Speaker 1: Al zone media.
Speaker 2: Presidential debates. I wonder why I decided to talk about
Speaker 2: them this week.
Speaker 3: With the COVID, I excuse me with dealing with everything
Speaker 3: we have to do.
Speaker 4: With in Springfield.
Speaker 5: They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, They're
Speaker 5: eating the cats, They're eating the pets of the people
Speaker 5: that live there.
Speaker 3: Talk about extreme.
Speaker 2: And not a candidate willing to put an arms embargo
Speaker 2: on Israel in sight. Whether you watch these debates or not,
Speaker 2: if you live in the US, and for a lot
Speaker 2: of people if you live outside the US, these debates
Speaker 2: end up affecting you, whether you engage with them or not.
Speaker 2: For voters, televised debates can range from an annoyance to
Speaker 2: either affirming a decided vote to swinging a less certain one.
Speaker 2: And an American presidential debate, they adhere to the two
Speaker 2: party system that is definitely working and helping us. Debates
Speaker 2: have been around forever, literally for all of recorded history,
Speaker 2: because there is no time in recorded history where people
Speaker 2: have agreed on things. They can be one with facts,
Speaker 2: but the more necessary component is charisma. Things you can
Speaker 2: accomplish with raw charisma are limitless. And let's see how
Speaker 2: far into the debate episode. I can go without saying Riz.
Speaker 1: When I say Riz, you can shoot me.
Speaker 2: Here in the US, presidential debates have not been around
Speaker 2: for as long as you probably think. The kinds of
Speaker 2: debates that hold the Internet in a vice grip like
Speaker 2: they have in the last few weeks and apparently won't
Speaker 2: again in this election cycle have only been around for
Speaker 2: as long as television has. And I want to be clear,
Speaker 2: So let me be clear. I'm only talking about presidential
Speaker 2: debates here, not on other issues. The first example comes
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty six, during the race between Dwight Eisenhower
Speaker 2: and Adelai Stevenson. Erase that Eisenhower eventually won, which we
Speaker 2: know because unless you're a dork, you probably don't know
Speaker 2: who Adlai Stevenson is.
Speaker 1: Sorry to dorks.
Speaker 2: During this cycle, the first televised presidential debate is aired
Speaker 2: during the primaries. Stephenson is up against opponent Esday's Keif
Speaker 2: Foffer in May of nineteen fifty six, dogging it out
Speaker 2: for the Democratic nomination. A Miami ABC affiliate broadcast the
Speaker 2: debate and it's it's pretty boring, Honestly.
Speaker 6: A presidential campaign must not degenerate into a mere personal
Speaker 6: conflict our candidates are.
Speaker 5: Only as important as the ideas they represent.
Speaker 4: Well, brother, this guy stinks.
Speaker 2: It's like these losers don't know they're supposed to run
Speaker 2: ads on this. This doesn't sell aggressively gendered soap in
Speaker 2: the future, but choosing this moment to start broadcasting and
Speaker 2: putting more emphasis on debates is done very intentionally. By
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, Americans were adapting to and building their
Speaker 2: life around TV at a very fast rate. TV had
Speaker 2: been in development since the late nineteen twenties, but as
Speaker 2: far as the home TV set goes, it's all about
Speaker 2: the fifties. According to the Digital Public Library of America,
Speaker 2: only a few thousand Americans had TVs before nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: Five years later, this number had reached twelve million, and
Speaker 2: by nineteen fifty five, the year before this very boring broadcast,
Speaker 2: half of American households were rocking a TV. Now that
Speaker 2: the majority of Americans had a video component to engaging
Speaker 2: with a debate, people wanted to hear more than just
Speaker 2: a candidate's voice on the radio, chillingly similar to what's
Speaker 2: happening with podcasts. Please don't make me pivot to video.
Speaker 2: I'm so close to a nervous breakdown as it is.
Speaker 7: The Republican candidate Vice President Richard M. Mixon and the
Speaker 7: Democratic candidate Senator John F.
Speaker 8: Candidate.
Speaker 2: But indeed, there was the first televised president residential debate
Speaker 2: between the two parties as we know it today on
Speaker 2: September twenty sixth, nineteen sixty, between eventual election winner John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy and then Vice President to Eisenhower Richard Nixon. Every
Speaker 2: president is a fucking moron, but this is a significant
Speaker 2: debate that there is a lot of lore surrounding. It
Speaker 2: does define how debates look moving forward. At the time,
Speaker 2: it pulled as many as seventy million viewers and was
Speaker 2: an opportunity for Americans to see how young Senator Kennedy
Speaker 2: and Vice President Nixon composed themselves when speaking to the nation.
Speaker 7: I think we can do better. I don't want the
Speaker 7: talents of any Americans to go to Waite. I know
Speaker 7: that there are those who say that we want to
Speaker 7: turn everything over to the government.
Speaker 8: I don't at all.
Speaker 7: I want the individuals to meet their responsibility, and I
Speaker 7: want the states to meet their responsibility. But I think
Speaker 7: there is also a national responsibility.
Speaker 8: There is no question but that we cannot discuss our
Speaker 8: internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they
Speaker 8: have a tremendous bearing on our international position.
Speaker 2: As the story goes, people who listen to the debate
Speaker 2: on the radio thought that Nixon won, and people who
Speaker 2: watched on TV thought Kennedy one. And this is for
Speaker 2: a bunch of reasons, very likely oversimplified because of the
Speaker 2: sample size of people surveyed, But hey, Kennedy won the election.
Speaker 2: What was clear was that the debate itself was a
Speaker 2: conceptual success and set this new precedent moving forward because
Speaker 2: on TV, Kennedy does genuinely look more confident, and Nixon
Speaker 2: then and now looks kind of sweaty. Not that sweaty
Speaker 2: people shouldn't be president, but Nixon's not a good example
Speaker 2: of someone who should. And weirdly, it is why all
Speaker 2: debate venues are generally freezing cold today. Stet stet Stett.
Speaker 1: That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2: And if TV was going to be the new norm
Speaker 2: for debates, successful candidates would have to learn to sell
Speaker 2: themselves using it. So moving forward, candidates who thrived in
Speaker 2: the press, regardless of their actual politics, tended to win
Speaker 2: the elections. Think Reagan think Clinton, think Obama, think Trump
Speaker 2: for one term. Hopefully that's not to say every elected
Speaker 2: president was a natural on screen. Looking at you, George
Speaker 2: Bush Senior.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm caught up in super Bowl Mania here and
Speaker 6: I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2: No charisma whatsoever. Kind of incredible but unmeimable presidents become
Speaker 2: increasingly rare as the years go on, mainly because the
Speaker 2: technology evolved to make it possible to memify them, and
Speaker 2: especially as social media took off, that became necessary for
Speaker 2: a candidate to be remembered and successful. Ironically, George Bush
Speaker 2: Senior's warmongering son is a great example of this.
Speaker 9: I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
Speaker 1: I always say that George W.
