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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to could Happened Here. You're a daily dose

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Speaker 2: of something a little unsettling. I'm Molly Conger, your occasional

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Speaker 2: host here on this feed, and the host of a

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Speaker 2: new weekly show from Kool Zone Media called Weird Little

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Speaker 2: Guys that I think you'll probably like. Today, I'm a

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Speaker 2: little shamelessly promoting my own show by giving you a

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Speaker 2: little taste of the kinds of stories I like to

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Speaker 2: dig into over on the Weird Little Guy's Feed. So,

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Speaker 2: remember last month when Donald Trump got shot? I kind

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Speaker 2: of don't. It feels like it was years ago. I

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Speaker 2: barely remember who I was during those tense few days

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Speaker 2: where it seemed possible Trump would ride that momentum to victory,

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Speaker 2: imagining posters of that photo of Trump with blood dripping

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Speaker 2: down his face, fist raised, and then kind of didn't

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Speaker 2: matter at all anymore. The shooter wasn't a Biden sleeper

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Speaker 2: agent sent to take down the opposition. He was just

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Speaker 2: some kid with a rifle and the kind of uniquely

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Speaker 2: American desire to cause chaos with it. And that was

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Speaker 2: really hard for a lot of people to swallow. What

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Speaker 2: do you mean it doesn't seem like he was politically motivated.

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Speaker 2: He shot the former president. He shot him while he

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Speaker 2: was on stage at a rally for his campaign to

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Speaker 2: retake the presidency. Everything about the situation is political. How

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Speaker 2: could the shooter have had any other motivation? Thomas Crooks

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Speaker 2: wouldn't be the first guy to take a shot at

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Speaker 2: a president or a presidential candidate for no reason at all.

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Speaker 1: Far from it. While I was doing.

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Speaker 2: Research for the first episode of my show, which theoretically

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Speaker 2: you could pick up your phone and subscribe to right

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Speaker 2: now while you're listening if you wanted to, he got

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Speaker 2: lost on a few side quests. That's always happening to me.

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Speaker 2: But as I breezed past, a quick mention of George Wallace,

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Speaker 2: the four term governor of Alabama, best remembered for his

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Speaker 2: rallying cry of segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. I'm

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Speaker 2: not going to do it in his accent. I'll spare

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Speaker 2: you that. I remember that he got shot while running

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Speaker 2: for president too, during the primary in nineteen seventy two.

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Speaker 2: He was paralyzed after surviving an attempted assassination on the

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Speaker 2: campaign trail. Surely, whoever shot a man like George Wallace

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Speaker 2: did it? Out of a deep ideological commitment to something right.

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Speaker 2: Maybe a civil rights activist opposed to Wallace's views on race,

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Speaker 2: or a McGovern voter concerned that Wallace's cynical attempt to

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Speaker 2: gain the Democratic Party nomination after winning five states as

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Speaker 2: a third party candidate in sixty eight might actually work.

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Speaker 2: Or maybe it was a diehard Nixon supporter who saw

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Speaker 2: Wallace as a spoiler, siphoning conservative votes away from Nixon.

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Speaker 1: But that's not what happened.

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Speaker 2: When Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace four times in the

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Speaker 2: chest and stomach on May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. It

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Speaker 2: had nothing at all to do with Wallace's policy positions,

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Speaker 2: or Nixon's or McGovern's. It didn't even have really anything

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Speaker 2: at all to do with George Wallace. Bremer had been

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Speaker 2: planning for months to assassinate Richard Nixon, but it turned

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Speaker 2: out that was too hard. He just wanted to shoot

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Speaker 2: somebody important. I hesitated to draw too many comparisons to

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Speaker 2: the Trump shooter, because there's a lot we still don't

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Speaker 2: know and may never know. But it did come out

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Speaker 2: early on that Crooks was equally interested in shooting Joe Biden.

