Speaker 1: Welcome back. And I want to begin with a couple
Speaker 1: of statements from people that about this book. The book
Speaker 1: is FDR A New Political Life. The author is David Beto,
Speaker 1: and this first one that's here is from Hillsdale College.
Speaker 1: It's burton fulsome. He says, the book FDR A New
Speaker 1: Political Life is the most illuminating one volume history of
Speaker 1: FDR ever written. American historians have come to recognize that
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's New Deal did not end the Great Depression, but
Speaker 1: prolonged it. David Beto carefully explains why so many FDR
Speaker 1: programs and power grabs were so counterproductive. To go from
Speaker 1: the older FDR histories to David Beto's wonderful new work
Speaker 1: is to make a historic leak from the dark ages. Also,
Speaker 1: another author, David Michalis, says, when it comes to race
Speaker 1: and Western influence, FDR's vision of the world order was
Speaker 1: muddled by delusional phenomenon. He was not a man of
Speaker 1: empire or genocide, like his wartime allies Churchill and Stalin,
Speaker 1: but he was a dreadfully old fashioned Victorian quack, an
Speaker 1: amateur phrenologist who believed that repopulating the Pacific rim with
Speaker 1: certain choice crossbreeding would create a better world for all.
Speaker 1: David Beto takes us further than his predecessors along the
Speaker 1: breadcrumb path into Franklin Roosevelt's thick forested interior and again
Speaker 1: many wonderful still reviews. And I got to say, even
Speaker 1: though I wasn't able to read the entire book, when
Speaker 1: I read of it really does match with this. I'll
Speaker 1: give you one more. This is from Jim Bovart, who
Speaker 1: we've interviewed on the show many times. He said. Historian
Speaker 1: David Beato, who previously exposed how President Franklin Roosevelt ravaged
Speaker 1: americans constitutional rights, is back with a new book, vividly
Speaker 1: exposing his personal perfidy from the dawn of Woodrow Wilson
Speaker 1: administration to nineteen forty five, the betrayal at Yalta and beyond.
Speaker 1: With volleys of research, Beto demolishes Roosevelt's reputation as one
Speaker 1: of the quote unquote great presidents. And so I look
Speaker 1: at FDR like Lincoln. These are presidents who come in
Speaker 1: at a time of great societal upheaval and change and war,
Speaker 1: and they have an active role in redefining our society.
Speaker 1: I think we're in a time like that right now,
Speaker 1: This is a guy who ran as a peace candidate
Speaker 1: but then turned to war. He was there at the
Speaker 1: center of the fight between gold and Fiat currency. He
Speaker 1: was preside over rapid expansion of Lebiatha and federal government
Speaker 1: with very creative excuses to override the constitution. He instituted
Speaker 1: surveillance and there was a free speech revolt against him.
Speaker 1: He also weaponized the FCC and we can see, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about what was going on with the FCC.
Speaker 1: We pointed out that why should broadcast media have its
Speaker 1: content controlled when they don't control the press. Well you
Speaker 1: can look to FDR for that. So joining us now
Speaker 1: is David Beato. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: this excellent book here that you have.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. You know, if you get a
Speaker 2: thing you were you brought up the I mean, if
Speaker 2: you don't mind, go ahead on the FCC issue, and
Speaker 2: it brought to mind the contrast between FDR and Trump.
Speaker 2: You know, Trump makes these wild threats about the involving
Speaker 2: the FCC, He goes public with it. He tries to
Speaker 2: get Jimmy Kimmel off the air, which really wasn't worth
Speaker 2: the effort. Frankly, and he succeeds short term. But now
Speaker 2: Kimmell is back on the air, so Trump looks silly.
Speaker 2: What FDR did is he did it behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: He did it carefully. He would never make a public
Speaker 2: statement like that. He went to the sponsors of For example,
Speaker 2: there was a leading anti New Deal radio commentator called
Speaker 2: named Boke Harder in nineteen thirty eight, one of the
Speaker 2: top rated commentators in the country on CBS, and so
Speaker 2: howd Roosevelt get him off the air? He opening an
Speaker 2: IRS investigation, an immigration investigation because Carter was from Canada.
Speaker 2: And then finally he went to the executives. He went
Speaker 2: to the sponsors, including Marjorie Merriweather Post Sold at least
Speaker 2: she was the original owner of mar A Lago, and
Speaker 2: she used her influence and Carter was forced off the air,
Speaker 2: and by the end of nineteen thirty eight, all anti
Speaker 2: New Deal commentators on the main networks were off the air.
Speaker 2: And despite the fact that most newspapers were hostile to FDR,
Speaker 2: he did it all quietly. He did it all behind
Speaker 2: the scenes with a scalpel where Trump used the blunt
Speaker 2: edge of the sword. And maybe many ways we should
Speaker 2: behave thankful for that. Yeah, the Trump is like a
Speaker 2: bull in a china shop so often and sometimes when
Speaker 2: he doesn't need to get his way, he doesn't get
Speaker 2: his way because he's so I don't know, obvious about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe his real thing is more about getting Americans
Speaker 1: divided and fighting each other than it is about the
Speaker 1: actual reform. But what FDR did is something that we've
Speaker 1: seen a pattern of people in government typically doing, and
Speaker 1: that is working behind the scenes, quietly sending out messages
Speaker 1: to make sure that this group of that group has
Speaker 1: shadow banned or canceled. And you can use your own
Speaker 1: judgment in terms of doing this, because you're a private
Speaker 1: corporation and you can do that. But of course he
Speaker 1: kind of did that with in terms of telegrams and
Speaker 1: things like that before, not the social media side, of course,
Speaker 1: but actual physical telegrams. FDR had his involvement with that
Speaker 1: as well. And they see the early trends of the
Speaker 1: surveillance state is the technology has changed, but the nature
Speaker 1: of men in power hasn't really changed that much. Talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Black Inquisition and things that
Speaker 1: were involved in that.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, the Black Committee was a Senate committee was
Speaker 2: headed by Senator HUGO. Black, who later ended up on
Speaker 2: the US Supreme Court despite his clan background. And Black
Speaker 2: was an attack dog for the New Deal. He was
Speaker 2: really Roosevelt's main ally, I would say in the Congress.
Speaker 2: He was to go to guy Well. Roosevelt wanted an
Speaker 2: investigation of anti New Deal organizations and Black was more
Speaker 2: than happy to cooperate in this. So Black would call
Speaker 2: these witnesses and they would, you know, sometimes successfully hold
Speaker 2: him off. He would bring in leading anti New Deal figures.
Speaker 2: And so Black got the bright idea, or someone got
Speaker 2: the bright idea, Well, why don't I get there? A
Speaker 2: private telegram telegrams were the emails texts of the time.
Speaker 2: They were over half of long distance communication. People would
Speaker 2: say things and telegrams that they wouldn't say in letters,
Speaker 2: but they would say now in an email or a text,
Speaker 2: and there were thousands of them. They were instantaneous, virtually instantaneous.
Speaker 2: So Black goes to Western Union and the other telegraph
Speaker 2: companies and said, I want copies of all telegrams sent
Speaker 2: to and from members of Congress, and he had other
Speaker 2: people as well, for like a six months period. And
Speaker 2: Western Union's response was, are you kidding, you know, our
Speaker 2: customers would would hate that. And Black goes to the
Speaker 2: FCC gets approval, and of course the FDR would have
Speaker 2: had a hand in this, although again he didn't really
Speaker 2: have to order Black to do anything because Black was
Speaker 2: serving the new Deal and got FCC approved.
Speaker 1: So again it's FCC because.
Speaker 2: Telegraph companies were ordered to provide That was one example,
Speaker 2: all you know, millions of telegrams. But then they expanded
Speaker 2: the Black expanded the investigation to include other cities, targeted individuals,
Speaker 2: and so forth. So he went in there with his
Speaker 2: staffers into Western Union, and they had to keep copies
Speaker 2: of the of telegrams, right, that was sort of part
Speaker 2: of their requirement, and they got big.
Speaker 1: That was a government that was a government first went
Speaker 1: through them. Sorry, that was a government requirement to keep
Speaker 1: the copies in the first place.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, well I think the telegraph companies probably maybe
Speaker 2: would have kept their own copies anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But they were required to keep copies of all telegrams
Speaker 2: and they went through millions. And I couldn't believe this
Speaker 2: when I saw, but yes, that was true. They went
Speaker 2: through about ten thousand a day over a very long period.
Speaker 2: Of time, and the committee staffers had instructions to don't
Speaker 2: look at anything of a personal nature, just to look
Speaker 2: at material related to lobbying. What would be lobbying, well,
Speaker 2: the committee had a specific definition indirect or direct lobbying.
Speaker 2: Indirect lobbying would be any attempt to influence public opinion.
Speaker 2: So our conversation would be an example of that. So
Speaker 2: any attempt to influence public opinion would be considered lobbying.
Speaker 2: So they went through copied selectively, and they would ambush
Speaker 2: witnesses because this was all secret. None of the witnesses
Speaker 2: knew they were doing this. None of them knew, and
Speaker 2: eventually came out because Western Union informed started to inform
Speaker 2: people who were being targeted, and one of them sued
Speaker 2: very prominent law firm in Chicago. Still there, Silas Strawn
Speaker 2: was his name, and Strawn was a heavyweight and in
Speaker 2: one in federal district court. By that time, Black had
Speaker 2: done his damage and he said, well, we're done with
Speaker 2: our investigation. However, this was a very good precedent for
Speaker 2: the future. Now, of course, Black could use the telegrams
Speaker 2: that he'd gotten his illegal booty, but he couldn't do
Speaker 2: any more of this kind of search, nor could official
Speaker 2: future congressional committees.
Speaker 1: Did they use the.
Speaker 2: Important precedent, but it's not very well known. He as
Speaker 2: a federal court judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we usually think about, you know, what's going on
Speaker 1: with Faiza and everything. And you know that came after
Speaker 1: World War two because with the creation of the CIA
Speaker 1: and NSA, they started getting information from the phone company,
Speaker 1: getting pen information, who did they call, and that type
Speaker 1: of thing which they could infer a lot from. But
Speaker 1: actually this predates all of that. Were they using this,
Speaker 1: as you said, they were questioning people. Did they use
Speaker 1: this information as a perjury trap for people? Yea asked
Speaker 1: him a questions of the new The answer.
Speaker 2: I suspect that that kind of thing went on. I
Speaker 2: haven't come across it. I have reason to believe from
Speaker 2: just reading some of Roosevelt's comments that he was, you know,
Speaker 2: this information was shared with him, but I can't prove it,
Speaker 2: but I think it was used for all sorts of
Speaker 2: nefarious reasons. See, historians have kind of looked in the
Speaker 2: wrong place. They've looked at people like jag or Hoover,
Speaker 2: who again there's a lot of things he did too,
Speaker 2: But the mass surveillance, this is a better example of
Speaker 2: mass surveillance, but people even looked at it. In fact,
Speaker 2: I hadn't even heard of the Black Committee till about
Speaker 2: twelve years ago when I was doing research and I
Speaker 2: came across to it. I said, what's this thing of
Speaker 2: the Black Committee? What's that? Is that describing the nature
Speaker 2: of the committee? Yeah, it was a Senate committee. It
Speaker 2: was forgotten, not by a lot of conservatives, though conservatives
Speaker 2: would be bringing up in the in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: and that's part of the reason why McCarthyism came about,
Speaker 2: because they were pissed and they thought, well, you guys
Speaker 2: are now complaining about civil liberties, what about the Black Committee?
Speaker 1: And that's a parallel to today as well, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're suffering injustice like that, you feel
Speaker 1: entitled to propagate it against your enemies again. You know.
Speaker 1: So wait, you guys did, so what about that? Let's
Speaker 1: do it again? I love the title that you got trials.
Speaker 2: Probably Trump's going to do sedition trials. That was, yes, right,
Speaker 2: that's right, the same thing that Jay six people were
Speaker 2: convicted of. Stupid. Yeah, that should have been repealed exactly,
Speaker 2: or at least severely limited.
Speaker 1: I like the way that you've got to hear the
Speaker 1: in the in your book, the Black Inquisition, You know,
Speaker 1: that really does get your attention as you're looking at it,
Speaker 1: just like it was like, oh, okay, you go critics, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Black Inquisition. And then there was a pushback against that.
Speaker 1: Part of it was William Randolph Hurst was of course
Speaker 1: targeted that because I guess I could say, well, anything
Speaker 1: that he says is going to be influencing public opinion, obviously,
Speaker 1: so let's get all of his telegrams. And so he
Speaker 1: actually you have a chapter here of the Right and
Speaker 1: the Left Free Speech Coalition. So it's a pushback with that.
Speaker 1: He joined with the ACLU left as William Randolph Hurst
Speaker 1: pushing back, tell us little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the Black Committee had gotten a treasure trove
Speaker 2: of Hearst related telegrams, but they did a very stupid thing.
Speaker 2: They did a public subpoena. None of this was subpoena,
Speaker 2: by the way, but they did a public subpoena of
Speaker 2: one and only one telegram that they probably already had.
Speaker 2: And this telegram was where Hearst was accusing this prominent
Speaker 2: member of Congress, the committee chair, of being in league
Speaker 2: with the communists. It was kind of a hyperbolic telegram,
Speaker 2: and I guess what the Black Committee, what Black thought was,
Speaker 2: people just see that as so over the top, this
Speaker 2: will be good pr for us. But instead what happened
Speaker 2: is other members of Congress, like you know, a guy
Speaker 2: named McCormack who is future Speaker of the House, a
Speaker 2: guy named Emmanuel Seller. These are New Dealers, they say,
Speaker 2: this is uncalled for, this is this is the tactics
Speaker 2: of Mussolini. So it actually backfired on Roosevelt. Even many
Speaker 2: of his own New Deal supporters were against this. And
Speaker 2: this is this is very interesting and very discouraging in
Speaker 2: some ways because during this period you had a lot
Speaker 2: of civil libertarians who on the left who were willing,
Speaker 2: even though they liked Roosevelt, who were willing to push
Speaker 2: back against him. And that is not as true today.
Speaker 2: Maybe that will change now, but it's not what it
Speaker 2: certainly hasn't been true today.
Speaker 1: Well, today there's so much more partisan in tribal and
Speaker 1: we don't seem to care about principles, we don't seem
Speaker 1: to care about the blah blah. And that's true of
Speaker 1: both sides, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's the people at the time. Give you
Speaker 2: a sense of the difference. Hl Mankin was in your
Speaker 2: face kind of anti New dealer, simil libertarian, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, agnostic, heal, he needed everybody, but who
Speaker 2: was friends with everybody. He had correspondence that span the
Speaker 2: political spectrum. He was respected, he was liked as an
Speaker 2: individual could talk to people. I don't think there are as
Speaker 2: many people who could who fit in that category today.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, he was real clever wit and I
Speaker 1: mentioned frequently his thing. A year ago, if I had
Speaker 1: a gold coin and a flasko whiskey, the whiskey was
Speaker 1: illegal in the coin was legal. This year, the gold
Speaker 1: coin is illegal and the Flasco whiskey is legal. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he was always hadn't heard that one, but he was
Speaker 1: always pointing out the absurdity of FDR. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think one of the very telling things about FDR was
Speaker 1: the war and peace issue. And you've got in here
Speaker 1: part of his speech, which truly is amazing that he
Speaker 1: makes when he's running as a candidate as a peace candidate.
Speaker 1: He says, I've seen war. I've seen war on land
Speaker 1: and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded.
Speaker 1: I've seen men coughing out their gas lungs. I've seen
Speaker 1: the dead and the mud. I've seen cities destroyed. I've
Speaker 1: seen two hundred limping, exhausted men come out of the
Speaker 1: survivors of the regiment of one thousand that went forward
Speaker 1: forty eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I've
Speaker 1: seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
Speaker 1: And you write, and, as he so often did, FDR
Speaker 1: exaggerated his exposure to the fighting in World War One
Speaker 1: was limited and sanitized. While the Navy had sent him
Speaker 1: on a guided inspection of American naval and marine bases
Speaker 1: in Europe, the main impression conveyed by his contemporary contemporaneous
Speaker 1: diary account was that of a sightseer. So talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, how he ran as a peace
Speaker 1: candidate and then he flipped pushing us into war.
Speaker 2: Well, FGR was playing both sides of the street. For example,
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, he'd been the guy to suggests, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we need neutrality laws, and then later he pushed
Speaker 2: for repeal of the Neutrality Act, saying I wish I'd
Speaker 2: never signed it. Never mentioned that he was the guy
Speaker 2: that helped to inspire it in the first place. So
Speaker 2: he was a rabid interventionist. When he was Assistant Secretary
Speaker 2: of the Navy under Wilson, he was constantly trying to
Speaker 2: imitate his cousin Theodore and get some sort of incident possibly,
Speaker 2: so he was a hawk. But then in the thirties
Speaker 2: he sort of realizes there's all this anti war feeling
Speaker 2: and he appeals to that. He actually applauds the Munich Agreement.
Speaker 2: But then after that he becomes much more of an
Speaker 2: interventionist and certainly aligns himself with Winston Churchill and so forth.
Speaker 2: But a lot of this is done quietly, so he
Speaker 2: started playing both sides of the street. And he is
Speaker 2: in trouble in the nineteen forty election. His opponent, Wendell Wilkie,
Speaker 2: who was kind of an interventionist too, but starts talking
Speaker 2: like in America Firster during the last part of the
Speaker 2: campaign is making inroads. So FDR is worried about this,
Speaker 2: so very shortly before the election he gives this speech
Speaker 2: he'd never given a speech this strong, where he says,
Speaker 2: I've said this before, and I'll say it again and
Speaker 2: again and again. Your boys are not going to be
Speaker 2: sent into any foreign war full stop, right. Wynda Wilkie
Speaker 2: heard that on the radio, and he said, that hypocritical
Speaker 2: son of bit, some of a bitch has just lost
Speaker 2: me the election.
Speaker 1: And whether or.
Speaker 2: Not that was true or not, FDR was, that was
Speaker 2: a clear motivation. His son went up to him and said, Dad,
Speaker 2: why did you say that. You never said anything like
Speaker 2: that before. And he said, basically, well, I had to win,
Speaker 2: you know, for the good of the country, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. So just amoral, an amoral figure, maybe worse
Speaker 2: in so many ways, a very cynical, jaded man, I think,
Speaker 2: who had great charm, Yes, but I never really cared
Speaker 2: for him. I'm going to confess. Did you ever see
Speaker 2: that movie Sunrise at Campabello?
Speaker 1: No? I never saw that.
Speaker 2: Oh it was a movie made in the fifties starring
Speaker 2: Ralph Bellamy playing FDR in his battle against polio, and
Speaker 2: I just you know, Bellamy captured FDR in some ways.
Speaker 2: It was supposed to a sympathetic portrayal, but there was
Speaker 2: just this charm which always seemed a little bit phony
Speaker 2: to me. Yeah, and and very calculating but very effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he seemed he seemed that way to me as well.
Speaker 1: But I always kind of just dismissed that, as you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at movies at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: people came across as very stiff and pretentious and you know,
Speaker 1: putting on airs and that that's kind of the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of people would come across, even in
Speaker 1: the movies at that time, they wouldn't come across as
Speaker 1: you know, genuine or and so I kind of just
Speaker 1: put it up to the zeitgeist of the time, if
Speaker 1: you will. But yeah, it's it's interesting. And you begin
Speaker 1: with his rise to power, talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that where'd this guy come from?
Speaker 2: He he had a big advantage, and that he was
Speaker 2: born into comfortable circumstances, not super wealth, but wealth. He
Speaker 2: was a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt and very distant,
Speaker 2: like seventh cousin, but the family had context with each
Speaker 2: other and so forth. And he went he did. He
Speaker 2: did the typical trajectory of someone in that class. He
Speaker 2: went to Groton, a very exclusive private school, and he
Speaker 2: went to Harvard. He got a Columbia his law degree
Speaker 2: from Columbia. He had very mediocre grades. He was not
Speaker 2: a good student, but he was a glad hander. People
Speaker 2: liked him. He made his impact socially, and then it
Speaker 2: was some people approached him and said, mister Roosevelt, we'd
Speaker 2: like you to run for Congress, or not for Congress,
Speaker 2: for a state legislature in New York. You know, Theodore
Speaker 2: was president at the time. They happened to be Democrats.
Speaker 2: I guess they thought that that was a brilliant move.
Speaker 2: Now I say that if the Republicans had approached Franklin,
Speaker 2: he probably would have run as a Republican. In fact,
Speaker 2: he had supported his cousin very openly. When his cousin
Speaker 2: ran for re election, it was his first vote was
Speaker 2: for Theodore. But the Democrats asked him it was a
Speaker 2: good Democratic year nineteen oh eight, So he ran as
Speaker 2: a Democrat and he was able to win. And from
Speaker 2: there he just impressed people. He got the attention of
Speaker 2: a guy named Josephus Daniels who was Secretary of the Navy.
Speaker 2: Quite a racist, Southern racist type, but Daniels was charmed
Speaker 2: by Roosevelt. He had a very apt comment. He said
Speaker 2: he was just like an actress. He had that he
Speaker 2: had it right. And someone had said, was the case
Speaker 2: of love at first sight? You know when Daniels saw him,
Speaker 2: and I don't think anything went on, but he made
Speaker 2: him assistant secretary of Navy, and from there Roosevelt was
Speaker 2: imitating his cousin, either intentionally or by chance. Theodore had
Speaker 2: been in the legislature, Theodore had been assistant secretary of
Speaker 2: the Navy, and then Theodore was vice presidential candidate, as
Speaker 2: Roosevelt was in nineteen twenty, so their very similarity. A
Speaker 2: lot of parallels between them. One difference. Though Franklin did
Speaker 2: not volunteer to fight in World War One, he was
Speaker 2: in his late thirties, he could have. His cousin. Theodore said,
Speaker 2: you have to get into the infantry, not just the Navy.
Speaker 2: You have to get into the infantry. You have to
Speaker 2: get in the fight. And Roosevelt came back and said, well,
Speaker 2: my boss thinks I'm essential, And maybe his boss did
Speaker 2: say that, but Theodore had had, you know, a similar boss.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to go in. But Franklin was not
Speaker 2: the man. The Theodore was right, and so he did not.
Speaker 2: He did not serve in the military.
Speaker 1: So at that point he was able bodied. At that
Speaker 1: point he was able bodied and could have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was before his bout of polio, which was
Speaker 2: nineteen how old hekt's right here in nineteen twenty one, so.
Speaker 1: It was about how old when that happened.
Speaker 2: He was about thirty nine, quite a young man. And
Speaker 2: the story, there's an interesting story there. Now a lot
Speaker 2: of people said, can't you say something good about Roosevelt.
Speaker 2: I will say that, you know, he showed great determination.
Speaker 2: Of course, he had a lot of he had a
Speaker 2: lot of help, he had a lot of doctors, he
Speaker 2: had a lot of you know, leisure time, he had
Speaker 2: a lot of support. But he showed great courage and
Speaker 2: overcoming that. Part of the story that I was surprised
Speaker 2: by is who did he blame for the polio? He
Speaker 2: blamed a Republican center. And the story on this is
Speaker 2: really fascinating. I begin my book with it. There was
Speaker 2: an investigation, well, there was something called the Newport scandal,
Speaker 2: the Newport sex scandal. Do you recall reading that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I skipped over to the black Inquisition stuff.
Speaker 2: What happened was Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Speaker 2: and there was a guy at one of the naval
Speaker 2: bases in Newport who was investigating whether there were same
Speaker 2: sex relationships going on. In the Navy thought this was
Speaker 2: major scandal and so forth, and even did his own
Speaker 2: private investigations where this guy would find people to go
Speaker 2: in and they would actually have sex right with these men,
Speaker 2: right to try to entrap them. So Roosevelt found out
Speaker 2: about this. The investigation was basically had no funding. The
Speaker 2: Secretary of War had refused to back it, I mean,
Speaker 2: the Attorney General refused to back it. And Roosevelt stepped
Speaker 2: in single handedly and set up a investigative unit headed
Speaker 2: by him called Section A in the Department of Navy,
Speaker 2: which investigated this issue of same sex relationships in the Navy.
Speaker 2: And they would send out investigators who again would entrap
Speaker 2: people by having sex with them, and Roosevelt, I think
Speaker 2: quite clearly knew what was going on. A local journalist
Speaker 2: in Newport pushed back on this and accused Roosevelt of
Speaker 2: doing this, and Roosevelt basically responded, said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, isn't it important to you know to find
Speaker 2: what's going on here? Why are we so worried about procedure?
Speaker 2: And it was actually controversially you would think this period
Speaker 2: is very anti gain. It was, but people in Congress
Speaker 2: and the press thought this was abhorrent. These tactics were
Speaker 2: beyond the pale, and.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the things that we've lost.
Speaker 2: He did his best to cover it up, and it weakened.
Speaker 2: It puts so much tension on him that he said
Speaker 2: that it had lowered his resistance and made him more
Speaker 2: susceptible to the outbreak of polio, which may have been
Speaker 2: true actually because it was a lot of us contaminated water.
Speaker 2: But again, if your immunity, you know, if you had
Speaker 2: low resistance and so forth. So he blamed this senator
Speaker 2: till his dying day for causing his his polio well
Speaker 2: you know what you're talking about, that or investigation which
Speaker 2: almost derailed his career, almost destroyed him, and he was lucky.
Speaker 1: It's the tactic that's involved there, and people don't know.
Speaker 2: Everybody did. And you would think this would be a
Speaker 2: period where they would say, alter gay, we need to
Speaker 2: root them out. And they may have thought that, but
Speaker 2: this is beyond the pail. And of course these people
Speaker 2: that had been destroyed, many of them were innocent. You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't get any benefits, right, didn't get military funerals.
Speaker 2: They were destroyed. And Roosevelt is able to ride through
Speaker 2: it partly because other things go on that avert public attention.
Speaker 2: But the New York Times, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: has a big story where it calls his behavior. They
Speaker 2: blame him for it. The Times blames him in this
Speaker 2: article and basically, you know, comes a conclusion he's unfit
Speaker 2: for office. But he's able to escape this somehow because
Speaker 2: of other things going on, and it's forgotten and most
Speaker 2: people today don't even know about it, but it's quite
Speaker 2: an important it's quite an important story in his life.
Speaker 1: Well, it reveals his character which we then saw later
Speaker 1: when he's coming after politically.
Speaker 2: And Roosevelt was quite clear that he wasn't worried about
Speaker 2: the means. It was the end. Yet something done. This
Speaker 2: is a view towards civil liberties. These people need to
Speaker 2: be shut up. Yeah, I think some way to shut
Speaker 2: them up. That was a real harm proseguer.
Speaker 1: That's a real hallmark of everything that he did. You know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't care.
Speaker 2: I think he was always kind of a default interventionist,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think he did have an ideology and I think he
Speaker 2: had been a wi Sonyan interventionist. He was a great
Speaker 2: admirer of Wilson, right, He defended Wilson when he ran
Speaker 2: for president nineteen twenty, even though much of the public
Speaker 2: was sick of Wilson. He defended the worst aspect, the
Speaker 2: most repressive aspects of Wilsonian. So I think that was
Speaker 2: his default position. That's the best way I could I
Speaker 2: could explain it. I think the relationship with Churchill made
Speaker 2: a difference, but I think you see even signs of
Speaker 2: that before that, where he's trying to do it. His
Speaker 2: focus is on the North Atlantic. By nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: he is desperately trying to provoke an incident in the
Speaker 2: North Atlantic, and he builds up minor incidents or you know,
Speaker 2: into cause celebs, and is trying to get into the war.
Speaker 2: Clear he wants to do that. By nineteen forty one
Speaker 2: by any means that he can't, but the is hostile
Speaker 2: to the idea. Well werewhelmingly the public is you know,
Speaker 2: does not want to get in another form war. They
Speaker 2: remember World War One, they do not want to do
Speaker 2: that again. But he's able to get aid to Britain,
Speaker 2: to lend lease, which is very open ended. But again
Speaker 2: selling this is well, of course we won't have to
Speaker 2: go in. You know, we can help the British, right,
Speaker 2: give them the tools and they will finish the fight,
Speaker 2: as he pleased to say, and that kind.
Speaker 1: Of thing kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. Right,
Speaker 1: kind of where we are right now with Ukraine. I guess, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can just give them the weapons and we won't
Speaker 1: really get involved. But the Germans aren't taking the bait
Speaker 1: to the extent that he wants them to. So he
Speaker 1: kind of shifts to the Pacific, right, and there's massive
Speaker 1: sanctions against the Japanese that preceded Pearl Harbor. And of course,
Speaker 1: what do you have about Pearl Harbor? What's your take
Speaker 1: on Pearl Harbor? Did he engineer that too and keep
Speaker 1: things secret? They're in a kind of subversive way? What
Speaker 1: what what is your pain?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, again he is he his focus is in
Speaker 2: the North Atlantic, but he eventually comes to the conclusion, well,
Speaker 2: you know, if we're going to go to war Japan,
Speaker 2: that's fine with me, and you know, maybe we can
Speaker 2: get into the European war as well. I don't think
Speaker 2: I think that that's part of what he's he's pushing,
Speaker 2: and really, since you know he he he there were
Speaker 2: opportunities to to UH to have peace agreement with Japan.
Speaker 2: The Japanese Prime minister offers to meet with Roosevelt in
Speaker 2: the middle of the Pacific to have a summit. So
Speaker 2: let's hash this out. Roosevelt doesn't take the opportunity. At
Speaker 2: one point, the Japanese actually say that they were willing
Speaker 2: to evacuate China. He doesn't take the opportunity. So he's he's,
Speaker 2: he's there's sort of a distraction. Now, okay, Pearl Harvard.
Speaker 2: Did Roosevelt know about it? I don't think he did.
Speaker 2: And my argument for that is, I think the best
Speaker 2: evidence is that they did know that Japanese would attack.
Speaker 2: They thought the attack would probably be somewhere like the Philippines,
Speaker 2: maybe in you know, Singapore, somewhere like that. They did
Speaker 2: not think it would be Pearl Harbor. Very few people
Speaker 2: thought that. Almost nobody thought that. And part of the
Speaker 2: reason they didn't think that is they they didn't think
Speaker 2: the Japanese were capable. They didn't think they were good pilots,
Speaker 2: They didn't think that they could they could pull something
Speaker 2: out like that. And even the commanders on the ground
Speaker 2: and Roosevelt did short change them, short and Kimmel there
Speaker 2: at the Pacific, they wanted observation planes, but Roosevelt diverted
Speaker 2: all resources to the North Atlantic they wanted, you know,
Speaker 2: they if they had had those observation planes, for example,
Speaker 2: it might have made all the difference. He short changed them.
Speaker 2: But even they thought that the main danger from the
Speaker 2: Japanese was sabotage. That's one of the reasons why they
Speaker 2: put the planes in the middle of the field. In
Speaker 2: many cases, it made the more vulnerable to attack, but
Speaker 2: theoretically less vulnerable to sabotage. So what is Roosevelt's first
Speaker 2: reaction after the attack, Well, it's from a butler who
Speaker 2: saw him, and Roosevelt's response was, I will go down
Speaker 2: in disgrace. He thinks, my god, I didn't expect this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be in trouble because of this. So
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think they knew that the
Speaker 2: attack was going to be at Pearl Harbor, partly because
Speaker 2: they underestimated the Japanese. I think Roosevelt was reckless, however,
Speaker 2: that he knew an attack was going to come, I
Speaker 2: think he could have done much more to warn naval
Speaker 2: commanders throughout the Pacific than an attack was going to come.
Speaker 2: There were clues that it could have come at Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 2: naming the time of day. They didn't know that the
Speaker 2: time of the day when the Japanese were going to
Speaker 2: just in the embassy had been ordered American Embassy to
Speaker 2: destroy their codes, and that was at seven thirty am,
Speaker 2: which would have been a very good time for an
Speaker 2: attack on Pearl Harbor. And they didn't put two and
Speaker 2: two together. So I think it's more in competence. But
Speaker 2: I don't buy the theory that has been put forward
Speaker 2: by people like Stinnett, who makes this argument that you
Speaker 2: know that we knew that the Japanese fleet was on
Speaker 2: the way and so forth. I don't see the evidence
Speaker 2: for that. We did break one of the codes, but
Speaker 2: we didn't break the crucial you know, naval code, broke
Speaker 2: the diplomatic code, so we knew a lot of what
Speaker 2: was going on. Roosevelt knew a lot about it. He
Speaker 2: was reading a lot of Japanese mail. And maybe they
Speaker 2: could have put two and two together, but I think
Speaker 2: it was sort of racism in some sense. They just
Speaker 2: didn't think that Japanese could pull something like this off.
Speaker 1: You know, they found about that they well talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about you.
Speaker 2: That issue, and I'd be happy to talk with people
Speaker 2: about it. But I don't buy that that he knew
Speaker 2: sure that it was going to happen at Pearl Harbor.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, talk about fear and emergency.
Speaker 2: You're saying, okay, Well, when Roosevelt ran in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two, he he pledged to maintain sound money.
Speaker 2: Now I didn't exactly say well gold, but who were
Speaker 2: didn't either. But he also gave a speech right before
Speaker 2: the election called a little known speech called the Covenant Speech,
Speaker 2: where he would talk about, you know, gold contracts, the covenant.
Speaker 2: Right he said he would hold the covenant, you know, basically,
Speaker 2: I will uphold you know, the use of gold.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Then, very shortly after the election, he makes a decision
Speaker 2: to go off the gold standard. He calls in his
Speaker 2: secretary of the Treasury he was much more or actually
Speaker 2: Secretary of State who's much more conservative than him on
Speaker 2: financial issues, Cordell Hall, and he says, Cordell, congratulate you.
Speaker 2: We're going off the gold standard tomorrow. And he pulls
Speaker 2: out some money and it was a money that was
Speaker 2: issued by the whatever, the Federal Reserve Bank of Tennessee.
Speaker 2: I guess he said, this is from Tennessee, your own state, Cordell.
Speaker 2: And what makes this money good? It's only good because
Speaker 2: we say it's good. And again that is what he did,
Speaker 2: and he does a lot of crazy things after that.
Speaker 2: He does a program to purchase gold and he sets
Speaker 2: the well, no, not to purchase gold, but to set
Speaker 2: the price of gold. So he say, is it's gold
Speaker 2: buying program? And how does he determine the price? He
Speaker 2: determines it then from things like he says, well, I
Speaker 2: think the price should be nineteen cents today because it's
Speaker 2: a lucky number. You know. He would say things like that.
Speaker 2: And Roosevelt was very superstitious. He had lucky shoes, he
Speaker 2: had lucky hats. So this is this is not as
Speaker 2: strange as you might seem. And it was just it
Speaker 2: was just a crazy, crazy town. But what saved us
Speaker 2: in terms of financially in the thirties was we had
Speaker 2: massive gold imports from both Europe and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: Your people are taking their gold for obvious reasons out
Speaker 2: of those places and bringing into the United States. So
Speaker 2: we have a tremendous gold inflow to the United States
Speaker 2: through those sort of happy, not happy, tragic accidents. I
Speaker 2: guess you could say both from Russia and from Castalin
Speaker 2: is buying a lot of American goods using gold, that's
Speaker 2: part of it. And of course the gold is coming
Speaker 2: in from Germany because Jews and others are taking their
Speaker 2: taking their gold out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's interesting, you know, when you when you look
Speaker 1: at how he was reacting, how he had his lucky
Speaker 1: shoes and all the rest of the stuff, and how
Speaker 1: arbitrary things were. That sounds very familiar to them in
Speaker 1: a disturbing way, doesn't it. You know, kind of erratic
Speaker 1: and arbitrary, capricious. What he's doing with these things. We're
Speaker 1: starting to see, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Parallels with Trump, but they're big difference is too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, I think there are there there there,
Speaker 2: there's there's some parallels that you control.
Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about the end of prohibition.
Speaker 1: That's that's one of the things. Everybody, you know, happy
Speaker 1: days is here again. How much of that was yah?
Speaker 1: Did he build that up for his his campaign and
Speaker 1: how much of that was really an initiative of his
Speaker 1: or was it just that people had had it with
Speaker 1: alcohol prohibition at that point? He got ahead of that
Speaker 1: was he was he opposed on that by the Republicans
Speaker 1: or what what was the situation with the prohibition?
Speaker 2: And I don't discuss prohibition a lot, but but Roosevelt
Speaker 2: was a straddler. He wasn't going to take controversial positions.
Speaker 2: He was also a straddler on trade issues and terriff issues,
Speaker 2: so he was not a leader of the anti prohibition forces.
Speaker 2: There were Democrats who were the more conservative. Democrats interestingly
Speaker 2: tended to be the more anti prohibition, and there was
Speaker 2: a big element in the party and people were sick
Speaker 2: and tired of the Prohibition loss by nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 2: The Republicans chose to kind of avoid the issue. So
Speaker 2: Roosevelt and getting the nomination, it certainly was a popular position,
Speaker 2: but he also recognized that this is a popular position,
Speaker 2: and he came out for repeal of the Constitutional Amendment
Speaker 2: bringing in prohibition. He took a very strong stand. I
Speaker 2: think there were other motivations, though, One was it's a
Speaker 2: great tax source. As a matter of fact, during the
Speaker 2: early deal, even though they're talking about income taxes, most
Speaker 2: of the tax collections are from excise taxes people like
Speaker 2: things like cosmetics, cigarettes, alcohol. That's where the bulk of
Speaker 2: the revenue is raised. So Roosevelt is raising the tax
Speaker 2: top rate to I don't know eventually it gets so
Speaker 2: well over ninety percent, but it's going way way up.
Speaker 2: He makes a big deal about this, But that means
Speaker 2: that the wealth, they find ways to find tax shelters,
Speaker 2: they don't pay it. So where does the actual money comes.
Speaker 2: It comes from the nickels and dimes and people going
Speaker 2: to movies, because the tax on movie tickets, it comes
Speaker 2: from the nickels and dimes of working class people. But
Speaker 2: Roosevelt is very clever and never acknowledging that. And of
Speaker 2: course the excise taxes on liquor as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: always think is maybe in the back of his mind too,
Speaker 2: and he uses that revenue source in a major way.
Speaker 1: It's always soaked the rich and then it's always the
Speaker 1: poor middle class to pay all the taxes. That's another
Speaker 1: thing that never seen.
Speaker 2: Your example of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, another thing never stops. And of course the revenuers,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what they called the people that were
Speaker 1: coming after the stills in the mountains and everything, because
Speaker 1: that was really what they wanted. They wanted the money
Speaker 1: that was there. So talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court packing issue as well, and his fight to
Speaker 1: essentially just completely rewrite the constitution. When we look at
Speaker 1: what happened with a New Deal, should be called a
Speaker 1: new constitution.
Speaker 2: Well proposes. He keeps his quiet again, but then in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, he's all puffed up because the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six election was one of the more spectacular landslides
Speaker 2: in American history, partly because Roosevelt is very effective in
Speaker 2: using New Deal money, targeted money, and I could talk
Speaker 2: about that as well, how he was able to win
Speaker 2: such a big majority. But he thought, I'm an get
Speaker 2: a third new detail, right. He wanted to be more radical,
Speaker 2: he wanted to do more, but he thought, what good
Speaker 2: will that do if the Supreme Court, which has been
Speaker 2: strucking down, striking down measures like the TRIPLEA and the
Speaker 2: National Recovery Administration, What good will all my effort be
Speaker 2: unless I get a sympathetic court. Okay, Well, he decides
Speaker 2: he proposes to increase the size of the court, and
Speaker 2: he gives a speech where he basically says, they're overextended,
Speaker 2: they're old, they're tired. I want to help them. You know,
Speaker 2: they've got to be workload. Well, he gives his speech
Speaker 2: and he wants to increase the size of the court,
Speaker 2: and he obviously thinks he can pull it off because
Speaker 2: I don't know, you're talking about something like she whizz.
Speaker 2: The Republicans are down to like sixteen twenty senators. I mean,
Speaker 2: he's got overwhelmed majority. You would think that he could
Speaker 2: pull this off easily. And he's so disingenuous and it's
Speaker 2: so obvious what he's doing that there is a big
Speaker 2: movement against core packing, led by a new Dealer Senator
Speaker 2: Burton Wheeler, who'd been an ally for Roosevelt and turns
Speaker 2: against him, and Wheeler is the ideal guy to lead
Speaker 2: this effort. The Republicans are very smart. They lay back
Speaker 2: and let the Democrats take leadership, and they do. Now.
Speaker 2: The campaign is very grueling, and it becomes clear during
Speaker 2: the campaign that Roosevelt is essentially won because one of
Speaker 2: the justices on the Court has switched sides, and it's
Speaker 2: clear that he's probably going to get all of his
Speaker 2: New Deal programs sustained. But he keeps pushing on. I
Speaker 2: guess it becomes a matter of principle for him. He
Speaker 2: keeps pushing on. He pushes, pushes, pushes. The majority leader
Speaker 2: of the Senate is exhausted, he is in ad shape,
Speaker 2: and he ends up having a heart attack and is
Speaker 2: found with a copy of the Congressional Record in his hand.
Speaker 2: His name is Joe Robinson, and Roosevelt is it doesn't
Speaker 2: go to Robinson's funeral, And there's a lot of controversy
Speaker 2: about that. Why don't you go to the guy's funeral?
Speaker 2: Probably because he was pissed off that Robinson wasn't doing
Speaker 2: a better job. Anybody says, well, you would understand. You know,
Speaker 2: he had to fight for that, and it hurts Roosevelt
Speaker 2: no end. And Roosevelt is defeated. So in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, that is an example of a left right coalition.
Speaker 2: There are many examples, but that's one. He's defeated by Democrats.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine that happening under Biden. I would find
Speaker 2: it difficult to imagine that, or Franklinder Trump in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction. But it did happen then, which says something
Speaker 2: positive about Americans during that period. Americans in Congress included.
Speaker 2: That's right, higher level of character in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And I've mentioned many times about the fact, you know,
Speaker 1: we have our war on drug that's been going on
Speaker 1: for over half a century. But we had the eighteenth
Speaker 1: and the twenty first Amendment, which said that they had
Speaker 1: enough respect for the Constitution that everybody they had a
Speaker 1: constitutional amendment to stop in order to start it, and
Speaker 1: then stop the alcohol provision because they knew that they
Speaker 1: didn't have that power in the Constitution. But today, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't care about that. We just do whatever we wish.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Everybody agreed on that we have to have a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. It's one of the biggest arguments against
Speaker 1: the war on drugs, I think is the fact that
Speaker 1: we have those two amendments that are there. But when
Speaker 1: you go back and you look at this particular case
Speaker 1: with a Supreme Court, the fact that he's got the votes,
Speaker 1: but he still wants to press on with this thing
Speaker 1: because it's a matter of personal prestige and power. I
Speaker 1: think the same type of thing that we see with Trump.
Speaker 1: And yet does he take the kind of vengeance against
Speaker 1: people who go against him, in kind of a vendetta
Speaker 1: that we see Trump taking against Republicans. I say, he
Speaker 1: doesn't attend the guy's funeral or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: he gives him the close shoulder. But did he really
Speaker 1: go after people like Trump will go after somebody like
Speaker 1: Thomas Massey who opposes him on his agenda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he keeps And this is this is what's interesting.
Speaker 2: There is an investigation under another loyalist. In fact, he'd
Speaker 2: been offered the position on the Supreme Court before Black,
Speaker 2: but wanted to stay in Congress. His name was Senator
Speaker 2: Sherman Minton, and if you search his name, the thing
Speaker 2: that usually comes up as there's a bridge named after him.
Speaker 2: But now maybe that'll change. Button was a very young guy.
Speaker 2: He was already in the Senate leadership, first termer, and
Speaker 2: he was very tight with Roosevelt. And Minton starts his
Speaker 2: own investigation basically succeeds Black's the Black Committee's it's the
Speaker 2: same committee, but Black is now in the US Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: and so Mitt heads this investigation. They can't search telegrams anymore.
