Speaker 1: This is assassination week. Oh God, my left arm, pet,
Speaker 1: it hurts so much. Land doesn't feel so good. Ronald
Speaker 1: Wilson Reagan. Six, six, six, six letters in any way, whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is it could happen here, a
Speaker 1: podcast about assassinating world leaders. Um, that's why it's called
Speaker 1: it could happen here, and today we're talking about a
Speaker 1: time where it did, when John Hinckley Jr shot Ronald
Speaker 1: Wilson Reagan. Um, with me today James Stout, Garrison Davis,
Speaker 1: Um and of course, of course, the ghost of Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 1: who was a regular contributor to our to our podcasts,
Speaker 1: along with the ghost of the Queen. And Yeah, now
Speaker 1: the ghost of the Queen has joined the team. Very excited. Um. So, obviously,
Speaker 1: John Hinckley shot Reagan. We're gonna get into a lot
Speaker 1: of detail about Mr Hinckley's life. This is something that
Speaker 1: is joked about a lot on the Internet, including by me. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's it's interesting because there's there's
Speaker 1: two strains of people who will like come out and
Speaker 1: tell you it's not cool to joke about John Hinckley
Speaker 1: JR shooting Ronald Reagan. And one of them is right.
Speaker 1: which are the people who are like, well, actually like
Speaker 1: it's pretty messed up story, and he like it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of messed up to to laugh about this family's tragedy,
Speaker 1: because it was a family's tragedy, and the other people
Speaker 1: are like, no, it's fucked up because he had the
Speaker 1: hots for Jodie foster and what was actually going on
Speaker 1: there was a lot more complicated um than that. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about all of the things that happened
Speaker 1: in this shooting, which was messed up and which I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't joke about on twitter, Um, because it's actually
Speaker 1: really bleak Um, and in order to understand both why
Speaker 1: it's sad on a personal level and why it's a
Speaker 1: tragedy for the entire country. Um, yeah, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: start by talking about John Warnock Hinckley Jr, who was
Speaker 1: born on May nine and more Oklahoma, which is about
Speaker 1: two and a half hours from where I grew up
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Unlike me, John's Dad, who was John Warnock
Speaker 1: Kinkley SR, was the chairman and president of Vanderbilt Energy.
Speaker 1: So they had lots of money, a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of walking around money and vanderbilt money. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like most people who have good money, they don't stay
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma. Um, they have any owls and the vanderbilt
Speaker 1: is big must. I'm certain they did add owls to
Speaker 1: this story. As you picture John's childhood. Um, so their
Speaker 1: richest hell and they get the funk out of Oklahoma
Speaker 1: and moved to Dallas Texas when John was four, which
Speaker 1: is so far weirdly like my life in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, although I was a bit older. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: that's why I didn't get the madness. So that's not why. Normally,
Speaker 1: getting kids away from Oklahoma really really fix his stuff.
Speaker 1: But John was taken. John was taken to the only
Speaker 1: place more toxic than small town Oklahoma, a wealthy neighborhood
Speaker 1: in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. He attended highland park
Speaker 1: high school. This school where I would later lose several
Speaker 1: speech and debate competitions and when one or two as well. Um,
Speaker 1: it's where, if you if you're in the DFW area,
Speaker 1: the rich kids who don't have good drugs go to
Speaker 1: highland park, but which rich kids with good drugs go
Speaker 1: to Jesuit because they're private school kids. But Highland Park
Speaker 1: is like the rich kids who are gonna like try
Speaker 1: to sell you a shitty ditch weed. Anyway, these are
Speaker 1: this is important Dallas Fort Worth context, and I assume
Speaker 1: it was the same when he was a child. Um,
Speaker 1: as far as I've ever found any information, he was
Speaker 1: a pretty your normal young man for that time and place. UH,
Speaker 1: there's no one really seems to notice anything particularly different
Speaker 1: about him. Um, he does reasonably well in school. Uh,
Speaker 1: later in life he's going to express some racist thoughts
Speaker 1: in his diary and in other writings prior to the shooting.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really seem to have ever been a motivating
Speaker 1: factor in his life and to the extent that he
Speaker 1: had regressive beliefs, they seem to have been due to
Speaker 1: the fact that he grew up in a sheltered, rich,
Speaker 1: all white environment. Um, and that's not great for you. Um, shocked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shocked one in Texas no less one right up in
Speaker 1: the new republic describes his childhood this way. Perhaps it
Speaker 1: is fear of what lies outside that makes the interior
Speaker 1: of the family so rigid and subdued, like life in
Speaker 1: a well run bunker. The world of the hinkleys was
Speaker 1: the rootless middle class sun belt culture that nurtures pro
Speaker 1: family values, Christian fundamentalism and occasional mass murderers. Families move frequently,
Speaker 1: but without compromising their parochialism. Everywhere people are White, Christian Republican.
