October 7, 2025 • 54 mins
Historian David Beito discusses his new book “FDR: A New Political Life” and exposes how FDR’s New Deal laid the foundations for America’s surveillance state, media censorship, and executive dictatorship. From telegram spying and gold confiscation to secret war plans and Supreme Court power grabs, this interview reveals how Roosevelt redefined tyranny in democratic disguise—and how today’s leaders are repeating his playbook.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome back. And I want to begin with a couple
of statements from people that about this book. The book
is FDR A New Political Life. The author is David Beto,
and this first one that's here is from Hillsdale College.
It's burton fulsome. He says, the book FDR A New
Political Life is the most illuminating one volume history of
(00:29):
FDR ever written. American historians have come to recognize that
Roosevelt's New Deal did not end the Great Depression, but
prolonged it. David Beto carefully explains why so many FDR
programs and power grabs were so counterproductive. To go from
the older FDR histories to David Beto's wonderful new work
(00:49):
is to make a historic leak from the dark ages. Also,
another author, David Michalis, says, when it comes to race
and Western influence, FDR's vision of the world order was
muddled by delusional phenomenon. He was not a man of
empire or genocide, like his wartime allies Churchill and Stalin,
(01:09):
but he was a dreadfully old fashioned Victorian quack, an
amateur phrenologist who believed that repopulating the Pacific rim with
certain choice crossbreeding would create a better world for all.
David Beto takes us further than his predecessors along the
breadcrumb path into Franklin Roosevelt's thick forested interior and again
(01:31):
many wonderful still reviews. And I got to say, even
though I wasn't able to read the entire book, when
I read of it really does match with this. I'll
give you one more. This is from Jim Bovart, who
we've interviewed on the show many times. He said. Historian
David Beato, who previously exposed how President Franklin Roosevelt ravaged
americans constitutional rights, is back with a new book, vividly
(01:55):
exposing his personal perfidy from the dawn of Woodrow Wilson
administration to nineteen forty five, the betrayal at Yalta and beyond.
With volleys of research, Beto demolishes Roosevelt's reputation as one
of the quote unquote great presidents. And so I look
at FDR like Lincoln. These are presidents who come in
(02:17):
at a time of great societal upheaval and change and war,
and they have an active role in redefining our society.
I think we're in a time like that right now,
This is a guy who ran as a peace candidate
but then turned to war. He was there at the
center of the fight between gold and Fiat currency. He
was preside over rapid expansion of Lebiatha and federal government
(02:42):
with very creative excuses to override the constitution. He instituted
surveillance and there was a free speech revolt against him.
He also weaponized the FCC and we can see, you know,
we've talked about what was going on with the FCC.
We pointed out that why should broadcast media have its
content controlled when they don't control the press. Well you
(03:05):
can look to FDR for that. So joining us now
is David Beato. Thank you so much for joining us
this excellent book here that you have.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Thank you so much. You know, if you get a
thing you were you brought up the I mean, if
you don't mind, go ahead on the FCC issue, and
it brought to mind the contrast between FDR and Trump.
You know, Trump makes these wild threats about the involving
the FCC, He goes public with it. He tries to
(03:33):
get Jimmy Kimmel off the air, which really wasn't worth
the effort. Frankly, and he succeeds short term. But now
Kimmell is back on the air, so Trump looks silly.
What FDR did is he did it behind the scenes.
He did it carefully. He would never make a public
statement like that. He went to the sponsors of For example,
(03:54):
there was a leading anti New Deal radio commentator called
named Boke Harder in nineteen thirty eight, one of the
top rated commentators in the country on CBS, and so
howd Roosevelt get him off the air? He opening an
IRS investigation, an immigration investigation because Carter was from Canada.
(04:15):
And then finally he went to the executives. He went
to the sponsors, including Marjorie Merriweather Post Sold at least
she was the original owner of mar A Lago, and
she used her influence and Carter was forced off the air,
and by the end of nineteen thirty eight, all anti
(04:38):
New Deal commentators on the main networks were off the air.
And despite the fact that most newspapers were hostile to FDR,
he did it all quietly. He did it all behind
the scenes with a scalpel where Trump used the blunt
edge of the sword. And maybe many ways we should
(04:59):
behave thankful for that. Yeah, the Trump is like a
bull in a china shop so often and sometimes when
he doesn't need to get his way, he doesn't get
his way because he's so I don't know, obvious about it.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, maybe his real thing is more about getting Americans
divided and fighting each other than it is about the
actual reform. But what FDR did is something that we've
seen a pattern of people in government typically doing, and
that is working behind the scenes, quietly sending out messages
to make sure that this group of that group has
shadow banned or canceled. And you can use your own
(05:36):
judgment in terms of doing this, because you're a private
corporation and you can do that. But of course he
kind of did that with in terms of telegrams and
things like that before, not the social media side, of course,
but actual physical telegrams. FDR had his involvement with that
as well. And they see the early trends of the
surveillance state is the technology has changed, but the nature
(05:59):
of men in power hasn't really changed that much. Talk
a little bit about the Black Inquisition and things that
were involved in that.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Okay, well, the Black Committee was a Senate committee was
headed by Senator HUGO. Black, who later ended up on
the US Supreme Court despite his clan background. And Black
was an attack dog for the New Deal. He was
(06:26):
really Roosevelt's main ally, I would say in the Congress.
He was to go to guy Well. Roosevelt wanted an
investigation of anti New Deal organizations and Black was more
than happy to cooperate in this. So Black would call
these witnesses and they would, you know, sometimes successfully hold
(06:49):
him off. He would bring in leading anti New Deal figures.
And so Black got the bright idea, or someone got
the bright idea, Well, why don't I get there? A
private telegram telegrams were the emails texts of the time.
They were over half of long distance communication. People would
say things and telegrams that they wouldn't say in letters,
(07:11):
but they would say now in an email or a text,
and there were thousands of them. They were instantaneous, virtually instantaneous.
So Black goes to Western Union and the other telegraph
companies and said, I want copies of all telegrams sent
to and from members of Congress, and he had other
(07:35):
people as well, for like a six months period. And
Western Union's response was, are you kidding, you know, our
customers would would hate that. And Black goes to the
FCC gets approval, and of course the FDR would have
had a hand in this, although again he didn't really
have to order Black to do anything because Black was
(07:56):
serving the new Deal and got FCC approved.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So again it's FCC because.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Telegraph companies were ordered to provide That was one example,
all you know, millions of telegrams. But then they expanded
the Black expanded the investigation to include other cities, targeted individuals,
and so forth. So he went in there with his
staffers into Western Union, and they had to keep copies
(08:22):
of the of telegrams, right, that was sort of part
of their requirement, and they got big.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That was a government that was a government first went
through them. Sorry, that was a government requirement to keep
the copies in the first place.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yes, yeah, well I think the telegraph companies probably maybe
would have kept their own copies anyway, I don't know.
But they were required to keep copies of all telegrams
and they went through millions. And I couldn't believe this
when I saw, but yes, that was true. They went
through about ten thousand a day over a very long period.
Of time, and the committee staffers had instructions to don't
(09:01):
look at anything of a personal nature, just to look
at material related to lobbying. What would be lobbying, well,
the committee had a specific definition indirect or direct lobbying.
Indirect lobbying would be any attempt to influence public opinion.
So our conversation would be an example of that. So
(09:22):
any attempt to influence public opinion would be considered lobbying.
So they went through copied selectively, and they would ambush
witnesses because this was all secret. None of the witnesses
knew they were doing this. None of them knew, and
eventually came out because Western Union informed started to inform
(09:44):
people who were being targeted, and one of them sued
very prominent law firm in Chicago. Still there, Silas Strawn
was his name, and Strawn was a heavyweight and in
one in federal district court. By that time, Black had
done his damage and he said, well, we're done with
our investigation. However, this was a very good precedent for
(10:08):
the future. Now, of course, Black could use the telegrams
that he'd gotten his illegal booty, but he couldn't do
any more of this kind of search, nor could official
future congressional committees.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Did they use the.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Important precedent, but it's not very well known. He as
a federal court judge.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, we usually think about, you know, what's going on
with Faiza and everything. And you know that came after
World War two because with the creation of the CIA
and NSA, they started getting information from the phone company,
getting pen information, who did they call, and that type
of thing which they could infer a lot from. But
(10:48):
actually this predates all of that. Were they using this,
as you said, they were questioning people. Did they use
this information as a perjury trap for people? Yea asked
him a questions of the new The answer.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I suspect that that kind of thing went on. I
haven't come across it. I have reason to believe from
just reading some of Roosevelt's comments that he was, you know,
this information was shared with him, but I can't prove it,
but I think it was used for all sorts of
(11:23):
nefarious reasons. See, historians have kind of looked in the
wrong place. They've looked at people like jag or Hoover,
who again there's a lot of things he did too,
But the mass surveillance, this is a better example of
mass surveillance, but people even looked at it. In fact,
I hadn't even heard of the Black Committee till about
twelve years ago when I was doing research and I
(11:45):
came across to it. I said, what's this thing of
the Black Committee? What's that? Is that describing the nature
of the committee? Yeah, it was a Senate committee. It
was forgotten, not by a lot of conservatives, though conservatives
would be bringing up in the in the nineteen fifties,
and that's part of the reason why McCarthyism came about,
because they were pissed and they thought, well, you guys
(12:08):
are now complaining about civil liberties, what about the Black Committee?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
And that's a parallel to today as well, isn't it.
You know, when you're suffering injustice like that, you feel
entitled to propagate it against your enemies again. You know.
So wait, you guys did, so what about that? Let's
do it again? I love the title that you got trials.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Probably Trump's going to do sedition trials. That was, yes, right,
that's right, the same thing that Jay six people were
convicted of. Stupid. Yeah, that should have been repealed exactly,
or at least severely limited.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I like the way that you've got to hear the
in the in your book, the Black Inquisition, You know,
that really does get your attention as you're looking at it,
just like it was like, oh, okay, you go critics, Yeah,
the Black Inquisition. And then there was a pushback against that.