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Speaker 2: Trump just happened to have a campaign rally close to

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Speaker 2: where he lived in Pennsylvania, and that rally happened to

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Speaker 2: have weak perimeter security. Crooks had also looked into how

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Speaker 2: to get close to FBI Director Christopher Ray, Attorney General

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Speaker 2: Merrick Garland, and inexplicably Kate Middleton, Yes, that Kate Middleton,

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Speaker 2: the Princess of Wales. If Biden had been campaigning in

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Speaker 2: western Pennsylvania, or if Richard Nixon's security hadn't been so tight,

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Speaker 2: crooks may have shot Biden and Bremer may have killed Nixon.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like it really mattered to either of

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Speaker 2: them who they shot, as long as they shot somewhat important.

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Speaker 2: One of the funny things about history is realizing that

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Speaker 2: we've always been the way that we are now. There

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Speaker 2: truly is nothing new under the sun. Because within hours

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Speaker 2: of the attempt on George Wallace's life, before any information

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Speaker 2: was clear at all, Nixon was demanded ending his aides

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Speaker 2: put in a call to the White House Deputy Director

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Speaker 2: of Communications, Kenneth Clawson to put out a statement that

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Speaker 2: the shooter was a supporter of George McGovern that was

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Speaker 2: the front runner and the Democratic primary, whom Nixon would

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Speaker 2: go on to trounce terribly at the election at the

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Speaker 2: end of that year.

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Speaker 1: So Nixon's saying.

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Speaker 2: Just say, we've got evidence, We've got unmistakable evidence. Of course,

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Speaker 2: they didn't have evidence of any kind, unmistakable or not.

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Speaker 2: And when the evidence did emerge, it certainly didn't show

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Speaker 2: the shooter working on the McGovern campaign, which is the

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Speaker 2: rumor Nixon was hoping to spread in those early hours.

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Speaker 2: Bob Kennedy, I.

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Speaker 1: Mean away, you put him to having.

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Speaker 2: To get a bust before they get in this on

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Speaker 2: the right of way. Now, we don't have thousands of

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Speaker 2: hours of secret recordings from inside the offices of today's Republicans,

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Speaker 2: but we did see something really similar in the immediate

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Speaker 2: aftermath of the Trump shooting. He's a Biden voter, he's

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Speaker 2: a Democrat, he's a radical leftist, he's Antifa. We can

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Speaker 2: already tell. We just know it's obvious, we have proof.

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Speaker 2: The fact that there was no proof of anything on

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Speaker 2: day one doesn't matter. It matters even less that no

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Speaker 2: proof ever materialized. You just have to get the rumor

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Speaker 2: out first. You have to make an impression while the

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Speaker 2: cement is wet, and sometimes that's permanent. One thing that

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Speaker 2: is not on the Nixon tapes, though, is a conversation

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Speaker 2: that allegedly occurred that afternoon in May nineteen seventy two

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Speaker 2: that was reported by Seymour Hirsch twenty years later in

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. Despite a Supreme Court ruling in the

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Speaker 2: seventies the tapes belong to the National Archives, the full

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Speaker 2: volume of the Nixon tapes were not made available to

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Speaker 2: the public until two thousand and seven. Now, Seymour Hirsh

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Speaker 2: is not a making stuff up kind of guy. I

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Speaker 2: don't think he was fabricating any part of this story.

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Speaker 2: He's still alive and has a sub stack at eighty

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Speaker 2: seven years old, So I don't want any beef with Seymour.

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Speaker 2: That's not what I'm saying. He has a decade's long

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Speaker 2: career as an investigative journalist and has a Pulitzer for

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Speaker 2: exposing the cover up of the Myli massacre. I don't

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Speaker 2: think he's patting the truth here. But in his nineteen

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Speaker 2: ninety two New Yorker piece called Nixon's Last cover Up

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Speaker 2: the tapes he wants the Archives to suppress, Hirsch wrote

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Speaker 2: that the unreleased tapes from the afternoon of the Wallace

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Speaker 2: shooting contained recordings of Nixon directing E. Howard Hunt, the

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Speaker 2: retired CIA officer who headed his White House plumbers, to

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Speaker 2: break into Bremer's apartment before the FBI could search it

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Speaker 2: and to plant McGovern campaign literature. Hunt's own autobiography admits

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Speaker 2: only that at Nixon's direction, Nixon advisor Charles Colson did

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Speaker 2: ask Hunt to take a look around Brehmer's apartment. Even

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Speaker 2: that this is all taking place just a month before

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Speaker 2: Hunt did in fact play a key role in the

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Speaker 2: Watergate break in, This isn't exactly unbelievable. I can absolutely

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Speaker 2: believe that Richard Nixon would ask E. Howard Hunt to

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Speaker 2: break into a building for some nefarious purpose, because we

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Speaker 2: know he did that at least once. And one thing

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Speaker 2: the varying accounts seemed to agree on is that Hunt

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Speaker 2: was unable to complete the assignment because the FBI had

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Speaker 2: already sealed off Bremmer's apartment in Milwaukee before he got there.