Speaker 1: Joanne explains John's egregious prejudices by saying he had never
Speaker 1: been around people of other races. Somewhere outside there are
Speaker 1: malign elements, minority groups, rock musicians, big government and the
Speaker 1: cynical Gosmus cosmopolites who dominate the media. Mothers in this
Speaker 1: culture do not lavish attention on their children, but on
Speaker 1: their furniture. Now that is a coastal liberal elite like
Speaker 1: fucking paragraph. Trying to describe like people who grow up
Speaker 1: in this situation as someone else who grew up in
Speaker 1: a similar area. I think most of that is pretty
Speaker 1: silly and, more to the point, it doesn't get to
Speaker 1: why John does this. We're getting to why John does this.
Speaker 1: It's not because he grew up sheltered and a little racist. Um.
Speaker 1: That is not why he shoots the president. Um. There is, however,
Speaker 1: a bit of that that that does strike me as accurate. As, again,
Speaker 1: a kid who grew up near here a couple of
Speaker 1: decades later, which is the description of his childhood as
Speaker 1: life and a well run bunker, which is kind of
Speaker 1: how it feels to live in these wealthy enclaves in
Speaker 1: the Dallas Fort Worth area. I grew up in plain Oh,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, a couple of steps down the
Speaker 1: economic rung from Highland Park, but not all that far.
Speaker 1: and Um yeah, that's that's not a bad description of it.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't generally lead to kids shooting the president.
Speaker 1: More often it leads to them shooting up heroin and
Speaker 1: then dying of heroin overdoses, which was the big problem
Speaker 1: in Plano when I was a kid. That said, it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that his parents are not, as far
Speaker 1: as I can find, like fifties stereotypes, like his dad's
Speaker 1: not this super masculine I who's like mentally abusive to
Speaker 1: his kid. His his MOM's not like checked out. Neither
Speaker 1: of them are against the idea that their son might
Speaker 1: have a mental illness and need help for it. In fact,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're kind of more open to the
Speaker 1: idea of reaching out for professional mental health for their
Speaker 1: kids than a lot of parents would have been at
Speaker 1: the same time period in nineteen seventy six, John Drops
Speaker 1: out of Texas tech to go to Hollywood and try
Speaker 1: to make it as a musician again. His parents are
Speaker 1: very supportive of him. One cannot say they didn't try
Speaker 1: to help their son live his dreams. When he gave
Speaker 1: up on music and he wanted to be a writer,
Speaker 1: they paid for him to take a class at Yale.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a second. It doesn't go well, UM,
Speaker 1: because he's yeah anyway. But John's not being honest with
Speaker 1: his ambitions, nor is he open with his parents about
Speaker 1: his mental health. We now know that John Developed Schizophrenia
Speaker 1: as a young man and had a series of psychotic breaks.
Speaker 1: When he would get money to do stuff like this
Speaker 1: Yale writing class, he would take it and buy guns.
Speaker 1: He did go to Yale, but it was mainly to
Speaker 1: Stalk Jodie Foster, who was going to ill at the
Speaker 1: same time. Um, now this is all occurring in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, which is the
Speaker 1: fucking Dark Ages for treatment of this particular condition and
Speaker 1: a lot of other conditions. There are not a lot
Speaker 1: of good options. Among other things, I just said, he's
Speaker 1: not open with his parents about the fact that his
Speaker 1: mental health is declining. I don't know how he really
Speaker 1: could have been I don't understand. I don't think it's likely.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not the case. This didn't happen to John,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's very likely for a young
Speaker 1: man in this time and place to be well equipped
Speaker 1: by his education or society to express what is going
Speaker 1: on in his head to his parents. Um, and it's,
Speaker 1: you know, to be fair to his parents, they're not
Speaker 1: equipped with a lot of like, you know, an ability
Speaker 1: to really help him out here, and they're doing the
Speaker 1: things you would want them to do. Again, they repeatedly
Speaker 1: are bringing in professionals to try to help. Um. None
Speaker 1: of it is particularly useful, but it's not for lack
Speaker 1: of trying. Um, like a lot of people who struggle
Speaker 1: with similar mental health issues, John Seeks refuge in fiction.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for everybody, the movie that he finds himself most
Speaker 1: drawn to is taxi driver, and I think most people
Speaker 1: are aware of this part of it. It's a bad choice.
Speaker 1: That's a really bad choice. Yes, if he had found
Speaker 1: maybe adventure time or something, it would have been a
Speaker 1: lot healthier, but instead taxi driver. If you haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: There's the main characters. His Kid, Travis bickle, played by
Speaker 1: a very young Robert de Hero. It is weird to
Speaker 1: watch him because we're also used to old man Bob
Speaker 1: Denro Um, who is thinking about assassinating like a presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: and then kind of through movie magic, rescues a child prostitute,
Speaker 1: played by Jodie Foster, from a pimp. Um, and Hinckley
Speaker 1: thinks the movie is kind of talking to him and
Speaker 1: providing him with like information about how he can fix
Speaker 1: his own life. He starts dressing like Travis bickle. He
Speaker 1: starts wearing like an army jacket and boots and drinking
Speaker 1: the way that bickle drank. He starts buying guns. He
Speaker 1: gets really into guns for you know. Um, he starts,
Speaker 1: you know, in letters that he's writing home to his parents.
