Latest / UK Column Radio / JFK’s Assassination and the Collapse of the American Empire | Jerm Warfare
Transcript
- 0:30Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is Jim wolfare the Battle
- 0:33Speaker 1: of Ideas. Loved chatting to you about Michael Jackson and
- 0:38Speaker 1: now we're gonna chat about JFK. What's interesting here is
- 0:42Speaker 1: there is a segue, isn't there there's a link?
- 0:46Speaker 2: Oh yes, and it's actually I think Michael Jackson is
- 0:49Speaker 2: the one that kind of nurtured my interest in JFK
- 0:51Speaker 2: as a child because he referenced him in multiple songs
- 0:54Speaker 2: and videos, and he actually wrote a song about the
- 0:57Speaker 2: character assassination of JFK. And so I used to listen
- 1:01Speaker 2: to that song, you know, over and over and over,
- 1:04Speaker 2: and so I think it sort of seeped into my
- 1:07Speaker 2: subconscious the idea that JFK was character assassinated. And so,
- 1:12Speaker 2: you know, when I became an adult later in my life,
- 1:14Speaker 2: much later in my life, I decided to kind of
- 1:17Speaker 2: look into JFK because I'd always been kind of confused
- 1:20Speaker 2: as a child about him because I you know, I
- 1:23Speaker 2: know Michael Jackson loved him, and I was a big
- 1:25Speaker 2: mj fan as a kid, so it was kind of like,
- 1:27Speaker 2: you know, you're a fan of whoever they're a fan of,
- 1:30Speaker 2: and so you know, I always kind of had a
- 1:33Speaker 2: good intuition about him, but there we was all so
- 1:35Speaker 2: many negative like gossip stories about him in the eighties
- 1:38Speaker 2: and nineties about you know, he was trying to kill Castro,
- 1:41Speaker 2: he stole the election with the mob. You know, he
- 1:44Speaker 2: was just a womanizer and very sort of superficial and
- 1:47Speaker 2: self absorbed, and so I didn't really know what to
- 1:50Speaker 2: think of him. And then when I grew up older
- 1:53Speaker 2: and I sort of became more disillusioned with our political leadership,
- 1:57Speaker 2: particularly when the Iraq War happened. I think that was
- 2:00Speaker 2: the first time my ever like paid attention to politics
- 2:04Speaker 2: or sort of woke up because they kept saying, you know,
- 2:06Speaker 2: weapons of mass destruction on TV all day long, and
- 2:08Speaker 2: I was just kind of like, it just felt like
- 2:10Speaker 2: someone was making a sales pitch. It felt very weird
- 2:13Speaker 2: to me. And so, you know, in two thousand and
- 2:16Speaker 2: eight was the first time I picked up a book
- 2:18Speaker 2: about JFK. And I would say between two thousand and
- 2:21Speaker 2: eight and twenty twenty, I would read a book here
- 2:23Speaker 2: and there about him. But I also became a big
- 2:26Speaker 2: follower of Robert Kennedy Junior because of you know, medical freedom.
- 2:30Speaker 2: It was one of my biggest issues and he you know,
- 2:33Speaker 2: he's very active in that movement, and he would always
- 2:35Speaker 2: bring up his uncle and during his podcasts and stuff.
- 2:38Speaker 2: So at one point I was like, Oh, I really
- 2:40Speaker 2: want to look into this JFK thing, because all the
- 2:43Speaker 2: people I admire seemed to admire him. So I was like,
- 2:47Speaker 2: let me look into it. And I just fell down
- 2:48Speaker 2: deep down the rabbit hole after that, And I had
- 2:51Speaker 2: no idea. Really, I didn't know much about his presidency,
- 2:55Speaker 2: and so I kind of I had no intention of
- 2:57Speaker 2: writing a book about it, and none whatsoever. I just
- 2:59Speaker 2: was doing it for my own knowledge and learning. And
- 3:02Speaker 2: I just kind of became so fascinated by how much
- 3:06Speaker 2: changed after he was assassinated and just how much he
- 3:10Speaker 2: was working on behalf of not just the American people,
- 3:13Speaker 2: but really people globally, and I would, you know, on
- 3:15Speaker 2: behalf of the average person, not on behalf of let's say,
- 3:18Speaker 2: the oligarchy or whatnot. And I was just so sort
- 3:23Speaker 2: of struck by how much was lost when he was assassinated,
- 3:26Speaker 2: and so I really wanted to write a book about
- 3:28Speaker 2: that to really explain to people, Like the subtitle of
- 3:31Speaker 2: my book is what the world lost when it lost
- 3:33Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy, and I felt like no one had
- 3:35Speaker 2: really asked or answered that question, which seems to me
- 3:39Speaker 2: like the first question you should ask an answer if
- 3:41Speaker 2: there's a major assassination that occurs, is well, why does
- 3:45Speaker 2: it matter? What changed?
- 3:47Speaker 1: Well, I mean the title of you one book. So
- 3:50Speaker 1: there's there's two JFK books, if I'm correct, that you've written,
- 3:53Speaker 1: and the one is called The Lost America America's President,
- 3:58Speaker 1: that's what it's in a very profound statement.
- 4:01Speaker 2: Yeah, because he's the last one who really worked on
- 4:06Speaker 2: behalf of the American people. Like he said, it's the
- 4:08Speaker 2: president's job to protect the public interest against all the
- 4:12Speaker 2: narrow private interests that operate in our society. And I
- 4:15Speaker 2: feel like he was the last president that functioned with
- 4:18Speaker 2: that goal in mind, to really protect the public interests
- 4:21Speaker 2: against private, narrow interests. And that's why I titled in
- 4:24Speaker 2: America's Last President. And I think he is, because I
- 4:29Speaker 2: think every president since has worked for various special interests
- 4:33Speaker 2: and not really on behalf of the American people.
- 4:36Speaker 1: I mean, you certainly one of the most famous US presidents.
- 4:40Speaker 1: I'm not an American, and I can tell you right
- 4:42Speaker 1: now that JFK is if you had to ask me
- 4:44Speaker 1: to name American presidents, I think his name would be first.
- 4:48Speaker 2: Yeah. I think he had the highest approval rating of
- 4:51Speaker 2: any presidents in US history since they started doing ratings,
- 4:54Speaker 2: which I think was maybe in the nineteen twenties or
- 4:56Speaker 2: nineteen thirties. So he had an average approval rating over
- 4:59Speaker 2: set seventy percent. I think the last president to even
- 5:02Speaker 2: surpass an average approval rating of fifty percent was Bill Clinton.
- 5:06Speaker 2: So in America, he was far more popular than any
- 5:10Speaker 2: of our other modern day presidents, which I think says
- 5:13Speaker 2: a lot in and of itself is you know, people approved.
- 5:16Speaker 1: Of that he was doing to be faith though Donald
- 5:19Speaker 1: Trump has got an approval rating of one thousand and five.
- 5:24Speaker 2: Donald Trump has his own math.
- 5:29Speaker 1: Okay, but now what is your conclusion? Okay, so we'll
- 5:34Speaker 1: dive into the book in the moment, But what is
- 5:35Speaker 1: what's the the zoomed out argument here?
- 5:40Speaker 2: So? Yeah, so I think when you look at all
- 5:42Speaker 2: his policy, So if you look at foreign policy, we
- 5:45Speaker 2: can sort of start with that. You know, it changed
- 5:48Speaker 2: drastically in Vietnam and Indonesia, in Africa and Latin America,
- 5:54Speaker 2: and I would say the most in the Middle East,
- 5:56Speaker 2: but all of these, Yeah, Israel, Palestine, all of these,
- 6:00Speaker 2: the policies changed drastically, and some of them, you know,
- 6:03Speaker 2: millions and millions of people died because of the assassination.
- 6:06Speaker 2: You had millions of deaths in Vietnam. You had something
- 6:10Speaker 2: between half a million and a million deaths in Indonesia.
- 6:14Speaker 2: It wasn't right away, but there was a later genocide
- 6:17Speaker 2: in the Congo several decades later that probably would not
- 6:20Speaker 2: have happened because Kennedy was working really hard to stabilize
- 6:23Speaker 2: the Congo during his presidency. You have the border crisis
- 6:28Speaker 2: right now, which Kennedy was really trying hard to help
- 6:31Speaker 2: the Latin American countries in the South American countries sort
- 6:34Speaker 2: of grow their economies and not be so dependent on
- 6:36Speaker 2: a primary export, so you wouldn't have a border crisis
- 6:40Speaker 2: of you know, people trying to come to America if
- 6:42Speaker 2: they had a good life in their countries. And then
- 6:45Speaker 2: of course when you get to the Middle East, you know,
- 6:47Speaker 2: he supported Palestinian right of return, He supported having the
- 6:52Speaker 2: UN troops on the border, so there couldn't have been
- 6:54Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty seven war with the UN troops on
- 6:57Speaker 2: the border. He had a very good relationship with Naser,
- 7:00Speaker 2: which again, there couldn't have been a nineteen sixty seven
- 7:03Speaker 2: war with Kennedy's good relationship with Naser. He tried to
- 7:07Speaker 2: register the American Zionist Council, which is sort of the
- 7:09Speaker 2: precursor to APAK, as a foreign agent. So that's kind
- 7:12Speaker 2: of the main lobby and support of Israel in America,
- 7:16Speaker 2: which you know, buys off Congressman all the time and senators,
- 7:21Speaker 2: and so that hasn't made impact. And then the other
- 7:23Speaker 2: thing is he tried to stop Israel from getting nuclear weapons.
- 7:27Speaker 2: And I think what's really important to understand there is
- 7:30Speaker 2: there's a lot of evidence that they took their materials
- 7:32Speaker 2: from the US from a plant called in Pennsylvania called Numec.
