Behind the Bastards - Part Two: John Schmitz: The First Trump
Aired: 2024-01-11
Duration: 01:19:41


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=== John Schmitz and Communism (10:29) ===

[00:01:54]  It's effectively a Yerba Mate soda that I started drinking in Berlin because you get dehydrated when you're doing ketamine, and then eventually you get tired when you're at one of those like underground sex clubs that's open for four days in a row.
[00:02:08]  And Club Mate, it's really, really, really hits the spot.
[00:02:12]  I like how they let you in the club and not Elon Musk, Robert.
[00:02:17]  Yeah, because I didn't bring my phone, you know?
[00:02:20]  That's right.
[00:02:20]  That's why they let me in.
[00:02:22]  You weren't wearing a dumbass Zoro mask.
[00:02:26]  I can be separated from Twitter occasionally.
[00:02:29]  Yeah.
[00:02:30]  Now, speaking of guys who are not allowed in German sex clubs, John George Schmitz.
[00:02:38]  That is the bastard for our FBI.
[00:02:41]  Whenever we go out, the people always shout, they go, John George Schmid is a piece of shit.
[00:02:47]  La Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:50]  He's got to be related to John Jacob Jingleheimer.
[00:02:53]  You know, they both have the Schmitz at the end, more or less.
[00:02:56]  So, our John Schmitz was born on August 12th, 1930, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the very mouth of hell itself.
[00:03:05]  Now, there are unfortunately few details that I ran into on his very early life.
[00:03:09]  His mother was named Will Helmina, which is a red flag, right?
[00:03:13]  That name, in 1930, that name means I love Kaiser Wilhelm, or at least my parents did.
[00:03:20]  And his father was Jacob John.
[00:03:22]  There you go.
[00:03:23]  That's basically between them and his dad, Jacob John Schmitz.
[00:03:27]  You're joking.
[00:03:29]  That's a bit of a baby.
[00:03:31]  Where's the jingleheimer?
[00:03:32]  Was that just like a sort of unknown SS officer?
[00:03:36]  Look, 1930, you still did get some people who were anti-German racists.
[00:03:40]  I would not be surprised if Jingleheimer was a slur.
[00:03:43]  Like, specifically, it's like sausage eater.
[00:03:46]  Yeah.
[00:03:47]  Totally, totally, totally.
[00:03:49]  Schnitzelheads.
[00:03:50]  Yeah.
[00:03:51]  They were devout Catholics.
[00:03:52]  John would remain a devout Catholic his entire life.
[00:03:55]  And again, we don't know nearly as much about his childhood, but his family seems to have been comfortable, middle class or upper middle class.
[00:04:01]  There's some hints that he may have had a degree of family money, but it is unclear.
[00:04:05]  Whatever it was, either it wasn't that much or his parents still wanted him working a job, and he did have a job as a young man, scrubbing out vats of beer.
[00:04:14]  That will be relevant for a very stupid reason later.
[00:04:17]  His family was, again, comfortable enough that he's able to go straight from high school into college, where he received a B.S. at Marquette University in 1952 and subsequently joined the U.S. Marine Corps.
[00:04:28]  He qualified initially as a jet fighter pilot and then as a helicopter pilot.
[00:04:33]  From what I can see, he didn't do any combat tours.
[00:04:36]  He was instead stationed in North Carolina and then Japan, flying F2H4 Banshees and F9F8 Cougars.
[00:04:43]  Part of why I think he doesn't actually get sent anywhere, because obviously the U.S. during the time he's in the military, like is in Korea.
[00:04:52]  And then kind of while he is still in the military, we start being in Vietnam.
[00:04:57]  But he is in the Marines and he is part of like kind of an experimental Marine air wing.
[00:05:02]  The Marines really hadn't had like that previously to the same extent that they did, at least with jet fighters.
[00:05:08]  And so his unit is not sent anywhere because they're still trying to figure out if like that's a thing that they think will work for the Marine Corps.
[00:05:14]  His career is then of little note, but for one fact, which is that after he retires from active duty in 1960 and transitions to being a reserve officer, he volunteers to teach a class on communism for the Fleet Marine Force Pacific Leadership School, which is based at the El Toro Marine Corps base.
[00:05:33]  And the El Toro Marine Corps base is in, you guessed it, Orange County, California.
[00:05:39]  Now, doing this series of anti-communism lectures seems to have basically been an excuse for Schmitz to rant about communist plots to conquer the world and how peace is impossible with the Soviet Union and China to an audience of young men who then went over to Vietnam and did the kind of things that you did in Vietnam, most of which are not very nice.
[00:06:00]  His lesson plan seems to have been deeply inspired by Frederick Schwartz's.
[00:06:04]  Again, a lot of Schwarzy names flying around here.
[00:06:08]  Very frustrating, but Frederick Schwartz's anti-communism school.
[00:06:12]  And so, given the mood at the time, the fact that this dude is doing basically the version of this big public anti-communism school that the Knottsbury farm guy is funding and that this Australian fascist is doing the lesson plan for.
[00:06:26]  The fact that John Schmitz is like doing a class on communism for the military, it makes him fit in really well with this whole fucking zeitgeist, right?
[00:06:36]  Yeah.
[00:06:37]  Upon leaving active duty in 1960, he became a history and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College.
[00:06:42]  He quickly became a fixture in the arch-conservative Orange County political scene.
[00:06:46]  He joined the John Birch Society.
[00:06:48]  He also attracted the attention of local far-right businessmen, including Carl Karcher, the founder and namesake of the Carls Jr. fast food empire.
[00:06:56]  Everything, truly everything.
[00:06:59]  Really, really a remarkable set of things there, right?
[00:07:03]  Knottsbury Farm.
[00:07:04]  I love that both the Knottsbury Farm and Carls Jr. are funding the fascist movement.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, seriously.
[00:07:11]  What else?
[00:07:12]  Like, like the giraffe from Toys R Us is just a fucking is in Leavenworth still for crimes he committed during the Vietnam War.
[00:07:24]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:25]  Joffrey went too far for even, yeah, for even the army in that period.
[00:07:30]  That's right.
[00:07:32]  Yeah, Joffrey.
[00:07:33]  Joffrey is the name of the giraffe who had the just a mountain of blood behind him.
[00:07:39]  Yeah, he had, yeah, the Milai massacre was his idea.
[00:07:43]  Yeah, he invented the concept of saturation bombing.
[00:07:47]  That was him.
[00:07:48]  Joffrey the giraffe.
[00:07:50]  He's made of Agent Orange.
[00:07:52]  Like what other loved.
[00:07:55]  They got it from glands in his skin that foliated the jungle.
[00:08:01]  Seriously.
[00:08:01]  Oh, if only I could blame a giraffe for all of our country's worst crimes.
[00:08:06]  Alas.
[00:08:06]  So Schmitz, you know, he gets out of the military.
[00:08:11]  He becomes a history and philosophy professor at Santa Ana College, and he quickly becomes a fixture in this political scene, right?
[00:08:17]  And he's working with the Carls Jr. guy, with the Knottsbury Farm guy.
[00:08:22]  He had married while he was still in the Marine Corps to a significantly younger woman.
[00:08:27]  I'm not sure exactly, but one newspaper I found from when he was like in his 40s described her as youthfully pretty in contrast to him.
[00:08:35]  So I'm going to guess a decent bit younger.
[00:08:37]  Mary is just as conservative as her husband and almost as hungry for power, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
[00:08:43]  So in 1962, right?
[00:08:46]  The family Schmitz get their first daughter, a young girl named Mary Kay.
[00:08:52]  And we will be talking about who Mary Kay Schmitz becomes a little bit later because I think it might surprise you.
[00:08:58]  Not that Mary Kay.
[00:09:00]  Not the cult leader, not that Mary Kay.
[00:09:03]  No, no, no.
[00:09:04]  Don't forget she exists, though, because boy howdy, it's going to really be a satisfying end to this series.
[00:09:10]  Now, the same year that Mary Kay is born, her father would carry out an act of probable heroism that helped make him into a local celebrity.
[00:09:18]  He was leaving the Marine Corps base one day after a long day of screaming about communism to teenagers when he encountered a man stabbing a woman by the roadside.
[00:09:28]  Quote, with nothing more than the sheer authority of his voice, according to the LA Times, Schmitz disarmed the assailant, right?
[00:09:35]  So the story is he finds this man stabbing a woman and he yells at him.
[00:09:40]  And that disarm, his voice is so commanding that it disarms this guy.
[00:09:44]  Now, that is, I think, literally what happened in that this guy, Schmitz yells at this guy and he stops the attack.
[00:09:53]  I think that the casual descriptions these sources get tend to minimize a crucial detail.
[00:09:59]  And I want to make it very clear that that detail is that the woman dies, right?
[00:10:03]  This is not a case where he saves a life by stopping an attack.
[00:10:06]  This is a case where a man stabs a woman to death, probably in a fit of rage, and then someone yells at him and he realizes what he's done and he stops, right?
[00:10:14]  He doesn't commit a spree killing because most killers aren't spree killers, right?
[00:10:17]  He murders this woman for some specific reason and then someone yells at him and he realizes, oh my God, what have I done?
[00:10:23]  Right.
[00:10:23]  What did he say?
[00:10:26]  Hey, don't stab that lady.
[00:10:27]  Hey, knock it off.
[00:10:29]  Knock it off.
[00:10:30]  Hey, hey, knock it off, you, you crazy kids.
[00:10:33]  Hey, that's enough.
[00:10:34]  She's had enough.
[00:10:36]  You did it.
[00:10:37]  You did it.
[00:10:38]  Again, I'm not saying he didn't do anything bad, but like you should, in fact, if you see someone getting stabbed, at least yell at the stabber.
[00:10:45]  Sure.
[00:10:46]  You know?
[00:10:46]  At least you can do.
[00:10:47]  But it's framed as like he disarmed this man.
[00:10:50]  And I really don't think that's exactly what he's doing.
[00:10:52]  Exactly.
[00:10:52]  They didn't talk about the 30 seconds he spent watching it happen and then was like, all right, buddy.
[00:10:58]  Tweaking his nipples.
[00:10:59]  Yeah.
[00:11:01]  Come on.
[00:11:01]  Well, it's also the thing that's really weird, because I'll shit on him for everything but this.
[00:11:05]  This isn't a bad thing.
[00:11:07]  But the way the news describes it, they always talk about how cool it is that he disarms this guy with his voice and then just casually announce, oh yeah, the lady died.
[00:11:15]  Like the LA Times just summarizes it this way.
[00:11:18]  Although the woman died, Schmitz's reputation as a hero was made.
[00:11:22]  Just like, yeah, she died, but what a cool thing this guy got to do.
[00:11:27]  Very funny.
[00:11:28]  I love that all of the newspapers write it the same way, just as afterthought.
[00:11:32]  I find that darkly interesting.
[00:11:35]  That is funny.
[00:11:36]  It is, it's, it's so unremarkable that like it only is remarkable if she lives.
[00:11:41]  It's not remarkable if she dies.
[00:11:43]  Everyone, we get that, right?
[00:11:45]  Stop something?
[00:11:46]  Yeah.
[00:11:46]  Yeah.
[00:11:46]  Or if he's like stabbed multiple people and then you could genuinely say, yeah, maybe he somehow stopped more people from getting stabbed.
[00:11:53]  But all I'm seeing here is you came upon the end of a murder.
[00:11:57]  Exactly.
[00:11:58]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:11:59]  You witnessed the very end of a murder.
[00:12:02]  But I think, if I can put my conspiracy hat on, I think what's happening here is that like Schmitz is a PR savvy guy.
[00:12:08]  He has a degree of charisma.
[00:12:10]  He knows how to spend things.
[00:12:11]  And as soon as he realizes what's happened here, like, this is too good a story to waste.
[00:12:16]  I can really make this work for me.
[00:12:18]  And by 1964, Schmitz had become one of Orange County's leading political lights.