Speaker 1: He starts talking about this relationship he has with a
Speaker 1: woman named Lynn, who isn't real but who sounds a
Speaker 1: lot like one of the women that Travis Beckel has
Speaker 1: an interest with in the movie. Um. And Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is kind of the start of his obsession with jodie foster.
Speaker 1: And there are people who will like say that he's
Speaker 1: a pedophile because she's thirteen. In the movie. That doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be the case when he is actually stalking
Speaker 1: her and most obsessed with her. She is eighteen and
Speaker 1: he is stalking her in real life and calling her
Speaker 1: on the phone and stuff, which is like bad and
Speaker 1: messed up. But he's not into her because she's young.
Speaker 1: In this movie. He's into her because he's he's kind
Speaker 1: of losing his mind and obsessing with her. Right. So,
Speaker 1: while this is all going on kind of in the
Speaker 1: late stages of this, his parents bringing a psychiatrist Um again,
Speaker 1: they're they're willing to fund and support him and seeking
Speaker 1: professional help. The doctor they wound up getting for him.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's a bad doctor for the time,
Speaker 1: but he's wrong as Hell. He kind of looks at
Speaker 1: the fact that John has been normal, quote unquote and
Speaker 1: quote unquote, in high school and like at the start
Speaker 1: of his college career, and so he looks at this
Speaker 1: kid who's like seems to be developmentally normal up to
Speaker 1: a certain point and then goes off the rails and says, well,
Speaker 1: it's because you were sheltered and coddled by your rich
Speaker 1: parents and you're just lazy, right. That's that's that's what
Speaker 1: this guy says. So a big part of his like
Speaker 1: advice to mom and dad is you gotta cut him off.
Speaker 1: You can't. Can't keep giving him stuff, can't keep giving
Speaker 1: him money, can't keep taking care of him. Um. So
Speaker 1: while this is happening and this guy is like making
Speaker 1: them make plans for John to be less reliant on
Speaker 1: his parents, John Hankley is getting way more into guns.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of target shooting. He also plays
Speaker 1: a lot of Russian roulette with himself alone in his basement,
Speaker 1: which is not not great. Um, in Christmas of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, he takes a very famous photo of himself
Speaker 1: holding a handgun to his temple. Now John is increasingly
Speaker 1: harassing jodie foster in this period. Now, what he's doing
Speaker 1: is not he's not just obsessing with her and it's
Speaker 1: one sided. He is reaching her on the phone. They
Speaker 1: talk a couple of times, yes, they do. She is
Speaker 1: always very terse in their calls. Always you can tell
Speaker 1: is kind of frightened, but is very controlled and careful.
Speaker 1: I would describe the way she handles this is very
Speaker 1: responsible and, like you can tell, she's talked with like people.
Speaker 1: I think like her manager or something and been like
Speaker 1: I have been advised, like I don't want you calling it.
Speaker 1: She's very tries to be very clear here. Um, and
Speaker 1: I think handles this as well as a person can
Speaker 1: possibly handle, you know, being stalked in this way. I
Speaker 1: believe he's able to get her number because, like, it's
Speaker 1: the eighties and people just have numbers in the phone book. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: she's kind of taking a break from Hollywood right now
Speaker 1: and is going to Yale. Um, his obsession with foster
Speaker 1: veers between these kind of like fantasies of like harming
Speaker 1: her or harming a guy that she's with, or harming
Speaker 1: himself and eventually harming the president of the United States.
Speaker 1: Now he is not want to shoot the president for
Speaker 1: political reasons. He has no kind of particular her anger
Speaker 1: at the president that he wants to work out with
Speaker 1: a gun. He wants number one to impress her and
Speaker 1: he wants everyone to know his name and know his
Speaker 1: name associated with jodie foster. Right, because, again, he's very ill. Um,
Speaker 1: he starts following Jimmy Carter around. He goes to like
Speaker 1: three different Jimmy Carter rallies in D C and in Ohio.
Speaker 1: There's video of him twenty feet away from Carter at
Speaker 1: one point. He probably has a gun on him. Um,
Speaker 1: like he gets really close to Carter again. One of
Speaker 1: the through lines here is that, like presidential security wasn't
Speaker 1: great a night. Yeah, it's not very good. Um, Carter.
Speaker 1: John Thinks about shooting Carter. He's probably there and equipped
Speaker 1: to do it, but he just can't get himself into
Speaker 1: the frame of mind to shoot Jimmy Carter, which is
Speaker 1: understandable because it is. It is Jimmy Carter right, like
Speaker 1: he is a hard Amanda want to shoot to death.
Speaker 1: So there's a moment where he like yeah, so he's
Speaker 1: he's kind of bouncing around. After this period where he
Speaker 1: like is he thinks about shooting Carter, but he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He is in communication with this Nazi ideologue and they
Speaker 1: almost have a meeting, but they don't. Um, that's all
Speaker 1: kind of obscure, kind of unclear. And then on October
Speaker 1: six nineteen eighty, he gets arrested at the Nashville airport
Speaker 1: with a briefcase full of handguns and a pair of handcuffs. Now,
Speaker 1: hoops hasn't been in this situation. The gun bag and oops, yeah,
Speaker 1: he says he's just trying to sell them and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: you still can't get on a plane with a bunch
Speaker 1: of guns, Johnny. This is yeah, this is pre night eleven.