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Speaker 2: Hirsh's Peace claimed the tapes contained recordings of Coulson breaking

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Speaker 2: this news to Nixon, that Hunt arrived too late and

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Speaker 2: the apartment was already under police guard, and further claims

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Speaker 2: that on the recordings, Nixon can be heard berating Coulson

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Speaker 2: for not doing more to slow down the FBI. Again,

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Speaker 2: all completely believable if you have even a passing knowledge

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Speaker 2: of Richard Nixon, and Coulson himself related this account to

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Speaker 2: Hirsh in nineteen ninety two. The problem is we have

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Speaker 2: the tapes now, fifteen years after Hirsch's article was published.

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Speaker 2: Researchers scoured the newly released recordings for proof of this

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Speaker 2: version of events, and it isn't there. It's entirely possible

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Speaker 2: that Colson is recalling conversations that occurred outside the presence

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Speaker 2: of the tape machine, or is misremembering how much of

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Speaker 2: this was actually spoken aloud and what was simply understood.

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Speaker 2: It's not out of the realm of possibility that Colson

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Speaker 2: is recalling something Nixon definitely desired. It's just not all

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Speaker 2: the tapes. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence, of course,

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Speaker 2: But we do have a pretty complete record of Nixon's

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Speaker 2: conversations on the afternoon of May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two.

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Speaker 2: Those missing eighteen minutes are from a different frantic afternoon

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Speaker 2: that summer. But before we get to the rest of

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Speaker 2: Richard Nixon's no good, very bad day. Here are some

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Speaker 2: products and services. So on May fifteenth, Nixon got out

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Speaker 2: of a budget meeting around four pm, which was shortly

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Speaker 2: after the shooting, and that's when he first got the news.

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Speaker 2: And we know from the tapes that his first phone

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Speaker 2: call was to his own wife, Pat and then he

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Speaker 2: called George Wallace's wife, Cornelia. He then asked Secretary of

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Speaker 2: the Treasury John Connolly to call Ted Kennedy to offer

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Speaker 2: him full Secret Service protection, which is not allowable under

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Speaker 2: the structure of how that works, but he wanted it done,

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Speaker 2: presumably out of some combination of the idea that Kennedy

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Speaker 2: would be McGovern's vice presidential pick, and maybe just the

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Speaker 2: general idea that if people are getting assassinated, you need

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Speaker 2: to account for all your Kennedy's. It's actually kind of

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Speaker 2: wild to dig into the tapes and see where everyone's

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Speaker 2: heads were at that afternoon in the Oval office. A

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Speaker 2: recording from around seven pm captures speculation that the shooting

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Speaker 2: may have been a false flag by Wallace's own people,

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Speaker 2: but the idea is quickly dismissed. He wouldn't have his

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Speaker 2: own people shoot him in the stomach that could kill you.

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Speaker 2: They would have gone for something less dangerous, like shooting

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Speaker 2: him in the foot, which is a conversation we all

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Speaker 2: had after the Trump shooting, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Oh maybe this is a stunt. Wait?

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Speaker 2: Why would he have them fire at his head? That's

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Speaker 2: so crazy, right, it's I mean, it's the same conversation

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Speaker 2: with different names and body parts subbed in. And this

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Speaker 2: recording too, capture Nixon's top aids, hoping that whoever did

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Speaker 2: it was a left wing nut could want he's gone

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Speaker 2: in er Well.

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Speaker 1: I think it likely likely it could be one of

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Speaker 1: his own people too.

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Speaker 2: If they would shoot that many while, and.