Part of it was William Randolph Hurst was of course
targeted that because I guess I could say, well, anything
that he says is going to be influencing public opinion, obviously,
(13:02):
so let's get all of his telegrams. And so he
actually you have a chapter here of the Right and
the Left Free Speech Coalition. So it's a pushback with that.
He joined with the ACLU left as William Randolph Hurst
pushing back, tell us little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, Well, the Black Committee had gotten a treasure trove
of Hearst related telegrams, but they did a very stupid thing.
They did a public subpoena. None of this was subpoena,
by the way, but they did a public subpoena of
one and only one telegram that they probably already had.
(13:40):
And this telegram was where Hearst was accusing this prominent
member of Congress, the committee chair, of being in league
with the communists. It was kind of a hyperbolic telegram,
and I guess what the Black Committee, what Black thought was,
people just see that as so over the top, this
will be good pr for us. But instead what happened
(14:01):
is other members of Congress, like you know, a guy
named McCormack who is future Speaker of the House, a
guy named Emmanuel Seller. These are New Dealers, they say,
this is uncalled for, this is this is the tactics
of Mussolini. So it actually backfired on Roosevelt. Even many
(14:21):
of his own New Deal supporters were against this. And
this is this is very interesting and very discouraging in
some ways because during this period you had a lot
of civil libertarians who on the left who were willing,
even though they liked Roosevelt, who were willing to push
(14:42):
back against him. And that is not as true today.
Maybe that will change now, but it's not what it
certainly hasn't been true today.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Well, today there's so much more partisan in tribal and
we don't seem to care about principles, we don't seem
to care about the blah blah. And that's true of
both sides, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Well, yeah, it's the people at the time. Give you
a sense of the difference. Hl Mankin was in your
face kind of anti New dealer, simil libertarian, you know,
I don't know, agnostic, heal, he needed everybody, but who
was friends with everybody. He had correspondence that span the
political spectrum. He was respected, he was liked as an
individual could talk to people. I don't think there are as
(15:26):
many people who could who fit in that category today.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
That's right. Yeah, he was real clever wit and I
mentioned frequently his thing. A year ago, if I had
a gold coin and a flasko whiskey, the whiskey was
illegal in the coin was legal. This year, the gold
coin is illegal and the Flasco whiskey is legal. So yeah,
he was always hadn't heard that one, but he was
always pointing out the absurdity of FDR. Yeah. So I
(15:51):
think one of the very telling things about FDR was
the war and peace issue. And you've got in here
part of his speech, which truly is amazing that he
makes when he's running as a candidate as a peace candidate.
He says, I've seen war. I've seen war on land
and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded.
(16:12):
I've seen men coughing out their gas lungs. I've seen
the dead and the mud. I've seen cities destroyed. I've
seen two hundred limping, exhausted men come out of the
survivors of the regiment of one thousand that went forward
forty eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I've
seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
(16:33):
And you write, and, as he so often did, FDR
exaggerated his exposure to the fighting in World War One
was limited and sanitized. While the Navy had sent him
on a guided inspection of American naval and marine bases
in Europe, the main impression conveyed by his contemporary contemporaneous
(16:55):
diary account was that of a sightseer. So talk a
little bit about that, how he ran as a peace
candidate and then he flipped pushing us into war.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well, FGR was playing both sides of the street. For example,
in the nineteen thirties, he'd been the guy to suggests, well,
maybe we need neutrality laws, and then later he pushed
for repeal of the Neutrality Act, saying I wish I'd
never signed it. Never mentioned that he was the guy
(17:29):
that helped to inspire it in the first place. So
he was a rabid interventionist. When he was Assistant Secretary
of the Navy under Wilson, he was constantly trying to
imitate his cousin Theodore and get some sort of incident possibly,
(17:50):
so he was a hawk. But then in the thirties
he sort of realizes there's all this anti war feeling
and he appeals to that. He actually applauds the Munich Agreement.
But then after that he becomes much more of an
interventionist and certainly aligns himself with Winston Churchill and so forth.
(18:17):
But a lot of this is done quietly, so he
started playing both sides of the street. And he is
in trouble in the nineteen forty election. His opponent, Wendell Wilkie,
who was kind of an interventionist too, but starts talking
like in America Firster during the last part of the
campaign is making inroads. So FDR is worried about this,
(18:39):
so very shortly before the election he gives this speech
he'd never given a speech this strong, where he says,
I've said this before, and I'll say it again and
again and again. Your boys are not going to be
sent into any foreign war full stop, right. Wynda Wilkie
(19:00):
heard that on the radio, and he said, that hypocritical
son of bit, some of a bitch has just lost
me the election.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And whether or.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Not that was true or not, FDR was, that was
a clear motivation. His son went up to him and said, Dad,
why did you say that. You never said anything like
that before. And he said, basically, well, I had to win,
you know, for the good of the country, that kind
of thing. So just amoral, an amoral figure, maybe worse
(19:30):
in so many ways, a very cynical, jaded man, I think,
who had great charm, Yes, but I never really cared
for him. I'm going to confess. Did you ever see
that movie Sunrise at Campabello?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
No? I never saw that.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Oh it was a movie made in the fifties starring
Ralph Bellamy playing FDR in his battle against polio, and
I just you know, Bellamy captured FDR in some ways.
It was supposed to a sympathetic portrayal, but there was
just this charm which always seemed a little bit phony
to me. Yeah, and and very calculating but very effective.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, he seemed he seemed that way to me as well.
But I always kind of just dismissed that, as you know,
when you look at movies at the time, you know,
people came across as very stiff and pretentious and you know,
putting on airs and that that's kind of the way
that a lot of people would come across, even in
the movies at that time, they wouldn't come across as
you know, genuine or and so I kind of just
(20:34):
put it up to the zeitgeist of the time, if
you will. But yeah, it's it's interesting. And you begin
with his rise to power, talk a little bit about
that where'd this guy come from?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
He he had a big advantage, and that he was
born into comfortable circumstances, not super wealth, but wealth. He
was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and very distant,
like seventh cousin, but the family had context with each
(21:05):
other and so forth. And he went he did. He
did the typical trajectory of someone in that class. He
went to Groton, a very exclusive private school, and he
went to Harvard. He got a Columbia his law degree
from Columbia. He had very mediocre grades. He was not
(21:27):
a good student, but he was a glad hander. People
liked him. He made his impact socially, and then it
was some people approached him and said, mister Roosevelt, we'd
like you to run for Congress, or not for Congress,
for a state legislature in New York. You know, Theodore
was president at the time. They happened to be Democrats.
(21:49):
I guess they thought that that was a brilliant move.
Now I say that if the Republicans had approached Franklin,
he probably would have run as a Republican. In fact,
he had supported his cousin very openly. When his cousin
ran for re election, it was his first vote was
for Theodore. But the Democrats asked him it was a
good Democratic year nineteen oh eight, So he ran as
(22:12):
a Democrat and he was able to win. And from
there he just impressed people. He got the attention of
a guy named Josephus Daniels who was Secretary of the Navy.
Quite a racist, Southern racist type, but Daniels was charmed
by Roosevelt. He had a very apt comment. He said
(22:33):
he was just like an actress. He had that he
had it right. And someone had said, was the case
of love at first sight? You know when Daniels saw him,
and I don't think anything went on, but he made
him assistant secretary of Navy, and from there Roosevelt was
(22:54):
imitating his cousin, either intentionally or by chance. Theodore had
been in the legislature, Theodore had been assistant secretary of
the Navy, and then Theodore was vice presidential candidate, as
Roosevelt was in nineteen twenty, so their very similarity. A
lot of parallels between them. One difference. Though Franklin did
(23:17):
not volunteer to fight in World War One, he was
in his late thirties, he could have. His cousin. Theodore said,
you have to get into the infantry, not just the Navy.
You have to get into the infantry. You have to
get in the fight. And Roosevelt came back and said, well,
my boss thinks I'm essential, And maybe his boss did
say that, but Theodore had had, you know, a similar boss.
(23:41):
He didn't have to go in. But Franklin was not
the man. The Theodore was right, and so he did not.
He did not serve in the military.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So at that point he was able bodied. At that
point he was able bodied and could have.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that was before his bout of polio, which was
nineteen how old hekt's right here in nineteen twenty one, so.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
It was about how old when that happened.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
He was about thirty nine, quite a young man. And
the story, there's an interesting story there. Now a lot
of people said, can't you say something good about Roosevelt.
I will say that, you know, he showed great determination.
Of course, he had a lot of he had a
lot of help, he had a lot of doctors, he
(24:27):
had a lot of you know, leisure time, he had
a lot of support. But he showed great courage and
overcoming that. Part of the story that I was surprised
by is who did he blame for the polio? He
blamed a Republican center. And the story on this is
really fascinating. I begin my book with it. There was
an investigation, well, there was something called the Newport scandal,
(24:49):
the Newport sex scandal. Do you recall reading that?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah? No, I skipped over to the black Inquisition stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
What happened was Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy
and there was a guy at one of the naval
bases in Newport who was investigating whether there were same
sex relationships going on. In the Navy thought this was
major scandal and so forth, and even did his own
private investigations where this guy would find people to go
(25:22):
in and they would actually have sex right with these men,
right to try to entrap them. So Roosevelt found out
about this. The investigation was basically had no funding. The
Secretary of War had refused to back it, I mean,
the Attorney General refused to back it. And Roosevelt stepped
in single handedly and set up a investigative unit headed
(25:47):
by him called Section A in the Department of Navy,
which investigated this issue of same sex relationships in the Navy.
And they would send out investigators who again would entrap
people by having sex with them, and Roosevelt, I think
quite clearly knew what was going on. A local journalist
(26:12):
in Newport pushed back on this and accused Roosevelt of
doing this, and Roosevelt basically responded, said, well, you know,
you know, isn't it important to you know to find
what's going on here? Why are we so worried about procedure?
(26:34):
And it was actually controversially you would think this period
is very anti gain. It was, but people in Congress
and the press thought this was abhorrent. These tactics were
beyond the pale, and.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So that's one of the things that we've lost.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He did his best to cover it up, and it weakened.
It puts so much tension on him that he said
that it had lowered his resistance and made him more
susceptible to the outbreak of polio, which may have been
true actually because it was a lot of us contaminated water.