Speaker 1: So he you have to assist. He's looking weird. He's
Speaker 1: like sweaty and in an army jacket and talking to it,
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, we've literally never searched a single
Speaker 1: person before in the entire life of this airport, but
Speaker 1: let's check this guy. What's this massively heavy brief case?
Speaker 1: There's a fun there's a dude just walking in with
Speaker 1: a Stinger and they're like no, no, let that guy on,
Speaker 1: but we gotta check John Ainkley Um. So he flies
Speaker 1: to Dallas, where he buys more handguns and some explosive
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber bullets. We will talk about that in
Speaker 1: a little bit, but they are explosive bullets, twenty two
Speaker 1: caliber bullets. There are bullets that are to explode on impact.
Speaker 1: Is he like reading soldier of Votune magazine at this point?
Speaker 1: Because this is nobody. He's like a gun culture. So
Speaker 1: I haven't we have to assume. I think his family's
Speaker 1: kind of casually conservative. He is kind of maybe as
Speaker 1: is embodied by the Nazi thing, probably dabbling in some
Speaker 1: areas again. I think that's that's certainly not good for him.
Speaker 1: It's also, I don't think politics. I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: real evidence that politics is a motivating factor. And what
Speaker 1: this guy is doing, Um, he does get explosive bullets.
Speaker 1: Probably helps that he has explosive bullets in terms of
Speaker 1: making this less dangerous. These are not good explosive bullets.
Speaker 1: They are meant to be fired out of a larger
Speaker 1: weapon than he fires them out of, but they are
Speaker 1: supposed to. Basically, the idea is this. These are twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber round, so the idea is that this little
Speaker 1: explosive charge in them makes them more like a thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So we're not talking about like military grade weaponry or
Speaker 1: anything here. Why is he doing? You may not know,
Speaker 1: of course, but like if he's a massive gun dog,
Speaker 1: he's not a massive no, gun culture is different than right.
Speaker 1: He's buying a bunch of handguns. He's shooting a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it would be. He's not particularly
Speaker 1: good or knowledgeable with right. Okay, yeah, yeah, but gun
Speaker 1: cultures very it's harder to get information about guns right.
Speaker 1: Maybe the day, he would have gotten a lot more
Speaker 1: into you like just flipping through magazines exactly. You can't
Speaker 1: look something up online. Yeah, yeah, he's twenty two, good
Speaker 1: for assassination, just exactly. And this is also like this
Speaker 1: is what he can afford. He gets kind of he's
Speaker 1: lost his better guns right their property of the state,
Speaker 1: so he winds up with this twenty two and he
Speaker 1: gets these explosive bullets to try to make it give
Speaker 1: more of a kick. Obviously, the thing that's going on
Speaker 1: in the background here is that Jimmy Carter and Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan having a presidential election which Reagan wins. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about kind of that a bit later,
Speaker 1: but that happens. Reagan is the president elect. Um, he
Speaker 1: flies home, Hinckley flies home. Things continue to deteriorate in
Speaker 1: his own life. He's continue to like travel around. John
Speaker 1: Lennon is assassinated and he kind of goes a little
Speaker 1: bit nuts over that because he loves John Lennon. Also
Speaker 1: might kind of think that he is John Lennon. So
Speaker 1: that does not help his mental state. He visits the
Speaker 1: the the what is it? The shrine to him in
Speaker 1: New York at one point and kind of. When he
Speaker 1: gets back in March of nine, his dad cuts him
Speaker 1: off basically like says, you know, you've got your here's
Speaker 1: your car, here's two hundred dollars. We can't take air
Speaker 1: of you anymore. John, and I think this is his
Speaker 1: dad basically trying to take that psychiatrist advice of like it.
Speaker 1: We need to have tough love. He has to be
Speaker 1: forced to kind of get his ship together. But John
Speaker 1: Hinckley is not really capable of getting his ship together
Speaker 1: because he is profoundly ill. So he uses that money
Speaker 1: to pay for hotel rooms in Denver where he sits
Speaker 1: alone watching television with a gun. Um. Not Great Treatment
Speaker 1: for schizophrenia. Reagan wins the election, uh, in what was
Speaker 1: a sweep electorally but fairly tight in terms of popular vote.
Speaker 1: He's got like fifty point five percent of the popular vote,
Speaker 1: something like that. It's pretty close. And soon after taking
Speaker 1: office he gets hammered on a bunch of stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: the economy is not great, he's this, he's he's back.
Speaker 1: He's like going for a bunch of far right policies
Speaker 1: to unwind the new deal, a lot of which are
Speaker 1: unpopular and some of which, he said he wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: do and debates with Carter. He's not. He doesn't have
Speaker 1: the kind of traditional grace period most presidents get where
Speaker 1: they're broadly popular. Right, Um, it's not looking great for
Speaker 1: kind of the midterms, is what I'm getting at Um.