Speaker 2: Bush is the reverse Hitler because he started as a
Speaker 2: warmonger and then became a horrible painter later on. Anyways,
Speaker 2: as technology continued to evolve, the presidential debate attempted to
Speaker 2: evolve alongside it. And while there were plenty of debates
Speaker 2: of consequence between the nineteen sixties show down between Kennedy
Speaker 2: and Nixon and debates today, things really lock into the
Speaker 2: format we recognize sometime in the eighties, take this very
Speaker 2: Reagan quip against Walter Mondale in nineteen eighty four that
Speaker 2: further proved that Riz, Oh, no, you have to shoot me. No,
Speaker 2: I said, Riz, I think I'm too old to say Riz.
Speaker 2: That proved that Riz is more important than anything in politics.
Speaker 2: This moment was not to tackle a common criticism of
Speaker 2: Reagan at the time. His age soundfamiliar, but he dealt
Speaker 2: with it so well in the debate that he surged
Speaker 2: ahead to win and continued to ignore the AIDS crisis
Speaker 2: for more than another year.
Speaker 6: Here's the clip, mister Truett and I and I want
Speaker 6: you to know that also, I will not make age
Speaker 6: an issue of this campaign. I am not going to
Speaker 6: exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
Speaker 2: Then, in nineteen eighty eight, a nonprofit called the Commission
Speaker 2: on Presidential Debates was founded. The CPD sponsored every presidential
Speaker 2: debate from nineteen eighty eight until twenty twenty, featuring ninety
Speaker 2: minute long debates with no commercials, and most of them
Speaker 2: were held on school campuses. And the eighties was a
Speaker 2: great time to bring in some steadiness and structure to
Speaker 2: debates because with this decade came the age of the
Speaker 2: twenty four hour news cycle as cable TV became increasingly popular.
Speaker 2: Ted Turner founded CNN in nineteen eighty, forever changing the
Speaker 2: way that we consume political news. It was around the
Speaker 2: clock thing now, and so if.
Speaker 1: There were stories, stories.
Speaker 2: Would be found, and if you were running a campaign,
Speaker 2: it gave you far more opportunities to make an impression.
Speaker 2: In general, debates don't just reflect the time they take
Speaker 2: place in. They also reflect the media environment they make
Speaker 2: their way into. Reagan was a trained and lightly successful
Speaker 2: movie actor, and you can tell Trump is a seasoned
Speaker 2: reality and tabloid star who's known for his shamelessness. And
Speaker 2: you can tell if.
Speaker 5: They win, I should get all the credit, and if
Speaker 5: they lose, I should not be blamed at all.
Speaker 2: So presidential debates became more showy as the years went
Speaker 2: on and the media cycle escalated. The two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight race between Obama and McCain was the first to
Speaker 2: meaningfully include social media and a candidate who knew how
Speaker 2: to use it. Obama was the first president to use
Speaker 2: social media consistently throughout a presidency.
Speaker 10: Is there any way we could fly Obama to some
Speaker 10: golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there. Well,
Speaker 10: RWs surfer girl, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2: And because social media meant that everyday people were locked
Speaker 2: into the twenty four hour news cycle just as much
Speaker 2: as the traditional media, the political theatrics increased, and by
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen we have Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Maybe
Speaker 2: you remember this time, and also sorry, this was the
Speaker 2: era of but her emails of Mexicans are rapists of
Speaker 2: grab them by the pussy. It's rhetoric we're used to
Speaker 2: hearing more of now, after nearly a decade of Donald
Speaker 2: Trump running as a mask off fascist, doing things like
Speaker 2: attempting to overthrow the government and trying to wipe immigration
Speaker 2: and social safety nets off the country's radar for good.
Speaker 2: And in response to this, the Democratic Party has gone
Speaker 2: further right, with current candidate Kamala Harris's campaign recently bragging
Speaker 2: that former Reagan Republicans were thrilled with her platform, which
Speaker 2: is not the flex they.
Speaker 1: Seem to think that is. But in twenty.
Speaker 2: Sixteen, the mask offness of this rhetoric still felt pretty
Speaker 2: new in the US. Yes, Trump's proposed policies were an
Speaker 2: escalation of the rights already bad agenda, but he just
Speaker 2: said hateful things versus couching violence in cushy political language.
Speaker 2: And this was something that American debates weren't really built for.
Speaker 2: As became clear during the Republican primaries.
Speaker 8: This is a tough business.
Speaker 5: So you're a tough guy, j It's and we need
Speaker 5: to have a leader that is preered top.
Speaker 10: You're never going to be president United States high insulting
Speaker 10: your way to.
Speaker 5: Let's see, I'm at forty two and you're at three,
Speaker 5: So no matter I'm doing better, doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: So far I'm doing better.
Speaker 2: Yes, Indeed, this was the Jeb Bush please clap era.
Speaker 1: Please clap.
Speaker 2: It's so funny it still hits. And eventually, during Trump
Speaker 2: and Clinton's first debate on September twenty six, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: at Hofstra University, which is to this day the highest
Speaker 2: viewed debate in American history with over eighty four million viewers,
Speaker 2: tensions between the candidates were at an all time high.
Speaker 11: I have a failure that by the end of this evening,
Speaker 11: I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.
Speaker 4: Why not? Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 12: Why not?
Speaker 5: I will release my tax retarge when she releases her
Speaker 5: thirty three thousand emails that have been deleted. As soon
Speaker 5: as she releases them, I will release I will.
Speaker 2: Release, yes, the her emails era. And you remember, these
Speaker 2: debates got a ton of internet traffic from every kind
Speaker 2: of voter you can imagine. It was the first election
Speaker 2: of my lifetime where people gathered to watch debates in
Speaker 2: bars like they were football games. Because it was fucked
Speaker 2: up and it was scary, and it was also good TV.
Speaker 2: And of course, the two main characters were pitted against
Speaker 2: each other in the media as you might expect, the
Speaker 2: reality TV mega millionaire pandering to the rights worst tendencies,
Speaker 2: and the season politician with a spotty record and a
Speaker 2: hellbent mission to become the first woman to hold the
Speaker 2: American presidency. Sometimes the moderators would be memed and commented
Speaker 2: on during these debates, but there was never a question
Speaker 2: of who the two protagonists of this fucked up, consequential
Speaker 2: TV show were. Until October ninth, twenty sixteen, at Washington
Speaker 2: University in Saint Louis, the second debate between Clinton and Trump,
Speaker 2: and one that featured the town hall format. This format
Speaker 2: had been in play with the Presidential Commission back since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, which featured an in the round setting
Speaker 2: where local people classified as quote unquote undecided voters by
Speaker 2: the Commission, and online question submitters could ask the candidates
Speaker 2: about the issues most important to them. The online questions
Speaker 2: and general moderation was done by Anderson Cooper and ABC's
Speaker 2: Martha Radditts, and the questions were very of the time.
Speaker 13: Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, It is not affordable.
Speaker 13: What will you do to bring the costs down and
Speaker 13: make coverage better?
Speaker 14: There are three point three million Muslims in the United States,
Speaker 14: and I'm one of them. You've mentioned working with Muslim nations,
Speaker 14: but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help
Speaker 14: people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled
Speaker 14: as a threat to the country After the election is over.
