WEBVTT - Shooter Without A Cause 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:13.360 Cool Zone Media. Hello everyone, Molly Konger here. You've probably 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.680 noticed this episode showed up on your feed on an 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:19.360 unusual day. If you're a diehard listener of another show 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:21.959 on the network, it could happen here. You may have 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:26.360 also noticed that this isn't exactly a brand new episode. 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:29.080 But I'm not here this week. I'm not thinking about 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.880 were Little Guys at all right now. I'm on my honeymoon. 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:35.600 The show feed will run old episodes this week and 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:38.600 next week, so there will be something on your feed 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:41.360 on the usual day, but I wanted to drop in 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.920 a little something extra this week too. This episode is 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.640 one that originally aired last summer on It could Happen here, 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:49.720 so some of you may have heard it already, and 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:51.680 there are a few references to the fact that it's 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.960 August of twenty twenty four. I didn't change those lines, 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.000 but I have slightly edited and re recorded the episode 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.160 so my talented audio engineer Rory could give this the 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:06.200 full weird little guy's audio feel. So if you missed 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.600 it last summer, I hope you'll enjoy this story about 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:13.920 the very weird little guy who shot a segregationist Because 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:26.120 it turned out shooting Richard Nixon was too hard. Remember 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:30.080 that time Donald Trump got shot? I kind of don't. 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:34.160 It feels like it was one hundred years ago or 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.960 in a dream. I barely remember who I was during 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.880 those tense few days where it seemed possible Trump would 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.839 ride that momentum to victory, imagining posters of that photo 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.720 of Trump with blood dripping down his face, fist raised. 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:50.880 And then it kind of didn't matter at all anymore. 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.639 We all forgot. The shooter wasn't a Biden sleeper agent 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.040 sent to take down the opposition. He was just some 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.320 kid with a rifle and the kind of uniquely American 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:06.360 desire to cause chaos with it. And that was really 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.600 hard for a lot of people to swallow. What do 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.600 you mean it doesn't seem like he was politically motivated. 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.400 He shot the former president. He shot him while he 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.200 was on stage at a rally for his campaign to 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:25.520 retake the presidency. Everything about the situation was political. How 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.320 could the shooter have had any other motivation? But he 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:32.320 wouldn't be the first guy to take a shot at 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.840 a president or a presidential candidate for what seems like 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.280 no reason at all. Far from it, As it turns out, 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:45.200 while I was doing the research for the first episode 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:48.760 of Wee Little Guys, I got lost on some side quests. 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.800 That's always happening to me. But as I breathed past 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.560 a quick mention of George Wallace, the four term governor 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.680 of Alabama who is perhaps best remembered for his rallying 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:03.720 cry of segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. You know, 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.760 the one I remembered that he had gotten shot while 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:11.720 he was running for president too. During the primary in 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.160 nineteen seventy two, George Wallace was paralyzed after surviving an 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.960 attempted assassination on the campaign trail. Surely, whoever shot a 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:22.600 man like George Wallace did it out of a deep 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:28.680 ideological commitment to something right. Maybe it was a civil 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:32.360 rights activist who opposed Wallace's views on race, or a 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:35.680 McGovern voter concerned about Wallace's attempt to gain the Democratic 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:38.640 Party nomination after he'd won five states as a third 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.200 party candidate in nineteen sixty eight. Or maybe it was 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:44.720 a diehard Nixon supporter who saw Wallace as a spoiler, 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.920 siphoning conservative votes away from Nixon. But that's not what happened. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.560 When Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace four times in the 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:57.520 chest and stomach on May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. It 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.160 had nothing at all to do with Wallace's policy positions, 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.920 or honestly, even really anything to do with George Wallace. 