But again, if your immunity, you know, if you had
(27:10):
low resistance and so forth. So he blamed this senator
till his dying day for causing his his polio well
you know what you're talking about, that or investigation which
almost derailed his career, almost destroyed him, and he was lucky.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's the tactic that's involved there, and people don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Everybody did. And you would think this would be a
period where they would say, alter gay, we need to
root them out. And they may have thought that, but
this is beyond the pail. And of course these people
that had been destroyed, many of them were innocent. You know,
they didn't get any benefits, right, didn't get military funerals.
They were destroyed. And Roosevelt is able to ride through
(27:52):
it partly because other things go on that avert public attention.
But the New York Times, as a matter of fact,
has a big story where it calls his behavior. They
blame him for it. The Times blames him in this
article and basically, you know, comes a conclusion he's unfit
for office. But he's able to escape this somehow because
(28:17):
of other things going on, and it's forgotten and most
people today don't even know about it, but it's quite
an important it's quite an important story in his life.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Well, it reveals his character which we then saw later
when he's coming after politically.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And Roosevelt was quite clear that he wasn't worried about
the means. It was the end. Yet something done. This
is a view towards civil liberties. These people need to
be shut up. Yeah, I think some way to shut
them up. That was a real harm proseguer.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
That's a real hallmark of everything that he did. You know,
he doesn't care.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I think he was always kind of a default interventionist,
and I think a lot, you know, I mean, I
think he did have an ideology and I think he
had been a wi Sonyan interventionist. He was a great
admirer of Wilson, right, He defended Wilson when he ran
for president nineteen twenty, even though much of the public
was sick of Wilson. He defended the worst aspect, the
(29:12):
most repressive aspects of Wilsonian. So I think that was
his default position. That's the best way I could I
could explain it. I think the relationship with Churchill made
a difference, but I think you see even signs of
that before that, where he's trying to do it. His
focus is on the North Atlantic. By nineteen forty one,
(29:36):
he is desperately trying to provoke an incident in the
North Atlantic, and he builds up minor incidents or you know,
into cause celebs, and is trying to get into the war.
Clear he wants to do that. By nineteen forty one
by any means that he can't, but the is hostile
(30:01):
to the idea. Well werewhelmingly the public is you know,
does not want to get in another form war. They
remember World War One, they do not want to do
that again. But he's able to get aid to Britain,
to lend lease, which is very open ended. But again
selling this is well, of course we won't have to
go in. You know, we can help the British, right,
(30:23):
give them the tools and they will finish the fight,
as he pleased to say, and that kind.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Of thing kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. Right,
kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. I guess, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
we can just give them the weapons and we won't
really get involved. But the Germans aren't taking the bait
to the extent that he wants them to. So he
kind of shifts to the Pacific, right, and there's massive
(30:49):
sanctions against the Japanese that preceded Pearl Harbor. And of course,
what do you have about Pearl Harbor? What's your take
on Pearl Harbor? Did he engineer that too and keep
things secret? They're in a kind of subversive way? What
what what is your pain?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Okay, yeah, again he is he his focus is in
the North Atlantic, but he eventually comes to the conclusion, well,
you know, if we're going to go to war Japan,
that's fine with me, and you know, maybe we can
get into the European war as well. I don't think
I think that that's part of what he's he's pushing,
(31:28):
and really, since you know he he he there were
opportunities to to UH to have peace agreement with Japan.
The Japanese Prime minister offers to meet with Roosevelt in
the middle of the Pacific to have a summit. So
let's hash this out. Roosevelt doesn't take the opportunity. At
one point, the Japanese actually say that they were willing
(31:50):
to evacuate China. He doesn't take the opportunity. So he's he's,
he's there's sort of a distraction. Now, okay, Pearl Harvard.
Did Roosevelt know about it? I don't think he did.
And my argument for that is, I think the best
evidence is that they did know that Japanese would attack.
(32:11):
They thought the attack would probably be somewhere like the Philippines,
maybe in you know, Singapore, somewhere like that. They did
not think it would be Pearl Harbor. Very few people
thought that. Almost nobody thought that. And part of the
reason they didn't think that is they they didn't think
the Japanese were capable. They didn't think they were good pilots,
(32:33):
They didn't think that they could they could pull something
out like that. And even the commanders on the ground
and Roosevelt did short change them, short and Kimmel there
at the Pacific, they wanted observation planes, but Roosevelt diverted
all resources to the North Atlantic they wanted, you know,
they if they had had those observation planes, for example,
(32:56):
it might have made all the difference. He short changed them.
But even they thought that the main danger from the
Japanese was sabotage. That's one of the reasons why they
put the planes in the middle of the field. In
many cases, it made the more vulnerable to attack, but
theoretically less vulnerable to sabotage. So what is Roosevelt's first
(33:17):
reaction after the attack, Well, it's from a butler who
saw him, and Roosevelt's response was, I will go down
in disgrace. He thinks, my god, I didn't expect this.
I'm going to be in trouble because of this. So
(33:38):
I don't think. I don't think they knew that the
attack was going to be at Pearl Harbor, partly because
they underestimated the Japanese. I think Roosevelt was reckless, however,
that he knew an attack was going to come, I
think he could have done much more to warn naval
commanders throughout the Pacific than an attack was going to come.
(34:00):
There were clues that it could have come at Pearl Harbor,
naming the time of day. They didn't know that the
time of the day when the Japanese were going to
just in the embassy had been ordered American Embassy to
destroy their codes, and that was at seven thirty am,
which would have been a very good time for an
attack on Pearl Harbor. And they didn't put two and
two together. So I think it's more in competence. But
(34:23):
I don't buy the theory that has been put forward
by people like Stinnett, who makes this argument that you
know that we knew that the Japanese fleet was on
the way and so forth. I don't see the evidence
for that. We did break one of the codes, but
(34:44):
we didn't break the crucial you know, naval code, broke
the diplomatic code, so we knew a lot of what
was going on. Roosevelt knew a lot about it. He
was reading a lot of Japanese mail. And maybe they
could have put two and two together, but I think
it was sort of racism in some sense. They just
didn't think that Japanese could pull something like this off.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
You know, they found about that they well talk a
little bit about you.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
That issue, and I'd be happy to talk with people
about it. But I don't buy that that he knew
sure that it was going to happen at Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Sure, well, talk about fear and emergency.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
You're saying, okay, Well, when Roosevelt ran in nineteen forty
nineteen thirty two, he he pledged to maintain sound money.
Now I didn't exactly say well gold, but who were
didn't either. But he also gave a speech right before
the election called a little known speech called the Covenant Speech,
where he would talk about, you know, gold contracts, the covenant.
(35:43):
Right he said he would hold the covenant, you know, basically,
I will uphold you know, the use of gold.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Then, very shortly after the election, he makes a decision
to go off the gold standard. He calls in his
secretary of the Treasury he was much more or actually
Secretary of State who's much more conservative than him on
financial issues, Cordell Hall, and he says, Cordell, congratulate you.
We're going off the gold standard tomorrow. And he pulls
(36:13):
out some money and it was a money that was
issued by the whatever, the Federal Reserve Bank of Tennessee.
I guess he said, this is from Tennessee, your own state, Cordell.
And what makes this money good? It's only good because
we say it's good. And again that is what he did,
(36:33):
and he does a lot of crazy things after that.
He does a program to purchase gold and he sets
the well, no, not to purchase gold, but to set
the price of gold. So he say, is it's gold
buying program? And how does he determine the price? He
determines it then from things like he says, well, I
(36:56):
think the price should be nineteen cents today because it's
a lucky number. You know. He would say things like that.
And Roosevelt was very superstitious. He had lucky shoes, he
had lucky hats. So this is this is not as
strange as you might seem. And it was just it
was just a crazy, crazy town. But what saved us
(37:17):
in terms of financially in the thirties was we had
massive gold imports from both Europe and the Soviet Union.
Your people are taking their gold for obvious reasons out
of those places and bringing into the United States. So
we have a tremendous gold inflow to the United States
through those sort of happy, not happy, tragic accidents. I
(37:39):
guess you could say both from Russia and from Castalin
is buying a lot of American goods using gold, that's
part of it. And of course the gold is coming
in from Germany because Jews and others are taking their
taking their gold out.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah. It's interesting, you know, when you when you look
at how he was reacting, how he had his lucky
shoes and all the rest of the stuff, and how
arbitrary things were. That sounds very familiar to them in
a disturbing way, doesn't it. You know, kind of erratic
and arbitrary, capricious. What he's doing with these things. We're
starting to see, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Parallels with Trump, but they're big difference is too. Yeah,
but you know, I think there are there there there,
there's there's some parallels that you control.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So talk a little bit about the end of prohibition.
That's that's one of the things. Everybody, you know, happy
days is here again. How much of that was yah?
Did he build that up for his his campaign and
how much of that was really an initiative of his
or was it just that people had had it with
alcohol prohibition at that point? He got ahead of that
(38:49):
was he was he opposed on that by the Republicans
or what what was the situation with the prohibition?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
And I don't discuss prohibition a lot, but but Roosevelt
was a straddler. He wasn't going to take controversial positions.
He was also a straddler on trade issues and terriff issues,
so he was not a leader of the anti prohibition forces.
There were Democrats who were the more conservative. Democrats interestingly
(39:16):
tended to be the more anti prohibition, and there was
a big element in the party and people were sick
and tired of the Prohibition loss by nineteen thirty two.
The Republicans chose to kind of avoid the issue. So
Roosevelt and getting the nomination, it certainly was a popular position,
(39:39):
but he also recognized that this is a popular position,
and he came out for repeal of the Constitutional Amendment
bringing in prohibition. He took a very strong stand. I
think there were other motivations, though, One was it's a
great tax source. As a matter of fact, during the
(40:01):
early deal, even though they're talking about income taxes, most
of the tax collections are from excise taxes people like
things like cosmetics, cigarettes, alcohol. That's where the bulk of
the revenue is raised. So Roosevelt is raising the tax
(40:22):
top rate to I don't know eventually it gets so
well over ninety percent, but it's going way way up.
