Speaker 1: Mmm, Hello friends, I am Robert Evans and this is
Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards to show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Today with me is my guest who
Speaker 1: I will be reading a story about a terrible person
Speaker 1: to My guest is coming in cold. His name is
Speaker 1: Dave Ross. He is the host of the Suicide Buddies
Speaker 1: podcast and a comedian. Dave, Welcome to the show. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me man. Thank you. Um, I'd already thank
Speaker 1: you before, but you deserve to thank you? Isn't at
Speaker 1: least one more? But that one's going to be a
Speaker 1: secret thank you? Man, thank you? You know what I mean? No, no,
Speaker 1: because now I have to give you my third thank
Speaker 1: you now, but that thank you was planning for later.
Speaker 1: You can also say you're welcome if you want to
Speaker 1: save your thank you. I've never heard those words before. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: no one really is, all right, So today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about a guy, Paul Manafort. What do you
Speaker 1: What do you know about Paul Manafort? I know very
Speaker 1: little about Paul and Afford he was, wasn't he Trump's
Speaker 1: campaign manager for a half a minute? Yeah? Yeah, A
Speaker 1: couple of months. He was one of the guys that
Speaker 1: got fired, and UM, yeah, I really don't know any
Speaker 1: more than that, you know, alone, he's in jail. I
Speaker 1: did not know. Wow, Okay, yeah he's he's fucking in jail.
Speaker 1: Mueller caught him on a bunch of getting into that.
Speaker 1: I am viciously not plugged in to current events or
Speaker 1: pop culture always my entire life. That's the sane thing
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, it's more so now because I'm forced
Speaker 1: to be. But yeah, well all right, yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess what most people listening know about Paul Manifford's Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was Donald Trump's campaign manager for a while. Uh,
Speaker 1: Mueller caught him doing some shady stuff and he's in
Speaker 1: jail now. And uh maybe he did something shady in
Speaker 1: the Ukraine, but they probably don't have fun the details,
Speaker 1: good stuff. We're gonna be getting into all that today.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, Maniford is definitely most well known
Speaker 1: and most hated for the role he played in getting
Speaker 1: Donald Trump elected president. Um, and I the big point
Speaker 1: of this podcast to day is to let people know
Speaker 1: that Paul Manifford's work with the Trump campaign is probably
Speaker 1: the least objectionable thing he did in his entire life.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, he is a major bad guy and so far,
Speaker 1: I would I would venture to say he's done more
Speaker 1: damage to the world than Donald Trump so far. I
Speaker 1: mean we're only two years into this presidency, so Trump
Speaker 1: can grow. But Paul Manaford is a world class historical
Speaker 1: great asshole. And that's what today's story is about. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, um wait yeah, yeah, So join me, won't
Speaker 1: you on a journey that I like to call Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort is just as bad, if worse than Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And I hope a hype a fire ants sets up
Speaker 1: shop in his colon. That's a working title. Is that
Speaker 1: the whole story? Because we can't talk about that for
Speaker 1: a while. I mean, how would you get fire ants
Speaker 1: inside of a man's colon? Horn surgery is involved horn surgery,
Speaker 1: so either at knife or either a knife or a horn, yeah,
Speaker 1: or I don't know, somehow some sort of funnel co
Speaker 1: were simm into sitting on a pile of fire ants
Speaker 1: for long enough, and you have to course the ants
Speaker 1: up into his rectum like it's a two part until
Speaker 1: they get up there, or he has to be held down.
Speaker 1: Either way, it's workable. I think we can there's a
Speaker 1: there's a road to this destination? Um okay anyway. Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort Jr. Was born on April one, nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: making his entire life and career essentially one very dark
Speaker 1: April fool's joke on all of us. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: raised in New Britain, Connecticut. His grandfather immigrated there from
Speaker 1: Italy in nineteen oh seven and started a construction company.
Speaker 1: But Paul's father, Paul Manafort Senor, wanted more than just
Speaker 1: the lucrative corpse burying mafia contracts an Italian contractor could
Speaker 1: expect to earn in the nineteen sixties. He wanted political power,
Speaker 1: so in nineteen sixty five, Manafort Senior ran for and
Speaker 1: one election to become the mayor of New Britain. He
Speaker 1: was a Republican and his easy charm made him popular
Speaker 1: with voters. Manafort Jr. Worked on his dad's campaigns as
Speaker 1: a teenager. He has happy memories of going to bars
Speaker 1: with his dad, who buy rounds and drinks for and
Speaker 1: schmooze with potential voters. Manaport Senior was mayor until nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, and, as you might expect from the Manafort name,
Speaker 1: he was outrageously corrupt. Uh In nineteen eighty one, he
Speaker 1: was charged with perjury for lying in court about a
Speaker 1: municipal corruption investigation. A major source for this episode is
Speaker 1: the Atlantic article Paul Manafort American Hustler, and it brings
Speaker 1: up a report from a lawyer, Palmer McGhee, which is
Speaker 1: a fun name for a lawyer cute, who was hired
Speaker 1: by New Britain to report on the hilarious corruption in
Speaker 1: their town. Quote in his findings, he pointed a finger
Speaker 1: straight at Manafort senor, calling him the person most at fault.
Speaker 1: According to the testimony of a whistleblower, Manafort had flatly
Speaker 1: announced that he wanted to hire someone flexible to manage
Speaker 1: his personal office, a place that would quote not be
Speaker 1: by the rules, which is a very nice way of
Speaker 1: saying he was going to commit major crimes while the
Speaker 1: mayor of a town. Years later, in an interview, Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort Jr. Would say, some of the skills I learned
Speaker 1: there I still used today. That's where I cut my teeth.
Speaker 1: What criminal mayor dad wow man. And so this isn't
Speaker 1: even his career yet, he hasn't even this is not
Speaker 1: even his final form. He was just starting on the
Speaker 1: road to being shitty and looking at his dad and going,
Speaker 1: but what if I was worse? Yeah, and I imagine
Speaker 1: his dad as the mayor from Jaws. I know that's
Speaker 1: I cannot recall Jaws well enough. Oh well, it's got
Speaker 1: a great shitty mayor, one of the great shitty mayor's
Speaker 1: and shitty mayor movies. Great. Yeah, yeah, I love a
Speaker 1: shitty mayor. Oh man, it's one of my favorite. I
Speaker 1: love it when he become a shitty governor, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yes, several y Rob Ford, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Wow, I guess he's not a You know,
Speaker 1: I expected a Reagan reference there, and we didn't. You
Speaker 1: didn't give me one. That's nice. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: could do that. We could do Chris Christie if you
Speaker 1: want um more. George Bush. George Bush for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a shitty baseball team owner for a while.
Speaker 1: A lot of shittiness out there. Yeah, the artist. Now,
Speaker 1: it's amazing the news today. James Gunn just just lost
Speaker 1: a movie for things a decade ago. But if you're
Speaker 1: a terrible governor, you can do anything. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how corrupt you've been. Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, it's amazing. You
Speaker 1: can become fucking president like several times. Yeah, what a
Speaker 1: great what a great system we've developed. Alright. Uh so
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort Jr. Hereafter the only Paul Manafort will be
Speaker 1: talking about. So just forget, forget to set that, senior dude,
Speaker 1: got it. Uh he first, Paul Manafort first got into
Speaker 1: national politics in nineteen seventy six. That was the year
Speaker 1: President Gerald Ford ran for reelection. Manafort was his delegate
Speaker 1: coordinator and basically helped him fight off a primary challenge
Speaker 1: from Ronald Reagan. So always a Reagan connection. Lost that Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah against Gerald Ford was the president at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty hard to unseat. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: realized we were talking about president for Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: don't know why I would have thought that Gerald Ford
Speaker 1: would have beat Ronald Reagan in like a comptroller seat
Speaker 1: when they were one or whatever. He definitely would have
Speaker 1: beat Reagan in a fist fight, because if oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I think you're put I think of our modern presidents,
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford is probably close to the top of half presidence.
Speaker 1: I think could win in a fist fight. He's built
Speaker 1: like a boxer. Yeah, yeah, face, white face. He could
Speaker 1: definitely take a punch. Yeah, yeah, for sure, Gerald Ford
Speaker 1: could take a punch. But in he did not succeed
Speaker 1: in winning the presidential election that year, which is won
Speaker 1: by Carter, which led to four years of Carter is
Speaker 1: um um in. Manafort took a job as the Southern
Speaker 1: coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign because Reagan decided he
Speaker 1: was going to try and unseat Carter, gave it another shot.