Speaker 15: Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is a
Speaker 15: Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most
Speaker 15: important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?
Speaker 2: I viscerally remember watching this debate because it was a
Speaker 2: shit show. The layout of the space meant that both
Speaker 2: candidates were standing up for most of the time in
Speaker 2: this weird performance to connect with normal people, but it
Speaker 2: did give Trump the opportunity to famous lear behind Hillary
Speaker 2: Clinton in a bunch of camera shots, just like standing
Speaker 2: uncomfortably close to her in what is an attempt to
Speaker 2: intimidate her. And I am in no way a fan
Speaker 2: of Hillary Clinton's but it was spooky and weird and uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: and the whole debate just felt very unproductive, and I
Speaker 2: spent my time watching it between talking to my friends
Speaker 2: at this bar and looking at my phone as people
Speaker 2: screenshotted weird moments as the candidates, in classic candidate fashion,
Speaker 2: picked at each other and.
Speaker 1: Did not answer a single question.
Speaker 2: But throughout all of this, there was this guy in
Speaker 2: the audience the whole time, the whole time, just sitting there,
Speaker 2: one of the undecided voters, sitting right in the front,
Speaker 2: and you kind of could not take your eyes off
Speaker 2: of him, Like literally you couldn't. This was a very
Speaker 2: blue space where most voters were wearing muted colors, but
Speaker 2: the guy I'm talking about was very attentive and wearing
Speaker 2: a bright red sweater. And every once in a while, while
Speaker 2: they keep cutting away to audience shots, and again you're
Speaker 2: looking at this guy, but the guy never talks until
Speaker 2: the very end. Weirdly, the very end just under eight
Speaker 2: minutes before the ninety minute broadcast is over, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, this guy you've been staring at during
Speaker 2: this depressing, weird end day's show for over an hour
Speaker 2: is standing up and he says this.
Speaker 3: What steps will your energy policy take to meet our
Speaker 3: energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly
Speaker 3: and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?
Speaker 2: An innocuous question, a valid question, even from the man
Speaker 2: in the red sweater. He's balding, he's wearing glasses, he's
Speaker 2: on the heavier side, and the sweater. I can't emphasize
Speaker 2: this red eyes on sweater enough and most importantly, the
Speaker 2: chiron below him, which reads ken bone undecided? Did voter
Speaker 2: Your sixteenth minute starts now. Sixteen oh baby, Welcome back
Speaker 2: to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look
Speaker 2: at the most notre glorious Internet characters of the day
Speaker 2: and see how their moment affected them and what it
Speaker 2: says about us and the Internet. And in honor of
Speaker 2: the very chill presidential debate cycle that's taken place in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, by the way, the first to be
Speaker 2: separate from the Commission on Presidential debates since nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Today we're going to look at the most famous non
Speaker 2: candidate debate participant of all time, one Kenneth Bone. So
Speaker 2: today we're going to look at the extremely chaotic political
Speaker 2: landscape that Ken was launched into, and in part two
Speaker 2: next week, we will talk to the man himself. As
Speaker 2: I was digging into the original reaction to Ken, one
Speaker 2: tweet stood out to me from a user at the
Speaker 2: Shrill List that really succinctly states the tenant rule of
Speaker 2: the main character experience that we break every single time.
Speaker 16: It's this, y'all, don't mess up this Ken Bone thing
Speaker 16: by interviewing him or finding out anything about him.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Well, sorry.
Speaker 2: Ken isn't the only person who's ever spoken or was
Speaker 2: invoked at a debate that made us stir, but he is,
Speaker 2: from what I could find, the only person who directly
Speaker 2: asked a question as an undecided voter in this town
Speaker 2: hall format who's remembered today. And I kind of have
Speaker 2: an issue with the term undecided voter, But Ken and
Speaker 2: I get into that in our interview, because yes, folks,
Speaker 2: we got Kenny. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I threw
Speaker 2: a birthday party from my cat flea over the weekend,
Speaker 2: a fact that just may send jd Vance into cardiac arrest.
Speaker 2: And this week we are talking about the tumultuous political
Speaker 2: environment that brought us one ken bone. There might not
Speaker 2: be many ken bones because there haven't actually been many
Speaker 2: presidential debates broadcast in this format. The first was in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, a town hall debate between three candidates,
Speaker 2: because remember there can be more than two between Bush Senior,
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton, and Ross Perrot with the same undecided voters
Speaker 2: ask the questions format, and like Kennedy before him, Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton thrived on TV and it was thought at the
Speaker 2: time to help him pull.
Speaker 1: Ahead and defeat Bush.
Speaker 2: The format made a comeback in nineteen ninety six between
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, but then we don't see
Speaker 2: it again until twenty sixteen and haven't since.
Speaker 1: Why is it.
Speaker 2: Such a Clinton specific format?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Conspiracy theories enjoy yourselves. And now that the Commission on
Speaker 2: Presidential Debates is out of commission, I doubt we'll see
Speaker 2: it anytime soon.
Speaker 1: But why can bone?
Speaker 2: I have my theories, and so does Ken himself. We'll
Speaker 2: talk about it in a bit after rewatching the full debate.
Speaker 2: I do think it comes down to a little bit
Speaker 2: of plant and payoff. Like we've been staring at this
Speaker 2: guy wearing a bright shirt for an hour and a
Speaker 2: half of some of the most depressing debating I've ever seen,
Speaker 2: and then he talks and seems sweet and has a
Speaker 2: funny name and is smiling and doesn't seem nervous. He's
Speaker 2: just like Chekhov's ken bone. Another reason is you kind
Speaker 2: of had to be there, so we have to go there,
Speaker 2: because understanding this particular moment in the twenty sixteen election
Speaker 2: cycle is pretty crucial.
Speaker 1: So come with me.
Speaker 2: Sorry again to October twenty sixteen. So this was the
Speaker 2: second of three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: and what I don't need to tell you was a
Speaker 2: jarring and deeply contentious race. My memory is that this
Speaker 2: election cycle took forever, and that's not just psychic damage.
Speaker 2: Talk of Trump planning a run began in March twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: around the same time as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich,
Speaker 2: Ben Carson please clap.
Speaker 1: Please clap, I think that was the candidate's name.
Speaker 2: The Republican ticket was chaotic this cycle. Twenty twelve, candidate
Speaker 2: and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney decided not to rerun,
Speaker 2: and there was no real, presumed ideal candidate that emerged
Speaker 2: in his stead sidebar Also, I'm from Massachusetts and I
Speaker 2: was going through some childhood journals recently from when I
Speaker 2: was like ten, and I wrote a whole journal entry
Speaker 2: about how I thought Mitt Romney was going to be
Speaker 2: bad for the children of Massachusetts. On the Democrat side,
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in April twenty fifteen, soon
Speaker 2: followed followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who many preferred,
Speaker 2: but this race was far less contentious. By February of
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, only Clinton and Sanders remained, and the two
Speaker 2: ran a tighter race than many expected. Sanders actually didn't
Speaker 2: drop out before the Democratic primary.
Speaker 1: And Trump famously.
