WEBVTT - Shooter Without A Cause 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.120 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:07.960 Welcome back to could Happened Here. You're a daily dose 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:11.840 of something a little unsettling. I'm Molly Conger, your occasional 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:13.560 host here on this feed, and the host of a 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:15.960 new weekly show from Kool Zone Media called Weird Little 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.279 Guys that I think you'll probably like. Today, I'm a 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:21.640 little shamelessly promoting my own show by giving you a 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.759 little taste of the kinds of stories I like to 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:26.400 dig into over on the Weird Little Guy's Feed. So, 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.160 remember last month when Donald Trump got shot? I kind 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.479 of don't. It feels like it was years ago. I 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.080 barely remember who I was during those tense few days 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.879 where it seemed possible Trump would ride that momentum to victory, 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.240 imagining posters of that photo of Trump with blood dripping 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:46.120 down his face, fist raised, and then kind of didn't 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.519 matter at all anymore. The shooter wasn't a Biden sleeper 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:52.559 agent sent to take down the opposition. He was just 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:55.040 some kid with a rifle and the kind of uniquely 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:57.960 American desire to cause chaos with it. And that was 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.560 really hard for a lot of people to swallow. What 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.520 do you mean it doesn't seem like he was politically motivated. 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.280 He shot the former president. He shot him while he 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:08.160 was on stage at a rally for his campaign to 0:01:08.200 --> 0:01:12.080 retake the presidency. Everything about the situation is political. How 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:16.360 could the shooter have had any other motivation? Thomas Crooks 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.160 wouldn't be the first guy to take a shot at 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:22.160 a president or a presidential candidate for no reason at all. 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.199 Far from it. While I was doing. 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:27.839 Research for the first episode of my show, which theoretically 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:29.840 you could pick up your phone and subscribe to right 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.840 now while you're listening if you wanted to, he got 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.760 lost on a few side quests. That's always happening to me. 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:39.440 But as I breezed past, a quick mention of George Wallace, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.000 the four term governor of Alabama, best remembered for his 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:47.640 rallying cry of segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. I'm 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:49.080 not going to do it in his accent. I'll spare 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.760 you that. I remember that he got shot while running 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:56.680 for president too, during the primary in nineteen seventy two. 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.400 He was paralyzed after surviving an attempted assassination on the 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.520 campaign trail. Surely, whoever shot a man like George Wallace 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:08.400 did it? Out of a deep ideological commitment to something right. 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.440 Maybe a civil rights activist opposed to Wallace's views on race, 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.480 or a McGovern voter concerned that Wallace's cynical attempt to 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.760 gain the Democratic Party nomination after winning five states as 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.560 a third party candidate in sixty eight might actually work. 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.919 Or maybe it was a diehard Nixon supporter who saw 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.880 Wallace as a spoiler, siphoning conservative votes away from Nixon. 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:30.160 But that's not what happened. 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:33.760 When Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace four times in the 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:37.000 chest and stomach on May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. It 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.480 had nothing at all to do with Wallace's policy positions, 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:46.240 or Nixon's or McGovern's. It didn't even have really anything 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.760 at all to do with George Wallace. Bremer had been 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.080 planning for months to assassinate Richard Nixon, but it turned 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:57.000 out that was too hard. He just wanted to shoot 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:01.080 somebody important. I hesitated to draw too many comparisons to 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.639 the Trump shooter, because there's a lot we still don't 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.280 know and may never know. But it did come out 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.400 early on that Crooks was equally interested in shooting Joe Biden. 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:11.960 Trump just happened to have a campaign rally close to 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.000 where he lived in Pennsylvania, and that rally happened to 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.560 have weak perimeter security. Crooks had also looked into how 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.640 to get close to FBI Director Christopher Ray, Attorney General 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:27.200 Merrick Garland, and inexplicably Kate Middleton, Yes, that Kate Middleton, 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.520 the Princess of Wales. If Biden had been campaigning in 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.960 western Pennsylvania, or if Richard Nixon's security hadn't been so tight, 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.640 crooks may have shot Biden and Bremer may have killed Nixon. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:40.880 It doesn't seem like it really mattered to either of 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:44.720 them who they shot, as long as they shot somewhat important. 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.040 One of the funny things about history is realizing that 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.200 we've always been the way that we are now. There 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.880 truly is nothing new under the sun. Because within hours 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.680 of the attempt on George Wallace's life, before any information 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:00.640 was clear at all, Nixon was demanded ending his aides 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:02.400 put in a call to the White House Deputy Director 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.560 of Communications, Kenneth Clawson to put out a statement that 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.440 the shooter was a supporter of George McGovern that was 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:10.840 the front runner and the Democratic primary, whom Nixon would 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.800 go on to trounce terribly at the election at the 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:14.440 end of that year. 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:16.520 So Nixon's saying. 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:20.000 Just say, we've got evidence, We've got unmistakable evidence. Of course, 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.400 they didn't have evidence of any kind, unmistakable or not. 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.320 And when the evidence did emerge, it certainly didn't show 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:28.680 the shooter working on the McGovern campaign, which is the 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.159 rumor Nixon was hoping to spread in those early hours. 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:56.320 Bob Kennedy, I. 0:04:56.240 --> 0:05:06.360 Mean away, you put him to having. 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:12.520 To get a bust before they get in this on 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.599 the right of way. Now, we don't have thousands of 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.400 hours of secret recordings from inside the offices of today's Republicans, 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.039 but we did see something really similar in the immediate 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:25.880 aftermath of the Trump shooting. He's a Biden voter, he's 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.280 a Democrat, he's a radical leftist, he's Antifa. We can 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.000 already tell. We just know it's obvious, we have proof. 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:33.880 The fact that there was no proof of anything on 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.919 day one doesn't matter. It matters even less that no 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.599 proof ever materialized. You just have to get the rumor 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.240 out first. You have to make an impression while the 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.400 cement is wet, and sometimes that's permanent. One thing that 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:49.880 is not on the Nixon tapes, though, is a conversation 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.599 that allegedly occurred that afternoon in May nineteen seventy two 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:55.479 that was reported by Seymour Hirsch twenty years later in 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.240 nineteen ninety two. Despite a Supreme Court ruling in the 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.240 seventies the tapes belong to the National Archives, the full 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:03.120 volume of the Nixon tapes were not made available to 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:07.200 the public until two thousand and seven. Now, Seymour Hirsh 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:09.400 is not a making stuff up kind of guy. I 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:11.839 don't think he was fabricating any part of this story. 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:14.520 He's still alive and has a sub stack at eighty 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:16.720 seven years old, So I don't want any beef with Seymour. 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:18.880 That's not what I'm saying. He has a decade's long 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:21.400 career as an investigative journalist and has a Pulitzer for 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.400 exposing the cover up of the Myli massacre. I don't 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:26.719 think he's patting the truth here. But in his nineteen 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.640 ninety two New Yorker piece called Nixon's Last cover Up 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:32.880 the tapes he wants the Archives to suppress, Hirsch wrote 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:34.880 that the unreleased tapes from the afternoon of the Wallace 0:06:34.920 --> 0:06:38.359 shooting contained recordings of Nixon directing E. Howard Hunt, the 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:42.120 retired CIA officer who headed his White House plumbers, to 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.400 break into Bremer's apartment before the FBI could search it 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:51.599 and to plant McGovern campaign literature. Hunt's own autobiography admits 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:56.000 only that at Nixon's direction, Nixon advisor Charles Colson did 0:06:56.080 --> 0:07:00.400 ask Hunt to take a look around Brehmer's apartment. Even 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.560 that this is all taking place just a month before 0:07:02.640 --> 0:07:04.919 Hunt did in fact play a key role in the 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:09.360 Watergate break in, This isn't exactly unbelievable. I can absolutely 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:11.720 believe that Richard Nixon would ask E. Howard Hunt to 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.880 break into a building for some nefarious purpose, because we 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.800 know he did that at least once. And one thing 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.000 the varying accounts seemed to agree on is that Hunt 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:22.200 was unable to complete the assignment because the FBI had 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.000 already sealed off Bremmer's apartment in Milwaukee before he got there. 