=== Property Rights and Racism (12:35) ===

[00:12:24]  He is still working as a professor of philosophy and political science at Santa Ana University.
[00:12:29]  And he's already, he's become very active in the John Birch Society.
[00:12:32]  His support for the Carls Jr. guy and several other wealthy conservatives ensured that he had enough donations to run his campaign.
[00:12:38]  So Schmitz, who regularly joked that he joined the John Birch Society to get moderates to vote for him, comes out blazing in this like local like state Congress election with a raft of absolutely bug fuck policy proposals.
[00:12:53]  He wants to ban sex ed in public schools.
[00:12:56]  He wants to encourage citizens to carry loaded handguns in their cars, which the corollary to that is he wants citizens to leave loaded handguns in their cars whenever they leave their cars.
[00:13:08]  He wants to sell all California state universities to private corporations so they can use violence to crack down on student protests against Vietnam.
[00:13:16]  That's why he wants to privatize colleges so that the corporation can use like security guards to beat up students.
[00:13:22]  This all occurred during a very special time for the United States when the most prominent Republican is again, Barry Goldwater.
[00:13:30]  Barry is such for an idea of how freaked out people are about what a fascist this guy is.
[00:13:35]  When Goldwater is running, like is in this campaign, this is LBJ's re-election campaign, right?
[00:13:41]  Goldwater, well, not re-election because he was never elected the first time, but you get what I'm saying, right?
[00:13:45]  LBJ's been president a little while since the Kennedy assassination.
[00:13:49]  He's running to continue to get to be president.
[00:13:52]  And Fidel Castro sends a private letter to LBJ basically saying, hey, man, I really want you to win re-election.
[00:14:00]  If you need to bomb us a little bit, right?
[00:14:03]  So you can brush up your anti-communist credentials for the election.
[00:14:06]  I get it.
[00:14:07]  You just give me a heads up before you fuck with us and I won't respond.
[00:14:11]  Like, I love you, bro.
[00:14:12]  Like, good luck out there.
[00:14:13]  That's so funny.
[00:14:15]  That's hilarious.
[00:14:16]  It is because like Castro is a rational actor.
[00:14:18]  He's like, yeah, man, Goldwater might fucking nuke us.
[00:14:20]  Like, this guy might actually be crazy.
[00:14:23]  Like, Goldwater is the namesake for what's called the Goldwater rule, which is this rule where if you're a mental health professional, you cannot diagnose a presidential candidate that like, you know, isn't coming to you for medical help or whatever, because there were so many people in the media being like, Goldwater may actually be insane.
[00:14:40]  Like, that's how crazy we think his policies are.
[00:14:43]  And he is, it's also worth noting, Goldwater, a big reason people think he's crazy is that he is one of these guys like Henry Kissinger who thinks low-yield nukes should be used tactically in battlefield situations.
[00:14:56]  Like we need to win this battle in Vietnam.
[00:14:59]  We should drop a little nuke on him.
[00:15:00]  So Goldwater's rule is you can't diagnose someone running, even if you're not absolutely saying insane shit.
[00:15:10]  Yeah, you should not use that to diagnose someone with a mental health condition.
[00:15:14]  Someone else or this candidate.
[00:15:16]  Yeah.
[00:15:17]  Okay.
[00:15:17]  This candidate.
[00:15:18]  Like basically if someone's running for election, you shouldn't say, if you haven't like worked on them or whatever and can't, you shouldn't be like, this person has this mental illness.
[00:15:28]  Right.
[00:15:28]  So we can't say Trump is a sociopathic narcissist because we don't know clinically.
[00:15:33]  Yeah.
[00:15:34]  Yeah.
[00:15:34]  You're not going to, you're not going to get a psychologist shouldn't say that, right?
[00:15:38]  That's the Goldwater rule.
[00:15:40]  It's fine for regular people to say, I think that guy's a fucking psychopath, right?
[00:15:44]  I think we've gone.
[00:15:45]  I think that's probably good.
[00:15:46]  Yeah.
[00:15:46]  Yeah.
[00:15:47]  We might have jumped the shark on it.
[00:15:48]  So I feel like there's a few people.
[00:15:50]  Yeah, it's always debatable, but it tells you how crazy people think Goldwater is, right?
[00:15:56]  You have a whole rule about not declaring presidential candidates crazy because of how crazy everyone thought this guy was.
[00:16:02]  Now, another big thing that Goldwater is a proponent of, and this is a less controversial thing than the nukes, is the idea that positive change for people who aren't white men means that society is in collapse, right?
[00:16:13]  Goldwater opposes the Civil Rights Act, as does John Schmitz and the rest of Orange County.
[00:16:20]  And this is the beginning of a new era, one in which you can't be as racist, right?
[00:16:24]  You can't say, I don't want the Civil Rights Act because I hate black people, right?
[00:16:29]  Instead, you have to say, I love everybody, but my property rights are more important than that, right?
[00:16:34]  And if you're saying we have to integrate the school, like private schools, you're saying private schools can't be whites only, that's bad for property rights.
[00:16:41]  Or if you're saying I have to serve black people at my restaurant, that's a violation of property rights.
[00:16:47]  And so I don't, I don't oppose the Civil Rights Act because I'm racist.
[00:16:50]  I oppose it because it's a violation of property rights.
[00:16:53]  And that's the most important thing in the world.
[00:16:55]  Yeah.
[00:16:56]  This all comes down to like fair housing, right?
[00:16:59]  Yes, exactly.
[00:17:00]  And schooling and fair education.
[00:17:03]  Yep.
[00:17:03]  Access.
[00:17:04]  I mean, but again, it's sort of what's running cover for what?
[00:17:07]  Your libertarianism running cover for your racism and then your religion running cover for all of it, like just like blanketing the whole thing.
[00:17:16]  Yeah.
[00:17:16]  And this kind of comes to a head in California politics in 1964 because there's this proposition backed by the California Real Estate Association to rescind the Rumford Act, which is a state law that makes it illegal to discriminate housing based on race, right?
[00:17:36]  And the proposition to like say, no, we want to be able to be racist in who we let buy houses, places, is obviously like Orange County had kept black people out for a long time by doing shit like that.
[00:17:48]  So the mobilization for Prop 14 to like let people discriminate when they sell houses and shit, that's hugely centered around Orange County.
[00:17:56]  And I'm going to quote from the book Suburban Warriors here.
[00:17:59]  Indeed, one activist, Tom Rogers of San Juan Capistrano, who served as the campaign finance manager for John Schmitz's state Senate run in 1964 and who shortly afterwards served as co-editor of that Catholic traditionalist paper The Wanderer, asserted years later that for him and many others, Proposition 14 was what the movement was all about.
[00:18:17]  Goldwater's frequent references of freedom of association, his belief that prejudice is a moral issue that cannot be legislated, and his strong advocacy of property rights placed him firmly on the side of those opposing the Rumford Act.
[00:18:30]  Moreover, Goldwater's determination to fight lawlessness, his references to rising crime rates, and his linkage of crime to lawlessness of other sorts, a reference to the civil rights and students' movements, appealed to the white middle classes in Orange County.
[00:18:43]  So Goldwater does not succeed in his dream of becoming the president.
[00:18:47]  But Schmitz does get elected to the California State Senate representing Orange County, and he is the first member of the John Birch Society to make it into local California politics.
[00:18:59]  He immediately gets to work being the loudest, craziest asshole in the Capitol.
[00:19:04]  The first full year that he served, 1965, is the year of the Watts riots.
[00:19:08]  Now, if you know anything about anything, you know that this becomes like a massive political issue for the right in California.
[00:19:17]  His attitude is not, well, this was a response to generations of abuse by the local government and by the police.
[00:19:24]  This was a communist operation.
[00:19:27]  He's so incensed that he sponsors a bill to investigate the backgrounds of every public school teacher in the state for communist affiliations.
[00:19:34]  Like his response to the Watts riots is, we need to build a CIA basically to go after school teachers and make sure they're not communists.
[00:19:43]  That's clearly what this case is.
[00:19:44]  Jesus Christ.
[00:19:45]  John develops, yeah, he is just, just a maniac.
[00:19:49]  Now, what's interesting, we've been talking a lot about how Reagan is such an important development for like the far right getting increasingly into legitimate conservative politics in this country.
[00:19:59]  John Schmitz hates Reagan.
[00:20:01]  So do a lot of Birchers, right?
[00:20:03]  Because they see Reagan as a compromiser, right?
[00:20:06]  And a compromiser is the same as a communist sympathizer.
[00:20:11]  Schmitz is the only Republican Senate member who votes down Governor Reagan's 1967 tax program.
[00:20:17]  And his issue is that as much as they'd cut, taxes are still too high.
[00:20:21]  And I'm going to quote next from an article on Cafe.com by David Kerlander.
[00:20:26]  Over the next three years, Schmitz took many, often lonely, far-right stands.
[00:20:30]  He argued for eliminating state income taxes altogether.
[00:20:33]  He sponsored a bill to repeal fair housing laws.
[00:20:35]  He argued that there should be no sex education in public schools.
[00:20:38]  He led a successful effort to censure University of California, Berkeley, for allowing Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver to speak on campus.
[00:20:46]  He fiercely spoke out against abortion and women's rights.
[00:20:50]  He also continued to buck fellow conservative leaders.
[00:20:53]  Schmitz declined to endorse a presidential candidate in 1968, telling the press, George Wallace is too moderate for me.
[00:20:59]  Hubert Humphrey is taking a dive.
[00:21:01]  And if I endorsed Richard Nixon, he might repudiate it the next day.
[00:21:05]  Like, again, George Wallace is like the guy who became famous for loving segregation as a governor of Alabama.
[00:21:11]  But that's what they want.
[00:21:12]  I mean, that's effectively what this sounds like, right?
[00:21:14]  They can't, they've never gotten over it.
[00:21:15]  And here's my, here's what I've realized.
[00:21:17]  Now we're in part two.
[00:21:19]  Could we say as a native Californian myself, I mean, not like, you know, native to the land, but someone who's born and raised in California, obviously NorCal for life, but that these are all kind of transplants, that ultimately the OC is a blight, is an anomaly, that it's not really California.
[00:21:38]  This is, they're all from somewhere else.
[00:21:41]  Can we disown the OC is what I want to know?
[00:21:46]  I feel like you can't because I think a crucial aspect of Californian culture, at least over the last going back 200 years or so, is the gold rush mentality.
[00:21:58]  Yeah.
[00:21:58]  The idea that the culture in this area, and this is a big thing in NorCal too, right?
[00:22:02]  It's a big part of Northern California San Francisco culture is like a bunch of the people who live here now are descendants of folks who rushed here to try to grab a bunch of money from a social phenomenon that had a ticking timeframe to it, right?
[00:22:16]  Right.
[00:22:17]  These upper middle class and rich people who fill out the OC and who are, you know, these kind of fascist maniacs running the defense industry, that's a gold rush.
[00:22:26]  That is, one day there's nothing, the next there's all the money in the fucking world.
[00:22:30]  And you got to sprint over there as fast as you fucking can to pick it up.
[00:22:34]  Totally.
[00:22:34]  It just depends on the industry, like Silicon Valley and the dot-com.
[00:22:37]  Silicon Valley is another gold rush, right?
[00:22:39]  Yes.
[00:22:39]  Same idea, same cultural.
[00:22:41]  And so is the pod industry, as a matter of fact, right?
[00:22:44]  Oh, I thought you said the pod, like the podcast.
[00:22:46]  No.
[00:22:47]  Well, yeah, I mean, actually a little bit, right?
[00:22:49]  That's less geographically centered than weed or the tech industry, the defense industry, gold.
[00:22:54]  Yeah.
[00:22:55]  True, true, true, true.
[00:22:56]  A little bit less harm, less harm.
[00:22:58]  But it is, you know, California is a state of, like a lot of our culture is gold rushes, and these people embody it, right?
[00:23:04]  Yes.
[00:23:05]  It's not a pretty part of Californian heritage, but it is, it is very much part of it, I think.
[00:23:11]  Yeah.
[00:23:11]  Although, you know, you don't need to jettison them as much because things have gotten better.
[00:23:15]  We'll see if it lasts, right?
[00:23:17]  There's, there's always.
[00:23:18]  As we noticed a little bit in the beginning.
[00:23:19]  Okay, so two, so not right-wing enough for the Birchers and Schmitz.
[00:23:25]  They hate Nixon.
[00:23:26]  They don't like Reagan much better.
[00:23:28]  They do like him better than Nixon, but not a lot.
[00:23:31]  So Schmitz is, he's one of these guys where he's such a howling fascist, but the Republican Party in this period is not nearly as inviting of that.
[00:23:40]  So most, as much as he yells about the left and socialism, all the people he really fights hard in his political career are other Republicans, right?
[00:23:48]  Like he is constantly going to war with Republicans.
[00:23:51]  Now, his wife, Mary, is really interesting, too, because she uses her husband's newfound power and notoriety, the fact that he's gotten elected, he's making all these waves as this just kind of arch bircher in California Congress.
[00:24:05]  She becomes one of the first female far-right media influencers, right?
[00:24:10]  She gets on local TV.
[00:24:12]  She becomes a, she has, eventually she gets like a permanent place on a TV show that's like a politics roundtable.
[00:24:18]  She is just like a frequently wanted speaker.
[00:24:20]  She like gets speaking fees and things going around supporting different candidacies.
[00:24:24]  If she were around today, she'd have a podcast and a blue check Twitter account and she would make seven figures working at the Daily Wire.
[00:24:30]  She is the prototype for that kind of like woman in conservatism.
[00:24:35]  Her handle, like her bio would be like mom, wife, American flag, cross.
[00:24:42]  Yeah.
[00:24:43]  You know, and she'd have like really nice arms, which is always the most annoying thing about right-wingers is they all have the same trainer and they all have the like just sort of like strong arms, which I don't understand and simultaneously covet.

