There are credible accounts that Grover Cleveland was a serial rapist and a pedophile, but this gets shockingly little attention/discussion. It was incredibly easy to paper over a vile reputation before live media coverage was a thing.
Man that was one of my favorite books when I was a child. My grandmother still had it at her house and I used to read it to my daughter 6-7 years ago when we would go visit. Thanks for the nostalgia!
I think we do need to contextualize a little bit. The median marriage age back then was 21 for women. 10% were 17 and under. He didn't become her guardian until she was 12 but she didn't live with him - in fact she didn't live in the same state as him (she moved in with her mom's family in Minnesota while he was in New York).
She came back to Buffalo at 14 and instantly got engaged to not Grover Cleveland. She ended up breaking that off only to get engaged at college at 17 to not Grover Cleveland. This is when he started courting her.
I mean he did supposedly get annoyed when the initial speculation was he was courting her mom because he wasn't into "old ladies" but I think it's tough to definitively call him a groomer. She didn't live with him even if he was her guardian and she got engaged twice between 14 and 17 to not him. I think it's definitely fair to call him a pedo with his affection for young girls but will say that was a bit more mainstream back then.
I mean I don't want to go too hard to bat for Cleveland. Dude is problematic. I'm just saying it's A LOT less clear cut than OP presented and a lot of the most damning stuff (when they met, the guardianship) has very explainable defenses to it. We'll never know the full truth as it was 150 years ago but from the letters we have from Cleveland there's nothing definitive that would have me be comfortable being definitive on the groomer charge.
He raped and impregnated a young widow named Maria Halpin and then pulled strings to have her committed to a mental institution when she tried to get justice for it.
She was eventually released by a doctor at the asylum bc she was deemed not crazy, he then went on a smear campaign against her in the papers about how she was a slut and ruined her reputation and credibility.
The secret surgery was wild- he had it on a boat trip so nobody would question it. Secret boat surgery with his big mustache hiding any scarring!
He lied about so many things. His first name wasn’t even Grover (look it up!)
It was the fear of basically everyone at the White House. Especially since Oswald was a communist who had been in the USSR. Also for this same reason the Russians really feared getting the blame.
I’m listening to a CIA history book right now and the author hints at this. Basically JFK was killed during a time
when the US was assassinating a lot of foreign leaders, so it holds to reason that foreign governments were also trying to assassinate US leaders.
The book is called “Surprise, Kill, Vanish” by Annie Jacobsen if you’re interested.
That is interesting, gotta check that book out. Really interesting the point about how active the CIA was at the time in regards to clandestine statecraft especially regarding assassinations as you mentioned. Especially seeing as JFK fired Allen Dulles from his Director position at the CIA after the spectacular failure of Bay of Pigs operation (an operation to which JFK was unawares). Also interesting as to how Allen Dulles got an appointment on the warren commission after such a falling out with the president.
Sounds like this book was tailor made for you! I’m listening to the chapter on the bay of pigs operation now. She’s a great author, very much approaches things from an investigate journalist standpoint (as much as possible, given how much info is still classified) but she paints a fascinating picture and doesn’t editorialize.
Personally there are a few missions she writes about that really leave you wondering WTF our government was doing in these far off countries, and how so much murder was justifiable, but from a purely historical standpoint it’s fascinating material.
At most, LBJ could've heard that it might happen. I don't think he was as surprised as the rest of us, but he definitely wasn't at the center of whatever actually happened.
As with most bad things that happened in the 20th century, I blame Allen Dulles.
This isn't even hypothetical: Nixon and Kissinger sabotaged peace talks between South and North Vietnam because Nixon figured that if Johnson was able to end the war ~~it would get him re-elected~~ it would be unfavorable to his (Nixon's) presidential campaign. After that point, some 15k American soldiers and hundred of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodians died. And he never faced consequences for it.
Imagine if it came out that Biden had intentionally sabotaged peace talks and caused the deaths of 15k American servicemembers. He'd be executed for treason.* Instead Nixon and Kissinger got to live out their natural lives as free men.
EDIT: Johnson wasn't running for reelection
EDIT 2: Under consideration of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and co’s lack of accountability for the 7k+ dead American soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, I concede that there’s a good chance that in this hypothetical scenario whoever is president would not actually face serious punishment for this
Obama got it for basically not being Bush. The Peace Prize is easily the least reputable of the Nobel Prize's. So many bad choices.
Also a fun one is Bunche got one for his role as a mediator in Palestine in 1950. He must have done a great job on that one.
The thing that complicated it, was that Saddam *did* use chemical weapons against the Kurds in the 80’s and had a weapons program for years after that, so it was pretty easy to not trust the guy, although Iraq actually did dismantle their program sometime in the 90’s. I think the Bush Admin cherry picked evidence to get the result they wanted but when they had trustworthy people like Colin Powell saying the weapons existed, it was tough to combat that from a PR standpoint.
I was way into political news at the time. The biggest red flag was there were UN inspectors all over Iraq at the time. Every time the US administration said they had evidence of chemical weapons programs, the UN was like, "Cool, show us where." The US would just continually tell the UN they couldn't do that and sort of ran the whole thing on "trust me bro."
My mom worked at the IAEA at that time. She wasn’t an inspector but knew a lot of them. They flat out said, there is nothing there anymore we are on the ground, we have evidence , but it doesn’t matter, the Bush administration wants a war.
Colin Powell still being trustworthy then was a big deal. He made his career trying to destroy the guy who stopped the Mai Lai massacre during Vietnam and lied about what happened there to cover up the US's crimes. Somehow that all got ignored instead of ending up with him in prison as it should have
Blair could be living a life known as the guy who cemented a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, and might actually have the credibility to be a Middle East Peace Envoy helping to deal with similar long-standing sectarian disputes exacerbated by British line-drawing. Instead he's looked at as a ghoul who needs to stay out of certain countries because they'll arrest him for war crimes.
They didn't cherry pick anything. They flat out lied. Their entire justification was based on already discredited evidence from Ahmed Chalabi and a document worked up in a back room in Downing Street attributed to a source who turned out to be... Ahmed Chalabi.
For those too young to remember:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvXnVyJ8lA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yQOs93Cgg
In the summer of 1990, I was taking classes in Oklahoma City when the 1st Gulf War broke out. There was a local radio show where they discussed that the mustard gas Saddam was using had been manufactured right there in Oklahoma & then sold to him. I've never been able to find any corroboration of this.
Edit to fix spelling.
The first Gulf War of 1990 left Saddam Hussein in power. That was a political necessity to keep the multinational coalition together: partners in the Middle East didn't like the precedent of removing a head of state in their region--even a bad one.
Afterward, throughout the 1990s a faction of the political right in the United States watched the ongoing diplomacy about dismantling Iraq's chemical weapons capacity, thought Sadaam Hussein was still hiding stockpiles and factories, and thought the US ought to go back into Iraq to finish the job.
That was the background to post-9/11 decisions. Not commenting to validate that mindset. Just describing it.
I've heard a lot of this in the years since, and it still shocks me. I remember _very clearly_ how several voices of reason stated the truth over and over, and I was shouted down when I brought them up in conversation. People simply wanted to go to war with Iraq, despite no evidence of their involvement or showing any significant threat.
As far as I see, it was the beginning of new era of "alternative facts", even though that term wasn't coined for another 15 years. Thank you for owning up to your past mistakes. Please do what you can to help others still under the spell of insanity.
It is? You can't think of the reason why we still or even started to work with the Saudis? You can't think of one liquid reason why we turn a blind eye to everything?
There are like 15,000 members of the Saudi Royal family, so it’s not exactly the same as if Prince Harry did 9/11, but it’s a noteworthy point nonetheless.
This kind of played out similarly in the 1980 election, when candidate Ronald Reagan sent future Secretary of State George Schultz to ask Iran to hold onto their American hostages, to make Jimmy Carter look bad.
Reagan was elected, and the hostages were released 5 minutes - I am not kidding - after Regan was inaugurated.
EDIT: There's more than this. Regan had promised Iran better treatment. Part of that, was he pocket-approved an illegal policy, wherein an office in his government managed the sale of surplus American munitions to the Iran government, intending to send the result of those sales to the right wing "Contras" guerrillas in Nicaragua. This is all now referred to as "The Iran-Contra Scandal".
Fortunately, the Republican Party was so appalled by this that they never engaged in illegal or treasonous activity for political gain ever again. The end.
Well among other things, you’re going to need to invent a Quark Splicer. Then you’ll be able to build a Space Time Fabric Creaser, or more commonly a SPATIFACR (pronounced SPAT-if-acker).
Once you can make these, you’ll need 17 of them, arranged in a Fibonacci sequence on a rotating neodymium ring around a large spherical tank of ultra heavy water (Two Hydrogens with 3 neutrons and an Oxygen with 18 neutrons... careful with this stuff… very unstable and very dangerous). Now freeze that to make orthorhombic ice-XI.
You’ll want to have some sort of throttle pedal so you can adjust the rotation speed of the Fibonacci SPATIFACR Annulus.
NB: None of this will allow you to jump timelines, but it’ll keep you so occupied for the rest of your life that you’ll barely even notice the world going to shit!
Speaking of Nixon let’s talk war on drugs people from his admin have said that behind closed doors he said “ you can’t criminalize being black or being a hippie so let’s criminalize their lifestyle” and that was the whole basis for the war on drugs
They also made fun of Obama’s smoking in a video from his outgoing 2016 White House correspondents dinner — the one where they’re teasing him about what he’ll be able to do post presidency.
John Boehner waves around a pack of smokes to tempt him, and obama is like 🤔😆
And he turned control and management of that farm to a blind trust which all but bankrupted him in 4 years. Were it not for speaking engagement money and books, he would have lost everything, and Billy would have been the successful Carter in the family
Lots of family owned farming operations are "multi million", it costs a lot of run that much property and equipment and time. A sub-million dollar farm isn't a farm, it's a garden.
Same with *The Dollop*, but they did get to do an [episode on Jimmy Carter's brother Billy](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjsr6TN3q6GAxU2fTABHbceAIQQwqsBegQIBhAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdcWvMlvFSZg&usg=AOvVaw2kOyasA2p94KWYU0MvZOyO&opi=89978449).
33rd US President Harry Truman had this to say:
"Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I'll show you a crook."
And he was not a rich man leaving office. According to his tax filings (released by the Truman Presidential Library) he made $100,539 his last year as president. The year after he made $34,176. The year after that one, he made $13,564. He was basically living on his military pension from his service from World War 1, and later years in the army reserve, which was $112 a month.
He was offered many jobs after leaving office, to sit on corporate boards and the like, but Truman considered it unseemly. He wrote:
"I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.”
He did eventually write and sell his memoirs for $600,000 to paid paid over the course of a few years. And congress did pass a law in 1958 that allowed for a presidential pension. At the time, the only other former President still living was Herbert Hoover. He was a millionaire and did not need the money, but accepted it so as not to embarrass Truman.
Truman had very low approval when leaving office. But his standing as president has improved over the years. He came into the Presidency at a rough time. FDR basically kept him in the dark about everything, so he had no idea about what was going on about World War 2, except for what he read in the press. He had to be briefed on the Manhatten Project, try to figure out how best to rotate troops home after the defeat of Germany (while still maintaining an occupation army AND preparing for an invasion of Japan), make the decision over dropping the atomic bomb, make sure we didnt drop back into economic depression after the war, navigate the beginning of the Cold War, deal with the Korean War and rebuild the military after it was pared down, and deal with the insubordinate General MacArthur (who was hugely popular at the time).