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Speaker 1: They would have shot him in the foot or something,

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Speaker 1: why did he have another It wouldn't wouldn't be one

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Speaker 1: of those other people shooting on the stomach. It's too

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Speaker 1: easy to kill him. Well, I think the guy, the

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Speaker 1: guy has to be another some kind of I just

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Speaker 1: hope he's the left wing nut of right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like that silly? I think I could kind of.

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Speaker 1: Or it was really a left wing now.

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Speaker 2: Rather than the right wing, and they tried.

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Speaker 1: To make out of something but the right day the

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Speaker 1: right wing or other. That's how the hell you do that?

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Speaker 1: I showed you the twister had just started in.

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Speaker 2: Twisse people, So Nixon tried to put a thumb on

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Speaker 2: the scale. After the fact, the exact nature of his

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Speaker 2: meddling will rever be up for debate, I guess, and

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Speaker 2: the Nixon tapes aren't the only unique primary source for

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Speaker 2: in down that day. In the early months of nineteen

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Speaker 2: seventy two, as Arthur Remmer prepared to shoot Nixon, gave

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Speaker 2: up on shooting Nixon and ultimately shot George Wallace, he

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Speaker 2: was keeping a diary, and in nineteen seventy three Harper's

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Speaker 2: Magazine Press published that diary. I couldn't find a physical

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Speaker 2: copy of the original bound book published by Harper's for

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Speaker 2: less than a small fortune, but it did find an

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Speaker 2: archival scan of the diary that was produced as evidence,

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Speaker 2: and the diary is a strange and fascinating document.

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Speaker 1: Only the latter half was published.

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Speaker 2: He'd thrown away the first one hundred and forty eight

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Speaker 2: pages of fact, he notes on the first page of

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Speaker 2: the version that we have In nineteen eighty a construction

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Speaker 2: worker named Sherman Griffin found those first one hundred and

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Speaker 2: forty eight pages. So this again, eight years after the shooting,

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Speaker 2: he found them wrapped in plastic inside of a backpack

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Speaker 2: underneath the twenty seventh Street Viaduct in Milwaukee. From prison,

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Speaker 2: Arthur Remmer tried to sue Griffin for ownership of the document,

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Speaker 2: saying it would only be used to embarrasshim and it

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Speaker 2: was his. He owned it, I need back, But in

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one a court ruled that Griffin could keep it.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure it was more complicated in the end, all

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Speaker 2: the back and forth in court, but ultimately Finder's keepers.

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Speaker 2: The portion we do have is a lot of things.

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Speaker 2: It's full of typos and disorganized thinking, and sexual fantasy

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Speaker 2: and the mundane, rambling stream of consciousness of a guy

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Speaker 2: going about his day to day life as he tries

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Speaker 2: to figure out how to shoot the president. A few

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Speaker 2: months after it was published, The New York Review published

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Speaker 2: an essay by gor Vadal speculating that Brehmer hadn't written

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Speaker 2: the diary at all. As a literary critic, it was

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Speaker 2: his professional opinion that Brehmer could not have written such

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Speaker 2: a document, though it was.

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Speaker 1: Riddled with typos.

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Speaker 2: But Doll believes they come and go and are not

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Speaker 2: believable in their structure and format, as though the writer

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Speaker 2: is remembering, as he writes that he's supposed to be

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Speaker 2: a twenty one year old bus boy of mediocre intelligence.

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Speaker 2: He also doubts that Bremer was well read enough to

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Speaker 2: make reference to Solzhenitsyn's day in the Life of a

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Speaker 2: von Denisovitch or quit as he crossed the Great Lakes,

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Speaker 2: call me Ishmael. Both Deniseovich and Ishmael are misspelled, but

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Speaker 2: that could be intentional, he says.

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Speaker 1: No.

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Speaker 2: Gorvadahal believes or perhaps would only like you to think.

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Speaker 2: He believes it's hard to say that the diary was

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Speaker 2: falsified in its entirety by E.

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Speaker 1: Howard Hunt.

