January 19, 2026 • 27 mins
(January 19,2025)
The unknown hero of MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Billionaires are 4,000x more likely to hold public office. Recent rainstorms translate to billions of gallons of water added to reservoirs.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It is a Monday morning, January nineteenth. It is Martin
Luther King Day, national holiday, as we celebrated. Banks are closed,
government offices are closed. We are open for business as
many are as not mandatory to close for business on
(00:29):
Martin Luther King Day. Actually it's not mandatory to close
for business on any day throughout the country. National holidays
included I wish a lot of us don't think about Okay,
So today Martin Luther King Day, obviously we celebrate one
of the greatest speeches of all time nineteen sixty three
in front of the Lincoln Memorial Hot Hot Hot. It
(00:52):
was August and it was two hundred and fifty thousand
people were there at the White House. President Kennedy was
watching King deliver his I have a dream speech and
I'll tell you about that in a minute on live
television and said he's damn good. And sitting to King's left,
Mahelia Jackson, the great singer, inspired the improvised closing saying
(01:18):
or screaming, tell him about the dream, Martin, and you
know who were there, Marlon Brando, Charleton, Heston Lenna Horne,
a fairly unknown folk singer by the name of Bob Dylan,
played there, and King's address is now seen by many
many people, most of us, as the greatest political speech
(01:39):
in American history. Are certainly one of the greatest political
speeches in American history. Even Kennedy, who had initially opposed
the march, when he greeted King at a White House
reception after the speech after that March, told King and
you had a dream.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Now, I want to blow up a myth, and that
is that even Martin Luther King said this, The I
have a dream part of the speech was spontaneous. You've
heard that many many times, that he came up with
that phrase spontaneously. That's one of the myths. Neil, Yes,
(02:23):
you're shaking your head.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
There is. I thought he did parts of the speech before.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That is exactly the point I'm making, oh, okay, is
that he is given credit for coming up with that
phrase spontaneously in the speech. Okay, So the dream, well,
he wasn't the first one to have the dream. And
I'm talking about in public speaking and part of a
(02:51):
massive movement and speech.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
He was not the first with.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
A vision of this new harmonious social work order, where race, class,
creed didn't divide people. He wasn't the first to have
the dream go viral, which it had in those days
where it was repeated and dissected. That honor actually belongs
(03:17):
to a white guy, a Wall Street banker named James
Truslow Adams. And Adams is actually the forgotten hero of
this great speech. He is being given the credit of
the founding father of that dream metaphor, where everybody is equal,
(03:37):
where race or creed does not matter, where everybody can
succeed equally, where it doesn't matter your gentile, black or white, everybody.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Can succeed to their ability.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So thirty years before King Speech, Adams coined and popular
the idea of the American Dream in a best selling
book that he wrote, The Epic of America and what
he did and why he did that. And here's the
fascinating historical part about this is that was to rally
Americans during the depths of the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's what originally it was.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Now there were references to quote an American Dream even
back to eighteen seventy, but it was Adams who put
the phrase on the map Jim Cullen offer of the
American Dream, A short history of an idea that shaped
the nation, said, adam uses that phrase over and over again,
and by the nineteen fifties it had become what we
(04:44):
actually call a meme now, so we observe King's birthday
is a national holiday, and we should. And he was
as extraordinary as he has given credit for, literally one
of the great leaders of not deliver leaders of this
rights movement at a very young age. And I think
he was assassinated at the age of thirty eight, I
mean just a young young man.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And here is what.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Is difficult to separate is the myth from facts.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Sixty three years after his most popular.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Speech, and that speech has been endlessly replayed and dissected
and misinterpreted. What is very seldom mentioned, the dream phrase
at the climax of the speech was not just the
result of his improvisational brilliance, which, by the way, he had.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The guy was an doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
King was an extraordinary speaker and communicator, one of the
greatest country ever has. But the dream speech, that phrase
at the end of the speech wasn't the result of
just his improvisational brilliance.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
He had help along the way.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Now, some historians say that should actually deepen one's appreciation
of King's genius and not take away from it that
King was able to stitch that idea from Adams, right,
the white banker who wrote in the twenties about the
(06:20):
American dream, and King was able to take that idea
from Adams and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Move it into the mission of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That is part of his genius is taking that and
now it became actually not just the metaphor, but the
proclamation of the civil rights movement. I have a dream, Okay,
I want to continue on with some history about the
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I have a dream speech because today national.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Holiday Martin Luther King Day, and his most iconic speech
as he stood in front of two hundred and fifty
thousand people the podium in front of Lincoln Memorial in
August in nineteen sixty three, was I have a dream
that no one is ever going to forget. I actually
saw that live. I was really young, but I saw
(07:11):
it live, and I don't remember a whole lot of it. Actually,
the only thing I remember is the video of the
crowds and Bob Dylan singing. Young Bob Dylan was singing there.