He makes a big deal about this, But that means
that the wealth, they find ways to find tax shelters,
they don't pay it. So where does the actual money comes.
It comes from the nickels and dimes and people going
to movies, because the tax on movie tickets, it comes
(40:43):
from the nickels and dimes of working class people. But
Roosevelt is very clever and never acknowledging that. And of
course the excise taxes on liquor as well. Yeah, I
always think is maybe in the back of his mind too,
and he uses that revenue source in a major way.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
It's always soaked the rich and then it's always the
poor middle class to pay all the taxes. That's another
thing that never seen.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Your example of that.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, yes, another thing never stops. And of course the revenuers,
you know, that's what they called the people that were
coming after the stills in the mountains and everything, because
that was really what they wanted. They wanted the money
that was there. So talk a little bit about the
Supreme Court packing issue as well, and his fight to
(41:27):
essentially just completely rewrite the constitution. When we look at
what happened with a New Deal, should be called a
new constitution.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Well proposes. He keeps his quiet again, but then in
nineteen thirty seven, he's all puffed up because the nineteen
thirty six election was one of the more spectacular landslides
in American history, partly because Roosevelt is very effective in
using New Deal money, targeted money, and I could talk
(41:55):
about that as well, how he was able to win
such a big majority. But he thought, I'm an get
a third new detail, right. He wanted to be more radical,
he wanted to do more, but he thought, what good
will that do if the Supreme Court, which has been
strucking down, striking down measures like the TRIPLEA and the
(42:16):
National Recovery Administration, What good will all my effort be
unless I get a sympathetic court. Okay, Well, he decides
he proposes to increase the size of the court, and
he gives a speech where he basically says, they're overextended,
they're old, they're tired. I want to help them. You know,
(42:38):
they've got to be workload. Well, he gives his speech
and he wants to increase the size of the court,
and he obviously thinks he can pull it off because
I don't know, you're talking about something like she whizz.
The Republicans are down to like sixteen twenty senators. I mean,
he's got overwhelmed majority. You would think that he could
(43:02):
pull this off easily. And he's so disingenuous and it's
so obvious what he's doing that there is a big
movement against core packing, led by a new Dealer Senator
Burton Wheeler, who'd been an ally for Roosevelt and turns
against him, and Wheeler is the ideal guy to lead
(43:22):
this effort. The Republicans are very smart. They lay back
and let the Democrats take leadership, and they do. Now.
The campaign is very grueling, and it becomes clear during
the campaign that Roosevelt is essentially won because one of
the justices on the Court has switched sides, and it's
clear that he's probably going to get all of his
(43:44):
New Deal programs sustained. But he keeps pushing on. I
guess it becomes a matter of principle for him. He
keeps pushing on. He pushes, pushes, pushes. The majority leader
of the Senate is exhausted, he is in ad shape,
and he ends up having a heart attack and is
(44:04):
found with a copy of the Congressional Record in his hand.
His name is Joe Robinson, and Roosevelt is it doesn't
go to Robinson's funeral, And there's a lot of controversy
about that. Why don't you go to the guy's funeral?
Probably because he was pissed off that Robinson wasn't doing
a better job. Anybody says, well, you would understand. You know,
he had to fight for that, and it hurts Roosevelt
(44:29):
no end. And Roosevelt is defeated. So in a lot
of ways, that is an example of a left right coalition.
There are many examples, but that's one. He's defeated by Democrats.
Could you imagine that happening under Biden. I would find
it difficult to imagine that, or Franklinder Trump in the
opposite direction. But it did happen then, which says something
(44:51):
positive about Americans during that period. Americans in Congress included.
That's right, higher level of character in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And I've mentioned many times about the fact, you know,
we have our war on drug that's been going on
for over half a century. But we had the eighteenth
and the twenty first Amendment, which said that they had
enough respect for the Constitution that everybody they had a
constitutional amendment to stop in order to start it, and
then stop the alcohol provision because they knew that they
didn't have that power in the Constitution. But today, you know,
(45:25):
we don't care about that. We just do whatever we wish.
I think it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Everybody agreed on that we have to have a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yes, that's right. It's one of the biggest arguments against
the war on drugs, I think is the fact that
we have those two amendments that are there. But when
you go back and you look at this particular case
with a Supreme Court, the fact that he's got the votes,
but he still wants to press on with this thing
because it's a matter of personal prestige and power. I
think the same type of thing that we see with Trump.
(45:52):
And yet does he take the kind of vengeance against
people who go against him, in kind of a vendetta
that we see Trump taking against Republicans. I say, he
doesn't attend the guy's funeral or whatever. But you know,
he gives him the close shoulder. But did he really
go after people like Trump will go after somebody like
Thomas Massey who opposes him on his agenda.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, he keeps And this is this is what's interesting.
There is an investigation under another loyalist. In fact, he'd
been offered the position on the Supreme Court before Black,
but wanted to stay in Congress. His name was Senator
Sherman Minton, and if you search his name, the thing
(46:34):
that usually comes up as there's a bridge named after him.
But now maybe that'll change. Button was a very young guy.
He was already in the Senate leadership, first termer, and
he was very tight with Roosevelt. And Minton starts his
own investigation basically succeeds Black's the Black Committee's it's the
(46:55):
same committee, but Black is now in the US Supreme Court,
and so Mitt heads this investigation. They can't search telegrams anymore.
But one of the things they do do is uh
the use uh. Mint gets permission to look at the
I R s uh uh the tax for uh tax
(47:18):
records of people he targets, for example, he gets that,
but Men gets very frustrated because there's a lot of
putback people pushback, people are very upset about his methods,
and he's he's does it. He lacks Black subtlety. Black
had some subtlety, and Minton is just charging for it.
And so Minton gives a speech. He said, well, we
(47:39):
need a law against these big newspapers because most of
the press was against Roosevelt. So he said, let's make
it a felony to publish anything known to be untrue
fake news basically the fact they used that term, I
think false news or fake news. And he proposes this bill,
(48:02):
and what is the reaction to the bill? You almost
universal opposition sets in almost from the beginning. As it
is setting in. Roosevelt has asked about the Minton bill
in a news conference, and I think Roosevelt was the
(48:23):
guy that had the idea. I think he put Minton
up to it. I can't prove that, but I think
it's true because Minton was not the kind of guy
to go off on his own, and he reflects what
Roosevelt thought of the press. He was asked about this
and he said, well, you know, if we had such
a bill, we wouldn't even have enough room in the
federal prison system to hold all the prisoners. And he
(48:44):
gets a little laugh, right yeah, and then is he
moves on to a new topic, and I wish they'd
done follow ups. They didn't. He says, you boys asked
for it. You know, that's what he says, You boys
asked for it. You know, I mean you reporters, you
you know people, you asked for this. And then he
(49:05):
moves on to the next topic and he drops it
right because Minton ends up dropping it, but and it
discredits his investigation, and his investigation is pretty much shut
down after that. So FDRs those two years after the
nineteen thirty six election are a low point for FDR.
There's pushback against him, he loses core packing, the Minton
(49:29):
Committee collapses, and he is he puts all of his
attention on core packing. As a result, he isn't able
to get his radical new Deal program in nineteen thirty eight,
thirty seven, thirty eight that he wanted because he focuses
almost entirely on court packing, and then later after it
really is too late on these investigations.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, it's kind of interesting when we look at this
period of time when all the institutions were being reconsidered reinvented,
if you will, and he's finding against the constitutional pattern
that had been accepted. That he was getting pushed back
even from his own party against some of this stuff
because as we talked about people understood the principles, he
had a lot of people who did not share his
(50:12):
idea that the end justifies a means, and we don't
see that today, we're in a much more dangerous situation.
I think when we look at this why it's good
to go back and look at history. You look at
the radical change that was accomplished during the FDR period
of time, and you look at the fact that now
we have people on both sides have become unhinged from
(50:33):
or have detached themselves from basic principles about free speech,
the rule of law, and having a due process to
investigate things like that. I think we're in a very
dangerous time right now. I think this book helps to
get people to understand that if we look at the
context of the historical context of this.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, and we're seeing a lot of people on the
right who were talking about free speech and local control,
states rights, Yeah, turned on a dime.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
This is very discouraging to see this.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Yeah, now they want to come after their idea of
fake news.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Now they've got their own fake news vendettas that they
want to come after. So it is there is so
much here. I mean, we could do several interviews with this.
This is an excellent book. It is a very important
presidency to understand the context of the times in which
we live in our government. And I really highly recommend
this book. FDR A Political Life by David Beto. And
(51:30):
you pronounce you spell your name as b e I
t o. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (51:35):
That's right?
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Yeah, so it's not spelled like the Texas politician.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Oh please, No, And a lot of people will call
him Beto O'Rourke. But I think it's better. Actually, oh yeah,
I believe that's why his name is pronounced.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
I he telling people that even if it isn't true, but.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
It wasna I think it is true. Yeah. I used
to always call him, uh, Robert Francis O'Rourke or whatever
his original name was. I said, is a he's a
trans Hispanic, he identifies as his Panic. He's yeah, that's right. Yeah,
we don't want to resurrect him with any attention. I guess,
(52:15):
but an excellent book, and thank you so much for
joining us, and there is much to learn in terms
of politics and history. Is a very seminal presidency, unfortunately
for many of us would like to see government that
follows the constitution. FDR's presidency was an unmitigated disaster, and
(52:36):
it bears looking at it and see if we see
any repetition in current events as a warning, as a
harbinger what was coming. Because as we're talking about earlier,
you know, this whole stuff was secretly getting information on
his enemies. We saw that immediately after World War two ended.
We saw that immediately being transferred over to the NSA,
the CIA, the FBI and all these people. Using the
(52:58):
income taxes by people, These same tactics are used over
and over again. Thank you very much, David Beto. The
book is FDR a political life. Thank you folks for
joining us. Have a good day. The common man. They
(53:24):
created common Core that dumbed down our children. They created
common past track and control us. They're Commons project to
make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future.
They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But
each of us has worth and dignity created in the
(53:46):
image of God. That is what we have in common.
