Eugene Talmadge, Georgia's 1930s "fascist" governor, seized state funds via martial law in 1936 after failing to pass an appropriations bill, sparking a standoff where Treasurer George Hamilton was physically removed. Despite judicial manipulation releasing $900,000, Talmadge lost the 1936 governor's race to Ed Rivers due to alienating labor voters and his segregationist rhetoric. His subsequent 1938 Senate defeat against Walter George followed by a 1940 gubernatorial win saw him embrace isolationism, read Mein Kampf, and claim everyone needs a "little dictator," ultimately shifting the Southern Democratic Party toward conservative positions that aligned with modern Republicans. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Lion King Soundtrack Surprise00:04:54
Cool zone media.
Sophie, one of these days I'm gonna do that and it's gonna sound like I'm doing another like atonal shriek, but then I'm just gonna like jump right into the opening soundtrack from the Lion King and you're gonna be fucking amazed.
What's so wild is when you did that, I was immediately thinking of Lion King.
Like I think you're almost there.
We all were.
I was very close.
I was very close.
I wasn't thinking the Lion King.
I'll say it.
I'm not.
I'm not gonna be saying you grew up with the bad Lion King, not the good one.
That's not true.
Fuck off.
Yeah, I assume you were raised on the Donald Glover Lion King.
What a mistake.
What a horrible mistake.
Why would you ever do another version of the result that I came up?
What are you talking about?
Garrison was not born last Thursday.
What are we doing?
I don't remember when the new Disney movies come out.
I just know they have off-putting CGI versions of all of these.
We've been working together for four years.
It's terrible.
That doesn't sound right.
I know.
I think it's longer.
No, it's been four years, Sophie.
It's well, yeah, slightly longer.
I'm going to tell you right now, my mental health is going to plummet the day you're able to rent a car.
That's going to be a disaster.
It's coming soon.
It's coming soon.
The Donald Glover Lion King predates us because that was 2019.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Anyway, welcome to Behind the Bastards.
I guess we have this new cold open thing, which I'm still not super familiar with, but it's pretty chilly.
So it's pretty chilly in here.
It's pronounced Chile, Garrison, and it's funny.
The difference between, you know, you, you're, yeah, sorry, I don't have an additional bit beyond that, but I got you there.
Nailed it.
I already set you up for that one.
You really did.
What are we talking about today, buddy?
Oh, just a normal guy from the 1930s named Eugene Talmadge.
Hell yeah.
Let's get back into it.
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You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
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I'm Ago Mode of my next guest.
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My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
Not be on a calendar of you know the cat, just hang in there.
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It wouldn't be that.
There's a lot in life.
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In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
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Hamilton vs The National Guard00:15:28
Right where we left off, Gene had his little racism convention to try to oust FDR, right?
He has his eyes set on the presidency.
And that was really the only tactic for ousting FDR.
It was racism.
Yeah, just straight up shooting workers.
Yeah, because everyone else loved him.
They're like, well, he's not racist enough.
Let's try that.
Let's see if that works.
The other pressing problem for Gene at this junction is that in the previous year, the state failed to secure an appropriations bill.
So there's no way for the state's finances to work going into 1936.
And this is kind of Gene's main problem, especially after his little failed racism convention.
So at this point, we're kind of early in 1936.
The state does have money.
It just has no legal process to divert or spend that money.
So in order to use the cash, Gene needs to convince the treasurer to sign checks on unappropriated funds, which is technically unconstitutional.
But by, I would say, creatively interpreting the law, Gene claimed that he could write checks on money appropriated as far back as 1933 using funds that were not paid in full.
He also requested that various state departments hold on to their tax collections or just give them directly to Gene and fully bypass the treasury.
So this was his plan to kind of hold on to money.
Now, unfortunately for Gene, the treasurer had already begun receiving tax payments from the various state departments.
And by February 13th, the state had begun to run out of operating funds.
Now, days later, Gene proclaimed that the state would have the exact same appropriations bill as in 1935, arguing that since the legislature already approved that budget, it was thus legal indefinitely, which is not how state budgets work.
Now, the treasurer was of the opinion that this whole affair was veering on unconstitutionality.
And he was worried.
Garrison, I need you to say that word again.
Okay, all right.
It's a long, there's a lot of syllables in here.
Unconstitutionality?
Unconstitutionality.
Okay, okay.
Okay.
Unconstitutionality.
That's probably a word.
Yeah.
It's mostly a word.
It was, it was.
He was scared it was unconstitutional.
I'm pretty sure this is a word, Sophie.
You've no.
I'm so tired.
I'm so tired.
I can't.
It's a word.
Unconstitutionality.
That's a word.
Robert and I are both so fucking tired.
You can just tell.
According to the Cornell Law Institute.
So there you go.
Shout out, Cornell.
My grandma went there.
Now, the treasurer, a guy named George Hamilton, was also worried that Talmadge might just try to personally seize all the state's cash kept in banks around the state, possibly with millions falling into the direct control of Gene.
So, Treasurer Hamilton asked FDR to secure state bonds in federal vaults so that Gene couldn't legally access them.
And FDR was apparently happy to make life harder for Eugene Talmudge.
I'm going to quote from Gene's biography by William Anderson.
Quote, The treasurer carefully drilled his staff on what to do in the event he was thrown out of office.
They were to remove all collateral bonds and cash from state vaults, set an eight-hour time lock on the empty vault, and run for the Federal Reserve and the local banks, where they were to deposit both cash and bonds.
Speed was essential because of the closeness of the treasurers at the governor's office.
Unquote.
They were basically had their offices just across the hallway.
We don't have enough.
You know what we don't have enough of in modern politics is capers.
You know, there's some good.
There's nearly enough capers.
That's a caper.
Yeah.
There's some good capers in this episode.
So speaking of capers, I love bagels.
Now, Talmadge wanted to test his own power by asking the school superintendent, a guy named MD Collins, and the asylum warden to put in requests for money, pressuring the treasurer to write the checks.
Now, the treasurer caught word of this ahead of time, and not wanting to be caught denying funds to schools and mental patients, he contacted the superintendent ahead of time and made secret arrangements to send him into hiding, putting him up in an Atlanta hotel.
So as expected, Gene went looking for the superintendent and was quite pissed when he just couldn't find him anywhere in the city.
Again, what happened to Capers?
Why don't we do this anymore?
All we have now is like fascism and very disappointing governors.
I want a caper.
Tim Walz, go steal the Declaration of Independence.
You know, get out there.
They didn't have like cell phones.
They didn't have like email.
You couldn't send like official requests digitally.
You had to actually find physically.
And then it was very easy to just put someone in a basement and keep them there.
Yeah.
Just keep someone hiding in a hotel in downtown Atlanta and you're just like, can't find us?
No, they might as well be on the fucking moon.