Speaker 1: So Reagan's a is struggling to right the ship, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out like, how do we how do we
Speaker 1: fix all this? Reagan or Hinckley while this is going
Speaker 1: and gets convinced that like shooting the president is a
Speaker 1: pretty good idea. He doesn't have a lot of other options.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like running out of money and he's
Speaker 1: able to get a little bit more from his mom,
Speaker 1: but he's he's increasingly unhinged and alone and desperate. On
Speaker 1: March twenty nine, he checks into a hotel in D
Speaker 1: C where he finds in a local paper the president's schedule.
Speaker 1: He loads his twenty two caliber revolver, he writes a
Speaker 1: letter to Jodie foster and he travels to the Hilton
Speaker 1: where the president is set to deliver speech to union workers.
Speaker 1: Here is how John's letter to uh to her ends. Quote.
Speaker 1: I will admit to you that the reason I'm going
Speaker 1: ahead with his attempt now is because I just cannot
Speaker 1: wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do
Speaker 1: something now to make you understand in no uncertain terms
Speaker 1: that I am doing all of this for your sake.
Speaker 1: By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope
Speaker 1: to change your mind about me. This letter is being
Speaker 1: written only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jody,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you to please look into your heart and
Speaker 1: at least give me the chance, with this historical deed,
Speaker 1: to gain your respect and love. I love you forever,
Speaker 1: John Hankley. It's not great. Yeah, yeah, not a great
Speaker 1: letter to get, not a great letter to send. was
Speaker 1: was this actually like delivered in the mail? I believe so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this she ends up getting this. I mean,
Speaker 1: like she has to come to court and stuff when
Speaker 1: he goes on trial. It's like something he kind of
Speaker 1: demands and I think she does to just make it
Speaker 1: easier for things to move along. Um, obviously she. She
Speaker 1: does nothing wrong at any point in this process. She's
Speaker 1: just living her life and this guy is out of
Speaker 1: his out of out of his head and has easy
Speaker 1: access to guns, Um, which is a problem at PM
Speaker 1: on March nine. One John Hinckley JR opens fire at
Speaker 1: the president's entourage from just a few feet away. Reagan
Speaker 1: had been speaking to a bunch of union guys at
Speaker 1: this this thing at the Hilton Anyway, and they're kind
Speaker 1: of like walking out into towards the Lima when this happens.
Speaker 1: John's first shot hits James Brady, the press secretary and
Speaker 1: former PR man for Philish loafly in his head. Uh.
Speaker 1: He then wounds a police officer and a secret service agent.
Speaker 1: He actually does not hit probably doesn't. I don't. I
Speaker 1: think there's still a little bit of debate because it's
Speaker 1: like ballistics are kind of fucky. But he probably doesn't
Speaker 1: directly hit Reagan. Instead around fragments and bounces off the
Speaker 1: armored limousine, penetrating the president's lung. None of the explosive
Speaker 1: bullets explode because they're not the right bullets for the gun.
Speaker 1: The barrel is too short, Um, so it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: might even do less damage than it would have done,
Speaker 1: although maybe they fragment because they're these weird explosive bullets
Speaker 1: and that's why Reagan gets hurt. Anyway. Hard to say.
Speaker 1: Nobody really understands ballistics. That all that well. Today there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate over how all this stuff works.
Speaker 1: Reagan had been in office for sixty nine days and
Speaker 1: no real plan existed for what to do if the
Speaker 1: president gets shot and is alive but is unable to
Speaker 1: do the job of the president. Um, fucking George H
Speaker 1: W Bush is in the air a bunch of this
Speaker 1: time and like people can't reach him, Um, and they're
Speaker 1: like but he's they're saying you need to come back
Speaker 1: to watching now. Um. So kind of the people running
Speaker 1: the country for a few hours is Al Hague, the
Speaker 1: Secretary of state, and like a room full of guys
Speaker 1: in the cabinet who were all disagreeing about everything and
Speaker 1: none of whom are constitutionally supposed to be running the country. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a real big problem. Like the fucking like the
Speaker 1: press ask at one point, because hey goes out there triping,
Speaker 1: like hey, the president's in surgery, and they're like, well, who's?
Speaker 1: WHO's in charge, like with the nukes and stuff? WHO's
Speaker 1: running the country? And he's like we got a whole
Speaker 1: room for the guys. Don't worry, it's all fine, and
Speaker 1: they're like is that with the law? Sense because I
Speaker 1: don't think that's how it's supposed to go. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's not great. It's actually a real problem. And they
Speaker 1: do they make a bunch of changes after this to
Speaker 1: make sure that, like we never don't know who the
Speaker 1: president is when, if this kind of thing happens, at
Speaker 1: least Um. But on a political level this is fucking
Speaker 1: Yang Busters for the Reagan administration, and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from a write up an Lpie here. The assassination attempt
Speaker 1: silenced criticism of his administration at a critical point early
Speaker 1: in his term. Explains H W brand's, author of the
Speaker 1: biography Reagan the life in an email the good humor
Speaker 1: he exhibited during his recovery. He spent only twelve days
Speaker 1: in the hospital, convinced many skeptics, some of some of
Speaker 1: his followers believe that God had forgiven him to allow
Speaker 1: him to finish his work, and it is possible that
Speaker 1: Reagan thought so too. On the thirtieth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: assassination attempt, journalist Del Wynton Wilbur published raw hide down,
Speaker 1: a thorough investigation full of revelations of what happened that day.