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.160 Rehmer had been planning for months to assassinate Richard Nixon, 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:16.120 but it turned out that was too hard. He just 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:21.040 wanted to shoot somebody important. I hesitate to draw too 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.680 many comparisons to the Trump shooter because there's a lot 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.000 we still don't know and may never know. But it 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.480 has come out that Thomas Crooks was equally interested in 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:32.520 shooting Joe Biden. Trump just happened to have had a 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.600 campaign rally close to his home in Pennsylvania with weak 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.360 perimeter security. Crooks had also looked into how to get 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.560 close to FBI Director Christopher Ray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:49.239 and inexplicably Kate Middleton. Yes, that Kate Middleton, the Princess 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:53.480 of Wales. If Biden had been campaigning in western Pennsylvania, 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.200 or if Richard Nixon's security had been less vigilant, Crooks 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.760 may have shot Biden and Remer may have killed Nixon. 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:03.880 It doesn't seem like it really mattered to either of 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.080 them who they shot, as long as they shot a 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:12.640 guy running for president. One of the funny things about 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:17.039 history is realizing we've always been what we are now. 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.599 There's truly nothing new under the sun. Within hours of 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.560 the attempt on George Wallace's life, before there was any 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.440 clear information at all, Nixon was demanding that the White 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.039 House Deputy Director of Communications, Kenneth Clawson, put out a 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.800 statement that the shooter was a supporter of George McGovern, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.919 the front runner and the Democratic primary Nixon would go 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.760 on to defeat McGovern later that year. Just say we've 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:47.599 got unmistakable evidence, Dixon said, Of course, they didn't have 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.520 any evidence of any kind, and when they did get 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:52.960 that evidence, it certainly didn't show the shooter working on 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:56.040 the McGovern campaign. But that was the rumor Nixon hoped 0:05:56.040 --> 0:06:02.440 to spread in those early hours. Rumors ball and put 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.920 it on the right and right away you can get there. 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:14.000 You put it to must get out before they fit 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:19.960 them on the right way. It's a bit fuzzy, but 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.000 you can hear Nixon saying that they need to act 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:26.160 quickly to pin this on the left. Rumors are going 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.840 to spread, and they want theirs to spread first and fastest. 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:36.800 It doesn't matter what's true, It matters what people believe. Unfortunately, 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:39.680 we don't have thousands of hours of secret tape recordings 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.760 inside the offices of today's Republicans, but we did see 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.520 something similar in the immediate aftermath of the Trump shooting. 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.719 He's a Biden voter, he's a Democrat, he's a radical leftist, 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.800 he's Antifa. We can already tell. We just know it's obvious. 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.480 We have proof. The fact that there was no proof 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.960 of anything on day one, it doesn't matter. It matters 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.719 even less that no proof ever materialized. You just have 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:08.240 to get the room or out first. You have to 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.560 make an impression while the cement is wet and sometime 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.880 little stick. One thing that is not on the Nixon tapes, though, 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.200 is a conversation that allegedly occurred that afternoon in May 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.400 of nineteen seventy two that was reported by Seymour Hirsch 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:28.240 twenty years later in nineteen ninety two. Despite a Supreme 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:30.400 Court ruling in the seventies the tapes belonged to the 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.120 National Archives, the full volume of the Nixon tapes were 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:38.800 not made available to the public until two thousand and seven. Now, 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.800 whatever you think of his later career, Seymour Hirsh wasn't 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.120 a making stuff up kind of guy back then, So 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.280 I don't think he's fabricating any part of this story. 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.800 He's still alive and has a sub stack at eighty 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:53.360 seven years old, so I don't want any beef with Seymour. 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.800 He said a decade's long career as an investigative journalist 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.080 and a Pulitzer for exposing the cover up of the 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.320 Malai massacre. So I don't think he's patting the truth here. 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.200 But in his nineteen ninety two New Yorker piece Nixon's 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.680 last cover up, the Tapes he wants the Archives to suppress, 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.920 Hirsch wrote that the unreleased tapes from the afternoon of 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:19.040 the Wallace shooting contained recordings of Nixon directing I Howard Hunt, 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.680 the retired CIA officer who head at Nixon's White House, 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:26.960 plumbers to break into Arthur Bremer's apartment before the FBI 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:45.400 could search it and plant McGovern campaign literature. Hunt's own 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:50.040 autobiography admits only that at Nixon's direction, Nixon advisor Charles 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:53.760 Coulson did ask Hunt to quote take a look around 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:58.120 Bremer's apartment. Given that this is all taking place just 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.480 a month before Hunt did in fact play a key 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:05.520 role in the Watergate break in, this isn't exactly unbelievable. 