Part Three: Lee Atwater: The Political Dirty Tricks Artist Who Gave us President(s) George Bush

Robert concludes the story of Lee Atwater by discussing his greatest success and then his sickness and fall from power and influence. We also talk about the Grammy nominated album he made with Isaac Hayes. Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/biography/lee-atwater https://archive.is/STJGq https://www.newberryobserver.com/news/10323/notable-newberry-alumnus https://andrewjazprosehill.substack.com/p/the-death-bed-confession-of-a-boogie https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-papers-of-lee-atwater-who-invented-the-scurrilous-tactics-that-trump-normalized?_sp=a8ee96fb-f790-4047-ae41-50c5940d1092.1729971751539 https://www.csmonitor.com/1989/0626/elee.html https://archive.is/yZ0Hf#selection-553.0-553.173 https://time.com/archive/6702136/saying-no-to-lee-atwater/ https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/brady-bad.html https://nul.org/news/ghost-lee-atwater-haunts-2022-midterm-elections https://www.npr.org/transcripts/94931206 https://milwaukeecourieronline.com/index.php/2021/08/13/the-spirit-of-lee-atwater-lingers-among-us-how-critical-race-theory-became-the-gops-new-southern-strategy/ https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/05/13/willie-horton-revisited https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/atwater/etc/synopsis.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/04/19/weighing-lee-atwaters-regrets/c78da503-8dc9-4c58-a8d6-d5524ffdfa8e/ https://archive.is/7CjqQ https://brooklynrail.org/2012/02/express/letter-from-the-trail-atwaters-ghost/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  I still have Japanese Kit Kat in my mouth. All right.

• 0:07Robert Evans?

  All right. Let's just start the episode with that. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where Garrison is the bastard by secretly revealing to us their Japanese Kit Kat habit.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  The macho Kit Kats are so good.

• 0:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it is a $20,000 a month habit. It's destroying their life and finances. But this is Behind the Bastards, a show where we don't judge unless you're one of the worst people in all of history, which Garrison has not yet. Garrison, welcome back to the show.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  The tariffs are really, really hurting this.

• 0:35Robert Evans?

  The Japanese Kit Kat addicts.

• 0:37Speaker 00

  My monthly budget has skyrocketed.

• 0:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Someone who knows something about math, please tell Garrison how to make ends meet with their their $20,000 a month Kit Kat habit.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  That's how I feel about my obsession with Korean sunscreen. I'm like, god damn it.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, no, totally. You, you do kind of look like every white woman in the Korean sunscreen shop.

• 1:00Robert Evans?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  It's a better, it's frankly a better product.

• 1:04Robert Evans?

  This is part three of our episodes on Lee Atwater, a bastard who wouldn't have been happy for us to lead into him this way. But yes, let's, let's plug some things up.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I just wanted to plug front of the pod, Sean Malin's book, The Podcast Pantheon, 101 podcasts that change how we listen. And we're, we're in it. We're featured in it. Oh, Robert, look what my bookmark is. Can you tell?

• 1:28Robert Evans?

  Is it, is it us?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  No, it's the pamphlet to the, the knife you got me after I had surgery.

• 1:35Robert Evans?

  Oh, okay. There you go. There you go.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  This is probably a really interesting read. But yeah, we're featured in, we're featured in the book. And it's available for preorder now and is out on September 16th, wherever you get books, I'm assuming. Anyways.

• 1:49Robert Evans?

  Presumably wherever you get books.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  He wrote nice things about us, which I appreciate.

• 1:55Robert Evans?

  And again, is not in our wheelhouse because we don't write nice things. I just write bad things about bad people.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  I kind of, I kind of just want to.

• 2:02Robert Evans?

  Lee Atwater.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  I just kind of want to read what's in this.

• 2:05Robert Evans?

  No, no.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  It's really cool.

• 2:08Robert Evans?

  We're reading about Lee Atwater. We're not reading about our podcast.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  No, not our podcast. I want to read the pamphlet for the, for the knife you got me.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Your bookmark, which was the knife?

• 2:17Robert Evans?

  The Bowie knife pamphlet. Yeah. Yes, it's, it's the New Zealand Bowie knife. Yes. And that's a good pamphlet. Yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Old Vaughn was a terror with the Bowie knife. That's how it starts.

• 2:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. One day. Anyone who fought with a Bowie knife was a terror with it because that's a scary weapon.

• 2:34Robert Evans?

  Like, anyone who's, who's choice in an era with like guns and swords is something that's shorter range than either is a frightening person. This is a good read. I'm not gonna lie. All right. It's a good read. Go buy yourself a Bowie knife, people.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Certified behind the bastards moment here.

• 2:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Wow. I'm a, I'm a big fan of the knife that is slightly too large for basically any useful purpose. I use it for cutting down trees.

• 3:00Speaker 03

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• 3:04Robert Evans?

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• 3:49Robert Evans?

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• 4:40Robert Evans?

  In 1984, Lee Atwater has been brought back on the team, or has been brought back on the election team to help Reagan get reelected, right? He's in the Reagan White House. He's kind of coasting off his laurels from the 1980 election for a while. In 84, he gets given his most prestigious position yet, which is assistant to the campaign manager, Ed Rollins. Talking to PBS, Rollins later claimed, "A lot of people told me he wouldn't be loyal to me and told me not to pick him," Rollins said. "I admired his work ethic." Now, whenever people tell you, "Don't pick this Republican strategist because he'll betray you," and you're like, "But his work ethic's good, you're about to get betrayed."

• 5:21Robert Evans?

  That's just how this story ends 100% of the time, and that's where it ends with Lee Atwater. Per that PBS piece, "Not long after," Rollins says, "Atwater arranged what turned out to be an ambush media interview in which Rollins was accused of running a dirty tricks campaign against the Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Lee had put a spear in my back," Rollins says. "It was just a two-year effort to destroy me. He wanted to run Bush's presidential campaign." So he starts plotting this while they're working together, and it doesn't fully come out how badly he's fucked him until the election is over. But from the instant they start together, he is planning, "How am I going to stab this guy in the back so that by 1988, his corpse is clear of my path and I can get the job that he's got right now?"

• 6:01Speaker 02

  What a cool guy.

• 6:03Robert Evans?

  He's always thinking a step ahead from at least the other Republicans, Lee Atwater.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  He's always like, "How may I stab you and where?"

• 6:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  If only he had a Bowie knife.

• 6:13Robert Evans?

  If only someone had told Ed, "This guy will definitely stab you in the back." "Oh, Lee Atwater, the backstabber? He's probably gonna stab your back." "I don't think he's gonna stab my back, not the backstabber." And gets his backstabbed, you know? It's a tale as old as time.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Tale as old as time.