Speaker 1: The book is written in the style of true crime
Speaker 1: and its title is a reference to the Secret Service
Speaker 1: Code name given to Reagan, raw hide. Joe Biden's code
Speaker 1: name is Celtic and jnald trump's was mogul. It reaches
Speaker 1: two important conclusions. Firstly, it argues that Reagan became the
Speaker 1: first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms because of
Speaker 1: the way he and his team handled the assassination attempt.
Speaker 1: And secondly, the White House did not reveal the seriousness
Speaker 1: of his injuries. He walks into the hospital and then
Speaker 1: stops breathing and collapses Um like. He walks in specifically
Speaker 1: because he wants to be seen walking in, and it's
Speaker 1: like they don't know that he's been shot at first.
Speaker 1: It's not like bleeding a bunch outside, he's bleeding internally.
Speaker 1: So it's this is like legitimately the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: It would have been hard to figure out what had
Speaker 1: happened to him, kind of because you can't immediately tell
Speaker 1: that he's bleeding. A lot of people have been shot
Speaker 1: and so everyone just kind of assumes he's having a
Speaker 1: heart attack, which is why they take him to the hospital.
Speaker 1: He thinks, actually, I think he believes that his secret
Speaker 1: service agent broke his ribs getting him into the Limo. Um,
Speaker 1: but if they've taken him to the White House first,
Speaker 1: he would have fucking died. He loses half of his
Speaker 1: blood in the surgery, like it's that's which is like
Speaker 1: bad if you lose half your blood. That's not like
Speaker 1: a great injury. Um, just it's his lung collapsing. Is
Speaker 1: that was happening, like yeah, they've got him on oxygen
Speaker 1: and stuff. He's like barely able to joke with the doctors,
Speaker 1: which he does, which is one of the things that
Speaker 1: like goes viral from this and make some so popular,
Speaker 1: because he's he's Yucking it up old Ronnie um his yeah,
Speaker 1: this is believed. There's a number of massive long term
Speaker 1: fucking consequences. One of them is that this is why
Speaker 1: h Nancy brings in Joan quickly the astrologer, like this
Speaker 1: is when she you can refer back to behind the
Speaker 1: bastards two part or on the Reagan astrologer. But this
Speaker 1: is why the Reagan astrologer becomes like they start they
Speaker 1: stopped having him do events. When the astrologer says it's
Speaker 1: a bad day for it and ship because, like Nancy,
Speaker 1: this kind of breaks her and it also kind of
Speaker 1: breaks Ronald he's not the same man after getting shot, which,
Speaker 1: to be fair, he is seventy when this happens, so
Speaker 1: getting shot in the lung at seventy, most people are
Speaker 1: gonna come back all the way. This is also probably
Speaker 1: doesn't help. The Alzheimer's May accelerate the timetable there. But
Speaker 1: on a political level this goes fucking great for the
Speaker 1: Republicans and it allows them to do a lot of
Speaker 1: really fucked up ship, and I'M gonna quote from CNN here. Today,
Speaker 1: Reagan is the only modern president who receives high marks
Speaker 1: from Republicans, Democrats and independence alike. A look at the
Speaker 1: polls can quantify the roots of this enduring goodwill. Despite
Speaker 1: elect an electoral landslide over Jimmy Carter with a forty
Speaker 1: four state win in nineteen eighty, Reagan won a narrow
Speaker 1: popular margin, a fifty point seven percent. Moreover, gallops, valuable
Speaker 1: presidential poll tracker, shows that Reagan's approvable ratings were significantly
Speaker 1: split along partisan lines after his nineteen eighty one inauguration,
Speaker 1: with seventy four percent Republican support and fifty three percent
Speaker 1: from independence, but thirty eight percent from Democrats. When Reagan
Speaker 1: came back to the capital on April to push for
Speaker 1: his economic recovery act, he was greeted by a hero's welcome.
Speaker 1: In a three minute Standing Ovation, he leveraged his political
Speaker 1: capital to help publish pass his agenda. Before the end
Speaker 1: of the summer, the Reagan tax cuts had passed the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives, led by Democratic speaker tip O'Neil, and
Speaker 1: the Republican controlled Senate, reducing the top tax rates from
Speaker 1: a confiscatory seventy and unleashing an entrepreneurial era. That's how
Speaker 1: CNN categorizes that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, again winstine states and the popular vote.
Speaker 1: It is very clear kind of how this happens and
Speaker 1: what this allows Reaga to do. It's fascinating because you
Speaker 1: have in Britain, like less than a year later. All right,
Speaker 1: we have Margaret Thatcher right like, who is similarly not
Speaker 1: doing very well, until she gets to go to war
Speaker 1: for two tiny little cold islands in the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: no one knew about before, and then they proceed to
Speaker 1: just ravage like the post World War Two social democracy consense.