Yeah.
So on February 20th, as Gene was still looking for Mr. Collins, the comp troller and the treasurer publicly announced that they would not be signing checks for the governor, claiming his proclamation was invalid, signing a grandfather clause, which voided the old unspent appropriations, and declared this now a constitutional battle.
The press had basically all turned on Gene at this point, tired from his antics.
An Atlanta Constitution headline read, the governor's illegal attempt at dictatorship.
Now, four years later.
You gotta have some respect for a title that tells it like it is.
There's some pretty good like 1930s headlines that we're gonna get to today.
Yeah, I mean, journalists made a comfortable income and had like support staff and stuff back then.
So yeah.
Now, four days later, Gene wrote an executive order firing comptroller Harrison and a treasurer Hamilton, both of whom declared that they would have to be literally thrown out of office.
I'm going to quote from Anderson again.
Quote, this tactic was designed to make Gene look militaristic, a bully, a dictator who ruled not by law, but by force.
Since Gene's martial law order from September 1934 was still in effect, that's like a year and a half later.
He just had to stay under martial law for like a year and a half.
He had the National Guard at his disposal.
Upon hearing the men would not leave, he ordered the adjunct general Lindley Camp, who had been waiting for this, to take a couple of plainclothes men and get Harrison out of his office.
It was early in the morning.
Camp was not a violent man.
He asked Harrison politely, but firmly, to leave.
You're no longer comptroller and you'll have to leave this office, Camp said.
Harrison, seated behind his desk, looked disappointed that no armed force had shown up.
He asked, where are the soldiers?
Camp leaned long over the desk and drawled, I'm some soldiers.
Harrison got up and quietly.
Incredible.
I'm some soldiers is pretty good.
There's not all of the Riz in every single elected leader in the country right now doesn't add up to that line.
I'm sorry.
We don't have that kind of, we don't have that kind of juice anymore.
Treasurer Hamilton put up Sophie.
I was just going to say, it's the quietly getting up and leaving for me.
Yeah.
Soldiers?
You can't respond to that.
You just have to get up and leave.
You've lost.
You've lost that engagement.
It's time to just leave the room.
Now, Hamilton, the treasurer, put up a bit more of a fight, at least according to Gene's assistant, Henry Sperlin, who recounted the ordeal.
Quote, I went in and found Hamilton sitting at his desk.
I told him he would have to leave his office at once.
He pulled a large pistol out and placed it on the desk and said, My favorite negotiating tactic.
It's good.
He said, I am constitutionally elected to this office and I have the means to protect it.
You just convinced me to run for office.
Because, man, that would be fun.
That would feel good.
That would feel good.
Continuing from Sperlin, quote, I turned around and went back across the hall to the governor's office and told him that George had a big pistol on the desk and was refusing to leave.
Gene blew up.
Knowing the times, that was like a 38.
Gene blew up and started yelling for the adjunct general at the top of his lungs.
Lindley, Lindley, Lindley.
About that time, the adjunct general came walking through the door and said, keep quiet, governor.
I heard you all the way across the street.
Unquote.
So funny.
So the adjunct general, along with some soldiers, went into Hamilton's office and literally picked him up out of his chair.
And while being carried out of his office, Hamilton yelled to his assistants who were running around with the last of the treasury's bonds in cash.
Wow.
Anderson says that the guards are going to be able to get away from the story.
We took a wrong turn in this country.
We took a wrong turn in this country.
This is so much more exciting.
We used to do it right.
That's a democracy you can be proud of, right?
Because you're reading about fight like that in the news.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Now, Anderson says that the guardsmen thought his assistants were just like running from the Capitol in fear.
When in actuality, they were taking the last of the state's money to be deposited in FDR's federal vaults.
So after Hamilton was removed from the Capitol, he contacted the bank, telling him that he was still, in fact, the legal treasurer, instructed them to not pay out any money, and told the post office to not deliver any mail directed to the treasurer to Gene's new replacement, a guy named Toby Daniel.
And the post office complied with this.
I guess people just liked Hamilton.
I'm going to quote from Anderson here, quote, it had been a long and busy day in the state government, a day which ended in total confusion about who controlled what.
Hamilton was seen just before dark, tacking his nameplate and title on a door across town as Gene prepared to move on the state vaults.
Unquote.
I just like that Treasurer Hamilton just set up his own fake office across town, be like, you know, I'm obviously still the treasurer.
I'm going to make myself my own office.
So the next day, Gene's new treasurer, Toby Daniel, went to the vaults and he found them sealed, shut with this eight-hour time lock.
Gene was never known as a patient man, so he ordered locksmiths to cut open the safe with gas torches.
As soldiers stood guard, men cut open the vaults to find nothing.
They were completely empty.
Oh, that's fun.
That's that's a good goddamn image.
Just yeah, Eugene Talmudge with a cigar and some soldiers looking at people cut open a vault with gas torches.
Do it as nothing at all.
Yeah, no, it's like it's a fantastic caper.
So Gene was extremely upset at this.
Oh, really?
And he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would take that in the spirit of good fair play.
No, no, no.
He sent Toby Daniel to the Fulton National Bank to cash out $100,000, but the bank refused to honor the check.
Every sequence of events left Gene just getting more and more pissed.
He wrote an angry letter to the bank president, telling him that the bank would have to now pay 7% interest on the state's $900,000.
And if they didn't want to deliver cash to Toby Daniel, the governor's executive assistant would be authorized to accept the state's money.
The bank continued to refuse to hand over any cash, saying that it was the quote-unquote unanimous decision of the council of all the clearinghouse banks that they could not feel entirely safe until there had been some judicial determination over the question of the state's financial situation.
To quote Anderson here, quote, Hamilton's strategy had worked.
Gene exploded in anger, turning his fury erroneously on the legislature and the federal government.
He said a clique in the House of Representatives had hatched a plot a year earlier in Washington, trying to force the state to call an extra session to drain off money and force Gene to raise taxes.
He said the mess was deliberately brought on by the New Deal.
Unquote.
Now, the Georgia Constitution required that the treasurer be bonded before assuming office, but no local bonding company wanted to be anywhere near this shit show.
But Gene's friend, John Whitley, found an insurance company all the way in Fort Scott, Kansas, that would bond Toby Daniel for $300,000.
Gene asked the highway board chairman, a guy named Mr. Wilbur, to put up $65,000, which he quite reluctantly agreed to, and John Whitley covered the rest.
Gene's L-streak continued when it was learned just days later that $17 million in federal road funds were being held because Gene spent $3 million of this money on other state expenses, which is not allowed.
Not cool.
You can't do that.
I mean, I feel like you should be able to do whatever you can get away with as the governor, right?
Like, that ought to be the rule.
It's like cheating at poker, right?
Like, as long as they don't catch you in the act, you're good.