=== Ann Coulter's Conservative Prototype (03:41) ===

[00:24:59]  You people know what I'm talking about.
[00:25:01]  You guys know that right-wingers are terrible, but the women have great, they have their arms are great.
[00:25:06]  You have only spoken truth.
[00:25:08]  Right.
[00:25:09]  And you're like, I don't know.
[00:25:10]  You definitely can't fight.
[00:25:12]  Like they're not fighting arms.
[00:25:14]  I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of Ann Coulter.
[00:25:17]  Yeah.
[00:25:17]  And what in Ann Coulter, like the celebrity that I would compare her to positively, I think this is actually a compliment for her, is Jack Skellington.
[00:25:27]  Yes.
[00:25:28]  No, no, no.
[00:25:29]  We should probably cut all of that.
[00:25:31]  Don't cut that.
[00:25:32]  She would take it as a W.
[00:25:34]  She appreciates it.
[00:25:36]  Well, we got to go to an ad real quick.
[00:25:39]  We sure do.
[00:25:40]  We sure do.
[00:25:40]  Speaking of Jack Skellington, he would want you to participate in capitalism well past Christmas.
[00:25:48]  Yes.
[00:25:48]  He doesn't actually like Christmas all that much, does he?
[00:25:50]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:25:51]  Here's ads.
[00:25:55]  What's up, everyone?
[00:25:56]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:25:57]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:26:04]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:26:08]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:26:11]  I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:26:16]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:26:18]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:26:20]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:26:23]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:26:27]  Yeah.
[00:26:28]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:26:31]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:26:32]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:26:41]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:26:43]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:26:49]  Just hang in there.
[00:26:50]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:26:52]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:26:53]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:26:55]  Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:27:05]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
[00:27:08]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene from iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
[00:27:16]  This is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:27:18]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:27:20]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:27:21]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:27:22]  I love you.
[00:27:23]  July 2003.
[00:27:24]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:27:29]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:27:32]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:27:41]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:27:43]  A shocking public murder.
[00:27:45]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:27:47]  Those are shots.
[00:27:48]  Those are shots.
[00:27:48]  Get down.
[00:27:49]  A charismatic politician.
[00:27:50]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:27:53]  I still have a weapon, and I could shoot you.
[00:27:58]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:28:00]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:28:03]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:28:04]  That may have been about sex.
[00:28:06]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:19]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:28:23]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:28:27]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:28:30]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:28:33]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:28:37]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.