Speaker 1: Just suck it up and fucking here we are now here.
Speaker 1: We are two and people are going to die of
Speaker 1: cold in Britain this winter. I will say in terms
Speaker 1: of just to be fair, one of the things people
Speaker 1: will say is a positive from this is that this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that helps push the arms
Speaker 1: treaty deals with the Soviet at union, because Reagan is
Speaker 1: like God saved me for a reason, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: to make nuclear war less likely. That's a bigger topic
Speaker 1: than today. It's a thing that he will claim and
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the fact that the Soviet Union and Reagan
Speaker 1: started talking about nukes during this period is not a
Speaker 1: bad thing. Um, always good to be talking about nukes, Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what I will say, if we're looking at
Speaker 1: kind of the only clearly good thing that came out
Speaker 1: of the shooting, it's the fact that the justice system
Speaker 1: actually worked in this one instance pretty much exactly how
Speaker 1: you would want it to. Hinckley was clearly not mentally
Speaker 1: competent to understand his actions, what he had done or
Speaker 1: to stand trial, and he was declared not guilty by
Speaker 1: reason of insanity. His father, tearful took blame for the
Speaker 1: shooting for cutting his son off from resources. The psychiatrist
Speaker 1: who had botched his diagnosis, admitted his mistakes on the
Speaker 1: stand and expressed regret. Hinckley was sent to a psychiatric
Speaker 1: facility where he received decades of treatment. The treatment seems
Speaker 1: to have really helped him. On December seventeen, two thousand three,
Speaker 1: a federal judge ruled that Hinkley was entitled to unsupervised
Speaker 1: visits with his parents. This is five years before his
Speaker 1: dad died, so they get time together again. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven he has a request for unsupervised visits as
Speaker 1: long as one month. This is denied, not because of
Speaker 1: any problems but because of issues the hospital had not
Speaker 1: taken to prepare for the transition. In July of two
Speaker 1: thousands sixteen, Judge Paul Friedman concluded that Hinckley did not
Speaker 1: pose a threat to himself or others and ordered him
Speaker 1: released Um. The conditions initially limited him to his residence,
Speaker 1: residence where he lived with his mother in parts of
Speaker 1: southern California. He was obviously forbidden from contact with pastor
Speaker 1: president presidents of the United States or any of their
Speaker 1: family members or graves. From banning. He was banned from
Speaker 1: contact with Jodie foster or other entertainers he was prohibited
Speaker 1: from watching violent movies, television or online media. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, a restriction confining him to his mother's house ended. Uh,
Speaker 1: he can now live anywhere he once with doctor's approval. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on September one, John Hinckley Jr, age sixty six,
Speaker 1: was approved for unconditional release by district judge Paul Friedman.
Speaker 1: Friedman noted that, quote, very few patients at St Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: Hospital have been studied more thoroughly than John Hinckley. And again,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much how it ought to work, right. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he shoots the president, but clearly because he's sick and
Speaker 1: you don't just punish sick people when they don't know
Speaker 1: what they've done. So he gets treated for decades until
Speaker 1: he's better. And now, yes, it's really good. Quite surprising.
Speaker 1: It is very surprising, and part of why it's surprising
Speaker 1: is that one of the other negative lingering effects of
Speaker 1: John Hinckley attempting to shoot the president is that a
Speaker 1: lot of changes are made in many states to make
Speaker 1: it much less likely that people benefit from the same
Speaker 1: understanding judicial system that John Hinckley Jr does. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote now from a write up from famous trials
Speaker 1: DOT COM, which has a pretty good, pretty good bit
Speaker 1: on just kind of everything that happened here. A fair,
Speaker 1: Pretty Fair summary, I think. Within a month of the
Speaker 1: Hinckley verdict, the House and Senate we're holding hearings on
Speaker 1: the insanity defense. A measure proposed by Senator Arlen Specter
Speaker 1: shifted the burden of proof of insanity to the defense.
Speaker 1: President Reagan expressed his support for the measure with the
Speaker 1: comment if you start thinking about even a lot of
Speaker 1: your friends, you would have to say, Gee, if I
Speaker 1: had to prove they were saying, I would have a
Speaker 1: hard job. All Right, tells us more about you that.
Speaker 1: Maybe that says a lot about your administration, who are,
Speaker 1: by the way, at this point, deep in like Iran, Contra, Shit,
Speaker 1: selling cocaine and in anyway. We were talking about all
Speaker 1: of this on an upcoming episode of bastards, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all monsters. Joining con Congress and shifting the burden
Speaker 1: to proof were a number of states. Within three years
Speaker 1: after the Hinckley verdict, two thirds of the states placed
Speaker 1: the burden on the defense to prove insanity, while eight
Speaker 1: states adopted a separate verdict of guilty but mentally ill.
Speaker 1: In one state, Utah, abolished the defense altogether, always delivering.
Speaker 1: So the system works really well for John Hinckley Jr.