The problem is that they always caught him.
That was the problem.
Yeah, that is an issue.
And George Hamilton at this point was promising to fight to the last to see that the law shall rule and not a tyrannical despot who has gone mad with egotism.
Now, according to the Atlanta Journal, 36 out of 44 state papers were now against Talmadge, with the Gainesville Eagle writing, he has out-heralded Herod in a despotic dictatorial action that transcends the throttling of Louisiana by Huey Long.
Anderson writes, A survey of newspapers from across the state reflected the shock and repulsion many had felt for this latest example of Talmadge enforcing his will.
The Cordell dispatch worried, he's going to be worse than Hitler or Mussolini, which isn't true.
That's not that.
At this point in 2024, we can confidently say not as bad as either of those guys.
The Cordell dispatch debugged.
Sorry, your prediction was wrong.
It would have been pretty funny if his term had ended with the United States Marines occupying Atlanta, Just bombing it to craters?
Yeah, so that one has been debunked.
The 1936 prediction did not come to pass.
That's a tragic, tragic situation.
The Columbia's Inquirer wrote that he is a, quote, paper-mâché dictator, a sort of amusing political clown who slipped into the governor's office during the storm of the Depression, which I would say is more accurate.
The Brunswick News asked how long Georgia would have to be, quote, misruled by this crazy governor who suffers hallucinations of grandeur and imaginary greatness.
Paper Mâché Dictator During Crisis00:04:57
Gene's answer to all of that was that this was a political plot to keep him off the campaign trail, saying, this invasion of states' rights can hold me in Georgia, but the New Deal is going to be defeated this year.
So at this point, Roosevelt's supporters were trying to get the state Democratic chairman Hugh Howell to call for a presidential primary to further embarrass Gene during the financial crisis and add to the pressure facing Talmadge.
But Howell and Talmadge knew what was up and didn't take the bait, especially since Roosevelt was absolutely dominating Talmadge in even like the most rural polls.
He was not very popular during this whole financial crisis.
On the 1st of March, the third month into this crisis, Gene met with all the banks and asked for the state's money to be released, which they again denied.
Anderson notes, quote, it was the kind of request he did not like to make, particularly since they refused him.
He stormed out saying he would scorch the bankers.
His plan was to write checks to pay for school bills.
If the bankers refused to honor them, public pressure would be directed away from Gene.
It didn't work, unquote.
So in response to this, Gene quote-unquote fired the banks, and the bank's attorney asked the Fulton Superior Court to rule on which treasurer could legally sign checks.
Gene filed a lawsuit with the post office for not delivering the treasurer's mail to Daniel.
And Daniel filed a lawsuit in a lower court against Hamilton in hopes it would force him to reveal where the collateral bonds were being kept, as still nobody could find where they were.
By this point, all of the business leaders were calling for a special legislative session to end this crisis.
The editor of the Constitution, the newspaper, privately promised a glowing editorial of Gene if he called for a special session to pass an appropriations bill, prompting other papers to do the same, with Gene then emerging from this crisis as a hero.
But the editor warned that if Gene refused to call a session, the newspaper would do everything in its power to get him impeached.
The majority of the state Senate signed a petition.
Imagine a newspaper having any juice at all in an election.
At this point, the American Constitution.
At this point, this specific paper held a great deal of power in the state.
Yeah, no, no, no.
I mean, that used to be, there were a lot of papers that were power, both regionally and in the country.
Like, it's just, we're in a completely different media situation now.
Nowadays, the AJC is still an influential paper in city and state politics in Georgia, but it's not what it was in the 1930s.
No one, you would not have, I mean, it'd be fascinating to see someone try, but like an editor go out and say, like, we will write you a great editorial if you carry out this policy, right?
Like, but if you don't, we're going to get you impeached.
Yeah, like that, that's, that's just a completely different planet in terms of print media influence.
At this point, a majority of the Senate signed a petition pleading for a special session, but Gene claimed that there was no emergency, thus no reason to call for a special session.
And on March 14th, the court ruled that neither Hamilton nor Daniel could withdraw money that had not been appropriated, but did not yet rule on which man was the legal treasurer.
When Gene tried to get checks written on oil tax money, a judge legally prohibited money from being paid out to the new comptroller.
And on March 18th, the oil companies threatened to withhold their tax payments until Gene removed their monetary liability.
To quote Anderson, quote, the next day, Hamilton asked the courts to adjudge him as treasurer, and the state's labor leaders sought an injunction against Daniel.
On March 23rd, the state revenue commissioner quit.
By the end of that week, Gene had bought radio time to defend his actions and explain his reasons for fighting FDR.
On air, he said he was no dictator, but that he had no alternative but to run the state's finances in order to feed the sick and the insane.
Unquote.
That's not, he's not bad at spin, you know?
Unfortunately, I think that probably would work today on a disappointing number of the people.
Yeah, people are very susceptible to dictators, as I'm sure everyone who's been looking at politics the past eight years is well aware.
The financial crisis neared its end starting April 11th when four out of the six judges overseeing the case disqualified themselves by having affiliations with the banks.
Now, this was Gene's saving grace, as it was his legal duty to replace the judges.
So he just picked four of his friends.
And a month later, the judges formally ruled in Gene's favor, five to one.
The banks released the money.
Hamilton returned the collateral bonds hidden in the federal vaults, and the flow of federal highway funds went back to the state.
Talmudge's supporters were ecstatic.
His secretary, Carlton Mobley, later said, The man was unbelievable.
We used to all worry like hell when he'd get himself into these situations.
There would seem no possible way he could come out on top, and then at the darkest moment, he would land on his feet.
Banks Release Hidden Collateral Bonds00:06:49
Unquote.
So that is how Gene navigated this little financial crisis and somehow came out on top.
Do you know what also likes topping?
Well, Garrison.
I'm going to correct you there because when Sophie and I started this podcast, you know, we had our big brainstorming session.
We were working out what we were going to accept from advertisers.
And I remember it was like hour eight or nine.
You know, we're both sitting across the big table at the office, and we both turn at the same time and said, only bottoms, you know?
And that's been our guiding principle in terms of advertisers from the beginning here.
You know, that's really our only standard.
We'll take ExxonMobil, clear bottom.
We wouldn't take British Petroleum.
That's a top.
Obviously.
We wouldn't take ExxonMobil.
We would take ExxonMobil.
No, we wouldn't.
Send us some money, guys.
Chevron?
They've tried.
That's a switch.
Chevron's a clear switch.
We're not taking them.
It was Chevron that asked us to do it.
It was both.
We've gotten requests from both to do sustainability campaigns for both those companies.
We do turn down money, people.
Not often, but we do.
Yeah, no.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber ducks.
A shocking public murder.
They scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
He related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, we are so back.