Speaker 1: Uh Manaford held this position for two years and used
Speaker 1: it to begin his first experiment with dirty tricks. There
Speaker 1: was this guy, Neil Acker, who had helped Manafort and
Speaker 1: his partner Roger Stone a couple of years earlier, during
Speaker 1: the mid terms. Manafort, Yeah, that's the only proper reaction
Speaker 1: to Roger Stone's name. He's he's he's history. He's a monster.
Speaker 1: He is a monster, admittedly a monster. He says. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to piss people off. I like it when
Speaker 1: people hate me. Yeah. Well, uh so, Manafort and Stone
Speaker 1: had worked at this guy, Neil Acker during the mid terms,
Speaker 1: and he'd been a big help to them. So manaforted
Speaker 1: Stone had promised to support Acker as a replacement for
Speaker 1: Roger Stone at the head of the influential Young Republicans group.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy nine, when it kind of came
Speaker 1: time to put up her shut up, Manafort backed out
Speaker 1: of the deal and told Acker that now he wouldn't
Speaker 1: help unless Ackers swore loyalty to Ronald Reagan. Acker wanted
Speaker 1: to stay neutral, and so Paul Manafort burned him to
Speaker 1: the ground. One week before the Young Republican convention, Manafort
Speaker 1: went to the delegates who had already promised to support
Speaker 1: Acker and told them to leave. Then he took over
Speaker 1: managing Acker's opponents campaign. Acker lost the election and what
Speaker 1: one of Manafort's whips called one of the great funk
Speaker 1: jobs and party politics. Yeah, politics, people always have fun
Speaker 1: ways of talking about how they funk with the government
Speaker 1: and the planet. Man. This is why I love VEEP
Speaker 1: so much. It's the only show that's really accurately portrayed
Speaker 1: how much they say fucking funk job and make fun
Speaker 1: of each other in our assholes, you know. In my
Speaker 1: private career as a journalist, I interviewed a number of
Speaker 1: congressional aids and like gubernatorial assistants and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: people who had worked in like national and high level
Speaker 1: state politics, and every single one of them said VEEP
Speaker 1: was the only TV show about politics that was accurate
Speaker 1: to how people talk in politics. Yeah, yeah, none of them.
Speaker 1: None of them chose the West Wing. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: not west wing is liberal porn, which makes it the
Speaker 1: greatest TV show of all time in my opinion. But wow,
Speaker 1: it's soothing to watch the totally it's like a backrupt
Speaker 1: Nobody with that much like backbone and moral certainty has
Speaker 1: ever been presidents. There are no people that are that altruistic.
Speaker 1: They're just are not. And we all wish there were.
Speaker 1: We all flip out like they could be, but they're not. No, No,
Speaker 1: they just they just don't get that far in politics.
Speaker 1: So President Reagan won the election nineteen eighty with Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort's help. It was the name of the guy that
Speaker 1: they buried, Neil Acker. Neil Acker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Neil Acker. Um.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty Reagan wins with Paul Maniffort's help. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this gives Manafort the access and cloud he'd always needed. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was appointed Associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office.
Speaker 1: This meant he got to help pick the people who
Speaker 1: would work in Reagan's White House, which would be a
Speaker 1: huge benefit to someone who happened to also own a
Speaker 1: lobbying firm. And on an unrelated note, in nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort started his very own lobbying firm with his
Speaker 1: good buddy Roger Stone and a man named Charles Black.
Speaker 1: Their company, Black, Manafort and Stone would soon become a
Speaker 1: DC legend. Now when you hear the phrase DC lobbyist today,
Speaker 1: it probably has a pretty strong negative connotation because now
Speaker 1: we just assumed that corrupt asked lobbyists from the n
Speaker 1: r A and the tobacco company is in the oil
Speaker 1: and gas industry or constantly deep dicking our democracy. But
Speaker 1: it didn't always used to be this way. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, there were just sixty four registered lobbyists in
Speaker 1: the entire United States. WHOA, yeah, this has not been
Speaker 1: a thing we've always done. In nineteen sixty three, several
Speaker 1: political scientists studied the few lobbyists in d C and concluded,
Speaker 1: and I found this quote in that Atlantic article, when
Speaker 1: we look at the typical lobby we find its opportunities
Speaker 1: to maneuver are sharply limited. It's staff mediocre, it's typical
Speaker 1: problem not the influencing of congressional votes, but finding the
Speaker 1: clients and contributors to enable it to survive at all.
Speaker 1: So lobbying is like not a thing for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eighty lobbying was still a very small field.
Speaker 1: Foreign lobbying, like lobbying on behalf of a foreign country,
Speaker 1: was even rarer, thanks in part to our special bonus
Speaker 1: bastard of the week, Ivy Lee. I should have called
Speaker 1: for an air horn there. I don't know, we can
Speaker 1: do it. Nailed it. Who is Ivy Lee? I've never
Speaker 1: heard this name. Most people have not. Ivy Lee was
Speaker 1: a PR man and one of the trailblazers of that profession.
Speaker 1: He is sometimes called the father of public relation. So
Speaker 1: he's like the George Washington of PR. Yeah. He worked
Speaker 1: for John D. Rockefeller. In the early nineteen hundreds. Mr.
Speaker 1: Rockefeller owned a number of coal mines in Colorado. His
Speaker 1: company came into conflict with the United Mine Workers of America,
Speaker 1: a union who wanted better pay and conditions in exchange
Speaker 1: for dying and mining disasters. The union went on strike
Speaker 1: and set up a gigantic tent colony outside of the
Speaker 1: town of Ludlow, Colorado for themselves and their families. Things
Speaker 1: got heated and the National Guard was brought in to
Speaker 1: break up the strike. This quickly turned into a battle,
Speaker 1: and twelve children were burnt to death inside a tent.
Speaker 1: A total of nineteen strikers and their family members, mostly
Speaker 1: their family members, and one National guardsman died. This became
Speaker 1: known as the Ludlow massacre, and it was very bad
Speaker 1: pr for Rockefeller and his company. Ivy Lee jumped to
Speaker 1: his aid and wrote a publicity leaflet blaming the child
Speaker 1: deaths on quote agitators paid for by the union. He
Speaker 1: didn't quite call the dead kids crisis actors, but the
Speaker 1: implication was there. This inflamed tensions between the strikers and
Speaker 1: the National Guard that led to ten more days of violence.
Speaker 1: Another fifty people were killed in The actual Army had
Speaker 1: to be called in to calm things down via bullets.
Speaker 1: Ivy Lee was called in before a US Commission on
Speaker 1: Industrial Relations and asked, in essence what the fuck? He
Speaker 1: explained that he and Rockefeller had been lied to by
Speaker 1: mine managers. They hadn't meant to massacre anyone, They just
Speaker 1: trusted those conniving managers who told them the strikers were
Speaker 1: super dangerous. So it wasn't Rockefeller's fault or his fault
Speaker 1: that all those kids got burned to death. Right. It's
Speaker 1: also such a funny argument, like, yeah, no, we killed
Speaker 1: them because we thought that they were mad, and when
Speaker 1: we found out that they weren't mad or whatever, not
Speaker 1: that they weren't mad, but weren't they weren't monsters. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: And then we felt bad after we murdered them. Our
Speaker 1: first hour go to is murdering, but in this case
Speaker 1: it was the wrong thing. We apologize. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: future we might murder people, but so you know, every
Speaker 1: time we murder people from now on, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: because someone told us that they're mean. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: miners started calling ivy Lee poison ivy Lee, which is
Speaker 1: you know, it's the ninth early nine hundreds. Nicknames are
Speaker 1: a new science. They were doing their best, I don't know, bad, Yeah,
Speaker 1: poison ivy you know you get it's itches, it itches, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's causes good, real real problems. Uh So, ivy
Speaker 1: Lee Poison Ivy Lee spent the next twenty years representing
Speaker 1: a variety of corporations. He eventually landed a contract with
Speaker 1: the I g Farban Chemical Company and traveled to Berlin
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four to give them advice. During this trip,
Speaker 1: he also had a meeting with a guy named Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler and another guy named Joseph Gebbels. He did free
Speaker 1: work on their behalf, speaking to a number of American
Speaker 1: journalists in Berlin to try and put a positive spin
Speaker 1: on their coverage of the Nazis. So I started my
Speaker 1: research on Mr Lee on a website called pr Place,
Speaker 1: which describes itself as quote where public relations and communications
Speaker 1: practice meets scholarship, where insight is derived from evidence, and
Speaker 1: where questions of career development and professionalism are explored. Since
Speaker 1: this guy is the founder of PR in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, PR Place at a largely positive description of it. Really,
Speaker 1: they talk about the controversy and he did some bad
Speaker 1: things with the Nazis, but he was just giving them advice.
Speaker 1: He was an unpaid consultant. You know. It was it
Speaker 1: was and it was a real you know, it was
Speaker 1: a bad error of judgment. But you know, he has
Speaker 1: a mixed legacy and we have to consider all the
Speaker 1: parts of it. So that's their take on this guy.