=== Nixon vs. The Outsider (15:59) ===

[00:28:41]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:28:43]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:28:48]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:28:49]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:28:51]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:28:53]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:28:56]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:28:58]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:29:00]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:29:05]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:29:06]  Trust me, babe.
[00:29:07]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:29:20]  Ah, and we're back.
[00:29:23]  So Mary Schmitz is, to give you an idea of like how people view her in the conservative movement, her nickname is the Phyllis Schlafly of the West.
[00:29:32]  So this family, they're just...
[00:29:34]  Bad.
[00:29:35]  Yeah, that's horrible.
[00:29:36]  Oh, my God.
[00:29:37]  Just two real powerful right-wing ghouls.
[00:29:40]  Oh, Lord.
[00:29:41]  Of the West.
[00:29:42]  And very soon, these people, you know, they're state-level figures right now, but very soon, they're going to be in the halls of real power.
[00:29:50]  Throughout this whole time, mid-60s and stuff, the Senate representative for the district that John and Mary live in, for, you know, the district that covers Orange County, is this lunatic right-wing hero named James B. Utt, which, yes, does look like James Butt when you type it all out.
[00:30:06]  That is the man's name.
[00:30:08]  It is Utt with two T's.
[00:30:10]  I know.
[00:30:11]  I know.
[00:30:12]  Like, that's like a joke you would see some fucking dude with a comic make on Twitter.
[00:30:16]  Yeah, no, no, that's his real fucking name.
[00:30:18]  That's his real fucking, no, it's B. Utt.
[00:30:20]  James B. You know what?
[00:30:22]  When your name is James B. Utt, you keep the B because you want people to think it's butt.
[00:30:27]  Like you, you relish in the buttness because you want to be a little, you want to be an ass, clearly.
[00:30:33]  Yeah, you know what you're going to become.
[00:30:36]  So James Butt, his pet theory is that, quote, a large contingent of barefooted Africans had been snuck into the United States by the United Nations, which is a communist organization to help them take over the country.
[00:30:48]  And that's where the Watts riots were not black people born and raised in the United States.
[00:30:54]  They were Africans snuck into Southern California by the United Nations to destroy the United States.
[00:31:01]  But this is the same shit.
[00:31:02]  This is the same shit we talk about now, right?
[00:31:05]  And it generally is like the Jews have done this, but it's right.
[00:31:09]  It's like sneaking.
[00:31:10]  They sneak in the elites, sneak in migrants to rile up the blacks until they want their rights.
[00:31:18]  You know, they're fine with black people as long as they're in their place.
[00:31:21]  As long as they're happily in ghettos and prevented from, you know, owning homes anywhere near Orange County, of course.
[00:31:29]  Yeah.
[00:31:29]  But yeah, it's the same shit.
[00:31:31]  My God, it's the same shit.
[00:31:32]  And it's crazy how, like, they don't see how much they recycle this stuff.
[00:31:36]  And I think Mr. Butt should get more credit.
[00:31:38]  Yeah, no, that's that's that's what we all feel about Mr. B. Utt.
[00:31:42]  So Utt was the son of a rancher.
[00:31:43]  He'd won his seat representing Orange County by attacking his opponent for preaching the gospel of socialism.
[00:31:49]  He believed that the music of the Beatles had inflicted artificial neuroses on young people and given them brain damage.
[00:31:56]  He was, I will say this, he was occasionally on the right side of issues, always for the wrong reasons.
[00:32:01]  He opposed the annexation of Hawaii, not on any kind of anti-colonial grounds, because the islands had too many non-white people and they would inevitably breed with white people.
[00:32:11]  Yes.
[00:32:12]  Yeah.
[00:32:13]  He is in his own.
[00:32:15]  Can we kill them all?
[00:32:16]  No.
[00:32:16]  Well, I don't want it.
[00:32:18]  Well, then I don't want to admit it here.
[00:32:21]  When his grandson decided to oppose the Vietnam War, Utt said that he would have rather seen the boy die overseas.
[00:32:28]  Oh, he is just a giant piece of shit.
[00:32:31]  This is the congressional, the federal, the national congressional representative for like the district that Schmitz lives in.
[00:32:38]  Yeah, and he's he's just a real bad guy, but extremely popular.
[00:32:42]  He wins in Orange County by a two-to-one majority.
[00:32:45]  Utt is one of the few men in politics who is extreme enough for John Schmitz's tastes.
[00:32:50]  He's basically the only dude who could hold that office and be sure John would not run against him.
[00:32:55]  But then in 1970, tragedy struck.
[00:32:58]  James B. Utt died due to complications from being a huge piece of shit.
[00:33:02]  In literal terms, he has a heart attack in church, which you might read as God striking him down if you're inclined to that sort of thing.
[00:33:11]  But while one less dead butt is generally good, it also created opportunity for John Schmitz.
[00:33:17]  Schmitz runs for the former representative seat and wins.
[00:33:20]  Now, the slogan that he uses to win this special election, it's impenetrable today.
[00:33:26]  It's when you're out of Schmitz, you're out of gear.
[00:33:29]  That doesn't mean anything to you, does it?
[00:33:32]  What?
[00:33:32]  Is it?
[00:33:34]  No.
[00:33:35]  I know.
[00:33:36]  Well, it's because he works cleaning out Beer Steins at a beer company.
[00:33:42]  And there was like, I think the slogan was, when you're out of schlitz, you're out of beer.
[00:33:45]  Like for some Milwaukee beer.
[00:33:48]  But like he, he, he takes this slogan that's very much this like Milwaukee area beer slogan and he repurposes it for a campaign in Southern California.
[00:33:58]  I don't know how this worked.
[00:33:59]  No, and the rule of puns, it does not just such a weird idea.
[00:34:04]  You can only change one side of the pun.
[00:34:07]  It can't be both.
[00:34:08]  It can't be when you're out of Schmitz, you're out of gear.
[00:34:12]  If you're out of schlitz, you're out of beer.
[00:34:15]  You got to keep schlitz or beer in there.
[00:34:17]  Yeah.
[00:34:17]  Yeah.
[00:34:17]  Otherwise, it's just, it's just nonsense.
[00:34:19]  No one knows what the fuck you're talking about.
[00:34:20]  But he wins the special election.
[00:34:22]  It works.
[00:34:23]  So now this fucking guy is in D.C. and is a full-on ass congressman.
[00:34:28]  He moves his wife and family to the Capitol and he gets to work extending his unique brand of god-awful politics nationwide.
[00:34:35]  His biggest enemy in government, again, is not some leftist, but is actually Richard M. Nixon, who Schmitz saw, you guessed it, as basically a commie sleeper agent from that article in cafe.com.
[00:34:47]  Matters were made more tense given that he was President Nixon's congressman representing the Orange County district containing San Clemente.
[00:34:54]  Schmitz was particularly critical of Nixon's rapprochement with China, telling the press, I have no objection to Richard Nixon going to China.
[00:35:01]  I just object to him coming back, which is actually pretty good.
[00:35:06]  That's not bad.
[00:35:08]  Schmitz vocally backed Ashbrook's attempt to primary Nixon in 1972.
[00:35:12]  And so this is something that pisses off Richard Nixon.
[00:35:16]  Schmitz has made it his business to become a thorn in his side.
[00:35:19]  And he starts to expand in this period of time outside of like harboring these kind of economic grievances and even grievances against like, you know, communist states to this more sort of esoteric conspiracy theory, conservatism.
[00:35:33]  In 1971, he writes an introduction to Gary Allen and Larry Abraham's None Dare Call It Conspiracy.
[00:35:39]  The book, which was in hugely, this is influential.
[00:35:42]  This is like the center of Alex Jones's ideology today.
[00:35:45]  The book argued that Eastern American elites, particularly the Jews therein, were funding global communism.
[00:35:52]  Allen proclaimed, among other things, that Chase Manhattan Bank president David Rockefeller had personally fired Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1964.
[00:36:03]  Jesus.
[00:36:05]  You know, the Chase Bank guy has the codes for hacking the Soviet Union.
[00:36:12]  Who could be more influential in Soviet politics than the head of Chase Manhattan Bank?
[00:36:16]  Oh, my God.
[00:36:17]  It is so funny.
[00:36:19]  Again, I mean, who is the head of Chase Manhattan Bank?
[00:36:21]  Was it a Jew?
[00:36:22]  Again, with these like broad, like anti-Semitic things, like just like the history of this, it's just like, and the like superpowers that racists and bigots, anti-Semites apply to Jews.
[00:36:34]  It's just wild.
[00:36:35]  Oh, yeah.
[00:36:36]  Yeah, it really is.
[00:36:37]  Then he hacked into the, I mean, again, and it's just the Jewish space laser, Marjorie Greene, the Rothschilds, the same shit.
[00:36:43]  Same shit.
[00:36:44]  Absolutely.
[00:36:45]  Now, if you know anything about Dick Nixon, and I know an unfortunate amount about the man, you know that his chief personality trait was that he could not let go of a grudge, right?
[00:36:56]  That is the main thing that defines Richard Nixon.
[00:36:59]  If he is angry at you once, he is angry at you for all time.
[00:37:03]  Now, Nixon, again, he remembers his fucking enemies.
[00:37:07]  And so in 1972, Schmitz has just finished backing an attempt to primary Nixon.
[00:37:12]  He's been yelling at him the whole time, two years he's been in Congress.
[00:37:15]  Tricky Dick is like, well, this guy's up for re-election.
[00:37:18]  I'm not going to let that son of a bitch fuck with me anymore.
[00:37:20]  He turns his petty man-child laser on John Schmitz and he blasts his career in national politics to smithereens.
[00:37:27]  John loses the primary nomination to a tax assessor, which is basically, I kind of wonder if Nixon did that on purpose because there's no one worse you can lose to as a libertarian than a tax assessor.
[00:37:41]  I'm happy about this.
[00:37:42]  Yeah, fuck this guy.
[00:37:44]  I mean, does that mean we like Nixon?
[00:37:47]  But no, but, you know, no, no, no, but I respect Nixon's ability to both be petty and wield power effectively enough to squash this motherfucker like a bug, right?
[00:37:58]  Yes.
[00:37:59]  Like you just have to take some satisfaction in it.
[00:38:02]  Like, absolutely.
[00:38:03]  Nixon beat everybody else, but at least this son of a bitch didn't get a fucking like hand up on it.
[00:38:08]  Well, that's the other thing is that I feel like the right now is like, oh, God, maybe I should cater more to the John Birch Society, or maybe I should cater more to the far right, or maybe I should change up my tune.
[00:38:17]  And it's like, you know, it takes a certain SOB to be like, no, fuck you.
[00:38:23]  I'm the president.
[00:38:24]  I'm doing what I want.
[00:38:26]  And yeah, I'm going to kill your career.
[00:38:27]  There you go.
[00:38:28]  Like, I don't know.
[00:38:29]  I respect that.
[00:38:30]  I respect that more than I respect someone who's like just going to be, yeah, cajoled by the most extremist elements of their own party and literally stands up for nothing and cannot lead.
[00:38:41]  And I'm not even talking Trump.
[00:38:43]  I think just broadly, the Republican Party, what it's become.
[00:38:47]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:48]  At least Nixon, there was this like animal cunning at work with the man that you had to at least respect in the same way you respect a tiger in the woods, you know, as opposed to just like a horde of fucking jovelina that have gotten drunk on prairie wine, which is how I feel today.
[00:39:06]  So Schmitz was adamant that this was all a conspiracy, you know, when he loses his reelection.
[00:39:11]  And Nixon had flexed his influence and done it specifically to embarrass Schmitz.
[00:39:16]  And that is probably what happened, right?
[00:39:18]  Schmitz is like, the president had his henchmen come out and get me.
[00:39:22]  And honestly, this is the one conspiracy Schmitz believed in that, like, oh, yeah, there is no world in which Dick Nixon did not destroy this man for hitting him from the right.
[00:39:30]  That is totally in character for Richard Nixon.
[00:39:33]  And you would have done the same.
[00:39:35]  So now, the thing here, this is really a case of you've got Schmitz fucks with Nixon.
[00:39:41]  Nixon being a petty bitch destroys his chance at getting reelected.
[00:39:46]  And then, but the thing is, like, Schmitz is also extremely petty.
[00:39:49]  So when Nixon nuked his hopes of staying in Congress, John Schmitz starts scheming.
[00:39:54]  Fate presents him with an opportunity in the form of a bullet, which an assassin fired in the body of George Wallace, the segregation governor.
[00:40:01]  Wallace is badly hurt, and he has to drop out as a presidential candidate for the American Party.
[00:40:07]  Now, I know what you're saying, Francesca.
[00:40:09]  The American Party isn't a thing, but it was.
[00:40:12]  It did used to be.
[00:40:15]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:16]  This is now deep political lore here for the country.
[00:40:20]  But it was a third party that was formed entirely to support the ambitions of George Wallace, right?
[00:40:25]  Like, if the fact that Goldwater isn't just saying slurs on stage doesn't mean you don't trust Goldwater.
[00:40:31]  And if the fact that Nixon isn't completely out of his mind means you won't vote for Nixon, the American Party has got your back, right?
[00:40:39]  Thank God.
[00:40:40]  We love you.
[00:40:41]  Just a little slur, only a bit of slurs.
[00:40:44]  Yeah.
[00:40:45]  More than a bit.
[00:40:46]  This is George Wallace.
[00:40:47]  So now Wallace is to the right of Goldwater, even to the right.
[00:40:52]  I don't know, even to the right.
[00:40:53]  Like they're just kind of saying he's just cruder, right?
[00:40:56]  I think is probably a better way.
[00:40:57]  He is more.
[00:40:58]  I don't think Goldwater, like he is more directly motivated by racism, but they are both both of their campaigns are pretty racebatey, right?
[00:41:06]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:07]  And the American, and this is, you know, Goldwater thing is 64.
[00:41:09]  This is 68.
[00:41:10]  And in the 68, well, the 68 election is when the American Party runs for the first time, and it does really well.
[00:41:15]  They get 10 million votes in the 1968 election, right?
[00:41:20]  And that's that, this is, it comes to something that's kind of relevant today, which is that, you know, we're, we're starting 2024, which is this presidential race is going to be the first race in a very long time where a third party candidate seems likely to win a lot of votes, right?
[00:41:35]  You're talking about RFK?
[00:41:36]  The Kennedy.
[00:41:38]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the new Kennedy that we got up in politics.
[00:41:41]  He's going to get, I don't think, enough, like, certainly not enough to win the presidency, but more like he is, he is polling better than a third party candidate has in a time, like since I've been, you know, aware of politics, right?
[00:41:53]  That's, yes, yeah.
[00:41:54]  I don't know.
[00:41:55]  I, I think we're going to find his vax card at some point.
[00:41:57]  He's got a vax card.
[00:41:58]  It's possible.
[00:41:59]  It's all going to be over.
[00:42:00]  You know, anything could happen.
[00:42:02]  It's January, is, you know, but I, I, I, it is like at the moment right now, he is a more a bigger factor in the election than a third party has been in quite a bit, right?
[00:42:12]  Sure.
[00:42:13]  But I, I, I'm, I'm bringing this up because I want to talk about how significant the American Party was for a brief period of time.
[00:42:19]  They get 10 million votes in the 68 election.
[00:42:21]  Today, the Libertarian Party in the U.S. has 732,000 registered voters.
[00:42:27]  The Green Party and Constitution Party together are another 350,000, right?
[00:42:32]  Ross Perot got about 20 million votes in 1992, but he was a billionaire and he had the money to finance a sizable campaign.
[00:42:40]  And the next election, he barely, he barely broke 8 million votes.
[00:42:43]  So Wallace's American Party, it's not going to win the election, but it can spoil the election for a Republican.
[00:42:51]  10 million votes, that kind of potential, having done that in the previous election, that's not something to scoff at, right?
[00:42:58]  No.
[00:42:58]  Yeah.
[00:42:59]  So, you know, that's interesting.
[00:43:01]  So the American Party is not this inconsiderable thing within U.S. politics at the time, not entirely.
[00:43:06]  And any candidate who could perform at the level Wallace had might be able to take away enough votes from Nixon to assure his reelection.
[00:43:14]  Schmitz wanted to be that man.
[00:43:16]  The fact that he might be able to wrench the Republican Party for the, because again, you know, if you force Nixon out, right, if you make him lose the election, then the fact that you got that many votes might is going to convince a lot of Republican leadership, okay, we need to speak to some of the issues that this guy is adopting, right?
[00:43:31]  That's, I think, his assumption, right?
[00:43:33]  That I can wrench this party to the right.
[00:43:36]  And I can hurt Nixon, who I hate and who is a communist anyway.
[00:43:40]  He gets the nomination for the American Party at that party convention that year.
[00:43:44]  And he, he's, you know, I'm actually going to read a quote from that cafe.com article again about like how he kind of frames his campaign.
[00:43:51]  Schmitz continued to tie himself to conspiracy theories.
[00:43:54]  He made much use of his connection to None Dare Call It Conspiracy, which by election season had blown up, selling 5 million copies.
[00:44:00]  Gary Allen even came aboard the campaign, providing his mailing lists accumulated from the book's success.
[00:44:06]  He also suggested Arthur Bremer, Wallace's would-be assassin, was part of a cadre of killers, which also included Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sir Hans Saran, that was secretly funded and trained by left-wing groups like the Students for Democratic Society.
[00:44:20]  Sure.
[00:44:20]  Schmitz summed up his basic presidential campaign pitch.
[00:44:23]  I boiled down our platform to a two-plank platform.
[00:44:26]  There's a foreign plank that says never go to war unless you plan on winning, and a domestic plan that says those that work ought to live better than those who don't, right?
[00:44:33]  Which is both not politics and also real easy to see why that spreads among a certain chunk of the country, right?
[00:44:39]  Oh, yeah.