Political Breakdown And Party Split00:16:03
Man, Georgia's doing great right now.
We just had a massive chemical fire, which makes my throat feel terrible.
And I still have to read through 3,000 words.
I made this comment the other day, but you're really a southerner when the town you live in has been blanketed and poisoned because a chemical factory has exploded because it got bought by a private equity company who then gutted the operations staff and completely fucked all of the safety procedures.
The air is terrible.
I lived in West and it was the same thing where like they had a fire.
They had not like they were reliant upon like a volunteer firefighting team that had not been properly trained in chemical fires.
They put water on said fire and it exploded and wiped out the whole fire department.
Yeah.
George is strong right now.
We're really hanging in there.
No, I was looking at the map of where all of the chlorine gas is going to be tomorrow as it wafts into downtown.
It sucks.
It sucks.
I woke up today with my throat being on fire.
All right.
Now, Gene was still eyeing up an office in Washington as he couldn't run a third consecutive term as governor.
But as Gene observed, just near total widespread support for FDR, he got too afraid to directly challenge the man and backed down.
As a backup plan, Gene was considering a run as Georgia's favorite son to stoke a brokered convention, but only if Roosevelt did poorly in the primary.
But Roosevelt ran completely unopposed in the primary and basically won the presidency by default, ending Gene's presidential ambitions.
To quote Anderson here, what seemed like a year-long camouflaged chase after the presidency came to a sputtering end.
On Wednesday, June 17th, the state executive committee met to choose Roosevelt delegates for the national convention and to witness the political death of Gene Talmadge.
Not to be upstaged, the corpse came striding briskly through the lobby, grinning broadly, shaking hands and slapping backs.
As he moved through the crowded lobby, one man refused to shake his hand, saying sullenly he didn't want to meet any new acquaintances that day.
The explosive Talmadge called the refusal an insult and ordered the man to remove his glasses.
Gene's instant fury betrayed his real feelings over the meeting.
A melee ensued between the man and Gene's entourage, scattering people over the lobby.
Gene was pushed away from the scuffling, and it ended quickly.
Unquote.
That's sad.
A good old, good old-fashioned state Democratic fist fight.
Love to see it.
Again, we need, like, if the if the VP debate last night had involved a fist fight, for one thing, I do think Walls would have very clearly won that.
He would have won.
JD Vance, obviously, probably is an endurance edge.
He's a much younger man, but JD Vance, there's no way he's ever been hit in the face.
He should have been.
Anyway, I support this.
We need to return.
Now, with the presidency beyond Gene's grasp, he decided to challenge the popular Richard Russell for his seat in the U.S. Senate.
Meanwhile, the long-term Talmadge loyalist Hugh Howell was hoping to succeed Gene as governor once Gene announced his run for the Senate.
Howell made statements in the press talking about how he could continue Gene's legacy and was dropping hints for Gene to endorse him.
But Gene eventually broke the news that he was instead backing his personal friend, Charles Redwine.
And Howell was quite upset that Gene was unwilling to return any political favors and was caught in a weird place since Howell still wished to kind of remain in the Talmadge orbit, but in doing so, it was inhibiting his progress as a politician.
More on him later.
Now, Gene threw another one of his big kickoff barbecue rallies in McRae on July 4th, where he announced Red Wine for governor and his run for the Senate, unveiling his platform to quote-unquote protect Georgia, which included outlawing a national debt, cutting the federal budget to under a billion dollars, removing members of the cabinet who try to change our form of government, which I think is like an anti-communist thing.
Yeah, it may have something to do too with like voting rights.
Yes, yes, because that becomes a big thing later on when the federal government was pushing for like no more white-only primaries.
And he also pushed for like, you know, other like laissez-faire capitalist policies.
Now, Gene finished his rally by symbolically passing the governor's torch by gifting Red Wine his own trademark red suspenders.
To quote Anderson, quote, those suspicious that Talmadge had become a living political party were interested to see if the voter loyalty could now be so manipulated.
Could Gene project his authority onto others?
Unquote.
Now, this is a question I've certainly had regarding what will happen to the Republicans in 2028, like depending on how this next election goes.
Like, how are they going to survive up like a post-Trump party?
Will Trump be able to pass his authority onto someone else, or will this go in a completely new direction?
That's certainly been a question on my mind.
Now, this same day, state senator and KKK member Ed Rivers announced his candidacy for governor, running on the most liberal platform in the state's history, which he called the Little New Deal.
So, despite being, in some ways, economically progressive for white people, he was, like all these guys, just insanely racist.
Gene decided just to do one speech a week while Russell mounted an intense statewide campaign to keep his Senate seat away from Governor Talmadge, branding Gene as a traitor to the Democratic Party for his previous, like, you know, racism convention and all of his appeals against FDR.
Now, this campaign was essentially Gene against both the state and the national Democratic parties.
Gene had no campaign manager, he had no headquarters, and was opposing both the state and the National Party.
He was set to make a campaign stop in Monroe, Georgia, the site of the strikes last year that Gene suppressed with concentration camps and the National Guard.
The union workers were planning to make Gene know just how welcome he was with a good old-fashioned egg throwing, which, God, we should bring back.
Now, word of heaven, in Australia, they've been doing it, or at least they were for a while.
Yes, there's been some in the UK as well.
But I guess like milkshaking has kind of become the new egg throwing.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it did for a while.
I feel like that stopped bringing all the boys to the yard a while ago.
Sad.
Yeah, it's tragic.
Now, word of this made its way to Gene, and the National Guard arrived early to secure the area.
The rumor was that 125 armed men came down from Atlanta, with locals witnessing carloads of strangers arriving carrying pistols.
Now, Lindley Camp denied that the guardsmen were sent, saying that it was actually local boys armed from the area who volunteered to keep the peace.
But the police chief claimed otherwise and saying that they were, in fact, guardsmen from Atlanta.
Whatever the case, to the union workers, Governor Talmadge had once again invaded their town with armed goons to do his bidding.
Like this level of like security for a politician was uncommon for the time.
It's kind of more normalized now, but back then, this was like really odd.
It is interesting the degree to which Americans had to be taught that you could shoot your politicians.
We learned that very rapidly and then things had to change.
Yeah, I mean, wasn't, if I remember correctly, wasn't Huey Longshot?
I think Long was shot.
He might have had two attempts on him.
But yeah, I think he was, I think he survived at least one.
Let's double-check that, though.
Yeah, no, he was assassinated.
Yeah.
So, like, and like for Gene, because of how much this security was uncommon for the time, it certainly did damage his reputation as like a wannabe military dictator.
Although, kind of now, we are very used to this type of security.
Now, during the Senate race, the recently promoted editor at the Constitution, a guy named Ralph McGill, who later became a prominent anti-segregationist journalist, he began writing about Gene's relationship with John Whitley, the highway construction guy, and insinuated some kind of unethical financial arrangement between the two regarding highway construction contracts.