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.240 I can absolutely believe that Richard Nixon asked E. Howard 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:12.640 Hunt to break into a building for some nefarious purpose, 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:17.440 because we know that happened at least once. And one 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.240 thing the varying accounts do seem to agree on is 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.480 that Hunt was unable to complete the assignment because the 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.480 FBI had already sealed off Bremmer's apartment in Milwaukee before 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:31.040 he got there. Hirsh's article in nineteen ninety two claims 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.680 that the tapes contain recordings of Coulson breaking the news 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.040 to Nixon that Hunt had arrived too late and the 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.280 apartment was already under police guard, and that the recording 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.200 captures Nixon berating Coulson for not doing more to slow 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:47.400 down the FBI. Again, this is all very believable if 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.240 you have even a passing knowledge of Richard Nixon, and 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.040 Colson himself was the one who related this account to 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:58.880 Seymour Hirsh in nineteen ninety two. The problem is we 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.800 have something now that Seymour Hirsch didn't have in nineteen 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:06.600 ninety two, and that's those tapes. Fifteen years after Hirsch's 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.559 article was published, researchers scoured the newly released recordings for 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.760 proof of this version of events, and it isn't there. 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.560 It's entirely possible that Coulson was recalling conversations that did 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.160 occur but outside the presence of the tape machine, or 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.360 maybe he's misremembering how much of this was actually spoken 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:32.360 aloud and what was simply understood. It's not out of 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.160 the realm of possibility that Coulson is recalling something Nixon 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:40.319 definitely wanted. It's just not on the tapes. Absence of 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:43.360 proof isn't proof of absence. But we do have a 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.480 pretty complete record of Nixon's conversations on the afternoon of 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:51.560 May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. There are famously eighteen missing 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.600 minutes in those tapes, but those are from a different 0:10:54.600 --> 0:11:00.360 afternoon in nineteen seventy two. On May fifteenth, though, Nixon 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:02.679 had just gotten out of a budget meeting around four pm, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.600 shortly after the shooting, and that's when he first got 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.040 the news. His first phone call was to his own wife, 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.760 Pat and then he called George Wallace's wife, Cornelia. He 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.400 then asked Secretary of the Treasury John Connolly to call 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:20.839 Ted Kennedy to offer him full Secret Service protection. And 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.800 presumably this is because he believed Ted Kennedy would be 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:27.440 McGovern's vice presidential pick. But I guess if people are 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.200 getting assassinated, you need to account for all your Kennedy's. 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.240 It's actually kind of wild to dig into those tapes 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:36.800 and see where Everwend's heads were on that afternoon in 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.560 the Oval office. A recording from around seven pm, so 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:44.280 three hours after the shooting, captures speculation that the shooting 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.200 may have been a false flag by Wallace's own people, 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.200 but the idea was quickly dismissed. He wouldn't have had 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:53.560 his own people shoot him in the stomach. They would 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:55.960 have gone for something less likely to end up killing him, 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.520 like shooting him in the foot, which is a conversation 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.319 we all heard immediately after the Trump shooting. Isn't it right? 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:06.200 Maybe this is a stunt, but why would he have 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.040 them shoot at his head? That's so risky. And this 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.319 recording to captures top Nix and aids hoping that whoever 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.480 did this was a left wing nut and not a 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:22.120 right wing nut. It could be one of his own 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.000 people too. They wouldn't shoot that man, and they would 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.960 have shot him in the foot or something. I haven't 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:31.640 it wouldn't be It is not one of those other 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.760 people shoot him in the stot did to kill him? Oh, 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:37.679 I think the guy. The guy has to be a 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:39.640 nut of some kind. I just don't be the left 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:45.319 wing