- 7:36Speaker 2: So JFK kept asking and asking and asking for inspections,
- 7:40Speaker 2: and they kept delaying him, delaying him, delaying him. Finally
- 7:44Speaker 2: like JK was fed up. He's like, I want inspections
- 7:47Speaker 2: in the summer of sixty three, I don't want to
- 7:49Speaker 2: hear any more excuses. And at that point the Israeli
- 7:52Speaker 2: Prime Minister resigned, and the resignation kind of bought Israel sometime,
- 7:57Speaker 2: so they were able to delay JFK to the end
- 7:59Speaker 2: of the year, but of course he was assassinated before then,
- 8:02Speaker 2: and so there were never proper inspections of Demona. But
- 8:05Speaker 2: I think it's a really important question to ask is
- 8:09Speaker 2: if JFK had gotten his inspections of Demona at the
- 8:11Speaker 2: end of the year, which he was promised. And it's
- 8:15Speaker 2: important to understand that he was promised inspections before their
- 8:17Speaker 2: reactor went critical. So LBJ did some very cursory inspections,
- 8:21Speaker 2: but it was after the reactor went critical. It wasn't
- 8:23Speaker 2: at all the inspections that JFK demanded, But there were
- 8:27Speaker 2: memos where they were wondering where's the uranium coming from?
- 8:30Speaker 2: And so had he done those inspections, would he have
- 8:33Speaker 2: figured that out? And what would that mean? If he
- 8:35Speaker 2: was already threatening to cut support to Israel over their
- 8:39Speaker 2: refusal for inspections and over their building nuclear weapons, you know,
- 8:42Speaker 2: what would he have done if he found out, which
- 8:45Speaker 2: I think he would have, that they were taking materials
- 8:47Speaker 2: from the US. And obviously, I think if that had happened,
- 8:52Speaker 2: Israel would not have the power it has today. They
- 8:55Speaker 2: would not have the power they have today over Americans,
- 8:57Speaker 2: nor would they have the power they have today over
- 8:59Speaker 2: the Palestinians. So I think if you look at everything
- 9:02Speaker 2: that's happened in the Middle East the last sixty years,
- 9:05Speaker 2: you know, I think it would have gone on a
- 9:07Speaker 2: completely different trajectory had JFK not been assassinated. In addition
- 9:10Speaker 2: to you know, Vietnam, Indonesia, Congo, all these other regions
- 9:15Speaker 2: as well.
- 9:16Speaker 1: All right, so your first book is asking who was
- 9:18Speaker 1: JFK and what was he trying to do? And then
- 9:21Speaker 1: your second book is asking who basically killed him and why.
- 9:29Speaker 2: Yeah, so the second book, it doesn't argue any thesis.
- 9:32Speaker 2: And I wrote it sort of one because I was
- 9:34Speaker 2: learning as I was writing it, and two because I
- 9:37Speaker 2: thought that was most fair to JFK. You know, one
- 9:40Speaker 2: of my pet peeves is when people say, oh, no
- 9:42Speaker 2: way was this party involved in the assassination, or no
- 9:45Speaker 2: way was that person involved. And I feel like that
- 9:48Speaker 2: is a great disservice to JFK. I feel like if
- 9:51Speaker 2: someone genuinely cares about JFK, they should be willing to
- 9:54Speaker 2: look at all potential suspects and all angles and not
- 9:58Speaker 2: try to fit the assa fascination into a preconceived mold.
- 10:02Speaker 2: And so I kind of started with, here's all the
- 10:06Speaker 2: entities that benefited from the assassination, which I said were
- 10:09Speaker 2: like the anti communists, the pro war people, you know,
- 10:12Speaker 2: the CIA, the Israeli Zionist interests, and then powerful financial
- 10:17Speaker 2: interest so all of those entities. And there's a lot
- 10:20Speaker 2: of overlap between those entities because one character, you know,
- 10:22Speaker 2: can fit into all five of those interests, right. So,
- 10:26Speaker 2: but those are the high level interests that benefited from
- 10:29Speaker 2: the crime. And then I just kind of went through
- 10:32Speaker 2: the crime and chronological order, and I tried to stick
- 10:35Speaker 2: to those things that are indisputable, because I feel like
- 10:38Speaker 2: too often people go on these random he said, she said,
- 10:41Speaker 2: tangents without any evidence that has anything to do with
- 10:45Speaker 2: the assassination. But there's certain things that are indisputable, like
- 10:47Speaker 2: we know who ran the host committee, we know the questionable,
- 10:51Speaker 2: questionable decisions that the host committee made to you know
- 10:55Speaker 2: that contributed to the assassination. We know a little bit
- 10:59Speaker 2: or someone about the fight over the luncheon site, because obviously,
- 11:02Speaker 2: because what happened is so a lot of the books
- 11:05Speaker 2: will kind of show how Oswald was placed into the
- 11:09Speaker 2: Texas school book depository, but they rarely get into the
- 11:13Speaker 2: fact that the luncheon site wasn't even known when Oswald
- 11:17Speaker 2: got his job at the TSBD, so obviously whoever's driving
- 11:20Speaker 2: the decision of the luncheon site. If you think there
- 11:22Speaker 2: was a conspiracy to murder JFK, you have to believe
- 11:25Speaker 2: that those people were in on the conspiracy or manipulated
- 11:29Speaker 2: in some way by people who were involved in the conspiracy.
- 11:32Speaker 2: Otherwise you can't argue there was a conspiracy, right, and
- 11:35Speaker 2: yet nobody looks at those aspects, and those are the
- 11:37Speaker 2: more indisputable aspects where you don't have to rely on
- 11:40Speaker 2: he said, She said so much, and you know things
- 11:42Speaker 2: like who is Ruby's cover guy that's to the warrant commission.
- 11:46Speaker 2: You know, that's indisputable, and so I tried to stick
- 11:49Speaker 2: to those things rather than that, he said, she said stuff,
- 11:53Speaker 2: because that can take you down endless rabbit holes. That
- 11:56Speaker 2: may or may.
- 11:56Speaker 1: I think even Oswald's attorney, what does his name, Mark Glene,
- 12:00Speaker 1: I think even he said that we need to actually
- 12:04Speaker 1: look at what's going on here.
- 12:05Speaker 2: Yeah, no, exactly. I think we need to stick to
- 12:08Speaker 2: the basic facts, because you know, in order to commit
- 12:11Speaker 2: this kind of crime, you need to control basic things like,
- 12:14Speaker 2: for example, they captured audio video footage of Oswald and
- 12:18Speaker 2: New Orleans, and they in August, and then they brought
- 12:22Speaker 2: that out in November, and Oswald was parading as a
- 12:25Speaker 2: pro communists. I believe he was some sort of like
- 12:28Speaker 2: agent provocateur where he was, you know, trying to provoke people,
- 12:32Speaker 2: and so he was going out into the streets as
- 12:34Speaker 2: a pro communist and they captured audio and video footage
- 12:37Speaker 2: of that. That was captured by the NBC station in
- 12:40Speaker 2: New Orleans, which was run by the Stearns, and then
- 12:43Speaker 2: that was brought out in November to say, you know,
- 12:46Speaker 2: no need to investigate. We've got the official story here.
- 12:49Speaker 2: We've got video and audio of Oswald being a communist
- 12:52Speaker 2: back in New Orleans in August. You know, case closed.
- 12:56Speaker 2: So people, and that's an indisputable fact. So people should ask, well,
- 12:59Speaker 2: who are the stars, right like, because obviously whoever plotted
- 13:02Speaker 2: this trusted the stern is to capture this footage of
- 13:05Speaker 2: a nobody and hold on to it for three months
- 13:07Speaker 2: and you know, not discarded or whatnot. And so those
- 13:09Speaker 2: are the sort of the basic things that I think
- 13:11Speaker 2: get ignored a lot that I tried to focus on
- 13:13Speaker 2: in my book, because you have to control those things
- 13:16Speaker 2: you have to control you know, you have to control
- 13:19Speaker 2: whoever captures the video and audio footage. You have to
- 13:22Speaker 2: control the lunch in site, you know, the motorcade route,
- 13:25Speaker 2: like these sort of basic things if you want to
- 13:27Speaker 2: try to pull this assassination off.
- 13:30Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just quickly cover some basic ground here.
- 13:33Speaker 1: What did JFK stand for?
- 13:37Speaker 2: He wanted to see a world of diversity, but a
- 13:41Speaker 2: unified world. So he was a huge supporter of nationalism,
- 13:45Speaker 2: like Third world nationalism. He thought every country should make
- 13:48Speaker 2: its own decisions. He did not believe that the US
- 13:51Speaker 2: should dictate policy in any way. Because he has an
- 13:54Speaker 2: Irish background, and his life was also saved by Indigenous Islanders.
- 13:58Speaker 2: So his boat was attacked during World War two and
- 14:01Speaker 2: he came very close to death, and it was two
- 14:03Speaker 2: Indigenous Islanders who saved his life, so I think. And
- 14:07Speaker 2: he also was sick a lot when he was younger,
- 14:09Speaker 2: so he was wasting away a lot. At times. He
- 14:12Speaker 2: looked like he was anorextic. He came close to death
- 14:14Speaker 2: multiple times. So I think because of these life experiences,
- 14:18Speaker 2: you know, being Irish, having his life saved by Indigenous Islanders,
- 14:21Speaker 2: you know, just having his life threatened by various illnesses
- 14:25Speaker 2: made him have a real empathy, I think for just
- 14:28Speaker 2: the common person around the globe, and so he was
- 14:33Speaker 2: very supportive of the independence movements. People label him as
- 14:39Speaker 2: a cold warrior, but to me, he was more of
- 14:41Speaker 2: an anti colonialist. And even if you listen to him
- 14:44Speaker 2: speak about the Soviet Union, he's speaking about them as
- 14:47Speaker 2: a colonial power. And he would say many times in
- 14:50Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, like, we can't criticize the Soviet Union
- 14:53Speaker 2: unless we also criticize European colonialism, because otherwise we look
- 14:58Speaker 2: like hypocrites to the world. So he was very critical
- 15:01Speaker 2: of both Soviet colonialism and European colonialism. So he was
- 15:06Speaker 2: very much in supportive of independence movements, but at the
- 15:09Speaker 2: same time he wanted unity. So he was very supportive
- 15:12Speaker 2: of like the United Nations, you know, and the troops
- 15:15Speaker 2: that they sent to the Congo, the troops that they
- 15:17Speaker 2: sent to the cause of border he was He just
- 15:21Speaker 2: felt like the United Nations was a tool to give
- 15:24Speaker 2: smaller countries a lot more say on the world stage,
- 15:28Speaker 2: and so he was he was not an isolationist. He
- 15:30Speaker 2: was definitely not an isolationist, but he wanted countries to
- 15:35Speaker 2: be independent but working together in a sort of peaceful,
- 15:38Speaker 2: cooperative way. I would say it was a sort of
- 15:40Speaker 2: world vision.