Now, twice that summer, John Whitley found McGill at campaign events and brutally beat him to a bloody pulp while threatening to kill the man if he didn't stop writing about him and Gene.
Just kicking McGill on the ground, dragging his body around in the dirt, and smashing his head into hard columns in a hotel lobby.
It was pretty grisly stuff.
To quote Whitley, quote, I beat the lion bastard until I got tired.
I'd rest, then beat him some more until he was bleeding good.
Then I told him, McGill, next time I see you, I'm going to have a pistol and I'm going to kill the hell out of you, unquote.
Which you could just, it's good to know that anti-journalist violence does go back far.
I mean, you're not really doing your job as a journalist if people aren't saying that kind of thing about you occasionally.
Yeah.
Anderson writes that McGill wasn't too badly hurt in the kerfuffles, but he was energized and quote unquote, returned to his typewriter with a vengeance, unquote.
Which, yeah, that, yeah, that makes sense.
Returned to his typewriter with a vengeance.
This race, Gene was kind of forced into playing political defense for one of the first times in his career.
Russell would go after Gene for using racism to distract from his otherwise empty politics, saying, When a politician runs out of arguments, knows that in the minds of the people, he is convicted of pure cussedness in keeping the old people of Georgia from getting their pensions, then he comes hollering N-word, N-word, N-word.
Gene responded by saying, You hear false interpretations of my service to you.
Russell says I go around yelling N-word.
Well, I don't believe in sending Negroes down here to rule over the white people, unquote, which is not really refuting what Russell is saying.
No, no, you are not killing those rumors.
Like, it's, it's, again, this is everyone's racist at this time.
Russell was also a raging racist.
He was, he, he was a segregationist, right?
Like, he just didn't like how Gene was kind of not very classy about it.
Gene was so like, like, open and like brash.
Russell was also a racist guy, but he, he wanted politics to be something other than just blaming black people for everything.
Like, that is where the bar was at this point.
Now, in August, senior senator George Walter joined the Russell campaign in an effort to finally beat Talmadge and the backward politics he represented.
By mid-August, Hugh Howell was refusing to campaign with Gene, and one of the first to join Team Talmadge, Lamar Murdeau from McRay, had become an advisor to Ed Rivers in the governor's race.
So Gene was bleeding support and losing allies.
Now, the two candidates agreed to some kind of back-to-back speech showdown on August 26th.
30 high school girls escorted Russell onto stage in parody of Gene's platoon of armed guards.
Anderson writes, quote, Russell thought he'd already saw the tide turning when farmers began taking off their red suspenders at his speeches and symbolically laying them at his feet, unquote.
Russell addressed Talmadge as old Republican Gene.
And this is where we start to really see, like, this is the beginning of the Southern Democratic Party stopping being Democrats, right?
Like, like, FDR is forced liberalization, and people like Talmadge, these kind of old demagogues who are like Democratic Party men are becoming more like the Northern conservative Republicans.
So, like, I think Eugene Talmadge is kind of like the, is one of the last of these like real, like, Southern Democrats.
And a lot of his politics very clearly paved the way for the Democratic Party to kind of split away and do this like kind of fabled like swap, right?
Uh, where most of these kind of supporters would later, in like 10, 20 years, be voting Republican, even though they forever had always been, had always been Democrats.
Yeah.
Yep.
I mean, this is the beginning of, I don't know if it's the end, but it's the beginning of our current hell, right?
This is this is where it all starts, and it all starts because people were like, what if, what if black folks got to enjoy some of the benefits of the social safety net that we're constructing in this country.
Old Republican Gene.
Yep.
So Russell came with a list of questions that he demanded Gene answer when it was his turn to take the stage.
They were mostly about how his programs would actually help people and how he would get money to help farmers with his ultra-conservative economic plans.
But upon taking the stage, Gene immediately discarded these questions, saying, quote, it would take a Philadelphia lawyer all day to answer them, unquote.
Which I think is an amusing old-timey remark.
Now, the Russell staff took this day as a victory for their candidate, and Gene later actually agreed.
On the second to last day of the race, a massive fistfight broke out at his rally in Dalton, Georgia.
From the podium, Gene tried to stop people from breaking up the fight, saying, Don't pay any attention to them.
The Talmadge boys can whip them.
Let them fight it out.
About half the crowd was listening to Gene's speech.
The other half were in this ongoing brawl.
The local deputy sheriff was severely beaten by five of Gene's National Guardsmen and then had all of them arrested.
Really, love to see cop-on-cott violence.
At the end of his speech, the open melee was still raging on, and Governor Talmadge quickly left town.
Come election day, Gene lost in a massive landslide, one of the biggest in the state's history.
Gene carried only 16 counties to Russell's 143 and was beat 2-1 in the popular vote.
The governor's race had very similar results, with the New Deal candidate Ed Rivers beating Talmadge Stooge Red Wine by over 100,000 votes.
Longtime Talmadge man Tom Linder lost his race for agricultural commissioner.
And George Hamilton, the treasurer, got his revenge by just utterly destroying Toby Daniel in the election.
That Daniel even lost his street that he lived on in LaGrange, according to William Anderson.
To quote Anderson, it had come to be said that Gene Talmadge had a guaranteed vote of 100,000.
And that statement rang true.
To 100,000 Georgians, Gene Talmadge was almost a deity.
His hold was hypnotic and unshakable on this core constituency.
But while his stand against the New Deal did not affect the vote of his own constituency, it lost the election because of the fact that it had on the swing vote.
Though the bifactional electorate, either for or against Gene, seemed stronger than ever, an undecided 100,000 or so votes swung the election.
This swing group was not polarized for or against Gene.
And these voters cannot be placed in a particular group that had a predictable behavior.
Most of them were simply convinced that the New Deal was helping them more than hurting them.
Another influential factor was the high voter turnout, the largest in Georgia's history.
Gene drew from a hardcore group, and the numbers did not fluctuate much above 140,000.
The wealthy and the very poor had once again combined for Gene, but he had lost the labor vote, which was growing, and also much of the middle class.
Unquote.
I find this kind of political breakdown to be quite interesting, both how even still we find conservatives are able to get both the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-poor to vote for them in a counterintuitive way.
And how Gene had this like very hardcore group of supporters that viewed him as a god and would vote for him regardless of like anything.
But he did lose in the swing vote.
Now, as for the governor's race, Gene was able to pass off his hardcore supporters to Red Wine, getting over 120,000 of these votes.
Losing Swing Voters To Red Wine00:05:03
But he completely failed to attract any of the 100,000 anti-Talmadge voters and was unable to move any of the important swing voters to Red Wine on his anti-New Deal Talmadge-inspired platform.