That is what they want to take away. Their most
powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know
everything about us, while they hide everything from us. It's
time to turn that around and expose what they want
(54:07):
to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find
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you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please
keep us in your prayers. Ddavidnightshow dot com
Welcome back. And I want to begin with a couple
of statements from people that about this book. The book
is FDR A New Political Life. The author is David Beto,
and this first one that's here is from Hillsdale College.
It's burton fulsome. He says, the book FDR A New
Political Life is the most illuminating one volume history of
(00:29):
FDR ever written. American historians have come to recognize that
Roosevelt's New Deal did not end the Great Depression, but
prolonged it. David Beto carefully explains why so many FDR
programs and power grabs were so counterproductive. To go from
the older FDR histories to David Beto's wonderful new work
(00:49):
is to make a historic leak from the dark ages. Also,
another author, David Michalis, says, when it comes to race
and Western influence, FDR's vision of the world order was
muddled by delusional phenomenon. He was not a man of
empire or genocide, like his wartime allies Churchill and Stalin,
(01:09):
but he was a dreadfully old fashioned Victorian quack, an
amateur phrenologist who believed that repopulating the Pacific rim with
certain choice crossbreeding would create a better world for all.
David Beto takes us further than his predecessors along the
breadcrumb path into Franklin Roosevelt's thick forested interior and again
(01:31):
many wonderful still reviews. And I got to say, even
though I wasn't able to read the entire book, when
I read of it really does match with this. I'll
give you one more. This is from Jim Bovart, who
we've interviewed on the show many times. He said. Historian
David Beato, who previously exposed how President Franklin Roosevelt ravaged
americans constitutional rights, is back with a new book, vividly
(01:55):
exposing his personal perfidy from the dawn of Woodrow Wilson
administration to nineteen forty five, the betrayal at Yalta and beyond.
With volleys of research, Beto demolishes Roosevelt's reputation as one
of the quote unquote great presidents. And so I look
at FDR like Lincoln. These are presidents who come in
(02:17):
at a time of great societal upheaval and change and war,
and they have an active role in redefining our society.
I think we're in a time like that right now,
This is a guy who ran as a peace candidate
but then turned to war. He was there at the
center of the fight between gold and Fiat currency. He
was preside over rapid expansion of Lebiatha and federal government
(02:42):
with very creative excuses to override the constitution. He instituted
surveillance and there was a free speech revolt against him.
He also weaponized the FCC and we can see, you know,
we've talked about what was going on with the FCC.
We pointed out that why should broadcast media have its
content controlled when they don't control the press. Well you
(03:05):
can look to FDR for that. So joining us now
is David Beato. Thank you so much for joining us
this excellent book here that you have.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Thank you so much. You know, if you get a
thing you were you brought up the I mean, if
you don't mind, go ahead on the FCC issue, and
it brought to mind the contrast between FDR and Trump.
You know, Trump makes these wild threats about the involving
the FCC, He goes public with it. He tries to
(03:33):
get Jimmy Kimmel off the air, which really wasn't worth
the effort. Frankly, and he succeeds short term. But now
Kimmell is back on the air, so Trump looks silly.
What FDR did is he did it behind the scenes.
He did it carefully. He would never make a public
statement like that. He went to the sponsors of For example,
(03:54):
there was a leading anti New Deal radio commentator called
named Boke Harder in nineteen thirty eight, one of the
top rated commentators in the country on CBS, and so
howd Roosevelt get him off the air? He opening an
IRS investigation, an immigration investigation because Carter was from Canada.
(04:15):
And then finally he went to the executives. He went
to the sponsors, including Marjorie Merriweather Post Sold at least
she was the original owner of mar A Lago, and
she used her influence and Carter was forced off the air,
and by the end of nineteen thirty eight, all anti
(04:38):
New Deal commentators on the main networks were off the air.
And despite the fact that most newspapers were hostile to FDR,
he did it all quietly. He did it all behind
the scenes with a scalpel where Trump used the blunt
edge of the sword. And maybe many ways we should
(04:59):
behave thankful for that. Yeah, the Trump is like a
bull in a china shop so often and sometimes when
he doesn't need to get his way, he doesn't get
his way because he's so I don't know, obvious about it.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, maybe his real thing is more about getting Americans
divided and fighting each other than it is about the
actual reform. But what FDR did is something that we've
seen a pattern of people in government typically doing, and
that is working behind the scenes, quietly sending out messages
to make sure that this group of that group has
shadow banned or canceled. And you can use your own
(05:36):
judgment in terms of doing this, because you're a private
corporation and you can do that. But of course he
kind of did that with in terms of telegrams and
things like that before, not the social media side, of course,
but actual physical telegrams. FDR had his involvement with that
as well. And they see the early trends of the
surveillance state is the technology has changed, but the nature
(05:59):
of men in power hasn't really changed that much. Talk
a little bit about the Black Inquisition and things that
were involved in that.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Okay, well, the Black Committee was a Senate committee was
headed by Senator HUGO. Black, who later ended up on
the US Supreme Court despite his clan background. And Black
was an attack dog for the New Deal. He was
(06:26):
really Roosevelt's main ally, I would say in the Congress.
He was to go to guy Well. Roosevelt wanted an
investigation of anti New Deal organizations and Black was more
than happy to cooperate in this. So Black would call
these witnesses and they would, you know, sometimes successfully hold
(06:49):
him off. He would bring in leading anti New Deal figures.
And so Black got the bright idea, or someone got
the bright idea, Well, why don't I get there? A
private telegram telegrams were the emails texts of the time.
They were over half of long distance communication. People would
say things and telegrams that they wouldn't say in letters,
(07:11):
but they would say now in an email or a text,
and there were thousands of them. They were instantaneous, virtually instantaneous.
So Black goes to Western Union and the other telegraph
companies and said, I want copies of all telegrams sent
to and from members of Congress, and he had other
(07:35):
people as well, for like a six months period. And
Western Union's response was, are you kidding, you know, our
customers would would hate that. And Black goes to the
FCC gets approval, and of course the FDR would have
had a hand in this, although again he didn't really
have to order Black to do anything because Black was
(07:56):
serving the new Deal and got FCC approved.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So again it's FCC because.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Telegraph companies were ordered to provide That was one example,
all you know, millions of telegrams. But then they expanded
the Black expanded the investigation to include other cities, targeted individuals,
and so forth. So he went in there with his
staffers into Western Union, and they had to keep copies
(08:22):
of the of telegrams, right, that was sort of part
of their requirement, and they got big.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
That was a government that was a government first went
through them. Sorry, that was a government requirement to keep
the copies in the first place.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yes, yeah, well I think the telegraph companies probably maybe
would have kept their own copies anyway, I don't know.
But they were required to keep copies of all telegrams
and they went through millions. And I couldn't believe this
when I saw, but yes, that was true. They went
through about ten thousand a day over a very long period.
Of time, and the committee staffers had instructions to don't
(09:01):
look at anything of a personal nature, just to look
at material related to lobbying. What would be lobbying, well,
the committee had a specific definition indirect or direct lobbying.
Indirect lobbying would be any attempt to influence public opinion.
So our conversation would be an example of that. So
(09:22):
any attempt to influence public opinion would be considered lobbying.
So they went through copied selectively, and they would ambush
witnesses because this was all secret. None of the witnesses
knew they were doing this. None of them knew, and
eventually came out because Western Union informed started to inform
(09:44):
people who were being targeted, and one of them sued
very prominent law firm in Chicago. Still there, Silas Strawn
was his name, and Strawn was a heavyweight and in
one in federal district court. By that time, Black had
done his damage and he said, well, we're done with
our investigation. However, this was a very good precedent for
(10:08):
the future. Now, of course, Black could use the telegrams
that he'd gotten his illegal booty, but he couldn't do
any more of this kind of search, nor could official
future congressional committees.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Did they use the.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Important precedent, but it's not very well known. He as
a federal court judge.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Yeah, we usually think about, you know, what's going on
with Faiza and everything. And you know that came after
World War two because with the creation of the CIA
and NSA, they started getting information from the phone company,
getting pen information, who did they call, and that type
of thing which they could infer a lot from. But
(10:48):
actually this predates all of that. Were they using this,
as you said, they were questioning people. Did they use
this information as a perjury trap for people? Yea asked
him a questions of the new The answer.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I suspect that that kind of thing went on. I
haven't come across it. I have reason to believe from
just reading some of Roosevelt's comments that he was, you know,
this information was shared with him, but I can't prove it,
but I think it was used for all sorts of
(11:23):
nefarious reasons. See, historians have kind of looked in the
wrong place. They've looked at people like jag or Hoover,
who again there's a lot of things he did too,
But the mass surveillance, this is a better example of
mass surveillance, but people even looked at it. In fact,
I hadn't even heard of the Black Committee till about
twelve years ago when I was doing research and I
(11:45):
came across to it. I said, what's this thing of
the Black Committee? What's that? Is that describing the nature
of the committee? Yeah, it was a Senate committee. It
was forgotten, not by a lot of conservatives, though conservatives
would be bringing up in the in the nineteen fifties,
and that's part of the reason why McCarthyism came about,
because they were pissed and they thought, well, you guys
(12:08):
are now complaining about civil liberties, what about the Black Committee?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
And that's a parallel to today as well, isn't it.
You know, when you're suffering injustice like that, you feel
entitled to propagate it against your enemies again. You know.
So wait, you guys did, so what about that? Let's
do it again? I love the title that you got trials.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Probably Trump's going to do sedition trials. That was, yes, right,
that's right, the same thing that Jay six people were
convicted of. Stupid. Yeah, that should have been repealed exactly,
or at least severely limited.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I like the way that you've got to hear the
in the in your book, the Black Inquisition, You know,
that really does get your attention as you're looking at it,
just like it was like, oh, okay, you go critics, Yeah,
the Black Inquisition. And then there was a pushback against that.
Part of it was William Randolph Hurst was of course
targeted that because I guess I could say, well, anything
that he says is going to be influencing public opinion, obviously,
(13:02):
so let's get all of his telegrams. And so he
actually you have a chapter here of the Right and
the Left Free Speech Coalition. So it's a pushback with that.