Speaker 1: I am. We are fifteen minutes in I and I
Speaker 1: am tired. I am fucking tired. We are four out
Speaker 1: of twenty four pages in. This was a long week
Speaker 1: of research, my friend. Yeah, okay, so I might get coffee,
Speaker 1: you know, And I feel like I could leave, go
Speaker 1: get coffee and come back and not miss anything. Miss
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but not miss anything. Because the
Speaker 1: general theme here is all these people are huge pieces
Speaker 1: of ship, and you should probably you should feel validated
Speaker 1: in being a nihilist. H I think it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: they're all pieces of ship in the same way the
Speaker 1: pieces of ship that still are dealing with their piece, right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I mean. Yeah, And it's also even
Speaker 1: the term piece of ship is reductive. It's like evil
Speaker 1: if you believe that evil exists in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Drunk with power, these guys and Paul Manifort are kind
Speaker 1: of the truest form of evil, because it's like, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to believe a crazy thing about the world,
Speaker 1: like that this race is superior, and to do terrible
Speaker 1: things based on that. It's another thing to support that
Speaker 1: guy just for cash. Absolutely. Yeah. It's also I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of our conception of evil comes
Speaker 1: from people getting like I just said, drunk with power.
Speaker 1: You get power and you end up doing awful things.
Speaker 1: You mad, right, exactly. But these people aren't even really
Speaker 1: that powerful before. They just want power, and so they're like, Oh,
Speaker 1: if I help this person by doing this manipulative thing,
Speaker 1: because I'm super good at manipulating people. I've learned over
Speaker 1: who knows where he learned how to be manipulative, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like in comedy, you have to
Speaker 1: go to open mics to get good. Oh, but mikes
Speaker 1: for these assholes are just like the people they date. Well,
Speaker 1: that and mining disaster and then yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: next level of mining disasters. Then eventually you get to
Speaker 1: destroy an entire country. Yeah. Uh. So here's how that
Speaker 1: wonderful website pr Place summarized the meeting between Hitler and
Speaker 1: Ivy League, The founder of pr I Can't Even Lee,
Speaker 1: reportedly advised Girbels to see propaganda efforts in the United
Speaker 1: States and urged him to meet personally with foreign diplomats
Speaker 1: and press in an effort to establish better relations with them.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't sound too bad. He was asking them
Speaker 1: to stop propagandizing two Americans. Maybe this guy is a hero.
Speaker 1: Only I dug a little bit deeper. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper, and I found a Time article about Mr Lee.
Speaker 1: Now Time is much harser on his work with the Nazis.
Speaker 1: It also mentioned some facts pr Place decided not to
Speaker 1: include for some inexplicable reason, like the fact that Lee's
Speaker 1: salary with I. G. Farman went from three thousand a
Speaker 1: year to twenty five thousand a year as soon as
Speaker 1: Hitler came to power, which is probably just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: It also fails to mention that IG Farban was nationalized,
Speaker 1: so his paid work for that company was also paid
Speaker 1: work for the German government a k a. The Nazis.
Speaker 1: Now Time includes a quote from Jonathan Arbach, author of
Speaker 1: Weapons of Democracy, Propaganda Progressivism in American public Opinion. Our
Speaker 1: box suspects the main purpose of the meeting was to
Speaker 1: provide the Nazi high command with quote some insight into
Speaker 1: how Americans think about Nazis. It was also to advise
Speaker 1: them on how to make us quote, think more positively
Speaker 1: about Nazis now. Mr Lee was called to later testify
Speaker 1: in front of a Congressional committee for all of this
Speaker 1: Nazi stuff. Time reported on that testimony back in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four. So in the article they site themselves from
Speaker 1: the past writing about Mr. Lee. I have told them, repeatedly,
Speaker 1: testified Mr Lee that the dissemination of the organization of
Speaker 1: German propaganda in the US was just a mistake and feudal,
Speaker 1: that it was bad business, that complete reliance should be
Speaker 1: placed upon getting news to the American people through normal
Speaker 1: channels of publicity. I told them that there were certain
Speaker 1: policies which Germany had on Jews which were bound to
Speaker 1: antagonize American public opinion. So basically he advised Hitler and
Speaker 1: Gebels to x nay on the u J while they
Speaker 1: were trying to court public opinion in the US. This
Speaker 1: is exactly what happened in the early thirties. The first
Speaker 1: couple of years after power or there was a distinct
Speaker 1: drop in the anti Semitic mentions and Hitler's speeches and
Speaker 1: in like their communications to foreign powers, which sort of
Speaker 1: culminated in the Olympics where they removed all signs of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism just long enough for the world to visit
Speaker 1: for the Olympics, and then when you know, put it
Speaker 1: in the high gear after that. So they took this
Speaker 1: guy's advice. In other words, Now, Lee died almost immediately
Speaker 1: after testifying in front of Congress. Pr Place says that
Speaker 1: the stress of his testimony is what killed him. So
Speaker 1: hopefully right, like fuck the guy, but his mild hitler
Speaker 1: NG went on. They have ramifications that are still with
Speaker 1: us today. Good ramifications. In nineteen thirty eight, the US
Speaker 1: pass the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA, which requires
Speaker 1: Americans to register with the government before working on behalf
Speaker 1: of a foreign government to say, influence public opinion towards
Speaker 1: an authoritarian regime in another country. Now we're gonna hear
Speaker 1: more about Farah later. For right now, it's important to
Speaker 1: understand that another aspect of Ivy Lee's little freelance Nazi
Speaker 1: career was a decade's long depression in the lobbying for
Speaker 1: sketchy foreign governments industry. It just wasn't done for a while. Again,
Speaker 1: there weren't very many lobbyists anyway, and sort of the
Speaker 1: stigma attached to Lee had kind of stopped it from
Speaker 1: happening for quite a while. Black Manifort, so Paul Manafort
Speaker 1: is the one that brought him back here. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I were dead. This is fucking crazy. That
Speaker 1: might might as well be the tagline for this pot.
Speaker 1: I wish I were dead, so I feel every time
Speaker 1: I watched the news. Now, yeah, oh sho, you got
Speaker 1: a tide pod sitting here. Yeah, we always have a
Speaker 1: tide pot in the ok. I'm we're millennials. Half an
Speaker 1: hour more, I'm gonna eat that ship. Um, you will die, right, probably? Yeah,
Speaker 1: has anyone ever done it? I think you'll die. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. It might be one of those
Speaker 1: things that's either way. We always have a tide pot around.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. So yeah, Black, Manafort and Stone were
Speaker 1: the lobbing firm that brought this back with a vengeance. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: they started by working with standard, respectable American corporations like
Speaker 1: Bethlehem Steele, Johnson and Johnson, trans World Airlines, Tobacco Institute. Um,
Speaker 1: it's fine. Probably they probably weren't hiding anything. Tell me
Speaker 1: that was a university. Tell me that was a real
Speaker 1: college that people went to. It's where you learned how
Speaker 1: to grow the best at back. Yeah. They were innovators
Speaker 1: in the lobbying field, and we're the first company to
Speaker 1: combine lobbying consulting and pr into the same business. Time
Speaker 1: magazine called them a supermarket of influence peddling. In other words,
Speaker 1: they were the Walmart of propaganda. Black Manifort and Stone
Speaker 1: was the first lobbying firm to also include political consultants,
Speaker 1: which meant they could run campaigns and then lobby the
Speaker 1: politicians they put in power simultaneously. What a value. And
Speaker 1: like all true innovators, Paul Manafort wasn't willing to sit
Speaker 1: on his laurels. He and his partners introduced another lobbying
Speaker 1: innovation in working for both sides at once. In Louisiana, Vermont,
Speaker 1: and Florida, the firm represented both Republican and Democratic candidates
Speaker 1: in that year's elections, guaranteeing they'd have a lobbying in
Speaker 1: no matter who won. Oh yeah, see, we're we're well
Speaker 1: into it now. Yeah. Uh, and we will. We will
Speaker 1: get back into it, but first we have to have
Speaker 1: some ads. And and before we get into the official ads,
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk a little about our unofficial sponsor, Derritos,
Speaker 1: who have not yet given us any money, but who
Speaker 1: I think. I'm a big advocate of Dorritos. After and
Speaker 1: after a long day of reading about terrible things. At
Speaker 1: least you're gonna have some dirits. You can have some derritos,
Speaker 1: which should be their new tagline. At least you can
Speaker 1: have some derritos. I remember when Taco Bell first came
Speaker 1: out with the Doritos Locos tacos. Everyone in my world
Speaker 1: was making fun of them, but my immediate reaction was like, man,
Speaker 1: that sounds great, and then I went and had one,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it was great. And to this
Speaker 1: day I still eat them and it it hurts me,
Speaker 1: you know, it hurts my butt, but it's all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's sometimes works. Just need that dorrito's flavor, and
Speaker 1: you also need the other products and services that are
Speaker 1: advertised on our podcast and helped to support the show,
Speaker 1: which are coming up now. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: We're eating fruit, leather and our mouth. It's all good.