- 15:42Speaker 1: He was also, I suppose an anti imperialist. Yes, do
- 15:49Speaker 1: you bid Johnsow what his position was on my country,
- 15:52Speaker 1: South Africa, because in the when he was president, we
- 15:54Speaker 1: were in the middle of apartheid.
- 15:57Speaker 2: Yeah, he was very critical of South Africa. Now, he
- 16:00Speaker 2: did not want to cut them off from the UN
- 16:03Speaker 2: or anything like that, because he felt that would just
- 16:06Speaker 2: encourage them to be more militant. But he did put
- 16:09Speaker 2: I think some embargoes on them. I can't remember the details.
- 16:12Speaker 2: I know South Africa was very concerned about JFK because
- 16:16Speaker 2: he actually he aid to Africa as a whole increased
- 16:21Speaker 2: something like four or five fold during his presidency, and
- 16:25Speaker 2: he had on average one African head of state come
- 16:28Speaker 2: visit the White House once per month, so I think
- 16:30Speaker 2: he had He was president for thirty three months and
- 16:33Speaker 2: he had something like maybe thirty African leaders you know,
- 16:36Speaker 2: come to the White House, so that's almost one a month.
- 16:38Speaker 2: He did not invite South Africa to the White House
- 16:41Speaker 2: because of their apartheid policies. So he was opposed to
- 16:44Speaker 2: the apartheid policies, but he wanted to sort of, I think,
- 16:49Speaker 2: work more with the carrot approach than the stick approach
- 16:52Speaker 2: to try to get them to replace their apartheid.
- 16:58Speaker 1: He also had a non Cold war foreign policy, didn't need.
- 17:03Speaker 2: Yeah, people will try to label him as a Cold warrior,
- 17:06Speaker 2: but I don't think he ever really was. Like I said,
- 17:08Speaker 2: his opposition to communism was more centered around his general
- 17:13Speaker 2: opposition to colonialism. So he definitely was not a fan
- 17:16Speaker 2: of the communist system. There's no doubt about that that
- 17:19Speaker 2: he didn't think it was the kind of economic system
- 17:22Speaker 2: that could sort of raise people out of poverty. He
- 17:25Speaker 2: felt a free market system would do a better job
- 17:28Speaker 2: of uplifting people's lives. So in that sense, yes, you
- 17:32Speaker 2: could call him a Cold warrior, but he did not
- 17:35Speaker 2: want to. He was not in support of sending American
- 17:37Speaker 2: combat troops to Vietnam. He did send advisors to Vietnam,
- 17:42Speaker 2: you know. But he was pushed multiple times during his
- 17:44Speaker 2: presidency to invade Cuba, both during the Bay of Pigs
- 17:48Speaker 2: and during the Cuban Missile crisis, and he refused, and
- 17:52Speaker 2: he was willing to work with neutralist leaders. So he
- 17:54Speaker 2: was very a lot of the Cold warriors. Only wanted
- 17:57Speaker 2: to support leaders that were supportive of America, but he
- 18:01Speaker 2: was willing to support any leader that was neutral. Like
- 18:05Speaker 2: so he was fine if they were neutral. Between the
- 18:07Speaker 2: United States and the.
- 18:08Speaker 1: Soviet Union, let's talk about the CIA.
- 18:12Speaker 2: What happened is the Bay of Pigs. He was sort
- 18:14Speaker 2: of coln during the Bay of.
- 18:15Speaker 1: Pigs, which, by the way, was sorry, but that was
- 18:19Speaker 1: also a bit of a disaster for the US.
- 18:22Speaker 2: Oh yes, absolutely, So that was sort of planned under Eisenhower.
- 18:28Speaker 2: And so when Kennedy became president, he was informed of
- 18:32Speaker 2: this mission that was in progress, and they had these
- 18:34Speaker 2: fourteen hundred exiles in Guatemala and they had to leave Guatemala,
- 18:39Speaker 2: so they either could go to Cuba, which is what
- 18:41Speaker 2: they were promised, or they'd have to bring them back
- 18:43Speaker 2: to the States. So doing nothing was not an option
- 18:46Speaker 2: for Kennedy. He had to do something with those exiles
- 18:48Speaker 2: because they had to leave Guatemala. And everyone told him,
- 18:51Speaker 2: you know, let's just drop him off on the island.
- 18:53Speaker 2: All the islanders will support them. They'll easily escape into
- 18:56Speaker 2: the hills, and you know, Castro will be taken down
- 18:59Speaker 2: and I'll will be great. And obviously it didn't go
- 19:02Speaker 2: like that. It was a complete disaster. These men got
- 19:05Speaker 2: captured right away by Castro. You know, none of the
- 19:08Speaker 2: Islanders supported them, and so Kennedy felt absolutely horrid about that,
- 19:13Speaker 2: Like that was a big weight on him until he
- 19:14Speaker 2: got those men out of prison like a year and
- 19:16Speaker 2: a half later. But he also realized just how manipulated
- 19:22Speaker 2: he had been, because there's a lot of indication today
- 19:25Speaker 2: that the CIA and the Department of Defense knew that
- 19:28Speaker 2: this Bay of Pigs was going to fail without military support,
- 19:32Speaker 2: and Kennedy had told him he was not going to
- 19:34Speaker 2: give military support beforehand, but they kind of believed, like, well,
- 19:37Speaker 2: once it messes up, he won't have a choice. He
- 19:40Speaker 2: won't want to look bad in front the public. He'll
- 19:42Speaker 2: come on board then. But he stuck to his guns
- 19:45Speaker 2: and he said, no, I'm not, I'm not you know,
- 19:47Speaker 2: bringing the US military into this. And he took full
- 19:50Speaker 2: blame for the Bay of Pigs, like he you know,
- 19:53Speaker 2: he said, victory has one hundred fathers and defeat as
- 19:56Speaker 2: an orphan, and you know, he said, I'm the responsible
- 19:59Speaker 2: officer and the government is one hundred percent my fault
- 20:02Speaker 2: this disaster. And it's funny because his approval rating actually
- 20:06Speaker 2: went way up, and I think it's because people were
- 20:08Speaker 2: so impressed with the fact that he took the full
- 20:10Speaker 2: blame for the disaster. But it absolutely was a disaster,
- 20:14Speaker 2: and it absolutely was the opposite of the image that
- 20:17Speaker 2: JFK wanted to portray, because it gave the image of
- 20:21Speaker 2: an imperialist country, which is not the image he wanted
- 20:24Speaker 2: to give to the outside world at all.
- 20:26Speaker 1: JFK also fired the CI director, if memory.
- 20:30Speaker 2: Says yes, and the two people under him. So he
- 20:33Speaker 2: fired Dulls, he fired Bissel, and he fired Kebel. So
- 20:36Speaker 2: that's the top three men at the CIA. So they
- 20:38Speaker 2: were all fired in nineteen sixty one, not long after
- 20:41Speaker 2: the Bay of Pigs.
- 20:42Speaker 1: What could possibly go wrong if you're going to fire
- 20:44Speaker 1: the head of the CIA.
- 20:47Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean that's you know, it's a it's
- 20:49Speaker 2: a big move. I mean, Dulles was older, you know,
- 20:51Speaker 2: he was near a retirement age. But nevertheless, it clearly
- 20:55Speaker 2: I don't think he left of his own choice. You know,
- 20:57Speaker 2: he was pushed out, and so that's you know, that's
- 21:00Speaker 2: going to anger a lot of people for sure.
- 21:03Speaker 1: Which leads me then to ask the question, was the
- 21:06Speaker 1: CIA involved in his assassination?
- 21:09Speaker 2: I don't take a position on the assassination. I don't
- 21:12Speaker 2: think the CIA as an institution was because John mccoone
- 21:15Speaker 2: at the time was the head of the CIA and
- 21:17Speaker 2: he was working with JFK obviously, but I think there's
- 21:21Speaker 2: a lot of evidence that elements of the CIA, particularly
- 21:24Speaker 2: James Jesus Angleton, were involved in the assassination. I don't
- 21:29Speaker 2: see much evidence for Dulls himself being involved in the assassination.