• 6:29Robert Evans?

  What's he gonna do, stab me? What's he gonna do, stab me? Man who just got stabbed by Lee Atwater. So Reagan wins reelection, obviously, and Atwater, you don't get a lot from him during this period, so I'm gonna guess he's not, he's not playing as formative a role as he is in 88, but it's easier to get a president reelected, usually, historically. than it is to get them elected the first time. Things are weird now. So after 84, Atwater's like, I've spent my time working in like, politics and working under elected leaders and working for the party directly. It's time for me to go into private practice, right? In part because it's time for me to make the money and I want to set myself up so that in 88,

• 7:10Robert Evans?

  I'm an independent political campaign figure and I have a better chance of getting appointed by George H W Bush, who everyone knows is going to be the Republican candidate, pretty much, right? There's a little bit of fuckery that's gonna have to happen to secure him the position, but people are pretty much sure. In particular, there's gonna be some fuckery against Dole, that Atwater's going, Bob Dole, if you remember Bob Dole.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Who could forget Bob Dole?

• 7:33Robert Evans?

  If your knees don't hurt.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  He's, he's the fruit cup guy, right?

• 7:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, probably. I think he's the fruit cup guy. He's the guy who The Simpsons parodied by just having him say his own name a lot. He didn't walk great because of his war injuries. He was an astronaut. Also, a Democrat by political standards today, but pretty hard Republican by the standards of his time. He ran against Clinton, too. He was, he was pretty boring. You watch that Simpsons Halloween episode and you get most of what you need to know about Bob Dole. And Bill Clinton, to be honest. So he starts a political consulting firm for all of the lower level candidates who had hired him periodically to conduct push polls or whatever. And that's what he's doing when he starts his independent firm.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  What's it called?

• 8:15Robert Evans?

  Well, it's, it's his first, I think it's like campaign consultants or something like that. But after the 84 election, he merges with a larger consulting firm. So he's not independent for long. And the firm that he merges with, you might have heard of, we've talked about the on the show.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Guess who?

• 8:32Robert Evans?

  You kinda guessed in the first episode, actually, Gary.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Roger Stone's firm.

• 8:36Robert Evans?

  It's Black Manafort and Stone. That's right.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, yeah.

• 8:39Robert Evans?

  That's, that's, that's where, that's who partners with Lee Atwaters. Because they need, I think they need more of a domestic angle because they're more focused on foreign dictators at this point, right? And Atwater's.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  To part three to get to Roger Stone, though. Also, there's an expanding area to operate in for non-foreign dictators.

• 9:00Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Yeah, there's a chance that you could make a non-foreign dictator if you get good enough at getting people elected domestically.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  It's called a growth opportunity.

• 9:08Robert Evans?

  And Manafort, right? Yeah. Lee Atwater probably would have if he'd survived long enough. Now, Roger Stone would later say of his friend and business partner, "We both knew he believed in nothing. Above all, he was incredibly competitive, but I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil and the devil took it."

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Roger Stone, everybody.

• 9:27Robert Evans?

  Roger Stone. If you want a guy who, as your friend, is gonna speak well of you when you're dead, Roger Stone is not that man.

• 9:36Robert Evans?

  Not the kind of fella he is. So Lee's tactics fit in with Manafort, Black, and Stone, but his interests diverged from his partners. Because again, they're more interested in becoming the go-to PR agency and campaign experts for dictators and wannabe dictators all over the world. And Atwater is pretty resolutely interested in the US and US elections. One of his former colleagues, Atwater's former colleagues, told The Washington Post, "Charlie Black wants to be rich. Roger Stone wants to be rich. Lee Atwater doesn't want to be rich. He wants to be master of the game." And there's a picture. You can see, I believe that's Manafort, that's Roger Stone in the middle, and then that's Lee Atwater on the right side of your screen in this photo.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I drink.

• 10:19Robert Evans?

  From their days working together. And...

• 10:21Speaker 00

  James Rabinac is still...

• 10:23Robert Evans?

  Still in play.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 10:26Robert Evans?

  Now, who are you gonna get to play young Roger Stone? Because honestly, he looks like Niles from Frasier, but Niles from Frasier can't play that role anymore.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  I think, what's his name? Eddie Redmayne? Is that his name?

• 10:37Robert Evans?

  Eddie Redmayne? Yeah, he might be the guy.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, he is similarly off-putting.

• 10:41Robert Evans?

  Now, where do you get a man with a thumb-shaped head who can play Paul Manafort? That's really gonna be the key, is a thumb-and-off-shaped celebrity.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  That could be a star maker.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Like I said in part one, Atwater could be played by Topher Grace.

• 10:55Robert Evans?

  Atwater could be played by Topher Grace, but I think Topher Grace is older now than Atwater ever lived to be. Spoiler.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Manafort, you know what? Come back to me.

• 11:04Robert Evans?

  Manafort's gonna be tough. Manafort, I went to high school with a couple of guys who looked like Paul Manafort, but they all went and got Paul Manafort jobs, so I don't think you're gonna get him into acting.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  This could be controversial. Maybe you tap someone like Shane Gillis. It's not hard for a Shane Gillis type to play a Paul Manafort.

• 11:23Robert Evans?

  So Lee Atwater has started working with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and the like. And while he's doing this, you know, while after, right after, shortly after, he's, he's gotten, I guess, acquired or partnered with them in April of 1985, George H. W. Bush invites his sons and some of his, some of his close relatives to Camp David to prepare them for his 1988 presidential run. Basically, number one, he's getting ahead of things. He wants them to meet the probable team. I don't think he's locked down all of his team positions, but he knows more or less the people he wants working with him, even though, even if he's not sure what job they're going to get. And so he wants his family, who have been, always been a big part of his political campaigns, to meet the people who are going to be running

• 12:06Robert Evans?

  his 88 campaign. And one of the people he assembles and has come to Camp David for this 1985 meeting is 34-year-old Lee Atwater.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Who's already proven to be a seasoned partier?

• 12:18Robert Evans?

  Yes, a solid party. And you have to, you have to, you really, especially given how close he and W. become, what kind of shit did you guys get up to at Camp David together? Like, what were you? I know, I think this is part during Bush's sober period, kind of, but I don't know. I feel like Bush and Lee Atwater probably did coke together. That's my Lee Atwater headcanon. So Lee's double cross of Rollins had worked, though, right? Because a year earlier, Rollins had been a shoo-in for the job, and Bush actually hadn't trusted Atwater at first, which is, again, usually a good instinct. And his sons particularly disliked Lee, right? Jeb has gone on to say that, like, initially, we saw him as more self-interested and interested in burning his own reputation than in helping

• 13:03Robert Evans?

  our dad. And we were worried that, like-

• 13:05Speaker 00

  It's really damning that Jeb is calling someone self-interested.