=== Two Golden Rules for Men (03:01) ===

[00:44:40]  So, cool stuff.
[00:44:42]  You know what else is cool?
[00:44:44]  Oh, I know what's cool.
[00:44:45]  Ads.
[00:44:46]  Sure.
[00:44:47]  The nice, cool breeze of capitalism blowing down our backs.
[00:44:55]  What's up, everyone?
[00:44:56]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:44:57]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:45:05]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:45:08]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:45:11]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:45:16]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:45:19]  I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:45:23]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:45:28]  Yeah.
[00:45:28]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:45:31]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:45:33]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:45:41]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:45:44]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:45:51]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:45:53]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:45:54]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:45:56]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:46:05]  10-10 shots fired.
[00:46:07]  City hall building.
[00:46:08]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:46:13]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios.
[00:46:16]  This is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:46:19]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:46:21]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:46:21]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:46:23]  July 2003.
[00:46:25]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:46:30]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:46:33]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:46:41]  Everybody in the chamber deducts a shocking public murder.
[00:46:45]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:46:47]  Those are shots.
[00:46:48]  Those are shots.
[00:46:49]  Get down.
[00:46:49]  A charismatic politician.
[00:46:51]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:46:53]  I still have a weapon.
[00:46:55]  And I could shoot you.
[00:46:59]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:47:00]  He alleged you.
[00:47:03]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:47:05]  That may have been about sex.
[00:47:07]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:47:11]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:20]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:47:24]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:47:27]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:47:30]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:47:34]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:37]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends.