- 21:33Speaker 2: That doesn't mean he wasn't. He may have been, but
- 21:36Speaker 2: in terms of like solid evidence, I don't think there's
- 21:38Speaker 2: too much that links Dolls to the assassination. But certainly Angleton,
- 21:42Speaker 2: who was head of counter Intelligence, who many people accuse
- 21:45Speaker 2: of running a CIA within the CIA, There's no doubt
- 21:49Speaker 2: he monitored Oswald's files, and he had Oswald's files on
- 21:52Speaker 2: his desk, you know, in November nineteen sixty three. So
- 21:55Speaker 2: a lot of people suspect Angleton of sort of creating
- 21:58Speaker 2: the Oswald legend or the Oswald story because Oswald was
- 22:03Speaker 2: sent or an imposter. There's a lot of debate whether
- 22:05Speaker 2: it was Oswald or not was sent to Mexico City
- 22:09Speaker 2: to link him to Valerie Costapov, who was involved with
- 22:14Speaker 2: KGB assassinations, and so that was sort of planted into
- 22:18Speaker 2: Oswald's files. So after the assassination, LBJ kind of ran
- 22:23Speaker 2: with the story that Angleton had set up and sort
- 22:26Speaker 2: of scared everyone into participating in a cover up because
- 22:29Speaker 2: he said, if we investigate this, then everyone's going to
- 22:34Speaker 2: we're going to see that Oswald is linked to KGB
- 22:36Speaker 2: assassinations and it's going to lead to World War three
- 22:39Speaker 2: and so forty million Americans are going to die. And
- 22:42Speaker 2: so he kind of bullied everyone into participating in the
- 22:45Speaker 2: cover up, saying, we can't properly investigate this because it
- 22:49Speaker 2: might lead to World War three. And it seems like
- 22:51Speaker 2: Angleton is the one that set the stage for all
- 22:53Speaker 2: of that because he's the one that had control over
- 22:55Speaker 2: Oswald's files. So I don't think there's any doubt that
- 23:01Speaker 2: well I shouldn't say any doubt, but it almost certainly
- 23:03Speaker 2: Angleton had to have been involved in the plot, and
- 23:06Speaker 2: he's pretty high up at the CIA.
- 23:08Speaker 1: But the Warren Commission was a complete miss.
- 23:12Speaker 2: Oh yes, they didn't investigate it properly at all. And
- 23:15Speaker 2: Dalles did run the Warren Commission. So there's absolutely no
- 23:17Speaker 2: doubt that he was involved in the cover up, and
- 23:21Speaker 2: that the CIA is as a whole, as an institution,
- 23:24Speaker 2: I would say, was involved in the cover up, as
- 23:26Speaker 2: was the FBI. So there's no doubt that there was
- 23:29Speaker 2: an institutional cover up. I think that's very much on
- 23:32Speaker 2: the record. Yeah, and so the Warren Commission again because
- 23:36Speaker 2: LBJ sort of partly because LBJ scared everyone into doing
- 23:41Speaker 2: the cover up, and I think partly, you know, I
- 23:43Speaker 2: think Dalls is even on record as saying something like
- 23:45Speaker 2: he wanted to protect the CIA because I think the
- 23:49Speaker 2: use of Oswald as a patsy and even as Ruby,
- 23:52Speaker 2: who has a lot of shady connections killing Oswald, those
- 23:55Speaker 2: are characters you don't want to investigate because you could compromise,
- 23:59Speaker 2: you know, FBI, the CIA and whatnot. And so these institutions,
- 24:04Speaker 2: whether or not the institutions themselves were involved in the assassination,
- 24:08Speaker 2: they would have a huge motive to cover up the
- 24:10Speaker 2: assassination because the patsy points back at them.
- 24:14Speaker 1: Trump released those files. Do they meta at all?
- 24:20Speaker 2: I think there's some useful information in them. I don't know,
- 24:24Speaker 2: like I don't think there's going to be a smoking
- 24:26Speaker 2: gun or anything like that. And the other thing about
- 24:29Speaker 2: the files is you have to look at them in context. Like,
- 24:33Speaker 2: for example, I know one of the best files that's
- 24:36Speaker 2: been released is when Garrison, Jim Garrison, was prosecuting Clay
- 24:41Speaker 2: Shaw for the murder of JFK. Ray Roca, who was
- 24:44Speaker 2: like an assistant to James Angleton. You know, there's a
- 24:48Speaker 2: memo where he says, if we don't interfere in Garrison's investigation,
- 24:51Speaker 2: in Garrison's trial, Garrison is going to get a conviction.
- 24:54Speaker 2: So here we have someone working for Angleton on the
- 24:57Speaker 2: record saying that he believes Garrison will be able to
- 24:59Speaker 2: success fully convict Clay Shaw of the murder of JFK.
- 25:03Speaker 2: So to me, that's very damning. But that's not something
- 25:07Speaker 2: the average person will understand because you have to understand
- 25:10Speaker 2: who's Garrison, Whose Shaw, Who's Angleton? You know what I mean.
- 25:13Speaker 2: So the files make sense if you've studied the case,
- 25:16Speaker 2: but they're not going to make sense to a lay person.
- 25:19Speaker 2: So there may be some useful nuggets of information like
- 25:22Speaker 2: that in the files that are still classified, but I
- 25:25Speaker 2: don't think there's going to there's not going to be
- 25:26Speaker 2: like one line that says, you know, this is who
- 25:28Speaker 2: did it? And nothing like that. I don't think.
- 25:31Speaker 1: Do you remember when Tucker Callson when you'll still let
- 25:33Speaker 1: Fox did that segment on JFK's assassination, and then Ben
- 25:38Speaker 1: Shapiro made that comment saying it doesn't matter who assassinated JFK.
- 25:44Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it absolutely matters. Like, forget even the policies.
- 25:47Speaker 2: Forget that so many policies change, and forget that we're
- 25:50Speaker 2: still living with the reverberations of those policy changes. The
- 25:54Speaker 2: fact that a US president had his head blown off
- 25:57Speaker 2: in broad daylight, and not just any president, but the
- 26:00Speaker 2: president with the highest approval rating in US history, that
- 26:04Speaker 2: is going to matter because if you don't solve that crime,
- 26:07Speaker 2: then you don't live in a genuine democracy because then
- 26:10Speaker 2: anybody you vote for, that vote can be vetoed by
- 26:14Speaker 2: powerful forces or powerful interests. So it absolutely does matter.
- 26:20Speaker 1: But we don't know exactly who assassinated him.
- 26:26Speaker 2: No, I don't think we have proof. But I think
- 26:28Speaker 2: what we do know is we know the policies that changed,
- 26:31Speaker 2: and we can still demand that jfkse policies be implemented.
- 26:36Speaker 2: For example, like if we go back to Israel, we
- 26:40Speaker 2: know he wanted inspections of Demona, and we know, he
- 26:43Speaker 2: wanted the lobby registered as a foreign agent. Those two
- 26:45Speaker 2: things can still be easily done, Like, if we really
- 26:48Speaker 2: want to honor JFK, we can demand inspections of Demona,
- 26:52Speaker 2: and we can demand that APEC register as a foreign agent.
- 26:55Speaker 2: We can undo the assassination, but we can re implement
- 26:58Speaker 2: his policies, which which is sort of so bizarre to
- 27:02Speaker 2: me that people don't focus on that at all. They're
- 27:04Speaker 2: so focused on the assassination and on the technicalities when
- 27:07Speaker 2: it's like the best way to honor JFK is to
- 27:11Speaker 2: implement his actual policies that can still be implemented.
- 27:17Speaker 1: But I mean genuine if you look at the power
- 27:19Speaker 1: of APEC and the Israeli lobby, do you really think
- 27:23Speaker 1: that that's possible anytime soon?
- 27:25Speaker 2: Not realistically no, But in theory and theory Donald Trump
- 27:30Speaker 2: can go to the Department of Justice and ask them
- 27:33Speaker 2: to register APECK as a foreign agent. And theory Donald
- 27:36Speaker 2: Trump can go to Israel and say, we're cutting off
- 27:39Speaker 2: all funding and support until we can inspect Demona, and
- 27:42Speaker 2: we're doing this to honor JFK, who was you know, assassinated,
- 27:47Speaker 2: and that's still appending, you know, investigation, So we don't know.
- 27:51Speaker 2: We can't prove who killed him, but we can prove
- 27:53Speaker 2: what policies changed.
- 27:54Speaker 1: But we also know that Donald Trump doesn't lack theories.
- 27:57Speaker 2: Yeah, Donald Trump is not going to do that as
- 28:00Speaker 2: any other president, but I'm saying they could. So I
- 28:03Speaker 2: feel like, you know, if people really want to honor JFK,
- 28:06Speaker 2: they should demand that his policy still be implemented, you know,
- 28:10Speaker 2: those that were reversed, and that still can be Obviously,
- 28:13Speaker 2: we can't undo Vietnam unfortunately. You know, we can't undo
- 28:17Speaker 2: what happened in Indonesia. We can't undo what happened in
- 28:20Speaker 2: the Congo, but we can you know, be supportive of
- 28:23Speaker 2: those regions, and we can be supportive, you know, we
- 28:26Speaker 2: can act not like an imperialist nation. We can't do that.
- 28:31Speaker 1: If JFK. I mean, this is obviously just a thought experiment.
- 28:35Speaker 1: But let's just pretend for a moment that he was
- 28:39Speaker 1: able to become president after Trump, What do you think
- 28:41Speaker 1: he would do?
- 28:43Speaker 2: Oh goodness today, that's a really good question. Well, one
- 28:47Speaker 2: is he would work on behalf of the American people,
- 28:49Speaker 2: because I think the American people have been like screwed
- 28:52Speaker 2: in the last sixty years. Like there's been very little
- 28:54Speaker 2: supportive domestic policy. Like JFK increased social Security benefits. He
- 28:59Speaker 2: lowered the minimum age for Social Security, and so today
- 29:04Speaker 2: like social Security is under threat, like we might lose
- 29:06Speaker 2: social Security. You know. JFK pushed hard for Medicare, He
- 29:11Speaker 2: increased unemployment benefits. He did a lot to help the
- 29:14Speaker 2: US economy. You know, he did various programs like regional
- 29:18Speaker 2: you know, area redevelopment programs, manpower training programs. You know,
- 29:23Speaker 2: he did a tax cut. So it's he increased all
- 29:26Speaker 2: these benefits, but he did a tax cut, and it's
- 29:29Speaker 2: you know, and it's because he wasn't like going crazy
- 29:32Speaker 2: spending money on wars and whatnot. He was very kind
- 29:35Speaker 2: of intelligent about the way he approached things. And there
- 29:38Speaker 2: was actually booming economy in the mid nineteen sixties in
- 29:41Speaker 2: the US, and I would say that's because of the
- 29:43Speaker 2: policies that JFK implemented in the early nineteen sixties. So
- 29:47Speaker 2: he was obsessed. Oh and there's nothing he hated more
- 29:50Speaker 2: than high inflation. He called inflation a cruel tax upon
- 29:53Speaker 2: the week. So he went to extreme lengths to keep
- 29:56Speaker 2: inflation low as president, and inflation during his term was
- 29:59Speaker 2: much lower than it is on average in the US.