• 13:09Robert Evans?

  Only for a little while. Because they were, their worry was that, like, well, these dirty tricks of his, maybe they'll work, but they'll, they'll ruin our father's reputation, his spotless moral record as former director of the CIA.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  The Bush family reputation is of grave importance.

• 13:23Robert Evans?

  Ron Contra, the Bush family, spotless. Um, wow. Eric Alterman describes how Lee Atwater gained the Bush family's trust. And this is, you know, Gary, I know you've been looking to do this yourself. So this, you might be wanting to take some notes on this point.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  What?

• 13:38Robert Evans?

  To prove his loyalty and increase his leverage with the family, he invited, demanded, actually, that George Jr. join him full time in the campaign. It was a twofer, he recalls. Not only would it end their questions of loyalty, but Atwater got the services of a staff member who could organize the family at a moment's notice. He turned out to be the most political and the most loyal to my father, Jeb Bush now says. Atwater could go to hell tomorrow and I'd be a supporter. He has proved himself with our family.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Jeb! Exclamation point.

• 14:03Robert Evans?

  And W will say basically that like, this is a lot of where he starts learning politics. It is, is from this period when Atwater takes him under his wing. He's working directly for Lee, helping to get H W Bush elected. Like, this is a lot of W's introduction to politics. And again, Atwater has already gotten Karl Rove started in his career. He's going to be Bush's campaign manager. So even though he's not going to live to see the Bush era, he's often given credit as an architect of the Bush era. And he really does deserve that.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Do you think?

• 14:33Speaker 00

  I wonder how much of that influences also like, like Bush's decision to go full Cheney.

• 14:39Robert Evans?

  Right. Yeah, yeah. I need an evil mastermind at my side.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  My question is, do you think if Lee survived longer, that Jeb exclamation point would have, would have, you know?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  No, no. Because at that, at that point, at that point, Lee would never, I think, hook his horse onto someone that much of a loser. When you have like a clear, like con man and winner in the, in, like, in the game, like, why?

• 15:04Robert Evans?

  There's two, and you know, we'll talk about this at the end. There's two possibilities for how Lee Atwater would have handled the rise of Trump. One would have been, I think he would have gone hard never Trumper. If for nothing else, then like, well, I'm kind of old and tired now and there's money in doing this. And maybe I don't really care as like, I know, I know I can't win, but I know I can grift off this and that's good enough. Or I think if he had stayed in like politic shape as he was kind of at the peak of his career, I think he would have seen Trump coming and gotten in bed with him. But it's, it's one of those two things. And we'll, we'll talk at the end again about what. We think is likelier for old Lee Atwater had he lived to see this. But he takes W. under his wing and trains him up. And it's during this 1988 election that Lee would reach the peak of his career,

• 15:48Robert Evans?

  possibly the peak of the damage he'd caused to society. But before I get to this, we need to pull back again and talk about how the justice system in this country used to work. Right? Because this is integral to how Lee does what he does and the damage that he causes doing it.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Oh, boy, really, really excited for this.

• 16:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we don't talk about this a lot, but by 1988, all 50 states had furlough programs for inmates, which allowed people who were incarcerated and still serving time to earn passes to leave prison for differing like periods. Right? At the most basic level, maybe like you've got a funeral or a wedding and you can get like an afternoon pass to attend it. But some people got passes that were kind of similar to work release programs. Some people got to spend weeks at a time out with their families and they'd go back in for a while. It was often seen as like a transition thing with like, okay, this person has sort of proved themselves inside. Let's see if they can handle limited amounts of time free before we start talking about like a commutation or about parole. You know, depending on the kind of conviction that they've got, right?

• 16:46Robert Evans?

  And about 10% of all prisoners in the U. S. received some sort of furlough in 1987. Per an article for the Marshall Project by Beth Schwartzopfel and Bill Keller, nationally murderers served an average of eight years before they were paroled or commuted. So furloughs were in the toolkit of a previous generation, an uncontroversial proposition. They offered incentives for good behavior behind bars and a good way for inmates to reacclimate to the life they would almost certainly return to outside of prison. Use of furloughs for prisoners in the U. S. is widespread, successful and relatively problem free. The editor of a magazine for corrections professionals told the New York Times in 1988. So again, I have to really emphasize this is not at all a political thing. In fact, under Governor Ronald Reagan, California had one of the most generous furlough programs in the country.

• 17:30Robert Evans?

  As stated, the program was really helpful to many inmates, but given the sheer number of people involved, there were always cases of it going wrong. And while Reagan was governor, two prisoners were furloughed by his justice system and went on to commit murder. This happened two separate times and there were criticisms. Of the program and of Reagan for allowing it during this period of time. And after the first murder, he responded to these criticisms by saying more than 20,000 people had these passes, and this is the only murder, ending with, obviously, you can't be perfect, which is a kind of reasonable, you just cannot have conversations like this about the justice system today.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  No, it's just like so, having something like this now would be like outrageously progressive.

• 18:10Robert Evans?

  Like, yeah, but like, look, two out of 20,000 ain't bad, you know, like, that's just life.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Like the current, like, like, crime crackdown that, that is like sweeping the nation with National Guard deployments everywhere. It's like-

• 18:21Robert Evans?

  All crimes at an all time low. Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  It's so opposite towards this logic and having like a Republican Party use this logic to justify a furlough program is so alien to, to the current understanding of politics.

• 18:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, and that's like, that's partly what's so depressing about it is that, like, you could say, obviously, you can't be perfect, and that's the end of it, at least as a Republican. But then the Republicans, when it happens to a Democrat, are going because of liat water to leap on this sort of thing as a way to destroy a presidential candidate. Right? So you jump forward to 1988. Bush's opponent is Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts. Two years before the election, a guy named Willie Horton, imprisoned in Massachusetts for his part in a 1974 robbery murder, gets out on furlough. And to be clear, we don't know if Willie killed anybody. He was one of three robbers. He would claim that he stayed in the car and that his friends had no idea, that he had no idea his friends planned to

• 19:21Robert Evans?

  kill a guy. One of his friends would say, no, no, it was Willie who went in. I think his friend was like, I stayed in the car. But these people are all dealing with, we have no idea what actually happened. And it doesn't matter to an extent because all three of them were part of the crime. And that's the way this sort of things gets charged. Right? If you're, if you're part of a robbery where someone gets shot, you can get charged with that murder, even if you don't pull the trigger. Right? That's just the way the legal system works and worked then. In June of 1986, Willie gets out on furlough, but he gets in trouble. I think he gets, basically, the police come after him and he decides to flee the state rather than get caught and go back to prison. He spends some time in Florida. Eventually, he moves up to Baltimore. And in April of 1987, someone breaks into a suburban home in Maryland owned by the sales manager for a car dealership.

