Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the
Speaker 1: show where we tell you everything you don't know about
Speaker 1: the very worst people in all of history. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: My guess this week are Amalia Lambert and Tess Lynch
Speaker 1: from the wonderful podcast Night Call. They're also writers and
Speaker 1: people about Town is His's Golden Gloves Boxers. I think
Speaker 1: we settled on just more accomplished people than me, is
Speaker 1: what's important for you to know for your purposes. And
Speaker 1: this week we are talking about someone who might be
Speaker 1: controversial on this podcast, So I want to lead in
Speaker 1: here before we introduce the subject by talking about my methodology,
Speaker 1: because we're about a dozen episodes or so. In so far,
Speaker 1: the focus on this podcast has always been the worst
Speaker 1: people in history, which I define as the shittiest one
Speaker 1: percent of human beings who have ever lived. Now, there's
Speaker 1: about one hundred and seven billion people in the total
Speaker 1: estimated human population, which gives us a big pool to
Speaker 1: draw from, which is how I can internally justify covering
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler one week and Harvey Weinstein the next, even
Speaker 1: though they're not, you know, quite on the same spectrum
Speaker 1: of awfal. So our next subject today hasn't killed anybody,
Speaker 1: she didn't cause a genocide, she's not a mass rapist.
Speaker 1: I still think I can justify putting her in that
Speaker 1: top one percent, although she's probably near the bottom of
Speaker 1: that one percent. Have y'all ever heard of a lady
Speaker 1: named Joan Quiggly? No, sounds familiar, But I don't know why.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say, like Margaret Thatcher. No,
Speaker 1: because she's got blood on her Yeah, she said in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the one percent. I was like, there's
Speaker 1: totally a Margaret Thatcher episode. But she's more in the middle, right,
Speaker 1: She's up there, Joan Quiggly, Joan Quiggly. Now, Joan Quigley
Speaker 1: does have a little bit of a connection to Margaret
Speaker 1: Thatcher because Joan Quigley has a very deep connection to
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan because Joan Quigley was Ronald Reagan's astrologer. Really yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. We're in so. I we were talking
Speaker 1: about it today because I read her book and it
Speaker 1: made me really hate her, And I don't know, some
Speaker 1: people may disagree that she's terrible, So we'll get into
Speaker 1: that too. Part of this podcast will be y'all telling
Speaker 1: me if I'm a crazy person judging her unfairly, or
Speaker 1: if you guys think she's awful too. But regardless of
Speaker 1: what we conclude, I've named this episode Joan Quiggly History's
Speaker 1: greatest monster. So let's dive into it. Joan Cecil Quigley
Speaker 1: was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on April tenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, at four to seventeen PM. That time is
Speaker 1: critical because if you don't know the exact minute of
Speaker 1: someone's birth, you can't properly cast their horoscope. This is
Speaker 1: something I learned by reading four hundred pages of Joan Quigley.
Speaker 1: Explain astrology to me. You read the whole thing? Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I have. Of course she a good writer. No, oh,
Speaker 1: she's not. I'll give it in fairness, she's not like
Speaker 1: bad like it's not. I'm not. I was never distracted
Speaker 1: by the writing quality of the book. How did you
Speaker 1: decide to read that? I realized that Ronald Reagan's astrologer
Speaker 1: had written a book, and then I bought it. How
Speaker 1: did you find out Ronald Reagan had an astrologer? I
Speaker 1: was drunk and browsing the internet at some point, and
Speaker 1: like I came across some little listical article talking about
Speaker 1: like wacky facts about US presidents. I think that's I
Speaker 1: remember that. She was also an astrologer to several other
Speaker 1: notable people. Was she an astrologer to the stars? Yes,
Speaker 1: oh yes, yes, yeah, I know, I know a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I don't know enough. Keep telling us. Yeah, well yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jones' father, John was a former lawyer who moved
Speaker 1: to San Francisco and bought a fancy hotel. His wife
Speaker 1: is named Zelda, which is like, if you know the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, that's like the name to have if you're
Speaker 1: a rich lady. It's like, that's like Jackson is today,
Speaker 1: Jackson Jackson. Oh god, yeah, just jack Like they're all
Speaker 1: club promoters. Okay. Yeah. So he and his wife Zelda
Speaker 1: raised their daughters as high society ladies. They had a
Speaker 1: penthouse on Knob Hill in San Francisco and went to
Speaker 1: a private school. The Quigly Girls, as they were known,
Speaker 1: had chauffeurs to take them to school. Parties generally enrolls royces.
Speaker 1: In her obituary, The Los Angeles Times said that she
Speaker 1: had quote come from the Creme de la creme of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, gentility and her fancy, rich lady bonafides would
Speaker 1: prove critical in earning her Nancy Reagan's trust. Joan went
Speaker 1: to Vassar. She got a degree in art history. Her
Speaker 1: mom was apparently an astrology nerd, and that's where Joan
Speaker 1: caught the bug. She spent a year as a secret
Speaker 1: apprentice to a soothsayer named Jerome Pearson. Her dad hated astrology,
Speaker 1: and so she had to hide her chart making and
Speaker 1: star watching while publicly doing normal aristocratic stuff like whatever
Speaker 1: the Junior League is. I don't know what the junior
Speaker 1: League is. Probably you dance with people, dance with other
Speaker 1: rich people, like Catilians, but with a sportier sounding name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my guess. Katillion is the only word that came
Speaker 1: into my mind when I read Junior league. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what one is. It's a club for rich people.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's only women. Like the picture in
Speaker 1: my head is that scene from Gone with the Wind
Speaker 1: where the lady in the big dress descends the staircase. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: something rich people do so they can hang out and
Speaker 1: wear fancy clothes. Do you have to wear a bustle? Ye?
Speaker 1: It's probably kind of racist. Oh, definitely, there's no Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: So once Joan is out of college in junior league
Speaker 1: or whatever and moves out of her dad's house, she
Speaker 1: starts writing an astrology column for seventeen magazine, which I
Speaker 1: didn't realize went back that far. And what year is this?
Speaker 1: Like the forties? Yeah, this is in like the forties seventeen,
Speaker 1: which back in the forties. Yeah, yeah, because they had
Speaker 1: just invented teenagers, right, yeah, they're like, now they need
Speaker 1: a magazine. Oh, people who live in past twelve. I
Speaker 1: guess we gotta figure the thing out. Her gig at
Speaker 1: seventeen didn't last long, though, because she didn't like writing
Speaker 1: horoscopes for tabloids. She runted to read the stars of
Speaker 1: the rich and famous and was kind of disgusted by
Speaker 1: the idea that poor people might use astrology. I should
Speaker 1: ask you this point, are either of y'all into astrology?
Speaker 1: I mean, tangentially. We've done a couple of night calls
Speaker 1: where we talked about astrology a bunch and sort of
Speaker 1: why it's interesting whether you believe in it or not.
Speaker 1: I personally do not believe in it, but I've also
Speaker 1: said it's probably some of a a virgo and the boring
Speaker 1: is and I love virgos, and I specifically aimed for
Speaker 1: a virgo with one of my kids. Got locked down
Speaker 1: that ago very please, how do you aim for that?
Speaker 1: You know? Noulate, N Well, it's really more like ten.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what do you think about astrology? I'm not
Speaker 1: into astrology, but I like a good friend of mine
Speaker 1: for back home in Texas who's like an accountant, is
Speaker 1: really into astrology. It's just one of those grounded people
Speaker 1: I know. So I don't think an issue. Well, what's
Speaker 1: your sign's entertaining? If I may, I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 1: What's your birthday? March? March? What? Twenty second? I think
Speaker 1: you're a Pisces. Maybe I'm wrong. I have no true
Speaker 1: astrology nerd would know. I know, but I you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about this, liked it. It's like, even though
Speaker 1: I don't believe in or like astrology, especially if you
Speaker 1: live in Los Angeles, you meet a lot of people
Speaker 1: but maybe are into astrology. There's also a thing I
Speaker 1: don't like where people are sort of like misogynistic about like, oh,
Speaker 1: women are so dumb they believe in astrology. Plenty of
Speaker 1: men believe in astrology. There's plenty of dumb men who
Speaker 1: believe in astrology. There's plenty of dumb men who believe
Speaker 1: in it, like trickle down economics. I think it's like
Speaker 1: it's like sports or something. It's just like a thing
Speaker 1: to keep life more entertain than it is. I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: I believe in it way more than I believe in chakras.
Speaker 1: When people get and I'm just like, Wow, they took
Speaker 1: you for a fool, because astrology you can, you know,
Speaker 1: entertain yourself with for free, so it can't actually be that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so we've decided as soon as you're spending
Speaker 1: money on it, then it's a day. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that that's kind of how I feel about it. Like
Speaker 1: I don't have any issue and I I like, I
Speaker 1: tried to as I edited this podcast make sure that
Speaker 1: I was not just attacking people astrology, because like, it's
Speaker 1: whatever you get do to get through the day. I've
Speaker 1: I've been superstitious about stuff when I've been in whatever,
Speaker 1: when you need it. Sometimes, yes, life, anything you're into.
Speaker 1: If you're doing it for Ronald Reagan, you're on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of amen, Well that may be one. And
Speaker 1: I'm also I'm trying to be fair to the Reagan's
Speaker 1: in this, although I'm not a Ronald Reagan fans. You
Speaker 1: do a history podcast about history, A's greatest monster we're
Speaker 1: going to cover. We're going to hit on the Reagans
Speaker 1: on this, but I think they're I think they're victims
Speaker 1: of Joan Quickly in this, and we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a second. Like we like Joan Quickly, Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: who scams the scammers? Ye? This is a complicated one.
Speaker 1: If it was just one other person sitting here, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't but two other people, I feel like we can
Speaker 1: make the historical judgment. I think I didn't finish school,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how historians make judgments, but I
Speaker 1: think this is it. I'm absolutely positive that this is
Speaker 1: exactly how it should be done. Fantastic. Okay. So Joan
Speaker 1: didn't like doing horoscopes for poor people, and didn't like
Speaker 1: doing horoscopes for anyone who could just afford to buy
Speaker 1: a magazine. Her obituary in The Economist notes that quote
Speaker 1: she did not make forecasts or cast up horoscopes for
Speaker 1: ordinary people, only for corporate figures, celebrities, and those who
Speaker 1: guided the destinies of nations. I wish the economist was
Speaker 1: exaggerating about that. The sad truth is that Joan Quigley
Speaker 1: was probably the most influential astrologer of the twentieth century. Now,
Speaker 1: Donald Reagan was Ronald Reagan's Treasury Secretary starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one and the White House Chief of Staff from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five to eighty seven. And it's real funny
Speaker 1: that Donald Reagan worked so closely with Ronald Reagan. Were
Speaker 1: they related? So their last names are spelled differently? What
Speaker 1: Donald Reagan is ourg Donald Reagan? Yeah, Donald Reagan. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call him Donald. Yeah, I should call him Donald Reagan.
Speaker 1: Still yeah, still confusing. So yeah, Donald Reagan was the
Speaker 1: chief of staff, which is like, that's a big job.
Speaker 1: That was Steve Bannon's job until like a year ago. Now,
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, Okay, So Donald Reagan was the White House
Speaker 1: Chief of Staff from eighty five to eighty seven. He
Speaker 1: was a big trickle down economics guy. He was very
Speaker 1: importantly the administration. But he was forced to resign in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven because he couldn't protect the President from
Speaker 1: the fallout of the Iran Contra affair. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, he published a memoir called for the Record,
Speaker 1: where he revealed to the world the White House's quote
Speaker 1: most closely guarded secret. No, not Ronald Reagan's growing senility.
Speaker 1: Not the fact that we've been selling missiles too. Iran
Speaker 1: joan quickly, this is a quote from Donald Reagan. Virtually
Speaker 1: every major move and decision that Reagan's made during my
Speaker 1: time as White House Chief of staff was cleared in
Speaker 1: advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up
Speaker 1: horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in favorable
Speaker 1: alignment for the enterprise, can tinued, would that there had
Speaker 1: been some other explanation, But there wasn't astrology, was it.
Speaker 1: It was a daily, sometimes hourly factor in every decision
Speaker 1: affecting the President's schedule. What what I didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: I love this. I didn't know the depth of this.
Speaker 1: Was she like living at the White House? Or was
Speaker 1: she just was he calling from San Francisco? It was
Speaker 1: Nancy who would call, Yeah, and we'll well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into a little bit about how it worked. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like she notes a number of times in her memoirir
Speaker 1: and Donald Reagan backs it up. She had absolute control
Speaker 1: of her when Air Force one took off and landed,
Speaker 1: she could make it circle in the sky if she
Speaker 1: wanted it to land at a different time, because the
Speaker 1: stars said that was better. Well, hey, she went to Vassar,
Speaker 1: she had her art history degree. She obviously knew a
Speaker 1: thing or two. Yeah, yeah, no, the am Vassa is
Speaker 1: famous for its air force. That's what I meant undergraduate.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, strategy sounds like a nightmare. But
Speaker 1: also I'm like, wow, I didn't know the Reagans had
Speaker 1: like a restputant. Yeah, it's very rare, like a lady Rasputant.