nut, not a right wing So Nixon tried to 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.160 put a thumb on the scale after the fact, but 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.440 the exact nature of his meddling will forever be up 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:56.199 for debate, and the Nixon tapes aren't the only unique 0:12:56.280 --> 0:13:00.120 primary source for what went down that day. In the 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.160 early months of nineteen seventy two, as Arthur Bremmer prepared 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.319 to shoot Nixon, gave up on shooting Nixon and ultimately 0:13:06.360 --> 0:13:11.000 shot George Wallace, he kept a diary, and in nineteen 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:16.760 seventy three, Harper's Magazine Press published that diary. I couldn't 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.400 find a physical copy of that original bound book for 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.200 less than a small fortune, but I did find an 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.960 original scan of Bremer's diary that was produced in court 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:30.520 as evidence. The diary is a strange and fascinating document. 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.800 Only the latter half was published. He'd thrown away the 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.360 first hundred and forty eight pages, a fact he notes 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:39.160 on the first page of the version that we do have. 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.840 In nineteen eighty a construction worker named Sherman Griffin found 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.160 the first one hundred and forty eight pages wrapped in 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.280 plastic inside of a backpack under the twenty seventh Street 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:53.760 Viaduct in Milwaukee from prison. Arthur Bremmer actually tried to 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.000 sue Griffin for ownership of the document, saying it would 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.920 only be used to embarrass him, but in nineteen eighty 0:13:59.920 --> 0:14:02.960 one a court ruled that Griffin could keep it. Find 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.960 your skeepers. But the portion that we do have, that 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.280 latter half of the diary is a lot of things. 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:16.000 It's full of spelling errors and disorganized thinking, and sexual 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:20.080 fantasy and mundane rambling stream of consciousness of a guy 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.640 going about his day to day life as he tries 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.040 to figure out how to assassinate the president. A few 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.280 months after it was published, The New York Review published 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.640 an essay by A. Gourvadal speculating that Brehmer hadn't written 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.920 the diary at all. As a literary critic, it was 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.080 Vidal's professional opinion that Brehmer could not have written such 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.560 a document, though it was riddled with spelling errors. Vidal 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.600 writes that they come and go, almost as though the 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:49.160 writer is remembering, as he writes that he's supposed to 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:51.800 be a twenty one year old bus boy of mediocre intelligence. 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.680 He also doubts Brehmer was well read enough to make 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.840 references to Soljhanitson's Day in the Life of von Denisovitch 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.480 or quip A he crossed the Great Lakes, call me Ishmael. 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:10.280 Both Denisovich and Ishmael are misspelled, but that could be intentional, right, No, 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.760 Gore Vidal believes, or perhaps would like you to think 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.400 he believes. You know, it's hard to say that the 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:21.600 diary was falsified in its entirety by E. Howard Hunt 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:26.800 Nixon Spook. Hunt was a prolific writer, giving Thedal a 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.080 large volume of material for comparison, and he claims there 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:34.880 are similarities in the writing styles. Again, just as Hirsch's 0:15:34.880 --> 0:15:37.240 claims about the Secret Tapes in nineteen ninety two were 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.680 called into question when we got the tapes in two 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:44.040 thousand and seven, Vidal's essay was published in nineteen seventy three, 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.240 seven years before the first half of the diary was found. 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.240 So even if you're inclined to believe Hunt was crafty 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:52.960 enough to construct this elaborate plot with a fake diary 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.360 and a patsy shooter, it's a real stretch to think 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:58.160 that he would write one hundred and forty eight pages, 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.120 wrap them in plastic, hide them in a backpack, and 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.120 tuck that backpack into a nook in a bridge in 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.920 Milwaukee to be discovered by a construction worker years later. 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:10.040 But it's also possible that Gorvittal was just doing a 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:15.000 bit that were not clever enough to understand. But the 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:19.520 legacy of that diary lives on in some surprising ways. 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:24.040 In those early confusing days after the Trump shooting, before 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.960 we all forgot what ever happened, I did see a 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:28.920 lot of people point out that the last time at 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.880 president took a bullet, it wasn't over politics at all. 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.040 John Hinckley Junior shot Reagan to impress Jody Foster. Remember, 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.840 And Okay, here's where I have to admit something kind 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:45.880 of embarrassing. I've always just accepted that statement at face value. 