He joined with the ACLU left as William Randolph Hurst
pushing back, tell us little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, Well, the Black Committee had gotten a treasure trove
of Hearst related telegrams, but they did a very stupid thing.
They did a public subpoena. None of this was subpoena,
by the way, but they did a public subpoena of
one and only one telegram that they probably already had.
(13:40):
And this telegram was where Hearst was accusing this prominent
member of Congress, the committee chair, of being in league
with the communists. It was kind of a hyperbolic telegram,
and I guess what the Black Committee, what Black thought was,
people just see that as so over the top, this
will be good pr for us. But instead what happened
(14:01):
is other members of Congress, like you know, a guy
named McCormack who is future Speaker of the House, a
guy named Emmanuel Seller. These are New Dealers, they say,
this is uncalled for, this is this is the tactics
of Mussolini. So it actually backfired on Roosevelt. Even many
(14:21):
of his own New Deal supporters were against this. And
this is this is very interesting and very discouraging in
some ways because during this period you had a lot
of civil libertarians who on the left who were willing,
even though they liked Roosevelt, who were willing to push
(14:42):
back against him. And that is not as true today.
Maybe that will change now, but it's not what it
certainly hasn't been true today.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Well, today there's so much more partisan in tribal and
we don't seem to care about principles, we don't seem
to care about the blah blah. And that's true of
both sides, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Well, yeah, it's the people at the time. Give you
a sense of the difference. Hl Mankin was in your
face kind of anti New dealer, simil libertarian, you know,
I don't know, agnostic, heal, he needed everybody, but who
was friends with everybody. He had correspondence that span the
political spectrum. He was respected, he was liked as an
individual could talk to people. I don't think there are as
(15:26):
many people who could who fit in that category today.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
That's right. Yeah, he was real clever wit and I
mentioned frequently his thing. A year ago, if I had
a gold coin and a flasko whiskey, the whiskey was
illegal in the coin was legal. This year, the gold
coin is illegal and the Flasco whiskey is legal. So yeah,
he was always hadn't heard that one, but he was
always pointing out the absurdity of FDR. Yeah. So I
(15:51):
think one of the very telling things about FDR was
the war and peace issue. And you've got in here
part of his speech, which truly is amazing that he
makes when he's running as a candidate as a peace candidate.
He says, I've seen war. I've seen war on land
and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded.
(16:12):
I've seen men coughing out their gas lungs. I've seen
the dead and the mud. I've seen cities destroyed. I've
seen two hundred limping, exhausted men come out of the
survivors of the regiment of one thousand that went forward
forty eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I've
seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
(16:33):
And you write, and, as he so often did, FDR
exaggerated his exposure to the fighting in World War One
was limited and sanitized. While the Navy had sent him
on a guided inspection of American naval and marine bases
in Europe, the main impression conveyed by his contemporary contemporaneous
(16:55):
diary account was that of a sightseer. So talk a
little bit about that, how he ran as a peace
candidate and then he flipped pushing us into war.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well, FGR was playing both sides of the street. For example,
in the nineteen thirties, he'd been the guy to suggests, well,
maybe we need neutrality laws, and then later he pushed
for repeal of the Neutrality Act, saying I wish I'd
never signed it. Never mentioned that he was the guy
(17:29):
that helped to inspire it in the first place. So
he was a rabid interventionist. When he was Assistant Secretary
of the Navy under Wilson, he was constantly trying to
imitate his cousin Theodore and get some sort of incident possibly,
(17:50):
so he was a hawk. But then in the thirties
he sort of realizes there's all this anti war feeling
and he appeals to that. He actually applauds the Munich Agreement.
But then after that he becomes much more of an
interventionist and certainly aligns himself with Winston Churchill and so forth.
(18:17):
But a lot of this is done quietly, so he
started playing both sides of the street. And he is
in trouble in the nineteen forty election. His opponent, Wendell Wilkie,
who was kind of an interventionist too, but starts talking
like in America Firster during the last part of the
campaign is making inroads. So FDR is worried about this,
(18:39):
so very shortly before the election he gives this speech
he'd never given a speech this strong, where he says,
I've said this before, and I'll say it again and
again and again. Your boys are not going to be
sent into any foreign war full stop, right. Wynda Wilkie
(19:00):
heard that on the radio, and he said, that hypocritical
son of bit, some of a bitch has just lost
me the election.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
And whether or.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Not that was true or not, FDR was, that was
a clear motivation. His son went up to him and said, Dad,
why did you say that. You never said anything like
that before. And he said, basically, well, I had to win,
you know, for the good of the country, that kind
of thing. So just amoral, an amoral figure, maybe worse
(19:30):
in so many ways, a very cynical, jaded man, I think,
who had great charm, Yes, but I never really cared
for him. I'm going to confess. Did you ever see
that movie Sunrise at Campabello?
Speaker 1 (19:45):
No? I never saw that.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Oh it was a movie made in the fifties starring
Ralph Bellamy playing FDR in his battle against polio, and
I just you know, Bellamy captured FDR in some ways.
It was supposed to a sympathetic portrayal, but there was
just this charm which always seemed a little bit phony
to me. Yeah, and and very calculating but very effective.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, he seemed he seemed that way to me as well.
But I always kind of just dismissed that, as you know,
when you look at movies at the time, you know,
people came across as very stiff and pretentious and you know,
putting on airs and that that's kind of the way
that a lot of people would come across, even in
the movies at that time, they wouldn't come across as
you know, genuine or and so I kind of just
(20:34):
put it up to the zeitgeist of the time, if
you will. But yeah, it's it's interesting. And you begin
with his rise to power, talk a little bit about
that where'd this guy come from?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
He he had a big advantage, and that he was
born into comfortable circumstances, not super wealth, but wealth. He
was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and very distant,
like seventh cousin, but the family had context with each
(21:05):
other and so forth. And he went he did. He
did the typical trajectory of someone in that class. He
went to Groton, a very exclusive private school, and he
went to Harvard. He got a Columbia his law degree
from Columbia. He had very mediocre grades. He was not
(21:27):
a good student, but he was a glad hander. People
liked him. He made his impact socially, and then it
was some people approached him and said, mister Roosevelt, we'd
like you to run for Congress, or not for Congress,
for a state legislature in New York. You know, Theodore
was president at the time. They happened to be Democrats.
(21:49):
I guess they thought that that was a brilliant move.
Now I say that if the Republicans had approached Franklin,
he probably would have run as a Republican. In fact,
he had supported his cousin very openly. When his cousin
ran for re election, it was his first vote was
for Theodore. But the Democrats asked him it was a
good Democratic year nineteen oh eight, So he ran as
(22:12):
a Democrat and he was able to win. And from
there he just impressed people. He got the attention of
a guy named Josephus Daniels who was Secretary of the Navy.
Quite a racist, Southern racist type, but Daniels was charmed
by Roosevelt. He had a very apt comment. He said
(22:33):
he was just like an actress. He had that he
had it right. And someone had said, was the case
of love at first sight? You know when Daniels saw him,
and I don't think anything went on, but he made
him assistant secretary of Navy, and from there Roosevelt was
(22:54):
imitating his cousin, either intentionally or by chance. Theodore had
been in the legislature, Theodore had been assistant secretary of
the Navy, and then Theodore was vice presidential candidate, as
Roosevelt was in nineteen twenty, so their very similarity. A
lot of parallels between them. One difference. Though Franklin did
(23:17):
not volunteer to fight in World War One, he was
in his late thirties, he could have. His cousin. Theodore said,
you have to get into the infantry, not just the Navy.
You have to get into the infantry. You have to
get in the fight. And Roosevelt came back and said, well,
my boss thinks I'm essential, And maybe his boss did
say that, but Theodore had had, you know, a similar boss.
(23:41):
He didn't have to go in. But Franklin was not
the man. The Theodore was right, and so he did not.
He did not serve in the military.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
So at that point he was able bodied. At that
point he was able bodied and could have.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, that was before his bout of polio, which was
nineteen how old hekt's right here in nineteen twenty one, so.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
It was about how old when that happened.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
He was about thirty nine, quite a young man. And
the story, there's an interesting story there. Now a lot
of people said, can't you say something good about Roosevelt.
I will say that, you know, he showed great determination.
Of course, he had a lot of he had a
lot of help, he had a lot of doctors, he
(24:27):
had a lot of you know, leisure time, he had
a lot of support. But he showed great courage and
overcoming that. Part of the story that I was surprised
by is who did he blame for the polio? He
blamed a Republican center. And the story on this is
really fascinating. I begin my book with it. There was
an investigation, well, there was something called the Newport scandal,
(24:49):
the Newport sex scandal. Do you recall reading that?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah? No, I skipped over to the black Inquisition stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
What happened was Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy
and there was a guy at one of the naval
bases in Newport who was investigating whether there were same
sex relationships going on. In the Navy thought this was
major scandal and so forth, and even did his own
private investigations where this guy would find people to go
(25:22):
in and they would actually have sex right with these men,
right to try to entrap them. So Roosevelt found out
about this. The investigation was basically had no funding. The
Secretary of War had refused to back it, I mean,
the Attorney General refused to back it. And Roosevelt stepped
in single handedly and set up a investigative unit headed
(25:47):
by him called Section A in the Department of Navy,
which investigated this issue of same sex relationships in the Navy.
And they would send out investigators who again would entrap
people by having sex with them, and Roosevelt, I think
quite clearly knew what was going on. A local journalist
(26:12):
in Newport pushed back on this and accused Roosevelt of
doing this, and Roosevelt basically responded, said, well, you know,
you know, isn't it important to you know to find
what's going on here? Why are we so worried about procedure?
(26:34):
And it was actually controversially you would think this period
is very anti gain. It was, but people in Congress
and the press thought this was abhorrent. These tactics were
beyond the pale, and.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So that's one of the things that we've lost.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He did his best to cover it up, and it weakened.
It puts so much tension on him that he said
that it had lowered his resistance and made him more
susceptible to the outbreak of polio, which may have been
true actually because it was a lot of us contaminated water.