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Speaker 2: Nixon Spook and Hunt was a prolific writer, giving the

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Speaker 2: doll a large volume of material for comparison, and he

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Speaker 2: claims there are similarities in the writing styles, and also

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Speaker 2: notes that both Bremer and Hunt use the phrase Harry hippies.

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Speaker 2: They have a distaste for Harry hippies. I wasn't alive

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy two. Maybe a lot of people hated

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Speaker 2: Harry hippies. But again, just as Hirsh's claims, what the

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Speaker 2: secret tapes in nineteen ninety two were called into question

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Speaker 2: when we got the tapes in two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 2: but All's essay was published in nineteen seventy three, seven

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Speaker 2: years before the first half of the diary was found.

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Speaker 2: So even if you're inclined to believe Hunt was crafty

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Speaker 2: enough to construct this elaborate plot with a fake diary

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Speaker 2: and a patsy shooter, it's a real stretch to think

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Speaker 2: he would even bother writing one hundred and forty eight pages,

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Speaker 2: wrapping them in plastic, hiding them inside of a backpack,

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Speaker 2: and tucking that backpack into a little nook under a

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Speaker 2: bridge in Milwaukee to be found by a construction worker

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Speaker 2: a decade later. That part just doesn't make a lot

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Speaker 2: of sense. But maybe Gorbadal was just doing an elaborate

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Speaker 2: bit that I don't understand. The legacy of that diary

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Speaker 2: lives on in some surprising ways. In those early days

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Speaker 2: after the Trump shooting, before we all forgot what ever happened,

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Speaker 2: I did see a lot of people point out that

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Speaker 2: the last time a president took a bullet, it wasn't

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Speaker 2: over politics. John Hinckley Junior shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Remember, Okay,

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Speaker 2: here's where I admit something kind of embarrassing. I've always

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Speaker 2: just accepted that statement at face value. It makes no sense,

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Speaker 2: But he wasn't acting rationally, so it's not something I

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Speaker 2: felt like I needed to make sense of. He shot

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Speaker 2: Reagan to impress Jody Foster. I guess he thought she'd

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Speaker 2: find that impressive. No need to interrogate that further. I

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Speaker 2: mean a lot of women might find it impressive if

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Speaker 2: you shot Ronald Reagan, so there's not a lot of

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Speaker 2: follow up to do on that. The thing is, i'd

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Speaker 2: never seen the movie Taxi Driver. I never pieced together

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Speaker 2: that he thought shooting the president would impress Jody Foster

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Speaker 2: because she starred as the child sex worker in the

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Speaker 2: movie Taxi Driver, in which the protagonist Travis Bickle plans

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Speaker 2: to shoot a presidential candidate named Charles Palatine Hinkley chat

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Speaker 2: Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Makes I guess, like a

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Speaker 2: little more sense if you have that cultural context. And

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Speaker 2: I fear I may have been the very last person

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Speaker 2: in America to find that out. So maybe everybody else

296
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Speaker 2: already knew this next part too. I don't know, but

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Speaker 2: Taxi Driver owes a lot to Arthur Bremer, the guy

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Speaker 2: who shot George Wallace. Screenwriter Paul Schrader has always denied

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Speaker 2: that he based any part of the movie on Bremer's diary.

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Speaker 2: In a nineteen seventy six interview, Schrader says he was

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Speaker 2: inspired by the shooting itself in nineteen seventy two, but

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Speaker 2: that the script was actually finished before the diary was

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Speaker 2: published in seventy three, and he registered the script with

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Speaker 2: the WGA, So that is provably true, right. But he

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Speaker 2: told film comments Richard Thompson in seventy six, I want

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Speaker 2: to emphasize that the script was written before any of

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Speaker 2: the diary was published. After I read the diary, I

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Speaker 2: was very tempted to take some of the good stuff

309
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Speaker 2: from it and add it to Taxi Driver, but I

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Speaker 2: decided not to because of legal ratifications. Bremmer is sitting

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Speaker 2: there in jail with nothing better to do than sue us,

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Speaker 2: which is why I made certain the script was registered

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Speaker 2: before the diary came out, and that nothing was changed

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Speaker 2: after the diary's publication. And that's actually kind of prescient

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Speaker 2: of him, come to think of it. He's saying this

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Speaker 2: in seventy six that Bremer could file some kind of

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Speaker 2: nuisance lawsuit from prison and that's years before Brehmer tried

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Speaker 2: to get half a million dollars and his diary back

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Speaker 2: from that construction worker. And I'm obviously not a film buff.