Speaker 1: Whatever kind of leather you have to put in your
Speaker 1: mouth to hear the rest of the story is fine.
Speaker 1: It's a rough one. So Paul Manafort, God, that would
Speaker 1: be the right drink, because gin is terrible and this
Speaker 1: is a terrible story as Yeah, he nailed. It's like
Speaker 1: a woodpeg to chew on and gin to drink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to feel like a junifer berries fucking me
Speaker 1: in the mouth. It's time for gin. I always want
Speaker 1: to feel like that. Yeah, okay, So we just talked
Speaker 1: about how Black Manifort and Stone, Paul Maniforts lobbying firm,
Speaker 1: had sort of invented the idea of just funding both
Speaker 1: sides of an election and not really caring who wins
Speaker 1: because you can sell you know, corporate access to them
Speaker 1: either way. So The Atlantic around this time in the
Speaker 1: early eighties quoted a congressional staffer who joked, why have
Speaker 1: primaries for the nomination? Why not just have the candidates
Speaker 1: go over to Black Manafort in Stone and argue it out.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the attitude in the belt Way
Speaker 1: about these people, and Manafort was very much into that attitude.
Speaker 1: He filled out a questionnaire for the Washington Time somewhere
Speaker 1: around this this period, and he stated that Machiavelli was
Speaker 1: the person he most wanted to meet, which is like, okay, dude, Okay.
Speaker 1: So things started getting very busy for Paul Manafort in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen eighties. He's revolutionizing the way Washington works.
Speaker 1: His first daughter, Andrea, was conceived in between conference calls.
Speaker 1: She later wrote that he quote, how much do you
Speaker 1: know that this is what his daughter said? How does
Speaker 1: she know that that's I don't know how I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's what Paul Manafort told her. Yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. It's pretty ridiculous for me
Speaker 1: to call bullshit on any of these facts at this point,
Speaker 1: but that one's just like, it doesn't painting have a
Speaker 1: good light, she said. He quote hung up the phone,
Speaker 1: looked at his watch, and said, Okay, we have twenty
Speaker 1: minutes until the next one, meaning the next conference call.
Speaker 1: So she's not painting a good pick, sure of her
Speaker 1: dad here, but we'll We'll hear more from Andrea later,
Speaker 1: especially knowing that he told her that, whether it's true
Speaker 1: or not, he was like, how old was she when
Speaker 1: he told her? This is clearly the story he wanted
Speaker 1: her to know. Yes, yeah, and it's wanted her to
Speaker 1: be us and evil when she grew up to yeah,
Speaker 1: and it worked out. Um, So Paul and his fellow
Speaker 1: partners started taking home big fat four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand a year on paychecks, which back then was like
Speaker 1: a million dollars a year. The company was also full
Speaker 1: of money, so they started throwing massive yearly parties, golf parties,
Speaker 1: which got rowdy enough that they were apparently kicked out
Speaker 1: of every venue they booked. They never got to use
Speaker 1: the same venue two years in a row. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: former employee and good friend of Paul Manafort is quoted
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic as saying this. A couple of women
Speaker 1: in the firm complained that they weren't ever invited. I
Speaker 1: told them they didn't want to be. So that's what
Speaker 1: that gross at all. Yeah, So damn it, these people,
Speaker 1: it's just garbage. Paul Manafort ran the company's social committee.
Speaker 1: It was his job to arrange these fuc duranch golf
Speaker 1: parties and also to pick themes for their yearly gathering.
Speaker 1: During one three year period, the themes were excess, exceed
Speaker 1: excess and excess as best. These are lovely people may
Speaker 1: super creative, No, and you can just couldn't just say caligula.
Speaker 1: That would be more creative creative. You could be fucking
Speaker 1: pouring wine down your faces and having slaves peel you grapes.
Speaker 1: But now we just go with fucking Gordon Gecko bullshit, straightforward.
Speaker 1: So manaforts demanded a loyalty test for employees hoping to
Speaker 1: make partner, but they were lame loyalty tests. Like you
Speaker 1: hear loyalty tests and you expect him to be like
Speaker 1: cutting people and stuff and planning them. But no, he
Speaker 1: would just like he had one guy entertained his friends
Speaker 1: from law school for several hours when he didn't want
Speaker 1: to deal with him. He gave two guys a day
Speaker 1: to find a Billy Barty impersonator for St. Patrick's day,
Speaker 1: so it would be like dumb ship like that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a little better than what you would think. You know.
Speaker 1: At this point, I just I take points away from
Speaker 1: him for not leaning into being aman. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: already ruining thousands of people's lives, yeah, you might as
Speaker 1: well demand a kidney from someone who wants to make
Speaker 1: partners so you have an extra kid what he's just
Speaker 1: lame over On the global stage. During the Carter administration,
Speaker 1: the US has started supporting some nice boys in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: called the Mujahadeen. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank,
Speaker 1: liked this Carter era gun running operation and suggested it
Speaker 1: be expanded into at least nine other countries. So when
Speaker 1: President Reagan was elected. The Reagan doctrine wound up being
Speaker 1: exactly what the Heritage Foundation had suggested, sending arms and
Speaker 1: advisors to aid anti communist forces around the world. The
Speaker 1: goal essentially was to bleed the U s s R.
Speaker 1: White by engaging them in a bunch of Vietnam style conflicts,
Speaker 1: and we would just give guns to whoever was against
Speaker 1: the communists, and if they were, you know, dictators or
Speaker 1: murder squads or whatever, we supported people like the Nicaraguan
Speaker 1: Contras and the camer People's National Liberation Front and Cambodia.
Speaker 1: So strong men, rebel leaders, and dictators the world over
Speaker 1: suddenly realized that if they could charm the Reagan administration,
Speaker 1: they could win a shipload of guns and money. But
Speaker 1: to get those guns and money, they'd need lawyers. Enter Manifort,
Speaker 1: Black and Stone or Black, Manifort and Stone as the
Speaker 1: actual name. But you know who cares fuck him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Paul Manafort particularly developed an expertise for helping these people.
Speaker 1: His first big fish was the President of the Philippines,
Speaker 1: Ferdinand Marcos. Now I say a president, but I mean dictator.
Speaker 1: Amnesty International estimates Marcos tortured more than thirty four thousand
Speaker 1: people and had three thousand, two d forty political opponents killed,
Speaker 1: which was bad in the eighties and now sounds like
Speaker 1: like almost a nice guy just by the our standards
Speaker 1: of tyrants at the moment. Yeah, yeah, well, what did
Speaker 1: he do anything good? No? I mean he embezzled ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars of the country's wealth to his own pockets.
Speaker 1: It is also funny that we're hearing you're telling me
Speaker 1: a story of one man, and that story just lightly
Speaker 1: involves other sort of I don't even know the word
Speaker 1: for its tail is a gentle caressing hand on the
Speaker 1: faces of like half a dozen different terrible people, are right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot more because we could do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on Roger Stone because he's a real piece of ship.
Speaker 1: I feel like you can do and there's there's an episode.
Speaker 1: There's you could do an episode on fucking Ferdinand Marcos
Speaker 1: because he's a real all of these he exclusively works
Speaker 1: with pieces of ship. That's that's the Paul Manafort brand. Um,
Speaker 1: he's single, he's about to be because he's in fucking
Speaker 1: jail and we'll hopefully die there. Yeah. He starts working
Speaker 1: for Ferdinand Marcos, who had again tortured thirty four thousand
Speaker 1: people by this point, and all of that murdering and
Speaker 1: torture was bad. Pr Ferdinand set aside something like fifty
Speaker 1: seven million dollars for Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four campaigns. He didn't actually pay all that money
Speaker 1: to Reagan, because it's illegal for foreign powers to directly
Speaker 1: donate to US political candidates. But Marcos did give Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort's company a whole lot of money, at least nine
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and possibly much
Speaker 1: much more. Manafort's job was to improve the image of
Speaker 1: the Marcos regime, especially among the Reagan administration. That shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been a hard job. The first couple, the Reagans,
Speaker 1: had met the marcos Is in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: become good friends. Ronald Reagan had danced with Emelda Marcos.