Speaker 2: Announced his candidacy in June of twenty fifteen after descending
Speaker 2: an escalator with Milania, saying.
Speaker 5: Wow, whoa that is some group of people thousands.
Speaker 2: This is not true, according to campaign reporter Alana Wise
Speaker 2: dozens and Trump is running then and now with the
Speaker 2: slogan make America Great Again, a phrase that isn't just
Speaker 2: implicitly racist, misogynist, and xenophobic, but also means that I
Speaker 2: finally gave up and just threw my red Bubba Gump
Speaker 2: hat away. So by the time the ken Bone debate
Speaker 2: aired in October twenty sixteen, we'd been getting regular updates
Speaker 2: on this election cycle on so social media every day
Speaker 2: for close to a year and a half. Both the
Speaker 2: Republican and Democratic primaries were closely monitored. As the primaries
Speaker 2: rolled out and Republican candidates started dropping from the race
Speaker 2: like flies, Trump succeeded in appealing to voters who felt
Speaker 2: failed by the Republican Party by loudly saying the most
Speaker 2: unhinged thing he could think of, and Hillary Clinton ran
Speaker 2: a very middle of the road centrist Democrat campaign, dodging
Speaker 2: criticisms of her past policy and putting emphasis on the
Speaker 2: historic nature of her candidacy, which was true. Clinton's status
Speaker 2: as the first woman to be a presumed nominee stood
Speaker 2: in stark contrast to Trump's history of allegedly raping, assaulting,
Speaker 2: and harassing women, an issue that came up consistently during
Speaker 2: his campaign, in addition to his history as a racist, landlord,
Speaker 2: failed businessman, islamophobic, and in general you name it.
Speaker 1: In terms of being overtly hateful.
Speaker 2: Another thing we heard a lot about was Hillary's emails,
Speaker 2: which I'll be honest, I needed a refresher on because
Speaker 2: they were largely invoked throughout the election without context. The
Speaker 2: email's issue boiled down to an issue of national security
Speaker 2: related to when Clinton was Secretary of State for Barack
Speaker 2: Obama and routed all of her emails, both personal and
Speaker 2: those of international importance, to the same private server for
Speaker 2: what she said was convenience. This became a massive story
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen. This resulted in in order to have
Speaker 2: these emails reviewed and have professional emails sent over to
Speaker 2: the State Department, and a huge scandal for Clinton, one
Speaker 2: that would continue to escalate after the October ninth debate.
Speaker 2: She presented it in the media as a mistake, and
Speaker 2: Republicans generally positioned it as proof that she would be
Speaker 2: a deceptive and corrupt president. So when Bernie Sanders says
Speaker 2: this in an October twenty fifteen primary debate against Clinton, the.
Speaker 7: American people are sick and tired of hearing about your
Speaker 7: damn emails.
Speaker 2: Hako, that's what he's talking about. And a year later,
Speaker 2: when Trump is.
Speaker 4: Saying, we have a question here from Ken Carperwicks. He
Speaker 4: has a question about healthcare, Kent. I'd like to know, Anderson,
Speaker 4: why aren't you bringing up the emails.
Speaker 5: I'd like to know, why aren't you brought up No,
Speaker 5: it hasn't, it hasn't, and it hasn't been finished at all.
Speaker 1: That's what he is talking about.
Speaker 2: Throughout the election season, Clinton had to answer for scourges
Speaker 2: on her political record, including her previous endorsement of the
Speaker 2: Iraq War, a resistance to single pair healthcareized to Wall Street,
Speaker 2: and a general lack of liberal accomplishment during her time
Speaker 2: as Secretary of State. Her record was not winning leftists
Speaker 2: over at all, and then there was just genuine misogyny.
Speaker 2: Outside of the email scandal, Probably her most notorious public
Speaker 2: appearance was the whole basket of deplorables thing, a turn
Speaker 2: of frase she used at a campaign event in September
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 12: You know, did just being Rosseley John wistic, you could
Speaker 12: put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the
Speaker 12: basket of deplorables.
Speaker 2: So Trump wins the Republican nomination with VP Mike Pence
Speaker 2: in July twenty sixteen, and Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic
Speaker 2: nomination a few days later with Tim Kine. And while
Speaker 2: Clinton was fending off the email scandal, a number of
Speaker 2: things were dogging Trump. To name a few, there was
Speaker 2: an ongoing lawsuit about the fraudulent Trump University. There were
Speaker 2: a series of extreme or overtly.
Speaker 1: False tweets, including continued.
Speaker 2: Obama Birtherism conspiracies, and a retweet of a Mussolini quote.
Speaker 2: And as was a major media focus, Trump's treatment of women.
Speaker 2: This had been a conversation for years. Trump's ex wife,
Speaker 2: Evanna had previously accused him of marital rape, and throughout
Speaker 2: the campaign, women who had previously associated with him or
Speaker 2: compete in his beauty pageants came forward with allegations of
Speaker 2: inappropriate touching, comments or coercion. But late in the election cycle,
Speaker 2: one damning tape had a lot of people, including me,
Speaker 2: thinking that there was no way Trump could bounce back
Speaker 2: from the Access Hollywood tape. If you don't remember the
Speaker 2: clip of Donald Trump and then host of Access Hollywood
Speaker 2: Billy Bush from two thousand and five, I.
Speaker 4: Got to confuse some ticktacks, just a casst kissinger. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm automatically a drag kit. The beautiful. I just started
Speaker 4: kissing them.
Speaker 12: It's like a magnet.
Speaker 5: He just didn't And when you're a start, they let
Speaker 5: you do it.
Speaker 4: You can do anything whatever you want to grab him
Speaker 4: by the.
Speaker 1: I can do any of that. I don't really have
Speaker 1: any desire to play more of this.
Speaker 2: This is the most famous section, but it's worth mentioning
Speaker 2: that the actual Access Hollywood tape is much longer than this,
Speaker 2: and includes a protracted session where Trump is telling Billy
Speaker 2: Bush about shamelessly harassing Billy Bush's co host Nancy O'Dell,
Speaker 2: and then goes on to talk about her body disparagingly.
Speaker 2: The woman he's referring to in the clip I just
Speaker 2: played is someone that two are about to interview, a
Speaker 2: soap opera actor named Arianna Zucker. This tape was leaked
Speaker 2: to The Washington Post two days before the town hall
Speaker 2: debate and was absolutely top of mind for both voters
Speaker 2: and media. Trump defended the behavior during the debate, infamously saying.
Speaker 4: This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 5: I apologize to my family, I apologize to the American people.
Speaker 4: Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is locker
Speaker 4: room talk.
Speaker 2: The day after this leaks, Hillary Clinton condemns Trump's statements,
Speaker 2: and Trump defended himself using the phrase locker room banter.
Speaker 2: But just remember while these days, Trump's base will slurp
Speaker 2: up any horrifying shit he can think of. At the time,
Speaker 2: something this transparent, horrible, this close to an election day,
Speaker 2: a lot of people thought he was done, including some
Speaker 2: of his own supporters. Dozens of present and former Republican
Speaker 2: lawmakers made public statements on the Access Hollywood tape as
Speaker 2: further proof that Trump was unfit to serve as president
Speaker 2: or as their candidate, while others who had endorsed him
Speaker 2: condemned the comments and still supported the man. Particularly is
Speaker 2: lukewarm soup eating VP pick Mike Pence.