Gene's grip on the state Democratic Party was slipping, and he had begun to lose to the New Deal.
So, for the first time in over 10 years in 1937, Gene was out of a government job.
He now spent his time building his cattle herd, doing little speaking engagements, and using his newspaper, The Statesman, to project his message across Georgia as he planned his next move.
His eyes were still set on the Senate, but this time on the even more respected senior senator, Walter George.
Anderson writes, Those who questioned Gene's good judgment in 36 questioned his sanity in 1938.
Unquote.
Basically, George was like the archetypal respected elder statesman.
Going against him was like crazy.
Luckily, Gene brought his 25-year-old son, Herman Talmadge, to serve as campaign manager, who actually did grow to be a pretty good political navigator.
His new 1938 platform differed from his previous bouts against the New Deal.
Instead of using vague, nostalgic rhetoric pointing towards the old ways, this time Gene sought to address the consequences of the New Deal as he saw them, attack the new big institutions, and uplift the little guy.
He called for a migration back to farms and promised to stop government waste by using federal relief money to buy land to give to citizens willing to farm it, and to convert the civilian conservation camps into vocational education campuses to provide practical job-oriented training in contrast to the frivolous liberal universities, another conservative mainstay.
His campaign speeches this year were described as like increasingly protectionist, isolationist, nationalist, and much more populist.
We're getting closer to like the full breakout of World War II.
And Gene was pretty firmly an isolationist and a nationalist.
Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that.
I mean, yep.
Yeah.
It is entirely unsurprising.
Yeah.
Talmadge tried to frame Senator George as a traitor to small farmers, particularly because of his support of coconut milk.
That was one of the main ways he attacked George as betraying U.S. dairy farmers.
Now, Gene wasn't the only guy targeting Senator George, though.
FDR was increasingly beefing with the southern wing of the party, and by the late 1930s, he sought to unseat some of the old guard from the Senate that were inhibiting progress.
Senator George was a particularly influential member of this group, and so FDR targeted him for removal.
Not many Georgia Democrats wanted to go up against the popular senator, but the Roosevelt Dems finally settled on Russell's 1934 campaign manager, a man named Lawrence Camp, to take on George.
FDR made this really confusing public appearance with Senator George in early August, where Roosevelt delivered a quite polite attack on his personal friend, George, calling him a fake liberal, and dismissed Talmadge as no kind of real concern and then endorsed Lawrence Camp.
FDR.
We don't make them like that anymore.
No.
You invite your friend to like a campaign event and then you just spend the day attacking him.
Shit talk him.
Just rat fuck him.
It's really good.
FDR, FDR was maybe our most effective rat fucker president.
He really knew how to rat fuck a man.
He didn't care.
He didn't care shit.
That's the benefit of dying of polio is you don't give a round fuck.
Gene, Gene tried to weaponize this speech to discredit George and brushed aside Camp as like a coattail writer and an unserious candidate.
Now, Roosevelt strategists were worried that his campaign against George might give Talmadge the election.
But that outcome didn't really concern FDR.
He thought that even if Talmadge got in the Senate, Gene would just make a fool out of himself.
The problem with George was that he was influential.
If he went a certain way, 40 other senators would follow suit.
Talmadge, on the other hand, was unlikely to attract followers in the Senate.
And Gene was quite happy with what he saw as liberal infighting and became even more certain that it would lead to his victory in the county unit vote, with the liberal vote being split now three ways.
As long as his hardcore of 100,000 supporters went out to vote, he saw no way for him to lose.
I'm going to quote from Anderson here on this kind of anecdote about what the Southern voter was thinking about going into the 1938 election.
Quote, one old fence sitter in Warm Springs told a reporter he was voting for Senator Talmadge, Governor Rivers, and President Roosevelt.
Quote, Talmadge is promising 40 acres of land.
Rivers promises to exempt it from taxation, and Roosevelt will rent it from us.
Why not vote for all of them and sit on the porch and collect a steady income?
Voting For All Three Leaders00:06:31
Unquote.
Okay.
So they'd be voting very, it's like they're totally fine voting for conservative Talmadge and progressive FDR.
Like that's that's totally fine.
And the policies can actually work in conjunction just to help these like guys eating up all this land.
Do you know what I enjoy eating up, Robert?
Well, Garrison, I've heard some rumors.
I don't like that.
I don't like that at all.
Absolutely not.
Jesus Christ.
Remember that meal we had during the DNC where there was a literal metal screw in your food?
I remember that.
Yes.
Do you remember that riot where afterwards I got us like $200 worth of Popeyes because we were all so depressed?
I think it happened a few times.
We've had a lot of really late night Chinese food and a lot of Popeyes.
Oh, the good old days.
The good old days.
David Turban Garrison likes to eat foods with literal metal screws in them and Popeyes.
Got it.
And of course, these products and services are.
Oh, we got a lot of free drinks over that screw.
That was great.
We did get a lot of free drinks over that screw.
They were really worried someone was attacking.
Attacking these DNC journalists.
Oh, God.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
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.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
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.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did it.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
They scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alesia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
Campaign Speeches Without Live Music00:14:55
That's so funny.
Shari stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, we are so back.
Come election day.
Early results gave Talmadge a small lead.
Stop the count.
Stop the count.
But Gene's initial celebration was premature because the next day, after Election Day, it was clear that Walter George actually beat Gene by 40,000 votes.
Urban migration was affecting Gene's ability to win elections.
Some of the county races were quite close, and a difference of just over 200 votes in certain counties would have given Talmadge the election under the county unit system.
But Gene wasn't going to back down this time.
He refused to concede the election and announced he would contest the vote.
Stop this deal.
Gene filed complaints with the Democratic Committee in 34 counties, claiming a recount would quote unquote clearly give me the election.
To quote Anderson, the Talmudge office had been literally flooded with phone calls and letters complaining of voting irregularities.
Many were sworn affidavits.
People claimed that dead people, children, and non-residents had voted for George.
Payoffs had been made, counting falsified, and ballots pre-marked.
Unquote.
Time is a flat circle.
Yeah, yeah.
So nothing does change.
Yeah.
No, absolutely not.
As a backup plan, Gene hatched another scheme to overrule the county unit election.
By making enough of a big fuss over the recounts and voting irregularities, Gene hoped to pressure the governatorial candidates Hugh Howell and Ed Rivers into having their delegates name Talmadge senator at the October convention using this little piece of like party law.
This was an odd strategy considering that Gene was not currently in the good graces of either man.
But he was getting desperate.
And when it became clear that crucial counties were going to reject his complaints, Gene began sending letters to friends in the counties asking for assistance.
One such letter read, Get all the evidence of irregularities in the election that you can.
If you can get any evidence of money being used, get this in affidavit form.
We will then appeal it to the convention in Macon on October 5th.
Now, the counties did not like having their elections questioned.