• 20:05Robert Evans?

  The intruders, I think, stabs and ties the husband up and repeatedly rapes his wife, Angela Miller, at gunpoint. Neither victim got a good look at the assailant's face, but the victim stole the homeowner's Camaro. And not long after this, the police find that Camaro with Willie Horton behind the wheel. While he's being arrested, he waves a gun at the police and they start shooting. And long story short, he gets arrested after being shot, I think, a couple of times. So Horton gets charged for the home invasion and the rape. And when the news finds out that he is a, like, the local news finds out that he's a furloughed murderer from California, they flip out. And initially, it's just a local paper, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, who wins a Pulitzer for their coverage of this, they are pretty relentless uncovering the story.

• 20:50Robert Evans?

  But it proves to have legs beyond the local area. And the first person to use it politically is actually Al Gore. Because during the primary process, Gore has to debate Dukakis for the Democratic, like, primary election. And Gore asks, if elected president, would you put the same program in place federally? Which is itself kind of a stupid question because there were federal furloughs at this point in time, right? It wasn't the same program that existed. But like, yeah, anyway, Gore is the first person to use this story for his benefit. But he doesn't name Horton, right? He talks about the story in broad details. He doesn't name the guy. He doesn't put his picture out there. But Lee Atwater, he's paying attention to this debate. He knows it doesn't, you know, give Gore the win.

• 21:35Robert Evans?

  But he also, I think, kind of sees where Gore didn't have the killer instinct, right? Ran up short, wasn't quite willing to go through with this to the extent that Lee is going to be willing to. And Lee sees this and he's like, that's it. That's how we win this fucking election, right? And he insists in campaign meetings that they have to pivot to make this the central message of the campaign. He tells his colleagues, by the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis's running mate, right? That they being the voters. He told a Baltimore reporter, "The Horton case is one of those gut issues that are values issues, particularly in the South. And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win." So all of this culminates in one of the most famous political ads in the history of this

• 22:18Robert Evans?

  country: the Willie Horton ad. And we're gonna play that, but first, let's have some ads. This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 22:50Speaker 05

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• 23:26Robert Evans?

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• 24:10Robert Evans?

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• 24:37Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So the Willie Horton ad is to this day, one of the most famous and probably one of the most successful political ads ever run.

• 24:47Robert Evans?

  I'm just gonna play it if you can watch it in the YouTube or just go watch it separately. You could Google the Willie Horton ad or type that into YouTube, you'll find it. We'll put it in source links as well. We'll describe what's going on, but you're gonna see a lot of a very scary picture of Willie Horton, right after he got arrested with a couple of gunshot injuries. A picture that Willie Horton today is like, yeah, it's a scary ass picture of me.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  Bush and Dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for first degree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime.

• 25:40Robert Evans?

  And the scary photo is the second one they show of him where he's being like led in by a cop who he's easily looks, I think because of forced perspective, like two feet taller than, he's just been shot and he, yeah, he like, he looks like a guy who walked away from multiple gunshot wounds, you know? Like it's this, I'm gonna like inundate the airwaves with this ad. These pictures of a guy during like the worst point in his life and also these pictures of a guy who I can kind of, it's this Southern Strategy thing, right? Where I can throw all of our audience's fears of crime and their fears of black people and mix them together. And like Dukakis is voting to let specifically black murderers out. Well, they were, they will specifically target white women, right? That's the message of the ad.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  This is the same like logic used in the last election, but with immigrants. Like you look at the way that they talked about like the Lake and Riley Act and showed mug shots of alleged Venezuelan gang members during these big press conferences. And yeah, it's, it's. Attacking the same fears like the Biden administration or whatever is releasing these violent, violent immigrants into our country.

• 26:48Robert Evans?

  Yep. Yep. And that's, you know, the Willie Horton ad gets a huge amount of credit. And there, this is a thing where this, this election had looked a lot different in the summer of 1988, which is, you know, right before the conventions, which used to matter more, the fact that you were locking in, you know, people during that used to matter more. But by the summer of 88, Dukakis is ahead by more than 17 points and Bush's people are kind of braced for a disaster. And the future president's chief of staff, Mary Madeline, recalls, quote, "Lee held us together with pep talks, history lessons and weird statistics." And a lot of those statistics had to do with how he thought white people were going to react to this story, this Willie Horton story, right? And this does help turn things around. Now, it's not his only dirty trick in the Dukakis campaign. He is fucking so cruel

• 27:33Robert Evans?

  to Dukakis. He starts a rumor that Dukakis had like, because it had worked for him while in the past, basically been close to being institutionalized for depression over the fact that like Dukakis, like the Washington Times published an article that Atwater laundered that he had received treatment for depression at one point. And this was a fairly minor thing, but again, Atwater has it blown up. He makes sure this article gets a lot of play. And it extends to the point where like a reporter asks Reagan, and again, there's, you know, did Dukakis plant the question with the reporter? Did he just plant the article? But this reporter asks Reagan, should Dukakis release his medical records, you know, and the president Reagan says, look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid, which is almost

• 28:16Robert Evans?

  the same response Atwater had given to the, about like the electroshock treatment. Like he's doing the same thing again, right? Like you see how it's, it's not a limitless playbook, although playing the hits also works, right? And yeah, like journalists are asking Dukakis, are you going to, like, have you seen a psychiatrist? And like, if he'd admitted that he had, like, that's, that also would have been seen by a sizable number of people as like disqualifying, right? We can't have a president who's ever gone to therapy. I think we've seen where that takes us as a culture. And yeah. Yeah, this is like, there's a lot of negative statements about Dukakis's wife too. As a result of, I think, like, some of her mental health treatment and whatnot, and he kind of goes after Kitty Dukakis as well.

• 29:02Robert Evans?

  And, yeah, it's like, there's, there's a lot of grossness around this election, and a significant chunk of it is centered around Atwater. Like, his whole attitude is, I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to pull any punches, and I will, in fact, invent some punches. If that's what it takes to, like, kick a guy when he's down as much as it's possible, right? And, yeah, I mean, the end of the story is Bush wins, like, Bush beats Dukakis. Now, there's also, Dukakis rides around in a tank, and doesn't look great in the tank. There's a very silly video, like, the helmet looks a little too big on his head. But that's paired with, the reason people saw it, is it's paired by an ad that Atwater helps to orchestrate,

• 29:45Robert Evans?

  where people are talking about all that Dukakis had done to trim defense budget, to, like, stop spending, and basically to disarm America during the height of our, our conflict with the USSR. And Dukakis was a governor, like, he wasn't voting to, like, it was all lies? Yeah, that has nothing to do with- No one even checked it, it's just lies, yeah. But again, the truth doesn't matter, right? What matters is you get this, you get this shit in people's ears, and that does all of the damage you need it to do, right? And that's, that's what Lee Atwater knows, and that's kind of his, his, his major contribution to Republican politics, and specifically to Republican electoral victories, is he is the guy, like, he gets credited with getting Bush Senior elected.