- 30:02Speaker 2: It was something like one percent annually inflation during his term,
- 30:05Speaker 2: and that's because of all the work that he put in.
- 30:08Speaker 2: And so the first thing he tried to do is
- 30:10Speaker 2: clean up the US economy, make sure that social security
- 30:13Speaker 2: is stable, make sure that inflation becomes in check, because
- 30:17Speaker 2: he would be appalled at how much inflation we've had,
- 30:21Speaker 2: you know. He would try to weed out the corruption
- 30:23Speaker 2: like in the various you know, FDA, CDC, EPA, because
- 30:28Speaker 2: he was very aware of conflicts of interest, like he did.
- 30:32Speaker 2: You know, Rachel Carson put out a book like questioning
- 30:34Speaker 2: Pesticide during his presidency, and the USDA was all, you know,
- 30:38Speaker 2: afraid of it and viewed her as a massive public
- 30:40Speaker 2: relations problem. But JFK did a study on pesticides and
- 30:45Speaker 2: came out and said, actually, Rachel Carson is right. These
- 30:47Speaker 2: pesticides are very toxic. They are very dangerous, you know,
- 30:51Speaker 2: And he was planning in nineteen sixty four to introduce
- 30:53Speaker 2: legislation to deal with that, which we never had. So
- 30:57Speaker 2: I think he would look at the health of Americans,
- 31:00Speaker 2: you know, just all of that, and then of course
- 31:02Speaker 2: on the foreign side, you know, he would be much
- 31:06Speaker 2: friendlier to foreign countries. He would try to wind down
- 31:09Speaker 2: the war between Ukraine and Russia and do what he
- 31:12Speaker 2: could with that. He would definitely not let Israel run
- 31:15Speaker 2: all over us, you know, he would make sure that
- 31:18Speaker 2: Iran war stopped. And so I just think it would
- 31:22Speaker 2: just be very, very different.
- 31:24Speaker 1: Now. It would have been impossible to know, I suppose,
- 31:27Speaker 1: But what do you think his approach to China would
- 31:30Speaker 1: have been. Certainly not the same as Trumps.
- 31:32Speaker 2: Surely, It's hard to say, but he was in general
- 31:36Speaker 2: for cooperation, so as long as they were keeping to
- 31:41Speaker 2: themselves and not so. His main issue with the Soviet
- 31:44Speaker 2: system is he felt they were trying to sort of
- 31:47Speaker 2: you know, expand and like, you know, get involved in Cuba,
- 31:50Speaker 2: which is on the other side of the world, and
- 31:52Speaker 2: so he didn't want them in the Western hemisphere. But
- 31:55Speaker 2: he didn't, you know, whatever economic system or whatever they
- 31:59Speaker 2: want to do within their own borders, he didn't care.
- 32:01Speaker 2: So I think as long as China, you know, wasn't
- 32:05Speaker 2: trying to act in an imperial way, I think he
- 32:08Speaker 2: would have tried to have good relations with them.
- 32:11Speaker 1: The lost chapter of your book touches on JFK. Junior's
- 32:16Speaker 1: plane crush. Why is that important?
- 32:19Speaker 2: Yeah, So I kind of people look at JFK's death
- 32:23Speaker 2: without ever looking at RFK or even JFK Jr. So
- 32:26Speaker 2: especially JFK and RFK, like those two absolutely should always
- 32:31Speaker 2: be looked at together, right because to me, those are
- 32:33Speaker 2: like serial murders. We don't know for one hundred percent,
- 32:36Speaker 2: but that's the place to start. You have one brother
- 32:38Speaker 2: who's president who gets assassinated, another brother who's running for
- 32:42Speaker 2: president who gets assassinated. Why are we not looking at
- 32:45Speaker 2: these crimes together, to look at the similarities between them,
- 32:49Speaker 2: to try to see if they might have the same
- 32:50Speaker 2: culprit Because to me, you know, the first suspect for
- 32:53Speaker 2: the murder of RFK would be whoever murdered JFK. Now
- 32:58Speaker 2: with JFK Junior that actually and when I was alive,
- 33:01Speaker 2: so obviously the assassinations in the nineteen sixties I wasn't
- 33:03Speaker 2: alive for but I remember that plane crash, and so
- 33:07Speaker 2: in my mind is it was like, you know, well,
- 33:10Speaker 2: this should be investigated, because at first I looked into
- 33:13Speaker 2: what was j K Junior doing? And he was you know,
- 33:17Speaker 2: everyone close to him said he wanted to run for
- 33:20Speaker 2: office at some point, probably in the next few years.
- 33:22Speaker 2: Some were saying governor, some were saying senator. A lot
- 33:25Speaker 2: of people were saying he eventually wanted to run for
- 33:28Speaker 2: the presidency, and he was writing a lot of controversial
- 33:32Speaker 2: things in George magazine. You know, he published an article
- 33:35Speaker 2: by Oliver Stone titled our Counterfeit History, kind of saying
- 33:40Speaker 2: that we know our official history is really a counterfeit history.
- 33:44Speaker 2: He investigated the Yitsak Rabbin assassination, and he actually let
- 33:47Speaker 2: the mother of the assassin write an article in George
- 33:51Speaker 2: magazine saying that her son was manipulated by right wing
- 33:55Speaker 2: Israelis to murder Rabine, which was highly controversial because I
- 33:59Speaker 2: think he was the only US media outlet that questioned
- 34:02Speaker 2: the Ravine assassination. So here you have someone who is,
- 34:07Speaker 2: you know, writing controversial articles in his magazine, who's questioning
- 34:12Speaker 2: very important events, you know, that are happening, including assassinations
- 34:15Speaker 2: of heads of state, who was very interested in running
- 34:18Speaker 2: for office, and suddenly he dies in this plane crash,
- 34:21Speaker 2: and their only explanation is a bad weather. Well, no
- 34:23Speaker 2: one else died that night from bad weather, right, So,
- 34:27Speaker 2: and there are a lot of questions about what is
- 34:29Speaker 2: the weather because the tower manager at Martha's Vineyard said
- 34:33Speaker 2: you could see I think ten to twelve miles. I
- 34:35Speaker 2: think the Asauce reading, which is like some kind of
- 34:37Speaker 2: computer reading or something, also said you could see for
- 34:41Speaker 2: ten to twelve miles. Well he crashed like I think
- 34:43Speaker 2: of something like seven or eight miles from the island.
- 34:46Speaker 2: So those statements and that Asauce reading is true, he
- 34:49Speaker 2: should have seen the island. So the claim that he
- 34:51Speaker 2: died from spatial disorientation, which means you can't see anything,
- 34:54Speaker 2: you don't know what's up or down or sideways, that's
- 34:58Speaker 2: a hard claim to make. If that if those visibility
- 35:01Speaker 2: estimates are true. And so again, I don't take a
- 35:04Speaker 2: position on the book whether it was an accident or
- 35:06Speaker 2: whether there was foul play. I think there's arguments to
- 35:09Speaker 2: be made for both cases. But I feel like it
- 35:12Speaker 2: should be looked at because here you have JFK gets assassinated,
- 35:16Speaker 2: his first are RFK gets assassinated, and his second heir
- 35:20Speaker 2: dies in a bizarre plane crash. So that should be
- 35:23Speaker 2: looked into if nothing else.
- 35:26Speaker 1: You've said a couple times now that you don't take
- 35:28Speaker 1: a position on various talking points. Why, I think.
- 35:34Speaker 2: Because it's not that I don't have an opinion. It's
- 35:38Speaker 2: more so I feel like so many people do that,
- 35:41Speaker 2: and they pigeonhole themselves and then more information comes out
- 35:44Speaker 2: and they become wedded to their theory and they can't
- 35:48Speaker 2: admit they were wrong, and they can't. I feel like
- 35:51Speaker 2: a lot of people they've been looking at this for
- 35:54Speaker 2: decades and they can't see straight anymore, Like they can't
- 35:58Speaker 2: even look straight at the assassination anymore because they've become
- 36:01Speaker 2: so wedded to a particular theory that they're not even
- 36:04Speaker 2: looking at all the data anymore, looking at the evidence anymore.
- 36:07Speaker 2: And I feel that's very unfair to JFK, because that's
- 36:10Speaker 2: not the way to get justice for JFK. So it's
- 36:13Speaker 2: more like, I don't want to fall into that same
- 36:16Speaker 2: trap of, oh, I'm convinced this is absolutely what happened.
- 36:19Speaker 2: I'm convinced this is who ordered the assassination. So I'm
- 36:22Speaker 2: no longer going to look at the evidence as a whole.
- 36:25Speaker 2: Whereas for me, it's just really important to get justice
- 36:28Speaker 2: for JFK, and it's really important to just look at
- 36:31Speaker 2: the evidence and to give everyone the information and let
- 36:34Speaker 2: them decide for themselves. Where does this information point to
- 36:38Speaker 2: because they may interpret the same information differently than I do.
- 36:42Speaker 2: You know, they may be able to pinpoint things that
- 36:44Speaker 2: I can't.
- 36:45Speaker 1: Getting justice for JFK will actually benefit the US.