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Speaker 2: We all just found out that I've never seen a movie.

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Speaker 2: So he won't say Schrader's not telling the truth here.

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Speaker 2: And maybe somebody who knows more about film would say, well,

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Speaker 2: there's a difference between a script and a screenplay, right,

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Speaker 2: those are different things. The script was done, but he

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Speaker 2: still could have changed the look and feel of how

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Speaker 2: it was shot, because there are some scenes in Taxi

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Speaker 2: Driver that, unless Scorssa and Trader had some kind of

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Speaker 2: deep psychic connection to whatever forces in the universe motivated

329
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Speaker 2: Arthur Bremer, they absolutely came from the diary. I read

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Speaker 2: the diary before sitting down to see what the movie

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Speaker 2: was all about. So when Travis Bickele, the titular taxi driver,

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Speaker 2: pulls up outside of a building with his fare, Martin

333
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Speaker 2: Scorsese himself in the back seat, I was doing the

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Speaker 2: Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme at my TV because the camera

335
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:24,520
Speaker 2: pans to a woman in a window smoking a cigarette,

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Speaker 2: partially obscured by a gauzy curtain. And just a few

337
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Speaker 2: pages into Bremer's diary, he describes a really similar scene

338
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Speaker 2: before he flew back to Milwaukee to try to cross

339
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Speaker 2: the border into Canada to shoot Richard Nixon in Ottawa.

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Speaker 2: He wrote this in his diary, My last night at

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Speaker 2: the Howard Johnson's in the Jamaica area in New York City.

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Speaker 2: I didn't sleep much. A beautiful naked lady across a

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Speaker 2: parking lot on the next motel out by her window

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Speaker 2: Florida ceiling, smoking cigarettes, and I had to watch her.

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Speaker 2: Her table room light was on, and a thin veil

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Speaker 2: of curtain allowed me to watch her as she passionately

347
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Speaker 2: kissed a man who wore clothes. I never saw them

348
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Speaker 2: in each other's arms for more than a minute a time.

349
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Speaker 1: Time. They must have been fighting. Through binoculars.

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Speaker 2: I saw them gesture like Italians and open their mouths

351
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Speaker 2: very wide, very often. So maybe he finished the script

352
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Speaker 2: before he read the diary, but the diary absolutely influenced

353
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Speaker 2: the way the film was shot. According to Andrew Rausch's

354
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Speaker 2: book on the Films of Martin Scorsese, de Niro prepared

355
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:21,040
Speaker 2: for the role by getting a New York taxi license

356
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Speaker 2: and driving around the city listening to a cassette tape

357
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Speaker 2: of someone reading the diary aloud. The diary is genuinely odd. Normally,

358
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Speaker 2: I'm firmly in the camp of please do not read

359
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:45,160
Speaker 2: or recommend that others read the manifestos left behind by shooters.

360
00:18:45,840 --> 00:18:49,159
Speaker 2: There's not much to gain from it. It's what they want, this, that,

361
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Speaker 2: and the other. There's plenty of writing on the topic,

362
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Speaker 2: but I don't really think anyone will read Arthur Bremer's

363
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Speaker 2: diary entry about leaving a nude massage parlor, frustrated that

364
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Speaker 2: he's still a virgin, feel inspired to follow in his footsteps.

365
00:19:04,119 --> 00:19:07,000
Speaker 2: But I do think it's a fascinating document. I learned

366
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Speaker 2: more about what's inside the mind of a nihilist aspiring

367
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,399
Speaker 2: shooter from Bremer's diary than I've learned from any self

368
00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:17,080
Speaker 2: indulgent little manifesto left behind by a mass shooter. After

369
00:19:17,119 --> 00:19:18,959
Speaker 2: failing to get his shot at Nixon at the appearance

370
00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:21,639
Speaker 2: in Ottawa in April, he wrote, I just need a

371
00:19:21,680 --> 00:19:24,679
Speaker 2: little opening in a second of time. Nothing has happened

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Speaker 2: for so long three months. The last person I held

373
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Speaker 2: a conversation with in three months was a near naked

374
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:32,800
Speaker 2: girl rubbing my erect penis, and she wouldn't let me

375
00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:36,960
Speaker 2: put it through her failures. A few pages later, he

376
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:39,639
Speaker 2: writes that he thought about getting really drunk, but quote

377
00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:42,560
Speaker 2: decided against it. Just wanted to pick a fight with

378
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Speaker 2: a bartender somewhere or someone get arrested, and then.