Speaker 16: As a husband and father, I was offended by the
Speaker 16: words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven
Speaker 16: year old video released yesterday. I do not condone his
Speaker 16: remarks and cannot defend him, and.
Speaker 2: It obviously feels naive now, but I can't overstate how
Speaker 2: bad this was perceived to be for his campaign. At
Speaker 2: the time, CNN called it the worst weekend for any
Speaker 2: presidential candidate ever. I wasn't aware of this phrase, but
Speaker 2: in American politics, a reveal of a damning further indictment
Speaker 2: of Trump's character could be classified as an October surprise
Speaker 2: or a late in the game reveal that could be
Speaker 2: a deciding factor to swing undecided voters like Ken Bone
Speaker 2: away from a certain candidate. And while the Access Hollywood
Speaker 2: tape is the most remembered of Trump's October surprises, this
Speaker 2: was actually the third damning thing that it hit his
Speaker 2: campaign that week. On October first, the New York Times
Speaker 2: reported that Trump likely avoided paying his taxes for almost
Speaker 2: twenty years, and hours before the Access Hollywood tape dropped,
Speaker 2: Trump said that the Central Park five should never have
Speaker 2: been exonerated. It looked so bad for him, and liberal
Speaker 2: media seemed to agree. They oscillated between disgusted with the
Speaker 2: tape itself and started taking this preemptive victory lap, a
Speaker 2: general feeling that surely this would be the thing that
Speaker 2: would get Donald Trump out of the race. If not
Speaker 2: the refusal to release the tax statement, if not, the
Speaker 2: mass govzenophobia, if not the pending fraud litigation, surely this
Speaker 2: The day after the tape was released, Trump tweeted.
Speaker 16: Certainly has made it interesting.
Speaker 2: Twenty four hours and that Saturday night, Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 2: I can't, we just can't. Alec Baldwin parodied the moment
Speaker 2: on SNL two nights before the debate.
Speaker 7: Mister Trump, this leaked audio showed you saying, you know,
Speaker 7: I can't.
Speaker 14: I can't quite say it on live television, but basically
Speaker 14: you said you wanted to.
Speaker 4: Grab them by the book.
Speaker 2: For what it's worth, this was not a great weekend
Speaker 2: for Clinton's campaign either. On the seventh, WikiLeaks began to
Speaker 2: publish emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta that
Speaker 2: addressed one of her massive vulnerabilities, the fact that the
Speaker 2: candidate courting the left had been giving paid speeches to
Speaker 2: Wall Street groups and refused to release the transcripts. But
Speaker 2: a paid speech on Wall Street was nothing next to
Speaker 2: the Access Hollywood tape, and it didn't register as Wiki
Speaker 2: Leaks probably would have liked for it too, And this
Speaker 2: left Trump on the major defensive. How is he going
Speaker 2: to survive this debate when half of his party was
Speaker 2: very ready to walk away from him? The afternoon of
Speaker 2: October ninth, he retaliated, organizing a press conference just hours
Speaker 2: before the debate with three women who had previously accused
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton of assault and rape. Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones,
Speaker 2: and Kathleen Willie, and a fourth person named Kathy Shelter,
Speaker 2: whose attacker had been legally represented by Hillary Clinton in
Speaker 2: Arkansas back.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: I had completely forgotten about this until Trump brought it
Speaker 2: up at the debate itself, saying that the women were
Speaker 2: attending the debate as his guests.
Speaker 5: If you look at Bill Clinton farward, minor words, and
Speaker 5: his was action.
Speaker 4: His was what he's done to women.
Speaker 5: There's never been anybody in the history of politics in
Speaker 5: this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you
Speaker 5: can say any way you want to say it, but Bill.
Speaker 4: Clinton was abusive to women.
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attack them viciously,
Speaker 5: four of them here tonight.
Speaker 2: This is just so nasty to me, because Bill Clinton's
Speaker 2: history of abusing women and predatory actions should be talked
Speaker 2: about just as much as Donald Trump's history of abusing
Speaker 2: women should. But Trump choosing this moment to highlight this
Speaker 2: abuse is incredibly transparent. He's backed into a corner and
Speaker 2: pointing at his former friends, the Clintons, and saying, I
Speaker 2: know you are, but what am I to discredit his opponent?
Speaker 2: Here's when Eda Broderick in a press conference Trump held
Speaker 2: four hours earlier.
Speaker 12: Okay, I'm ready to Broadrick, and I'm here to support
Speaker 12: Donald Trump. I tweeted recently, and mister Trump retweeted it
Speaker 12: that actions speak louder than wards.
Speaker 1: Mister Trump may have said some.
Speaker 12: Bad words, but Bill Clinton riped me when Hillary Clinton threatened.
Speaker 12: I don't think there's any comparers.
Speaker 2: The stories of these survivors deserve a platform. Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: is a piece of shit, but it's a valid discussion
Speaker 2: that couldn't be coming from a worse source. I believe
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton survivors, and I also think Trump was really
Speaker 2: obviously using them as political pawns to make the words
Speaker 2: he said in two thousand and five sound less significant
Speaker 2: than Bill Clinton's alleged actions. He says as much in
Speaker 2: the debate, and that might mean something if there weren't
Speaker 2: ample alleged and proven actions of Trump's own.
Speaker 1: He's bullshitting.
Speaker 2: Here's how he's talking at that press conference.
Speaker 5: These war very courageous women have asked to be here.
Speaker 11: And it was a June Help.
Speaker 2: Them, Loah, and the Access Hollywood tape didn't doom Trump's campaign,
Speaker 2: as we now know, the lesson here. Never underestimate how
Speaker 2: much people of every political.
Speaker 1: Persuasion hate women.
Speaker 2: So it's this environment that is surrounding this group of
Speaker 2: undecided or, as I think is a more appropriate term,
Speaker 2: uncommitted voters who had questions about issues they felt that
Speaker 2: neither candidate had sufficiently addressed. As Ken tells me in
Speaker 2: our interview, the whole idea of undecided even being a
Speaker 2: question after the Access Hollywood tapes had the participants kind
Speaker 2: of on their heels and feeling foolish the day of.
Speaker 2: They'd been selected weeks earlier, far before the tape came out.
Speaker 2: But it's this moment that a random man in a
Speaker 2: red eyes On sweater somehow manages to steal the show.
Speaker 2: Ken was and is a normal guy. He worked at
Speaker 2: a power plant in the area. He had a wife
Speaker 2: and a teenage son. He'd been raised conservative and was
Speaker 2: slowly unlearning a lot of it. He liked sports, he
Speaker 2: liked anime, he liked video games. He was just some guy,
Speaker 2: and he asked a question about energy policy because it
Speaker 2: would directly affect his life.
Speaker 1: Ken told me all about what this day was like.
Speaker 1: It was very long.