In any case, the history of the I have a
Dream speech is a little bit more complicated than the
(07:32):
general feeling or the myth. Actually, if you will, it
was spontaneous. He just threw it in at the end,
and he came up with that.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The person who actually came up with the metaphor, the
I have a Dream metaphor for America was a guy
with the name of James Thurlow Adams, a white banker
during the depression, a rich guy. Now what's interesting is
that Adams was anti King. King was a democratic socialist,
(08:08):
suspicious of capitalism, un federal capitalism. Wanted universal health care
and education, a guaranteed annual income, the nationalization of some industries.
He was going to run for mayor, but bom Donnie
got him to it beforehand. And he believed the federal
government should do more for disadvantaged people. Adams was the
(08:32):
other way. He believed in small government. Was born into
a fairly wealthy New York family. As I said, he
became a successful Wall Street investment banker, and he made
enough money off of his investments to retire and pursue
his true passion writing history books. Matter of fact, he
(08:55):
won a Puellish Surprise for History in nineteen twenty two
for a book he wrote, The Founding of New England. Now,
when he wrote the book The Epic of America, his
faith in America had been truly shaken because the gap
between the have and the have nots had widened, and
I mean really widened. Sounds familiar to us. Americans were
(09:17):
losing faith in democracy. Authoritarian governments were on the rise
in Europe, and it was a different time, different place.
The argument also, the various countries around the world are
turning far right.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
This is fairly new what we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This also happened in the thirties, not to the extent
of the thirties.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And what Adams did is he created this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Image of a dream to describe the America he wanted,
and he wanted to call his book the American Dream.
The publisher said, nah, publishers said, no, one's going to
pay three dollars for a book about a dream. That
was a lot of money for a book in those days.
But he knew that the metaphor had power. He invoked that.
(10:06):
He wrote that phrase at least thirty times in his book.
He wrote that his vision of America was not a
dream of motor cars and high wages. Not just that,
but a dream of a social order in which each
man and each woman shall be able to attain the
(10:27):
fullest nature of which they are innately capable, recognized by
others for what they are, regardless of the circumstances of
birth or population.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Does that sound like the king speech? Sure does.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Adams then gave this view a name, and that is
the Dream. It became a Bestsellers were desperate, desperate for
a view of a better future, and so they went
(11:07):
to his book, I mean stampeded to his book. It
came out in the early thirties, the rock bottom of
the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
There were fears that America was actually going to dissolve.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Because of hunger and poverty, and so this dream metaphor
became part.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Of popular culture.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The book circulated with American soldiers fighting fascism during World
War Two, and by.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
The time he died.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Adams died in nineteen forty eight, he became pretty bitter
by the direction of America. The country had defeated fascism
in Europe. President Roosevelt had the New Deal, which did
save the economy and kept a lot of people from starving.
The US emerged from World War Two as the world's
(11:59):
greatest superpower.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
No one was even close. We owned the world.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
But Adams was disillusioned by Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Why because he thought the New Deal gave too much
power to the government and betrayed the American tradition of
self reliance. Does that sound like a political movement that
we're looking at now? And here is scholars looking at it.