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.880 Hirsh's Peace claimed the tapes contained recordings of Coulson breaking 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.200 this news to Nixon, that Hunt arrived too late and 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:34.520 the apartment was already under police guard, and further claims 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.440 that on the recordings, Nixon can be heard berating Coulson 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.280 for not doing more to slow down the FBI. Again, 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.520 all completely believable if you have even a passing knowledge 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:47.080 of Richard Nixon, and Coulson himself related this account to 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.920 Hirsh in nineteen ninety two. The problem is we have 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.280 the tapes now, fifteen years after Hirsch's article was published. 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.280 Researchers scoured the newly released recordings for proof of this 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:00.840 version of events, and it isn't there. It's entirely possible 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:03.960 that Colson is recalling conversations that occurred outside the presence 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.560 of the tape machine, or is misremembering how much of 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.360 this was actually spoken aloud and what was simply understood. 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:12.640 It's not out of the realm of possibility that Colson 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.280 is recalling something Nixon definitely desired. It's just not all 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:20.200 the tapes. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence, of course, 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.520 But we do have a pretty complete record of Nixon's 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:25.440 conversations on the afternoon of May fifteenth, nineteen seventy two. 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:29.840 Those missing eighteen minutes are from a different frantic afternoon 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:32.640 that summer. But before we get to the rest of 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.840 Richard Nixon's no good, very bad day. Here are some 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:48.280 products and services. So on May fifteenth, Nixon got out 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.480 of a budget meeting around four pm, which was shortly 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:53.160 after the shooting, and that's when he first got the news. 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:55.840 And we know from the tapes that his first phone 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:57.920 call was to his own wife, Pat and then he 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.439 called George Wallace's wife, Cornelia. He then asked Secretary of 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.920 the Treasury John Connolly to call Ted Kennedy to offer 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.240 him full Secret Service protection, which is not allowable under 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.000 the structure of how that works, but he wanted it done, 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.960 presumably out of some combination of the idea that Kennedy 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.320 would be McGovern's vice presidential pick, and maybe just the 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.120 general idea that if people are getting assassinated, you need 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.280 to account for all your Kennedy's. It's actually kind of 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:26.679 wild to dig into the tapes and see where everyone's 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:29.480 heads were at that afternoon in the Oval office. A 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.320 recording from around seven pm captures speculation that the shooting 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:34.960 may have been a false flag by Wallace's own people, 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:37.920 but the idea is quickly dismissed. He wouldn't have his 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.040 own people shoot him in the stomach that could kill you. 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.720 They would have gone for something less dangerous, like shooting 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:46.480 him in the foot, which is a conversation we all 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:48.000 had after the Trump shooting, isn't it. 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.000 Oh maybe this is a stunt. Wait? 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.480 Why would he have them fire at his head? That's 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:56.000 so crazy, right, it's I mean, it's the same conversation 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.920 with different names and body parts subbed in. And this 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.199 recording too, capture Nixon's top aids, hoping that whoever did 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:07.040 it was a left wing nut could want he's gone 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:08.840 in er Well. 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.080 I think it likely likely it could be one of 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:11.920 his own people too. 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:14.960 If they would shoot that many while, and. 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.160 They would have shot him in the foot or something, 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.560 why did he have another It wouldn't wouldn't be one 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:22.720 of those other people shooting on the stomach. It's too 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:28.000 easy to kill him. Well, I think the guy, the 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:30.000 guy has to be another some kind of I just 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:31.600 hope he's the left wing nut of right? 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:35.480 Yeah, like that silly? I think I could kind of. 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:41.240 Or it was really a left wing now. 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:44.679 Rather than the right wing, and they tried. 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:46.560 To make out of something but the right day the 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.439 right wing or other. That's how the hell you do that? 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:51.520 I showed you the twister had just started in. 