- 36:49Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. It's because the average American has suffered tremendously
- 36:54Speaker 2: since his assassination. You know, just our economy, the inflation,
- 36:58Speaker 2: you know, the Social Security going bankrupt. It's a complete
- 37:02Speaker 2: mess in the US. And it's because our presidents don't
- 37:05Speaker 2: work on behalf of the average person. They work on
- 37:07Speaker 2: behalf of the oligarchy. And so absolutely, I think getting
- 37:12Speaker 2: justice will bring America back to a republic, because right
- 37:14Speaker 2: now it's an empire. It's not really a republic.
- 37:17Speaker 1: And the crumbling empire at that.
- 37:20Speaker 2: Yes, I would say so as well. Yeah, and so
- 37:23Speaker 2: I think you want to restore a proper republic where
- 37:25Speaker 2: your leadership actually actually works on your behalf.
- 37:30Speaker 1: I've had the great pleasure of having RFK Jr. On
- 37:34Speaker 1: my show a couple of times, but he won't speak
- 37:36Speaker 1: about his uncle always father for that matter. Do you
- 37:41Speaker 1: think he knows?
- 37:42Speaker 2: I'm not sure he does. He seems to me to
- 37:45Speaker 2: be one of those people that made up his mind
- 37:47Speaker 2: decades ago and doesn't can't really look see the assassination anymore,
- 37:53Speaker 2: you know, because he still thinks this over like Cuba
- 37:56Speaker 2: and Vietnam, which it may have been. I don't know,
- 37:59Speaker 2: but I think there's other suspects, and I think there's
- 38:02Speaker 2: other policies that need to be looked at, and I
- 38:04Speaker 2: think he's yeah, I think he's still kind of stuck
- 38:07Speaker 2: in that frame of mind. And he may be right.
- 38:11Speaker 2: I don't know, but I think he's not looking at
- 38:14Speaker 2: it clearly in my opinion.
- 38:17Speaker 1: I say that because I was thinking the other day
- 38:20Speaker 1: that we don't know the truth. Now. There's lots of speculation,
- 38:24Speaker 1: and I suspect that's because a number of people who
- 38:28Speaker 1: were involved are possibly still alive. Maybe in the next
- 38:32Speaker 1: twenty five years, when all of those players are no
- 38:37Speaker 1: longer around, perhaps we will find out the truth.
- 38:41Speaker 2: I don't know if I agree with that. I think
- 38:44Speaker 2: most of them are deceased. I think it's more you
- 38:48Speaker 2: want to protect entities and institutions and power structures, and
- 38:54Speaker 2: I think if you let out the truth, it could
- 38:57Speaker 2: severely alter the way people perceive America. Like it's no
- 39:02Speaker 2: because you know, sort of Hawaii titled in America's Last President,
- 39:06Speaker 2: the country you live in is not the country you
- 39:08Speaker 2: think you live And I think Tucker Carlson said something
- 39:11Speaker 2: like that, like this is not the country you think
- 39:13Speaker 2: it is or something like that, And so I think
- 39:16Speaker 2: if you just let out the truth, then you admit
- 39:18Speaker 2: you sort of that, You admit the president has no power,
- 39:21Speaker 2: You admit that the president is a puppet, and that
- 39:24Speaker 2: the president can be removed by powerful forces. And so
- 39:27Speaker 2: I think, I don't know, maybe one day will be
- 39:31Speaker 2: as you said, if the empire crumbles enough that truth
- 39:36Speaker 2: will come out. I hope that it does come out
- 39:37Speaker 2: at some point, but I think, yeah, it's just too
- 39:42Speaker 2: many powerful interests to protect.
- 39:44Speaker 1: I think quickly going through your book, I didn't see
- 39:47Speaker 1: anything about Marilyon Monroe, and I have to ask about that.
- 39:51Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not RFK definitely because she was friends
- 39:56Speaker 2: with their brother in law. So their brother in law
- 40:00Speaker 2: was an actor and she was an actress, so they
- 40:03Speaker 2: I know they RFK met Marilyn Monroe more than JFK did.
- 40:07Speaker 2: I think JFK only met her on like one or
- 40:09Speaker 2: two occasions, so I do not know if he actually
- 40:12Speaker 2: had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. I think a lot
- 40:15Speaker 2: of that is I don't take a position on the
- 40:19Speaker 2: affair stuff. I kind of mostly I think it's not
- 40:22Speaker 2: any of my business, so that's.
- 40:24Speaker 1: The reason I think it's tabloid. But the thing is,
- 40:27Speaker 1: the thing is if if you're talking about the president
- 40:28Speaker 1: though this kind of this stuff is kind of important,
- 40:33Speaker 1: yes and.
- 40:33Speaker 2: No, because my general position is that they couldn't blackmail him.
- 40:38Speaker 2: They had to kill him, so whatever he did could
- 40:40Speaker 2: not have been that bad. Otherwise they would have just
- 40:43Speaker 2: blackmailed him because he had all these policies that were
- 40:46Speaker 2: reversed after his assassination, and no one could figure out
- 40:49Speaker 2: how to get him to change his policies, so they
- 40:52Speaker 2: had to assassinate him. So whatever he did, and he
- 40:56Speaker 2: may have had some affairs, I have no idea, but
- 40:58Speaker 2: it can't be as bad as this sort of portrayed
- 41:01Speaker 2: in the press, because otherwise he should have been really
- 41:03Speaker 2: easy to blackmail and control his policies. It's kind of
- 41:06Speaker 2: my general take.
- 41:08Speaker 1: But monicn we all know that the media doesn't lie.
- 41:13Speaker 2: I think how I view the affair stuff is this propaganda,
- 41:17Speaker 2: and propaganda doesn't mean it's false, right. Propaganda can be
- 41:20Speaker 2: true or false or anywhere in between, So I would
- 41:23Speaker 2: never say like, oh, he didn't have affairs, because I
- 41:25Speaker 2: have no clue. But I do think the affair stuff
- 41:27Speaker 2: is used as propaganda to portray him in a shallow
- 41:32Speaker 2: and superficial way. And I think that's the purpose of it,
- 41:35Speaker 2: is to kind of because a lot of times, you know,
- 41:38Speaker 2: people find out I wrote a book about Kennedy, They're like, oh,
- 41:40Speaker 2: but he's a womanizer. Why would you write a book
- 41:42Speaker 2: about him, you know what I mean. And it's a
- 41:45Speaker 2: way to make people not want to look at his policies,
- 41:47Speaker 2: to not want to understand what was lost when he
- 41:49Speaker 2: was assassinated, to not understand how much this country and
- 41:53Speaker 2: this world has suffered as a result of his assassination.
- 41:56Speaker 2: So that's why I kind of view it as propaganda,
- 41:58Speaker 2: which again doesn't mean it's false, like there could very
- 42:01Speaker 2: well be some truth to it, but it's just used
- 42:03Speaker 2: for a purpose that's to kind of make people not care.
- 42:07Speaker 1: I mean, knowing that he was a threat to intelligence,
- 42:11Speaker 1: financial interests, corporate interests, foreign policy interests, did he stand
- 42:18Speaker 1: a chance?
- 42:21Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's it's kind of
- 42:25Speaker 2: difficult because you know, we're he was approaching an election here,
- 42:29Speaker 2: So I think it's fair to ask the question, you know,
- 42:31Speaker 2: why wasn't his election just sabotaged, you know, his reelection?
- 42:35Speaker 2: You know, because if these forces have the power to
- 42:38Speaker 2: kill the president, I assume they would have the power
- 42:41Speaker 2: to sabotage a reelection. Although you know, he was very popular,
- 42:45Speaker 2: so I don't think sabotaging his election would be easy.
- 42:47Speaker 2: But I don't think it would be impossible. But whether
- 42:51Speaker 2: he would have lasted eight years, yeah, I don't know.
- 42:55Speaker 2: Because he I think, to your point, he angered every
- 42:58Speaker 2: power sector there is. I don't think there's a power
- 43:01Speaker 2: sector that he did not anger. You know, he angered
- 43:04Speaker 2: Wall Street, he angered the CIA, he angered the military.
- 43:09Speaker 2: So he you know, I view him as doing his
- 43:12Speaker 2: job right. He actually saw himself as president. He actually
- 43:17Speaker 2: saw his job as protecting the public interest against all
- 43:20Speaker 2: the narrow private interests that operate in our society. And
- 43:23Speaker 2: that's how he functioned as president. Whereas I think everyone's
- 43:27Speaker 2: sense is kind of a tool of these other powerful forces.
- 43:30Speaker 2: Because the other thing is like Kennedy was extremely wealthy,
- 43:34Speaker 2: and so when you think of an extremely wealthy person,
- 43:36Speaker 2: you're like, well, how is this person going to relate
- 43:39Speaker 2: to me? Or how is you know what I mean.
- 43:40Speaker 2: But the wealth made him independent in a way because
- 43:43Speaker 2: he didn't feel as beholden to all these other power
- 43:46Speaker 2: interests because he grew up with tons of money his
- 43:50Speaker 2: whole life, right, so he didn't feel like he owed
- 43:53Speaker 2: these people anything. Whereas if you have all these other
- 43:55Speaker 2: presidents like Bill Clinton grew up in poverty, and you
- 43:58Speaker 2: know Obama and all these other presidents, they're going to
- 44:02Speaker 2: be whole be much more beholden to their donors than
- 44:05Speaker 2: JFK was, and so they're going to function in a
- 44:07Speaker 2: much less independent way.
- 44:09Speaker 1: How did JFK get to the presidential position.