Speaker 2: But one of the things they do do is uh
Speaker 2: the use uh. Mint gets permission to look at the
Speaker 2: I R s uh uh the tax for uh tax
Speaker 2: records of people he targets, for example, he gets that,
Speaker 2: but Men gets very frustrated because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: putback people pushback, people are very upset about his methods,
Speaker 2: and he's he's does it. He lacks Black subtlety. Black
Speaker 2: had some subtlety, and Minton is just charging for it.
Speaker 2: And so Minton gives a speech. He said, well, we
Speaker 2: need a law against these big newspapers because most of
Speaker 2: the press was against Roosevelt. So he said, let's make
Speaker 2: it a felony to publish anything known to be untrue
Speaker 2: fake news basically the fact they used that term, I
Speaker 2: think false news or fake news. And he proposes this bill,
Speaker 2: and what is the reaction to the bill? You almost
Speaker 2: universal opposition sets in almost from the beginning. As it
Speaker 2: is setting in. Roosevelt has asked about the Minton bill
Speaker 2: in a news conference, and I think Roosevelt was the
Speaker 2: guy that had the idea. I think he put Minton
Speaker 2: up to it. I can't prove that, but I think
Speaker 2: it's true because Minton was not the kind of guy
Speaker 2: to go off on his own, and he reflects what
Speaker 2: Roosevelt thought of the press. He was asked about this
Speaker 2: and he said, well, you know, if we had such
Speaker 2: a bill, we wouldn't even have enough room in the
Speaker 2: federal prison system to hold all the prisoners. And he
Speaker 2: gets a little laugh, right yeah, and then is he
Speaker 2: moves on to a new topic, and I wish they'd
Speaker 2: done follow ups. They didn't. He says, you boys asked
Speaker 2: for it. You know, that's what he says, You boys
Speaker 2: asked for it. You know, I mean you reporters, you
Speaker 2: you know people, you asked for this. And then he
Speaker 2: moves on to the next topic and he drops it
Speaker 2: right because Minton ends up dropping it, but and it
Speaker 2: discredits his investigation, and his investigation is pretty much shut
Speaker 2: down after that. So FDRs those two years after the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six election are a low point for FDR.
Speaker 2: There's pushback against him, he loses core packing, the Minton
Speaker 2: Committee collapses, and he is he puts all of his
Speaker 2: attention on core packing. As a result, he isn't able
Speaker 2: to get his radical new Deal program in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: thirty seven, thirty eight that he wanted because he focuses
Speaker 2: almost entirely on court packing, and then later after it
Speaker 2: really is too late on these investigations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting when we look at this
Speaker 1: period of time when all the institutions were being reconsidered reinvented,
Speaker 1: if you will, and he's finding against the constitutional pattern
Speaker 1: that had been accepted. That he was getting pushed back
Speaker 1: even from his own party against some of this stuff
Speaker 1: because as we talked about people understood the principles, he
Speaker 1: had a lot of people who did not share his
Speaker 1: idea that the end justifies a means, and we don't
Speaker 1: see that today, we're in a much more dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: I think when we look at this why it's good
Speaker 1: to go back and look at history. You look at
Speaker 1: the radical change that was accomplished during the FDR period
Speaker 1: of time, and you look at the fact that now
Speaker 1: we have people on both sides have become unhinged from
Speaker 1: or have detached themselves from basic principles about free speech,
Speaker 1: the rule of law, and having a due process to
Speaker 1: investigate things like that. I think we're in a very
Speaker 1: dangerous time right now. I think this book helps to
Speaker 1: get people to understand that if we look at the
Speaker 1: context of the historical context of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're seeing a lot of people on the
Speaker 2: right who were talking about free speech and local control,
Speaker 2: states rights, Yeah, turned on a dime.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: This is very discouraging to see this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now they want to come after their idea of
Speaker 1: fake news.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now they've got their own fake news vendettas that they
Speaker 1: want to come after. So it is there is so
Speaker 1: much here. I mean, we could do several interviews with this.
Speaker 1: This is an excellent book. It is a very important
Speaker 1: presidency to understand the context of the times in which
Speaker 1: we live in our government. And I really highly recommend
Speaker 1: this book. FDR A Political Life by David Beto. And
Speaker 1: you pronounce you spell your name as b e I
Speaker 1: t o. Is that right?
Speaker 2: That's right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's not spelled like the Texas politician.
Speaker 2: Oh please, No, And a lot of people will call
Speaker 2: him Beto O'Rourke. But I think it's better. Actually, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I believe that's why his name is pronounced.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I he telling people that even if it isn't true, but.
Speaker 1: It wasna I think it is true. Yeah. I used
Speaker 1: to always call him, uh, Robert Francis O'Rourke or whatever
Speaker 1: his original name was. I said, is a he's a
Speaker 1: trans Hispanic, he identifies as his Panic. He's yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't want to resurrect him with any attention. I guess,
Speaker 1: but an excellent book, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us, and there is much to learn in terms
Speaker 1: of politics and history. Is a very seminal presidency, unfortunately
Speaker 1: for many of us would like to see government that
Speaker 1: follows the constitution. FDR's presidency was an unmitigated disaster, and
Speaker 1: it bears looking at it and see if we see
Speaker 1: any repetition in current events as a warning, as a
Speaker 1: harbinger what was coming. Because as we're talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, this whole stuff was secretly getting information on
Speaker 1: his enemies. We saw that immediately after World War two ended.
Speaker 1: We saw that immediately being transferred over to the NSA,
Speaker 1: the CIA, the FBI and all these people. Using the
Speaker 1: income taxes by people, These same tactics are used over
Speaker 1: and over again. Thank you very much, David Beto. The
Speaker 1: book is FDR a political life. Thank you folks for
Speaker 1: joining us. Have a good day. The common man. They
Speaker 1: created common Core that dumbed down our children. They created
Speaker 1: common past track and control us. They're Commons project to
Speaker 1: make sure the commoners own nothing and the communist future.
Speaker 1: They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated ordinary. But
Speaker 1: each of us has worth and dignity created in the
Speaker 1: image of God. That is what we have in common.
Speaker 1: That is what they want to take away. Their most
Speaker 1: powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire to know
Speaker 1: everything about us, while they hide everything from us. It's
Speaker 1: time to turn that around and expose what they want
Speaker 1: to hide. Please share the information and links you'll find
Speaker 1: at the Davidnightshow dot com. Thank you for listening, Thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing. If you can't support us financially, please
Speaker 1: keep us in your prayers. Ddavidnightshow dot com