(12:29):
In nineteen ninety one, a committee of scholars concluded King
plagiarized passage of his speech in his dissertation for a
doctoral degree.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
He is doctor Martin.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Luther King got a doctorate at Boston University, and the
scholars said that he had a appropriated the words without
proper attribution.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
That'll get you fired.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Today, by the way, plagiarism, that's one of the few
things that we'll get a pressor professor fired with tenure,
get a professor knocked off the faculty. Now you've got
scholars who say that he really didn't steal the rhetorical
thunder from Adams, although he clearly did.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
He simply gave it more power.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
He borrowed quotes from White Protestant ministers, the Black Church.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
He never sided the sources.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And by the way, if you look at the Dream Speech,
he alludes to quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
the Emancipation Proclamation. The Gettysburg Address also considered one of
the greatest speeches in the history of our.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Country, probably way up there, maybe the greatest. John F.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Kennedy asked, not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Extraordinary speech.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
And so you know, the history of that speech doesn't
make it any less powerful. I believe that Martin Luther
King as he uttered those words. And the wonder of
it is that we have that, we can look at it,
(14:19):
we can experience it. The record of it and seeing
him actually give that speech stays with us, and we'll
stay with us forever.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It's Martin Luther King Day, celebrating all day, the great
civil rights leader. So I just want to give you
a little bit of history, a little handle history. It's
always fun, all right. A couple of announcements before we
jump into we all want to be billionaires, and that
is first and foremost. Ask handle anything where you record
(14:54):
a question to embarrass me, and we broadcast that every
Friday at eight. And the way it works is during
the show, you go to the iHeartRadio app and you'll
hear this show being broadcast being streamed, and then you
go to the microphone of the upper right hand corner
and you click onto that and you record your question,
(15:17):
and then it embarrasses me one and completely. And the
other thing I want to announce is we are at
the tail end today and tomorrow of helping Kno buy
a car. Why because Cono his car blew up. He
drives seventy two miles each way to get here from
the Inland Empire, and now he feels pretty good about it.
(15:40):
He's wide awake, he's never had a problem falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And why is that?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, Inland Empire meth labs and well, yeah, you know,
tell me the Inland Empire doesn't have those fun labs.
In any case, we're helping Kono get that car because
he works here and his car blew up, and that's
a very.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Bad combination financially. Uh So you go to.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Kf I A M six forty dot com slash con
O k O n O, and that's the way we're
asking you to do it because if you just straight,
if you go to a straight go fundme page or
some weird stuff going on, and sometimes people jump in
and don't collect for the appropriate, appropriate person organization. So
go to kf I A M six forty dot com
(16:27):
slash kf I and please help us if you will.
Uh and uh con O Uh by the way, uh
the we're gonna draw everybody who does give us a
few dollars to help. CONO will be in a drawing
where you'll be getting a good chunk of myth.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Uh that kno will no.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, no, no no, no drug dealing.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Wow. Let's just keep people awake during the show. We
don't want people to fall asleep. Definitely keep you up.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, that's true. You know what I'm gonna do is, Yeah,
we're going to the Billionaire's tax and is We're probably
gonna do it. I won't end up doing that tomorrow,
all right. Some of the big stories we are looking at.
The Pentagon has ordered fifteen hundred active soldiers to prepare
(17:22):
for a possible deployment to Minnesota as the anti ice
protesters are gaining strength, and in Spain, a rather horrific
accident high speed training collision, thirty nine people dead, doesn't
is injured. And the President has announced members of his
Board of Peace for rebuilding Gaza. And that's one of
(17:47):
the things that I'm going to talk about, because this
segment is called crazy ass stuff that Trump has said
and done.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Okay, there we go, just turn it on the mic again. Wow,
I'm just.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Throwing stuff around today and I don't know why it's happening.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Well, yes I do, it's me Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Now, some of the stuff that Trump has done actually
makes sense, and he has done what other presidents couldn't do,
wouldn't do. One of them is really broker the piece
if you want to call it a piece or somewhat
of a piece between Israel and Hamas. That's a good move,
(18:31):
and no one thought he would do that, even though
he did it kind of weirdly. But he has also
said and done some stuff that you shake your head
at and you go.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Did he really say that? Did he really do that?
Some of it just entertaining, some of it heartbreaking, some
of it effective.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And so let me go through a few of the
craziest that he has done or said. First of all,
he I'm going to start with declaring the Gulf of
Mexico is now going to become known as the Gulf
of America. Now, the rest of the world doesn't buy that,
and most of the United States doesn't buy that. Although
if you look at official maps the United States from
(19:19):
the cartographers, it is they are now labeled or the
golf is labeled the.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Gulf of America.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I don't know how much it costs to redo the
maps as anybody else saying that.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
By the way, the Gulf of Mexico has been named
the Gulf of Mexico for probably four hundred years, so
there's a little history there. This one is you truly
can't believe that. September eleventh, two thousand and one, Donald Trump,
and this is reported and it has been confirmed by sources.
(19:52):
Trump called a New York television station to share what
he was seeing from his skyscraper apartment. He was interviewed
for about ten minutes, and he mentioned that his building
in the Financial District was now the tallest after the
two World Trade Center buildings were destroyed. Forty Wall Street
(20:18):
actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and
actually before the World Trade Center, it was actually the tallest.
But President Trump on September eleventh, way before he was president,
called up and said, hey, my apartment building is now
the tallest building.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Okay, thank you. That one is just weird.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Here's one that is beyond weird, and that is the
Civil Rights Act. He said this, I've heard him say
this led to white people being very badly treated. The
Civil Rights Act is anti white people, and they were
very badly treated. This was in interview with The New
(21:01):
York Times. Another fun one, and by the way, I
agree with him on this.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
He vowed to bring.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Back plastic straws because paper ones explode in minutes. That's
absolutely true. They actually become oatmeal, they don't explode. And
I would love to see a presidential directive. Now, most
presidential directives along this line who pays attention to because
it made no sense. But I would love to see
a presidential directive, not that it has any force, but
(21:29):
he's right on that one. Remember he talked about the
penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer, and Palmer couldn't respond
because he was already dead at the time. On COVID
he said, children are almost and I would almost say definitely,
(21:50):
but almost immune from this disease. So few they've gotten stronger, well,
relatively speaking, fewer dead, but some have died.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Hard to believe. I don't know how you feel about it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
They have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow
for this, And it was I guess there was some
truth to it that kids weren't as affected as adults,
elderly and particularly babies that were affected. This one really
really smashed me, and I said, please, you couldn't have
(22:24):
said that. A hero of mine, John McCain, who I
had interviewed in twenty fifteen. He was asked about running
and John McCain was also running, and he said, this
is Trump. I like people who weren't captured. He's not
(22:46):
a war hero. I like people who weren't captured. John
McCain is a genuine war hero. He was shot down
and spent I think six years in a North the
enemy's jail.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Was offered to be released.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
By the North Vietnamese because his dad was an admiral,
and he said, no, not until the rest of my
compatriots are released, the rest of the prisoners, and because
of that he was tortured horribly that he turned down
the offer.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Nuking hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Reportedly asked a top national security official if they could
stop hurricanes from hitting the US by dropping nuclear bombs
into the eye of the storm. Now, there's a lot
of attributions to a lot of these. By the way,
all of these this isn't just single source.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And remember this one.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
During the twenty twenty COVID briefing, he wondered aloud whether
injecting disinfectant clorox into your body or using ultraviolet light
inside the body could cure virus. And he was looking
at the I think it was Fauci and one of
the heads of the CDs, and they.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Were looking at him like he is nuts, completely nuts.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
One of the most horrible one is pardoning fifteen hundred
rioters claiming they were patriots.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That was tough. He's misspeaks a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
During the March twenty, twenty twenty five speech on wasteful spending,
he said the US is spending eight million dollars on
making mice transgender. I think he missed the term up
with transgenic mice used in medical research as opposed to
transgender mice. Describing Hurricane Florence in twenty eighteen, he called
(24:37):
it one of the wettest we've ever seen from the
standpoint of water. I guess that's true. I guess that's true.
He repeatedly claimed that the noise from wind turbines caused cancer. Okay,
didn't know that, that's news. And a couple things that
he had the power to do, which he did. Replace
(24:59):
the g in the White House rose garden with stone
papers and concrete and created a sort of a patio
furnace with patio furniture. Sighting issues with wet grass and
high heels for women at events, He's right, by the way,
women wearing high heels on grass does.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Not work very well.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And the one that a lot of us are having
problems with, adding that three hundred million dollar ballroom to
the east wing, I mean taking down the East wing
and putting in the ballroom. And now, because the ballroom
has a bigger footprint than the White House itself, he's
taking the west wing and creating the same a mirror
(25:43):
image of the East wing the ballroom, and so the
White House is going to look completely totally different. Does
he have the power to do that? Well, who's going
to stop him? Actually, there is annal of historians who
rule on this who actually can make the decision to
(26:06):
change the White House?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And he ignored them. But who's going to stop him.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The only way that he can be stopped is I
guess the Department of Justice files a lawsuit and stops him. Right, Yeah,
that's going to happen in this lifetime. All right, we're done,
guys coming up, it's Gary and Shannon. Gary's back, right,
So okay, that happens tomorrow. Everybody is back, Heather, thank
you for being here time. Yeah, I'm supposed to say that,
(26:34):
so I have to thank you, okay, and then we're
back with a regular crowd tomorrow morning with Amy and
Me and Neil and Kono and Ann and Will. I
know Will likes to be mentioned because Will has no
self esteem whatsoever, and so I have to tell everybody
(26:55):
how great Will is.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Will is great. Thank you, You're welcome. This is KFI
AM six point forty. You've been listening to the Bill
Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It is a Monday morning, January nineteenth. It is Martin