=== Serengeti of Conservatives (10:20) ===

[00:47:41]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:43]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:48]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:50]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:52]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:54]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:57]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:58]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:48:01]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:48:05]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:48:07]  Trust me, babe.
[00:48:08]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:21]  And we're back.
[00:48:22]  How are you feeling, Francesca, about all this Republicaning?
[00:48:26]  Yeah, it's a lot of Republicaning.
[00:48:27]  I'm feeling overwhelmed, but fascinated by all of this.
[00:48:32]  I wish we had the countervailing force on the left to do shit like this, but we don't.
[00:48:39]  But I love, yeah, the evolution of the rights thinking really hasn't evolved at all.
[00:48:45]  Yeah, I mean, this is really the evolution of the rights thinking, right?
[00:48:49]  Like the evolution of the modern right is so much where this guy was back then, but the broader Republican Party adopts a lot of those attitudes in part because Schmitz kind of cracks that wall between Orange County and the rest of the country.
[00:49:04]  Right, well, because it's simultaneously, it seems like Orange County is, it is just so isolated from the rest of the country that is turning on things like the Vietnam War that is for things like not just integration, but like civil rights, exactly, like actual civil rights.
[00:49:24]  Certainly more so than OC is.
[00:49:25]  And in an awakening, and just more culturally, like there is a backlash, of course, against like conservatism of your parents and whatnot.
[00:49:32]  There's like free speech movements, you know, like whatever, you know, hippie movement, drug culture, whatnot.
[00:49:38]  Like there's a whole rejection of this bullshit, which is why Reaganism was such a fucking blow.
[00:49:44]  So was Nixonism, Nixonianism?
[00:49:47]  So was Dixism.
[00:49:49]  But yeah, it is, it's interesting to have Schmitz come in here and get that many votes.
[00:49:55]  And then also with such a simple platform.
[00:49:56]  I believe in money.
[00:49:57]  Money number one and white people.
[00:50:01]  I mean, private property.
[00:50:03]  Yeah.
[00:50:03]  Money, but just for the people who are already rich.
[00:50:06]  Exactly.
[00:50:07]  And bombing people who do not live here.
[00:50:09]  Like, that's his plank, right?
[00:50:11]  It's a perfect encapsulation of right-wing isolationism, you know, which is if you're going to fight a war, make sure you win it, which is the, if you're going to go to war in the Middle East, take all the oil, right?
[00:50:20]  It's that, like, it's coded as isolationist, but it's really not.
[00:50:24]  It really is, as we talk about like super pro-war, just kill them all dead, deader than dead.
[00:50:31]  Yeah.
[00:50:32]  Kill them all, take their stuff.
[00:50:33]  Yeah.
[00:50:34]  Yeah.
[00:50:34]  Now, for a running mate, he picks a guy named Tom Anderson, who is a farm magazine publisher who was far right, but also not the kind of guy who's going to detract attention from the main show.
[00:50:45]  Mostly I take pictures of cows, cows lounging.
[00:50:48]  It's livestock.
[00:50:50]  Yeah.
[00:50:51]  Just looking pretty.
[00:50:52]  It's like a right-wing livestock magazine.
[00:50:54]  I think it's an early homesteading magazine, right?
[00:50:56]  When you're saying we need to go back to the land to drop out of society.
[00:51:00]  Because like a guy who takes pictures of cows, I would, that sounds like a cool dude.
[00:51:07]  But that sucks.
[00:51:09]  Yeah, he got drawn into this mess.
[00:51:11]  Yeah.
[00:51:11]  Yeah.
[00:51:12]  Poor guy.
[00:51:12]  What a bummer.
[00:51:13]  So his campaign manager is Dan Smoot, who's a former FBI agent who's obsessed with the Council on Foreign Relations.
[00:51:21]  And because this was fucking California, his finance director is actor Walter Brennan, who had won three best supporting actor Oscars.
[00:51:29]  So that's this guy's bench.
[00:51:32]  Yeah, what a crew.
[00:51:34]  They had better celebrities, though.
[00:51:36]  I feel like all the celebrities we mentioned are like at least at least they won best supporting.
[00:51:42]  Yeah, he seems to have been an actor.
[00:51:43]  I don't know.
[00:51:44]  I can't recall anything he was in.
[00:51:47]  Gina Carano now or fucking Tim Brewer, Jim Brewer, whatever the fuck his name is.
[00:51:53]  Yeah, it was Jim Brewer.
[00:51:54]  It's Jim.
[00:51:55]  Who cares?
[00:51:55]  Whatever.
[00:51:56]  It's Jim.
[00:51:56]  Yeah.
[00:51:57]  So the campaign was immediately aggressive, filled with wealthy, small business owning, middle-aged men who were just desperate to get to feel like they were like insurgent revolutionaries.
[00:52:08]  One American party official told a journalist, this party is a distillation of the John Birch Society, the Christian Crusade and the Minutemen.
[00:52:15]  We're revolutionaries.
[00:52:16]  We're getting together to try to work through the system.
[00:52:19]  But I'll say this, we'll have constitutional government in this country.
[00:52:22]  And if we don't get it through a ballot box, we'll get it in the streets.
[00:52:26]  That's what the Constitution would want.
[00:52:28]  Again, that's very much that like J6 attitude.
[00:52:31]  It is.
[00:52:32]  We're going to work through all of our daddy issues together.
[00:52:35]  If we lose an election, we have the right to kill people, right?
[00:52:38]  Like that's what he's saying.
[00:52:40]  And Schmitz knew that he had an uphill battle in getting elected, or more to the point, stopping Nixon from getting re-elected.
[00:52:47]  His brand of paranoiac, utterly fantastical conservatism was not popular nationwide, but he was tailor-made for media soundbites, which helped to keep him in the news.
[00:52:56]  He told ABC, the Nixon family motto is be sincere, whether you believe it or not.
[00:53:01]  He presaged both Donald Trump with his meni lines and the presidential campaign and personal brand of Ronald Reagan with folksy right-wing witticisms like this.
[00:53:10]  Do you know why a newborn baby cries?
[00:53:12]  Because he's naked.
[00:53:12]  He's hungry and he already owes the government $5,900 in taxes.
[00:53:17]  Which is funny because like, well, that baby already owes a private corporation thousands of dollars for being born because that's what it costs to be fucking born in this system you people insist on continuing to have for us.
[00:53:30]  And Jesus for dying for its sins, according to them.
[00:53:33]  Yeah.
[00:53:33]  In Cafe.com, David Cordlander writes, quote, the Wall Street Journal offered a piece entirely devoted to Schmitz's rhetorical flourishes entitled, Keep Em Laughing is the motto as John Schmitz runs for president.
[00:53:45]  The piece even referred to Schmitz as sort of the Bob Hope of the ultra-right.
[00:53:50]  Oh, God, what an unappealing series of words.
[00:53:55]  His mix of jokes, conspiracies, and righteous indignation at everything he deemed the political establishment garnered decent returns.
[00:54:02]  He managed to get himself on the ballot in 32 states, even as Wallace refused to formally endorse him.
[00:54:08]  And in the decades to come, this kind of style of far-right populist conspiracy messaging, really the fact that he is marrying outright conspiracy theories to an attempt at mainstream politics.
[00:54:19]  This is now dominant, right?
[00:54:21]  This is the dominant form of conservatism.
[00:54:23]  Be honest, it's not dominant on the left as well, just in a different direction.
[00:54:27]  But like conspiracism is so mainstream now.
[00:54:32]  And we all get together in the Epstein conspiracy.
[00:54:35]  That's where we meet.
[00:54:36]  Yeah.
[00:54:37]  Left, right.
[00:54:39]  It's the Serengeti of conservatives.
[00:54:40]  For a little while.
[00:54:41]  For a little while.
[00:54:42]  And then we all go ourselves.
[00:54:44]  Then we decide we want to be angry at specific people on that plane differently.
[00:54:51]  No.
[00:54:52]  Yeah.
[00:54:52]  I do think we should do a squid game for all of the people in the Epstein books.
[00:54:56]  And we agree to pretend whoever survives didn't do anything wrong.
[00:55:00]  Or their children, you know?
[00:55:02]  Send their children there.
[00:55:03]  So we're like the Hunger Games, but for the rich.
[00:55:06]  Yeah.
[00:55:07]  I do like, I do think it'd be fun.
[00:55:09]  Lot of money as a tv show oh yeah, I mean, oh god, don't get me started on that tv show.
[00:55:14]  And Netflix is awful, but I would.
[00:55:16]  I love him.
[00:55:17]  But I do want to hear what Chomsky has to say, because he apparently was also a uh, an associate.
[00:55:22]  But no, more importantly, I want to hear what Kate Blanchett has to say.
[00:55:25]  I really actually want to see here what she has to say, like what the hell, my girl?
[00:55:29]  Yeah, I want to hear, I want them all to have to say something.
[00:55:31]  Cameron Diaz girl, what?
[00:55:34]  Yeah yeah, I mean, he did do Epstein, did do a lot of flights to like anything that would get famous people on his plane, to like different galas and shit overseas.
[00:55:44]  But I don't know, maybe I can't.
[00:55:46]  I, I I have trouble imagining Cameron Diaz wanting to buy whatever he was selling.
[00:55:51]  But who knows, who knows?
[00:55:53]  I think it's just like everyone who was famous in the year 2002.
[00:55:58]  That is a lot of them, but a lot of those people are also sex.
[00:56:02]  It's, it's a mix.
[00:56:03]  This is, it's a, it's a.
[00:56:05]  Really it's a grab bag, it's anyway.
[00:56:06]  We're, we're getting off topic but uh but, but yeah, the conspiracy theory, yeah, that wasn't.
[00:56:12]  It's interesting that, though it also is the media, because he and his wife are also media figures.
[00:56:16]  So it's the marriage of the media figures, good sound bites, which is what you need, or at least what the media wants, and the conspiracy, yeah, it's one of those things where he has predicted where things are going, but also at his time.
[00:56:30]  The Republican Party is not ready for that right.
[00:56:33]  He does not succeed in his time because it's just not.
[00:56:36]  You can't win nationally, even among Republicans doing that quite yet.
[00:56:41]  Um, that's not really going to be possible until you've had a few generations of Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart and etc.
[00:56:47]  Propagandizing to the masses.
[00:56:49]  That said, he doesn't do badly.
[00:56:51]  He takes in 1.2 million votes, which is an amount vastly higher than nearly any third-party candidates get today, but also well short of what Wallace did.
[00:57:00]  In his concession speech, Schmitz aptly identified that Republican influencers would use his techniques to win support of the dedicated maniacs who made up his base in the future.
[00:57:09]  We got one million votes enough to strike fear in some hearts in this country.
[00:57:14]  He's not wrong there.
[00:57:16]  He saw this as a good start.
[00:57:18]  Uh, he was at the time the seventh most successful third-party candidate in U.s political history and his plan was to double down, get back into Congress and weld together a coalition of the deranged that could lurch the Republican Party to the right and act as a constant thorn in Dick Nixon's side.
[00:57:34]  They were not aware at this point that uh, Nixon was going to get shit can?
[00:57:37]  Coalition of the deranged is beautiful yeah yeah, what's what's going on here?
[00:57:42]  Right, while he plotted, his wife organized her campaign against the equal rights amendment and scored a job on tv as a political pundit.
[00:57:49]  Things were going great for the Schmitzes.
[00:57:52]  They had power, money and growing influence.
[00:57:55]  Soon, in 1973, John Schmitz, who's again a family values candidate right, that's a big part of this.