Speaker 1: So I'm also maybe I like respect her as a
Speaker 1: history scammer. If Joe had moved to d C and
Speaker 1: been fucking all I guess the husbands in DC of
Speaker 1: all of the powerful government people like Resputant did to
Speaker 1: the ladies in the noble court in Russia, this would
Speaker 1: be a very different podcast. In fact, she had to
Speaker 1: do so much less work working remotely. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't be understated how great they draw up the stars.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and she was not shot and drowned in
Speaker 1: the Volga, which is spoiler, sorry, but you probably should
Speaker 1: have been. Yeah, it wouldn't have been the worst thing
Speaker 1: so far. I'm not really hating this lady. But let's
Speaker 1: keep going. Let's let's get into a little bit. So
Speaker 1: Donald notes that nobody other than some people very close
Speaker 1: to the president knew about this relationship, including his Secret
Speaker 1: Service detail. He even sort of mentions that he thinks
Speaker 1: they'd be kind of pissed to realize that, after all
Speaker 1: their years of carefully guarding the president, like Nancy, had
Speaker 1: been talking about his moves ahead of time with this
Speaker 1: astrologer over an unsecured phone line. He said, quote, surely
Speaker 1: they would think that posed a security risk, which it did,
Speaker 1: and that'll be a thing later. It actually kind of
Speaker 1: led to a grand Soviet US astrology duel. But that's
Speaker 1: a moment for I'm yeah, that's for later in the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of myself. Yeah, So, when mister Reagan
Speaker 1: dropped the truth about President Reagan's astrologer, it hit Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill like a bomb. The story sort of faded to
Speaker 1: just a general political fable. Now, like I think most
Speaker 1: people vaguely hear that the Reagans were into astrology, but
Speaker 1: they don't know much about it. But at the time
Speaker 1: it was as huge as story as it would be now,
Speaker 1: although now it would only be a story for a
Speaker 1: day and a half that best, maybe not even that.
Speaker 1: So Nancy Reagan insisted that it hadn't been a big deal.
Speaker 1: She claimed that her use of Joan had just been
Speaker 1: a silly affectation, nothing serious. This made Joan very angry
Speaker 1: in her mind. Not only had she not hurt the Reagans,
Speaker 1: her astrology had been the secret power behind the throne.
Speaker 1: So Joan decided to write a memoir of her own,
Speaker 1: and on March first, nineteen ninety, she published what does
Speaker 1: Joan Say? My seven years is White House Astrologer to
Speaker 1: Nancy and Ronald Reagan. This is the book that I
Speaker 1: read for this podcast, What does Jones Say? What does
Speaker 1: Jones John? About three hundred something pages, had a lot
Speaker 1: to say. I don't think it sold well. I wound
Speaker 1: up having to order a very old hardcover copy of
Speaker 1: it that had never been opened. There's no kindle edition
Speaker 1: of it, so I had to underline the words the
Speaker 1: old fashioned way. It was terrible taking notes on books
Speaker 1: before Kendall's strenuous Yeah. Anyway, Joan made me work because
Speaker 1: her book wasn't a success, and I may hate her
Speaker 1: for that. She opens her memoir by saying, this is
Speaker 1: a book I never thought I would write, which I
Speaker 1: think is a lie because she published it really quickly
Speaker 1: after Nancy Reagan's memoir. Joan claims that when Donald Reagan
Speaker 1: spilled the beans on her existence quote, I rejected all
Speaker 1: suggestions that I document my Reagan years. I said as
Speaker 1: little as possible to the media. I tried above alt
Speaker 1: to keep from damaging the president I had admired and
Speaker 1: served for seven years with total dedication. But then she
Speaker 1: claims that Nancy Reagan's memoire, My Turn, forced her to reconsider.
Speaker 1: She said it reads like fiction, and much of it
Speaker 1: as evasive. That is the beginning of what would become
Speaker 1: several hundred pages of throwing shade at Nancy Reagan. To
Speaker 1: my eyes, Jones memoir serves two purposes. Number one to
Speaker 1: allow her to take credit for every achievement of the
Speaker 1: Reagan era, and number two, to shit on Nancy Reagan. Now.
Speaker 1: I know at this point you might be wondering how
Speaker 1: credible is this lady, and obviously she's an unreliable narrator,
Speaker 1: but multiple people do back up the fact that she
Speaker 1: not only advised the president, she was actually the arbiter
Speaker 1: of his schedule. Donald Reagan, who was again chief of
Speaker 1: staff and would know, admitted in his memoirs that Joan
Speaker 1: had total control over win Air Force one took offen landed.
Speaker 1: He wrote that he, or in this case, she, who
Speaker 1: controls the president's schedule, controls the workings of the presidency,
Speaker 1: which seems accurate. In his book The Acting President, CBS
Speaker 1: correspondent Bob Scheffer related a story that also backs up
Speaker 1: Jones's importance. This is Bob Sheefer. The only real hitch
Speaker 1: the campaign team had to deal with during those weeks
Speaker 1: of planning in the fall of nineteen eighty three was
Speaker 1: a conflict over when the president should formally declare his
Speaker 1: Candidacylee Water in particular, wanted it done right away, but
Speaker 1: he was repeatedly told that Miss Reagan did not feel
Speaker 1: the time for that announcement was propreties. I think it's propitious, propitious,
Speaker 1: thank you. That baffled him, and when he finally continued
Speaker 1: to press for an explanation, Michael Deaver took him aside
Speaker 1: and disclosed that Nancy's reluctance was based on the astrologer's warning.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot a number of people. You can
Speaker 1: find stories of saying that, like, yeah, we had to
Speaker 1: change the time at the last minute, or we had
Speaker 1: to do something at like midnight or three in the
Speaker 1: morning or whatever, and when they would trace it back
Speaker 1: because Nancy Reagan said, no, he can't go out at
Speaker 1: that hour, like he has to go out now, or
Speaker 1: he has to do this now. Was this because Joan
Speaker 1: was insinuating that he would be assassinated if he Okay,
Speaker 1: bingo boiler, Sorry no, no, no, this is this is
Speaker 1: like immediately the next paragraph. So no, you landed on it.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to get into how this weird little
Speaker 1: relationship started. It kicked off in the nineteen seventies because
Speaker 1: Joan was on the MURV Griffin show. Murf Griffin was
Speaker 1: I be fair to call him like a late light host, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Fallon of his era, but probably more talented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry if there's Jimmy Fallon fans out there,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's history's greatest monster yeah at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, MERV Griffin, you know, was one of those
Speaker 1: really connected people. So he liked Joan quickly, and she
Speaker 1: did his astrology a bunch, and he also knew an
Speaker 1: actress named Nancy Reagan, and he knew wh her back
Speaker 1: when she was an actress and her husband was an actor,
Speaker 1: and then he continued to know them after her husband
Speaker 1: became the governor of California. Mervy knew that Nancy believed
Speaker 1: in astrology. Joan claims he asked if he could give
Speaker 1: her number to Nancy, and she said yes. This is
Speaker 1: from Joan. The first time Nancy consulted me mostly about
Speaker 1: personal problems. She had given me her exact birth time,
Speaker 1: so doing her horoscope was easy. I remember I described
Speaker 1: to her in detail the matter that she intended asking
Speaker 1: me about before she asked it. From the beginning, my
Speaker 1: accuracy impressed her. So Joan did her work on Nancy,
Speaker 1: and Nancy was astonished at you know, how well it
Speaker 1: worked or whatever, And so they had a little relationship
Speaker 1: going on for a while. The Reagan's had always superstitious.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty seven, when Ronnie was inaugurated as governor,
Speaker 1: his inauguration was scheduled for twelve ten am in the
Speaker 1: morning at the advice of a different astrologer. So like
Speaker 1: this has been a thing in their life for a while.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty Reagan ran for president. One. In
Speaker 1: her memoire, Nancy claims that Joan volunteered her services, which
Speaker 1: just amounted to a few phone calls and advice on
Speaker 1: wind to time certain events. Joan, however, claims that she
Speaker 1: advised the Reagans extensively, particularly during then candidate Reagan's first
Speaker 1: presidential debate with a guy named John Anderson. Anderson has
Speaker 1: been forgotten and buried in history, as we all will
Speaker 1: be someday, but he was Ronald Reagan's opponent in his
Speaker 1: first debate, and this was important because Ronald Reagan was
Speaker 1: a very old presidential candidate. No one had ever been
Speaker 1: sixty nine and running for president before, so it was
Speaker 1: important that he looked good and not seem old. Joan
Speaker 1: took great care in timing their debate. She also claims
Speaker 1: that she warned Nancy that the stars had told her
Speaker 1: that someone was going to tamper with Ronald Reagan's microphone,
Speaker 1: and apparently, according to Joan, Nancy found that the microphone
Speaker 1: had been tampered with and turned down, and Jones says
Speaker 1: that if Ronald had used the microphone without fixing it,
Speaker 1: he would have sounded weak and therefore old what it
Speaker 1: makes sense? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of age
Speaker 1: shaming to say that that weakness and age are correlated.
Speaker 1: But I guess she's not necessarily wrong. I mean, we
Speaker 1: also saw how that can be wielded very powerfully in
Speaker 1: a presidential campaign. Weakness and age and you know, fallibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's that. This is one of the ones where
Speaker 1: I want to like attack her, but she may not
Speaker 1: be wrong about it, right, I kind of think she's
Speaker 1: But also, like, what if the mic wasn't turned down
Speaker 1: and they just turned his mic up? You know, so
Speaker 1: he was allowed to me to be a smart move.
Speaker 1: That's still a smart move. Yeah, And this is Nancy
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything about this, so I don't. It's we're
Speaker 1: kind of have to take Jones's word that this microphone
Speaker 1: thing happened. She does, however, take credit for Ronald winning
Speaker 1: his debate against Carter, or rather, she says, I cannot
Speaker 1: claim any credit for his winning the Carter debate. However,
Speaker 1: I was definitely responsible for Carter's losing that crucial contest,
Speaker 1: because she claimed she picked an astrological time that made
Speaker 1: it impossible for Carter to win. Is sort of the
Speaker 1: inauguration of her taking credit for everything that happens during
Speaker 1: this time. So Ronald Reagan was elected, and Joan stopped
Speaker 1: hearing from Nancy Reagan because at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan's the president, and all the president's advisors are saying,
Speaker 1: don't associate with astrologers. That's going to end badly for
Speaker 1: us politically. If you know we're people, find out that
Speaker 1: you're consulting an astrologer on things, it's just not going
Speaker 1: to be good. But then on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: some guy shot President Reagan in a vital area his body.
Speaker 1: President Reagan nearly died. I don't really like Nancy Reagan,
Speaker 1: particularly her involvement in the War on drugs, but one
Speaker 1: thing you can say for her and her husband is
Speaker 1: that they were very much in love. By the reports
Speaker 1: of everybody who knew the two of them, the assassination
Speaker 1: attempt sort of broke Nancy Reagan. Most people would turn
Speaker 1: to something comforting, either drugs or God or drugs made
Speaker 1: out of God. After that kind of shock, Nancy turned
Speaker 1: to astrology. So this is where we get into the
Speaker 1: thing that I think makes Joan kind of a monster.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to delve into that. But first,
Speaker 1: do you guys like products and services? Who does it them? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: In currency? Oh yeah, Well, we're gonna sell some things
Speaker 1: to you for you to spend your currency on ad
Speaker 1: break and we're back. So it has been a long
Speaker 1: opening so far. Nothing bastardy inherently about what Joan Quigley's done.
Speaker 1: She's just been doing astrology for people who like having
Speaker 1: astrology done. You know whatever, It's fine, We're getting to
Speaker 1: wear I think she does something awful. So Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: is shot on March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one. Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: freaks out in exactly the same way anyone who's spouse
Speaker 1: gets almost assassinated would freak out. Now, both Nancy Reagan,
Speaker 1: because I read Nancy's memoo, or at least the chunk
Speaker 1: that deals with this. Both Nancy Reagan and Joan agree
Speaker 1: that the aftermath of President Reagan getting shot is when
Speaker 1: their working relationship in the White House started. Okay, they
Speaker 1: both have a different recollection of how that happened. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to read excerpts from both jones memoir and
Speaker 1: Nancy's memoir, and y'all can tell me which seems more
Speaker 1: credible to you. All right, So I'm going to start
Speaker 1: with Joan. It's gonna be quick. Okay, this is what
Speaker 1: she's said that day. I remember it verbatim. First she asked,
Speaker 1: could you have told about the assassination attempt? Yes, of
Speaker 1: course I could had I been looking. However, I haven't
Speaker 1: been following your charts or tracking the mundane material for Washington.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Had I been looking, I would have warned you.
Speaker 1: She then said, and she's this is Nancy talking to her.
Speaker 1: I'm getting terrible press. It's so unfair. I'm really a
Speaker 1: very nice person. Can you tell me what to do?
Speaker 1: I'm willing to pay you. So. In Jones's version of events,
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan asks, because you have predicted my husband's assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: and then immediately asks after that, can you make me popular?
Speaker 1: All right? So that's Joan's recollection. Here's Nancy Reagan in
Speaker 1: her memoire, my turn, and now it is her turn.
Speaker 1: That joke wasn't even a joke. I said it, and
Speaker 1: you can't take it back. Here's Nancy Reagan. I remember,
Speaker 1: as if it were yesterday, my reaction to what MERV
Speaker 1: told me. On the phone MERV Griffin he had talked
Speaker 1: to Joan, who had said that she could have warned
Speaker 1: me about March thirtieth. According to Mirv, Joan had said
Speaker 1: the president should have stayed home. I could see from
Speaker 1: my charts that this was going to be a dangerous
Speaker 1: day for him. Oh my god, I remember telling MERV
Speaker 1: I could have stopped it. I hung up the phone,
Speaker 1: picked it up again and called Joan. MERV tells me
Speaker 1: you knew about March thirtieth. I said yes, She replied,
Speaker 1: I could see it was a very bad day for
Speaker 1: the president. I'm so scared. I told her. I'm scared
Speaker 1: every time he leaves the house, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I can breathe until he gets home. I cringe every
Speaker 1: time we step out of a car or leave a building.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that one of these days somebody is going
Speaker 1: to shoot at him again. So what do you guys,
Speaker 1: Who do you guys think is credible here? Which story
Speaker 1: do you believe? I mean, so, Joan is basically like,
Speaker 1: I wasn't looking, so I don't know. So I didn't
Speaker 1: know ahead of time, right, And then Nancy kind of
Speaker 1: comes back at her, being like, well, I'd like you
Speaker 1: to sign on for my own purposes to give me
Speaker 1: better publicity, you know, to kind of milk the stars,
Speaker 1: if you will, forge and try to get stop my
Speaker 1: husband from getting shadow again. Meanwhile, Yeah, and then Nancy
Speaker 1: is like she just wants to protect her husband. She'll
Speaker 1: do anything. Joan saw it coming reached out via merv exactly.