379
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Speaker 1: Where am I?

380
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:48,720
Speaker 2: I got something to do something big before I ever

381
00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:52,399
Speaker 2: get arrested again. He writes that he's getting tired of

382
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Speaker 2: writing he wants to be a madman who kills, and

383
00:19:55,119 --> 00:19:58,760
Speaker 2: then abruptly transitions to saying he goes crazy when hears

384
00:19:58,800 --> 00:20:02,040
Speaker 2: Johnny Cash's new single, quoting the lyrics I shot you

385
00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:05,040
Speaker 2: with my thirty eight and now I'm doing time, before

386
00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:07,159
Speaker 2: noting that a baseball game had been canceled that day

387
00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:10,040
Speaker 2: due to rain. Honestly, the document it reminds me the

388
00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:13,399
Speaker 2: most of is the diary kept by Franklin Seacrest, the

389
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Speaker 2: young man who set a synagogue on fire in Austin

390
00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:18,480
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. Large portions of his diary were

391
00:20:18,520 --> 00:20:21,600
Speaker 2: produced as evidence in his trial, and his diary is

392
00:20:21,760 --> 00:20:24,639
Speaker 2: sort of similar in that it's a strange stream of consciousness,

393
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:29,040
Speaker 2: accounting his frustrations with women, his daily activities, going to class,

394
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:33,760
Speaker 2: arguments with his mother interspersed with these strange outbursts of

395
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:36,280
Speaker 2: violent desire, and they're just sort of mixed in without

396
00:20:36,359 --> 00:20:41,080
Speaker 2: any recognition that these things are incongruous. After taking two

397
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:43,280
Speaker 2: weeks away from his diary to deal with the tragedy

398
00:20:43,280 --> 00:20:45,960
Speaker 2: of failing to kill Richard Nixon, Rember went to see

399
00:20:45,960 --> 00:20:48,840
Speaker 2: Clockwork Orange. As he watched the movie, he decided he

400
00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:51,840
Speaker 2: would kill George Wallace instead, though he lamented that this

401
00:20:51,920 --> 00:20:55,120
Speaker 2: was a second rate target, writing I won't even rate

402
00:20:55,119 --> 00:20:57,520
Speaker 2: a TV interruption in Russia or Europe. When the news breaks,

403
00:20:57,920 --> 00:21:00,560
Speaker 2: they never heard of Wallace. If something big and nom

404
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:02,600
Speaker 2: flares up, I'll be get the bottom of the first page.

405
00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:06,480
Speaker 2: In America, the editors will say Wallace dead. Who cares?

406
00:21:07,440 --> 00:21:10,320
Speaker 2: He won't get more than three minutes on network TV news.

407
00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:12,800
Speaker 2: I don't expect anybody to get a big throbbing erection

408
00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:15,800
Speaker 2: from the news. You know, a storm in some country

409
00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:18,400
Speaker 2: we never heard of, kills ten thousand people, big deal?

410
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:21,800
Speaker 2: Pass the beer. What's on TV tonight? I hope my

411
00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:25,120
Speaker 2: death makes more sense than my life. And just days

412
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:27,960
Speaker 2: before he finally took his shot, he wrote, yesterday I

413
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:30,720
Speaker 2: even considered McGovern as a target. If I go to

414
00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:34,240
Speaker 2: prison as an assassin, solitary forever, guards in my cell, etc.