• 30:30Robert Evans?

  And because of when he dies, he'll, sometimes his death will be blamed on Bush Senior failing to get reelected. Bush Senior denies this, but I don't know if he's the best source on things that got him elected and didn't get him elected, given his record.

• 30:46Robert Evans?

  So this is like the peak of his life and the peak of his success, right? Things turn around rapidly for him after this. Obviously, the Willie Horton ad in particular gives Atwater a reputation for being a racist. And this is one of the few things that really seems to bug him, right? Because he would always bring up the fact that he visited James Brown in prison, the fact that he played with a number of, he cuts an album, one of the people he cuts an album with is Isaac Hayes, like he cuts this like R and B blues album and whatnot that's like, yeah, has Isaac Hayes on a couple of tracks and there's a very funny review of it. One sec, let me pull it up, I should have had this.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm excited, I'm excited to hear this.

• 31:26Robert Evans?

  We can, we can try to get a track together for the end here. But yeah, so he, production, the album was recorded in 1989. What guesses to the title, Garrison?

• 31:38Speaker 00

  I, oh my god.

• 31:40Robert Evans?

  Because Lee Atwater cuts this, his goal was to bring the, a wider audience the sounds of the 1960s, right? So he gets some all time great rhythm and blues singers, there's Isaac Hayes, Chuck Jackson, B.B. King, the Memphis Horns, Sam Moore, Arleda Nightingale. Yeah, like, like some heavy hitters on there and then Lee Atwater featured first. The critical reception was not entirely bad, the Los Angeles Times called Atwater not any better than a singer in an average bar band, but he is more convincing than other such pop celebrity figures such as the Blues Brothers or Bruce Willis. Which I think is an insult to the Blues Brothers, let's, let's stop right there, but fair enough

• 32:22Robert Evans?

  when we're talking about Bruce Willis and his, his period of time in music.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Look, he's no William Shatner, okay?

• 32:30Robert Evans?

  He's, he's, he does not have Shatner's instincts, no. USA Today wrote, even able assists from B.B. King and Isaac Hayes can't mask the utter amateurism of Atwater's soul is chirping.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  That's a little devastating.

• 32:42Robert Evans?

  That's a little mean, that's, that's a little cruel and it's gonna come out at a time that's extra painful for him. Anyway, he, again, as a result of his friendship with a lot of these guys, he's really going to get heated when other, ever journalist will suggest, maybe there's something racist about that racist ad. And his ultimate argument was not even that like it wasn't racist, it was that I didn't have anything to do with it, it was produced by a third party, a court, an independent, like, or basically a PAC made it and they put it out there, right? So we're not to blame, we had nothing to do with it, right? And this was a lie. Evidence has since come out tying Atwater and the Bush campaign to directing and funding the ad. And more recently Roger Stone has come forward to admit that like, yeah, that was Lee. PBS summarizes his recollection of events.

• 33:28Robert Evans?

  Well, he was running the Bush campaign. Atwater said that he had secretly arranged financing for the Horton ad. Atwater locked the office door, says Stone, and he popped the famous Willie Horton spot onto a television. He said, "I got a couple of boys who are going to put up a couple million dollars for this independent, and I said, 'That's a huge mistake.'" And Stone always has an agenda. I think in this case, he didn't want to be associated with an ad this famously poisonous and racist, and so he really wanted to jam it onto Atwater's head. But there's independent people who will make the same claim, that like, yes, this was funded, as this kind of shit often is, by the campaign. They just wanted plausible deniability, right? Everyone who's anyone knows it was Atwater.

• 34:09Robert Evans?

  He gets the next big, like, because of this, because of not just the Willie Horton ad, but his altogether successful role helping to get Bush Senior elected, he gets appointed head of the RNC immediately after the 88 election. That's his next job.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 34:23Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  So he was, he was cutting that album while, while getting pushed-

• 34:27Robert Evans?

  While the head of the RNC, yes, Garrison.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  To the head of the RNC!

• 34:30Robert Evans?

  He is the head of the RNC when he records with Isaac Hayes. So this is the peak of Atwater's career, and while his only-

• 34:39Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, you can't-

• 34:40Robert Evans?

  You can't get higher than that, right?

• 34:42Speaker 00

  This seems like everything he wants out of life in a way.

• 34:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he has, and life is just about done for him. And I should say here, before we get further into his life, while his only lingering interest in the Willie Horton ad was separating himself from it, right, after it had done what he needed it to do for Bush's campaign, the repercussions for our criminal justice system continue on to this day. During the election, Governor Dukakis froze and then banned furloughs for people with life sentences. This is in 1988. And The Marshall Project describes how chaotic this is at the time. "Inmates and staff in Massachusetts prisons at the time describe how dozens of lifers who had moved over the course of years from maximum to medium to minimum, even to work release programs, were gathered up in the middle of the night and brought back to more secure facilities. They went out at midnight and scooped up all these lifers to get them back behind the

• 35:27Robert Evans?

  walls in case any of them had any mind to take off," said Greg Diachenko, who had recently begun serving a life sentence in Massachusetts at that time. "Some of these lifers were out there for many, many years, these first degreeers, hoping for commutation, getting furloughs and everything. Those guys kept their hopes up, even after all that, that the political climate would die out and they would eventually work their way out. We were told it would just be a short while, maybe a year or two, before the political climate changed and guys would get back out." But things never changed back.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  No.

• 35:53Robert Evans?

  As we're all unfortunately aware. State after state in the wake of the Willie Horton ad began restricting parole and eliminating work releases, commutations, furloughs, and conjugal visits. This marked the start of the Republican Party's embrace of just build more prisons as the solution to every crime-related problem. But Democrats got in on the action, too. When stumping for his crime bill, Joe Biden described his objective as "to lock Willie Horton up in jail." And Joe, Willie Horton was already locked up. Like, um, from then on, it was known that any attempt to make life easier for prisoners or provide chances for clemency, especially as a member of the, as an elected leader, as an executive, right? If you're a governor or something, if you show mercy on a prison, it, all it takes

• 36:38Robert Evans?

  is one of the thousands of people you might provide clemency to, to commit a crime, and that's your career.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  That can ruin your political career.