Speaker 1: I find Nancy's more credible. And if it depends on
Speaker 1: how much money Joan was making, I think if Joan
Speaker 1: needed the income from Nancy Reagan, then I kind of
Speaker 1: believe in her reaching out. But if she was really
Speaker 1: doing fine, it sounds like maybe she had a trust fund.
Speaker 1: I don't really know why she would, especially because even
Speaker 1: though I do like astrology, I wouldn't put any stock
Speaker 1: in it. It seems like a big risk for her
Speaker 1: to take, you know, I think, and I get the
Speaker 1: feeling from the memoir and from the stuffing the end
Speaker 1: to I think Joan wanted to feel close to power. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's what it is is. Joan wanted to
Speaker 1: be influential. She wanted to use her powers to direct
Speaker 1: the progress of history. And what I think is if
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan's version of things is true and MERV Griffin
Speaker 1: didn't counter her at least when she recalled this. Then
Speaker 1: this lady reached out to MERV because he knew that
Speaker 1: MERV was going to talk to Nancy. Joan reached out
Speaker 1: to MERV and said, oh, I predicted what happened to
Speaker 1: President Reagan. I saw it coming in which case? So
Speaker 1: in which case, one of two things is true. Either
Speaker 1: astrology does work, and this lady legitimately saw that President
Speaker 1: Reagan was in mortal danger, had the first lady's phone
Speaker 1: number and didn't reach out and call her, or astrology
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. And Joan just lied to MERV
Speaker 1: Griffin because she knew Nancy would hear from him. Wasn't
Speaker 1: she just saying I could have predicted it if you
Speaker 1: had had me on the job already. That's what her memoir.
Speaker 1: That's what Joan says in her memoir. Nancy's like saying
Speaker 1: that Joan called MERV Griffin and was like, I could
Speaker 1: have stopped it. Yeah, according to what MERV said to
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan, Joan told MERV the president should have stayed home.
Speaker 1: I could see from my charts that this was going
Speaker 1: to be a dangerus day for him. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and believe Joan. Yeah, me too, because really, yes,
Speaker 1: because I think that it's way more credible that she
Speaker 1: would say I wasn't looking. If I had been, then
Speaker 1: I could have predicted it, because why would you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that's way more likely because if she
Speaker 1: had known, she would have also tried to reach out
Speaker 1: because she because it would have achieved the same purpose.
Speaker 1: But Okay, the reason I believe Nancy's account is because
Speaker 1: they both admit that Nancy stops calling Joan after Ronald
Speaker 1: wins the presidency. But after the assassination attempt, wouldn't you
Speaker 1: think that Nancy would kind of start reaching out. But
Speaker 1: I think Nancy would start reaching out if one of
Speaker 1: her friends says this astrologer tells me she predicted I
Speaker 1: think Nancy was probably just looking for clues. She was
Speaker 1: admittedly in freak out mode. She was admittedly in freak
Speaker 1: out mode. But it also she she's presented with a solution,
Speaker 1: which is that this lady predicted the assassination, and I
Speaker 1: could have stopped it if I'd kept talking to her.
Speaker 1: But don't you think that it also makes Nancy seem
Speaker 1: like a more reasonable person if she claims that, well,
Speaker 1: Ben Merv, who everyone loves, called me and said, you know,
Speaker 1: like astrology's not bullshit as opposed to having to admit
Speaker 1: I was so freaked out that I reached out to
Speaker 1: my old astrologer that I only had to drop because
Speaker 1: it was like kind of tacky. Well, she doesn't say
Speaker 1: that she dropped Joan because it was kind of tacky.
Speaker 1: She's actually totally positive about Joan, like Nancy Reagan's never
Speaker 1: anything but nice, like the bodies are buried. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know, like Joe never. Joe never talks
Speaker 1: about the bodies being buried. Joe she got paid off
Speaker 1: to just take this money for this memory invited to
Speaker 1: pro Joan people. Oh yeah, this is what I want,
Speaker 1: because I can't be mad at somebody for like scamming
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan, because Nancy Reagan sucks so bad that like
Speaker 1: she but but tell us more. If there was only
Speaker 1: money at stake, I'm just I wouldn't care if it
Speaker 1: turns out that Joan was like Nancy Reagan, Like the
Speaker 1: stars say, you should like pretend the AIDS crisis isn't happening,
Speaker 1: Like then I'll turn on Joan again. Not quite that,
Speaker 1: but it does tie the war on drive. I think
Speaker 1: some of that is just Nancy Reagan. Yeah, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: some of that's Nancy Reagan. I feel like I think
Speaker 1: she called MERV so that she could get Nancy because
Speaker 1: she knew that if Nancy heard from her, like she
Speaker 1: would like be like, oh, I could have stopped this,
Speaker 1: Like like that rings truer to me. The Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: calling Joan and being like could you have predicted it?
Speaker 1: And can you make everyone love me? I still believe Joan.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know people who are very obsessed
Speaker 1: with their astrologers, and I think some that's true that
Speaker 1: they'll get sort of like not great readings and then
Speaker 1: something scary happens and they reach out almost like a therapist.
Speaker 1: That is plausible too. I just have trouble believing number one,
Speaker 1: that the conversation immediately swung from can you stop my
Speaker 1: husband from dying? To can you make America love me? No,
Speaker 1: I don't think I think they're the same thing, because
Speaker 1: she's like, if my husband dies, I'm not first lady anymore,
Speaker 1: so like I both need my husband to stay alive
Speaker 1: and then to be the most you know, because she's
Speaker 1: an actress. She just wants to be playing the part
Speaker 1: of the first lady that everyone loves. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: part of it comes down to whether or not you believe.
Speaker 1: And she's a shitty actress, which is why Well and
Speaker 1: Ronald wasn't a great actor. But they are both not
Speaker 1: good actors, which is why they're not believable. I mean,
Speaker 1: in fairness, they were like two good actors back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they were the not good actors who snitched on
Speaker 1: people at the Blacklist trials. So we knew that we
Speaker 1: been knew there about it. Yeah, I don't know, So okay,
Speaker 1: so we're you guys are coming down on Joan was
Speaker 1: just responding to a legitimate job offer. And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: Joan was trying to like sneak her way back into
Speaker 1: the Reagan's life by taking advantage of an assassination attempt.
Speaker 1: So that's where we are right now, all right, So
Speaker 1: we'll see where everyone's opinions line up at the end
Speaker 1: of this story. So I should probably note right now
Speaker 1: for the sake of completion, Joan does claim at another
Speaker 1: point in her memoir to have foreseen something terrible and
Speaker 1: not told Nancy Reagan about it. She claims that she
Speaker 1: predicted Nancy Reagan's cancer and said nothing. Nancy's horoscope had
Speaker 1: indicated to me months in advance that she would develop
Speaker 1: breaths cancer. I didn't want to alarm her by coming
Speaker 1: right out and telling her I knew well too well
Speaker 1: with a warrior she was, so I did what I
Speaker 1: always do in such cases. I advised her to have
Speaker 1: monthly checkups and frequent mammograms, certain that the doctors would
Speaker 1: discover it the minute it developed, which strikes me as
Speaker 1: a little bit of a dick move, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's astrologer's standard practice. I mean, the odds of
Speaker 1: it of getting breast cancer if you're a woman are
Speaker 1: so high that it's a pretty safe bet to say
Speaker 1: at some point you'll get cancer. But I mean, if
Speaker 1: she told Nancy Reagan, I see that you're going to
Speaker 1: get cancer, what could Nancy Reagan have done other than
Speaker 1: exactly what she advised her to do. I mean, what
Speaker 1: can you do if you know you're about to get
Speaker 1: cancer other than see a doctor. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: this again may tie back to the fact that I
Speaker 1: don't think she foresaw any of this, and she's just
Speaker 1: claiming later after the fact. To have foreseen someone's cancer
Speaker 1: to make her sound good doesn't make her sound good though, No,
Speaker 1: it makes her sound terrible. There's no way to say,
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to get cancer, didn't tell you.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm not like surprised that the Reagans would
Speaker 1: take all their advice from like an amoral scammer, because
Speaker 1: that's what they are. Yes, and we'll we'll, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're in that all moral California scammers. I also
Speaker 1: feel like they were coming from like California, where it's
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty, like who doesn't have a personal skeletrap? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is part of the thing. Like they're like one,
Speaker 1: she's always got these she's got all these pictures in
Speaker 1: the book where it'll be like someone some senator or whatnot,
Speaker 1: and she'll be like, Senators such and such didn't have
Speaker 1: an issue with my astrology because he had an astrology. Okay,
Speaker 1: if she had had like a like a priest on
Speaker 1: call or whatever. Yeah, it seems like it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, I mean, maybe more acceptable to
Speaker 1: Middle America if she's got a priest than if she's
Speaker 1: don't They love horoscopes, Yeah, who doesn't. Evangelicals might not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would say the difference between a priest and
Speaker 1: a horoscope is that a priest And I'm not into
Speaker 1: religion either, but a priest doesn't claim to be predicting
Speaker 1: the future for you. A priest can just be like
Speaker 1: like the priests the most presidents talk to. They're not
Speaker 1: like being like, hey, what time should I take my
Speaker 1: plane off? Like should I do this meeting? They're like,
Speaker 1: what does God say about bombing people in the Sudan
Speaker 1: or whatever? And apparently God's fine with it. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: we've we've gotten past the assassination attempt and Joan's prediction
Speaker 1: of Nancy Reagan's cancer. So yeah, after the assassination attempt, Joan,
Speaker 1: you know, gets the offer to become the astrologer for
Speaker 1: the Reagan White House and she decides to take it on.
Speaker 1: She says that, you know, she knew that if she
Speaker 1: took the Reagans on quote, I would be giving up
Speaker 1: all my time and effort, like those who take part
Speaker 1: in any administration, sacrificing the rewards they command in the
Speaker 1: private sector in order to serve their country. Was she
Speaker 1: exclusive to the Reagans. No, oh no, she's this is nonsense.
Speaker 1: This is just one of their client and she was
Speaker 1: paid extraordinarily wealthy. You know how much do you know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars a month in nineteen eight, which is
Speaker 1: today nine thousand dollars a month. What who else were
Speaker 1: her clients? That's what I want to know. She doesn't
Speaker 1: go into much detail. MERV. Griffin was definitely one of them,
Speaker 1: but she was like a lot of famous San Francisco
Speaker 1: socialites and stuff, wealthy people. And this, this is a
Speaker 1: big trend in the book, is Joan bragging about how
Speaker 1: selfless she is for working for the Reagans. She claimed
Speaker 1: that Nancy begged her to take them on for free
Speaker 1: because the Reagans didn't have much money, but they eventually
Speaker 1: settled on a sum, which, again Joan claims were basically
Speaker 1: poverty wages, but which was about nine grand a month
Speaker 1: in modern money, which is in my mind, a lot
Speaker 1: of money. She remarks regularly, like pretty much every chapter,
Speaker 1: how heroic she is for taking just this pittance. Quote.
Speaker 1: I charged Nancy a monthly fixed fee because she needed
Speaker 1: much more of my time than she could afford. This
Speaker 1: was very generous. On my part because I often worked
Speaker 1: longer than full time for a while, when an emergency
Speaker 1: would arise, I was working as long as nine hours uninterrupted.
Speaker 1: Oh my good, Oh my god. Yeah, And this is
Speaker 1: I guess another call out to the Dorito's people. If
Speaker 1: they want to sponsor the podcast, I will work nine
Speaker 1: hours uninterrupted on a Dorito's themed monster podcast. We're trying
Speaker 1: to get the Dorito's people. Though Doritos comes through, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like they're the perfect chip for dictator based comedy.
Speaker 1: We do. Moncho's might be in the running, but I
Speaker 1: think Dorito's is more of like the you know from
Speaker 1: De la crame as you might say, Yeah, yeah. Someone
Speaker 1: on Twitter came up with a great hashtag Nachos not Nazis,
Speaker 1: which I think, yeah, yeah, we can, we can sell
Speaker 1: some Dorito's. Anyway, back to the Reagans, so yeah, in
Speaker 1: Nancy's version of events, which again, nobody's credible here, which
Speaker 1: is why I'm grateful to have y'all's perspective on the matter,
Speaker 1: because I just wound up hating Joan in this book.
Speaker 1: But you're right, Nancy Reagan does not deserve to be
Speaker 1: taken seriously or literally at her own word either. So
Speaker 1: Nancy claims that Joan became a crutch and something of
Speaker 1: a therapist, but nothing more. You know, she would call
Speaker 1: her when she was anxious about something or a meeting
Speaker 1: that Ronnie was going to have. And I can't not
Speaker 1: call him Ronnie now because I read that a thousand times,
Speaker 1: and I think that Nancy is lying about this. I
Speaker 1: don't think she's lying about using Joan as a therapist.