=== Carla Stuckel and Power (14:51) ===

[00:58:02]  Degeneracy in the modern era is ruining our kids.
[00:58:05]  Oh well, he was next.
[00:58:07]  Oh, I do get.
[00:58:08]  He gets himself a mistress.
[00:58:10]  Yes yes, this guy is both a creepy politics dude but also a professor, so of course his mistress is one of his former students.
[00:58:18]  The much younger Carla Stuckel Is like 50 now.
[00:58:22]  She's like in her late 20s.
[00:58:25]  And he starts sleeping with his student, Carla Stuckel, former student.
[00:58:30]  And then he fathers two children with her over the space of a few years.
[00:58:34]  And while he's doing that, Mary Schmitz is doing her Phyllis Schlafly routine.
[00:58:38]  She's going on TV.
[00:58:39]  She's organizing the fight against the equal of rights and men that are helping to, you know.
[00:58:44]  And while, you know, he is seeing his mistress and she is becoming a media influencer, you know what no one is doing?
[00:58:50]  Watching their fucking kids.
[00:58:52]  And this is going to end in tragedy.
[00:58:55]  One August afternoon in 1973, both parents are out and their daughter, Mary Kay, a sixth grader, had been put in charge of the baby, Philip.
[00:59:04]  Time out, timeout.
[00:59:05]  First of all, that's totally not a not.
[00:59:07]  You can totally do that.
[00:59:09]  No, this is family one, family two.
[00:59:11]  What are we talking about?
[00:59:12]  We're talking about mistress's family.
[00:59:13]  We're talking about Mary.
[00:59:14]  No, no, his, his, his, family one, family one.
[00:59:17]  OG family.
[00:59:17]  Oh, OG family.
[00:59:18]  His daughter from Family One, Mary Kay, who I told you to keep an eye on.
[00:59:22]  Not for this, although this plays into why you need to remember Mary Kay.
[00:59:26]  They have her watching the baby while he is having sex with his former student and Mary is on TV, right?
[00:59:34]  And I'm going to quote from the LA Times here.
[00:59:35]  The baby was a fearless three-year-old.
[00:59:37]  And when he took off his life jacket and stepped into the deep end of the pool, not even the diligent Mary Catherine, playing in the shallow end with her older brother Jerry noticed the tiny splash.
[00:59:46]  Only after their mother began looking for Philip was he found lifeless on the bottom of the pool.
[00:59:51]  Oh, God.
[00:59:51]  So that's bad.
[00:59:54]  Yeah.
[00:59:55]  Pools.
[00:59:56]  Not great.
[00:59:57]  I mean, people who are not wealthy enough to have this problem don't know, but like me.
[01:00:03]  But apparently, pools are total death traps.
[01:00:06]  There's like one of them leading killers of babies.
[01:00:08]  Of course it is.
[01:00:10]  They're not like that's not even surprising.
[01:00:13]  I mean, guns are really trying.
[01:00:15]  It's just a thing for a small person to drown in.
[01:00:18]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:19]  Guns are truly trying to like, I think it might be neck and neck.
[01:00:22]  It might actually be guns at this point, but pools are like probably beat him at this point.
[01:00:27]  Yeah.
[01:00:27]  Guns are much more affordable than a pool.
[01:00:29]  Everybody has a gun.
[01:00:31]  I know.
[01:00:32]  If only pools were as accessible.
[01:00:38]  We could be drowning far more babies.
[01:00:41]  Yeah, we could really up those numbers.
[01:00:44]  So, you know, this is tragic, obviously, and it brings Schmitz a lot of sympathy, partly because nobody knew that the reason he had not been there to watch his baby is that he was having sex with a woman, not his wife, who was also his former student.
[01:00:58]  You know, if people had known that he was a fraud as a moral paragon and that his son had maybe died in part due to his ambitions, they might not have felt as positively about him, though.
[01:01:09]  But this doesn't come out immediately, right?
[01:01:11]  And through the mid-1970s to the early 80s, Schmitz, you know, continues to run.
[01:01:15]  He gets back into state Congress.
[01:01:17]  He's in California Congress for another term.
[01:01:19]  He makes another national level campaign and he becomes more comfortable broadcasting openly racist remarks on the campaign trail.
[01:01:27]  After lawyer Gloria Allred gives him a leather chastity belt during a state Senate committee on abortion.
[01:01:33]  And Gloria is like making fun of him.
[01:01:37]  They have a state Senate committee in California on like abortion laws.
[01:01:40]  And obviously she's Gloria Allred.
[01:01:42]  She thinks it should be legal.
[01:01:44]  And he is being a howling fascist about it and saying, no, women shouldn't have the right to have sex.
[01:01:49]  And so she gives him a chastity belt, right?
[01:01:51]  I love it.
[01:01:52]  Which actually he needs.
[01:01:53]  It's like a joke.
[01:01:54]  She doesn't even know that he's fathered a whole other family.
[01:01:56]  He literally does.
[01:01:57]  She has actually anticipated a real need.
[01:02:00]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:02:04]  So he issues a press release calling Gloria and other pro-choice activists, quote, a sea of hard Jewish and arguably female faces.
[01:02:18]  There it is.
[01:02:18]  There it is.
[01:02:20]  There he said it.
[01:02:21]  Yeah.
[01:02:22]  He did it.
[01:02:22]  He did it, everybody.
[01:02:24]  And there's a backlash to this.
[01:02:26]  Sure.
[01:02:27]  Even in even in the 70s, you can't say this.
[01:02:32]  So there's a backlash.
[01:02:33]  And his response to the backlash is basically to say, I don't hate Jews.
[01:02:36]  They're like everyone else except more so, which is still pretty racist.
[01:02:41]  They're like everyone else except.
[01:02:44]  So they're not like everyone else.
[01:02:46]  What does that mean?
[01:02:48]  I mean, it's something people used to say about the Japanese, too.
[01:02:53]  I think it's like a classier way of saying they're not like regular people.
[01:02:57]  I think it's what you say, too, when the group you're afraid of has a reputation, at least, for like being powerful in an industry or in some other way, right?
[01:03:05]  You know, Japan is a military power when people are saying that about Japan.
[01:03:09]  There's this widespread attitude that Jewish people run certain.
[01:03:12]  I think that's kind of what he's saying, right?
[01:03:15]  So it's the polite company bigotry.
[01:03:17]  Yes.
[01:03:18]  Yes.
[01:03:18]  It is the polite way of saying I think the Jews run the media, right?
[01:03:22]  Like that is basically what he's saying.
[01:03:24]  He also, he did not just confine himself to talking about Jewish people.
[01:03:28]  He said of Latinos, I may not be Hispanic, but I'm close.
[01:03:31]  I'm Catholic with a mustache, which is what a wild thing to say.
[01:03:37]  Yeah, that's what a dad, or that's what a guy on Cinco de Mayo says.
[01:03:42]  Like when he's wearing like a nacho bolt, like sombrero and calling every waiter Pedro.
[01:03:50]  Yeah.
[01:03:51]  He also called Martin Luther King Jr. a notorious liar.
[01:03:55]  He had regained his Senate seat in 1978, but he failed in two campaigns to win election to the U.S. Senate.
[01:04:01]  By 1982, he had been thoroughly relegated to the status of a local headache.
[01:04:06]  And then in 1982, a month after losing yet another primary election, the news broke that Schmitz had fathered two children with his mistress.
[01:04:15]  Now, you want to know how this news broke?
[01:04:17]  Because this is a fucking story.
[01:04:19]  Oh, yes.
[01:04:20]  Kay, it's Mary.
[01:04:22]  It involves a penis injury.
[01:04:24]  So not a good one.
[01:04:26]  This is a child's penis injury.
[01:04:28]  So nobody laughs.
[01:04:29]  You're not allowed to laugh.
[01:04:30]  If you just had laughed before, feel bad about it right now.
[01:04:33]  Yeah, now you're thinking about it.
[01:04:35]  30 seconds, reflect on your crimes.
[01:04:37]  Yeah.
[01:04:38]  Yeah.
[01:04:38]  You sickos.
[01:04:40]  So his also, this is kind of a sicko thing.
[01:04:44]  He names his second son out of wedlock after his father.
[01:04:48]  No.
[01:04:50]  Which is a weird move for your kid you're going to deny the rest of his life, but okay.
[01:04:57]  Like you have to have a little bit of deniability.
[01:04:59]  Like if your wife finds out, be like, that's not my kid.
[01:05:03]  It's like, it's added.
[01:05:06]  It's named after your dad.
[01:05:08]  Are you kidding me?
[01:05:09]  Yeah.
[01:05:10]  Its name is Schmitzy Ditzy.
[01:05:12]  Like, come on now.
[01:05:13]  Yeah.
[01:05:16]  And it's, you know, the reason this all comes out.
[01:05:18]  So he's got this kid, John George, who is a baby at this point.
[01:05:22]  And the baby gets booked at an OC hospital for an injured penis.
[01:05:27]  The injury is very peculiar.
[01:05:28]  A piece of hair had been wrapped, and it's described as being wrapped in a square knot around, I think, the head of the penis so tightly that it had nearly severed the member, right?
[01:05:38]  So the baby has to have surgery.
[01:05:40]  Yeah, it's fucked up, but the baby's fine.
[01:05:41]  Like it does, he does recover, right?
[01:05:44]  But the incident prompted, obviously, an investigation, right?
[01:05:47]  That's the kind of thing that looks like it could be something intentional, right?
[01:05:50]  Someone hurt this kid, you know?
[01:05:52]  I think they're perfectly reasonable to look into this.
[01:05:55]  Detectives threaten to arrest the baby's mother, Carla Stuckel, if she didn't tell them who the father was.
[01:06:00]  And I think this is the police assume if someone's abusing this child, it's probably the dad.
[01:06:06]  So we need to figure out who the dad is, right?
[01:06:08]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:06:08]  And they're like, look, we'll arrest you if you don't tell us.
[01:06:10]  And that's how Schmitz, his name gets out, right?
[01:06:13]  Because he's famous, right?
[01:06:14]  He's their local.
[01:06:14]  He's been their rep a couple of times.
[01:06:16]  He's this big figure.
[01:06:17]  So I'm a mom, so I know like there, I've, I see all these Instagram posts and some of them are like careful with, you know, stray hairs because I guess hairs, yeah, you know, when like a hair gets like wrapped around your finger, like that can happen and it can like hurt and it's hard to like cut it or break it.
[01:06:33]  Just random thing, reasons for parents to worry, random shit, but like getting it on your dick.
[01:06:39]  Like, I don't believe in God, but I'm pretty sure God put that piece of hair around.
[01:06:44]  Oh, God.
[01:06:46]  That is kind of the shitty thing God would do instead of just strike John Schmitz down, make a baby suffer to ruin his career.
[01:06:53]  Fucking asshole.
[01:06:54]  Like that is, you're right.
[01:06:56]  That is very Old Testament God.
[01:07:00]  So, you know, the story breaks.
[01:07:02]  I'm sure the police just can't keep their mouth shut or whatever, but like it breaks and it craters John as a political figure.
[01:07:08]  This is the end of his like meaningful public life.
[01:07:11]  He makes another congressional run in 1983, but he loses by more than 50 points.
[01:07:16]  The affair was such a scandal that it also ends Mary Schmitz's career on TV, which is evidence of some misogyny, right?
[01:07:22]  Because like this isn't her fault, right?
[01:07:25]  That her husband cheated on her with a lady, but she loses her job on TV as a right-wing shithead anyway.
[01:07:31]  I guess it's unjust.
[01:07:33]  She does suck.
[01:07:34]  So, you know, take, think about that how you want, I guess.
[01:07:38]  The two separate, but they get back together.
[01:07:41]  True to his nature as human garbage.
[01:07:43]  Schmitz never supports Carla Stuckel or helps to support their, he refuses to pay, right?
[01:07:49]  He is like this his whole life.
[01:07:51]  When the police question him, he tells the police straight up, I do not and will not support him financially.
[01:07:56]  Because the police are like, do you want to help pay the bill at the hospital for your son?
[01:08:00]  He's like, I will not pay any money.
[01:08:02]  It is her responsibility to take care of him, not mine.
[01:08:05]  Gotta love Republicans.
[01:08:07]  Party of personal responsibility.
[01:08:09]  Yeah, indeed.
[01:08:10]  I mean, at least I will give him this.
[01:08:15]  He didn't like, you know, advocate for stealth abortion the way other Republicans do with their mistresses, right?
[01:08:20]  No, he has the kid and then he, I mean, he was anti-abortion, but he does have his kid.
[01:08:26]  Yeah.
[01:08:26]  Or he has to do it.
[01:08:27]  And then allows him to live a life of like, you know, a shitty life where his dad doesn't hug him or support him or love him the way Republicans want in order to breed more Republicans.
[01:08:38]  Guess what?
[01:08:40]  You're ahead of the game again, Francesca.
[01:08:42]  Okay.
[01:08:42]  These kids have a nightmare life.
[01:08:45]  Carla Stuckel is left to support both children on her own.
[01:08:48]  This is actually, did you watch The House of Usher?
[01:08:51]  No.
[01:08:53]  Oh, well, these two kids have literally the background of the kids.
[01:08:57]  I honestly wonder if that's who what's his name was thinking of.
[01:09:01]  Anyway, so Carla is left to support these kids on her own, which she does until 1993 when she dies due to complications from type 1 diabetes.
[01:09:09]  She had been like working, barely keeping it together to take care of these two on her own, and then she dies.
[01:09:15]  Schmitz refuses to take either of his children and they're sent to an orphanage.
[01:09:20]  John Schmitz leaves up.
[01:09:22]  What a piece of shit.
[01:09:25]  Yeah.
[01:09:27]  Okay.
[01:09:27]  He just like, not my responsibility.
[01:09:29]  Not my job.
[01:09:30]  Her body made him.
[01:09:31]  Fuck her.
[01:09:32]  Like, that's him.
[01:09:35]  He lives on, increasingly angry and irrational until 2001 when he dies of prostate cancer.
[01:09:41]  The Journal of Historical Review, which exists to deny the Holocaust, called him a good friend in its obituary.
[01:09:49]  He's just a cool guy.
[01:09:51]  He is, by the way, a Holocaust denier.
[01:09:53]  He attends events held by the Journal of Historical Review.
[01:09:57]  Of course he is.
[01:09:58]  He had to get the bingo card.
[01:09:59]  Yeah, exactly to complete it.
[01:10:01]  Yeah.
[01:10:02]  And that's almost the end, Francesca, because we got one bot on this episode.
[01:10:07]  Yeah, Sophie just read it.
[01:10:11]  I mentioned at the start.
[01:10:12]  I mentioned at the start, remember his daughter, Mary Kay.
[01:10:16]  Yes.
[01:10:16]  Right?
[01:10:17]  Oh my god.
[01:10:17]  Schmitz is the daughter that he had with his wife, right?
[01:10:20]  Who is there when her baby brother dies.
[01:10:23]  Yeah, which probably fucks her up somewhat.
[01:10:26]  So in between, John getting exposed as a philandering fraud and dying while he's still alive, something else happened.
[01:10:33]  Not to him, but to his daughter, Mary Kay.
[01:10:36]  She becomes a middle school teacher and she marries someone.
[01:10:40]  Do you want to guess what the last name of her husband is?
[01:10:43]  Becomes her last name?
[01:10:45]  No.
[01:10:46]  No, I don't want Johnno.
[01:10:48]  Mary Kay Leturno.
[01:10:50]  That's John Schmitz's daughter.
[01:10:52]  Now, depending on how much you know about this story, some of you are saying, oh, shit.
[01:10:59]  Oh, my God.
[01:11:00]  I actually don't know this story before.
[01:11:03]  Oh, God.
[01:11:04]  Oh, shit.
[01:11:05]  Yeah.
[01:11:05]  In like the mid-90s, Mary Kay Leterno, I think it's the mid-90s.
[01:11:09]  Mary Kay Leterno gets famous because she starts, she's a school teacher, a middle school teacher, and she repeatedly statutorily rapes one of her 12-year-old male students and has two children with him.
[01:11:21]  Oh my fucking God.
[01:11:23]  Gets public and she, it is a massive national news story.
[01:11:28]  This is front page news, TV news on every household for weeks for the first time.
[01:11:34]  A female teacher is a predator.
[01:11:36]  And we've probably seen the clips of like them when they're older and her being like, oh, it's the boss.
[01:11:43]  And him being like, what the fuck?
[01:11:46]  And like, yeah, it's because they go on to like get married and have like a normal bit in prison and then makes, yeah, it's whole, it's really dark.
[01:11:58]  It's a fucked up story.
[01:12:01]  She died horribly, though.
[01:12:02]  So that's cool.
[01:12:04]  She does die really badly.
[01:12:06]  So yeah, that's John Schmitz's primary legacies are that he helped create the modern Republican Party that we're all desperately hoping doesn't kill everybody today.
[01:12:18]  And he gave birth and raised Mary Kay Leterno, who became one of the most famous pedophiles in this country's history.
[01:12:24]  So that's good.
[01:12:27]  Robert.
[01:12:29]  Robert.
[01:12:30]  I was not ready.
[01:12:31]  You didn't see that one coming, did you, Sam?
[01:12:32]  I was telling you who was not ready for that last paragraph.
[01:12:36]  Oh, my God.
[01:12:39]  Surprise pedophile in the fourth quarter, baby.
[01:12:42]  Oh, my God.
[01:12:44]  Thank you for knowing what the fourth quarter is.
[01:12:47]  Wow.
[01:12:49]  They breed.
[01:12:51]  These are the kinds of people they breed.