• 36:45Robert Evans?

  The lesson they take, right? Um, it's great. Uh, now, would something like this have happened, like the Willie Horton, Horton ad have happened later if it weren't for Lee Atwater? Probably. But it happened when it did and how it did because of him, right?

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, and it reflects the type of stuff that he's talking about after, like, the Nixon campaign, right? And, and this, and like, uh, continuation of the Southern Strategy.

• 37:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, all of this is, the Willie Horton ad is another way of just not saying the N-word in campaign ads when you really want to. Um, so 1989, Lee's recording a real album, he's on top of the world, he's running the RNC. Uh, Eric Alterman spent time with him in April to write that New York Times article that we've quoted from, and the article describes his dirty tricks in detail, but also lingers on how cool Atwater seems to this journalist. Here's how it opens. "It's 2 a.m. on a sultry Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina. Does the Republican Party know where its chairman is? Harvey Lee Atwater, hometown boy, is onstage at Bullwinkle's, a smoky dive with two pool tables, dollar beers, and the raunchy, long-haired, mojo-blues band shaking the rafters.

• 37:53Robert Evans?

  The overflow crowd is packed against the wall, forcing overdressed Republican gentry to slip to rub elbows with the Bullwinkle regulars. Atwater has changed out of his blue..." Blazer and tie into a late night T-shirt that David Letterman gave him. His guitar was a gift from Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, a souvenir of Atwater's Gala Blue Celebration at a presidential inaugural ball. Drinking beer straight from the pitcher, sweat pouring down his face. Atwater apologizes for going home so early, but the St. Patrick's Day parade is just seven hours away and he is the grand marshal. His final number is a repeat of his opener, Eddie Taylor's "Bad Boy." "I'm bad, I'm bad," cries the man who masterminded George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. "I'm the worst you ever had."

• 38:33Speaker 02

  It's the drinking beer straight from the pitcher for me.

• 38:35Robert Evans?

  Oh, man.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  This ain't your grandpa's Republican Party.

• 38:39Robert Evans?

  This ain't your grandpa's Republican Party. They're cool now.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  That's, they want to be cool so bad.

• 38:46Robert Evans?

  It's so funny. It's so funny. It's the only, literally the only thing denied to them.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  It's such this like psychosexual drive for conservatives to be the real rebels, for them to be like, like the actual cool kids, and they will move mountains.

• 39:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's because-

• 39:01Speaker 00

  To try to achieve this cool kid status.

• 39:04Robert Evans?

  The ones who are smart and influential are together enough to like have interests outside of politics and to know vaguely that like what I'm doing is really uncool and fucked up. I wonder if I could just sort of punish everyone into pretending that's not true, you know? And then they'd have to treat me like I'm a good musician and not write mean things about how Isaac Hayes' voice is better than mine. So, even that, soon after the 88 election, Lee's tactics were being adopted by campaign managers across the political spectrum. Patricia Schroeder, a Democratic Congresswoman, told The Times, "The real problem with Lee Atwater is that his tactics are contagious." And in his article, Altman adds, "Indeed, the question Democrats around the country are asking themselves is, can you beat Lee Atwater unless you join him?"

• 39:48Robert Evans?

  And, you know, the answer's no, but also they never quite figure it out, do they? They're always bad at it. Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're still here.

• 39:56Robert Evans?

  We're still here. We're still here. Still getting dunked on by the guy doing shots at Bullwinkle.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Maybe we can just copy the Republican strategy over and over and over again.

• 40:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, after they've already done it.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Maybe it's gonna finally work.

• 40:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah, maybe being exactly like the Republicans will take the Democrats where they want to be one of these days. The thing they never learn is like what you should learn from the Republicans is that it's okay to be a dick to your enemies. You don't have to treat them respectfully just because you're running against them and you watch the West Wing, right? You don't have to, for example, lie about their wives, but-

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Aaron Sorkin and his consequences have been a disaster for US politics.

• 40:34Robert Evans?

  So Lee's tactics live on. He does not. On March 5th, 1991, Atwater collapsed at a fundraiser for a Republican senator. And there's a very funny story in the documentary Boogeyman that covers Lee Atwater, where Ed Rollins, who worked several floors above him, when Lee starts having seizures, his aides go get Ed Rollins, because Atwater's like, "You're the only guy I trust. They're gonna kill me otherwise, and I don't know who they are." Is it the Democrats? Is it other, you know, various people? But Ed is like, "I thought, you know, we'd really reached a point of like rapprochement." Because he was like, "I'm sorry for like fucking you over and all the bad shit I did. You're the only one I trust."

• 41:17Robert Evans?

  And Rollins will be like, "Lee said that I was his rock, basically, during this period." And I found interviews with like a major figure at the DNC saying the same things about Lee, that like after Lee got sick, he reached out to them and was like, "I now, like, we're friends now, you know, like, I can respect this person. I was never able to do that before I got sick, but now I can respect this person who I disagree with. They've become my rock." And it's just, I think Lee just lied a lot about who, how much support he was getting, because he wanted other people to talk well about him after he died. I think that's most of what this is.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  That's really bizarre.

• 41:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and that's kind of what Rollins concludes. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but like, yeah, on a, so yeah, he collapses at this fundraiser, gets taken to the hospital. Doctors find out he's got a brain tumor shortly thereafter. The New York Times wrote, quote, "After the tumor was diagnosed, Mr. Atwater assigned friends and aides to research all aspects of the disease to help decide on the best course of treatment. Our research and the further study of my scans kept us on a roller coaster of good news and bad, he said. Then on March 21st, we hit bottom. And it was then that he learned that the tumor was way worse than they had originally thought. He sees a healer who tells him to get rid of his black t-shirts and start wearing red underwear, and he does this.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah.

• 42:35Robert Evans?

  He tries massage therapy. But his particular cancer, it's this brain tumor he's got, the only way they have of treating it at that time, I don't know if we're much better at it now, but they're literally drilling a hole into his head and dropping little radioactive specs in there. So he has to like, sleep in a lead-lined room in his own house, and it swells his head up. Like, he's too embarrassed to be seen in public because his like, head gets massively swollen. Like, he does not, he looks like he's dying horribly, right? Like, this is a really terrible death that he dies. And he's aware of it the whole time. There's a very unfortunate video of him, like, going out in South Carolina one last time and singing, "I'm Bad," while deeply ill and like, not able to get the lyrics. And you can tell he

• 43:20Robert Evans?

  just desperately wants to be back at his height again, back like, at this, this peak he inhabited not long earlier. He talks about that a lot, about like, and he'll, he'll give crowd-pleasing speeches about how I had everything just a little while ago, and now I understand that like, friends and family are all that matter. But you can also tell, like, I don't know how much you believe that, Lee. I think you would, you'd throw your friends and family away in a second to be healthy and able to do this for another 30 years.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Just for a chance to go back to what you were, yeah.