- 44:15Speaker 2: Yeah, so he campaigned for like two years before. So
- 44:19Speaker 2: he flew out every weekend, most usually with Ted Sorenston,
- 44:22Speaker 2: his speech writer, and they went to all these small
- 44:24Speaker 2: towns across America. And so he campaigned like crazy. Even
- 44:29Speaker 2: two years before he announced he was running for president,
- 44:31Speaker 2: he'd already traveled all over the country campaigning. He entered
- 44:35Speaker 2: every single primary, well I don't think it was every
- 44:39Speaker 2: but pretty much every primary, even ones that people told
- 44:42Speaker 2: him not to get into that he's going to lose,
- 44:44Speaker 2: he still entered them. He was and even though he
- 44:47Speaker 2: won every single primary, he still almost didn't get the
- 44:50Speaker 2: nomination because it was very tight at the convention as
- 44:54Speaker 2: to who was going to get the nomination because he
- 44:56Speaker 2: was not the establishment candidate. Lyndon Johnson was the establishment candidate.
- 45:00Speaker 2: And so even with winning all the primaries, even with
- 45:03Speaker 2: all that campaigning, and I think TV being a new
- 45:06Speaker 2: medium helped him as well because he was very photogenic
- 45:09Speaker 2: and so you know, the newness of TV I think
- 45:12Speaker 2: got him probably a lot of voters as well. But
- 45:16Speaker 2: even so he still struggled to get the nomination because
- 45:18Speaker 2: he was not the establishment candidate. That is not who
- 45:21Speaker 2: the establishment wanted as the nominee.
- 45:25Speaker 1: Okay, so then what's the moral of the story. I mean,
- 45:27Speaker 1: you say, you've written these two books.
- 45:29Speaker 2: I think we want to look at one the long
- 45:31Speaker 2: term implications of his assassination. Like I would argue, would
- 45:34Speaker 2: nine to eleven have happened? Would the Iran War be
- 45:37Speaker 2: happening today? Would we be having the border crisis? Would
- 45:40Speaker 2: we be having this massive inflation? So I think you
- 45:44Speaker 2: want to look at all these things that are happening
- 45:47Speaker 2: in the world today and ask the question would they
- 45:49Speaker 2: be happening if JK was assassinated? And I can say
- 45:52Speaker 2: pretty confidently that some of them would not be happening today.
- 45:55Speaker 2: So that's number one is that we still live with
- 45:57Speaker 2: that assassination every single day, which which means it's not history,
- 46:01Speaker 2: it's very present, like it continues daily with us. Right. So,
- 46:06Speaker 2: and we sort of, like what I said earlier, we
- 46:09Speaker 2: know what policies change. So until we demand that those
- 46:11Speaker 2: policies change back to what JFK was doing, we're still
- 46:14Speaker 2: living with the assassination because we're still living with the
- 46:18Speaker 2: policies that changed as a result of his assassination. So
- 46:21Speaker 2: that's number one. But number two is outside of policies,
- 46:25Speaker 2: we still allowed a coup to happen in America and
- 46:28Speaker 2: then we just kept voting. So what does that say
- 46:31Speaker 2: about us as a society? About you know what I
- 46:34Speaker 2: mean that we'll just accept that whoever we elect will
- 46:37Speaker 2: get violently removed and we'll just we'll just take whoever
- 46:41Speaker 2: you give us. You know, That's how you get a
- 46:43Speaker 2: crumbling society. That's how you get like bankrupt social security
- 46:47Speaker 2: and whatnot, is because you've allowed the person that you
- 46:50Speaker 2: voted for to be removed, you know, by far narrower interests.
- 46:54Speaker 2: And so I think there's a guy Charles Eisenstein and offer.
- 46:57Speaker 2: I like he said that kennedy Is sassination is like
- 47:00Speaker 2: a cancer that has metastasized to such an extent that
- 47:04Speaker 2: nobody even knows the source anymore. So I think people
- 47:06Speaker 2: in America see that there's tons of corruption. They don't
- 47:09Speaker 2: trust the government. So trust in government was about eighty
- 47:12Speaker 2: percent when Kennedy was president. It's about twenty percent today.
- 47:15Speaker 2: So you have only twenty percent of the American public
- 47:18Speaker 2: trusting the government. And that's what he's saying. This cancer
- 47:21Speaker 2: has metastasized to such an extent that this country is
- 47:24Speaker 2: like ill, but nobody knows why anymore, because it's like
- 47:28Speaker 2: they don't even know that. It goes back to the
- 47:30Speaker 2: JFK assassination, because you know, it's like boiling a frog.
- 47:34Speaker 2: It happens over time and people don't even realize how
- 47:37Speaker 2: they got here. So I think you have to go
- 47:39Speaker 2: back to the source and say when did this go downhill?
- 47:42Speaker 2: When did the trust in government start to dip? It
- 47:44Speaker 2: started to dip after the Kennedy assassination.
- 47:48Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think should have happened though,
- 47:50Speaker 1: Should the public have said no, no, no, we're not going
- 47:52Speaker 1: to enter the next election until we know what happened.
- 47:56Speaker 2: I don't know, like in an ideal world, yes, but world,
- 48:00Speaker 2: I absolutely understand why people kept voting. I mean I
- 48:04Speaker 2: kept voting. Oh I wasn't alive then, but I voted
- 48:06Speaker 2: in my lifetime, you know, So I totally like understand that.
- 48:13Speaker 2: So I'm not sort of criticizing people, but I feel
- 48:16Speaker 2: like there needs to be I don't know, there needs
- 48:19Speaker 2: to be some way to demand justice, and maybe a
- 48:22Speaker 2: voting boycott is the way to do it, to say,
- 48:25Speaker 2: you know, we're not voting until we feel confident that
- 48:28Speaker 2: the story you've told us about the Kennedy assassination is accurate.
- 48:32Speaker 2: You know, I would have loved for people to do
- 48:33Speaker 2: that in nineteen sixty four. It was harder then because
- 48:37Speaker 2: there was no video, so we didn't see the Zapruder
- 48:39Speaker 2: film of the assassination where it looks obvious like you
- 48:42Speaker 2: shot from the front. That didn't come out till the
- 48:44Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, And so I think in nineteen sixty four
- 48:47Speaker 2: it was a lot easier for the public to buy
- 48:50Speaker 2: the official story. By the nineteen seventies, something like less
- 48:53Speaker 2: than ten percent of Americans bought the official story, and
- 48:57Speaker 2: that's when all the mafia and affair and all that
- 49:00Speaker 2: stories started coming out in the nineteen seventies, And I
- 49:02Speaker 2: think it was because there was a realization that, hey,
- 49:06Speaker 2: the public's not buying this Kennedy story, nobody believes it.
- 49:09Speaker 2: Let's just trash the crap out of Kennedy so that
- 49:12Speaker 2: people don't care anymore. And that's basically what happened, because
- 49:16Speaker 2: you can't cover up the crime. It's too hard. Maybe
- 49:19Speaker 2: for a few years you can cover it up, but
- 49:21Speaker 2: you can't cover it up long term. So the only
- 49:23Speaker 2: other thing you can do is make people not care
- 49:25Speaker 2: about it. And I feel like that's where all the
- 49:27Speaker 2: negative Kennedy stories came from.
- 49:29Speaker 1: As amount of interest. That's also where the phrase conspiracy
- 49:33Speaker 1: theorist came from. This, Yes, it came from the CIA.
- 49:37Speaker 2: Correct. Yeah, So the CIA distributed a memo to its
- 49:40Speaker 2: assets to basically label everyone a conspiracy theorist who questions
- 49:45Speaker 2: the Kennedy assassination. So it's not just demeaning Kennedy, it's
- 49:49Speaker 2: also they wanted to demean people who questioned his assassination.
- 49:54Speaker 2: So it's like, in that sense, people don't want to
- 49:57Speaker 2: question it because they don't want to be labeled a
- 49:59Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist or a nut job or whatnot. So they
- 50:02Speaker 2: kind of used all these various psychological trips tricks to
- 50:06Speaker 2: make the assassination irrelevant by either demeaning the people questioning
- 50:10Speaker 2: it or demeaning JFK himself. It's kind of the same idea.
- 50:14Speaker 2: I think, what have.
- 50:16Speaker 1: You learned from writing you books?
- 50:20Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I think I've learned that. Like I've lived
- 50:23Speaker 2: in a bubble most of my life. Like I was, like,
- 50:27Speaker 2: you know, certainly as a kid, as a teenager, even
- 50:29Speaker 2: in my twenties, I had no idea what was going on.
- 50:32Speaker 2: You know. I was just kind of like I had,
- 50:35Speaker 2: you know, I kind of I trusted government, you know.
- 50:37Speaker 2: I kind of thought, like, you know, government is trying
- 50:41Speaker 2: to help the citizens, and we're trying to make peace abroad,
- 50:44Speaker 2: and we're trying to go after the bad guys, and
- 50:46Speaker 2: like that's not the case at all. Right, So I
- 50:49Speaker 2: think I learned from Kennedy's book, you know, how corrupt
- 50:53Speaker 2: things are today and how much better they could be.
- 50:56Speaker 2: Like I learned what a good leader looks like and
- 50:58Speaker 2: what a proper president should be doing. You know, he
- 51:00Speaker 2: should be very concerned about the economy. He should be
- 51:04Speaker 2: very concerned about the welfare of his people. He should
- 51:07Speaker 2: be very concerned about stability and peace in the world.
- 51:10Speaker 2: And I don't think our leaders are concerned about that.
- 51:13Speaker 2: I think they're concerned about pleasing their donors and you know,
- 51:17Speaker 2: getting their beachside property after they leave the White House,
- 51:20Speaker 2: and that seems to be what they're concerned about.
- 51:24Speaker 1: In our previous conversation, which was about Michael Jackson and
- 51:27Speaker 1: your book about Michael Jackson, he himself questioned the assassination
- 51:31Speaker 1: and that's the link.