Speaker 1: That does not seem out out of the pale at
Speaker 1: all for me. But I do think that Nancy's fibbing
Speaker 1: about Joan not having a big role in the administration
Speaker 1: because Donald Reagan's account backs up Joan's claim that she
Speaker 1: was important and she was making major calls. It is
Speaker 1: interesting to me that Nancy's only nice to Joan in
Speaker 1: her memoir. She says Joan was and emotionally supportive and
Speaker 1: expresses admiration for how she handled the press when the
Speaker 1: story broke. It's interesting to me that Joan spends her
Speaker 1: whole book attacking Nancy Reagan and making her look like
Speaker 1: a monster with quotes like Nancy was almost totally innocent
Speaker 1: of history. I was often surprised by how little she
Speaker 1: knew about it. She was in no way an intellectual
Speaker 1: or deeply reflective, which I don't disagree with, but is
Speaker 1: not a nice way to refer to the person who's
Speaker 1: the only reason that you're noteworthy. Well maybe she thinks
Speaker 1: it's not the only reason she's noteworthy. Yeah, And also
Speaker 1: is the difference between a politician and a psychic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a plain dealer. Yeah. Yeah. And Joan makes a
Speaker 1: big point about how much Nancy Reagan hated Eli with Sell,
Speaker 1: the Holocaust survivor and author, and what he won. Was
Speaker 1: it a nobel I think? Yeah. She says that Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan hated elizzl because of he made a big fuss
Speaker 1: when Ronald Reagan laid a wreath at a cemetery where
Speaker 1: Nazis are buried, which is a reasonable thing to be
Speaker 1: angry about if you're a Holocaust survivor. When Roselle became
Speaker 1: vocal about it and sparked an out cry, Joan claims
Speaker 1: that Nancy said, he acts like he's crazy. It's his fault.
Speaker 1: He's a fanatic. And after this point Joan chimes in
Speaker 1: to say that she doesn't think Nancy was a racist
Speaker 1: in the most racist way possible. To be fair, Nancy
Speaker 1: was not a religious bigot. She liked her wealthy Jewish
Speaker 1: friends as well as her friends of other religions. Ooh
Speaker 1: oh no, but is that a way to know it's
Speaker 1: just terrible. It's terrible. And that's one where I feel
Speaker 1: like Nancy's I'm sure Nancy's awful about this. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the thing is I'm like, is she just trying
Speaker 1: to like call attention to how awful Nancy is while
Speaker 1: still rottin. I think she recognizes it. I think she
Speaker 1: legitimately she probably doesn't know anyone that isn't an anti Semite,
Speaker 1: so she's like on a scale of aism, this was
Speaker 1: just you know, she just hated him, but you know,
Speaker 1: her her wealthy Jewish friends. As long as you're rich. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think Joan Quickly ever talked to anyone
Speaker 1: who wasn't rich. And that's what I'm saying. So she's
Speaker 1: never met a non racist person in her life, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's telling that she doesn't consider the
Speaker 1: Reagans to be rich, right, because like they had a
Speaker 1: ranch in Santa Barbara, but they're not old money. Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1: She that's the line for her because she's you know,
Speaker 1: San Francisco old money, and I'm sure some East Coast
Speaker 1: people would be like, well, that's California, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the astors are really raking her over the coals, and
Speaker 1: they're all making fun of the Reagan being president is
Speaker 1: so good, the talk of the Junior League. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the Junior League, I am pretty sure those
Speaker 1: wealthy Jewish families aren't allowed at the Cotillions. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, they're definitely not allowed in the Junior League. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah. Joan quickly claims her first big job was
Speaker 1: to make Nancy Reagan likable. Nancy was being pilloried by
Speaker 1: the press from the White House China. She planned to
Speaker 1: buy to her expensive clothes. Her every movement was ridiculed
Speaker 1: and criticized. Everywhere she said brought more public disapproval. So
Speaker 1: Nancy was embarrassed at being a political liability and begged
Speaker 1: for Jones help. I want everyone to love me. Where
Speaker 1: Nancy's first words after I agreed to work with her
Speaker 1: on a professional basis. I had to smile. The words
Speaker 1: were so typical of a person with her kind of horoscope. Dude,
Speaker 1: want now, I'm going to go home and look up
Speaker 1: like what Nancy Reagan's sign was. Because based on that,
Speaker 1: what am I thinking? Scorpio, I'm gonna find out why? Yeah, okay, research,
Speaker 1: This is important, extra research that I didn't do because
Speaker 1: I'm a hack and a frog. Yeah. So Joan claims
Speaker 1: that she asked Nancy what charities Nancy wanted to work for.
Speaker 1: Nancy kind of vaguely expressed an interest in drug rehabilitation
Speaker 1: programs in the Foster Grandparents program, and Joan claims that
Speaker 1: she's responsible for focusing Nancy Reagan. I told her that
Speaker 1: these two charities would be what she would be known
Speaker 1: for from now on, that she would talk about them
Speaker 1: whenever she granted interviews and make them her personal crusade.
Speaker 1: She must be a kind of ministering angel of mercy,
Speaker 1: a sort of supernational mother figure. I told her to
Speaker 1: set her staff to ferreting out appealing letters from children,
Speaker 1: for instance, and make a point of answering them. Or
Speaker 1: she could respond to some needy person, making sure this
Speaker 1: same time that the story would be well publicized in
Speaker 1: the media. Oh man, which is such a rich person?
Speaker 1: Right about needy person? Like, what do you mean by needy?
Speaker 1: That was the foster grandparents thing too. I wonder, I
Speaker 1: mean that sounds like I guess it's a program to
Speaker 1: help like connect underprivileged kids to like older men and
Speaker 1: women who could be like So she really wanted to
Speaker 1: just focus on issues that you can put on a mug. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is only superficial things that she could be beloved for.
Speaker 1: And Joan Quigley was like, yes, but you can't be
Speaker 1: casual about it. If you're going to talk about drugs,
Speaker 1: you've got to be a drug warrior. You've got to
Speaker 1: be like lecturing the nation and claims basically to be
Speaker 1: why Nancy Reagan became the face of the war on
Speaker 1: drugs during the nineteen eighties, Well, apparently Nancy was a cancer,
Speaker 1: just like oh, that's for sure. Ronald was the Aquarius,
Speaker 1: the age of Aquarius. I mean the cancer's cancers are.
Speaker 1: So they're water signs and they're very they do need
Speaker 1: a lot of approval and they're very sensitive to being
Speaker 1: reject So there are two water signs together. We water
Speaker 1: signs together. Well, water signs are you know, they're fluid,
Speaker 1: like there's you know, I'm just now I'm speaking personally
Speaker 1: about the water signs. I know, but they're kind of mercurial,
Speaker 1: like their temperament can change on a dime. They have moods.
Speaker 1: They're moody people. Molly and I are Earth's signs around.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you say that water signs are fluid
Speaker 1: because Nancy Reagan, the water sign was a major factor
Speaker 1: in the escalation of the War on drugs, which is
Speaker 1: why so many people have to take pissed tests to
Speaker 1: prove their sobriety. WHOA, and while you were all reeling
Speaker 1: from that connection, we have to break for some more ads,
Speaker 1: so please pull out your credit cards and spend some money.
Speaker 1: We're back and we're talking about Joan Quiggly, History's greatest monster,
Speaker 1: or maybe not. We'll be deciding that by the end
Speaker 1: of this podcast. One way or the other. It fits
Speaker 1: into the behind the Bastard's theme. Either Joan Quiggley's a
Speaker 1: bastard or Ronald Reagan the bastard behind the bases, which
Speaker 1: in a way makes her less of a bast I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like, still, she's the power behind the throne, and
Speaker 1: the throne is evil, so I mean the war on
Speaker 1: drugs thing I don't love. Right now, Nancy Reagan is
Speaker 1: remembered for like just say no, yeah, she's you know,
Speaker 1: criminalizing all that stuff, and also for being a horrible homophobe, Yes,
Speaker 1: super homophobic. And there's because Joan is very conservative that
Speaker 1: comes across and this thing. So I like, she doesn't say.
Speaker 1: There's not a word about gay people in this. There's
Speaker 1: not a word about the AIDS crisis in this, So
Speaker 1: I like, I can't say anything about that because Joan
Speaker 1: didn't consider it worth talking about what they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're an astrologer and you saw the AIDS
Speaker 1: crisis coming and did nothing, then I'm going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and say that's what I'm saying. She's a monster too.
Speaker 1: And again, if you're like taking all the credit for
Speaker 1: making Nancy Reagan the person she is, then like you're
Speaker 1: taking credit for a lot of garbage. Actually, I'll say
Speaker 1: this in Jone's defense. I don't think she could have
Speaker 1: predicted the AIDS crisis because that would have been doing
Speaker 1: the horoscopes of a bunch of low income gay people,
Speaker 1: and Joan quickly did not work for port. But astrology
Speaker 1: too is seeing world trends. Yeah, you know, you can
Speaker 1: focus on an individual chart, or you can focus on
Speaker 1: the planetary alignments, and she she throughout her book she's
Speaker 1: very inconsistent about what astrology can do, because sometimes she'll say,
Speaker 1: when something goes badly for Reagan, she'll say, like, the
Speaker 1: stars were just so fucked up with that thing that
Speaker 1: there was no way that anything anyone could have done,
Speaker 1: no intervention. But she'll also claim that, like, you can
Speaker 1: make anything successful if you pick the right time. That's all,
Speaker 1: which is it, Joan, That's all New age bullshit, is
Speaker 1: like it's infallible except sometimes yeah, but in this case
Speaker 1: nothing could be right. Yeah, So there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of inconsistencies within it. But again, I don't have any
Speaker 1: issue with astrology until you start determining when the president
Speaker 1: speaks to national tragedies. From which point made me start?
Speaker 1: Do you guys think Alex Jones is the Joan Quigley
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration? Oh shit, you know that's not
Speaker 1: a bad point. I saw him give a speech at
Speaker 1: the Republican National Convention, like outside of the main convention floor.
Speaker 1: I have never seen a human being get that red
Speaker 1: because he's screaming, and it's like it was terrifying. But
Speaker 1: I feel like with Trump too, it's like he also
Speaker 1: like he cribbed so much from Reagan, and he also
Speaker 1: does so much based on what he sees on TV. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's also the president who just watches TV all day
Speaker 1: and he's superstitious. Yeah, he's definitely supersticititious. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: they've got Alex Jones on a hotline. And I gotta
Speaker 1: say I'm glad that Trump does not have one thing
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan had is personal charisma. Like if you ever
Speaker 1: talk to anyone, even people who didn't like him, who
Speaker 1: had face to face conversations, he was very good. He
Speaker 1: was he was fun. He was good at charming people. Right.
Speaker 1: That's so weird because I never got that from him
Speaker 1: ever when you guys hung out, when we hung out
Speaker 1: stories when he got shot and he was like dying
Speaker 1: and being wheeled in for Sara, Like he like looked
Speaker 1: up at the surgeon and he said, oh, I sure,
Speaker 1: hope you're a Republican. It's like like little folk like
Speaker 1: that's not funny Trump would, is it. I think it's
Speaker 1: endearing in the moment. I don't think. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, he's not as bad as Trump. I
Speaker 1: think in terms of interpersonal relationship, I think Trump Reagan
Speaker 1: to me, like his charisma is I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it was more like the same thing with like
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. It was like people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: his folksy charisma, and I was like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Like, I don't see that. He just seems
Speaker 1: like an idiot. But I think Reagan was more like George,
Speaker 1: you know, he he seemed like like an old man
Speaker 1: who used being old to like fake convey stateliness to
Speaker 1: be that's an aspect of it, like one thing old
Speaker 1: white man. It's hard to say how much of Trump's
Speaker 1: unpopularity is due to the media cycle, and like if
Speaker 1: Trump had been president in nineteen eighty one, would he
Speaker 1: be more popular because we just wouldn't have as much
Speaker 1: focus on it. But Reagan was more popular than Trump, right,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I mean imagine Reagan though, that
Speaker 1: was I mean, that's one of the things about you know,
Speaker 1: making a very like vanilla joke of like I hope
Speaker 1: you're a Republican as opposed to like firing off some
Speaker 1: crazy ass tweets where you're just so offensive exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's more like if Reagan were president now,
Speaker 1: he'd be tweeting some crazy racist shit all the time.
Speaker 1: I know what I mean. It would be because he
Speaker 1: wouldn't know how to use Twitter because he's too old.
Speaker 1: I think he might be mutton dressed as lamb on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying he at least for sure was saying
Speaker 1: crazy racist, homophobic shit behind closed doors, behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: But I think that's the I mean, not that it
Speaker 1: makes it any better, but that it makes it easier
Speaker 1: to be a charming person. Ye fit in the you know,
Speaker 1: that's like what people think is charming about you, which
Speaker 1: is obviously Donald Trump's voters are like, I love when
Speaker 1: he talks about a politics. He grabs them by the
Speaker 1: pussy and that's what I like, you know, But I
Speaker 1: do think there's different kinds of racism and they're all toxic.