• 43:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. But he does, there's a public perception that a change sweeps over Atwater. He writes like an article for the Times about how bad he feels about all his dirty tricks. He starts reaching out to people he'd harmed over the years. He sends a letter to Dukakis. He apologizes to him for the "making Willie Horton your running mate" comment, and also for saying he intended to strip the bark off the little bastard. He admitted to the naked cruelty of the remarks. He also claimed to have sent an apology for Willie Horton. Now, The Marshall Project talked to Horton, and Horton was like, "I didn't, I don't remember getting it, but I got a lot of mail back then, so maybe I just missed it." That one's gonna have to come down as like, kinda unknown, because Horton wasn't willing to, didn't say he was a liar.

• 44:32Robert Evans?

  It was like, "No, I literally might have missed it." Like, there were a lot of shit coming in back then. He does write apologies to a lot of people. Now, depending on who you ask, his people who remained his critics will be like, "He never repudiated the tactics. He never said that he regretted helping out the Republican Party, or everything he did to win. He just regretted how hurtful some of the specific things he did were, and he apologized to those individuals, right? But he never repudiated the strategies that had brought him wealth and power." And Jane Mayer, who goes through after his death, and then after his wife's death, his kids let Jane Mayer go through his papers for The New Yorker, right? And like, one of his daughters, who went on to be a Democrat, is like,

• 45:16Robert Evans?

  "I don't, I'm not gonna talk about like, my dad, what he did as an impolitics. He was a good father during the time that I knew him." But like, you know, obviously, as adults, they thought that this stuff was important to get to a journalist, like, given the influence he had creating the modern Republican Party. And Mayer also interviewed members of his family, his old partner Roger Stone. She writes, "His memoir calls on politicians to instead follow the golden rule. Roger Stone, who formed an early consulting and lobbying firm in the Washington area with Atwater, remains unconvinced about Atwater's spiritual awakening. 'Lee was a great storyteller,' Stone told me in a recent interview, 'but in the end, he was just grasping at straws. The Atwater family disagrees, and has no doubt that he became a Christian. But at that point, he was also a Buddhist, Hindu, and everything else. He had converted to every faith under the sun.

• 46:00Robert Evans?

  Whatever religious leader he sees, he's making a conversion."

• 46:05Speaker 00

  That's that old Lee that I know and love.

• 46:06Robert Evans?

  That's the old Lee we know and love, old deathbed conversion Lee Atwater. And we'll talk some more about Lee Atwater dying horribly, but first, here's some ads.

• 46:19Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutigrevir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto was right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetolide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 47:18Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872. History's full of dirty players. Don't let your butt be one of them. You know what bastards and buttholes both have in common? They're full of [BLEEP]. But with Dude Wipes, your butt doesn't have to be. Don't let dry TP dictate your aftermath. Dude Wipes remove what toilet paper leaves behind. Dude Wipes are the perfect poop time partner in crime at home or on the go. Flushable, plastic-free Dude Wipes are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. They're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but tough enough for methods of historical proportions. Unlike Baby Wipes, Dude Wipes are flushable and designed to begin breaking down when flushed. No battles here. They come in a range of at-home and travel-friendly formats:

• 48:03Robert Evans?

  individually wrapped singles, eight-count pocket packs, and 48-count Big Daddies. So the wipe can match the crime. Every time. Dude Wipes in a good World War II novel: two bathroom musts when it comes to mustering up a great number two. So stop Stalin, grab a pack of Dude Wipes, and wipe the slate clean. Dude Wipes: Best Clean Pants Down. Available at major retailers nationwide.

• 48:29Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So I want to read, there's a fascinating paragraph from a Brooklyn Rail article, "A Letter From the Trail: Atwater's Ghost," that really gets into how Atwater paved the way for Trump, not just by normalizing ugly attacks and making rhetoric meaner, but by destroying the credibility of even mainstream Republican candidates. In other words, decades of Atwater politics convinced conservative voters that there were no good candidates, not even on their side, which was a necessary precursor to Trump's rise to power. And this is something I didn't really get until I read this article.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 49:04Robert Evans?

  Let me read this quote first, and we'll talk about it. "As Atwater's progeny have become embedded in the party and its process, the constant stoking of fears and the consistent personal attacks have eaten away at the credibility of its candidates, and in turn, the candidates don't actually particularly require credibility to become the nominee. Far more important is money, organization, effective destruction of the other, and an ability to address as little as possible. The campaign is now only about the campaign. Accordingly, mere electability becomes the only major issue, the ability to campaign all that matters. It is not he who is best who will win, but he who best runs that will be awarded the chance to run again."

• 49:37Speaker 00

  It's so much of it is like disregarding, like, accepting that each candidate as like a person, obviously, is going to be terrible. And it's just about this theatrical process.

• 49:52Robert Evans?

  Right. And who is best able to withstand it and endure it and what, which is not ever going to be someone who's a good person, anywhere close. Not that that's who was getting elected before, but, man, are you going to be worse, right? And there's one story from that Boogeyman documentary that I find really funny about Lee, near the end, which is, they talk to one of his, like, many R&B singer friends, like, one of these guys that, who's like a legitimate, like, actual legend within the field, Chuck Jackson, who, like, he played with from time to time and who thought himself a friend of Lee's. And Chuck was like, when he got sick, you know, I gave him a Bible, and he told me, you know, that this really helped. This was like the one thing that helped get me through. It was like, you know,

• 50:35Robert Evans?

  coming back to finding my faith and, you know, thank you, you played a big role in that, giving me this Bible. It meant everything to me. And the documentary then cuts to Ed Rowland's being like, well, I was talking to a friend after they cleaned this stuff out of his office, and she found the Bible, and it was still wrapped in cellophane. And he was like, that was Lee, that was Lee, lying to the earth.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  That rolls so hard.

• 50:55Robert Evans?

  Every time. And like, he dies, he dies at fucking 40, right? At March 29th, 1991, after a year-long fight against a brain tumor. He is 40 years old.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Man, he probably never, he probably never even got to see Wild at Heart.

• 51:10Robert Evans?

  Never got to see Wild at Heart. He did get nominated for a Grammy that he does not get for this terrible album of his. He gets not, which is listed as like, one of the only things he wanted out of life that he hadn't gotten is a Grammy. But at least he got nominated before he died. He's buried in his jogging suit and holding his Red Hot and Blue album. So grave robbers, there's.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Grammy nominee Lee Atwater, better known for his other work.