Gene's accusations of misconduct were near unanimously rejected, and counties billed him for the trouble that he caused, which is also a good thing we don't see as much anymore.
Being like, you made us do all this extra work here.
We'll just send you a bill.
His appeal to the state executive committee was also rejected in a 61-4 vote.
Gene responded to the ruling by saying, the very resistance of the state executive committee to recount bears out our contentions that something was wrong.
Sure, sure, buddy, of course.
Yeah, as his grasps for power continued to fail, Gene became increasingly angry and desperate.
He called on his supporters to march on the Macon Convention to demand that Gene's accusations be heard.
He tried to plan a J6.
Man, he really, there is nothing new under the sun.
I mean, one of the heartbreakers here is I had thought Trump was a little more original than he really is.
And, you know, it just hates it sucks when you find out your heroes aren't who you are.
Robert, Robert.
You know, that just hurts.
It hurts.
The night before the convention, some friends of Gene staged an intervention in his hotel, begging him to admit that he lost.
Wow, how the times have fucking changed.
But supporters crashed the intervention to convince Gene to keep fighting, which he did.
He immediately doubled down.
He sent Tom Linder to tell Hugh Howell that if he released his delegates to Gene, Gene would help him win the 1940 governor's race.
Now, Howell was still mad that Gene had turned his back on him in the last election, and it was now Howell that refused to help Gene.
The convention came.
Gene and his cronies were going around trying to coerce a roll call decision on Gene's election denial.
Governor Ed Rivers actually allowed this to happen, confident that the result would serve Gene one final humiliation.
And he was correct.
Gene's call for a reconsideration of the vote was firmly shut down.
Gene went into a tantrum telling supporters that it was Hugh Howell's fault that they had failed at the convention, saying, quote, we had stacks of evidence at the Macon Convention, but they refused to even look at it.
The great trouble there was that Hugh Howell sold out the Talamich people and appointed George men as delegates, unquote.
Again, just flat circle shit.
We had all this evidence.
They refused to look at it.
It's been stolen, etc., etc.
Basically, what happened here was that Gene's disinterest and periodic disrespect of the machinery of party politics, as well as state and county power structures, finally began to damage him politically.
What once helped get him into power was now self-sabotaging his ability to hold onto power and effectively navigate party politics.
So after his second Senate defeat in a row, Gene wished to return to his comfort zone and retake the governor's office.
In 1939, Gene kept relatively low profile, but he would still travel around the state to speak at local clubs and organizations.
Nothing too notable, but it ensured that he remained a presence to his core base at like rural barbecues and church socials.
Meanwhile, a loose organization of Gene's political allies spent the year quietly lobbying courthouse gangs and promoting Gene as governor across the state.
Ed Rivers couldn't seek re-election, so Gene's biggest competition was his friend-turned rival Hugh Howell, who would try to run for a third time.
I'm gonna quote from Anderson again.
Quote, a number of factors made the return of Talmadge possible.
One was the scandalous debts run up by Rivers.
The state was almost bankrupt.
Another was the shadow of a world war and the anxieties that fear produced.
A crisis was created.
There was a need for strength, a desire for the simple solution in a complex and confusing world.
A future that no one wanted made the past a psychological crutch.
Gene Talmadge, the Iron Man of Action, would once again ride onto the political stage to save the day.
He saw no way he could lose.
He had in two elections been recognized as a man disjointed from the times.
That fact that had been his strength in earlier races, but became his weakness, now again would be his strength.
Unsettled times had thrown the people out of step.
With war threatening, they began to look for that well-worn path.
They dug back in their past and found the certainty they had been seeking, old Gene.
He was their crutch in a way.
Only this time it was war and needless bankruptcy that demanded an aura of toughness.
Now, I find this quote to be one of the more like unsettling in how it kind of shows how the backwardness can like flip-flop.
Like how things that are your strength can become your weakness.
And then as times get tougher, that can be your strength again.
And considering the current economic situation in this country, as well as raging wars in the Middle East, it does not leave me with tons of comfort.
No, I mean, if you're reading history right, it never should.
Yeah.
But yeah, that is a particularly because you're never safe in a democracy, right?
The upside is you have a degree of agency over the political system, but you are always waiting for the worm to turn in such a way that the very worst people are empowered.
And it will always happen.
There's no getting away from it.
Like, there's no...
Somebody made a post on the subreddit the other day where they were like, is it just, are we just going to every four years be worried about becoming a dictatorship?
And like, yeah, bro.
It feels that way.
That's how it is.
Speaking of dictator, some of Gene's advisors wanted him to give his opening campaign speech from above the crowd through his office window in Atlanta.
But Gene thought this would make him look too much like Mussolini.
It says a lot about the period of time that that was no longer a good thing.
Because there were several years where they would have been like, you should do it.
It'll make you look like Mussolini.
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, you're like in 1940 now.
That's 1940.
It's too late.
It's become a little uncertainty.
Gene likes Mussolini.
He just knows that it's not going to play well in this moment.
So instead.
That's what I would have said.
That's how I would have taken him down.
Instead, Gene donned his red suspenders and stood on a chair outside the Capitol to officially announce his campaign to an excited crowd of supporters.
To drum up an interest in the campaign and demonstrate the return of like personality theatrical politics, the Talmudge team wrote a song and turned it into a record that would play before every Talmudge speech.
I'm going to read some of the lyrics here that are in this book.
An apple, a teeth.
Jesus Christ, these are so bad.
An apple for the teacher is very fine indeed.
But sad to state, an apple is not all the teachers need.
The needless estate employees and the government so wild had a very marked effect on every Georgia child.
Unfortunately, these are all of the lyrics I could find.
But it's just a song about how big a government is hurting children.
And this saw everyone became sick of this song because this was now the only song that would play before all of the Talmudge speeches just on a loop.
God.
This was the first.
This was like the first time.
Usually before campaign speeches, they had like live music.
They used to have like, you know, just some like local band would like play some tunes.
This now they were hooking up a record to like to like loudspeakers and just blasting it.
That's just hell.
Bad.
Bad.
Now, Gene's son, Herman Talmadge, was growing increasingly influential within the Talmadge machine and provided his father a newfound political savvy.
Though Gene was reluctant at first, Herman struck a deal with the Georgia New Deal Democrats for their backing in exchange for an ever so slightly more liberal Talmadge platform focusing on education and the economy.
The resulting platform was widely deemed the most legitimate and practical out of Talmadge's whole career.
To quote Anderson, a Talmud victory was so certain that the race took on a great deal of boredom.
Fist fights at speeches, a common occurrence, began getting as much press attention as the speeches themselves.
Unquote.
And kind of the most emblematic day of the 1940 race was on July 27th.
All of the candidates held rallies in Warm Springs.