=== Surprise Pedophile in Fourth Quarter (03:27) ===

[01:12:53]  This is what happens.
[01:12:55]  Yeah.
[01:12:55]  I mean, if you know what I will, Mary Kay Leturno is a bad person, but having your parents be fascists who neglect you and kind of put you in a situation where you are responsible for your infant brother or your child brother's death couldn't have helped.
[01:13:11]  Like, that didn't help.
[01:13:12]  That didn't make the odds of her turning out healthy better, right?
[01:13:16]  No.
[01:13:16]  And also, like, we don't know whatever.
[01:13:18]  Like, some other shit might have happened.
[01:13:19]  You know what I mean?
[01:13:20]  She's, I mean, who knows?
[01:13:22]  Exactly.
[01:13:23]  Like, something else might have happened to her.
[01:13:25]  She is bad, and so is he.
[01:13:26]  She's bad.
[01:13:27]  She's very bad.
[01:13:28]  She's the whole thing.
[01:13:29]  Curse.
[01:13:30]  They're so cursed.
[01:13:32]  Also.
[01:13:32]  Sounds like a dog shit family.
[01:13:34]  Yeah, it's a very dog shit family.
[01:13:36]  Robert, I think this is the first time in like a really long time that I've been extremely surprised at the end of the day.
[01:13:43]  Yeah, you didn't see that one coming at all, did you?
[01:13:46]  I wish I was more up on my child rapist.
[01:13:52]  There's a lot of clips going around because there's a Netflix movie that's loosely based based off the story called May December.
[01:13:58]  Yeah.
[01:13:59]  Good stuff.
[01:14:00]  Good stuff.
[01:14:01]  I just know this is one of those episodes that like the instant I said that across the country, like hundreds of thousands of people all went, oh, fuck, really?
[01:14:11]  No.
[01:14:15]  I did.
[01:14:16]  I did not, like, it was, it's such a funny bookend for this story.
[01:14:21]  Not funny, because, like, an actual child was deeply, deeply harmed here.
[01:14:25]  More than one, a lot of children actually are harmed in this story.
[01:14:28]  But just, it was not what you expect with the first 90% of this story.
[01:14:33]  Yeah, it's just it's a fun distraction from the rest of it, which is like the origins of like the far right and the da-da-da-da.
[01:14:40]  Hey, Laterno.
[01:14:41]  Like, that's, I like it.
[01:14:42]  So, Letterno.
[01:14:44]  Child abuse was really refreshing.
[01:14:45]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:14:47]  Really, exactly.
[01:14:48]  Cleanse my palate from all the other stuff.
[01:14:51]  Yeah, it's like that sip of water when you're doing a wine tasting.
[01:14:56]  For sure.
[01:14:57]  For sure, Palace.
[01:14:58]  This is probably not a road to go down.
[01:15:00]  No, no, no.
[01:15:01]  Do not.
[01:15:02]  But hey, look, they got a Netflix show.
[01:15:04]  I mean, movie.
[01:15:05]  So.
[01:15:07]  Oh, yeah.
[01:15:07]  No, I'm going to be watching that tonight.
[01:15:09]  Yeah.
[01:15:10]  Poor Schmitz doesn't get a special.
[01:15:13]  So, Francesca Fiorentini, you have a podcast, The Abituation Room, which people should listen to.
[01:15:20]  I have been on it.
[01:15:22]  You have.
[01:15:22]  You were great.
[01:15:23]  You were there in person.
[01:15:24]  I'm doing another live show on January 28th, 7 p.m. at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco as a part of SF Sketchfest, and Miles Gray is going to be there.
[01:15:32]  And thank you so much.
[01:15:33]  And now I'm going to just sit in shame that I didn't know who Mary Kay Laterno was.
[01:15:38]  And I was just now.
[01:15:40]  That's okay.
[01:15:41]  It's okay.
[01:15:42]  I double knew it.
[01:15:43]  I double knew it.
[01:15:44]  So be made up.
[01:15:45]  You've got time before Sketchfest to really, really work on some Mary Kay Laterno jokes.
[01:15:51]  You know what?
[01:15:51]  If you just find David Letterman's monologues from back then, you can steal some.
[01:15:56]  No one will.
[01:15:56]  I can steal them.
[01:15:57]  And Cat Williams will call me out for it.
[01:15:59]  It'll be great.
[01:16:03]  Yeah.
[01:16:03]  It's been a pleasure.
[01:16:04]  Thank you so much.
[01:16:06]  Anything else you want to tell people?
[01:16:08]  No, man.
[01:16:09]  Just listen to the Abituation Room.
[01:16:10]  There's a comic and a there's always a comedian.
[01:16:14]  There's always an expert or an activist.
[01:16:16]  We talk politics and kind of big, what the fuck are we going to do in 2024 stuff?

=== Stealing Letterman Monologues (03:19) ===

[01:16:21]  So it's good.
[01:16:22]  Yeah.
[01:16:23]  Yeah.
[01:16:23]  And I think that's, it's useful.
[01:16:25]  The Abituation Room has a style that is cathartic to it.
[01:16:30]  And if you think you need that right now as we start to head into 2024, it's a great place to get it.
[01:16:36]  So listen to some of that.
[01:16:38]  Relax.
[01:16:39]  I will never relax for laughing about the.
[01:16:44]  Yeah.
[01:16:44]  No.
[01:16:45]  You never know where Mary Kay Laterno is going to be heading in an episode.
[01:16:48]  So I could do that any day.
[01:16:52]  My face is a different shade.
[01:16:54]  That's how shocking that was.
[01:16:57]  It's like how you may have American history before J6 and after, where like, oh, wow, now a coup could just happen at any time.
[01:17:04]  It's real to us.
[01:17:06]  Now the possibility of being confronted with Mary Kay Laterno is going to be lurking in the back of your mind every episode, Sophie.
[01:17:13]  Forever.
[01:17:14]  It's been five or six years.
[01:17:17]  And this is the first time where I couldn't close my mouth.
[01:17:22]  Just the pure, the pure shock of the Mary Kay La Turno drama.
[01:17:28]  Yeah.
[01:17:29]  Oh my God.
[01:17:30]  See, it's a good way to open 2024.
[01:17:33]  It is.
[01:17:34]  I feel like I got to go like hug a dog.
[01:17:38]  End this episode.
[01:17:40]  What the fuck?
[01:17:40]  Yeah.
[01:17:41]  Yeah.
[01:17:42]  Bye.
[01:17:43]  All right, everybody.
[01:17:44]  Bye-bye.
[01:17:45]  Bye.
[01:17:48]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[01:17:52]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
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