• 51:38Robert Evans?

  Better known for his other work, destroying the country, helping too, right? God, it's so funny. He's such a, such a fantastic piece of shit. There's a really good quote, I also like that Brooklyn Rail article, how it describes his end, like his last months of life. So I'm going to read that really quickly as we close out. "Telling a friend that it's all bullshit, the truth has nothing to do with it, Atwater talked with regret of his actions, seemingly fearful of that which he was leaving behind. Whether the repentance was genuine or just a calculated attempt to gain passage to a peaceful afterlife will never be discovered, but the damaging effects of his earthbound legacy were plain to see in his home of South Carolina. If one is seeking an analogy to describe the current incarnation of the Republican Party, one could do worse than a dying Lee Atwater.

• 52:23Robert Evans?

  Its brain consumed with a deadly cancer, its words erratic, their credibility under assault by its own crisis, its body radiated, fattened, atrophied. At the last, the analogy runs dry, for while Lee let out a cry for forgiveness, a plea to heaven, the party and its voters seemed to be headed in the opposite direction." And all of us going with him, you know? That's the one thing all of these negative articles about Lee tended to have wrong was, they all were written more in the aughts. A lot of them came out during like, like this particular one that I'm quoting from came out in 2012. So it's like the middle of the Obama years. I'm like, no, no, no, this is going to work out a lot better for them than you think it is. You're just irrationally optimistic right now because we're in between shitstorms. But, uh, boy, howdy.

• 53:05Robert Evans?

  I'll give you a couple more years, you'll be writing different things about old Lee.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Oh my.

• 53:11Robert Evans?

  Yep. How we doing?

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Oh, well.

• 53:16Robert Evans?

  Anyway.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, I don't know what else there is to say. I mean, he.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  It's not, it's not necessarily that like he won, but like his shadow, I guess looms.

• 53:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he taught them what they needed to know to get to the next step.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  He was a trailblazer, I guess.

• 53:32Robert Evans?

  He was a trailblazer, that's for sure.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  And people are continuing that trail even further than what he had in mind. And he maybe saw the extension of, of where that trail would go. And maybe that like frightened him a little bit, but making the trail was just too much fun.

• 53:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, he may have hoped kind of half-heartedly that like, ah, well, now I got kids. He's starting to, because his kids are young when he dies. So maybe there's a, maybe there's a moment in there where he's like, oh no, I may have left them a much worse world. And I had always kind of hoped I'd get enough time to like redeem myself, help someone who didn't suck ass get elected president. Maybe I'm giving Lee too much credit there, right? I don't really think he became much better, but I'll believe he was worried about the future that he helped make, you know?

• 54:15Speaker 00

  We gotta have like a, like a, like a political position in the country, like, like our, like our national, like Riddler, you know? Just somebody that can have fun, play some games, do like.

• 54:26Robert Evans?

  We need, we need a fourth branch of the government. That's the Riddler. Yes.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Cause we could, we could save so much, so much trouble by just having people who, who, who like need to be entertainment, but can't quite cut it, serve in public office in some way. It's kind of an extension of like, of like, of like a court jester role. And I, I think this would be really helpful. Like if, we should like nationalize like wrestling or something.

• 54:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we should nationalize wrestling. I've been saying for a while, we need to, one, one real use for like all of the AI chatbots is we can create a fake Hollywood. Where like you give people like Ben Shapiro, like Hallmark movie budgets to write, make better movies. And we just generate fake fans for them.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Fake audiences, yeah.

• 55:09Robert Evans?

  We trick them all into thinking that they're beloved creators, right? You give them an award every now and then.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  This could be one of the greatest harm mitigation operations of all time.

• 55:17Robert Evans?

  We could have saved the country, you know? If we, if we'd really gotten onto this early enough, we could have done a lot of good.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  I mean, even, even people on the left like this sort of thing, like, uh, just this past weekend, Zorron did a massive scavenger hunt around New York City. Everyone wants to do this sort of stuff. And I think we should have a proper place for it.

• 55:37Robert Evans?

  We should.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Let that man play some mediocre blues.

• 55:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, if only. I mean, we started to figure that out. He got his album at the end, and you really got the feeling that like, look, man, if you if we had let him cut a blues album earlier.

• 55:54Speaker 00

  If he got that Grammy in the 70s, whoo.

• 55:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we need we need an organization doing what like the CIA used to do for like democracies in Latin America, but for like

• 56:05Speaker 00

  What they used to do to communists?

• 56:06Robert Evans?

  For like failed comedians that are clearly heading for the far right. We're like, no, no, no, you gotta save this man's career.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  We got a possible Steven Crowder situation developing in Iowa.

• 56:18Robert Evans?

  If Joe Rogan gets too into podcasts, it's gonna be a disaster for everybody else. You need to make it get his acting career going. Get him a gig every two years with Adam Sandler in some depressing movie.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Fear Factor, season 13 is a go.

• 56:31Robert Evans?

  I can just imagine like Adam Sandler's out in like the fucking woods of Montana. A helicopter touches down. A man from the NS, Mr. Sandler, we need you to make another movie.

• 56:42Robert Evans?

  Here's your cast list, sir.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  I got out of this business years ago.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  So what's your job in government? I'm Adam Carolla's official handler.

• 56:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I convinced Adam Carolla, things are still going well. He's popular.

• 57:01Robert Evans?

  Yes, it is a full time job.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  If the democratic like elite cabal was real, this is what they should be doing.

• 57:08Robert Evans?

  This, this is, this is the actual need. Yeah. Anyway.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Oh, well.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Got anything you want to plug, Gare?

• 57:17Speaker 00

  Sure. News podcast, It Could Happen Here, our weekly news roundup, executive disorder. I post about about Yowie and conspiracy theories and other fun stuff that tickles my fancy on on Blue Sky and X, the everything app at ByShonenType. Wrapping up a series right now for It Could Happen Here on Blue and on liberal conspiracy theories. So that'll probably be out by the time you listen to this. So find find that on It Could Happen Here.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  That will not be out by the time they listen to this. That'll be coming out

• 57:51Robert Evans?

  Well.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  A couple of days after this wraps.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  After Labor Day. I'm still polishing this conspiracy turd, so.

• 57:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  After Labor Day checkout, check out my, uh, my piece on Blue and On.

• 58:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, everybody. And remember, folks, if you need to get a copy of the original album pressing of Red, Hot and Blue, uh, just find Lee Atwater's grave. There's a track scene in there, too. Oh, my God.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Send, send that up with Voyager. We need the aliens to listen to this.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

• 58:53Robert Evans?

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• 1:00:23Speaker 03

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