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.760 It makes no sense at all. But he wasn't acting rationally, 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.600 so it's not something that seemed like I needed to 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.200 make sense of. He shot Ronald Reagan to impress Jody Foster. 0:16:57.560 --> 0:16:59.720 I guess he just thought she'd find that impressive. No 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:02.760 need to interrogate that further. A lot of women might 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:05.800 find it impressive if he shot Ronald Reagan, so there's 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:07.120 not a lot of follow up to do on that. 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.120 The thing is, i'd never seen the movie Taxi Driver. 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.000 I truly never pieced together that he thought shooting the 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.560 president would impress Jody Foster because she had starred as 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.760 a child sex worker in the movie Taxi Driver, in 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.800 which the protagonist Travis Bickle plans to shoot a presidential 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:30.320 candidate named Charles Palatine. Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jody 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:34.800 Foster makes a lot more sense with that added cultural context, 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.399 And I fear I may have been the last person 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:42.000 in America to realize that. So maybe everybody else already 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.879 knows this part too. Taxi Driver owes a lot to 0:17:47.040 --> 0:18:05.640 Arthur Bremer, the guy who shot George Wallace. Screenwriter Paul 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:09.160 Schrader has always denied basing any part of the movie 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:13.600 on Bremer's diary. In a nineteen seventy six interview, Schrader 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.679 says he was inspired by the shooting itself, but that 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.960 the script was actually finished before the diaries were published, 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.720 telling Richard Thompson for a film comment, I want to 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.480 emphasize that the script was written before any of the 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.760 diary was published. After I read the diary, I was 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:32.920 very tempted to take some of the good stuff from 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.160 it and add it to taxi Driver, but I decided 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.879 not to because of legal ramifications. Bremmer is sitting there 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:41.880 in jail with nothing better to do than sue us, 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.680 which is why I made certain the script was registered 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.520 before the diary came out, and that nothing was changed 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.320 after the diary's publication. And it's actually kind of prescient 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:54.680 of him, come to think of it. He's saying in 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.119 nineteen seventy six that Brehmer could file some kind of 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.159 nuisance lawsuit from prison, and this is years before he 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:03.280 tried to get half a million dollars and his diary 0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:07.720 back from that construction worker. And look, I'm obviously not 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:11.320 a film buff. Like I said, I only recently saw 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:13.880 a taxi driver for the first time, so I won't 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.800 say Paul Schrader isn't telling the truth. And I don't know. 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:19.600 Maybe if you're a film buff, you'd say there's a 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.160 difference between changing the script and changing the screenplay. Those 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.480 are kind of different things, right, I guess that's true. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.280 I don't know, because there are some scenes in Taxi 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.480 Driver that, unless Scarcese and Trader had some kind of 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.840 deep psychic connection to whatever forces in the universe motivated 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:40.800 Arthur Bremmer, they absolutely came from the Diary. You can't 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:44.160 tell me if they don't come from the diary, because 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:46.880 when I sat down to watch the movie, I had 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.520 just finished reading the Diary. So when I saw the 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.080 scene where Travis Bickle, the titular taxi driver, pulls up 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:56.880 outside of a building with his fair Bartin Scorsese himself 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.439 in the back seat, I did that, Leonardo DiCaprio pointing 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.280 me at my TV when the camera panned to the 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.520 woman in the window and she's smoking a cigarette, partially 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.880 obscured by the gauzy curtains, And that's a rather specific 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:15.399 visual image. And just a few pages into Bremer's diary, 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:19.679 he describes a very similar scene before he flew back 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:21.879 to Milwaukee to try across the border into Canada to 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.960 shoot Richard Nixon at an event in Ottawa. He wrote 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.520 this in his diary, My last night at the Howard 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:32.240 Johnson's in the Jamaica Area, New York City. I didn't 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.640 sleep much. A beautiful naked lady across the parking lot 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.600 of the next motel out by her window Florida ceiling, 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:42.760 smoking cigarettes, and I had to watch her. Her table 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:44.919 room light was on, and a thin veil of curtain 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.479 allowed me to watch as she passionately kissed a man 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:50.400 who wore clothes. I never saw them in each other's 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.000 arms more than a minute at a time. They must 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.439 have been fighting through binoculars. I saw them gesture like 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:02.280 Italians and open their mouths very wide, very often. So 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.080 maybe Schrader did finish the script before he read the diary, 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.080 but the diary absolutely influenced the way the film was shot. 