Speaker 1: But like with Trump, you've got this more like I'm
Speaker 1: going to be like, but news organizations are still like
Speaker 1: a racially charged incident, you know, like they still won't
Speaker 1: say he's being a racist, even though he's like using
Speaker 1: racist terms and saying racist things. People still are like,
Speaker 1: but he's the president, so we're going to treat it
Speaker 1: with like the import of like the president saying something
Speaker 1: but it's all the same platforms the Republican Party has
Speaker 1: always had, which are like homophobia, racism, and like hating
Speaker 1: poor people. Well, and I think more to the point,
Speaker 1: what you're getting at, which which is interesting in that
Speaker 1: it ties in here is one of the things that
Speaker 1: has been so dangerous in regarding the intersection of the
Speaker 1: press and this presidency, is that we traditionally treat the
Speaker 1: presidency as this August position. There's like something special about
Speaker 1: the president, like that there's a certain level of respect
Speaker 1: that you should have for the president. And that's obviously
Speaker 1: nonsense as it occurs to Donald Trump, because he's just
Speaker 1: an asshole on Twitter. Well, it's nonsense in general. It
Speaker 1: was nonsense then, yeacause this guy had a fucking astrology
Speaker 1: telling his plain to ser full in the sky. The
Speaker 1: stars weren't and all like the great presidents of history
Speaker 1: were like slave owners, so like they were not keeping
Speaker 1: their racism secret, you know, or rampaging alcoholics or too
Speaker 1: fat to get out of a bathtub, like they're just
Speaker 1: what they're just doing, which is just disgusting, right, And
Speaker 1: I think the thing about Reagan was it was like
Speaker 1: we're casting a guy who looks like he should be
Speaker 1: the president to play the president on television, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't actually like know or care. Well, that's where the
Speaker 1: astrologer becomes an important That's where the astrologer but comes
Speaker 1: back in let's get back to let's get back to astrologer.
Speaker 1: When we were last talking about the astrology stuff, we
Speaker 1: were getting into the fact that, yeah, Joan quickly insisted
Speaker 1: that Nancy Reagan make drug policy be like her big thing,
Speaker 1: and of course Nancy becomes the face of the just
Speaker 1: Say No campaigns. You know, during the Reagan administration, the
Speaker 1: number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses increased
Speaker 1: from like fifty thousand to several hundred thousand, like four
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen ninety seven. So, yeah, Nancy Reagan wasn't making
Speaker 1: policy on that, but she was the face of it,
Speaker 1: and she had a significant role in setting public opinion.
Speaker 1: And some of that's on Nancy, and some of that's
Speaker 1: on Joan Quigley, some of that's on Ronnie. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: of it's on Ronnie because Joan and Nancy weren't making policies. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like it's also it's always like frowned upon
Speaker 1: for the president to like listen to his wife, you know,
Speaker 1: and make policy based on that. But she gets her
Speaker 1: little pet projects right, but like incarcerating drugs, incarcerating everybody, yeah,
Speaker 1: the homie things, yeah uh so yeah. In addition to
Speaker 1: urging Nancy to make anti drug policy a cornerstone of
Speaker 1: her first ladyship, Joan insisted that Nancy avoid doing any
Speaker 1: interviews with fashion magazines. I think she mainly includes this
Speaker 1: part so that you can take another shot at Nancy
Speaker 1: or another shot at seventeen magazine. She doesn't mention in
Speaker 1: magazine by name. It's just like screw magazines, magaziness. Poor
Speaker 1: people go to form those only read gold. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: says that not talking to fashion magazines was quote the
Speaker 1: hardest thing for her to give that up. She tried
Speaker 1: to wheedle me into letting her do it, but I
Speaker 1: was firm. Joan claims at the time she picked for
Speaker 1: Nancy to do her public appearances and her anti drug
Speaker 1: speeches and stuff for as perfect as possible. She's very
Speaker 1: proud of this work and says it's the reason that
Speaker 1: Miss Reagan's reputation improved throughout her husband's time in office.
Speaker 1: Here's Joan again, quite typically, when Nancy thanked me for
Speaker 1: turning her image around, I said, and it was something
Speaker 1: she was already aware of. Nancy Joe Kennedy paid between
Speaker 1: one and two million dollars in nineteen sixty for what
Speaker 1: I have done for thousands. In nineteen eighty one, she
Speaker 1: claims Joe Kennedy had to pay publicists to make Jackie
Speaker 1: Oh popular. Wish Oh. Come on, everybody would have loved
Speaker 1: Jackie no matter what she did. She was fucking Jacklino
Speaker 1: Nasis like, go to hell, John quickly. And then she
Speaker 1: said to Nancy, really, you must admit it has been
Speaker 1: a present. And again she was getting nine thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a month in modern dollars. It's so hard because when
Speaker 1: you're paying for astrology, any number seems both ludicrous and
Speaker 1: completely safe. You know what I mean, nine thousand. If
Speaker 1: you're if someone's giving you nine thousand dollars for this,
Speaker 1: it seems easy to argue that that's a tiny amount.
Speaker 1: And they're saying, I'm the only person who can give
Speaker 1: you this information right also, I mean it. Joan Quigley
Speaker 1: does not sound like a feminist, but in a way
Speaker 1: advising the first lady to not push her cause in
Speaker 1: fashion magazines is kind of a feminist stamp, and it
Speaker 1: would be taken way more seriously if you avoid that
Speaker 1: channel entirely. Like I'm kind of behind that. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not against that part. But also I'm like, Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: just wanted to be in fashion magazines. That's how she
Speaker 1: wanted to be first Lady, so she could be on
Speaker 1: the cover of Vogue or whatever. And if she'd just
Speaker 1: been on the cover of Vogue and not been talking
Speaker 1: about drugs, yeah, maybe would be in a better place
Speaker 1: in the country. Should have stuck to fashion. Yeah, and more,
Speaker 1: I guess more to the point, what irks me is
Speaker 1: just like I'm sure that to Joan Quiggly, nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a month was a pittance, but like that's just
Speaker 1: further makes me dislike her, because it's like, like three
Speaker 1: families could have lived on what you just for this one.
Speaker 1: Joe Gurritos wants to pay us all to do astrology. No,
Speaker 1: and you know, as horrible as Joan Quigley is, is
Speaker 1: as good as cool ranch Dorito's taste after a hot
Speaker 1: day not eating doritos. Okay, let's let's move back on.
Speaker 1: Can we co opt this for our podcast? So now,
Speaker 1: I like really wanted to if you guys get a
Speaker 1: Dorito sponsorship, I just got to say, super, We're going
Speaker 1: to try our best. I interviewed an influencer and I
Speaker 1: was like, how do you get brands to sponsor you?
Speaker 1: And she was like I just like at them and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, sponsor me. And I was like that works,
Speaker 1: and I was like I'm going to start. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: brands all the time listening this should hashtag at Dorito's
Speaker 1: in the podcast and try to try tos for putting
Speaker 1: us in this whole world where we all need to
Speaker 1: be sponsored by brand to exist. Hell world, don't you
Speaker 1: mean na choantastic world? I mean a cool a cool
Speaker 1: ranch where it is a cool ranch. Well, Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: you brought it back there before. Yeah, I salute you
Speaker 1: for that. Uh So Yeah. She own claims that her
Speaker 1: advice made Nancy Reagan more popular, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue with that, at least in the fact that Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan did get a lot more popular. She started with
Speaker 1: like a fifty seven percent approval rating after her first year,
Speaker 1: but rose to seventy one percent by nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: So whether or not it was Jones doing Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: was a lot more popular by Ragie. She was right
Speaker 1: about not doing the fashion magazines too, because the fashion
Speaker 1: magazines would have just been a list of like what
Speaker 1: expensive things she was doing exactly and wearing. But also
Speaker 1: as the eighties, I thought that's all anybody wanted. No,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think she's trying. I think
Speaker 1: Joan was trying to create the illusion of substance where
Speaker 1: she found none. Well, you know, the main way, that's
Speaker 1: what Jane would say, Yeah, right, true, big way to
Speaker 1: create the illusion of substance is to not talk that much. Hmm,
Speaker 1: that's true, or to just appear. I mean when she
Speaker 1: had Nancy kind of choose her projects and then mention
Speaker 1: those all the time. She's also kind of editing out
Speaker 1: anything else Nancy might want to say, totally go over
Speaker 1: way less. Well, she's giving her talking points. Yeah and yeah,
Speaker 1: and Joan work started with Nancy Reagan's image, but it
Speaker 1: did not end there. As the months and years went on,
Speaker 1: Nancy came to rely on Joan more and more. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say what influenced her husband's worsening health had
Speaker 1: on this, but Joan's involvement in the Reagan administration became extensive.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote from Joan. I was responsible for timing
Speaker 1: all press conferences, most speeches. The State of the Union
Speaker 1: addresses the takeoffs and landings of Air Force one. I
Speaker 1: picked the time of Ronald Reagan's debate with Carter and
Speaker 1: the two debates with Walter Mondale, all extended trips abroad,
Speaker 1: as well as the shorter trips in one day excursions.
Speaker 1: In other words, Reagan did not leave the White House
Speaker 1: without Jones say so. She also helped the Reagans make
Speaker 1: major health decisions. Quote. I delayed President Reagan's first operation
Speaker 1: for cancer from July tenth, nineteen eighty five to July thirteenth,
Speaker 1: and chose the time for Nancy's mistectomy. So she's got
Speaker 1: an unbelievable amount of influence. Did anyone think it was
Speaker 1: weird that they were having like press conferences at like
Speaker 1: twelve twenty five or something, you know, they did? There
Speaker 1: were like that's one of the quotes from earlier as
Speaker 1: people talking about it, it it was weird the times they
Speaker 1: would set for things, and nobody really knew exactly why,
Speaker 1: but there would be myths, like Nancy said, this isn't
Speaker 1: a good time. That seems like like some smoking gun
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, that Joan was picking the times that
Speaker 1: they were weird times. No, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: Like it's definitely like no one who is who is
Speaker 1: close to the administration is refuted any of this. Like
Speaker 1: Nancy said, it wasn't that big idea. It's true, but
Speaker 1: Donald Reagan's like, no, like the thing, Yeah, it sure
Speaker 1: was a thing. It's important that you understand. Joan quickly
Speaker 1: never claimed to be clairvoyant, which is how Donald Reagan
Speaker 1: described her. I don't think Donald Reagan was an astrology guy.
Speaker 1: She claims that a clairvoyant is a mystic or a psychic,
Speaker 1: while Joane sees herself as basically a scientist, and this
Speaker 1: is her view of astrology. I based my astrological analysis
Speaker 1: on the data provided by astronomers and charts calculated by computers.
Speaker 1: My conclusions are based on this accurate scientific material, in
Speaker 1: the same way your doctor supports his diagnosis by the
Speaker 1: laboratory reports, or an economist bases his predictions on statistics.
Speaker 1: So Joan didn't have a computer of her own, this
Speaker 1: was the eighties. She would send a lot of the
Speaker 1: information that she was calculating off to third party companies
Speaker 1: who had computers, which means that in addition to the
Speaker 1: unsecured phone call she was having with Nancy Reagan about
Speaker 1: the president's secret schedule, she was also sending off that
Speaker 1: information to strangers. Was she saying in her was she
Speaker 1: like sending postcards basically saying the President wants to have
Speaker 1: Air Force one launching it to this place on this
Speaker 1: date at this time. All she says is that no
Speaker 1: one could have figured out what they were talking about
Speaker 1: based on the info she gave those people. But we're
Speaker 1: having to take her word from it, right right, So
Speaker 1: I'm just setting that up that there's a severe breach
Speaker 1: in the President's information security as a result of this
Speaker 1: astrology thing that's going on. So Joan is a serious lady.
Speaker 1: She had nothing but contempt for astrologers who write for
Speaker 1: newspapers and magazines like she used to do when she
Speaker 1: was young and needed the money. She rages that there
Speaker 1: are at present no forced standards for astrologers and that
Speaker 1: unworthy people cannot be prevented from assuming what should be
Speaker 1: a respected title. So she's very angry about popular astrology,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the astrology that people can afford
Speaker 1: if they can afford a newspaper. Miss quickly spent a
Speaker 1: large chunk of her book trying to convince us that
Speaker 1: astrologers have been historically necessary in government. She points out
Speaker 1: that most great kings had astrologers, that Isaac Newton believed
Speaker 1: in astrology, that Einstein believed in astrology. So like, she
Speaker 1: spends a lot of her book trying to convince you
Speaker 1: that it's fine for an astrologer to be advising the president. Now.
Speaker 1: In her view of the world, every achievement of the
Speaker 1: Reagan era, and also every human achievement in general, was
Speaker 1: made possible by the combination of the stars being in
Speaker 1: the right position. She credits the miracle of flight to
Speaker 1: the fact that Neptune and Pluto were together in the
Speaker 1: air sign of Gemini in the early nineteen hundreds. That's true, Okay, good,
Speaker 1: good to know. I thought it was like people, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody met the air and dying until they got it right.
Speaker 1: But no, it's good. That's magnets, yeah, stars. I could
Speaker 1: go back and forth about like all the different things
Speaker 1: Joan believed. I wound up putting a lot more of
Speaker 1: that in the first draft of this that I trimmed
Speaker 1: out just because, like, let's keep it to the Reagans.
Speaker 1: It is important. You know that. She claims to put
Speaker 1: in a huge amount of work to the charts that
Speaker 1: she was doing so. For example, exact birth times are
Speaker 1: necessary for good horoscopes. Since Ronald Reagan was born back
Speaker 1: in the olden times before people kept track of when
Speaker 1: babies were born, Joan had to rectify him, which is
Speaker 1: the term she uses for some reason for figuring out
Speaker 1: someone's birth time using backwards math. So she claims to
Speaker 1: have calculated both Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan's birth times. Did
Speaker 1: Joe tell me tell you how what backwards math is? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm dying to know about back It's a little bit
Speaker 1: of magic, are you? I got that quote? When you
Speaker 1: don't know what time of day an individual was born,
Speaker 1: and for serious astrology, the exact birth time is indispensable.