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan may have received in the legal emerald necklace
Speaker 1: as a gift from him, But by the midnineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Marcos was just killing way too many people to receive
Speaker 1: open support from his old friends, the President and the
Speaker 1: first Lady. Now we don't actually know how or if
Speaker 1: that earmarked fifty seven million dollars was spent. There are
Speaker 1: rumors that Paul Manafort himself was handed at least ten
Speaker 1: million dollars of it, some of it in cash in
Speaker 1: a briefcase like given to him million dollars he so
Speaker 1: Marcos had set aside. We know that he set aside
Speaker 1: fifty seven million dollars to help the Reagans, and hopefully
Speaker 1: he didn't give that directly to them, And we don't
Speaker 1: know how much of that money was actually spent. There
Speaker 1: is a rumor that at least ten million of it
Speaker 1: wound up in Paul Manafort's hands, that Emilga Marcos just
Speaker 1: walked it over to him in briefcases filled with cash. Um.
Speaker 1: But we don't know because none of it was reported.
Speaker 1: Um An effort denies that he spent any of this money,
Speaker 1: that he received it, that he was that he spent.
Speaker 1: Manafort denies that he received any money that he didn't
Speaker 1: report to the government. But as we'll see in the
Speaker 1: rest of the story, he has a history of not
Speaker 1: reporting all the money he gets from dictators to the government.
Speaker 1: So the rumor is that he was given at least
Speaker 1: ten million dollars by the Marcos regime personally as a bribe.
Speaker 1: And we know that one of the guys Reagan sent
Speaker 1: over to tell Marcos when he finally had to leave
Speaker 1: because the rebels were at the gates. One of the
Speaker 1: guys the US sent over to like give him this information.
Speaker 1: Marcos kept saying to him, but I you know, I
Speaker 1: paid ten million dollars to Ronald Reagan's campaign. How am
Speaker 1: I not getting help right now? And he didn't know.
Speaker 1: This guy didn't know what he was talking about, because
Speaker 1: there was no record of that. Right. What it is
Speaker 1: is he he gave ten million dollars to Paul Manafort,
Speaker 1: who just wanted away with it, which is a thing
Speaker 1: that Yeah, Manafort says that's totally fiction and that he
Speaker 1: did everything by the book. But we'll read the rest
Speaker 1: of the story and you can tell me how much
Speaker 1: you believe that Paul Manafort didn't just steal ten million
Speaker 1: dollars from a dictator. Right. Well, that's the thing with
Speaker 1: these people, right Eventually, I'm sorry, I don't mean to
Speaker 1: derail you entirely. When you really think about people like
Speaker 1: Roger Stone and Paul Manaford and Donald Trump, people who
Speaker 1: just funk with the world, they yeah, right, that's what
Speaker 1: they do. I think they come from such a unique
Speaker 1: perspective on life, whereas I feel like, even though people
Speaker 1: do awful things all the time, are rude to each other,
Speaker 1: disrespectful to each other, we've all messed up, and we've
Speaker 1: all bullied and been bullied and all that stuff. I
Speaker 1: think a great many people are trying to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. But I think these in order to be
Speaker 1: like that, you literally have to think, like man, life
Speaker 1: would be fun if I didn't care about anyone else's
Speaker 1: pain at all, it would be super fun. And I
Speaker 1: really think that's what it is. And I know that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be shocking to me. It shouldn't be that weird
Speaker 1: to me that people think that way, but I can't
Speaker 1: accept it. But I really think that they look at
Speaker 1: the world as an amusement park in which they get
Speaker 1: to do whatever they want, and they don't care about
Speaker 1: their legacy at all. They just think, like, man, if
Speaker 1: I could have the most sex and a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: and my whole life could be an adventure, even if
Speaker 1: millions of people die, then that would be pretty fun.
Speaker 1: You only live once, right, And I think your big part, right.
Speaker 1: I think Roger Stone is that kind of guy, which
Speaker 1: is why he's very carefully picked the jobs he's picked.
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort wanted a legacy and wanted power, and that
Speaker 1: will wind up being his downfall later in this story. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it wasn't happy, just enjoying life, Okay, So, but I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself here. So Politico looked deeper into
Speaker 1: the story of Marcos or of a Manafort receiving ten
Speaker 1: million dollars from Marcos after Manafort started working for Trump,
Speaker 1: and they found a lot of information that had never
Speaker 1: been made public because nobody back then had cared what
Speaker 1: some shady guy with connections to Reagan did in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote Polico here. Manafort and his associates advised
Speaker 1: the couple on electoral strategy, the marcos Is on electoral strategy,
Speaker 1: and in Washington, where they worked to retain goodwill by
Speaker 1: tamping down concerns about the Marcos regimesman rights record, theft
Speaker 1: of public resources, and ultimately their perpetration of a massive
Speaker 1: vote rigging effort to try and stay in power in
Speaker 1: the Philippines nineteen eight six presidential election. So Manafort became
Speaker 1: so well known in the Philippines as the guy who
Speaker 1: was essentially lying to the rest of the world about
Speaker 1: what was going on in their country. Corazon Aquino, the
Speaker 1: woman who ran against Marcos in that election, actually brought
Speaker 1: up Paul Manafort a lot during her campaign. Um Teddy
Speaker 1: looks In, a Filipino journalist, said, quote, Manafort's name was
Speaker 1: like Voldemort today. So he made the Harry Potter And
Speaker 1: I'm not a guy for making Harry Potter connections to politics,
Speaker 1: but he fucked did so. That nineteen six election was
Speaker 1: a snap election, and I think it was Manafort's advice
Speaker 1: to Marcos that he holds a snap election. And the
Speaker 1: goal was people say, I'm not a Democratic leader. So
Speaker 1: if I hold an immediate election right now, you know,
Speaker 1: it happens out of nowhere. And it's just so he
Speaker 1: can prove that he's the man that people want to charge.
Speaker 1: And they were hoping to just rig the election and
Speaker 1: coast on it. Manafort said at the time about this
Speaker 1: snap election, what we've tried to do is make it
Speaker 1: more of a Chicago style election and not in Mexico's.
Speaker 1: And back then, saying something was a Chicago style election
Speaker 1: meant that it involved blatant voter fraud, which it did. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so after the snap election, the Marcos regime claims victory
Speaker 1: that they solidly won the election. International observers say no,
Speaker 1: like this is clearly fraudulent and here is a shipload
Speaker 1: of evidence, and it leads to like a gigantic a
Speaker 1: three week standoff between Marcos his opponent, and the whole
Speaker 1: country standoff, like an armed standoff, like rebels taking to
Speaker 1: the round his palace or whatever, like the like the
Speaker 1: stereotypical the rebels are at the gates of the palace,
Speaker 1: shaking on the gigs and guns point like that happens,
Speaker 1: and Marcos has to like depart the country with his wife.
Speaker 1: They wind up in Hawaii with one of Paul Manafort's employees,
Speaker 1: like flies out with them, and yeah, still just helping
Speaker 1: them get set up in their new line. Remind me
Speaker 1: real quick, what the investment for Paul Manafort in the
Speaker 1: Philippines and the Marcos government. Shipload of money, that's the
Speaker 1: that's a percent of it. They're giving him a shipload
Speaker 1: of money. He's received on paper at least a million
Speaker 1: dollars a year from them, which is more like two
Speaker 1: million a year in our modern and he has almost
Speaker 1: certainly received at least ten million dollars in straight up
Speaker 1: cash for him, not for his company. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is a good business for him. So yeah, six was
Speaker 1: a busy year for Paul Manafort. In addition to everything
Speaker 1: he was doing with the marcos Is, he also did
Speaker 1: a lot of work for a client named Jonah Savimbi,
Speaker 1: a former Maoist war lord who had become an anti
Speaker 1: communist war lord. His army kind of sword absolutely turned
Speaker 1: women into sex slaves and murdered children. So you can
Speaker 1: see why he needed the pr genius of Paul Manafort
Speaker 1: to refurbish his image. He's working with this guy the
Speaker 1: same year he's working with fucking Ferdinand Marcos. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Manafort had Sevembi make a pilgrimage to New York and
Speaker 1: d C to charm journalists and politicians with the hope
Speaker 1: of getting aid from the US government and former shipload
Speaker 1: of weapons to continue perpetrating his war. He had Savimbi
Speaker 1: were an expensive suit and right around in a stretched
Speaker 1: limo from fancy hotel to fancy hotel. Here's how A
Speaker 1: Time magazine article from nineteen eighties six the slickst shop
Speaker 1: in Town, which is what they called. Manafort's firm described
Speaker 1: the charm tour. When Savimbi came to Washington last month
Speaker 1: to seek support for his guerrilla organization and its struggle
Speaker 1: against the Marxist regime in Angola, he hired Black Manifort.
Speaker 1: When the what the firm achieved was quickly dubbed Savimbi chic.