- 51:34Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he did question. So he wrote a song
- 51:36Speaker 2: about it, about both the physical and the character. Assassination
- 51:40Speaker 2: of JFK is called Tabloid Junkie, and I think he's
- 51:44Speaker 2: was absolutely brilliant for merging those two things together, because
- 51:47Speaker 2: it was a sort of dual assassination or a sort
- 51:50Speaker 2: of dual erasure of JFK. And I'm really grateful to
- 51:54Speaker 2: him for sort of planting that seed in my mind
- 51:57Speaker 2: and getting me to understand that, you know, was the
- 52:00Speaker 2: physical assassination. But you know, MJ's words were they resurrected him,
- 52:05Speaker 2: and I think that's what was happening in the nineteen seventies.
- 52:07Speaker 2: They resurrected him as this sort of mob dealing playboy,
- 52:12Speaker 2: and that was again to sort of it was a
- 52:15Speaker 2: way to cover up the assassination, I think, And I
- 52:17Speaker 2: think he understood that brilliantly, and he I think he
- 52:20Speaker 2: captured that brilliantly in.
- 52:21Speaker 1: That song Grossy Knoll.
- 52:24Speaker 2: Yes, no exactly, and he you know, and he's sort
- 52:27Speaker 2: of saying, like, you know, they mutilated his image, and
- 52:31Speaker 2: then he's saying, truth be told the Grassy Knoll and
- 52:33Speaker 2: so I think, you know, I think it took a
- 52:36Speaker 2: lot of guts to say that, and I think, you know,
- 52:37Speaker 2: the truth does lie there both like kind of literally
- 52:41Speaker 2: and like metaphorically or whatever.
- 52:43Speaker 1: And yet also ironically, the same thing happened to Michael.
- 52:49Speaker 2: Yes, like he you know, I don't know if there
- 52:52Speaker 2: was foul play in his death or not, but certainly
- 52:54Speaker 2: his death was very strange, and certainly if he wasn't
- 52:57Speaker 2: directly killed, I think he was indirectly killed in the
- 53:01Speaker 2: sense that he was bullied to death. You know that
- 53:03Speaker 2: he was just so desperate to sleep and he you know,
- 53:06Speaker 2: he suffered so much trauma in his life, and a
- 53:09Speaker 2: lot of it was slander due to slander from the press.
- 53:12Speaker 2: You know, I think Kennedy's been slandered in a lot
- 53:14Speaker 2: of ways after his death, but he wasn't so much
- 53:17Speaker 2: in his life, whereas Michael Jackson was slandered while he
- 53:21Speaker 2: was alive, and so that slander. You know. He said,
- 53:23Speaker 2: like with your pen, you torture men. So I think
- 53:26Speaker 2: he kind of felt like he was being tortured by
- 53:28Speaker 2: the press and you know, by the establishment, and I
- 53:31Speaker 2: think that did ultimately lead to his death.
- 53:34Speaker 1: Why was RFK targeted?
- 53:37Speaker 2: I think because he would have reopened the investigation into
- 53:40Speaker 2: the JFK assassination because he was very interested in his
- 53:43Speaker 2: brother's assassination. And I think he would have done an
- 53:46Speaker 2: actual investigation, not a cover up, not a sweeping under
- 53:50Speaker 2: the rug. And so I think you could not allow
- 53:53Speaker 2: RFK to be president because that's the only way he
- 53:55Speaker 2: could enforce all the government agencies to participate in a
- 53:59Speaker 2: proper investigation. That seems to me to be the motive
- 54:04Speaker 2: for killing him. You know, I can't say definitively.
- 54:06Speaker 1: But I mean, who else is able to reopen an investigation?
- 54:11Speaker 1: Only the US president, I think.
- 54:14Speaker 2: So I mean, I mean, yes, I mean certainly citizens
- 54:20Speaker 2: can investigate it, and citizens have been investigating it for years,
- 54:24Speaker 2: but it's about getting an audience. That's part of the
- 54:26Speaker 2: problem is like, you know, a lot of citizens have
- 54:29Speaker 2: done a lot of good work on the assassination, but
- 54:31Speaker 2: how do you get it to a wide audience. How
- 54:34Speaker 2: do you get the American people to understand it? And
- 54:38Speaker 2: I think that can only come from the president or
- 54:40Speaker 2: from very high up, or from the media or something
- 54:43Speaker 2: like that. But our mainstream media is not going to
- 54:46Speaker 2: do that.
- 54:48Speaker 1: So what does that statement? Was it Nicholas Katzenbacher something
- 54:51Speaker 1: and you said a day after, a day after the
- 54:55Speaker 1: assassination that it was it was Oswald?
- 54:59Speaker 2: Yeah, And well he didn't say it was Oswald. He said,
- 55:02Speaker 2: we have to convince the public that it was Oswald, right,
- 55:05Speaker 2: So I think that's really important to understand. I don't
- 55:08Speaker 2: think he cared if it was Oswald or not. He
- 55:10Speaker 2: cared that this thing gets swept under the rug. And
- 55:13Speaker 2: that was sort of everyone's attitude is we have to
- 55:15Speaker 2: cover up this crime, which is really really sad, you know,
- 55:19Speaker 2: And I get Lbj's World War three scare, but it's
- 55:22Speaker 2: just like, if you cover up that kind of crime,
- 55:25Speaker 2: you're not a healthy society.
- 55:27Speaker 1: But LBJ also didn't really have a good relationship with JFK.
- 55:31Speaker 2: No, because so LBJ kind of got pushed on JFK.
- 55:36Speaker 2: And I wonder if that was intentional as a sort
- 55:38Speaker 2: of insurance policy, you know, if JK becomes too problematic,
- 55:42Speaker 2: we'll just install LBJ. So LBJ was Senate Majority Leader
- 55:46Speaker 2: at the time, and so Philip Graham and Joseph also
- 55:51Speaker 2: encouraged JFK to try to smooth things over with LBJ
- 55:55Speaker 2: and offer him the VP spot because JFK was really
- 55:58Speaker 2: concerned that if he has a bitter LBJ a Senate
- 56:01Speaker 2: Majority leader, he's going to block all of JFK's legislation,
- 56:04Speaker 2: like he would have probably never gotten the Nuclear Test
- 56:07Speaker 2: Band Treaty ratified, and so he knew he had to
- 56:09Speaker 2: deal with the LBAJ issues. So he went downstairs and
- 56:12Speaker 2: tried to just smooth things over. And according to Arthur's Lessenger,
- 56:16Speaker 2: he didn't actually offer him the VP spot. He sort
- 56:19Speaker 2: of like held it out just to try to smooth
- 56:21Speaker 2: things over, and and LBJ wrapped at it. He like
- 56:25Speaker 2: took it. And then JFK went to talk to Bobby
- 56:27Speaker 2: and he said, you'll never believe it. He wants it.
- 56:29Speaker 2: What the hell do we do now? So then Bobby
- 56:32Speaker 2: went downstairs to talk to LBJ to try to talk
- 56:34Speaker 2: him out of it, and LBJ never ever forgave Bobby
- 56:37Speaker 2: for that for trying to talk him out of the
- 56:39Speaker 2: VP spot. But Bobby was not successful, so LBJ ended
- 56:42Speaker 2: up being VP, and JFK was relieved not to have
- 56:45Speaker 2: him as Senate Majority Leader, but he wasn't really he
- 56:48Speaker 2: didn't really want him as VP either, but he thought
- 56:50Speaker 2: he was like competent enough, like he thought, you know,
- 56:53Speaker 2: he didn't. He thought he was kind of vindictive and bitter,
- 56:56Speaker 2: but still competent. But then later Jackie Kennedy said in
- 56:59Speaker 2: her Oral History that by nineteen sixty three, JFK thought
- 57:03Speaker 2: LBJ was totally incompetent, Like he would say, my god,
- 57:06Speaker 2: can you imagine what will happen to this country if
- 57:08Speaker 2: LBJ ever becomes president? So by that, you know, by
- 57:12Speaker 2: the end of his life, he thought LBJ was absolutely
- 57:16Speaker 2: like horrible or incompetent. I should say, so, yeah, they
- 57:21Speaker 2: were not. They did not have a great relationship at all,
- 57:24Speaker 2: And I think it was the worst mistake JFK ever made,
- 57:26Speaker 2: and I think it cost him his life because I
- 57:28Speaker 2: think if he had someone more like him as VP,
- 57:32Speaker 2: there would have been no benefit to assassinating him, because
- 57:35Speaker 2: then that person would have a continued the same policies
- 57:39Speaker 2: and B would have demanded an investigation, so you couldn't
- 57:42Speaker 2: get away with assassinating him. So I think it was
- 57:45Speaker 2: absolutely the worst choice of his life that he ever made,
- 57:48Speaker 2: and I think it cost him his life. I think
- 57:49Speaker 2: it's really important to look at the immediate short term
- 57:52Speaker 2: changes and also the long term changes. You know, it's
- 57:57Speaker 2: like because that's what we know, Like, we don't know,
- 58:00Speaker 2: we don't have one hundred percent proof of about the assassination,
- 58:04Speaker 2: but we do have one hundred percent proof on his policies.
- 58:07Speaker 2: So those are the things we can focus on. Those
- 58:09Speaker 2: are the things that we can honor JFK by honoring
- 58:11Speaker 2: his policies. And I feel like, and that's a start,
- 58:15Speaker 2: you know, that's a start.
- 58:17Speaker 1: A Monica way, Can I get your book Socking Of?
- 58:20Speaker 1: Follow your work?
- 58:21Speaker 2: Uh? My books are available on Amazon, thrift Books, Barnes,
- 58:25Speaker 2: and Noble, all the usual places. And then I'm online
- 58:28Speaker 2: on x just my name and also on substack just
- 58:32Speaker 2: my name.
- 58:33Speaker 1: I remember that one this time, all right, almost almost
- 58:40Speaker 1: almost call Lewinsky. I want to go away sac. Thank
- 58:49Speaker 1: you for joining me in the trenches.
- 58:51Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back on