415
00:21:35,080 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 2: Or get killed or suicided, what difference to me? Ask

416
00:21:38,600 --> 00:21:40,520
Speaker 2: me why I did it, and I'd say I don't know,

417
00:21:40,920 --> 00:21:45,040
Speaker 2: or nothing else to do, or why not? Or I

418
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 2: have to kill somebody. It bothers me that they are

419
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:50,000
Speaker 2: about thirty guys in prison now who threaten the pres

420
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,200
Speaker 2: and we never heard a thing about them except that

421
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:52,800
Speaker 2: they're in prison.

422
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:55,159
Speaker 1: Maybe what they need is organization.

423
00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:58,720
Speaker 2: Make the first lady a widow, incorporated, chicken in every

424
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:01,679
Speaker 2: pot and a bullet on every head, Committee incorporated the

425
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:04,240
Speaker 2: whole to national convention every year to pick the executioner.

426
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:06,439
Speaker 2: A winner will be chosen from the best entry in

427
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:09,639
Speaker 2: forty thousand words or less, preferably less on the theme

428
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:11,679
Speaker 2: how to do a bang up job getting people to

429
00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:15,000
Speaker 2: notice you? Or get it off your chest? Make your

430
00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 2: problems everybody's. On May thirteenth, two days before the shooting,

431
00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 2: Bremer attended a Wallace rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan. There are

432
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:24,680
Speaker 2: photographs of Bremer at the rally that day, and he

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00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:26,840
Speaker 2: even spoke to a police officer who responded to a

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00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:30,320
Speaker 2: call about a suspicious vehicle park near the venue. Bremer

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00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 2: told the officer he just wanted to be early to

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00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:34,560
Speaker 2: get a good spot at the rally, and complied when

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00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:37,639
Speaker 2: asked to move his car. His loaded thirty eight was

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00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,440
Speaker 2: in his jacket pocket. He writes in his diary that

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00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:42,000
Speaker 2: he could have taken his shot that day, but at

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00:22:42,040 --> 00:22:44,199
Speaker 2: the last minute two teenage girls got between him and

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00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:47,040
Speaker 2: his target, and he thought they'd be disfigured or blinded

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00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:50,000
Speaker 2: if he fired through the glass they were pressed up against, writing,

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00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 2: I let Wallace go only to spare these two stupid, innocent,

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Speaker 2: delighted kids. His final entry, made the night before the

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00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:00,920
Speaker 2: shooting ends with got a sign from camp headquarters here

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00:23:01,560 --> 00:23:04,320
Speaker 2: to shield the gun. Is there anything else to say?

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00:23:05,320 --> 00:23:09,159
Speaker 2: My cry upon firing will be a penny for your thoughts.

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00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:12,920
Speaker 2: Round four pm on the fifteenth, after Wallace finished addressing

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00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,640
Speaker 2: a crowd in Laurel, Maryland, Bremer pushed his way through

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00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 2: the people, hoping to shake Wallace's hand, and unloaded his

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Speaker 2: thirty eight. He struck Wallace four times and wounded four others,

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00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 2: a state trooper, a campaign volunteer, Wallace's personal bodyguard, and

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00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:29,280
Speaker 2: a secret Service agent. He was convicted and sentenced to

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Speaker 2: sixty three years, later reduced to fifty three years on appeal.

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00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:35,159
Speaker 2: He was denied parole in nineteen ninety six after arguing

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00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:38,920
Speaker 2: at his hearing that shooting segregationist dinosaurs wasn't as bad

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00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 2: as harming mainstream politicians, but he was released in two

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00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 2: thousand and seven. George Wallace wrote to Bremer in prison

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00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five, telling him that he forgave him

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00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 2: for the shooting and hoped to correspond a bit to

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00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 2: get to know one another. Bremer never responded, and George

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Speaker 2: Wallace died in nineteen ninety eight. So we shot George

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00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 2: Wallace for no reason, and Robert de niro study of

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00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 2: the diary he left behind inspired the performance that made.

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Speaker 1: Hinckley shoot Reagan. There's really nothing hard to believe at

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Speaker 1: all in the.

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Speaker 2: Idea that Thomas Crooks wanted to shoot a president just

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Speaker 2: to be remembered as anyone at all.

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Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

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00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the

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00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:29,000
Speaker 1: You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated

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00:24:29,080 --> 00:24:33,120
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening,