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

Speaker 2 Call Zone Media.

Speaker 7 Robert Evans here, and I just finished committing a light form of tree genocide on some invasive trees that live in my side yard called the Trees of Paradise.

Speaker 7 If you've ever encountered one of these trees, go murder it right now.

Speaker 3 Stop your podcast.

Speaker 10 Kill that tree.

Speaker 3 If it's on your neighbor's property, knock down their fence.

Speaker 15 Do whatever you have to do to get to that tree. Kill it.

Speaker 16 Kill them all.

Speaker 23 Garrison Davis, welcome to the show hello thank you so violent do you hate the tree of paradise garrison i remember some struggles years ago but my my problems have uh have escalated yeah the it's this it's the tree that smells like yeast when you cut it down and grows forever and very quickly it's the devil it's the evil tree no luckily there's no trees on the east coast so not much problem they got rid of all the trees

Speaker 10 not as much of a joke as we'd like it to be um

Speaker 15 they've been growing back over the last 200 years, but yeah, they did kill all the old growth a while ago.

Speaker 34 Garrison, speaking of killing the planet, you know who loves to kill the planet?

Speaker 21 Billionaires, I guess. I don't know.
Fascists, billionaires, that whole area.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, billionaires, fascists, and the political party that they largely use for a lot of their dirty work, the Republican Party.

Speaker 22 This week, we're talking about a guy who is responsible for kind of breaking politics in a major way in the United States.

Speaker 7 He played a huge role in getting Ronald Reagan and George H.W.

Speaker 44 Bush elected.

Speaker 14 And he pioneered a kind of polling called push-polling.

Speaker 47 That's like one of the most toxic methods of doing, you know, dirty tricks campaign ads to this day.

Speaker 48 This is kind of the guy who invented the way modern presidential elections work.

Speaker 49 He's a fella named Lee Atwater, and he was a strategist for the Republican Party.

Speaker 20 Have you heard of this guy?

Speaker 21 I've heard of the name. I feel like it's one of those like Roger Stone types.
They've probably like combined him with a few other people,

Speaker 21 but don't have a clear idea on like who this guy is. But it's like one of the, it's like somewhere in like in that Rolodex of guy.

Speaker 41 Yes, he's very close to Roger Stone.

Speaker 38 He was much smarter and better at his job.

Speaker 54 Like Roger Stone kind of drafted a lot off of Lee's accomplishments.

Speaker 59 The thing Lee is, one of the things Lee is most known for is his protege was Karl Rove.

Speaker 7 George W.

Speaker 57 Bush's campaign manager.

Speaker 26 Like he was the guy who got Karl Rove his start and taught him everything he knows.

Speaker 61 The guy who George W.

Speaker 51 Bush nicknamed Turd Blossom.

Speaker 12 That's a true story, Garrison.

Speaker 38 And that was a compliment.

Speaker 21 I can't believe our president would pick demeaning names for his friends to slash enemies. This is crazy.

Speaker 64 It was not meant to be.

Speaker 24 Anyway,

Speaker 23 that's another story for another day when we do the Karl Rove episodes.

Speaker 67 But this guy, Lee Atwater, is one of my slept on.

Speaker 29 Like, if you had a time machine, who would you go back and assassinate guys?

Speaker 68 Like, no, no, no.

Speaker 37 Really?

Speaker 70 I'm going after Atwater.

Speaker 66 Yes.

Speaker 71 Wow. We'll We'll see how you feel about this.

Speaker 21 What do you think the trickle-down effects of that are going to be?

Speaker 33 Well, you know, you never know when you go back in time and assassinate.

Speaker 21 This is what we know about time travel. Yes.

Speaker 14 Like, I went back in time and assassinated, you know, super Hitler, and we just got regular Hitler.

Speaker 17 And now everybody thinks regular Hitler was just as bad as Super Hitler.

Speaker 76 Trust me, Super Hitler was much worse than regular Hitler.

Speaker 3 But, you know, it turns out it's Hitler's all the way down.

Speaker 24 If you keep killing Hitler's, you just get different versions of Hitler's.

Speaker 10 Anyway, a little bit of time travel information for those of you out there looking to go back in time and kill regular Hitler.

Speaker 49 Someone already did it.

Speaker 21 Wow. I mean, yeah, that is kind of what happens in Terminator, right?

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 78 Basically, yeah, that's the gist of Terminator.

Speaker 21 Because I've seen like five different CG, like Arnold Schwarzeneggers at this point. So

Speaker 21 no matter what you take care of, they're always going to make some deep-faked version again.

Speaker 79 Yeah, that's really the ultimate message of the Terminator movie.

Speaker 75 Oh my God, deep fake Hitler?

Speaker 21 When's that going to be in a blockbuster?

Speaker 66 That's already the Hitler we've got, Garrison.

Speaker 1 Keep up.

Speaker 78 It's not the original one.

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Speaker 78 All right, that's the end of this cold open.

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Speaker 37 We're back.

Speaker 92 So we're talking about Lee Atwater, who was born Harvey Leroy Atwater.

Speaker 94 And he would always describe his upbringing, his family background as the middle of the middle class.

Speaker 12 Now, whenever a high-ranking political strategist kind of guy says that I came from the very middle of the middle, he was a pretty wealthy guy.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 28 Top, we'll say top of the middle.

Speaker 68 He wasn't rich, but top of the middle class, right?

Speaker 21 Comfortable.

Speaker 49 He and his, he and both his mom and his dad know like their family origins in the United States going back 200 something years, which is not like the norm for an American, right?

Speaker 49 It's a little more normal in these kind of like Carolina families than it is in, say, Oregon, but this is not.

Speaker 21 Or, you know, with like the 23andMe stuff where you can like find it, but yeah.

Speaker 67 No,

Speaker 49 they know their relatives because they had famous ancestors.

Speaker 21 They have like a family lineage.

Speaker 22 Right, right.

Speaker 27 His mother was Totty Page.

Speaker 57 She got the name Toddy because she toddled around as a kid, I think.

Speaker 98 And he, she, it's a very like fucking middle 20th century wife name.

Speaker 53 Yeah, Totty.

Speaker 3 She traced her family line back to a Revolutionary War hero named Alexander Craighead.

Speaker 95 His descendants married into a North Carolina family and migrated down to South Carolina, where they ultimately produced Gabriel Cannon Page, who became postmaster for the state and was the first Republican politician in the family.

Speaker 38 And this is back when the Republicans were unequivocally the good guys.

Speaker 31 We are talking about like Reconstruction era, right?

Speaker 21 This is like 1870s or something.

Speaker 99 Yeah, we're talking about like, I think pre, I think he starts before the Civil War.

Speaker 35 But yeah, this is this is like around the period when like they're definitely the good guys.

Speaker 95 He has a son called Leroy, which is where R.

Speaker 48 Lee Atwater takes his name from, who's born in 1891, and as a teenager is permanently maimed, has his leg fucked up forever in a horse-drawn wagon accident.

Speaker 11 You know it's going to be a good episode when we get a wagon accident right off the bat.

Speaker 101 Like a load-bearing wagon accident.

Speaker 90 This is important. This is an important wagon accident.

Speaker 8 I'll tell you why in a minute.

Speaker 43 Now, like most 20-year-olds in 1911, he elopes with a 16-year-old named Irene.

Speaker 103 He moves, I don't know, like a town over.

Speaker 63 It's not hard to elope elope back then.

Speaker 64 And he becomes a mailman like his father.

Speaker 12 He's able to support his siblings through the depression because he's the only page with a stable job.

Speaker 11 And his family recalls that because he's got this busted leg, he used to be a very active guy and he can't be physically active after his leg gets fucked up.

Speaker 54 And he compensates by becoming a really good storyteller.

Speaker 49 He's just spellbinding.

Speaker 104 He's so good that he publishes a volume of like tales from his childhood as a book.

Speaker 105 book, which I'm going to guess are like partly true, given his descendants, but he's got the gift of gab, and he's going to like pass this on to his kids, and it's going to become a thing that the men in the Page family are known for, as being like really smooth talkers, right?

Speaker 40 Really good at telling stories.

Speaker 11 Like his father, he grows up to be an extreme partisan Republican.

Speaker 71 In the book Bad Boy, a biography of Lee Atwater, John Brady writes, The Pages were Republicans in an era when there was no Republican Party in South Carolina.

Speaker 3 In 1932, when the framed portrait of FDR replaced the picture of Herbert Hoover in the classrooms of Spartanburg, there was enthusiastic applause from all but the page children who sat on their hands.

Speaker 75 Question.

Speaker 18 The worms turned.

Speaker 107 Why is the book called Bad Boy?

Speaker 97 Because that's his favorite song, Sophie.

Speaker 11 We'll be getting to Lee Atwater in a little bit and his love of RB. Don't you worry.

Speaker 16 Oh boy.

Speaker 21 This is the beginning of

Speaker 21 the little switcheroo.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 21 Not like a real switcheroo, but like shifting.

Speaker 21 Shifting politics, I guess.

Speaker 81 Right, right.

Speaker 24 And you're seeing also shifting racial politics.

Speaker 12 Like this is around the time when black voters stop voting for Republicans and start voting for Democrats.

Speaker 49 And you can kind of see the party has, this is now, the party has gone from like the party of Lincoln, violently opposed to slavery and supporting at least more equality than the other party, when they're like, FDR, that fucking communist, right?

Speaker 5 Like things have changed.

Speaker 40 The pages make sure that all of their children grow up voracious readers.

Speaker 52 And they were,

Speaker 55 we'd call them helicopter parents today, right?

Speaker 41 They're obsessively concerned with their kids, even their daughters' educations.

Speaker 76 They're studying their homework.

Speaker 61 They're like quizzing them and stuff.

Speaker 10 They're unusually involved in their education for parents of this period of time.

Speaker 90 And most of Toddy's elders live to their 90s.

Speaker 50 So she raises her kids with the expectation that you guys are going to live long lives, right?

Speaker 49 You know, it's traditional for her relatives to make it into their 90s.

Speaker 24 That is a little bit of foreshadowing.

Speaker 28 Damn.

Speaker 21 All these fucking guys just live forever, I swear to God.

Speaker 11 Garrison, I'm so happy about where this story ends.

Speaker 108 Not where it middles, but where it ends

Speaker 49 for that reason.

Speaker 55 So Lee's father is Hart.

Speaker 112 We talked about his mom, which is the Page family.

Speaker 12 His father, obviously, is where he gets the Atwater name.

Speaker 76 His dad's name is Harvey Atwater.

Speaker 51 And like the Pages, the Atwaters are one of those families who can trace their lineage back to the birth of the country, and in fact, beyond.

Speaker 52 David Atwater was the first member of the family to flee England for the New World, and he landed in New Haven, Connecticut in 1637.

Speaker 81 He and his wife had 10 children, and the Atwater family historian, because they have one of of those, wrote that they and quote, their children and grandchildren endured as many hardships, felled as many trees, fought as many Indians, burned as many witches, and tossed over as much tea, and were as good all-around pilgrim fathers and mothers as if Grandfather David had arrived in the Mayflower in 1620.

Speaker 74 Good all-around.

Speaker 16 Great.

Speaker 38 What an incredible sentence.

Speaker 50 So he's, they're one of those families.

Speaker 70 They're one of those families.

Speaker 21 Like right. Capital T, those.

Speaker 49 Yeah, those families. And it's very funny.

Speaker 105 They're the kind of family that, because again, his David Atwater arrives in 1637.

Speaker 94 The Mayflower arrives in 1620.

Speaker 49 And the family historian is like, well, I have to come up with an excuse for why they're as good, basically, as the people who arrived in 1620, right?

Speaker 112 Because that's a big difference to us.

Speaker 11 Like, the fact that we didn't quite make it onto the Mayflower is something that our family takes shit for.

Speaker 98 Oh, you guys got here 17 years later, huh?

Speaker 21 They're still trying to make up for it. Yeah.

Speaker 21 This has been a stain on our family history for centuries.

Speaker 68 Why wasn't he born 17 years earlier?

Speaker 28 God damn it, David.

Speaker 21 We really did not want the second generation pilgrim hat.

Speaker 34 No, no.

Speaker 75 It's not even second.

Speaker 53 But like, now, David.

Speaker 28 Late first.

Speaker 18 Late generation.

Speaker 13 And to be fair, David does do something to kind of make up for not making it onto the Mayflower, which is that he helps to found Yale.

Speaker 43 So again,

Speaker 74 the middle of the middle class, the Atwaters.

Speaker 38 Now, his great-grandson Russell is wounded during the Revolutionary War.

Speaker 11 And years later, this is one of the weirdest stories related to his family.

Speaker 38 So, Russell is a Revolutionary War veteran.

Speaker 29 And then, years later, when Napoleon Bonaparte goes into exile, Napoleon's like, I think I can escape from this island and I might make it to the new world.

Speaker 63 And for whatever reason, he contracts with Russell to buy land in New York State as a potential place for Napoleon Bonaparte to retire if he escapes.

Speaker 21 Which would have been so cool.

Speaker 68 What a wild thing that would be if they're just like, yeah, and that's Napoleon's house outside of Schenectady.

Speaker 28 Oh, that would be fun.

Speaker 61 I don't know if it was Schenectady where he bought the, it was somewhere in New York State.

Speaker 11 But yeah, Napoleon was thinking about retiring to New York, like Lee Pace.

Speaker 21 Really, two of history's giants?

Speaker 97 Two of history's giants.

Speaker 29 Only one of them in the literal sense.

Speaker 23 So again, we're not talking about super rich old money, but we are talking about both families are about as close as the U.S.

Speaker 11 gets to aristocracy, right?

Speaker 51 They have proud histories and they've got connections that go back generations to local politics and government in the Carolinas.

Speaker 46 And this is the legacy that Leroy Atwater, our Lee Atwater, was born to inherit when he came into the world on February 27th, 1951 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 72 That's how you guys say it, right?

Speaker 110 Yes, that is the official pronunciation.

Speaker 21 Thank you.

Speaker 59 Thank you. Just making sure so the Reddit doesn't come after me again.

Speaker 27 So at the time of his birth, his mom.

Speaker 38 It's atlanta atlanta like like that like like the at symbol like that's how she's yeah gosh uh so at the time of his birth his mother was a teacher and his father harvey was an insurance adjuster uh lee was born yes i hardly know her um garrison

Speaker 49 we should have done that for at water garrison what's i thought about it i don't i'm off my game today it's okay none of this is going as planned we had a little mix-up before recording um so lee is born like three weeks premature, and as a result, he's got like nervous twitches.

Speaker 14 He spasms constantly, right?

Speaker 71 As like a little kid, he like shakes and his legs are constantly twitching.

Speaker 90 And his parents take him to the doctor.

Speaker 61 And the doctor, I don't know if this is what's actually wrong because we're talking the 50s, but the doctor, probably while smoking a cigarette and still drunk from the night before, is like, oh, yeah, his nervous system's not finished cooking.

Speaker 78 Just let him finish.

Speaker 79 He'll be fine.

Speaker 77 I don't know that that's what happened.

Speaker 43 But he doesn't stop.

Speaker 11 Like, he always kind of has some of these like nervous system issues, right?

Speaker 110 Like, they'll plague him all of his life.

Speaker 99 And as a result, Toddy is like his 24-7 parent. Like, she's unable to get like a sitter because he cries anytime she leaves.

Speaker 73 He needs like constant 24-hour attention.

Speaker 48 He barely sleeps.

Speaker 60 He's a sickly child, right?

Speaker 11 For the first couple of years of his life.

Speaker 58 So he is, he's, he's attached to his mom.

Speaker 7 And she is, by all accounts, an extremely dedicated mother.

Speaker 61 He has trouble sleeping.

Speaker 29 He can't stand being alone.

Speaker 48 One of the stories I've read about him as a baby is that he he develops a habit of banging his head on his crib to rock himself to sleep.

Speaker 17 And he does it so often that he gets like a bald spot callus on the back of his head.

Speaker 12 That's terrible.

Speaker 30 It's fucked up.

Speaker 71 This kid's childhood is a nightmare, actually.

Speaker 24 It's about to get a lot worse.

Speaker 12 He has one of the worst childhoods I've ever heard of in one of these bastards.

Speaker 3 For a kid who's got both of his parents and has like a comfortable standard of living.

Speaker 92 It's rough.

Speaker 63 Now, Toddy is an attentive and devoted mother.

Speaker 93 His dad is kind of a 50s dad. He's mainly working.

Speaker 4 He's not super emotionally available, but there's nothing, I don't get any sort of allegations that he was like abusive or anything like that either.

Speaker 104 So you could do worse for a 50s dad than his father.

Speaker 11 Now, Lee is, again, he's kind of a late bloomer, but once he starts going, once he starts growing up,

Speaker 51 he's kind of like a fucking rocket ship.

Speaker 23 John Brady, his biographer, writes, Lee walked at one year, but then he ran.

Speaker 8 He talked early and often.

Speaker 48 By two, onlookers thought he could read, but he had memorized books his mother read to him on her lap.

Speaker 24 At age two and a half, he could recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the Charleston commencement program in nursery school.

Speaker 17 Proud Toddy made him say it for company.

Speaker 34 Not great.

Speaker 22 Not great.

Speaker 21 That's always a bad start when they start acting like this.

Speaker 94 And it's he, the fact that from he gets praise as a little kid for tricking adults into thinking he can read is a lifelong pattern with Lee, right?

Speaker 8 And he seems to be come up with the understanding that like, all that matters is perception.

Speaker 9 If people think I can do something, it doesn't matter if I've done it or not.

Speaker 13 What matters is I've tricked them into thinking I've done it, right?

Speaker 82 Like

Speaker 61 that's going to be the core of how this guy relates to other people for his entire life.

Speaker 67 That like lying and misleading someone into thinking that you did something is as good as doing the thing.

Speaker 21 Sounds like he's born for politics.

Speaker 68 Sounds like he is born for politics.

Speaker 63 No one has ever been more born for politics than Lee Atwater.

Speaker 31 It's remarkable.

Speaker 22 Wow.

Speaker 95 Now, as I kind of insinuated here, his greatest asset is his memory and his mother's attentiveness.

Speaker 34 She takes him to museums and to historic sites constantly, and he files away everything she and the different museum docents tell him, which gives his first teachers the impression that he's super well-read for a little boy.

Speaker 24 By the time he started preschool, he had memorized all the presidents, and he's kind of

Speaker 8 obscuring the fact that he can't read, and he doesn't learn how to read or write for, you know, until later than would otherwise have been normal because he's kind of able to trick them.

Speaker 52 His handwriting is illegible.

Speaker 12 It never really gets better throughout his life.

Speaker 51 Some of this is a result of the nerve.

Speaker 48 He can't hold a pen or a pencil properly.

Speaker 73 He's described as always holding writing implements like chalk because he's got like these weird nerve issues.

Speaker 21 Yeah, he has like the big like vice grip thing.

Speaker 37 Right, right, right. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Which obviously that's not his fault, but that's, you know, a factor in how he comes up the way he does.

Speaker 21 I wonder if that caused him to like overcompensate by working on his memory because he had these like fine motor issues, because he had issues with reading.

Speaker 21 It basically trained his brain that the best way for him to process and hold information is just through sheer memorization.

Speaker 18 I think not this like actual

Speaker 21 act of understanding.

Speaker 49 Yeah, and I think that is what happens.

Speaker 9 And it's a major factor in why he's good at the things he's doing because he's very fast on his feet.

Speaker 48 He's very mentally fast on his feet, right?

Speaker 25 But he's not a guy who really thinks through the consequences of his actions or cares all that much.

Speaker 3 His bad coordination and spasms are joined by a tendency to shake his legs and work his mouth constantly.

Speaker 43 And And today,

Speaker 9 this kid would be diagnosed with ADHD so fucking quickly, right?

Speaker 31 Sure.

Speaker 29 But we had not invented that yet.

Speaker 81 And so her mom was just told, he's got too much energy.

Speaker 55 You got to tire him out.

Speaker 72 You know, make him run around the yard a bunch.

Speaker 3 It being the 50s, his parents saw no issue in letting him work that energy out by wandering around town or in the woods on his own.

Speaker 24 As a three-year-old, he became obsessed with Native American mythology and began dressing as a stereotypical Indian chief on a daily basis, carrying a real tomahawk wherever he went, because, again, it was the 50s, and that was fine.

Speaker 70 Little three-year-old, look at him. He's got a little axe.
Isn't that cute? He's just swinging it around. Blade, razor-sharp.

Speaker 82 Oh, you can shave with it.

Speaker 116 On November 18th, 1953, Lee's little brother, Joe, was born.

Speaker 17 Later family recollections would remember that Lee was frustrated by the fact that his parents now had less attention to shower on him, and he acted out.

Speaker 69 He's the oldest.

Speaker 110 He's the oldest, yes.

Speaker 18 Eldest child.

Speaker 75 The oldest child.

Speaker 16 Not the eldest boy.

Speaker 72 The eldest boy.

Speaker 72 And he acts out.

Speaker 18 Thank you, Sophie.

Speaker 36 Well, no, I think he's the oldest child.

Speaker 10 Their daughter's the youngest.

Speaker 112 Yeah, so he's the oldest.

Speaker 16 That went right over your head.

Speaker 74 It's fine. It's fine.

Speaker 74 It's fine.

Speaker 115 Okay.

Speaker 6 He acted out, tearing down curtains and causing other messes to get her attention, which Toddy handled by convincing Lee to play with his younger brother.

Speaker 49 In time, he became as devoted to Joe as his mom had been to him.

Speaker 48 And he told his parents proudly, I've got me a playmate for the rest of my life.

Speaker 49 That is again foreshadowing.

Speaker 21 Oh, so sweet.

Speaker 108 Yeah, sweet.

Speaker 10 The Edwaters moved around a lot during Lee's early childhood.

Speaker 35 His father had studied to become a lawyer, but quit to work as an insurance adjuster.

Speaker 57 And his change in ambitions was followed by moving first from Georgia to Charleston and then from Charleston, finally to Aiken, South Carolina.

Speaker 6 Now, the year after they moved to South Carolina, their senator, Strom Thurmond, would become famous for launching the longest continuous Philadelphia guy.

Speaker 90 This fucking guy. Oh, Strom's a big part of the story, Garrison.

Speaker 24 You're not ready for how involved in all this Strom fucking Thurmond is.

Speaker 16 That's so good.

Speaker 78 Which is like, if you don't know anything, if someone's like, hey, who do you think Strom Thurmond was?

Speaker 61 If they just tell you he was a sinner, you'd be like, well, I bet he was a racist one.

Speaker 74 He's the perfect name for who he is.

Speaker 97 That's the racist guy name.

Speaker 30 Like, that's that's on ontological or determination, whatever the fuck they, what is it?

Speaker 51 Nominative determinism, right?

Speaker 36 Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 49 That's it. His name made him a racist.

Speaker 112 That's what I'm blaming on it, not his inherent characteristics.

Speaker 52 So he became famous for launching the longest continuous filibuster in the history of the United States from 8.54 p.m.

Speaker 102 At that point.

Speaker 28 Until our hero, Corey Booker.

Speaker 71 Did Corey beat it?

Speaker 75 One sec. Yeah.

Speaker 108 I got to check this out.

Speaker 74 This is in the news this year.

Speaker 103 We talked about this.

Speaker 108 Yeah.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 61 up until Corey Booker, Strom Perry was the longest continuous filibuster in the history of the United States, 24 24 hours and 18 minutes.

Speaker 48 Strom held forth a nonstop tirade against what he saw as the most evil piece of legislation in his lifetime, the Civil Rights Act.

Speaker 11 That is what he is trying to stop.

Speaker 27 Thurmond said during his filibuster, I'm convinced that this is bad proposed legislation, which never should have been introduced, which never should have been approved by the Senate.

Speaker 27 I urge every member of this body to consider this bill most carefully.

Speaker 99 I hope the Senate will see fit to kill it.

Speaker 112 Now, that's the most polite thing Strom Thurmond's going to say about civil rights in this period of time.

Speaker 3 Thurmond had previously been governor of South Carolina and had run as a presidential candidate for the Dixiecrats, which was, you know, the Southern Democrats.

Speaker 63 We'll talk about what the Dixiecrats are in a second, in 1948.

Speaker 38 And when he wasn't up before Congress, his language about these matters was often a lot less polite.

Speaker 81 An article in WNYC Studios, The Takeaway, summarizes, quote, almost a decade before Thurman's filibuster, Southern state separatist leaders had revolted in opposition to President Harry Truman's civil rights platform in 1948.

Speaker 38 Democrats dubbed themselves Dixiecrats and spoke about taking back the country that was being turned into an unrecognizable dictatorship.

Speaker 55 And here's Thurmond.

Speaker 27 The Civil Rights Act simply means it's another means, that it's another effort on the part of this president to dominate the country by force and to put into effect these uncalled for and the damnable proposals he has recommended under the guise of so-called civil rights.

Speaker 48 And I tell you, the American people, from one side to the other, had better wake up and oppose such a program.

Speaker 43 And if they don't, the next thing will be a totalitarian state in these United States.

Speaker 48 There's There's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the inward race into our theaters, our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches, Thurman said.

Speaker 75 And he is a

Speaker 103 hard star every time.

Speaker 82 Yeah, we should have, oh boy, maybe the butt, we should have sent out the B-49s

Speaker 75 to

Speaker 75 carpet blocking.

Speaker 21 This is like one of the last gasps of the Southern Democrats

Speaker 21 before like the, you know, the time switch over. The Social Democrats, like the progressive wing, which gained a lot of success under FDR, was able to exert more, more influence over the whole party.

Speaker 21 And then the Southern Democrats kind of like fizzled throughout the 50s then.

Speaker 81 Well, and they switched over.

Speaker 8 Thurmond is going to become a Republican, right?

Speaker 51 A lot of these Southern Democrats become Republicans.

Speaker 76 That's actually part of the story that we're going to be telling this week.

Speaker 3 So Strom Thurmond is their senator when they move to Aiken, South Carolina.

Speaker 63 And I bring that up not just because he's the senator in their state, because Lee might not have known much about this.

Speaker 67 They move in down.

Speaker 113 They're like three doors down from Strom Thurmond.

Speaker 80 He is their next door neighbor, right?

Speaker 50 Lee Atwater meets him for the first time

Speaker 67 on Halloween, 1956, the year before that filibuster.

Speaker 21 Fucking screenwriters on the nose. Chill out, guys.

Speaker 75 I know, I know.

Speaker 103 It's amazing.

Speaker 50 He later recalled he came out and gave me a Snickers candy bar.

Speaker 97 That was the best thing I got that year.

Speaker 77 So I liked Senator Thurmond, but I didn't know anything about politics.

Speaker 102 This fucking thing.

Speaker 77 He gave out the full-size candy bars. Look,

Speaker 50 he's a racist, but full-size candy bars for Halloween.

Speaker 43 Who's to say if he's bad?

Speaker 102 Snickers satisfies. We are.

Speaker 28 Wow. We are.

Speaker 119 Speaking of things that satisfy.

Speaker 21 Good job, Sarah.

Speaker 3 Satisfying things.

Speaker 102 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 10 Good work.

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Speaker 87 Okay, if you thought season two of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions was spicy, buckle up. Season three is here, and Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are taking things deeper.

Speaker 87 They're tackling trending topics, offering practical advice, and having hilarious and heartfelt conversations with a range of queer celebs and sexperts who know their stuff.

Speaker 87 This season, they're covering it all, from circuit culture to hookup horror stories to locker room shenanigans. No stone is left unturned.

Speaker 123 And let's be real, 2025 hasn't exactly been a breeze.

Speaker 87 So Gabe and Chris are doing the work, keeping the community informed with chats on prep, harm reduction, and how to cruise smart in a wild political climate.

Speaker 88 Oh, and this season, they want to hear your stories.

Speaker 87 Their call-in segment is getting even hotter, and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air.

Speaker 124 No pressure. So if you're ready for round three, just push play.

Speaker 87 Sniffy's Cruising Confession, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 89 New episodes every Thursday.

Speaker 85 This is Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

Speaker 85 Now, I know I didn't invent being a busy mom, but during football season, between the sideline gig, everything else I have going on, and my little one, it's a lot.

Speaker 85 That's why I'm seriously excited to be teaming up with Gerber. They do so much to make football season a more parent-friendly experience.

Speaker 85 I mean, over 95 years, they've been the MVP for parents who just want to nourish their little ones with stuff they can trust. And you can certainly trust Gerber.

Speaker 85 Did you know Gerber holds the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand out there? And Gerber has certainly been a go-to for me.

Speaker 85 Right now, in between naps to dinner, or, you know, on the way home from school, it's all about keeping Mac happy. If he's sitting and he starts to get a little frustrated, here, have a yogurt melt.

Speaker 85 It will put you in such a better mood, which means I'm in a better mood too. It all comes down to this.
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Speaker 85 And that really lightens the load for me. So grab your little ones, Gerber favorites at a store near you.

Speaker 82 We're back.

Speaker 72 And yeah,

Speaker 3 if you want to just look up up Strom Thurmond, you can find a lot of quotes of him using a lot of slurs.

Speaker 105 This is the kind,

Speaker 72 as a kid, my parents were both into the whole, like, well, he, you know, he was, it was, it was more about states' rights for him.

Speaker 38 He wasn't like, it was about racism for him.

Speaker 63 And that's what Thurmond said when it became unpopular to be racist later.

Speaker 75 Is that like, well, I was never racist. It was

Speaker 37 a hard R every time. Every time.
Like,

Speaker 43 also, when he was in his 20s,

Speaker 5 he impregnates a 15 year old house servant and has an interracial kid so he is constantly as he's preaching racism preaching against his own illegitimate child that he raped a child to have strom thermod that's really bad fun guy well maybe we'll cover him one of these days really glad he's dead yeah he lived way too long

Speaker 21 this motherfucker lived forever this like a few days ago like like james dobson died at like like 90 something it's like

Speaker 21 are are we gonna celebrate this no not really Kissinger, like they're all fucking immortal.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I'm glad he's dead. They got the damage.

Speaker 38 Everything he wanted to do.

Speaker 21 Dobson's one of the most successful political actors of the past 50 years.

Speaker 21 He won.

Speaker 21 I almost feel bad

Speaker 21 sharing memes. Because

Speaker 21 it's not good.

Speaker 27 And that's what I'll tell you about this.

Speaker 90 Lee Atwater's tactics win.

Speaker 3 He doesn't personally get to win.

Speaker 44 So there's a little bit of satisfaction in those episodes from that.

Speaker 38 A little solace, a quantum of solace to steal from the James Bond books.

Speaker 8 So obviously being down the street from Strom Thurmond doesn't make you a bastard, but Lee's going to go on to have a strong relationship with him throughout his life.

Speaker 48 And while at this point his parents are Republicans and Thurmond was a Democrat, Strom is going to change his political affiliation in the not-too-distant future as it becomes clear that the Republican Party is now the party of segregation.

Speaker 17 Just a few weeks before that fateful Halloween happened where he gets the full-size Snickers bar, something else would happen that was a lot less pleasant and would influence young Lee's future life even more than Strom Thurmond.

Speaker 118 This is maybe the definitive moment of his life.

Speaker 63 On the afternoon of October 5th, Toddi decides to cook a batch of doughnuts.

Speaker 118 Her husband's coming home from work, but he's like late to dinner and she's trying to pass the time.

Speaker 55 So she's like, why don't we make a batch of donuts?

Speaker 23 You know, Lee is in watching TV.

Speaker 61 Brother Joe is kind of toddling around.

Speaker 25 He's like three.

Speaker 57 She's struggling with a migraine.

Speaker 3 So she's like, she's not paying as much attention as she'd normally pay to the task.

Speaker 29 And this becomes a problem because cooking donuts, at least at that point, the only real way to do it is you're putting a deep fat fryer on top of the stove and you're filling it with oil.

Speaker 27 So you've got this huge thing filled with oil.

Speaker 16 Now, again, Lee, who's six, is watching TV and three-year-old Joe toddles into the kitchen and gets up on top of a trash can and starts like fiddling with the fryer.

Speaker 38 And she tells him to get down.

Speaker 57 And he trips and the trash can fall and he pulls the fryer on top of himself.

Speaker 38 And in an instant, this three-year-old boy is coated head to toe in boiling oil.

Speaker 29 Now, this is an instantly fatal injury in that the instant it happens, he's dead, but he doesn't die instantly.

Speaker 35 It's just there's no treating this.

Speaker 43 Today, you couldn't fix this.

Speaker 48 He has immediately 90-degree, like 30-degree burns over 90% of his body.

Speaker 3 This could not be fixed today.

Speaker 49 This is simply an unsurvivable accident.

Speaker 4 And Lee runs into the room to see the skin melting off of his baby brother, who is screeching.

Speaker 7 His mom is screaming.

Speaker 48 Their dad comes home right after this, starts panicking and like throwing rice on the ground at the kid.

Speaker 49 Just, I don't think he knows what to do.

Speaker 38 Everybody's like, this is, I can't imagine a more traumatic thing, right?

Speaker 8 Than watching your little brother melt to death.

Speaker 97 They get him to the hospital.

Speaker 12 He dies several hours later.

Speaker 61 The entire family, I mean, I should, it's like saying the family is traumatized.

Speaker 66 It's like, what?

Speaker 112 That's not even necessary.

Speaker 55 Of course, they are.

Speaker 21 No matter like what your family is, like, this is going to be a tragic event. Like, this is, that's

Speaker 115 really bad. Yeah.

Speaker 45 And the people who knew Lee well would say that he was, this changes him forever.

Speaker 21 He's going to fuck up a six-child.

Speaker 58 My opinion is that I think part of why he is the way he is is that from this point on, he's like, the world's chaos.

Speaker 17 It doesn't matter what I do.

Speaker 77 It's like, it's just all about personal gratification.

Speaker 72 Like, fuck it.

Speaker 22 Fuck the world.

Speaker 36 Right.

Speaker 3 That's just my interpretation.

Speaker 49 Jane Mayer, the journalist writing for The New Yorker, knew Lee when he was an adult and would write years later, quote, he said that he heard the sounds of his brother's screams every day of his life.

Speaker 15 And I have no reason to doubt that.

Speaker 66 Lee Atwater lies about a lot.

Speaker 16 I have no reason to doubt that. That's really bad.
You probably hear that forever.

Speaker 21 Yeah. Yeah, that's really bad.

Speaker 36 Just the worst thing I can conceive of, pretty much.

Speaker 75 No, that's going to be, yeah.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 28 Jesus.

Speaker 23 So this is going to be a formative experience for young Lee.

Speaker 81 And again, I think this jerks him out of what you might call normal life, normal society.

Speaker 21 Yeah, this is going to make anyone, no matter who you are, just a more broken person.

Speaker 24 Yeah, I think it gives him a sense of separation from the rest of humanity right like he's going to see himself as subject to different rules and as a different kind and i think this is part of it i think this just almost plucks him out of the regular world it's like so disorienting and dissociating this horror of this um

Speaker 7 anyway that's my opinion we'll see what you think The next year, Lee starts first grade and he gravitates towards the performing arts.

Speaker 48 In 1961, his father is promoted and they move one last time they'd stayed in the house for a few years because his dad had been like if we move it's just hiding from what happened we should face it his mom really wanted to get out of the house where she watched her baby spoil to death yeah yeah

Speaker 26 um when they move though lee begs his parents never to make him change schools again and they don't um he later in life would express that moving around where they did and ending up ultimately in columbia gave him a good ground level view of like the critical political points in in their state which would be crucial in his political future.

Speaker 21 So now he's no longer like next door neighbors with Thurman at most points.

Speaker 8 No, but the family have become friends and they have a connection that will last the rest of their lives, right? Like his parents know how to contact Straham like because they were neighbors.

Speaker 21 In more ways than one, the damage is already done.

Speaker 58 The damage is already done. You have to imagine.

Speaker 63 I mean, Straw and Thurman probably like reached out and brought up a casserole after their son boiled to death or something.

Speaker 102 You said this. In the 50s.

Speaker 21 You said this was a few weeks before the Snickers.

Speaker 18 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 21 So I guess he like meets Thurman like a few weeks later.

Speaker 8 Honestly, that might have been why Thurman gave them, they may have known it. I mean, because the family had moved in a while, but that may have been why he got a full-size candy bar.

Speaker 77 Thurman's like, fuck, the least I could do is give this kid a lot of candy.

Speaker 4 So Lee's classmates and teachers recall him as a bad student.

Speaker 49 His friend David Yon noted that he was, quote, unable to stay focused, always switching channels.

Speaker 112 And John Brady writes in his biography, Lee learned early how to have his way with other kids, not physically, but through other means of manipulation and control that left him clearly in charge of relationships.

Speaker 48 Lee became a prankster, sending birthday invitations to all of the girls in class from David Yon, who was too shy to throw a party, even if it was his birthday.

Speaker 112 It wasn't.

Speaker 28 So like, okay.

Speaker 32 There's a lot of fun moments in this kid is.

Speaker 74 God forbid a kid have a little fun.

Speaker 41 God forbid a child enjoy himself.

Speaker 21 Although I can see how these tactics might become useful in politics later down the line.

Speaker 105 Right.

Speaker 35 And the point that Brady is making is like, he can't have like an equal relationship with you.

Speaker 61 Like, that's kind of why he's always got to be pulling pranks is there has to be, he has to know something you don't.

Speaker 112 He has to have some degree of like power, right?

Speaker 83 That seems to be almost compulsive for him.

Speaker 54 Um, now that said, he's a lot of fun to be around.

Speaker 49 He has a lot of friends, and they recall him.

Speaker 38 He's always fucking around.

Speaker 54 His pranks can be pretty mean sometimes, but he's always a lot of fun.

Speaker 60 Um, and depending on the source, he's always, he's either described as manipulative or a leader.

Speaker 95 And I don't think those two things are exclusive.

Speaker 18 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 72 He's just always in charge, you know?

Speaker 14 i can't believe this i can't believe this cult leader was also manipulative right his friend and future south carolina governor carol campbell recalled him being good at organizing people he would get people to go to all-star pro wrestling in the sixth grade and by the way atwater is a huge wrestling fan you know how like in 2016 that rash articles came out being like wrestling is how you should understand donald trump trump thinks about politics in a wrestling way the first guy to explicitly say u.s politics works the way wrestling does and and explain is lee atwater in like the 70s he's talking about like wrestling is really the way to understand like kayfabe and shit is the way to understand how politics works without him trump never would have had that that razor palmed to fake the assassination attempt that's right that's right he wouldn't have been able to garrison don't feed the blue and ons

Speaker 21 god damn it sorry i'm writing i'm writing about the the assassination conspiracy theorist right now, so I couldn't help it.

Speaker 58 Yeah, this is just going to make it worse.

Speaker 70 An AR-15 would have blown his head off if it struck his ear.

Speaker 66 that's right damn it that's right um

Speaker 81 in fifth grade he got a job selling eggs door to door uh now as would be the case his entire life he proved to be an incredible salesman and he gets promoted rapidly to manager his mother is frustrated by the fact that he loves selling stuff but he'll like lose the money he makes he is not interested in having money more the process it's the process that satisfies him yes it's like you're you're you're like outsmarting someone like you're you're able to like yeah yeah he likes convincing people to buy things, you know, he doesn't so much care about money.

Speaker 21 You're winning someone over and that is, that can be like an exhilarating thing to do.

Speaker 58 Yes.

Speaker 43 And even as an adult, he makes good money, but he's never greedy in the financial sense.

Speaker 45 He's greedy in the power sense, right?

Speaker 35 He's greedy in the influence sense.

Speaker 21 That's what motivates him more than can I make you do this thing? Yeah. Right.
What will it take for me to get this result?

Speaker 3 Now, his teachers, as you might expect, have profoundly mixed opinions about him.

Speaker 60 He is obviously very intelligent.

Speaker 95 And they will all say, in terms of what he would say during class, he's really smart.

Speaker 23 He participates in classroom discussions.

Speaker 104 He's great at those.

Speaker 46 He just won't do any work, period.

Speaker 114 So his grades are always shit, even though he's clearly like the smartest kid in most of his classes.

Speaker 86 One of his English teachers described, she signed his yearbook

Speaker 38 by calling him my first nightmare every morning with an exclamation point.

Speaker 75 That's fun.

Speaker 31 That's fun. That's fun.

Speaker 3 So in eighth grade, when the class takes a trip to Washington, D.C., his teacher, the teacher who's like their chaperone, is shocked at how being around the nation's political nexus seems to snap him out of this

Speaker 94 like thing where he can't pay attention or focus, right?

Speaker 105 Like, he's instantly, she said, he asked better questions than anyone else in the class.

Speaker 93 He was totally focused the whole time.

Speaker 115 He was excited.

Speaker 75 No, no, no.

Speaker 23 They get to take a picture with his old family friend, Strom Thurmond, and he's super psyched, you know?

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's this, it's this, you can see the fucking shadow of Darth Vader behind Anakin moment thing, right?

Speaker 110 Like, oh, no.

Speaker 21 Whenever a kid gets too excited in the Capitol, again, you got, you gotta fix that early.

Speaker 61 Look, we can talk about, you know, the ethics of giving kids drugs for like ADHD, but if you get a kid who's into politics, like, it's, it's just time, you should prescribe them heroin, right?

Speaker 54 Something to slow them down, you know, gotta knock them out of the running somehow.

Speaker 19 No,

Speaker 32 so, Sophie, it's fine for you.

Speaker 30 If as long as it's pure, you know, as long as it's uncut, it's safe.

Speaker 18 No comment. No comment.

Speaker 48 Outside of politics, Lee's other primary interest is music, specifically the music of James Brown.

Speaker 28 He loves R, he loves black music, right?

Speaker 58 Like he loves R B.

Speaker 29 He listens to James Brown for the first time in his dad's car, and he's just, that's it for him.

Speaker 35 He has found his true love in life.

Speaker 4 And this is the thing he is passionate about, right?

Speaker 48 The thing, the actual thing he's deeply passionate about, right?

Speaker 101 He's passionate about winning in politics.

Speaker 63 His friends will always say he could have been a Republican or a Democrat.

Speaker 25 Republican was just easier.

Speaker 94 Like he's not passionate about conservatism.

Speaker 104 conservatism he likes the process and he loves blues and rock and roll right he like he and yeah he also he he prefers most of the artists he likes and he will befriend and play with because he's in a band most of his life he'll play with a number of like famous blues and r b like artists uh he also develops a love for elvis presley and from the time he's a little kid one of his go-to entertaining tricks is to like shake his hips and ass like the king or do a slide like uh james brown would do like he gets really good at at mimicking all of these movements from his favorite musicians um and he'll do them as like party tricks yeah it's putting in inputs to get a certain output which is the same thing with selling same thing with your class clown manipulative hijinks exactly right and his parents you know this being a kind of blue-bloody family they try to get him interested in a respectable instrument the piano but they give up on that pretty quickly and by the time he's an adolescent forward, his favorite hobby is playing the guitar.

Speaker 35 Basically, they make him a deal where, like, yeah, if you can, if you'll take piano classes for three years, we'll buy you a guitar.

Speaker 11 So, he takes piano classes for exactly three years and then never plays piano again.

Speaker 27 Like, as soon as he gets a guitar, that's it for him.

Speaker 4 Um, on one occasion, his friends told a story about like they had a sleepover with him, and he bets them 50 cents each that he can play the same five notes repeatedly longer than they can stand to listen.

Speaker 7 And at around 3 a.m., they give up and pay him, right?

Speaker 112 Like, his fingers are bleeding, but he just will not stop until they like he he loves making wagers.

Speaker 17 And it's not about the money.

Speaker 34 It's about the winning, you know?

Speaker 21 That's the other thing to watch out for. If any kid really likes making bets and wagers, you got to stop that quick.

Speaker 43 Yes. Now, I was that kind of kid in high school, and we did get one of our friends to try to drink an entire gallon of milk, and he vomited everywhere.

Speaker 35 It was very funny.

Speaker 93 Lee's health issues persist as he becomes a teenager.

Speaker 49 He's never good at sports.

Speaker 23 To get girls interested in him, he starts a band and he starts smoking cigarettes at the ripe old age of 12.

Speaker 25 He is a daily heavy smoker from age 12 on.

Speaker 55 It's so funny.

Speaker 97 It was easy to get cigarettes back then.

Speaker 21 A 12-year-old in a suit smoking a cigarette.

Speaker 115 Hell yeah.

Speaker 67 Yeah, just chain smoking, lighting one with the other.

Speaker 8 Yeah, waking up with his hands shaking if he can't immediately burn a couple of camels before he gets out of bed.

Speaker 102 Do you know what his cigarette was?

Speaker 28 No, actually, I don't.

Speaker 65 I'm going to guess Paul Maul.

Speaker 21 Biographers need to, we need to get better at it. You need to get their brain.

Speaker 19 Making sure

Speaker 21 we know which cigarette a person smokes. I think it tells you a lot about a person.

Speaker 118 Vonnegut was a Paul Maul man, you know?

Speaker 115 Okay.

Speaker 36 And obviously, all the hip kids today smoke American spirits.

Speaker 59 But what it matters what brand you're smoking, right?

Speaker 115 Like, you know, the color, yeah.

Speaker 44 Yeah. Some people, some people like that green bullshit.

Speaker 3 I'm more into my into the grays, you know.

Speaker 75 Okay.

Speaker 18 Oh, you're on the smoke. I don't smoke cigarettes.

Speaker 109 I just always keep a pack of cigarettes on me in my jacket.

Speaker 21 There you go.

Speaker 29 It's always useful. You never know who's going to need a cigarette.

Speaker 32 Do you need a cigarette? If so, why not take it while listening to ads?

Speaker 84 Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 87 Okay, if you thought season two of Sniffy's Cruising Confessions was spicy, buckle up. Season three is here, and Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso are taking things deeper.

Speaker 87 They're tackling trending topics, offering practical advice, and having hilarious and heartfelt conversations with a range of queer celebs and sexperts who know their stuff.

Speaker 87 This season, they're covering it all, from circuit culture to hookup horror stories to locker room shenanigans, no stone is left unturned.

Speaker 123 And let's be real, 2025 hasn't exactly been a breeze.

Speaker 87 So Gabe and Chris are doing the work, keeping the community informed with chats on prep, harm reduction, and how to cruise smart in a wild political climate.

Speaker 123 Oh, and this season, they want to hear your stories.

Speaker 87 Their call-in segment is getting even hotter, and they'll react to your wildest cruising confessions on air.

Speaker 124 No pressure. So if you're ready for round three, just push play.

Speaker 87 Sniffy's Cruising Confession, sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 89 New episodes every Thursday.

Speaker 85 This is Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

Speaker 85 Now, I know I didn't invent being a busy mom, but during football season between the sideline gig, everything else I have going on, and my little one, it's a lot.

Speaker 85 That's why I'm seriously excited to be teaming up with Gerber. They do so much to make football season a more parent-friendly experience.

Speaker 85 I mean, over 95 years, they've been the MVP for parents who just want to nourish their little ones with stuff they can trust. And you can certainly trust Gerber.

Speaker 85 Did you know Gerber holds the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand out there? And Gerber has certainly been a go-to for me.

Speaker 85 Right now, in between naps to dinner or, you know, on the way home from school, it's all about keeping Mac happy. If he's sitting and he starts to get a little frustrated, here, have a yogurt melt.

Speaker 85 It will put you in such a better mood, which means I'm in a better mood too. It all comes down to this.

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Speaker 11 We're back.

Speaker 110 I hope you've all had a delicious cigarette, a delightful cigarette.

Speaker 29 Apologies Apologies to anyone who just quit smoking and is finding themselves triggered.

Speaker 72 I don't have an issue with cigarettes.

Speaker 51 I just like to tempt people into smoking them.

Speaker 72 It's good for you. Try it.

Speaker 32 Garrison, are you still smoking?

Speaker 27 Are you having enough cigarettes in your diet?

Speaker 21 I smoke aesthetically to complete an outfit. Of course,

Speaker 21 I'm not like a smoker.

Speaker 74 What?

Speaker 28 Don't

Speaker 18 cigarettes.

Speaker 107 Don't smoke cigarettes. Thank you.

Speaker 21 I mean, again, it's only for the outfit, Sophie.

Speaker 61 If someone shoots at you, smoke a cigarette.

Speaker 10 That's what they're for. They're great.

Speaker 21 They haven't shot at me in a while.

Speaker 80 That's the thing.

Speaker 80 I know.

Speaker 115 Then you can't get you cigarettes.

Speaker 77 You got to go find someone to shoot at you so you can get a smoke at.

Speaker 62 Go to a waffle house.

Speaker 17 You'll get shot at events.

Speaker 21 I'll stand outside the Manhattan Hilton.

Speaker 37 Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 6 So his peers recall him being very awkward around women and falling back on his first talent, lying to try and convince them that he knew what sex was and that he was totally dating girls, right?

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah, this is really believing.

Speaker 11 He's just bullshitting about it at first.

Speaker 93 But he does, he figures it out at a pretty young age.

Speaker 3 He has his first serious girlfriend in ninth grade.

Speaker 24 John Brady writes, quote, at school dances, he would get on stage and dance around, playing air guitar, mugging with his blues face, upstaging acts, reading dance contests in the area right in front of the stage.

Speaker 24 Afterward, he would apologize to Debbie, his girlfriend, for behavior that must have struck her as being compulsive.

Speaker 48 I know I acted badly, he would say on the phone the next day.

Speaker 38 I hope you'll still go out with me.

Speaker 39 And she did for a while, but she starts being like, I don't know, this is a little much for me.

Speaker 78 And Leah is eventually like, what's wrong here?

Speaker 43 And she explains, like,

Speaker 32 you know, girls like it when a guy is like honest and open and

Speaker 10 she could tell that they really like her.

Speaker 24 And I can't tell what you think.

Speaker 109 Like, you're just such a liar.

Speaker 72 Like, I can't tell if you like me or what you're doing here.

Speaker 64 She tells him, I'm just tired of being the second half of the show.

Speaker 72 I feel like I've got to be part of a stunt routine.

Speaker 50 I think that tells you a lot about the kind of kid he is.

Speaker 109 He can't honestly connect with people very easily.

Speaker 3 They've got to be a part of the show for him.

Speaker 49 That's kind of the only way he's able to have a relationship with someone.

Speaker 106 Yeah.

Speaker 67 Almost by turning it into a performance.

Speaker 76 And yeah, he's like.

Speaker 21 I can oddly relate to that in some ways. And it's, it's,

Speaker 21 yeah, no, it's, I, I, I, I kind of understand that, that disconnection.

Speaker 58 I relate to a lot about him because he is a class clown and so was I and so are like a lot of people who wind up in entertainment.

Speaker 25 And we all have that like piece of us that I think other people aren't missing that makes that makes you want to perform.

Speaker 95 Like, I think there's fundamentally a difference between people who become performers and people who don't.

Speaker 48 And Lee Atwater is a performer, right?

Speaker 21 And the important thing is that they stay in wrestling or entertainment. Whenever they switch over to politics, That's where it gets bad.

Speaker 55 It's awful. It's the worst.

Speaker 111 Every time.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 66 Yeah. That's, and Lee's that kind of figure, right?

Speaker 27 Where he he would probably have preferred to be a professional musician.

Speaker 50 He might have been able to make it happen.

Speaker 71 He's pretty good.

Speaker 43 And he, like, is in a band most of his life.

Speaker 29 He actually is nominated for a Grammy.

Speaker 1 What the fuck?

Speaker 70 Like, he's okay.

Speaker 11 And I think it's one of those things where he could have been really good if he'd had the courage to commit, but it's just too much of a long shot for him and politics there's no risk of failure he can tell right like because he's he's just got the brain for it and that sucks i'm getting ahead of myself here so i just get to i just want to show garrison a photo of leat water with chase oh yeah

Speaker 107 oh i got to because it i oh yeah i thoroughly enjoyed it because he he looks like uh uh tofer grace from in in in this photo he looks like tofer grace when he was on uh that 70 show

Speaker 16 he does look a lot like tofer grace okay look at this dork yeah yeah yeah what a meeting

Speaker 21 the hairs i want james erbaniak to play him in a movie james urbaniac could definitely play lee i'm calling you have to do a southern accent because oh but you'll you'll hear lee in a little bit here he can he can do it he could do it oh yeah that that would be good casting

Speaker 28 so

Speaker 6 yeah i it's interesting to me that debbie is the first person to realize what lee atwater is and call him out while they're in like ninth grade, because this is going to be a devastatingly accurate description of the man until the last chapter of his life.

Speaker 23 And Debbie summarized her opinion on him this way.

Speaker 48 There were sides of Lee that I certainly adored, but the opportunist in him, the person seeking popularity in a stage, would almost always overrule the nice guy, the more genuine part of him.

Speaker 61 I don't think he could stop it.

Speaker 79 Right? Yeah. And that's what you get from people who knew him.

Speaker 54 and were appropriately critical of him, but cared about him, where there's almost this, I don't know how much, I feel like he was partly out of control of himself.

Speaker 73 Not that that like mitigates his culpability and the evil he does, but like he almost can't stop himself from

Speaker 37 being

Speaker 25 from being a false, like he can't be the real version of himself.

Speaker 100 He has to play a role, right?

Speaker 14 Like, and maybe that's some protective thing.

Speaker 52 Maybe it's, I don't know fully what's going on, but this is something you get expressed that like it's he's almost incapable of being himself.

Speaker 112 He has to put on an act.

Speaker 40 In interviews about his own early life, Lee would claim to be a been a voracious reader as a kid, going through two or three books a week while in grade school.

Speaker 67 And he always makes this claim in the context of being explaining why his grades were shitty, right?

Speaker 95 Because he has to, like, he always acknowledges I did terribly in school.

Speaker 24 But I was really like, I was self-educated, right?

Speaker 8 He was an autodidact.

Speaker 61 And so, like, he would always say, the only reason he got bad grades is he thought getting good grades was uncool and that refusing to do well in class when you're smart enough to do well in class is cool.

Speaker 67 He would say, quote, the only thing that would keep me from reading a book was if it was assigned reading.

Speaker 93 And so it's interesting to me, that's very important to him, the fact that, you know, he got bad grades because he chose to, but he was really smart.

Speaker 81 His mother later recalled he decided that since he wasn't the smartest in the room, he would be the dumbest.

Speaker 40 He had to be different.

Speaker 86 And I don't think she's fully accurate there.

Speaker 52 And I don't think Lee is being fully honest here.

Speaker 9 I think Lee is, he's definitely smart.

Speaker 95 He's definitely capable of doing better in school than he did.

Speaker 86 He chose to fuck up in school, but I also think he's deeply insecure because of these issues he has reading as a kid.

Speaker 83 He's never as well read or educated as he wants to be.

Speaker 86 And as his charisma and his gift of gab lets him mimic being, right?

Speaker 5 He's able to pretend to have the depth of education that he doesn't have.

Speaker 57 And he doesn't, I don't think he actually read two or three books a week during this period of time.

Speaker 65 Like, that's what he claims.

Speaker 95 But he's going to to make this claim again years later when he's starting to make a name for himself as a Republican Party campaign strategist.

Speaker 35 And I want to quote from an article for the New York Times by Maureen Dowd writing about this period of time.

Speaker 35 And this is later in life, but I think it's relevant to the claim he makes while he's in grade school.

Speaker 3 Quote, as a Reagan aide, he bragged that he read three books a week, everything from Dostoevsky to Alvin Toffler, and then hired an aide named James Pinkerton to read the books and give him summaries while he jogged on the treadmill at the White House gym.

Speaker 27 It was a good joke about all the Ivy League reporters reporters who wrote about his prodigious reading habits, and the lofty quotes also impressed young women.

Speaker 109 He really did read the Great Gatsby, Pinkerton recalls fondly.

Speaker 77 So.

Speaker 21 That's good.

Speaker 43 I think he's doing that, a version of that in high school.

Speaker 59 He's basically having chat GPTs summarize books for you.

Speaker 61 That's what he'd be doing.

Speaker 21 And he gets what he'd be doing now.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 90 And he memorizes a couple of quotes so that he can drop a quote from the book and seem like he knows what he's talking about.

Speaker 21 This is the same thing he was doing as a kid, right? Like as like as a little kid and to like impress adults. Yeah.

Speaker 21 This is like even connected to his like urge to like perform. It's like the deception, the performance is all that matters.
That overrides any like actual substance

Speaker 21 behind this, because no one can actually truly

Speaker 21 understand the substance unless you let them in. And if you're always putting on this character, then no one's going to get close enough to like understand that.

Speaker 34 Right, right.

Speaker 60 And I think it also he is

Speaker 3 he could do better in school than he does, but not as much better as he, again, like his mom said, he wouldn't have been the best.

Speaker 8 He wasn't that smart.

Speaker 54 And so he's, he has to kind of

Speaker 23 he both talking about how purposefully he fucked up school and about how much he read and how smart he really was.