Speaker 1: You must figure it out from such clues as the
Speaker 1: known events of that person's past, their appearance in psychological
Speaker 1: and physical characteristics, not already explained by the other factors
Speaker 1: in their horoscope. Oh it's not math at all. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: she claims to know the exact manner. Oh so it's
Speaker 1: like reverse. She's like, oh, he seems like he was
Speaker 1: born in around twelve twenty five, so exactly, it seems
Speaker 1: like an afternoon or yeah, seems like a fourth using
Speaker 1: personality to be like okay, yeah, sure, yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: everyone who could have proved her wrong on this has
Speaker 1: been dead for decades because Ronald Reagan was born in
Speaker 1: like the teens. Yeah, you know clocks then either, So
Speaker 1: we have to cut for some what are those things
Speaker 1: where people sell stuff and other people learn about products
Speaker 1: and service Doritos. We're having a Dorito's break now, so
Speaker 1: you guys have a crunch tastic time listening to these
Speaker 1: taste ads, and we're back. So we were just talking
Speaker 1: about how Nancy Reagan figured out what she claimed to
Speaker 1: be Ronald Reagan's exact time of birth, uh, and also
Speaker 1: Gorbachov's exact time of birth so that she could do
Speaker 1: their charts, which which comes up later. But let's let's
Speaker 1: veer back right now and talk about the Challenger Space
Speaker 1: shuttle disaster. I ran across some Twitter, unverified Twitter comments
Speaker 1: by people claiming that Ronald Reagan's astrologer had picked the
Speaker 1: time for the Challenger Shuttle launch. I found no evidence
Speaker 1: of that, but Joan does claim that she's the reason
Speaker 1: the President ordered an investigation of NASA after the Challenger disaster.
Speaker 1: According to Joan, the President had Nancy ask her whether
Speaker 1: or not the stars said NASHA should be investigated after
Speaker 1: seven astronauts died in an explosion, which, yes, regardless of
Speaker 1: what the stars say, someone should investigate. But yeah, Joan
Speaker 1: says that she analyzed the charts for the launch and
Speaker 1: the astronauts and said that there ought to be an investigation.
Speaker 1: The Twelfth House indicated that sabotage, at worst or at
Speaker 1: least inexcusable negligence had been involved in the crash, which
Speaker 1: was obviously true because space shuttles aren't supposed to explode.
Speaker 1: That seems like a like a like an easy get
Speaker 1: for for Where was Joan before the Launch's interested in
Speaker 1: right in flight? Now? Yes, well get close to the stars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird that she didn't call that one right the
Speaker 1: same time, but she doesn't know when bad things are
Speaker 1: going to happen. She also she only knows that she
Speaker 1: could have predicted them. Yeah, if she. If only I
Speaker 1: hadn't been doing if only you gave me more money,
Speaker 1: I would have known. Yeah, that this what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, she's the reason there was an investigation in
Speaker 1: an assa after this. Now, older listeners may remember that
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan was known as the Teflon President because many
Speaker 1: many scandals during his presidency didn't seem to stick to
Speaker 1: him up until you know the very end. John quickly
Speaker 1: claims credit for this too, in a chapter of her
Speaker 1: book titled Astrology. Was the Teflon and the Teflon Presidency beautiful?
Speaker 1: It's great, It's a work of art. Really, here's Joan.
Speaker 1: For almost six years, the president dominated his press conferences,
Speaker 1: partly because he was well prepared, and finally because the
Speaker 1: times I chose for his press conferences enabled him to
Speaker 1: appear at his best. She repeatedly insists that my control
Speaker 1: over the departure times at Air Force One when the
Speaker 1: President was aboard were absolute. Her most vivid story of
Speaker 1: sort of deflecting a scandal for the President came during
Speaker 1: the run up of his trip to Germany in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five. He was going to help shore up Helmet Cole,
Speaker 1: the German Prime Minister in a reelection campaign. There was
Speaker 1: a big photo op opportunity that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: important to the German public. Where the two men were
Speaker 1: going to go to a cemetery in Bittberg where they'd
Speaker 1: lay to rest a wreath commemorating the dead of World
Speaker 1: War Two. It was a lovely gesture, but the President's
Speaker 1: team failed to account for the forty nine dead Waffen
Speaker 1: ss men buried there. This became a huge issue in America.
Speaker 1: I just talked about kind of Illeisel was very angry
Speaker 1: about it. People marched in the streets. Israeli and American
Speaker 1: Jewish leaders were outraged, but Helmet Cole insisted the visit
Speaker 1: was necessary, and most Germans seemed to agree. Ronnie needed
Speaker 1: to support Cole because his re election was critical to
Speaker 1: write Reagan's Cold War strategy, something about where he wanted
Speaker 1: to put missiles. So bereft of good options, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: turned to Joan Quigley. She claims to have suggested that
Speaker 1: the administration basically make a visit to bergen Belsen concentration
Speaker 1: camp before going to Bittberg, and that they would publicize
Speaker 1: that a lot more. She also claimed that the timing
Speaker 1: on when they visited Bitberg was critical, so she picked
Speaker 1: an exact like minute and like this is the minute
Speaker 1: that Air Force one has to land. And what mattered
Speaker 1: was not the context of the president's visit or that
Speaker 1: he was laying a wreathit a cemetery that included dead
Speaker 1: asss men. What mattered was that astrologically the right time
Speaker 1: was chosen. Jones time didn't work out with the president's
Speaker 1: existing plan. They're supposed to have a picnic or something,
Speaker 1: so she canceled the picnic, and then she had the
Speaker 1: Air Force One fly around in circles for as long
Speaker 1: as it had to in order to land at Bitberg
Speaker 1: at her chosen time. So she just had the Air
Speaker 1: Force One just circling for hours, waiting for the right
Speaker 1: astrological time, burning jet fuel. How did the public receive
Speaker 1: this visit? They didn't know. I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: actually a disaster. This is Michael Moore. One of the
Speaker 1: first times he shows up on TV is as at
Speaker 1: a crowd of protesters at Bitburg. Hold. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: Helmet Cole was re elected in the controversy did eventually fade,
Speaker 1: which Joan credits to the fact that she had Air
Speaker 1: Force one burn enough fuel that yeah, they were able
Speaker 1: and at her specifically chosen astrological time. So again, people
Speaker 1: noticed at the time that the Reagans had really weird
Speaker 1: timing issues because there were like White House correspondents that
Speaker 1: had worked with other presidents who didn't use astrologers. Joan
Speaker 1: notes that like or who did with their astrologers, gave
Speaker 1: them like times, you know, hour normal people till Yeah,
Speaker 1: because Joe, it's always like twenty minutes past the Yeah
Speaker 1: with you, because that's how you make it seem like
Speaker 1: it's a special time. Yeah. No, twelve twenty five. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I keep feel like we all keep saying twelve twenty five,
Speaker 1: Well there's probably an astrological Yeah, it's when the seventh
Speaker 1: house is in the night House. Yeah. Well it's also
Speaker 1: Christmas when the moon is in the seven twelve twenty
Speaker 1: five wait what oh yeah wow yeah, yeah, that's when George,
Speaker 1: you should be an astrologer. Because you just did a
Speaker 1: whit on me. I was like, why I played it
Speaker 1: being an astrologer on AOL instant messenger when I was
Speaker 1: in like junior high almost got to charging people money,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, I can't do this. Well,
Speaker 1: stream of Bay, I know you could be that kind
Speaker 1: of astrologer, not this president but I'm saying, what if
Speaker 1: you did and then you like were able to bring
Speaker 1: it down, you know, because if you have that much power, right,
Speaker 1: you could be like, you know, serious saying I'm in
Speaker 1: the wrong. Oh so definitely. Donald Trump reads everything on
Speaker 1: the teleprompter like an anchorman. You know, you could just
Speaker 1: get him to say anything. Yeah. So I'm just maybe
Speaker 1: I should be the presidential astrologer. Yeah, as long as
Speaker 1: he doesn't listen to this podcast, you can't get that
Speaker 1: job here, I know. Yeah. There's a quote in Jones
Speaker 1: book from Bill Plant of CBS which is fascinating to
Speaker 1: me because he was basically talking about how the White
Speaker 1: House correspondence would always wonder why the timing was so weird.
Speaker 1: We wondered if there was any strategy involved, and we
Speaker 1: were relieved to learn that the obvious reason was astrology.
Speaker 1: Keep being quotes. It's like, why were you relieved at that?
Speaker 1: Like what was going on in the eighties could be
Speaker 1: something even weirder. Yeah, yeah, god, yeah, you're right. Just
Speaker 1: I mean I would have just assumed panic attacks, like
Speaker 1: every time someone's late, I'm like, oh, it's a panic attack,
Speaker 1: or I would have it was like to throw off
Speaker 1: the rhythm of the press Corps or something to keep
Speaker 1: people on their toes. Yeah, but you make people wait,
Speaker 1: it's like a power move. Yeah. So yeah. Joan takes
Speaker 1: credit for being the Teflon in the Teflon presidency. She
Speaker 1: also takes credit for the being the only reason that
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan stayed alive through his term. Quote, the fact
Speaker 1: that the cancer did not reoccur is due to the
Speaker 1: excellent time I chose astrologically. So she claims to have
Speaker 1: been the reason his cancer didn't come back, which I
Speaker 1: would give to the doctor, but whatever. She also takes
Speaker 1: credit to the fact that Ronald Reagan was not assassinated
Speaker 1: during his time in office. While Reagan had times where
Speaker 1: he could have been assassinated, I was always able to
Speaker 1: protect him by warning him not to appear in public
Speaker 1: at vulnerable times. Now I'm angry at her for stopping
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan from being and save your assassination wants for
Speaker 1: other more worthy people. You know, there's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I got so into just hating her in the book
Speaker 1: that I was just angry at her for taking credit
Speaker 1: for everything. Yeah. But again again, right, she's taking credit
Speaker 1: for like was that, Well, it's just it's like she
Speaker 1: talks about like the invasion of Grenada, and like there's
Speaker 1: no discussion about like whether it was morally right or
Speaker 1: like the people who died. It was all about like
Speaker 1: I had to make sure Air Force one landed at
Speaker 1: the right time. When he gave his speech about like
Speaker 1: the Grenada invasions, like that's not the thing to be
Speaker 1: concerned about. Joan quickly, well, that's varsity league. She's in
Speaker 1: junior league. It's totally different to handle different things, you know.
Speaker 1: It's very frustrating. So yeah, Joan takes credit for everything
Speaker 1: good that happened during the Reagan administration. The only mistake
Speaker 1: she admits to making is in picking the time for
Speaker 1: Reagan's first debate with Walter Mondale during his nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four re election campaign. Mondale is generally seen as winning
Speaker 1: that debate, but Joan actually kind of takes credit for
Speaker 1: this too. So when she was charting it, she put
Speaker 1: his son in a prominent position in the location chart
Speaker 1: for the time and place in the debate. A reason
Speaker 1: that he had so little charisma and personality that the sun,
Speaker 1: normally indicative of these traits, would simply emphasize his deficit. Characteristics. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: she claims that putting the sun in that position in
Speaker 1: his chart in the time she picked actually made Mondale
Speaker 1: unstoppably powerful in the first debate, which is why Reagan lost.
Speaker 1: So that's good to know for Walter Mondale, if he's
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, he had an even more powerful astrologer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who just died before the second debate wis Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna get to some dueling wizards a little
Speaker 1: bit here. Well, maybe she's also responsible for hiding President
Speaker 1: Reagan from the public during the days after his biggest scandal,
Speaker 1: Iran Gate broke. For those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: the Iran Conscious scandal started in nineteen eighty five when
Speaker 1: a group called Hesbalah and Lebanon kidnapped seven Americans. America
Speaker 1: went to Iran and was like, hey, could you guys
Speaker 1: get hesbel At a chill out for like and give
Speaker 1: us these guys back, and if you do, we'll give
Speaker 1: you missiles which you can use to shoot at Iraq.
Speaker 1: Iran in Iraq were war at the time. We were
Speaker 1: also giving a Raq weapon so that they could shoot Iran.
Speaker 1: But President Reagan was like, why not arm both sides
Speaker 1: of the conflict and free some hostage at the same time.
Speaker 1: So we had Israel sell weapons to Iran, and then
Speaker 1: we paid back Israel in more way weapons, and then
Speaker 1: there wound up being a bunch of extra cash leftover
Speaker 1: after this. And a guy named Alie North was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got all these far right wing rebels
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua fighting the socialist government there. And there's an
Speaker 1: Act of Congress called the bowl In Amendment that says,
Speaker 1: we can't give the contras more money, but what if
Speaker 1: we just keep selling more missiles to Iran and give
Speaker 1: the money to the Contras now? And so anyway, that's
Speaker 1: what they did, and it's different from what gangs do
Speaker 1: because everyone wore suits. So that's the Iran Contra scandal
Speaker 1: in a nutshell. The story broke in late nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six and Americans got very angry that the president and
Speaker 1: his men had illegally funded a terrorist group linked to
Speaker 1: twelve hundred attacks. Joan claimed that the stars were too
Speaker 1: bad for her to help with this scandal. The major
Speaker 1: cosmic forces had so turned against Reagan that what I
Speaker 1: had been able to do earlier was impossible for me
Speaker 1: to do. Then, so she just advised Nancy Reagan to
Speaker 1: not have the president talk to anybody, and Donald Reagan
Speaker 1: criticizes her during this for limiting the president's exposure to
Speaker 1: the media and the public. This period, people were yelling
Speaker 1: basically for President Reagan to say something about this gigantic scandal,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't say a word, which apparently all due
Speaker 1: to Joan Quickly saying don't talk to anybody, which I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe President Reagan would have made the choice
Speaker 1: to shut up no matter what, but I'm sure Joan
Speaker 1: telling him it was too dangerous for him to talk
Speaker 1: to the press about all these missiles he had sold
Speaker 1: people did not help matters. So I think that goes
Speaker 1: in the Joan Quickly bad pile, if you're keeping track.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like, if he had said something, we
Speaker 1: don't know what he would have said, sorry, would have
Speaker 1: been nice. Maybe she knew him so well at that
Speaker 1: point that she knew that what he would say would
Speaker 1: be even worse than just nothing. Yeah, And the way
Speaker 1: Joan puts this is the media was crying out for
Speaker 1: press conferences, which in my opinion, would have been disastrous
Speaker 1: to the president's interest in during which he would have
Speaker 1: been at a disadvantage, which again she doesn't express any
Speaker 1: care for the nation's interests or for the fact that
Speaker 1: an actual crime had been committed. It's just this is
Speaker 1: bad for the president, right, and that's my only concern.