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:55.880 Twisse people, So Nixon tried to put a thumb on 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:58.600 the scale. After the fact, the exact nature of his 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.040 meddling will rever be up for debate, I guess, and 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.560 the Nixon tapes aren't the only unique primary source for 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.280 in down that day. In the early months of nineteen 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.000 seventy two, as Arthur Remmer prepared to shoot Nixon, gave 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.120 up on shooting Nixon and ultimately shot George Wallace, he 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.440 was keeping a diary, and in nineteen seventy three Harper's 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:20.920 Magazine Press published that diary. I couldn't find a physical 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:23.480 copy of the original bound book published by Harper's for 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:26.079 less than a small fortune, but it did find an 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.960 archival scan of the diary that was produced as evidence, 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.080 and the diary is a strange and fascinating document. 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:35.480 Only the latter half was published. 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.320 He'd thrown away the first one hundred and forty eight 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:39.360 pages of fact, he notes on the first page of 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:42.600 the version that we have In nineteen eighty a construction 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.200 worker named Sherman Griffin found those first one hundred and 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.079 forty eight pages. So this again, eight years after the shooting, 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:51.199 he found them wrapped in plastic inside of a backpack 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.720 underneath the twenty seventh Street Viaduct in Milwaukee. From prison, 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.480 Arthur Remmer tried to sue Griffin for ownership of the document, 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:00.360 saying it would only be used to embarrasshim and it 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.000 was his. He owned it, I need back, But in 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.360 nineteen eighty one a court ruled that Griffin could keep it. 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.320 I'm sure it was more complicated in the end, all 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.480 the back and forth in court, but ultimately Finder's keepers. 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.200 The portion we do have is a lot of things. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.280 It's full of typos and disorganized thinking, and sexual fantasy 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:21.679 and the mundane, rambling stream of consciousness of a guy 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.280 going about his day to day life as he tries 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:26.719 to figure out how to shoot the president. A few 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:28.760 months after it was published, The New York Review published 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.360 an essay by gor Vadal speculating that Brehmer hadn't written 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.720 the diary at all. As a literary critic, it was 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.000 his professional opinion that Brehmer could not have written such 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:37.800 a document, though it was. 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:38.680 Riddled with typos. 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:40.960 But Doll believes they come and go and are not 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.720 believable in their structure and format, as though the writer 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.320 is remembering, as he writes that he's supposed to be 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:49.840 a twenty one year old bus boy of mediocre intelligence. 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:52.520 He also doubts that Bremer was well read enough to 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:54.880 make reference to Solzhenitsyn's day in the Life of a 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.560 von Denisovitch or quit as he crossed the Great Lakes, 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:01.840 call me Ishmael. Both Deniseovich and Ishmael are misspelled, but 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:03.920 that could be intentional, he says. 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:05.200 No. 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:09.000 Gorvadahal believes or perhaps would only like you to think. 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.800 He believes it's hard to say that the diary was 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:14.199 falsified in its entirety by E. 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:15.280 Howard Hunt. 0:13:15.760 --> 0:13:19.520 Nixon Spook and Hunt was a prolific writer, giving the 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.080 doll a large volume of material for comparison, and he 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.079 claims there are similarities in the writing styles, and also 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:29.520 notes that both Bremer and Hunt use the phrase Harry hippies. 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.680 They have a distaste for Harry hippies. I wasn't alive 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:34.560 in nineteen seventy two. Maybe a lot of people hated 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:37.840 Harry hippies. But again, just as Hirsh's claims, what the 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.280 secret tapes in nineteen ninety two were called into question 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:42.359 when we got the tapes in two thousand and seven, 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.640 but All's essay was published in nineteen seventy three, seven 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:48.479 years before the first half of the diary was found. 