Luther King Day, national holiday, as we celebrated. Banks are closed,
government offices are closed. We are open for business as
many are as not mandatory to close for business on
(00:29):
Martin Luther King Day. Actually it's not mandatory to close
for business on any day throughout the country. National holidays
included I wish a lot of us don't think about Okay,
So today Martin Luther King Day, obviously we celebrate one
of the greatest speeches of all time nineteen sixty three
in front of the Lincoln Memorial Hot Hot Hot. It
(00:52):
was August and it was two hundred and fifty thousand
people were there at the White House. President Kennedy was
watching King deliver his I have a dream speech and
I'll tell you about that in a minute on live
television and said he's damn good. And sitting to King's left,
Mahelia Jackson, the great singer, inspired the improvised closing saying
(01:18):
or screaming, tell him about the dream, Martin, and you
know who were there, Marlon Brando, Charleton, Heston Lenna Horne,
a fairly unknown folk singer by the name of Bob Dylan,
played there, and King's address is now seen by many
many people, most of us, as the greatest political speech
(01:39):
in American history. Are certainly one of the greatest political
speeches in American history. Even Kennedy, who had initially opposed
the march, when he greeted King at a White House
reception after the speech after that March, told King and
you had a dream.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Now, I want to blow up a myth, and that
is that even Martin Luther King said this, The I
have a dream part of the speech was spontaneous. You've
heard that many many times, that he came up with
that phrase spontaneously. That's one of the myths. Neil, Yes,
(02:23):
you're shaking your head.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
There is. I thought he did parts of the speech before.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That is exactly the point I'm making, oh, okay, is
that he is given credit for coming up with that
phrase spontaneously in the speech. Okay, So the dream, well,
he wasn't the first one to have the dream. And
I'm talking about in public speaking and part of a
(02:51):
massive movement and speech.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
He was not the first with.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
A vision of this new harmonious social work order, where race, class,
creed didn't divide people. He wasn't the first to have
the dream go viral, which it had in those days
where it was repeated and dissected. That honor actually belongs
(03:17):
to a white guy, a Wall Street banker named James
Truslow Adams. And Adams is actually the forgotten hero of
this great speech. He is being given the credit of
the founding father of that dream metaphor, where everybody is equal,
(03:37):
where race or creed does not matter, where everybody can
succeed equally, where it doesn't matter your gentile, black or white, everybody.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Can succeed to their ability.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
So thirty years before King Speech, Adams coined and popular
the idea of the American Dream in a best selling
book that he wrote, The Epic of America and what
he did and why he did that. And here's the
fascinating historical part about this is that was to rally
Americans during the depths of the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
That's what originally it was.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Now there were references to quote an American Dream even
back to eighteen seventy, but it was Adams who put
the phrase on the map Jim Cullen offer of the
American Dream, A short history of an idea that shaped
the nation, said, adam uses that phrase over and over again,
and by the nineteen fifties it had become what we
(04:44):
actually call a meme now, so we observe King's birthday
is a national holiday, and we should. And he was
as extraordinary as he has given credit for, literally one
of the great leaders of not deliver leaders of this
rights movement at a very young age. And I think
he was assassinated at the age of thirty eight, I
mean just a young young man.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And here is what.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Is difficult to separate is the myth from facts.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Sixty three years after his most popular.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Speech, and that speech has been endlessly replayed and dissected
and misinterpreted. What is very seldom mentioned, the dream phrase
at the climax of the speech was not just the
result of his improvisational brilliance, which, by the way, he had.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The guy was an doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
King was an extraordinary speaker and communicator, one of the
greatest country ever has. But the dream speech, that phrase
at the end of the speech wasn't the result of
just his improvisational brilliance.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
He had help along the way.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Now, some historians say that should actually deepen one's appreciation
of King's genius and not take away from it that
King was able to stitch that idea from Adams, right,
the white banker who wrote in the twenties about the
(06:20):
American dream, and King was able to take that idea
from Adams and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Move it into the mission of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That is part of his genius is taking that and
now it became actually not just the metaphor, but the
proclamation of the civil rights movement. I have a dream, Okay,
I want to continue on with some history about the
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I have a dream speech because today national.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Holiday Martin Luther King Day, and his most iconic speech
as he stood in front of two hundred and fifty
thousand people the podium in front of Lincoln Memorial in
August in nineteen sixty three, was I have a dream
that no one is ever going to forget. I actually
saw that live. I was really young, but I saw
(07:11):
it live, and I don't remember a whole lot of it. Actually,
the only thing I remember is the video of the
crowds and Bob Dylan singing. Young Bob Dylan was singing there.