Speaker 81 Those are both like coping mechanisms to protect his ego to an extent.

Speaker 48 His grades are bad enough that in 10th grade, his parents send him away to a military school.

Speaker 114 He goes to Fork Union Military School starting in the fall of 1966.

Speaker 81 And this is the kind of split, like all the kids there are kids who are misbehaving and not doing well in class.

Speaker 35 And you have to think about this academy as one big sizzling pot of ADHD, right?

Speaker 101 Every kid there could like be swallowing Riddlin by the fucking pound.

Speaker 3 John Brady talks to several of his classmates, one of whom later claimed he was a manipulator.

Speaker 114 He could get you to agree to anything.

Speaker 57 And this is a sentiment basically everyone who knew him during this period of time would agree with.

Speaker 61 One of his hobbies is collecting record albums.

Speaker 57 And early on at Fork Union, he started convincing his other classmates.

Speaker 125 There was this like record club that that if you got someone else to join, they'd send you a free album.

Speaker 81 And so he'd do this to get a bunch of free albums.

Speaker 115 Yeah.

Speaker 38 And then he bribed a friend, he gave him a bunch of albums if he would jump out of their window two floors up.

Speaker 113 If he'd compete with him and jumping out of their window two floors up and then sneaking back in without being caught.

Speaker 48 And so Lee does it first.

Speaker 4 He jumps out and he sneaks back in and he's fine.

Speaker 22 And then when his roommate jumps out, Lee blocks the door to their room with a locker to ensure that his friend gets caught and loses the bet.

Speaker 82 Like,

Speaker 64 that's the kind of shit he's pulling.

Speaker 22 He's such a little psycho.

Speaker 32 He starts drinking.

Speaker 77 I mean, it's kind of funny, but like

Speaker 74 subjectively shitty.

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 48 He starts drinking at age 15 when he finds a store that doesn't check IDs and sells Pap's blue ribbon.

Speaker 52 That is his child beer.

Speaker 49 In his biography of Lee, John Brady

Speaker 66 ahead of his times.

Speaker 38 He grew a little pencil mustache, too.

Speaker 49 John Brady describes the parties he went to with his bunk mates in incredible terms.

Speaker 54 In the car, he changed back into civvies and chugged beers in long extended gulps like a sword swallower.

Speaker 112 He could consume a six-pack in 10 miles, tossing cans out the car window, then arriving at a rock or soul dance, thoroughly blitzed.

Speaker 14 On the dance floor, he did James Brown splits and pirouettes.

Speaker 81 He picked up girls who were impressed at first by his wildness and wit, but who slowly froze on the unbearable ride home.

Speaker 1 Jesus.

Speaker 34 Fun kid.

Speaker 21 I like that they're measuring drinking by the mile.

Speaker 37 By the mile.

Speaker 29 That's how you know you're really doing some underage drinking.

Speaker 21 A six snack every 10 miles. It's really

Speaker 61 just hurling the empty beers out the window.

Speaker 63 Fuck it.

Speaker 3 Who's going to stop us? Not a seat belt in sight.

Speaker 41 The cops are just as drunk as you.

Speaker 3 It was a, we used to be a proper country garrison.

Speaker 92 Alas.

Speaker 75 His grades.

Speaker 21 Yeah, alas, until people like this came around.

Speaker 38 Until people like this came around and ruined it.

Speaker 115 That's right.

Speaker 76 His grades improve a little at fork union and so in his second semester there he starts begging his parents he has this like very like uh methodical plan to convince his parents to let him go back to high school he wants to go to jc flora high which is where several of his friends had gone and is like a college campus in size and organization more than like a traditional high school yeah it's a public school and it's a big one um it sounds kind of like where i my high school where it's like a can't a college size campus yeah um his parents agree and uh yeah, he's able to go back to public school.

Speaker 116 And as soon as he is, Lee gets back to his old tricks.

Speaker 3 Per Jane Mayer's article in The New Yorker, the first presidential campaign that Natwater managed was a bid to get a friend of his elected as student body president against the friend's wishes.

Speaker 48 He created a list of false accomplishments and devised a fake rating system that ranked his friend first.

Speaker 48 The poll was called Big At's Comedy Ratings, and it was distributed as a flyer listing the funniest boys and girls in school.

Speaker 73 To continue with Mayer's quote, he plastered the school with posters declaring his friend's platform of false promises of free beer on tap in the cafeteria, free dates, free girls.

Speaker 81 The campaign took a darker turn when Atwater's sidekick stomped on the bare feet of a hippie-like student until his feet bled profusely.

Speaker 48 Afterward, the group threatened to do the same to younger students unless they voted for Atwater's candidate.

Speaker 81 Atwater recalls thinking that he privately reveled in the tactics and was proud he could participate in intimidating his fellow students.

Speaker 4 But publicly, he feigned concern, or as he writes, I was acting like Eddie Haskell saying, Oh my gosh, young people, you could be next.

Speaker 37 His candidate won an upset victory, but the school declared it void owing to a technicality.

Speaker 115 I learned a lot, he writes.

Speaker 49 I learned how to organize and I learned how to polarize.

Speaker 75 Wow.

Speaker 37 A lot there.

Speaker 74 Wow.

Speaker 74 Oh, that's horrifying.

Speaker 77 That's nuts. Yeah, that's so fucking awful.

Speaker 18 I learned how to organize and I learned how to polarize.

Speaker 77 They're beating kids because he's fucking, yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, and he's like, and I reviewed revolutionized getting this mob to beat, yeah.

Speaker 74 What a cool guy. Uh-oh.

Speaker 28 Jesus Christ.

Speaker 66 Yeah, this, this kid's gotta be evil.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 21 that's, that's, that's wild, right?

Speaker 108 And it's, it's, I don't, it's something else.

Speaker 3 Like, that is sinister as fuck.

Speaker 21 That also sounds like a great, like, 80s film.

Speaker 114 It does.

Speaker 29 So much of his childhood could have been like an 80s or early 90s movie.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 69 Like, yeah.

Speaker 21 That would be

Speaker 21 such a good like person running for class president

Speaker 37 movie.

Speaker 48 If he had just written like, if he'd just become like John Hughes, you know, we could have been saved a lot of horror as a as a species,

Speaker 106 if only, if only.

Speaker 115 Wow.

Speaker 89 But you know who won't be saved from the horrors, Garrison?

Speaker 111 Us.

Speaker 24 The people who listen to your podcasting on It Could Happen Here or follow you on social media.

Speaker 125 You got anything you want to plug?

Speaker 21 I mean, no, just it could happen here, our weekly news show, Executive Disorder, where

Speaker 50 we talk about the news every week. The horrors.

Speaker 24 For what? How bad things is.

Speaker 21 30, 30, 35 weeks now.

Speaker 18 Jesus.

Speaker 107 You changed your handle on the Sochmedes, didn't you?

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 21 Yes, I changed my handle for fun to by Shonen type on all social media platforms.

Speaker 21 I'm still trying to use Blue Sky, but

Speaker 107 it's a bummer.

Speaker 74 Hashtag

Speaker 74 welcome to the remote. I don't know.

Speaker 103 It's true.

Speaker 119 it's all of them are it's it's a bummer and then it's a fascist bummer there's you know i yeah i

Speaker 21 there's nothing good so trying try for these podcasts but but you know occasionally occasionally yeah uh

Speaker 65 well we'll be back with uh part two yeah

Speaker 37 uh

Speaker 18 yeah perhaps oh this guy didn't just end running for class president or no no this he did not drop dead after

Speaker 107 he After organizing and polarizing.

Speaker 8 School election and old.

Speaker 74 Yeah.

Speaker 21 See, I thought that was

Speaker 28 a great ending.

Speaker 35 No, we'll hit you with part two.

Speaker 24 But first, we're going to roll out for the day.

Speaker 3 But you can, everybody, please go to Defense Fund PDX Donor Box. Type that into Google.

Speaker 26 Defense Fund PDX donor box and donate to the Portland Defense Fund to help people who have literally no one else looking out for them get bailed out and you know get some help not falling into a black hole if they get charged with a fucking misdemeanor generally.

Speaker 21 Yeah,

Speaker 3 please help and go to.

Speaker 30 I love you.

Speaker 2 Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.

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Speaker 84 New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at behind the bastards.

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