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.079 So even if you're inclined to believe Hunt was crafty 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:53.680 enough to construct this elaborate plot with a fake diary 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.719 and a patsy shooter, it's a real stretch to think 0:13:56.760 --> 0:13:59.960 he would even bother writing one hundred and forty eight pages, 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.320 wrapping them in plastic, hiding them inside of a backpack, 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:04.920 and tucking that backpack into a little nook under a 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.920 bridge in Milwaukee to be found by a construction worker 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:10.640 a decade later. That part just doesn't make a lot 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:13.960 of sense. But maybe Gorbadal was just doing an elaborate 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.120 bit that I don't understand. The legacy of that diary 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.680 lives on in some surprising ways. In those early days 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.040 after the Trump shooting, before we all forgot what ever happened, 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:24.680 I did see a lot of people point out that 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:27.280 the last time a president took a bullet, it wasn't 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:32.720 over politics. John Hinckley Junior shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Remember, Okay, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.680 here's where I admit something kind of embarrassing. I've always 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.440 just accepted that statement at face value. It makes no sense, 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.880 But he wasn't acting rationally, so it's not something I 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:46.440 felt like I needed to make sense of. He shot 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.040 Reagan to impress Jody Foster. I guess he thought she'd 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.800 find that impressive. No need to interrogate that further. I 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:53.960 mean a lot of women might find it impressive if 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:55.560 you shot Ronald Reagan, so there's not a lot of 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.320 follow up to do on that. The thing is, i'd 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:02.320 never seen the movie Taxi Driver. I never pieced together 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.640 that he thought shooting the president would impress Jody Foster 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.560 because she starred as the child sex worker in the 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:10.600 movie Taxi Driver, in which the protagonist Travis Bickle plans 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:14.120 to shoot a presidential candidate named Charles Palatine Hinkley chat 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.080 Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. Makes I guess, like a 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.680 little more sense if you have that cultural context. And 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.240 I fear I may have been the very last person 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.080 in America to find that out. So maybe everybody else 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.960 already knew this next part too. I don't know, but 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:33.480 Taxi Driver owes a lot to Arthur Bremer, the guy 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.400 who shot George Wallace. Screenwriter Paul Schrader has always denied 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.040 that he based any part of the movie on Bremer's diary. 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.800 In a nineteen seventy six interview, Schrader says he was 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.480 inspired by the shooting itself in nineteen seventy two, but 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:49.440 that the script was actually finished before the diary was 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.560 published in seventy three, and he registered the script with 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:56.480 the WGA, So that is provably true, right. But he 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.480 told film comments Richard Thompson in seventy six, I want 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:02.960 to emphasize that the script was written before any of 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.960 the diary was published. After I read the diary, I 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:07.920 was very tempted to take some of the good stuff 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.160 from it and add it to Taxi Driver, but I 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.880 decided not to because of legal ratifications. Bremmer is sitting 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:15.800 there in jail with nothing better to do than sue us, 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:17.840 which is why I made certain the script was registered 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:20.320 before the diary came out, and that nothing was changed 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:23.640 after the diary's publication. And that's actually kind of prescient 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:25.400 of him, come to think of it. He's saying this 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.480 in seventy six that Bremer could file some kind of 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.760 nuisance lawsuit from prison and that's years before Brehmer tried 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:32.720 to get half a million dollars and his diary back 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.720 from that construction worker. And I'm obviously not a film buff. 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.760 We all just found out that I've never seen a movie. 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:42.280 So he won't say Schrader's not telling the truth here. 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.200 And maybe somebody who knows more about film would say, well, 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:47.800 there's a difference between a script and a screenplay, right, 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.040 those are different things. The script was done, but he 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.200 still could have changed the look and feel of how 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.480 it was shot, because there are some scenes in Taxi 0:16:57.560 --> 0:16:59.760 Driver that, unless Scorssa and Trader had some kind of 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.920 deep psychic connection to whatever forces in the universe motivated 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:07.280 Arthur Bremer, they absolutely came from the diary. I read 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.520 the diary before sitting down to see what the movie 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.560 was all about. So when Travis Bickele, the titular taxi driver, 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:15.359 pulls up outside of a building with his fare, Martin 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.240 Scorsese himself in the back seat, I was doing the 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:21.800 Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme at my TV because the camera 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.520 pans to a woman in a window smoking a cigarette, 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.400 partially obscured by a gauzy curtain. And just a few 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.560 pages into Bremer's diary, he describes a really similar scene 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:33.080 before he flew back to Milwaukee to try to cross 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.760 the border into Canada to shoot Richard Nixon in Ottawa. 