But again, if your immunity, you know, if you had
(27:10):
low resistance and so forth. So he blamed this senator
till his dying day for causing his his polio well
you know what you're talking about, that or investigation which
almost derailed his career, almost destroyed him, and he was lucky.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's the tactic that's involved there, and people don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Everybody did. And you would think this would be a
period where they would say, alter gay, we need to
root them out. And they may have thought that, but
this is beyond the pail. And of course these people
that had been destroyed, many of them were innocent. You know,
they didn't get any benefits, right, didn't get military funerals.
They were destroyed. And Roosevelt is able to ride through
(27:52):
it partly because other things go on that avert public attention.
But the New York Times, as a matter of fact,
has a big story where it calls his behavior. They
blame him for it. The Times blames him in this
article and basically, you know, comes a conclusion he's unfit
for office. But he's able to escape this somehow because
(28:17):
of other things going on, and it's forgotten and most
people today don't even know about it, but it's quite
an important it's quite an important story in his life.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Well, it reveals his character which we then saw later
when he's coming after politically.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And Roosevelt was quite clear that he wasn't worried about
the means. It was the end. Yet something done. This
is a view towards civil liberties. These people need to
be shut up. Yeah, I think some way to shut
them up. That was a real harm proseguer.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
That's a real hallmark of everything that he did. You know,
he doesn't care.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I think he was always kind of a default interventionist,
and I think a lot, you know, I mean, I
think he did have an ideology and I think he
had been a wi Sonyan interventionist. He was a great
admirer of Wilson, right, He defended Wilson when he ran
for president nineteen twenty, even though much of the public
was sick of Wilson. He defended the worst aspect, the
(29:12):
most repressive aspects of Wilsonian. So I think that was
his default position. That's the best way I could I
could explain it. I think the relationship with Churchill made
a difference, but I think you see even signs of
that before that, where he's trying to do it. His
focus is on the North Atlantic. By nineteen forty one,
(29:36):
he is desperately trying to provoke an incident in the
North Atlantic, and he builds up minor incidents or you know,
into cause celebs, and is trying to get into the war.
Clear he wants to do that. By nineteen forty one
by any means that he can't, but the is hostile
(30:01):
to the idea. Well werewhelmingly the public is you know,
does not want to get in another form war. They
remember World War One, they do not want to do
that again. But he's able to get aid to Britain,
to lend lease, which is very open ended. But again
selling this is well, of course we won't have to
go in. You know, we can help the British, right,
(30:23):
give them the tools and they will finish the fight,
as he pleased to say, and that kind.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Of thing kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. Right,
kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. I guess, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
we can just give them the weapons and we won't
really get involved. But the Germans aren't taking the bait
to the extent that he wants them to. So he
kind of shifts to the Pacific, right, and there's massive
(30:49):
sanctions against the Japanese that preceded Pearl Harbor. And of course,
what do you have about Pearl Harbor? What's your take
on Pearl Harbor? Did he engineer that too and keep
things secret? They're in a kind of subversive way? What
what what is your pain?
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Okay, yeah, again he is he his focus is in
the North Atlantic, but he eventually comes to the conclusion, well,
you know, if we're going to go to war Japan,
that's fine with me, and you know, maybe we can
get into the European war as well. I don't think
I think that that's part of what he's he's pushing,
(31:28):
and really, since you know he he he there were
opportunities to to UH to have peace agreement with Japan.
The Japanese Prime minister offers to meet with Roosevelt in
the middle of the Pacific to have a summit. So
let's hash this out. Roosevelt doesn't take the opportunity. At
one point, the Japanese actually say that they were willing
(31:50):
to evacuate China. He doesn't take the opportunity. So he's he's,
he's there's sort of a distraction. Now, okay, Pearl Harvard.
Did Roosevelt know about it? I don't think he did.
And my argument for that is, I think the best
evidence is that they did know that Japanese would attack.
(32:11):
They thought the attack would probably be somewhere like the Philippines,
maybe in you know, Singapore, somewhere like that. They did
not think it would be Pearl Harbor. Very few people
thought that. Almost nobody thought that. And part of the
reason they didn't think that is they they didn't think
the Japanese were capable. They didn't think they were good pilots,
(32:33):
They didn't think that they could they could pull something
out like that. And even the commanders on the ground
and Roosevelt did short change them, short and Kimmel there
at the Pacific, they wanted observation planes, but Roosevelt diverted
all resources to the North Atlantic they wanted, you know,
they if they had had those observation planes, for example,
(32:56):
it might have made all the difference. He short changed them.
But even they thought that the main danger from the
Japanese was sabotage. That's one of the reasons why they
put the planes in the middle of the field. In
many cases, it made the more vulnerable to attack, but
theoretically less vulnerable to sabotage. So what is Roosevelt's first
(33:17):
reaction after the attack, Well, it's from a butler who
saw him, and Roosevelt's response was, I will go down
in disgrace. He thinks, my god, I didn't expect this.
I'm going to be in trouble because of this. So
(33:38):
I don't think. I don't think they knew that the
attack was going to be at Pearl Harbor, partly because
they underestimated the Japanese. I think Roosevelt was reckless, however,
that he knew an attack was going to come, I
think he could have done much more to warn naval
commanders throughout the Pacific than an attack was going to come.
(34:00):
There were clues that it could have come at Pearl Harbor,
naming the time of day. They didn't know that the
time of the day when the Japanese were going to
just in the embassy had been ordered American Embassy to
destroy their codes, and that was at seven thirty am,
which would have been a very good time for an
attack on Pearl Harbor. And they didn't put two and
two together. So I think it's more in competence. But
(34:23):
I don't buy the theory that has been put forward
by people like Stinnett, who makes this argument that you
know that we knew that the Japanese fleet was on
the way and so forth. I don't see the evidence
for that. We did break one of the codes, but
(34:44):
we didn't break the crucial you know, naval code, broke
the diplomatic code, so we knew a lot of what
was going on. Roosevelt knew a lot about it. He
was reading a lot of Japanese mail. And maybe they
could have put two and two together, but I think
it was sort of racism in some sense. They just
didn't think that Japanese could pull something like this off.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
You know, they found about that they well talk a
little bit about you.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
That issue, and I'd be happy to talk with people
about it. But I don't buy that that he knew
sure that it was going to happen at Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Sure, well, talk about fear and emergency.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
You're saying, okay, Well, when Roosevelt ran in nineteen forty
nineteen thirty two, he he pledged to maintain sound money.
Now I didn't exactly say well gold, but who were
didn't either. But he also gave a speech right before
the election called a little known speech called the Covenant Speech,
where he would talk about, you know, gold contracts, the covenant.
(35:43):
Right he said he would hold the covenant, you know, basically,
I will uphold you know, the use of gold.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Then, very shortly after the election, he makes a decision
to go off the gold standard. He calls in his
secretary of the Treasury he was much more or actually
Secretary of State who's much more conservative than him on
financial issues, Cordell Hall, and he says, Cordell, congratulate you.
We're going off the gold standard tomorrow. And he pulls
(36:13):
out some money and it was a money that was
issued by the whatever, the Federal Reserve Bank of Tennessee.
I guess he said, this is from Tennessee, your own state, Cordell.
And what makes this money good? It's only good because
we say it's good. And again that is what he did,
(36:33):
and he does a lot of crazy things after that.
He does a program to purchase gold and he sets
the well, no, not to purchase gold, but to set
the price of gold. So he say, is it's gold
buying program? And how does he determine the price? He
determines it then from things like he says, well, I
(36:56):
think the price should be nineteen cents today because it's
a lucky number. You know. He would say things like that.
And Roosevelt was very superstitious. He had lucky shoes, he
had lucky hats. So this is this is not as
strange as you might seem. And it was just it
was just a crazy, crazy town. But what saved us
(37:17):
in terms of financially in the thirties was we had
massive gold imports from both Europe and the Soviet Union.
Your people are taking their gold for obvious reasons out
of those places and bringing into the United States. So
we have a tremendous gold inflow to the United States
through those sort of happy, not happy, tragic accidents. I
(37:39):
guess you could say both from Russia and from Castalin
is buying a lot of American goods using gold, that's
part of it. And of course the gold is coming
in from Germany because Jews and others are taking their
taking their gold out.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah. It's interesting, you know, when you when you look
at how he was reacting, how he had his lucky
shoes and all the rest of the stuff, and how
arbitrary things were. That sounds very familiar to them in
a disturbing way, doesn't it. You know, kind of erratic
and arbitrary, capricious. What he's doing with these things. We're
starting to see, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Parallels with Trump, but they're big difference is too. Yeah,
but you know, I think there are there there there,
there's there's some parallels that you control.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So talk a little bit about the end of prohibition.
That's that's one of the things. Everybody, you know, happy
days is here again. How much of that was yah?
Did he build that up for his his campaign and
how much of that was really an initiative of his
or was it just that people had had it with
alcohol prohibition at that point? He got ahead of that
(38:49):
was he was he opposed on that by the Republicans
or what what was the situation with the prohibition?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
And I don't discuss prohibition a lot, but but Roosevelt
was a straddler. He wasn't going to take controversial positions.
He was also a straddler on trade issues and terriff issues,
so he was not a leader of the anti prohibition forces.
There were Democrats who were the more conservative. Democrats interestingly
(39:16):
tended to be the more anti prohibition, and there was
a big element in the party and people were sick
and tired of the Prohibition loss by nineteen thirty two.
The Republicans chose to kind of avoid the issue. So
Roosevelt and getting the nomination, it certainly was a popular position,
(39:39):
but he also recognized that this is a popular position,
and he came out for repeal of the Constitutional Amendment
bringing in prohibition. He took a very strong stand. I
think there were other motivations, though, One was it's a
great tax source. As a matter of fact, during the
(40:01):
early deal, even though they're talking about income taxes, most
of the tax collections are from excise taxes people like
things like cosmetics, cigarettes, alcohol. That's where the bulk of
the revenue is raised. So Roosevelt is raising the tax
(40:22):
top rate to I don't know eventually it gets so
well over ninety percent, but it's going way way up.
He makes a big deal about this, But that means
that the wealth, they find ways to find tax shelters,
they don't pay it. So where does the actual money comes.