Speaker 2: They took your phone, so you couldn't have access to
Speaker 2: the outside world while on property, and because of that,
Speaker 2: they gave the town hall members these little disposable cameras
Speaker 2: to remember the event by some of the pictures that
Speaker 2: when viral of Ken featured him with his disposable camera
Speaker 2: taking a picture of the technical equipment that furthered this
Speaker 2: vision of him as a geek. So Ken doesn't even
Speaker 2: turn his phone off until well after the debate has ended.
Speaker 2: By the time he left Washington University, he still didn't
Speaker 2: know he was becoming famous. As the live reactions to
Speaker 2: the debate were unrolling everywhere on TV and definitely on
Speaker 2: social media. The general feeling was that Clinton had prevailed
Speaker 2: as the winner of the debate, but not by as
Speaker 2: much as Democrats hoped. She was still extremely vulnerable on
Speaker 2: issues like immigration and healthcare. As for Trump, he'd made
Speaker 2: a debate defining statement of dismissing.
Speaker 4: Assault as locker room talk.
Speaker 2: And other language implying autocracy over democracy, including threatening to
Speaker 2: put Hillary Clinton in jail if elected, appealing to the
Speaker 2: lock her up contingency. So people really glombed on to him.
Speaker 2: Here are some tweets.
Speaker 16: Kenneth Bone is here to remind you it's sweater weather.
Speaker 2: Thank you Kenneth Bone for breaking the tension with being
Speaker 2: named Kenneth Bone.
Speaker 16: How will you protect my job as a card and
Speaker 16: guess who?
Speaker 2: Hashtag debates Ken Bone an undecided voter, but not an
Speaker 2: undecided dresser.
Speaker 16: US History Books, twenty one fifty and in that moment,
Speaker 16: the Republic was saved by a man named Ken Bone.
Speaker 2: At the time, this was still unusual for debates. But
Speaker 2: even in the midst of this chaos. By the time
Speaker 2: Ken Bone arrived home in nearby Belleville, Illinois, he was
Speaker 2: a star. Here's Jake Tapper the day after All day long,
Speaker 2: my staff and I we've been pondering this important question
Speaker 2: what makes Ken Bone so awesome? And Fox and Friends
Speaker 2: the day after that.
Speaker 3: The votes are in and this undecided voter has won
Speaker 3: over all of our hearts.
Speaker 2: If I showed you every news broadcast that made reference
Speaker 2: to remember that guy in the red sweater from last
Speaker 2: night with the funny name, well, we loved him, it
Speaker 2: would be here for hours. People loved him, and Ken
Speaker 2: was pretty receptive to the attention. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 2: When the twenty sixteen election results came in, I'd just
Speaker 2: been broken up with by a malevolent prop comedian who
Speaker 2: fears me to this day. And this week we're revisiting
Speaker 2: the saga of ken Bone, just in time for another contentious,
Speaker 2: consequential election cycle. We're voting anything but down ballot makes
Speaker 2: me feel sick as Ken starts to make public appearances,
Speaker 2: just showing up on TV in the order he received
Speaker 2: requests in we see him speak to people across the
Speaker 2: political spectrum, because at least initially, he was embraced by everyone,
Speaker 2: and in a move that reminds me of Hawk to
Speaker 2: a girl. More recently, both liberal and conservative media establishments
Speaker 2: made attempts to claim Ken as it were, but Ken
Speaker 2: would not be claimed. So, having now thoroughly revisited this
Speaker 2: cursed forty eight hours of American history, it's a little
Speaker 2: easier to understand why ken Bone became such a big deal.
Speaker 1: Does it still seem a little random?
Speaker 2: Sure, But Ken Bone was the only fun part of
Speaker 2: watching the debate, a living meme in the middle of
Speaker 2: an eventful and largely depressing couple of news days. People
Speaker 2: just fucking went nuts for this guy. I mean full disclosure.
Speaker 2: On October eleventh, twenty sixteen, I published a fake diary
Speaker 2: written by Ken Bone in Paste magazine, And so if
Speaker 2: you're Ken Bone, you're presented with an immediate choice of
Speaker 2: whether you want to engage with this or not, and
Speaker 2: he decides he's going to the next few days are
Speaker 2: filled with ken interviews, and his general vibe seems to
Speaker 2: be just as sweet as the man we saw on
Speaker 2: screen at the debate. His social media following exploded.
Speaker 1: His Twitter follower.
Speaker 2: Count went from literally seven to over two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: in the space of a few days. Everyone was talking
Speaker 2: Ken Here he is with Anderson Cooper.
Speaker 3: It's been very strange, and I'm very sorry to all
Speaker 3: the Ken Bone twenty sixteen people, but I am only
Speaker 3: thirty four years old. You'll have to wait for Ken
Speaker 3: Bone twenty twenty. And if you want to addresses me for Halloween,
Speaker 3: you better be quick. The sweater is sold out on Amazon,
Speaker 3: and these mustaches don't come.
Speaker 2: Overnight with Jimmy Kimmel, very grateful to you for spending
Speaker 2: time with us tonight.
Speaker 16: Do you have any idea of how adorable you are?
Speaker 4: First, I want to say.
Speaker 3: That's a definitive guess.
Speaker 4: Yes, Okay, good?
Speaker 2: And on Comedy Central Late Show at midnight, Trigger warning
Speaker 2: for Chris Hardwick jump scare.
Speaker 11: Thanks Chris. It was a real thrill to see ken
Speaker 11: Bone facts trending on Twitter on Monday night. I loved
Speaker 11: every one of them, but I can't pick my favorite
Speaker 11: because I'm undecided, So I'm going to read a few
Speaker 11: of the best mines.
Speaker 2: Sure, it's basically the same three things over and over,
Speaker 2: but it's not like the other news turn of the
Speaker 2: debate left anything remotely fun to talk about. In the
Speaker 2: week after Trump's obfuscation about the Access Hollywood tape, a
Speaker 2: number of women decided to come forward with their own
Speaker 2: allegations about how Trump had treated them to give further
Speaker 2: credence that the two thousand and five tape was no joke.
Speaker 2: And while the Stormy Daniel's allegation wouldn't become public, then
Speaker 2: many women's stories did. I could find fourteen accounts of
Speaker 2: women coming forward with allegations of harassment and assault from
Speaker 2: the past that were reported in the week after the
Speaker 2: October ninth debate. It was nuts, but at first ken
Speaker 2: Bone was something everyone could agree on. He was profiled
Speaker 2: just about everywhere that first week.
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, The New.
Speaker 2: York Times, Fox, the Washington Post, you name it. They
Speaker 2: wrote about him in those first few days, and most
Speaker 2: of the pieces have a similar tilt that Ken Bone
Speaker 2: was a breath of fresh air, the working class everyman personified.
Speaker 1: He was good on.
Speaker 2: Camera, he didn't seem to be hawking anything, and bonus,
Speaker 2: he was using many of his appearances to raise money
Speaker 2: for a local shelter for the unhoused, the Saint Patrick
Speaker 2: Center in Saint Louis. But we know this story right,
Speaker 2: Something was going to give. The sudden increased public scrutiny
Speaker 2: led to a phenomenon we've talked about on this show before,
Speaker 2: the inevitable milkshake duck moment. Fox's Asia Romana described the
Speaker 2: pattern in twenty twenty.