Speaker 1: And he's famous and that reflects on me, right. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: no one knew about her at this point, right, But
Speaker 1: to her, she knew she was the power. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she didn't want it to go bad. She also claims
Speaker 1: to be responsible for beginning the end of the Cold War. Uh. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's a big one to say, credible. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: heavily involved in what happened in the relations between the superpowers,
Speaker 1: changing Ronald Reagan's evil empire attitude so that when he
Speaker 1: went to Geneva, so that he went to Geneva prepared
Speaker 1: to meet a different kind of Russian leader and one
Speaker 1: he could convince of doing things our way. See. Joan
Speaker 1: claimed she did Gorbachev's chart and figured out his birth
Speaker 1: time and figured out that he and Ronald had the
Speaker 1: potential to be best friends and bring peace to the world.
Speaker 1: Best friends. Yeah, best friends, Reagan and Gorbachev. You remember
Speaker 1: when they brought world peace? Yeah? Where we have world peace.
Speaker 1: It's now. Yeah, it's great, fair, that's perfect now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jones saw that there was the potential for an
Speaker 1: incredible collaboration between these two. She just had to cool
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan's hot heart. So she incepted the idea of
Speaker 1: peace with the USSR into Ronald Reagan by bringing the
Speaker 1: idea up to Nancy Reagan. I'm going to read this
Speaker 1: orbatim because it's just just charming. Do me a favor.
Speaker 1: I told Nancy Ronnie can be so charming and persuasive.
Speaker 1: Get him to exercises super salesmanship ability on Gorbachev. Get
Speaker 1: him to sell arms reduction, democracy, human rights, and free
Speaker 1: enterprise to the Secretary General. She added, it only makes
Speaker 1: sense for both sides to agree to reduce the grandiose
Speaker 1: military expenditures that are causing the national debt to rise
Speaker 1: in the USA and the Soviets and abysmal standard of living.
Speaker 1: Ronnie will be able to reason with Gorbachev and convince
Speaker 1: him of doing things our way, you know, freedom and
Speaker 1: free enterprise. Which, yeah, I wait, am I siding with
Speaker 1: Joan because she wants to curb military Sunday? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just the way she phrases it. It's a
Speaker 1: goof just get him to sell arms reduction. It's like
Speaker 1: how she says it, like it's a horoscope though. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like don't go on a trip tomorrow. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: don't disagree with like, I mean, that's obvious. It's the
Speaker 1: only good policy thing she said so far. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not that good, like better than that in the fashion magazine. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not bad. I have trouble believing that.
Speaker 1: That's what convinced Ronald Reagan to deal with Do you
Speaker 1: find it difficult? But you know, freedom and free enterprise.
Speaker 1: You have to give her the wins along with the lawsuits.
Speaker 1: You're right, you're right, You're right. That's fair. So Joan
Speaker 1: wound up had there was a big secret meeting in
Speaker 1: Rekkievic between Grbachav and Reagan. It was a big deal
Speaker 1: because you know, fucking cold, what is like red dawn
Speaker 1: yere So the fact that they were actually sitting down
Speaker 1: and talking was a big deal. Joan did this in
Speaker 1: spite of the fact that she had no idea where
Speaker 1: Reikievic was. Nancy mentioned their meeting to her and asked
Speaker 1: if the president should go and Joan's first question was
Speaker 1: where on earth is Reikievic and how do you spell it?
Speaker 1: Which maybe ought to be like your your sign that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be weighing in on this, But there, what's
Speaker 1: that Jay doing in there? It's true, it's a confusing
Speaker 1: ass Jay, and the why is a little weird too,
Speaker 1: But Joan still did the work. And while the Reikievic
Speaker 1: meeting didn't end with any conclusive because President Reagan wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to give up his Star Wars missile defense plan,
Speaker 1: it was a big step towards thawing in the Cold War,
Speaker 1: and it led eventually to the signing of the Intermediate
Speaker 1: Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or the IF Treaty. This treaty
Speaker 1: basically pulled a lot of short range nukes out of
Speaker 1: Europe and led to the elimination of something like twenty
Speaker 1: six hundred missiles, which, regardless of your politics, is a
Speaker 1: good thing. Twenty six hundred less nukes in the world
Speaker 1: because of this treaty. So negotiations for the inf actually
Speaker 1: had been ongoing through back channels and shit since like
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, but by nineteen eighty seven, Gorbachev was
Speaker 1: ready to fly over to America and sign the treaty.
Speaker 1: The decision for whden where to host the meeting, of course,
Speaker 1: was Jones, so she plotted everything out and sent her recommendations.
Speaker 1: The Russians agreed at first, but then they kept switching
Speaker 1: around the times and changing their plans, often at the
Speaker 1: last minute, until the dates for the summit and the
Speaker 1: times for the signing were fixed at, according to Joan,
Speaker 1: close to the worst possible astrological time to do it. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is probably not a coincidence. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: almost certainly the result of a great untold duel between
Speaker 1: a US astrologer and the Soviet Union. Nancy had been
Speaker 1: Joan for years at that point, informing her about secret
Speaker 1: meetings with Soviet premiere months before they actually happened. There
Speaker 1: was zero informational security in this meeting. So not only
Speaker 1: is Joan sending off information about this to random computer
Speaker 1: people to have it computed, but like they're talking on
Speaker 1: an unsecured line. They did sometimes talk through the White
Speaker 1: House switchboard and gonna I'm gonna quote from Joan's recollection here.
Speaker 1: Nancy always chided me for refusing to leave my full
Speaker 1: name and number with the switchboard. I told her it
Speaker 1: made me uneasy. I told her operators talked. She said
Speaker 1: I was silly to worry about something like that. I know,
Speaker 1: She said, all White House operators are secretive and reliable.
Speaker 1: Nancy told me she would give me an assumed names
Speaker 1: that I could always get through to her through the
Speaker 1: White House switchboard. She would choose the assumed name for
Speaker 1: me and put it on a list. This would automatically
Speaker 1: give me access. The name she chose was Joan Frisco
Speaker 1: Ha. Ha Ha was from San Francisco. So Joan is convinced
Speaker 1: that their conversations were intercepted by the Soviet Union. The
Speaker 1: Soviet Union changed the time times of the treaty meeting
Speaker 1: in order to favor themselves and hurt Ronald Reagan as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Very well, maybe what happened now Astrology
Speaker 1: was illegal in the Soviet Union? Really Yeah, well they were.
Speaker 1: Religion was illegal. So they're not big on superstition in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, so I think they are, which is
Speaker 1: why it has to be banned. Yeah yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: you forget astrology science. Well I was saying, maybe Resputant
Speaker 1: was still alive. Well, I think it does tie back
Speaker 1: to resputing. Yeah. I think that's probably a big part
Speaker 1: of why it was. So it seems like one of
Speaker 1: the two. Either the Soviets found an astrology they hadn't
Speaker 1: in prison and had that person pick the worst times,
Speaker 1: or they just made sure to always fuck with the
Speaker 1: timing once that Reagan said it, because they knew that
Speaker 1: it would upset him that he wasn't doing that. I
Speaker 1: think that's what happened. But it's funner to think of
Speaker 1: it as like a I could sell a screenplay on
Speaker 1: an astrology duel. But yeah, definitely in the United States,
Speaker 1: so there's any producers on them, or if Dorito's wants
Speaker 1: to back the first Dorito's feature film original content, Yes,
Speaker 1: favorite streaming platform this is. This is going to make
Speaker 1: us a lot of money. I'm so exciting, Okay, I
Speaker 1: hope so yeah, I mean that would just be a pittance,
Speaker 1: but I'll take it. I'll do that work on Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh damn it, watch out, we're gonna take your sponsorship. No,
Speaker 1: you're so much better at this than me. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Joan blames the information leaking on Nancy's cunning ruse, calling
Speaker 1: her Joan Frisco. I think it's just as likely that
Speaker 1: it happened because she was they were talking on home
Speaker 1: phone lines or she was sending stuff off to computer people.
Speaker 1: Either way, clearly wasn't a secure situation. Joan found the
Speaker 1: best time of day to do the signing, even with
Speaker 1: all of the Soviet fuckery, and she warned Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: that since they weren't signing in a great day, she
Speaker 1: had to be super careful to use the exact time
Speaker 1: that Joan suggested for the day that they did sign it,
Speaker 1: but Nancy messed up and they signed like twenty minutes later.
Speaker 1: Joan suggests this is because Nancy had just said cancer surgery,
Speaker 1: you know from the case answer that Joan claims she
Speaker 1: foresaw it didn't warn Nancy about, and then adds, under
Speaker 1: such circumstances, she can't be blamed for not arranging the
Speaker 1: signing with her usual foresight and precision, which is nice.
Speaker 1: It's the only break she gives Nancy Reagan in her
Speaker 1: whole book. So the IONF Treaty is probably one of
Speaker 1: the most inarguable accomplishments of the Reagan era. Thousands of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons were destroyed. Both sides were allowed to send
Speaker 1: advisors over to inspect the process. The whole world was
Speaker 1: made a little bit safer by the implementation of this treaty.
Speaker 1: Here's what Joan said about it. The execution of the
Speaker 1: if treaty signing time was flawed. The exact time I
Speaker 1: had asked for would have had the effect of filling
Speaker 1: up a tea cup nearly to the brim at the
Speaker 1: same time ensuring that the tea cup would not fill
Speaker 1: up too fast or spill over. Then Joan mixes the
Speaker 1: shit out of her metaphors. What we now had, in
Speaker 1: effect was a car whose brakes had failed, checked through
Speaker 1: crowded intersections, just a classic filled tea cup car speed
Speaker 1: through an intersection. So Joan claimed that either the treaty
Speaker 1: was going in disastrously for the world, because she wrote
Speaker 1: this in nineteen ninety before all the effects, the treaty
Speaker 1: was going to end disaster, or it was going to
Speaker 1: be like a thoroughbred racing unchallenged towards the finish lines.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. She only hedges her bets when she's talking
Speaker 1: about the future. Whenever she talks about a prediction she
Speaker 1: made in the past, it was always very clear to her.
Speaker 1: But Joan's not consistent. Is what I'm saying here, So yeah,
Speaker 1: to this day, I don't know how safe that treaty
Speaker 1: is for us or the world. I haven't had the
Speaker 1: heart to progress that signing chart as I did the
Speaker 1: other it was fine. I haven't had the heart and
Speaker 1: alsor they're not paying me anymore. They're not paying me anymore.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Joan quickly wasn't sure that the IF treaty
Speaker 1: was a good idea, but she's damned sure that Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan is a monster. At times, she writes about Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan like Nancy was a vampire. Basically, I mean, is
Speaker 1: she wrong again? I guess not. No, she's not wrong.
Speaker 1: Two people can both be monsters. Yeah, two people can
Speaker 1: both be monsters. She claims that Nancy grew stronger as
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan grew weaker, as if she was like feeding
Speaker 1: off of Ronald's essence again, you know, like a vampire.
Speaker 1: Maybe she knows she was close to Nancy. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I say she knows where the bodies are buried, I
Speaker 1: mean she was. She's a vampire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: Like to me, I get frustrated because I'm like, even
Speaker 1: if you're within an awful administration, you got to be
Speaker 1: loyal to the people who are the only reason that
Speaker 1: you're noteworthy, and like Nancy Reagan is the reason you
Speaker 1: got it brought into this. She was very nice to
Speaker 1: year in her shitty memoirs. You should be not a
Speaker 1: monster to her. But again, the astrologer's job is to
Speaker 1: tell the truth and the politician's job is to, you know,
Speaker 1: try and make everybody happy. And that's that's fair because
Speaker 1: certainly Nancy Reagan doesn't deserve any equivocating here, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's be real about Nancy Reagan. And she's polite but bad. See,
Speaker 1: I get too drawn in when I read someone's terrible memoirs, yea,
Speaker 1: And I don't. I don't hate Nancy Reagan as much
Speaker 1: as I ought to because her memoirs are better written.
Speaker 1: Probably she had more money for a good ghost write. Ah,
Speaker 1: that's why. Yeah. So I don't want to defend Nancy
Speaker 1: Reagan anymore. I do want to make it clear that
Speaker 1: Quigley was terrible at predicting the future, because while she
Speaker 1: usually equivocated between you two points and would say like, oh,
Speaker 1: the treaty is either going to be a disaster or
Speaker 1: fine to kind of like sometimes she did make specific
Speaker 1: predictions in her memoirs about things that were going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future, and they are all wrong. Here's
Speaker 1: one aiding the Contras wasn't popular in many circles. History
Speaker 1: will one day prove that Ronald Reagan was strategically correct.