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.240 According to Andrew Rausch's book on the Films of Martin Scorsese, 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.280 Robert de Niro prepared for the role by getting a 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:19.280 New York taxi license and driving around the city listening 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.800 to a cassette tape of Bremer's diary. The diary is 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:29.600 genuinely odd. Normally, I'm firmly in the camp of please 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.520 do not read or recommend that others read the manifesto 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:36.680 left behind by a shooter. But I really don't think 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.760 anyone will read Arthur Bremer's diary about leaving a nude 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:43.200 massage parlor frustrated that he's still a virgin, and feel 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:48.720 inspired by it. But I do think it's a fascinating document. 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:52.200 I think I learned more about what's inside the mind 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.879 of a nihilist aspiring shooter from Bremer's diary than I've 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:58.720 learned from any self indulgent little manifesto left by a 0:21:58.720 --> 0:22:02.359 mass shooter. After failing to get his shot at Nixon 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.560 at the appearance in Ottawa in April, he wrote, I 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:07.440 just need a little opening in a second of time. 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:12.000 Nothing has happened for so long three months. The last 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.199 person I held a conversation with in three months was 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:16.639 a near naked girl rubbing my erect penis, and she 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:21.400 wouldn't let me put it through her failures. A few 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:24.520 pages later, he writes that he thought about getting really drunk, 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:28.720 but quote decided against it. Just wanted to pick a 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:31.840 fight with a bartender somewhere someone and get arrested, and 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.960 then where am I? I got something to do something 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.679 big before I ever get arrested again. He writes that 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.440 he's tired of waiting. He wants to be a madman 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:46.119 who kills, and then abruptly transitions to saying he quote 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.080 goes crazy when he hears Johnny Cash's new single, quoting 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:52.639 the lyrics I shot you with my thirty eight and 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.240 now I'm doing time, before noting that a baseball game 0:22:56.280 --> 0:23:00.199 was canceled due to the rain. Honestly, the document it 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.800 reminds me of most is a diary kept by Franklin Seacreast. 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:06.359 I was a young man who set a synagogue on 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:10.520 fire in Austin in twenty twenty one. Seacrest's diary is 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.879 the similar sort of strange stream of consciousness, accounting of 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:19.000 his frustrations with women, his daily activities interspersed with these 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:23.520 outbursts of violent desire. After taking two weeks away from 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:25.399 his diary to deal with the tragedy of failing to 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:30.040 kill Richard Nixon, Rehmer went to see Clockwork Orange. As 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:32.080 he watched the movie, he decided he would kill George 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:35.200 Wallace instead, though he lamented that this was a second 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:39.680 rate target, writing, I won't even rate a TV interruption 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:42.600 in Russia or Europe. When the news breaks, they never 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:45.800 heard of Wallace. If something big and nom flares up, 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:47.280 I'll end up at the bottom of the first page. 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:52.160 In America, the editors will say Wallace dead. Who cares? 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:55.320 He won't get more than three minutes on network TV news. 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.639 I don't expect anybody to get a big, throbbing erection 0:23:58.760 --> 0:24:01.840 from the news. You know, a storm in some country 0:24:01.840 --> 0:24:04.720 we never heard of, kills ten thousand people, big deal. 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:08.040 Past the beer and what's on TV tonight. I hope 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:12.440 my death makes more sense than my life. Days before 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:16.240 he finally took the shot, he wrote yesterday, I even 0:24:16.280 --> 0:24:18.879 considered mc govern as a target. If I go to 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.200 prison as an assassin, solitary forever, guards in my cell, 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:26.480 et cetera, or get killed or suicided, what difference to me? 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:29.720 Ask me why I did it, and I'd say I 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:33.280 don't know, or nothing else to do, or why not, 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:37.399 or I have to kill somebody. It bothers me that 0:24:37.400 --> 0:24:39.479 they are about thirty guys in prison now who threatened 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:41.479 the president and we never heard a thing about him 0:24:41.880 --> 0:24:45.360 except that they're in prison. Maybe what they need is organization. 0:24:46.359 --> 0:24:49.560