Speaker 16: One as a mild mannered commoner unexpectedly gains attention and
Speaker 16: briefly captures the heart of the nation, or at a minimum,
Speaker 16: the bored attention of Twitter and the nation's meme makers,
Speaker 16: only for a horrifying revelation about them to surface before
Speaker 16: fifteen minutes of Internet fame have even elapsed.
Speaker 2: And less than a week later, Ken's milkshake duck moment came.
Speaker 2: He was asked to host a Reddit ama Ask Me
Speaker 2: Anything to adoring commenters. Introducing himself from his actual Reddit
Speaker 2: account username Stan Gibson eighteen.
Speaker 16: He writes, Hello Reddit, I'm just a normal guy who
Speaker 16: spends his free time with his hot wife and cat
Speaker 16: in Saint Louis. I didn't see any of this coming.
Speaker 16: It's been a crazy week.
Speaker 2: The replies match the fawning nature of how ken was
Speaker 2: talked about in those early days. A kid commented that
Speaker 2: he wrote an essay about him called ken Bone Our
Speaker 2: Deliverance from Evil, and there were questions about his opinions
Speaker 2: on certain political policies and how he met his hot wife.
Speaker 2: But some people clicked on the username Dan Gibson eighteen
Speaker 2: and found some pretty sketchy Reddit user behavior. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to rehash it all here. Ken Bone has addressed
Speaker 2: it publicly numerous times and in our interview, But the
Speaker 2: comments people pulled to disseminate on social media ranged from
Speaker 2: as innocuous as ken commenting on not Safe.
Speaker 1: For work pictures who Cares.
Speaker 2: Too genuinely offensive comments about Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes, and
Speaker 2: the murder of Trayvon Martin. This last one is worth
Speaker 2: honing in on. In particular, Ken.
Speaker 16: Wrote it doesn't have to be a one or the
Speaker 16: other view here. From what I read about the case,
Speaker 16: the shooting of Trayvon Martin was justified. But from what
Speaker 16: I've learned of Zimmerman through statements, interviews, and behavior, he's
Speaker 16: a big old shitbird, bad guy legally kills kid in
Speaker 16: self defense. Sucks for everybody, including us due to the
Speaker 16: media fuckery.
Speaker 2: This is the statement that has brought up the most,
Speaker 2: and there are many interpretations of this comment that made
Speaker 2: it sound like ken Bone was completely okay with Zimmerman
Speaker 2: murdering Trayvon Martin in cold blood, which doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be the statement here, but the fact remains that it
Speaker 2: is deeply insensitive and beside the point. And once these
Speaker 2: comments were discovered, ken acknowledged and apologized for them in
Speaker 2: short order, and apologizing to Jennifer Lawrence directly and saying
Speaker 2: this about the Trayvon Martin comments on October fourteenth.
Speaker 3: There's some that I'm not super proud of, and a
Speaker 3: part of my message is being positive and holding our
Speaker 3: leaders to a higher level of discourse, so I need
Speaker 3: to hold myself accountable for that too. I like to
Speaker 3: feel like I've grown and evolved as a person in
Speaker 3: the time since then, if I could personally apologize to
Speaker 3: any of the people who are offended by what they read,
Speaker 3: then I absolutely would do that, and maybe I'll get
Speaker 3: that chance to this platform. But if you were offended
Speaker 3: by that and you listen, I take responsibility for that.
Speaker 2: And so less than a week after ken had become
Speaker 2: a public figure, he was persona non grata. Time This
Speaker 2: started some conversation around what this kind of Internet fame
Speaker 2: really meant and if it was productive to dig up
Speaker 2: whatever one could on someone who was a normal person
Speaker 2: just days before. What are we really getting out of
Speaker 2: headlines like the New York Posts ken Bone is actually
Speaker 2: kind of an awful guy, the New York Times.
Speaker 1: We may be leaving the Ken Bone zone.
Speaker 2: GQ's j Willis meditated on it in a piece at
Speaker 2: the time called the Internet came for Ken Bone and
Speaker 2: it will drag you too.
Speaker 16: Now you may be thinking, wait, I haven't copped to
Speaker 16: insurance fraud or publicly expressed my appreciation for pregnancy porn.
Speaker 16: But the Internet is an involuntary time capsule that preserves
Speaker 16: all forms of imprudence. If you were wearing Ken Bone's
Speaker 16: grass stained new balances, it would just be some other
Speaker 16: offensive element of your past displayed as proof of your fallibility.
Speaker 2: So this was written eight years ago, when the rhythms
Speaker 2: of random online fame were beginning to be policed and
Speaker 2: reported on by online users as much as, if not
Speaker 2: more so, than traditional media outlets. Like if Ken Bone
Speaker 2: came to prominence twenty years earlier, no one would know
Speaker 2: his feelings on police brutality or pregnancy porn. That's the
Speaker 2: development and how fame works now, and Ken certainly lost
Speaker 2: a lot of fans as a result. Nearly a decade on.
Speaker 2: The milkshake duck phenomenon does feel like an inevitability unless
Speaker 2: you've lived a completely moral, upright life online, which almost
Speaker 2: no one has. This isn't to excuse Ken's comments at all.
Speaker 2: He doesn't excuse them himself. But I think what defines
Speaker 2: the main character is how they managed to navigate these moments.
Speaker 2: Did they grow defensive and double down? Did they say nothing?
Speaker 2: Did they apologize? Do they really apologize? All of these
Speaker 2: are functionally pr questions, and when someone becomes famous overnight
Speaker 2: that they're supposed to be able to answer right away.
Speaker 2: So a few days after becoming notorious, Ken Bone had
Speaker 2: to do something. If he wanted to maintain his persona
Speaker 2: in any way, and he does. He apologizes for the
Speaker 2: comments and leaves them up on his Reddit page so
Speaker 2: as not to be seen as scrubbing his problematic online history,
Speaker 2: and he keeps going. We're going to talk about all
Speaker 2: of this in our interview as well. So at the time,
Speaker 2: if you were a Ken fan, all you could do
Speaker 2: is make your own judgment and see if he took
Speaker 2: the constructive criticism to heart and move past the unproductive
Speaker 2: element of dog piling, because there are elements to this
Speaker 2: process that are extremely unproductive, the fact that ken Bone's
Speaker 2: family was threatened, that his home was swatted, and he
Speaker 2: was made to feel generally unsafe. But even as all
Speaker 2: this is going on, Ken never hired a manager or
Speaker 2: a publicist or anything like that.
Speaker 1: All the appearances he made during.
Speaker 2: This intense month leading up to the election were done
Speaker 2: around his work schedule and facilitated by Ken And during
Speaker 2: this peak moment, even through the controversy, there was no
Speaker 2: shortage of interest.
Speaker 1: Of giving this guy attention.
Speaker 2: He tweeted out an ad for Uber which almost got
Speaker 2: him in trouble with the.