In any case, the history of the I have a
Dream speech is a little bit more complicated than the
(07:32):
general feeling or the myth. Actually, if you will, it
was spontaneous. He just threw it in at the end,
and he came up with that.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Not really.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
The person who actually came up with the metaphor, the
I have a Dream metaphor for America was a guy
with the name of James Thurlow Adams, a white banker
during the depression, a rich guy. Now what's interesting is
that Adams was anti King. King was a democratic socialist,
(08:08):
suspicious of capitalism, un federal capitalism. Wanted universal health care
and education, a guaranteed annual income, the nationalization of some industries.
He was going to run for mayor, but bom Donnie
got him to it beforehand. And he believed the federal
government should do more for disadvantaged people. Adams was the
(08:32):
other way. He believed in small government. Was born into
a fairly wealthy New York family. As I said, he
became a successful Wall Street investment banker, and he made
enough money off of his investments to retire and pursue
his true passion writing history books. Matter of fact, he
(08:55):
won a Puellish Surprise for History in nineteen twenty two
for a book he wrote, The Founding of New England. Now,
when he wrote the book The Epic of America, his
faith in America had been truly shaken because the gap
between the have and the have nots had widened, and
I mean really widened. Sounds familiar to us. Americans were
(09:17):
losing faith in democracy. Authoritarian governments were on the rise
in Europe, and it was a different time, different place.
The argument also, the various countries around the world are
turning far right.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
This is fairly new what we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
This also happened in the thirties, not to the extent
of the thirties.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And what Adams did is he created this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Image of a dream to describe the America he wanted,
and he wanted to call his book the American Dream.
The publisher said, nah, publishers said, no, one's going to
pay three dollars for a book about a dream. That
was a lot of money for a book in those days.
But he knew that the metaphor had power. He invoked that.
(10:06):
He wrote that phrase at least thirty times in his book.
He wrote that his vision of America was not a
dream of motor cars and high wages. Not just that,
but a dream of a social order in which each
man and each woman shall be able to attain the
(10:27):
fullest nature of which they are innately capable, recognized by
others for what they are, regardless of the circumstances of
birth or population.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Does that sound like the king speech? Sure does.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Adams then gave this view a name, and that is
the Dream. It became a Bestsellers were desperate, desperate for
a view of a better future, and so they went
(11:07):
to his book, I mean stampeded to his book. It
came out in the early thirties, the rock bottom of
the Great Depression.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
There were fears that America was actually going to dissolve.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Because of hunger and poverty, and so this dream metaphor
became part.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Of popular culture.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The book circulated with American soldiers fighting fascism during World
War Two, and by.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
The time he died.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Adams died in nineteen forty eight, he became pretty bitter
by the direction of America. The country had defeated fascism
in Europe. President Roosevelt had the New Deal, which did
save the economy and kept a lot of people from starving.
The US emerged from World War Two as the world's
(11:59):
greatest superpower.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
No one was even close. We owned the world.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
But Adams was disillusioned by Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Why because he thought the New Deal gave too much
power to the government and betrayed the American tradition of
self reliance. Does that sound like a political movement that
we're looking at now? And here is scholars looking at it.
(12:29):
In nineteen ninety one, a committee of scholars concluded King
plagiarized passage of his speech in his dissertation for a
doctoral degree.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
He is doctor Martin.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Luther King got a doctorate at Boston University, and the
scholars said that he had a appropriated the words without
proper attribution.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
That'll get you fired.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Today, by the way, plagiarism, that's one of the few
things that we'll get a pressor professor fired with tenure,
get a professor knocked off the faculty. Now you've got
scholars who say that he really didn't steal the rhetorical
thunder from Adams, although he clearly did.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
He simply gave it more power.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
He borrowed quotes from White Protestant ministers, the Black Church.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
He never sided the sources.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And by the way, if you look at the Dream Speech,
he alludes to quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
the Emancipation Proclamation. The Gettysburg Address also considered one of
the greatest speeches in the history of our.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Country, probably way up there, maybe the greatest. John F.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Kennedy asked, not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Extraordinary speech.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
And so you know, the history of that speech doesn't
make it any less powerful. I believe that Martin Luther
King as he uttered those words. And the wonder of
it is that we have that, we can look at it,
(14:19):
we can experience it. The record of it and seeing
him actually give that speech stays with us, and we'll
stay with us forever.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Martin Luther King.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
It's Martin Luther King Day, celebrating all day, the great
civil rights leader. So I just want to give you
a little bit of history, a little handle history. It's
always fun, all right. A couple of announcements before we
jump into we all want to be billionaires, and that
is first and foremost. Ask handle anything where you record
(14:54):
a question to embarrass me, and we broadcast that every
Friday at eight. And the way it works is during
the show, you go to the iHeartRadio app and you'll
hear this show being broadcast being streamed, and then you
go to the microphone of the upper right hand corner
and you click onto that and you record your question,
(15:17):
and then it embarrasses me one and completely. And the
other thing I want to announce is we are at
the tail end today and tomorrow of helping Kno buy
a car. Why because Cono his car blew up. He
drives seventy two miles each way to get here from
the Inland Empire, and now he feels pretty good about it.