It comes from the nickels and dimes and people going
to movies, because the tax on movie tickets, it comes
(40:43):
from the nickels and dimes of working class people. But
Roosevelt is very clever and never acknowledging that. And of
course the excise taxes on liquor as well. Yeah, I
always think is maybe in the back of his mind too,
and he uses that revenue source in a major way.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
It's always soaked the rich and then it's always the
poor middle class to pay all the taxes. That's another
thing that never seen.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Your example of that.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, yes, another thing never stops. And of course the revenuers,
you know, that's what they called the people that were
coming after the stills in the mountains and everything, because
that was really what they wanted. They wanted the money
that was there. So talk a little bit about the
Supreme Court packing issue as well, and his fight to
(41:27):
essentially just completely rewrite the constitution. When we look at
what happened with a New Deal, should be called a
new constitution.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Well proposes. He keeps his quiet again, but then in
nineteen thirty seven, he's all puffed up because the nineteen
thirty six election was one of the more spectacular landslides
in American history, partly because Roosevelt is very effective in
using New Deal money, targeted money, and I could talk
(41:55):
about that as well, how he was able to win
such a big majority. But he thought, I'm an get
a third new detail, right. He wanted to be more radical,
he wanted to do more, but he thought, what good
will that do if the Supreme Court, which has been
strucking down, striking down measures like the TRIPLEA and the
(42:16):
National Recovery Administration, What good will all my effort be
unless I get a sympathetic court. Okay, Well, he decides
he proposes to increase the size of the court, and
he gives a speech where he basically says, they're overextended,
they're old, they're tired. I want to help them. You know,
(42:38):
they've got to be workload. Well, he gives his speech
and he wants to increase the size of the court,
and he obviously thinks he can pull it off because
I don't know, you're talking about something like she whizz.
The Republicans are down to like sixteen twenty senators. I mean,
he's got overwhelmed majority. You would think that he could
(43:02):
pull this off easily. And he's so disingenuous and it's
so obvious what he's doing that there is a big
movement against core packing, led by a new Dealer Senator
Burton Wheeler, who'd been an ally for Roosevelt and turns
against him, and Wheeler is the ideal guy to lead
(43:22):
this effort. The Republicans are very smart. They lay back
and let the Democrats take leadership, and they do. Now.
The campaign is very grueling, and it becomes clear during
the campaign that Roosevelt is essentially won because one of
the justices on the Court has switched sides, and it's
clear that he's probably going to get all of his
(43:44):
New Deal programs sustained. But he keeps pushing on. I
guess it becomes a matter of principle for him. He
keeps pushing on. He pushes, pushes, pushes. The majority leader
of the Senate is exhausted, he is in ad shape,
and he ends up having a heart attack and is
(44:04):
found with a copy of the Congressional Record in his hand.
His name is Joe Robinson, and Roosevelt is it doesn't
go to Robinson's funeral, And there's a lot of controversy
about that. Why don't you go to the guy's funeral?
Probably because he was pissed off that Robinson wasn't doing
a better job. Anybody says, well, you would understand. You know,
he had to fight for that, and it hurts Roosevelt
(44:29):
no end. And Roosevelt is defeated. So in a lot
of ways, that is an example of a left right coalition.
There are many examples, but that's one. He's defeated by Democrats.
Could you imagine that happening under Biden. I would find
it difficult to imagine that, or Franklinder Trump in the
opposite direction. But it did happen then, which says something
(44:51):
positive about Americans during that period. Americans in Congress included.
That's right, higher level of character in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And I've mentioned many times about the fact, you know,
we have our war on drug that's been going on
for over half a century. But we had the eighteenth
and the twenty first Amendment, which said that they had
enough respect for the Constitution that everybody they had a
constitutional amendment to stop in order to start it, and
then stop the alcohol provision because they knew that they
didn't have that power in the Constitution. But today, you know,
(45:25):
we don't care about that. We just do whatever we wish.
I think it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Everybody agreed on that we have to have a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yes, that's right. It's one of the biggest arguments against
the war on drugs, I think is the fact that
we have those two amendments that are there. But when
you go back and you look at this particular case
with a Supreme Court, the fact that he's got the votes,
but he still wants to press on with this thing
because it's a matter of personal prestige and power. I
think the same type of thing that we see with Trump.
(45:52):
And yet does he take the kind of vengeance against
people who go against him, in kind of a vendetta
that we see Trump taking against Republicans. I say, he
doesn't attend the guy's funeral or whatever. But you know,
he gives him the close shoulder. But did he really
go after people like Trump will go after somebody like
Thomas Massey who opposes him on his agenda.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, he keeps And this is this is what's interesting.
There is an investigation under another loyalist. In fact, he'd
been offered the position on the Supreme Court before Black,
but wanted to stay in Congress. His name was Senator
Sherman Minton, and if you search his name, the thing
(46:34):
that usually comes up as there's a bridge named after him.
But now maybe that'll change. Button was a very young guy.
He was already in the Senate leadership, first termer, and
he was very tight with Roosevelt. And Minton starts his
own investigation basically succeeds Black's the Black Committee's it's the
(46:55):
same committee, but Black is now in the US Supreme Court,
and so Mitt heads this investigation. They can't search telegrams anymore.
But one of the things they do do is uh
the use uh. Mint gets permission to look at the
I R s uh uh the tax for uh tax
(47:18):
records of people he targets, for example, he gets that,
but Men gets very frustrated because there's a lot of
putback people pushback, people are very upset about his methods,
and he's he's does it. He lacks Black subtlety. Black
had some subtlety, and Minton is just charging for it.
And so Minton gives a speech. He said, well, we
(47:39):
need a law against these big newspapers because most of
the press was against Roosevelt. So he said, let's make
it a felony to publish anything known to be untrue
fake news basically the fact they used that term, I
think false news or fake news. And he proposes this bill,
(48:02):
and what is the reaction to the bill? You almost
universal opposition sets in almost from the beginning. As it
is setting in. Roosevelt has asked about the Minton bill
in a news conference, and I think Roosevelt was the
(48:23):
guy that had the idea. I think he put Minton
up to it. I can't prove that, but I think
it's true because Minton was not the kind of guy
to go off on his own, and he reflects what
Roosevelt thought of the press. He was asked about this
and he said, well, you know, if we had such
a bill, we wouldn't even have enough room in the
federal prison system to hold all the prisoners. And he
(48:44):
gets a little laugh, right yeah, and then is he
moves on to a new topic, and I wish they'd
done follow ups. They didn't. He says, you boys asked
for it. You know, that's what he says, You boys
asked for it. You know, I mean you reporters, you
you know people, you asked for this. And then he
(49:05):
moves on to the next topic and he drops it
right because Minton ends up dropping it, but and it
discredits his investigation, and his investigation is pretty much shut
down after that. So FDRs those two years after the
nineteen thirty six election are a low point for FDR.
There's pushback against him, he loses core packing, the Minton
(49:29):
Committee collapses, and he is he puts all of his
attention on core packing. As a result, he isn't able
to get his radical new Deal program in nineteen thirty eight,
thirty seven, thirty eight that he wanted because he focuses
almost entirely on court packing, and then later after it
really is too late on these investigations.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, it's kind of interesting when we look at this
period of time when all the institutions were being reconsidered reinvented,
if you will, and he's finding against the constitutional pattern
that had been accepted. That he was getting pushed back
even from his own party against some of this stuff
because as we talked about people understood the principles, he
had a lot of people who did not share his
(50:12):
idea that the end justifies a means, and we don't
see that today, we're in a much more dangerous situation.
I think when we look at this why it's good
to go back and look at history. You look at
the radical change that was accomplished during the FDR period
of time, and you look at the fact that now
we have people on both sides have become unhinged from
(50:33):
or have detached themselves from basic principles about free speech,
the rule of law, and having a due process to
investigate things like that. I think we're in a very
dangerous time right now. I think this book helps to
get people to understand that if we look at the
context of the historical context of this.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, and we're seeing a lot of people on the
right who were talking about free speech and local control,
states rights, Yeah, turned on a dime.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
This is very discouraging to see this.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Yeah, now they want to come after their idea of
fake news.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
You know.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Now they've got their own fake news vendettas that they
want to come after. So it is there is so
much here. I mean, we could do several interviews with this.
This is an excellent book. It is a very important
presidency to understand the context of the times in which
we live in our government. And I really highly recommend
this book. FDR A Political Life by David Beto. And
(51:30):
you pronounce you spell your name as b e I
t o. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (51:35):
That's right?
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Yeah, so it's not spelled like the Texas politician.
Speaker 2 (51:41):
Oh please, No, And a lot of people will call
him Beto O'Rourke. But I think it's better. Actually, oh yeah,
I believe that's why his name is pronounced.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
I he telling people that even if it isn't true, but.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
It wasna I think it is true. Yeah. I used
to always call him, uh, Robert Francis O'Rourke or whatever
his original name was. I said, is a he's a
trans Hispanic, he identifies as his Panic. He's yeah, that's right. Yeah,
we don't want to resurrect him with any attention. I guess,
(52:15):
but an excellent book, and thank you so much for
joining us, and there is much to learn in terms
of politics and history. Is a very seminal presidency, unfortunately
for many of us would like to see government that
follows the constitution. FDR's presidency was an unmitigated disaster, and
(52:36):
it bears looking at it and see if we see
any repetition in current events as a warning, as a
harbinger what was coming. Because as we're talking about earlier,
you know, this whole stuff was secretly getting information on
his enemies. We saw that immediately after World War two ended.
We saw that immediately being transferred over to the NSA,
the CIA, the FBI and all these people. Using the
(52:58):
income taxes by people, These same tactics are used over
and over again. Thank you very much, David Beto. The
book is FDR a political life. Thank you folks for
joining us. Have a good day. The common man. They
(53:24):
created common Core that dumbed down our children. They created
common past track and control us. They're Commons project to
make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future.
They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But
each of us has worth and dignity created in the
(53:46):
image of God. That is what we have in common.
That is what they want to take away. Their most
powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know
everything about us, while they hide everything from us. It's
time to turn that around and expose what they want
(54:07):
to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find
at the Davidnightshow dot com. Thank you for listening, Thank
you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please
keep us in your prayers. Ddavidnightshow dot com
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