Speaker 1: FTC whoops, and of course Izod, the.
Speaker 2: Maker of the original Red Sweater got in touch and
Speaker 2: put Ken in an ad on October twenty first, called
Speaker 2: ten Bones, fifteenth Minute That's all but like worshipful and
Speaker 2: includes Ken's wife Heather.
Speaker 17: I'm about as pumped up as I can get, and
Speaker 17: it's just fun letting it carry me.
Speaker 3: So you just never give up hope.
Speaker 17: Why I'm there right on.
Speaker 2: To see other people who enjoy him as much as
Speaker 2: I do is real fun.
Speaker 17: It's really important that we don't give up on the
Speaker 17: political process. I really do expect at the end of
Speaker 17: the election that it winds down and when it's over,
Speaker 17: it's over, and I'm happy to have played my role.
Speaker 2: Someone tell passed Ken what happened. And even after the election,
Speaker 2: Ken continued to make appearances, one of which he used
Speaker 2: to reveal that he eventually did become a decided voter
Speaker 2: and went for Hillary. But the intensity of this first
Speaker 2: week was never matched again. His rise was steep and
Speaker 2: connected to a specific moment, and the fall was pretty
Speaker 2: steep too. And then the media cycle kept moving, and
Speaker 2: in October twenty sixteen, that was no joke back at
Speaker 2: the election ranch Hillary Clinton's real October surprise. The thing
Speaker 2: that was thought to be. The final wrecking ball to
Speaker 2: her campaign didn't come until the end of October, when
Speaker 2: FBI Director James Comy announced that her email server had
Speaker 2: put classified insensitive information at risk and that there would
Speaker 2: be an investigation. That investigation was concluded two days before
Speaker 2: the election and stated that no charges would be filed
Speaker 2: and weren't necessary, but the damage was already done. Clinton
Speaker 2: had been leading in national polls by as much as
Speaker 2: seven points before this announcement and plummeted after the investigation
Speaker 2: was announced. So as the US began to navigate what
Speaker 2: the fuck a Trump presidency was going to mean after
Speaker 2: he was declared the winner, ken Bone had to come
Speaker 2: to grips with what his viral fame was going to
Speaker 2: look like moving forward, and what he wanted to do
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: Like most main.
Speaker 2: Characters I talked to who had a life prior to
Speaker 2: their moment, ken Bone had no desire to quit his
Speaker 2: day job or move to Hollywood, but he did want
Speaker 2: to engage with this fame to the extent that he
Speaker 2: could manage it alongside his normal life. While he remained
Speaker 2: firmly in this debate moment for most people, here are
Speaker 2: some of the appearances he made in the years that followed.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen, an appearance on Bill Maher, I.
Speaker 16: Want to convince you that you should have voted for
Speaker 16: Hilary instead of Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Well I didn't. I'll tell you that much. I didn't
Speaker 3: vote for Godzilla. I didn't vote for Jill Stein either,
Speaker 3: not Godzilla and not Jill Stein.
Speaker 4: But are you going to reveal who you did vote
Speaker 4: for now?
Speaker 3: I'm waiting for my book deal to come through.
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 11: No, not at all.
Speaker 3: I promised before the election that I wouldn't say who
Speaker 3: I voted for because like it or not, we're obsessed
Speaker 3: with celebrities in this country, and even like an F
Speaker 3: list celebrity like me, people put stock in my opinion
Speaker 3: and it's not fair to the democratic process if I
Speaker 3: tell them what to believe. You're an informer. That is
Speaker 3: your job to inform people, educate them, entertain them. I'm
Speaker 3: a random due that works at the power plant. People
Speaker 3: don't need to be informed by me.
Speaker 4: Someone cooked here.
Speaker 2: Ken also made an appearance at Sea Pac in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: serving as a representative for a polling company called Victory
Speaker 2: Insights and an app called Donor Decks, which was a
Speaker 2: software that aimed to get normal people involved in politics.
Speaker 3: I and just running into these consultants or these committees
Speaker 3: can cost you as much as a family makes in
Speaker 3: a year fifty sixty eighty thousand dollars. Well, donor decks
Speaker 3: can get you in touch with potential donors for a
Speaker 3: couple hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of sounds like a scam. He was
Speaker 2: a paid spokesman and it's not around anymore. These appearances
Speaker 2: were both twenty seventeen, so you can see even though
Speaker 2: he ultimately votes Democrat, there is still a conservative tilt
Speaker 2: to what Ken is interacting with publicly. But even as
Speaker 2: he's doing so, it's clear that he's deeply unsatisfied with
Speaker 2: how Trump's presidency is going, so for a while, he
Speaker 2: still appears to be the independent voter he became famous
Speaker 2: for being. In general, his appearances and his opinions don't
Speaker 2: really seem to follow one political line or another, but
Speaker 2: that changed over time. As the years pass Ken continued
Speaker 2: to occasionally engage with the press while maintaining his normal life,
Speaker 2: and in doing so, he did a lot of the
Speaker 2: things we now associate with niche celebrity cameo account where
Speaker 2: you could order a custom video message for your friend
Speaker 2: from Ken Bone, a short lived podcast called The Ken
Speaker 2: Bone Show, and he also did paid talks around the country.
Speaker 2: But over the years, you can sort of track a
Speaker 2: shift in his politics just by scrolling up. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff he was posting in the back half
Speaker 2: of the twenty tens that I don't agree with at all,
Speaker 2: particularly around gun control. But the closer you get to
Speaker 2: the present, the more left Ken seems to go. He
Speaker 2: maintains his Internet presence and would occasionally speak out on
Speaker 2: political issues that meant something to him. The way COVID
Speaker 2: was catastrophically handled in the US had a demonstrative effect
Speaker 2: on Ken. He donated some of his cameo proceeds to
Speaker 2: COVID relief and was extremely critical of anti VAXX freaks
Speaker 2: who refused a social distance.
Speaker 1: He said he.
Speaker 2: Voted third party in twenty twenty and was unsatisfied with
Speaker 2: the two main candidates, and in the last two years
Speaker 2: he's advocated for better public education on a indigenous American history.
Speaker 2: He's been extremely critical of Israel, and he's called people
Speaker 2: encouraging student protests for Gaza to be shut down Boot Liquors,
Speaker 2: and he's advocated for healthcare for all.
Speaker 1: Ken's kind of based.
Speaker 2: Now you guys, and in Part two, releasing next Tuesday,
Speaker 2: we'll hear about this.
Speaker 1: Saga from the man himself.
Speaker 2: Part two with Kenneth Bone See you then, and before that,
Speaker 2: a moment of fun. One more Cursed George W. Bush
Speaker 2: Poll Bye.
Speaker 9: We got an issue in America. Too many good dots
Speaker 9: for getting out of business. Too many obgyns aren't able
Speaker 9: to practice their their love with women all across this country.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth minute as a production of Whole Zone Media and Iheartwordtaps.
Speaker 1: It is written, posted and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. He
Speaker 2: Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 2: from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog
Speaker 2: producer Anderson, my cats Flee and Casper, and my pet
Speaker 2: rock Bird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1: Bye