(15:40):
He's wide awake, he's never had a problem falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And why is that?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Well, Inland Empire meth labs and well, yeah, you know,
tell me the Inland Empire doesn't have those fun labs.
In any case, we're helping Kono get that car because
he works here and his car blew up, and that's
a very.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Bad combination financially. Uh So you go to.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Kf I A M six forty dot com slash con
O k O n O, and that's the way we're
asking you to do it because if you just straight,
if you go to a straight go fundme page or
some weird stuff going on, and sometimes people jump in
and don't collect for the appropriate, appropriate person organization. So
go to kf I A M six forty dot com
(16:27):
slash kf I and please help us if you will.
Uh and uh con O Uh by the way, uh
the we're gonna draw everybody who does give us a
few dollars to help. CONO will be in a drawing
where you'll be getting a good chunk of myth.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Uh that kno will no.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
No, no, no no, no drug dealing.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Wow. Let's just keep people awake during the show. We
don't want people to fall asleep. Definitely keep you up.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, that's true. You know what I'm gonna do is, Yeah,
we're going to the Billionaire's tax and is We're probably
gonna do it. I won't end up doing that tomorrow,
all right. Some of the big stories we are looking at.
The Pentagon has ordered fifteen hundred active soldiers to prepare
(17:22):
for a possible deployment to Minnesota as the anti ice
protesters are gaining strength, and in Spain, a rather horrific
accident high speed training collision, thirty nine people dead, doesn't
is injured. And the President has announced members of his
Board of Peace for rebuilding Gaza. And that's one of
(17:47):
the things that I'm going to talk about, because this
segment is called crazy ass stuff that Trump has said
and done.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Okay, there we go, just turn it on the mic again. Wow,
I'm just.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Throwing stuff around today and I don't know why it's happening.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Well, yes I do, it's me Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Now, some of the stuff that Trump has done actually
makes sense, and he has done what other presidents couldn't do,
wouldn't do. One of them is really broker the piece
if you want to call it a piece or somewhat
of a piece between Israel and Hamas. That's a good move,
(18:31):
and no one thought he would do that, even though
he did it kind of weirdly. But he has also
said and done some stuff that you shake your head
at and you go.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Did he really say that? Did he really do that?
Some of it just entertaining, some of it heartbreaking, some
of it effective.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And so let me go through a few of the
craziest that he has done or said. First of all,
he I'm going to start with declaring the Gulf of
Mexico is now going to become known as the Gulf
of America. Now, the rest of the world doesn't buy that,
and most of the United States doesn't buy that. Although
if you look at official maps the United States from
(19:19):
the cartographers, it is they are now labeled or the
golf is labeled the.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Gulf of America.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I don't know how much it costs to redo the
maps as anybody else saying that.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
By the way, the Gulf of Mexico has been named
the Gulf of Mexico for probably four hundred years, so
there's a little history there. This one is you truly
can't believe that. September eleventh, two thousand and one, Donald Trump,
and this is reported and it has been confirmed by sources.
(19:52):
Trump called a New York television station to share what
he was seeing from his skyscraper apartment. He was interviewed
for about ten minutes, and he mentioned that his building
in the Financial District was now the tallest after the
two World Trade Center buildings were destroyed. Forty Wall Street
(20:18):
actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and
actually before the World Trade Center, it was actually the tallest.