Speaker 1: The Contras signed a peace treaty with the government in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven. The leader they were fighting, Ortega, is
Speaker 1: still in charge of Nicaragua. Joan Quiggley said that if
Speaker 1: this remained the case, all of Latin America would fall
Speaker 1: to communism, still waiting on that. She also includes the
Speaker 1: text of a letter she sent to Ronald Reagan saying
Speaker 1: that development of SDI the Star Wars Strategic Defense initiative,
Speaker 1: was a brilliant strategy. So he said he would go
Speaker 1: down in history with Lincoln and Roosevelt as the best
Speaker 1: American presidents, but he would be known as the greatest
Speaker 1: of America's presidents because while Lincoln just solved slavery and
Speaker 1: Roosevelt just solved World War Two, Donald Reagan would quote
Speaker 1: bring peace to the world. Oh man, what if if
Speaker 1: only she'd been right. Yeah, Well, she wasn't right about
Speaker 1: any of that, because the Strategic Defense initiative was scrapped
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three for being expensive nonsense. World peace
Speaker 1: still has not happened. Yeah, but also Trump brought up
Speaker 1: the Star Wars thing like yesterday. Definitely made an impression
Speaker 1: on him. Yeah, yep, so she did say conduct the
Speaker 1: course of history. Yeah. Well, in a way, she was
Speaker 1: a Charlatan, but she was working for Charlatan's Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he'd been working for the good guys. She probably would
Speaker 1: have done good guys stuff. I mean, just anything to
Speaker 1: advance her own interest, right, Yeah. She just seems like
Speaker 1: a self interested person. Yeah, that's she's definitely a self
Speaker 1: interested person. Most of my distaste for her comes from
Speaker 1: I feel like she was taking advantage of a scared
Speaker 1: lady whose husband had just gotten shot. Yeah, but who
Speaker 1: cares if it's Nancy Reagan. Yes, you takes just a
Speaker 1: scared lady. Yeah. Maybe that's why Nancy got so bad. No,
Speaker 1: it was bad, she was bad. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: like a lot of it probably comes from the fact too,
Speaker 1: that if you don't view astrology as any in any
Speaker 1: way legitimate, which I'm barely saying I even I do.
Speaker 1: By the way, Rob is an aries not a Pisces,
Speaker 1: just to make that clear. But he is on the cusp,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't that far off. But uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to see people who do believe
Speaker 1: in astrology or who charge to make astrological predictions as manipulative.
Speaker 1: And but I mean they're different than clairvoyance. It's true
Speaker 1: because they're actually looking at something that they believe they can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're looking at math, and they're trying to apply logic
Speaker 1: to an insane world to make people comforted by the
Speaker 1: idea that there's like a structure and a float of
Speaker 1: things and that you can predict what it'll be. I
Speaker 1: think they believe in their own abilities. Well yeah, And see,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that I question is
Speaker 1: whether or not because Joan isn't entirely consistent number one
Speaker 1: in her claims about what astrology can do, because there
Speaker 1: will be times when she was like, there's nothing that
Speaker 1: could have changed the outcome this, and there's other times
Speaker 1: where she's like, you can guarantee the success of any
Speaker 1: endeavor if you do this and this and this. She's
Speaker 1: a scammer, But she wasn't like giving the advice she
Speaker 1: was giving them was mostly about what time to do
Speaker 1: the bad things they were going to do, as opposed
Speaker 1: to being like, do this thing. Yeah, they were like,
Speaker 1: when you make the announcement about the horrible thing you're doing,
Speaker 1: do it at twelve twenty five. The only thing she
Speaker 1: claims that she was specifically giving advice that went beyond
Speaker 1: timing is for Nancy Reagan's war on drug stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you've done a great job of
Speaker 1: convincing me again that Nancy Reagan is one of his
Speaker 1: greatest monsters and we're getting behind a bastard here for Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think also she really used the fact
Speaker 1: that she was like, you know, the first lady to
Speaker 1: hide the fact that she was a horrible person and
Speaker 1: should be remembered as such. And just because she was
Speaker 1: insecure doesn't mean that she didn't I mean, everything she did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Reagan's legacy has benefited so much from the nostalgia
Speaker 1: with conservatives that they look back on it as like
Speaker 1: the last great time. They were all in coke at
Speaker 1: that time too, for sure, And also we know people
Speaker 1: were maybe like not so cogent during points of the
Speaker 1: presidency and somebody maybe it was all over North, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody was in their ear being like, do this horrible thing,
Speaker 1: and they were saying yes. So you know, you still
Speaker 1: have the the president you can say like no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to. Yeah. So I don't think we should
Speaker 1: put too much on the people that influenced the Reagans.
Speaker 1: I think we should really just lay the blame at
Speaker 1: the feet of the Reagans for being such assholes. Well,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a lot of blame to go around for
Speaker 1: the Reagans, I guess might I don't think Joan was
Speaker 1: the I don't think she's the one to blame. I
Speaker 1: think if we're gonna blame anyone, let's blame Aliver North.
Speaker 1: I think she gets some blame, though, cause I think
Speaker 1: number one just for the war on drugs, not just
Speaker 1: for the war on drugs. I still think that Nancy's
Speaker 1: recollection of how Joan came back into her life rings
Speaker 1: truer to me than Jones does. And I think that
Speaker 1: Joan was taking advantage of that. And I also think
Speaker 1: I think Joe knew that she was not as I
Speaker 1: think whether and I think she must have believed in
Speaker 1: astrology to some extent, obviously, but I think she knew
Speaker 1: that it was not as cut and dry and clear
Speaker 1: cut as she claims in her book, and I think
Speaker 1: getting involved in global geopolitics to the extent that she
Speaker 1: did with no qualifications. Yeah, but again that's what the
Speaker 1: Reagans did. That's a good point, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially Nancy. He definitely for Nancy. He'd been a governor
Speaker 1: at that point, but he wasn't a good governor, and
Speaker 1: he got cast in the role because he was like
Speaker 1: someone you know, he was like Trump. He was somebody
Speaker 1: that really evil. People were like, this guy will make
Speaker 1: a good face for our evil white supremacist and he
Speaker 1: seemed able to be manipulated, and he was able to
Speaker 1: be manipulated, which made him a good you know. And
Speaker 1: I think people do kind of use the excuse of like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe he was senile, And there's rumors he had Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: at a certain point in the presidency. Definite. But again
Speaker 1: it's like he still thought it was a good idea
Speaker 1: to be president. He wasn't like, hey, maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: the most qualified person. He like, let all those people
Speaker 1: gas them up. To be fair, if you have Alzheimer's
Speaker 1: or your senile, you're not going to be you can't
Speaker 1: be held accountable for your decisions, even if they're terry. Right.
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, don't thinking had Alzheimer's when you became governor.
Speaker 1: I think you had ambitions. But you know, if your
Speaker 1: ambitions are like I'll do whatever it takes to stay
Speaker 1: in power and get into power, you probably shouldn't be
Speaker 1: in power. I don't disagree with that when it comes
Speaker 1: to Ronald Reagan or for Nancy. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that the fact that a number of unqualified people got
Speaker 1: into national leadership excuses what Joan did either. But I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I just think if you're scamming the Reagans,
Speaker 1: like the Reagans deserve to be scammed, you know. And
Speaker 1: when I added up, it's like she she's mostly culpable
Speaker 1: for like being a bad friend. Yeah, as opposed to
Speaker 1: she's a bad friend, and you're not really someone's friend
Speaker 1: if they're paying you to be their friend. But it's
Speaker 1: like compared to Info Wars, for instance, I mean, when
Speaker 1: you when you think about the statements she was actually
Speaker 1: making and the way that she was wielding the power
Speaker 1: that she had, she could have been so much worse.
Speaker 1: She could have been so much worse. She was saying
Speaker 1: what time to land the plane? She wasn't saying, like
Speaker 1: everybody who you think is like a child in a
Speaker 1: cage is an actor. That's true, and like that person
Speaker 1: is in the ear. But ive Donald Trump, and he
Speaker 1: believes that stuff even though he's making the policy which
Speaker 1: is like more insane. Well, I will say, though, if
Speaker 1: you start comparing people from anyone from the Reagan administration
Speaker 1: to anyone from today's administration, all the people from back
Speaker 1: then are going to look better. We know, what did
Speaker 1: she do? But what did she do that was so bad? Bad?
Speaker 1: Just because the gloves are off, they were doing the
Speaker 1: same shit. It's just Nancy was going to choose a
Speaker 1: bad policy to get behind. And I think that Joan
Speaker 1: was correct in saying that the war on drugs was
Speaker 1: a way to play the public and to create a
Speaker 1: cause and fabricate a solution that wouldn't be effective but
Speaker 1: would have the illusion of being this really incredible, like
Speaker 1: we're all going to be so happy this was passed.
Speaker 1: But what if Nancy Reagan, what if she was like,
Speaker 1: all right, choose like a b C and everything was
Speaker 1: even worse. But what if Nancy had just done a
Speaker 1: bunch of fashion magazine interviews and nobody she'd never gone on.
Speaker 1: Well that's stupid, though, why should she? She was the
Speaker 1: first lady? Because I think that what Joan was saying
Speaker 1: is that people need to take you seriously. You don't
Speaker 1: have the knowledge, You don't have the gravitas to be
Speaker 1: able to make people like you, because they're just gonna
Speaker 1: think you're and also because you're a bad person who
Speaker 1: has no substance and you're just like a homophobic, horrible socialite.
Speaker 1: Isn't it bad to tell someone who has no substance
Speaker 1: and horrible opinions on things to make their opinions count
Speaker 1: by becoming ac she was already Yeah, but she just
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about fashion. Well, that wouldn't have ever
Speaker 1: made her possul being first ladies to talk about fashion
Speaker 1: and also pretend to care about some pet issue. It's
Speaker 1: like being a socialite on a super scale. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense that a socialite would have the best advice
Speaker 1: on how to be like a socialite. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: guess this. This, this, this is not something we're gonna
Speaker 1: settle to either of our anyone's mutual agreement. I think
Speaker 1: she took advantage of Nancy Reagan in a moment of
Speaker 1: weakness and light about having predicted her husband's assassination. Y'all
Speaker 1: are on a different side of that, and think that
Speaker 1: Nancy probably just called her up, called her up. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say. I think our side, our platform is
Speaker 1: fuck Nancy Reagan. I don't disagree with fun Nancy Reagan.
Speaker 1: But I add John quickly to that. John gets as
Speaker 1: scot Free. We're pro Joneses. You the listeners at home,
Speaker 1: will have to decide for yourselves who you think the
Speaker 1: bastards in this story were. But I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree there were a lot of bastards everyone's talked
Speaker 1: about today. And Donald Reagan, by the way, is also
Speaker 1: kind of a dick, but we'll get into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should be the people whose names we
Speaker 1: don't know yet. Yeah, those are the real Yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't even watch Ollie North should take a lot more,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. And if we're gonna blame someone
Speaker 1: for the Reagans, that's not the Reagans. It ain't the psychic.
Speaker 1: Not the psychic I mean, but she's not. She's not
Speaker 1: a psychica. She's astrology, a planetary scientist, maybe the stars.
Speaker 1: Maybe the stars were misaligned and that's why they were
Speaker 1: all such terrible people. Yeah, true, because she's definitely it's
Speaker 1: just the way she writes things. I'm not saying she's likable.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying she's not as bad as the Rigans.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe I'm not saying she's as bad as
Speaker 1: the Reagans. I am saying she's history's greatest monster. Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been enlightening, and I'm glad y'all had a
Speaker 1: different opinion on all of this than me, because it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to have much perspective after three hundred
Speaker 1: pages of the Twelfth House and the Seventh by the
Speaker 1: way I should, I want to add one last thing.
Speaker 1: So the end of Joan Quigley's book is just a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff on how astrology works in politics, and
Speaker 1: so she talks about all the different houses, which I
Speaker 1: don't understand what any of that means. But there's like
Speaker 1: the twelfth House in politics is apparently all the poor people,
Speaker 1: but also journalists and saboteurs and like poor people, the homeless,
Speaker 1: drug addicts and journalists and the same a lot. No,
Speaker 1: she's the right astrologer for the Reagans for sure. Anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys want to plug your pluggables? Yeah, sure. Come
Speaker 1: listen to Night Call. It's on the Audio Boom network
Speaker 1: of podcasts. And if you have a question, a comment,
Speaker 1: an astrological prediction, you can give us a call at
Speaker 1: two four oh four six night You can also text
Speaker 1: us at the same number, or you can email us
Speaker 1: at Night Call podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we can do like some cross coverage. If you've got
Speaker 1: thoughts about the Reagans and astrology, you send them to
Speaker 1: Night Call and we will talk about them there too.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for fun. Thank you guys for being on you
Speaker 1: listeners at home. If you have an opinion over whether
Speaker 1: or not Joan Quickly is history's greatest monster, or if
Speaker 1: I'm being too hard on her, drop us a line
Speaker 1: at at Bastard's pod on Twitter and either yell at
Speaker 1: me or agree with me, whichever is your preference. You
Speaker 1: can also find us on the internet at behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. We'll have some pictures up there. Joan
Speaker 1: Quigley commissioned a drawing of like a presidential seal with
Speaker 1: astrological symbols on it. That's super kooky. We'll get a
Speaker 1: picture of that for you. So yeah, I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at I write Okay,
Speaker 1: please check us out. We're back every Tuesday. So next
Speaker 1: Tuesday we will be talking about someone probably with millions
Speaker 1: of deaths on their hands. Hey, when are you gonna
Speaker 1: get to some Freemasons? Yeah, they're all Freemasons. All right.
Speaker 1: This has been behind the bastards. I have been Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: and I love like forty percent of you.