Speaker 1: Um Ethically, I think the Justice Department of the United
Speaker 1: States this is maybe one of it. Probably in history
Speaker 1: you will not find many cases of a guy shooting
Speaker 1: an active world leader and being treated ethically by the
Speaker 1: justice system like he's handled very reasonably, I think. Um,
Speaker 1: and never again, never and again will that happen for anybody,
Speaker 1: even if they don't shoot the president. So Um, obviously
Speaker 1: I wish John Hinckley jr well. I I hope his
Speaker 1: musical career goes fine. Um, I fuck Ronald Reagan. Um,
Speaker 1: hate him and UH yeah, it's probably made the world
Speaker 1: a lot worse that John Hinckley Jr tried to shoot
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, because it empowered Ronald Reagan. One of the
Speaker 1: lessons here, if we're talking about assassinations, is that, um,
Speaker 1: it's a real wild cards trying to assassinate a president
Speaker 1: or any other politician and as a general rule, people
Speaker 1: are kind of programmed to think that somebody's cool if
Speaker 1: they get shot and don't die, like it's one of
Speaker 1: the cooler things that like look it just objectively. It's
Speaker 1: what do you do if you want to show John
Speaker 1: Mcclain as hard as hell, even get like hit in
Speaker 1: the arm or something and just like work through it? Right,
Speaker 1: like what do people people talk about like Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: when he was shot and how bad it was that
Speaker 1: he gave it bad asset was that he gave a speech,
Speaker 1: or how cool it is that fucking Andrew Jackson, who
Speaker 1: they don't say any of these things about, is JFK
Speaker 1: that's right. Is Not cool, not col not over the
Speaker 1: roof of a church. Yeah, lame as hell, Um, but,
Speaker 1: like you know, this is the look. If, if you
Speaker 1: want John F Kennedy to stop being the president and
Speaker 1: you can successfully kill him, you will get what you want.
Speaker 1: He's no longer the president. Um, if you were to
Speaker 1: have a political motivation, and again, Hinkley doesn't. Hinkley, it's
Speaker 1: not thinking about the top marginal acts right when he
Speaker 1: does this. Um. But if you if that had been
Speaker 1: his goal, this is the opposite of that, right, because
Speaker 1: it just makes Reagan look cool and helps him, makes
Speaker 1: everybody feel like an asshole for fighting him for a while. So,
Speaker 1: like he gets a bunch of ship through and also
Speaker 1: a bunch of laws get worse for mentally ill people
Speaker 1: and uh in. On the whole, bad, bad, bad assassination. Zero, zero. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to say, based on based on the evidence
Speaker 1: we have here, shooting Ronald Reagan not a good idea.
Speaker 1: They didn't do it. Now let the whole team down
Speaker 1: and we should just plug his album. It's out on
Speaker 1: as Pesto. We should plug his out because, again, he's
Speaker 1: not responsible for this. Yeah, you know, I think he's
Speaker 1: if he's happy speaking songs, I'm happy for him. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I wish you the best of luck, John. You can
Speaker 1: buy his t shirts. He's got t shirts that he's
Speaker 1: trying to move, which I don't know. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's bad to encourage his music career, like seriously, like
Speaker 1: we're all doing it with a little bit of a smile.
Speaker 1: But what's the harm? If John Hickley Jr thinks that
Speaker 1: people like his music, that doesn't hurt anybody. And maybe
Speaker 1: if people can see that, like if you treat people
Speaker 1: with mental illnesses like people who are ill, not sucking
Speaker 1: terrible people, then they can get to a place where
Speaker 1: they can sing songs on Youtube. And yes, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's an example again of the only time it worked
Speaker 1: the way it's. It's but it did work out pretty
Speaker 1: well in this case. Yeah, UM, so I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: take whatever lessons you want to out of this. Many,
Speaker 1: many possible things can be a lot, a lot of
Speaker 1: different lessons we can take out of this. Don't Hire
Speaker 1: Our Hague, but I feel like that's that's a generally
Speaker 1: good lesson. Yeah, there's a Phoenix Punch Bang called Jody
Speaker 1: Foster's army, I've just read as well. Who makes songs
Speaker 1: about him. Great by their records too. Fine. Yes, no
Speaker 1: strong opinions on that either way. Anyone else got anything
Speaker 1: to say about John Hinckley JR or the assassination attempt
Speaker 1: on Ronnie Raw Hide Reagan? Also, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: I R a a lot this week. Probably not for
Speaker 1: nothing that Joe Biden's code name is Celtic. M MMMM,
Speaker 1: and the Queen Dies now makes you think you're telling
Speaker 1: me it's a coincidence. I still suspects trust personally. I
Speaker 1: think that maybe Joe Biden shook hands with Liz trust and,
Speaker 1: like like, transferred a nerve poison onto her hand and
Speaker 1: then she touched the Queen, definitely possible. She wanted Joe
Speaker 1: Sipping againness on the plane back, knowing that he's done
Speaker 1: his job and his Batta clava and he speakably one anyway.
Speaker 1: Hopefully nobody who has stuff going on listens to that
Speaker 1: and takes the wrong message out of it. Yeah, kind
Speaker 1: to one another anyway. We're done. Okay, it could happen
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Speaker 1: for listening.