But President Trump on September eleventh, way before he was president,
called up and said, hey, my apartment building is now
the tallest building.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Okay, thank you. That one is just weird.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Here's one that is beyond weird, and that is the
Civil Rights Act. He said this, I've heard him say
this led to white people being very badly treated. The
Civil Rights Act is anti white people, and they were
very badly treated. This was in interview with The New
(21:01):
York Times. Another fun one, and by the way, I
agree with him on this.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
He vowed to bring.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Back plastic straws because paper ones explode in minutes. That's
absolutely true. They actually become oatmeal, they don't explode. And
I would love to see a presidential directive. Now, most
presidential directives along this line who pays attention to because
it made no sense. But I would love to see
a presidential directive, not that it has any force, but
(21:29):
he's right on that one. Remember he talked about the
penis size of golfer Arnold Palmer, and Palmer couldn't respond
because he was already dead at the time. On COVID
he said, children are almost and I would almost say definitely,
(21:50):
but almost immune from this disease. So few they've gotten stronger, well,
relatively speaking, fewer dead, but some have died.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Hard to believe. I don't know how you feel about it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
They have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow
for this, And it was I guess there was some
truth to it that kids weren't as affected as adults,
elderly and particularly babies that were affected. This one really
really smashed me, and I said, please, you couldn't have
(22:24):
said that. A hero of mine, John McCain, who I
had interviewed in twenty fifteen. He was asked about running
and John McCain was also running, and he said, this
is Trump. I like people who weren't captured. He's not
(22:46):
a war hero. I like people who weren't captured. John
McCain is a genuine war hero. He was shot down
and spent I think six years in a North the
enemy's jail.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Was offered to be released.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
By the North Vietnamese because his dad was an admiral,
and he said, no, not until the rest of my
compatriots are released, the rest of the prisoners, and because
of that he was tortured horribly that he turned down
the offer.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Nuking hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Reportedly asked a top national security official if they could
stop hurricanes from hitting the US by dropping nuclear bombs
into the eye of the storm. Now, there's a lot
of attributions to a lot of these. By the way,
all of these this isn't just single source.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And remember this one.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
During the twenty twenty COVID briefing, he wondered aloud whether
injecting disinfectant clorox into your body or using ultraviolet light
inside the body could cure virus. And he was looking
at the I think it was Fauci and one of
the heads of the CDs, and they.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Were looking at him like he is nuts, completely nuts.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
One of the most horrible one is pardoning fifteen hundred
rioters claiming they were patriots.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That was tough. He's misspeaks a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
During the March twenty, twenty twenty five speech on wasteful spending,
he said the US is spending eight million dollars on
making mice transgender. I think he missed the term up
with transgenic mice used in medical research as opposed to
transgender mice. Describing Hurricane Florence in twenty eighteen, he called
(24:37):
it one of the wettest we've ever seen from the
standpoint of water. I guess that's true. I guess that's true.
He repeatedly claimed that the noise from wind turbines caused cancer. Okay,
didn't know that, that's news. And a couple things that
he had the power to do, which he did. Replace
(24:59):
the g in the White House rose garden with stone
papers and concrete and created a sort of a patio
furnace with patio furniture. Sighting issues with wet grass and
high heels for women at events, He's right, by the way,
women wearing high heels on grass does.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Not work very well.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
And the one that a lot of us are having
problems with, adding that three hundred million dollar ballroom to
the east wing, I mean taking down the East wing
and putting in the ballroom. And now, because the ballroom
has a bigger footprint than the White House itself, he's
taking the west wing and creating the same a mirror
(25:43):
image of the East wing the ballroom, and so the
White House is going to look completely totally different. Does
he have the power to do that? Well, who's going
to stop him? Actually, there is annal of historians who
rule on this who actually can make the decision to
(26:06):
change the White House?
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And he ignored them. But who's going to stop him.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
The only way that he can be stopped is I
guess the Department of Justice files a lawsuit and stops him. Right, Yeah,
that's going to happen in this lifetime. All right, we're done,
guys coming up, it's Gary and Shannon. Gary's back, right,
So okay, that happens tomorrow. Everybody is back, Heather, thank
you for being here time. Yeah, I'm supposed to say that,
(26:34):
so I have to thank you, okay, and then we're
back with a regular crowd tomorrow morning with Amy and
Me and Neil and Kono and Ann and Will. I
know Will likes to be mentioned because Will has no
self esteem whatsoever, and so I have to tell everybody
(26:55):
how great Will is.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Will is great. Thank you, You're welcome. This is KFI
AM six point forty. You've been listening to the Bill
Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The Bill Handel Show News
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