Speaker 1: Doors swung open all over town for the guerrilla leader,
Speaker 1: who was depardly attired in a Nehru suit and ferried
Speaker 1: about in a stretched limousine. Dole had shown. Bob Dole
Speaker 1: had shown only general interest in Savimbi's cause until Black,
Speaker 1: the majority leader's former aid, approached him on his client's behalf.
Speaker 1: Doll promptly introduced a congressional resolution backing Unita that was
Speaker 1: his his organization's insurgency, and sent a letter to the
Speaker 1: State Department urging that the US supply it with heavy arms.
Speaker 1: The firm's fee for such services was report at least
Speaker 1: six dred thousand dollars. It's a bargain, so yeah, that
Speaker 1: comes from where terrorist warlord give him grand and they
Speaker 1: get him in touch with the halls of power, who
Speaker 1: then send him missile launchers and ship and Bob Dole
Speaker 1: at the time was a senim majority leader. And then
Speaker 1: how did so All that happened was that Black was
Speaker 1: his aid and he walked in him was like, hey,
Speaker 1: would you do this? And he just did it. That's
Speaker 1: that's what you're paying for when you pay for Manafort,
Speaker 1: Black and Stone. They have connections in Congress, and so
Speaker 1: if you're a warlord, you give them a shipload of money,
Speaker 1: they will make you look good. They'll advise you how
Speaker 1: to talk in order to be acceptable to d C.
Speaker 1: And then they'll go to their friends who were in
Speaker 1: Congress who they helped get elected and be like, this
Speaker 1: guy needs a shipload of guns, and we got plenty
Speaker 1: of guns. Why don't we give him some. Man, I'm
Speaker 1: realizing I'm super naive. I'm just like, why would they
Speaker 1: do that? Meaning because they don't get because they don't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just and you're like money man, and I'm like what, Um,
Speaker 1: if you're disturbed. All of this was disturbing to people
Speaker 1: at the time because it was goody new at this time.
Speaker 1: UM Paul Manafort assured everyone who was disturbed that his
Speaker 1: firm was quote loyal to the president and added, we
Speaker 1: would never lobby against Star Wars for example. Ah, it's
Speaker 1: such a piece of ship um. Paul Manafort also assured
Speaker 1: everyone that Black Manafort and Stone did turn down some jobs,
Speaker 1: like a possibly lucrative account with Momar Kadafi, So they
Speaker 1: won't work with everybody. Everybody now the lobby they worked
Speaker 1: with Hitler, No, that was Ivy. That was Ivy that
Speaker 1: was far too young to work with Hitler. Either way,
Speaker 1: they worked in thirty four percent. Paul Manafort would have
Speaker 1: been loving Hitler. They worked with Ivy Lee pretty rough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the lobbying work with Savimbi, a warlord, also meant
Speaker 1: that Manafort and his company now had a vested interest
Speaker 1: in keeping the war in Angola going because they keep
Speaker 1: getting money as long as they keep and by the
Speaker 1: into the nineteen eighties, the country seemed close to peace,
Speaker 1: especially since the Soviets had stopped giving aid to angle
Speaker 1: Is communist government. So the side should have been able
Speaker 1: to work something out. USSR stopped aiding the communists and
Speaker 1: Angle if you stopped aiding the insurgents, then they had
Speaker 1: to workout we want to keep the war going. Well,
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort wanted to keep the war going, and he
Speaker 1: was able to guarantee additional shipments of weaponry, which allowed
Speaker 1: the war to continue into the late nineteen nineties. By
Speaker 1: the late nineties, more than two hundred people per day,
Speaker 1: we're dying in the fighting, and it's possible that the
Speaker 1: extension of the war that he's partly responsible for killed
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands. Holy shit, he's a real piece of shit.
Speaker 1: And you know, I have to think that a man
Speaker 1: like Paul Manafort has never enjoyed the cheesy crunch of
Speaker 1: a nacho derrito, because I think that a guy like
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort probably subsists entirely on fancy caviars and in
Speaker 1: four hundred dollar cheeses. He doesn't enjoy common pleasures like
Speaker 1: the doritos. True, there's no caviar flavored dorrito. There's not.
Speaker 1: Because they're an honest working man snap and for some
Speaker 1: other honest products that may or may not be angled
Speaker 1: towards working men. But definitely support this podcast. Here are
Speaker 1: some ads and we're back. Goodness, those were some good
Speaker 1: products and or services. All right, let's get back into
Speaker 1: the maniforting. So we we just talked about sort of
Speaker 1: the lobbying work that Manafort did for Ferdinand Marcos of
Speaker 1: the Philippines up until he got ousted by rebels, and
Speaker 1: the work he did supporting rebels and helping to extend
Speaker 1: a civil warrning Gola. Uh. And now we're getting into
Speaker 1: the rest of his career. Um. Yeah. I think the
Speaker 1: best summary of what his firm was doing at this
Speaker 1: time was actually by his business partner, Roger Stone. He
Speaker 1: gave it last year or h and Kin Ruden's political
Speaker 1: Junkie podcast, so which I don't think is a gigantic podcast,
Speaker 1: but he said, of this era, black Manafort, Stone and
Speaker 1: Kelly lined up most of the dictators in the world
Speaker 1: that we could find pro Western dictators. Of course, dictators
Speaker 1: are in the eye of the beholder. You're saying dictator. No,
Speaker 1: he's completely admitting it. And in two thousand fifteen, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that dude is a complete sociopath. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: is a hundred percent soulless. It's weird too, though. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's the only sociopath I'm aware of that is aware
Speaker 1: he's a sociopath and acts on it, like knows what
Speaker 1: sociopathy is and how it can be advantageous in the
Speaker 1: n Maybe isn't the sociopath He's he's actively bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I almost, I almost. I hate him less than most
Speaker 1: of the terrible people today, just because he never seen
Speaker 1: there seems to I don't think there's any doubt in
Speaker 1: his head that he's making the world worse. Cares and
Speaker 1: it's just okay, Well, you just need to be stopped somehow,
Speaker 1: hopefully by just being ostracized politically in some glorious day
Speaker 1: in the future, other people who pretend to be good,
Speaker 1: I guess, or who we have to go after first,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what you do with
Speaker 1: Roger Stone. So over the course of the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Stone and Black of you know, Black Manifort and Stone
Speaker 1: got even deeper into Republican Party politics. Paul Manafort, though,
Speaker 1: did a little bit, started doing a lot less work
Speaker 1: in the US and fell in love with working for
Speaker 1: shady for an oligarchs. Um. He did continue to do
Speaker 1: some work in the United States. He was the deputy
Speaker 1: convention manager for George H. W. Bush's Republican Convention. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was at that convention in New Orleans where Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort and Donald Trump first met. This is in nineteen
Speaker 1: eight Here's how Slate described the encounter. Trump was in
Speaker 1: town and curious to see how a convention was really run.
Speaker 1: Manafort thought it'd be neat to get his picture with
Speaker 1: the Donald. The two convened in a trailer outside of
Speaker 1: the Louisiana super Dome during a steamy weekday for a
Speaker 1: friendly chit chat. This friendly chit chat would eventually lead
Speaker 1: to a decades long personal and professional relationship between the
Speaker 1: two men. For now, Manafort was by far the political
Speaker 1: senior of the two. He hadn't just succeeded in politics,
Speaker 1: he'd helped change the game entirely. See in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: as I said, there were sixty four registered lobbyists in
Speaker 1: the entire United States due to the lobbying boom that
Speaker 1: Paul helped ignite. By nineteen ninety, there were more than
Speaker 1: ten thousand registered lobbyists in the United States. That's Paul
Speaker 1: Maniforts doing in large part. That's yeah. So by nineteen two,
Speaker 1: people with actual souls had started to take notice of
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort's work. The Center for Public Integrity published a
Speaker 1: report on foreign influence pedaling called the Torturers Lobby. They
Speaker 1: called it this because the people Manifort and his colleagues
Speaker 1: represented were guilty of torturing hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: The report noted that quote. Both Kenya and Nigeria, who
Speaker 1: were clients of Maniforts, have widely criticized human rights records.
Speaker 1: Last year, Kenya received thirty eight million in US four
Speaker 1: and aid and spent over one point four million on
Speaker 1: Washington lobbyists to get it. Nigeria received eight point three
Speaker 1: million and expended in excess of two and a half million.