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.919 He wrote this in his diary, My last night at 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.240 the Howard Johnson's in the Jamaica area in New York City. 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.879 I didn't sleep much. A beautiful naked lady across a 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:47.160 parking lot on the next motel out by her window 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:51.040 Florida ceiling, smoking cigarettes, and I had to watch her. 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:53.480 Her table room light was on, and a thin veil 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:55.680 of curtain allowed me to watch her as she passionately 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.400 kissed a man who wore clothes. I never saw them 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.000 in each other's arms for more than a minute a time. 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.840 Time. They must have been fighting. Through binoculars. 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.240 I saw them gesture like Italians and open their mouths 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.000 very wide, very often. So maybe he finished the script 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.000 before he read the diary, but the diary absolutely influenced 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.280 the way the film was shot. According to Andrew Rausch's 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:18.959 book on the Films of Martin Scorsese, de Niro prepared 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.040 for the role by getting a New York taxi license 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.200 and driving around the city listening to a cassette tape 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:39.359 of someone reading the diary aloud. The diary is genuinely odd. Normally, 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:41.600 I'm firmly in the camp of please do not read 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.160 or recommend that others read the manifestos left behind by shooters. 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:49.159 There's not much to gain from it. It's what they want, this, that, 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.720 and the other. There's plenty of writing on the topic, 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.480 but I don't really think anyone will read Arthur Bremer's 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:59.000 diary entry about leaving a nude massage parlor, frustrated that 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:03.360 he's still a virgin, feel inspired to follow in his footsteps. 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.000 But I do think it's a fascinating document. I learned 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:09.840 more about what's inside the mind of a nihilist aspiring 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:13.399 shooter from Bremer's diary than I've learned from any self 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:17.080 indulgent little manifesto left behind by a mass shooter. After 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:18.959 failing to get his shot at Nixon at the appearance 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.639 in Ottawa in April, he wrote, I just need a 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.679 little opening in a second of time. Nothing has happened 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.480 for so long three months. The last person I held 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.520 a conversation with in three months was a near naked 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.800 girl rubbing my erect penis, and she wouldn't let me 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.960 put it through her failures. A few pages later, he 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.639 writes that he thought about getting really drunk, but quote 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.560 decided against it. Just wanted to pick a fight with 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.040 a bartender somewhere or someone get arrested, and then. 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:46.000 Where am I? 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.720 I got something to do something big before I ever 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:52.399 get arrested again. He writes that he's getting tired of 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:55.080 writing he wants to be a madman who kills, and 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.760 then abruptly transitions to saying he goes crazy when hears 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.040 Johnny Cash's new single, quoting the lyrics I shot you 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.040 with my thirty eight and now I'm doing time, before 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:07.159 noting that a baseball game had been canceled that day 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.040 due to rain. Honestly, the document it reminds me the 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.399 most of is the diary kept by Franklin Seacrest, the 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:15.359 young man who set a synagogue on fire in Austin 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.480 in twenty twenty one. Large portions of his diary were 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.600 produced as evidence in his trial, and his diary is 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:24.639 sort of similar in that it's a strange stream of consciousness, 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:29.040 accounting his frustrations with women, his daily activities, going to class, 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:33.760 arguments with his mother interspersed with these strange outbursts of 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.280 violent desire, and they're just sort of mixed in without 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:41.080 any recognition that these things are incongruous. After taking two 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.280 weeks away from his diary to deal with the tragedy 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:45.960 of failing to kill Richard Nixon, Rember went to see 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.840 Clockwork Orange. As he watched the movie, he decided he 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:51.840 would kill George Wallace instead, though he lamented that this 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:55.120