Gene didn't arrive on time, but his custom song blared over the loudspeakers on repeat, drowning out the other candidates.
Oh man, perfect.
On stage, Gene's opponents took turns attacking him, with one targeting Gene for quote, boasting he had read Hitler's book seven times, although he said he was too busy to read any other books.
Unquote.
And look, I'm one of the very few people who have read Mein Kampf because that book is not seven times not a readable book.
Seven times.
This is literally a joke in the boys.
This is literally a joke in the boys.
That's nuts.
That's too many times to have read Mein Kampf.
No, they're like, there's a great episode where they asked their like Tucker Carlson analog, have you ever read Mein Kampf?
He's like, yeah, like a few times, I guess.
There's a few times.
I will say my favorite Mein Kampf joke is in the movie Churchill the Hollywood years, in which Christian plays Winston Churchill, where one of the King of England's servants sees a copy of Mein Kampf by his bed and goes, Me and Camp F, what's this?
A gay prison novel?
It's great.
Perfect.
They did that exact Tucker Carlson thing in succession with a scene in succession.
Maybe this was succession, not the boys.
Maybe I'm confusing it, or maybe it's both.
Who knows?
Yeah.
I could be confusing Tucker Carlson analogs because they're all just Tucker.
Yeah.
It's always Tucker.
Yeah.
Now, Gene arrived.
No.
Gene arrived late from a hemorrhoid operation and literally upstaged one of his opponents who was in the middle of a speech.
And this disturbance sparked a massive brawl beneath the stage that only got worse when Gene tried to speak.
To quote William Anderson, quote, the crowd was now full of devilment.
And while supporters spoke for Gene, a car was set afire in the back of the crowd, and people swirled to watch it burn.
It was just like the old days.
About the only punches Gene's opponents were able to land that summer were in regard to Talmadge's early admiration for Europe's rising dictators.
They all honed in on Gene's propensity for militaristic action and pointed to where that type of action had gotten Europe.
Gene ignored them.
Unquote.
The election for the Democratic primary was held on 9-11, and the results handily gave Gene a clear and decisive victory.
Just truly, truly the worst 9-11.
Gene got like 320 county unit votes.
He just completely swept the race.
Gene arrived late to his own celebration party and left early to pass out in his hotel room.
He was getting old.
He was having hemorrhoid operations.
He wasn't the same kind of fiery young man that started his career.
Yeah, by the time you have it, yeah.
Hemorrhoid operations make you fiery, but maybe a different kind of fire.
Different fiery.
Yeah, different sort of fire.
The Georgia Democratic Convention next month was referred to as a Talmadge orgy and was full of over 4,000 Talmadge fanatics in red suspenders.
Time's a flat circle.
I hate that so much.
Yeah, man.
And 4,000, that's not a small amount for like a decent crowd today for like a local party.
For like a local political convention?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Now, journalist Ralph McGill wrote, quote, Talmadge has something only few men have.
Minor Dictator Refrain In Georgia00:03:40
He has that quality that makes men want to follow him, to fight for him, to defend him, unquote.
Gene sent his son Herman to promise FDR that they were going to bury the hatchet, quote unquote, and that they would be fully cooperative in the war effort.
But Gene's personal feelings differed.
I'm going to end this episode with one final quote from Anderson that kind of lays out what Gene was like going into World War II.
Quote, The Nazi devastations in Europe brought out the isolationism in Talmadge.
He saw the conflict as a potential drain on the American economy.
There was for him little value in foreign aid taking money from the hungry farmer's pocket.
Talmadge singled out FDR as the main force behind America's growing involvement in the war, and this increased his hatred of the man.
He felt that if the United States remained strong, the country would be left alone.
He said in November, quote, if you lead a bulldog around with you, nobody is likely to jump on you, unquote.
In the same breath, he warned, quote, America cannot take the stand of being permanent guard for Europe.
Some thought Gene's isolationism had gotten out of hand when he wrote some highly favorable editorials about Japan in The Statesman.
After that country had just killed thousands of Chinese, Japan thought it had an ally in Gene and invited a member of his newspaper to, quote, witness the real life and the scenic beauties of Japan so that you may represent them to the American people through your newspaper, unquote.
There's no more natural ally for the governor of Georgia than the Empire of Japan.
Let's just say it.
Let's just say it.
It's a fascist Japan.
He literally sent over his employees to...
No, his employees were invited to Japan by the fascist party to give it a glowing review in his own newspaper.
Boy, this unit 731 thing really seems interesting.
Why don't we try a local version of that?
Oh my God.
Gene was an innocent dupe who was so desperate to keep attention from leaving the poor farmer that he would even try to sanctify war makers.
Others saw this as indicative of the dark side of Gene.
When people were calling him a dictator, he said, I'm what you call a minor dictator.
But did you ever see anybody that was much good who didn't have a little dictator in him?
Unquote.
He's not wrong about that.
He's actually not wrong about that.
I mean, this is like a little bit healthy.
It's not just politics.
Like, everyone I've ever worked with who's who's a good like manager has a little bit of that somehow.
I feel you have to, right?
I feel attacked.
That's how Soby is.
So he is the dictator of Kuza.
You need a little bit of dictator.
He's not wrong about that, right?
Like, it's the same thing.
Like, there's a degree to which you need that.
I mean, yeah, like, that's, that's how fucking.
I can't tell if I'm being attacked or complimented.
And that's a compliment.
You're being complimented.
It's a complicated.
But I mean, no, he, like, embraced this like minor dictator refrain.
And then to conclude from Anderson, quote, Gene's early admiration for Hitler, the fact that he had read Hitler's book seven times, and his tendency to surround himself with huge military staffs and nonchalantly call for martial law gave an eerie backing to his words, unquote.
So yeah, that's Gene circa 1940.
He's sending his employees and I believe actually his own son to Japan as special guests of the Japanese government.
He's reading Mein Kampf a few too many times, I would say.
Six too many times.
Embracing The Minor Dictator Role00:04:24
Yeah.
I'm fine with up to one.
And certainly embracing the dictatorial attacks on him by saying, I mean, come on, you gotta be a little bit of a dictator.
So yeah, that is Gene.
That's how I podcast, you know, a little bit of a dictator.
Yeah, that is that is Gene at this point.
Um, he is he's getting old, he's getting a little worn out, um, but he is he is he's still hanging in there.
Yeah, yeah, he really is.
Boy, this man has some staying power.
Well, he's an innovator, you gotta give him that.
We will we will finish this this four-part series on Gene in the next episode, where we are gonna where we are gonna discuss, just as a little hint, uh, something called the caulking affair, uh, which is kind of what one of the last of uh of Gene's scandals.
So get excited for that.
We're gonna have a lot of a lot of good caulking uh jokes, I guess.
Yeah, why not cool talk out with our talk out?
That's what we're gonna do.
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