Speaker 1: Whom did both countries call upon to do their bidding
Speaker 1: for the US government? Why? It was Black Maniforts, Stone
Speaker 1: and Kelly. They added a Kelly at this point. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Macaw Matua from Harvard Law Schools Human Rights Program stated
Speaker 1: of this quote, it's morally objectionable all this influence peddling.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt several of these countries couldn't afford these
Speaker 1: lobbyists without the help of American taxpayers. In other words,
Speaker 1: the aid that these dictators received subsidized their ability to
Speaker 1: afford Paul Manafort and his fellow travelers. Wait to say
Speaker 1: that again, So they would get eight or ten million
Speaker 1: dollars in aid from the US and then they pay
Speaker 1: a million or two to Paul Manifford, so he was
Speaker 1: he was getting the US government to pay these guys
Speaker 1: and the Ganella afford to pay him because they were
Speaker 1: getting so much aid from the US. Right, that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like it should be doable, it doesn't. It seems
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing that a sane in ethical
Speaker 1: society would say. No. But yeah, at some point, at
Speaker 1: the very least, we never did. Um. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from that report the tortures lobby again. A
Speaker 1: spokeswoman for Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly told the Center
Speaker 1: that the firm does not quote attempt to explain away
Speaker 1: concerns about human rights. Instead, she said, we try to
Speaker 1: open a dialogue. So that's nice conversational tortures about torturing,
Speaker 1: which they need more money to do more of. Well,
Speaker 1: you've got to be civil, yeah, and heard that somewhere recently.
Speaker 1: Civilities critical, It's the most important thing, even matter you're talking.
Speaker 1: You couldn't call a guy like Paul Manafort like a
Speaker 1: ship drenched ass nozzle because that's not civil. No, it
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve to be treated that way, even though he's
Speaker 1: enabled the deaths of hundreds of thousands. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, this person like committed genocide. It's sort of so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's definitely committed world class human rights violations culpable anyway. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spy Magazine wrote an article on all this with the
Speaker 1: wonderful title Publicists of the Damned, which is solid titling spy. Uh.
Speaker 1: They didn't talk to Paul Manafort, but they interviewed his
Speaker 1: friend and colleague, John Donaldson. I think Donaldson's interview helps
Speaker 1: explain how these fuckers justified their factory to themselves. They
Speaker 1: didn't talk to Paul Manifort, but they interviewed his friend
Speaker 1: and colleague, John Donaldson. I think Donaldson's interview helps explain
Speaker 1: how these fuckers justify their fury to themselves. Quote when
Speaker 1: a friendly Congressional aid took Donaldson aside to express his
Speaker 1: misgivings about the black Manifort clients Kenya and Somalia, saying, John,
Speaker 1: these guys are real bad. Donaldson responded, Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: but we're really trying to persuade them to clean up
Speaker 1: their act. Yeah, well for him, good for him, and
Speaker 1: I think things are going well in Somalia these days.
Speaker 1: I haven't checked up on them since the early nineties,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it seems like a country that's just straight,
Speaker 1: straight rocket. Yeah. No, everything has been good there since
Speaker 1: the early nineties. Definitely seems like it seems like it. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: So most of that article, the Spy magazine article folks
Speaker 1: to round a different firm Van Kloburg and associates, who
Speaker 1: are the PR dudes for Saddam Hussein. But Spy recognized
Speaker 1: and gave credit to Paul Manifort's company first starting this
Speaker 1: industry and dominating it. They ranked all of the influence
Speaker 1: peddlers in terms of the amount of bloody hands and
Speaker 1: uh Manafort black yeah number one, but on hands rating,
Speaker 1: which is the right way to rate this industry absolutely Yeah,
Speaker 1: wait that was it was an American PR firm that
Speaker 1: these are all supported. This is I can't even handle it, man,
Speaker 1: I don't. I guess I knew, I knew it was
Speaker 1: this level of corruption, but wow, Okay, it's unspeakable. I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna need more fruit leather pretty soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fruit leather and Derrito's will help, will help cleanse our
Speaker 1: moral pal Yeah. So in the early nineties, Paul Manifort
Speaker 1: was a busy guy, as we've just gotten through talking about.
Speaker 1: But he was not too busy to help out a
Speaker 1: friend in need, a friend like his buddy Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: Mr Trump came to Paul Manifort with a problem Peaquat
Speaker 1: Indians had opened up a casino that was apparently taking
Speaker 1: business away from Trump's casinos in Atlantic sit Now, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say what exact advice Manaford gave Mr. Trump,
Speaker 1: but Trump wound up testifying in front of the House
Speaker 1: Native American Affairs Subcommittee, and he said, among other things,
Speaker 1: those don't look like Indians to me. What yes? And
Speaker 1: so his argument was he was trying to convince them
Speaker 1: they're not Native Americans. That's at West where he started.
Speaker 1: He was asked, what were they have been? People with
Speaker 1: like toner on Native American face? He was crazy what
Speaker 1: an Indian looked like in Congress and he responded, you know,
Speaker 1: you know. He also insinuated the mob was heavily involved
Speaker 1: with these Indian casinos, without any evidence. He claimed that
Speaker 1: Indian gaming had been quote a total disaster for Connecticut
Speaker 1: man the origin of the phrase a total disaster. I
Speaker 1: feel bound by honor to read you this excerpt from
Speaker 1: a Hartford Courant article about his testimony. When it was
Speaker 1: finally Trump's turn, he discarded the seven page statement he
Speaker 1: was going to read. I had a long and boring speech,
Speaker 1: he told the panel. It was politically correct and something
Speaker 1: that would have gotten me into no trouble whatsoever. With that,
Speaker 1: he offered off the cup remarks about some of the
Speaker 1: things bugging him lately, such as the mob forget the
Speaker 1: Justice Department shrug. Organized crime is rampant, people know it,
Speaker 1: people talk about it. Trump insisted, I wonder what j
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover would have said about this. Now. Neil Abercrombie,
Speaker 1: a Democrat from Hawaii, wind up getting in the last word.
Speaker 1: And that Hartford Corn article and his speaking on that
Speaker 1: in nine inadvertently provides the best summary of modern politics
Speaker 1: I've ever heard free speech reins, no matter how idiotic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really nailed totally. So. Other coverage by Hartford Current
Speaker 1: at the time revealed that by this point Trump had
Speaker 1: been retaining the services of Black, Manifort and Stone for
Speaker 1: years for their advice on quote, housing matters. When he
Speaker 1: was asked why he needed mister Manifort's services, Trump laughed,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this lobbying does anything, but they've
Speaker 1: represented me over the years and I'm very loyal because
Speaker 1: if we know one thing about Donald Trump Trump crazy
Speaker 1: left turn, it's weird because he he seems so maniacal
Speaker 1: and so self important that you forget that he's really
Speaker 1: like socially incredibly smart. Yeah, Donald Trump, Yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: dumb at so many things that you forget that he's
Speaker 1: a genius in one thing, right, absolutely, which is the
Speaker 1: most dangerous. There's nothing as dangerous as an idiot with
Speaker 1: a trick up his sleeve. I also wonder how dumb
Speaker 1: he is. I wonder how much of it actually is calculated,
Speaker 1: even like tweeting of like co Fe Fey, you know
Speaker 1: how on purpose that was? Yeah, it's it's I've just
Speaker 1: stopped paying attention to any anything funny because like he's
Speaker 1: we should be laughing at him now. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how ridiculous the ship he does. He should anyway. This
Speaker 1: is not the Donald Trump episode. Although did he this
Speaker 1: subcommittee that those are those people were not Native Americans? Okay, no,
Speaker 1: No one had to listen to Donald yet. So this
Speaker 1: was still that beautiful period where you could just ignore him.
Speaker 1: Did they just call him dumb and move on? They
Speaker 1: called him dumb and racist, like the people. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were like, this was really racist testiment because he said
Speaker 1: they're not they don't look like Indians. It's insanity. Um.
Speaker 1: So during the nineteen nineties, Paul began a friendship with
Speaker 1: another guy to an arms dealer named Abdul Rahman las Here,
Speaker 1: who paid him like ninety grand and nineteen four to
Speaker 1: help broker a deal with a French politician to help
Speaker 1: Pakistan make submarines. It didn't end well and like eleven
Speaker 1: people were murdered, but Paul Manafort still got paid. Um.
Speaker 1: According to The Atlantic, las Here was something of a
Speaker 1: bad influence on Paul Manafort. They quoted one of his
Speaker 1: friends as saying, Paul became aware of the difference between
Speaker 1: making three hundred thousand and five million. He discovered the
Speaker 1: south of France las Here would show him how to
Speaker 1: live that life. So Paul is now hanging out with
Speaker 1: like a fucking arms merchant multimillionaire if not billionaire, and
Speaker 1: he realizes that like his just millionaire lifestyle is small,
Speaker 1: not enough. Yeah, so Paul starts spending less and less
Speaker 1: time at the office and more time jet setting around
Speaker 1: with Ellis here. Uh. He also started spending money like
Speaker 1: he was worried it might evaporate. When his daughter Andrea
Speaker 1: decided she wanted a horsey, Paul Manafort bought a farm
Speaker 1: in Palm Beach and filled it with pure bred Irish horses.
Speaker 1: He also hired a full staff to take care of them.
Speaker 1: In nineteen and one, his firm gets bought by another company,
Speaker 1: and he makes a bunch of money, and he leaves
Speaker 1: in in nineteen five in order to set up another
Speaker 1: lobbying firm of his own, more focused on overseas deals,
Speaker 1: so he leaves. Black Man of hort and Stone gets
Speaker 1: bought and he leaves after a couple of years. Um,
Speaker 1: but he keeps. He starts a couple of different firms,
Speaker 1: all doing the same thing. Yeah. Um, his life isn't
Speaker 1: all fun and games. His wife was injured in a
Speaker 1: horrible horseback riding accident in and by all accounts, he
Speaker 1: was very devoted to her while she healed. So that's okay,
Speaker 1: nice thing. Yeah. One way he seemed to deal with
Speaker 1: his stress was by buying houses. Often side unseane. He
Speaker 1: just decide I want a new house, and boom. As
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp's example proves, this kind of lifestyle is not
Speaker 1: sustainable without regular injections of cash. Uh and since working
Speaker 1: with dictators wasn't always enough to make the bills, Paul
Speaker 1: decided to get it on a great scam opportunity with
Speaker 1: his arms dealer buddy las Here. Here's the Atlantic quote.
Speaker 1: In two thousand two, he and Manafort persuaded the bank
Speaker 1: to invest fifty seven million euros in a Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: biometrics company. According to reporting by the Portuguese newspaper Observator,
Speaker 1: Manafort was the lead American investor in the company. His
Speaker 1: involvement helped justify the bank's investment despite evidence of the
Speaker 1: company's faulty products and lacks accounting. Elas Here is alleged
Speaker 1: to have extracted bloated commissions from the deal and to
Speaker 1: have pocketed some of the banks loans. Manafort reportedly made
Speaker 1: one and a half million dollars selling his shares of
Speaker 1: the biometrics firm before the company eventually came tumbling down.
Speaker 1: So he's just fine fucking over everybody, damn yeah, uh
Speaker 1: so yeah. By two thousand and five, Paul Manapour is
Speaker 1: known as the guy. If you were a shady dictator
Speaker 1: or criminal looking to improve your image abroad, maybe get
Speaker 1: in the good graces of US politicians. This led him
Speaker 1: to Ukraine and the employee of its wealthiest citizen, a
Speaker 1: steel billionaire named Renat Akhmatov. According to PolitiFact, Manafort advised
Speaker 1: one of Akhmatov's companies on corporate communication strategy. But it
Speaker 1: turned out Akhmatov was a friend of this guy, Viktor Yanukovich,
Speaker 1: who was really in a bit of a pickle. Now,
Speaker 1: Victor was the Prime Minister of Ukraine and a buddy
Speaker 1: of the Putin regime. He wanted to move Ukraine closer
Speaker 1: in the geopolitical sense to Russia, but most Ukrainians, particularly
Speaker 1: in the western part of the country, did not want this.
Speaker 1: They hoped to eventually become part of the EU. It
Speaker 1: was a big issue for the country and it came
Speaker 1: up front and center in the two thousand five election
Speaker 1: when Victor Yunukovitch went up against Victor Yukashenko, who was
Speaker 1: pro West. Yukashenko was horribly poisoned with dioxin during the
Speaker 1: campaign and Yanukovich was declared the winner. People thought this
Speaker 1: was shady and they took to the station yeah to protest.
Speaker 1: Uh the Supreme Court ordered a revote, which is apparently
Speaker 1: an option in some countries, and yeah, they held a
Speaker 1: revote two weeks later. So this guy Yanukovich calls Paul
Speaker 1: Manafort two weeks before the new vote and asked him
Speaker 1: to help save his ailing presidential campaign, which is very
Speaker 1: unpopular since he poisoned. That guy had to have been him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, I mean, of course, Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know why people don't like me. Yeah, yeah, Anyway, Manaford,
Speaker 1: being an honest guy, told him that there wasn't much
Speaker 1: he could do at this late hour, and Yanukovich did lose,
Speaker 1: but he wound up hiring Manafort shortly thereafter. The two
Speaker 1: worked together for nearly a decade. On paper, Manafort was
Speaker 1: an advisor to Yanukovich's party. In reality, he was also
Speaker 1: helping revamp Yanukovich himself. Here's the Washington Post quote. Manaford
Speaker 1: and half a dozen businessmen, lawyers, and political analysts involved
Speaker 1: in Ukraine at the time brought discipline and focus that
Speaker 1: the Yanukovich led campaigns had lacked. He got Yanukovich to
Speaker 1: comb his hair better to stay on message during public appearances.
Speaker 1: He drilled them on talking points and told them what
Speaker 1: suits to wear. He tried to control everything. A former
Speaker 1: member of Yanukovich's party recalled how people who represented the
Speaker 1: party would be dressed the words they said, their makeup
Speaker 1: and style lists, every small detail, and it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things people at the time will say, he
Speaker 1: just advised Yanukovich to dress like himself and Comba's hair.
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort did because they were kind of the same size,
Speaker 1: and Manor was like, just be more like me and
Speaker 1: you'll win the election. Wow. Did it work? Well? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's just getting a little bit ahead of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh sorry, I I know you're the one with the
Speaker 1: yeah spoiler. Yet did totally did, but it took a while. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five, Manaford decided he needed some side
Speaker 1: action while he was starting up work with this Yanukovich guy,
Speaker 1: so he went to a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripashka
Speaker 1: with an offer. If a Leg would put up a
Speaker 1: shitload of money, Paul would put together a program to,
Speaker 1: according to the AP quote, influence politics, business dealings, and
Speaker 1: news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet
Speaker 1: republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's government. So Derri Pashka
Speaker 1: says he didn't wind up going through with this idea
Speaker 1: and maybe it's true. In any case, that's where Paul
Speaker 1: Manaford's head was at in two thousand five visa v.
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin, totally happy to pedal influence to the guy
Speaker 1: to the west. So yeah, Paul Manafort spent the early
Speaker 1: aughts using his American political know how to shape Victor
Speaker 1: Yunukovich in to the kind of guy who could win
Speaker 1: an election. Apparently Paul's a strategy was yet to make
Speaker 1: you look and dressed exactly like him. Maniford also advised
Speaker 1: Ynukovich's party, the Party of Regions, to focus on one
Speaker 1: single theme every week, rather than come to grips with
Speaker 1: the opposition over a bunch of different issues. Just always
Speaker 1: say focus on one thing that week, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't ignore anything else, and just yeah, shout about that.
Speaker 1: I forget because there's so much death in in these
Speaker 1: stories that he's giving them political advice that seems to
Speaker 1: be working. Yeah, he's advising him to act like American
Speaker 1: politicians in a country that doesn't have a long history
Speaker 1: of democracy, be manipulative. Yeah, and so he's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just say one thing a bunch uh yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get into a lot more about
Speaker 1: Manifort's work in Ukraine and and how that all ended
Speaker 1: in blood and fire and horrible death, as well as
Speaker 1: the rest of the Paul Manafort story. But that is
Speaker 1: going to have to come in another couple of days
Speaker 1: because this is the end of part one of our
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort podcast, So we'll get back into it on Thursday.
Speaker 1: You can hear the conclusion of this thrilling story. Until then,
Speaker 1: do you want to plug some plug doubles for the people?
Speaker 1: Oh sure, I'm at Dave to the Ross on everything.
Speaker 1: That's da V E T O T H E R
Speaker 1: O S S, Twitter and Instagram, and it's my website
Speaker 1: and also listen to my podcast Suicide Buddies Suicide Buddies.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I write Okay, just two letters. You can find this
Speaker 1: podcast at at Bastard's Pod on Twitter. You can also
Speaker 1: find our website behind the Bastards dot com. Or we'll
Speaker 1: have pictures from this episode and a list of all
Speaker 1: of the many, many sources that were used. So yeah,
Speaker 1: come check us out next Thursday and we will we
Speaker 1: will continue to talk about what a fantastic piece of ship.
Speaker 1: Paul Manaford is. It's a little bit of a spoiler.
Speaker 1: He's probably the guy that we're talking about on this
Speaker 1: show that I have the most of a personal connection
Speaker 1: to because I reported extensively on the Ukrainian Revolution and
Speaker 1: on their civil war back in two and fifteen. So
Speaker 1: you can you can prepare for me to get real
Speaker 1: angry in the next podcast. Can't wait. Yeah, it'll be exciting.
Speaker 1: H