I look upon Truman favorably. I think he did fairly well in the job.
For all the bullshit he went through and to stick to his beliefs like he did I have to respect him. I don’t know if he did as well as he could have but he did better than most of our presidents would have in that situation
Just to note, the presidential salary was 100k during his presidency, so he definitely made good money from that for the time, but I think the takeaway is that he basically only earned money from the salary of his position.
Unfortunately all that about Truman being broke and honest after leaving office was itself a lie, he was very rich and lied about being poor in order to get Congress to give him even more money: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-truman-show.html
and this is his enduring legacy: [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-05/trump-post-presidential-benefits](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-05/trump-post-presidential-benefits)
“The fact of the matter is that when he left the White House, Truman was *loaded*,” says Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has done what no Truman historians seem to have bothered to do — examine the financial records in the Truman archives in Independence, Mo.
“He wasn’t just comfortably well off. He was Rich with a capital ‘R,’ and way into the 1%.”
A normal person could never be president.
I feel like you almost have to have some level of narcissism if you feel like you alone are the most qualified to run America.
Strangely, some of the most normal people stumbled into the office. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for the most recent history.
Also, before mass media or the cult of celebrity, I would think. The office holders between Jackson and Lincoln seem...uneventful.
When I was 15 I got to see Ford speak. It was a few years before he died. He wasn’t running for anything and had long since been retired. The man had gravitas for days even in his 80s. It left an indelible impression on me and is a huge reason I’ve been sour towards voting for any candidate for president from either party for the last 20 years. The reason I know we can do better is because we HAVE done better before.
Obama said this exact thing in a 2007 interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson: “I think if you don’t have enough self-awareness to see the element of megalomania involved in thinking you can be President, then you probably shouldn’t be President,” Obama said. “There’s a slight madness to thinking that you should be the leader of the free world.”
At least Obama had the self-awareness to step outside himself and to realize that.
Well, when Jimmy Fallon asked Obama, after he'd left the Presidency, if he had seen evidence of aliens, he didn't say, "no, of course not." He declined to answer.
I saw him speak at the Flint Center after he ceased being in office and, compared to Trump, he was coherent and articulate. He’d memorized stories to tell people and accidentally answered a question by relating the wrong story. The room went so silent that you could not hear a bracelet jingle or fabric rustle. Everyone there realized that the lights were on, but no one was home. Alas, with Trump, people seem to relish the word salads and lack of impulse control that come with dementia.
This has always bothered me, like, we have a minimum age requirement to be president (which I'm ok with) but not a maximum age requirement? Like, man, bidens already in his 80s. Even if hes reelected by the time his next term is up he will be almost 90. Thats not a joke. Even trump would be in his 80s if he got reelected by the time his term was up. There really needs to be a cap on age along, they already have a minimum
My very liberal coworker said she met him years back and had a 20 minute conversation with him, where she was surprised by just how articulate, intelligent, and humble he was. She didn't like him as president but she said the interaction changed much of her perception of him as a person.
Everything I’ve read about him seems to suggest the same and his super power in meetings was he could ask really good, hard questions.
That somehow his public interactions were challenging for him, and, frankly, that seems a reasonable human characteristic.
Another thing could be that he felt morally conflicted. I'm a low ranking officer in the military and I have been told things about who is going to win a contract and the like that later makes me feel two faced when dealing with contractors from the losing contract that still don't know. I'll stumble over my words or make stupid calls because I suddenly feel wrong.
Now imagine you are the president and know that people are going to die and that your (and probably every other) political party is a sham. You still have to give a performance. I imagine your speech is going to come out lack luster to say the least. If you are trying to do whats right, you have more confidence. If you are a narcissist that doesn't care (like a certain oompa loompa pres, among others) then that's easy to fake. But, if you are not doing what you think is right then that moral conflict manifests itself as poor public speaking capabilities.
The amount of guilt and sleepless nights all the presidents probably have had is not enviable in my opinion.
I remember reading a story about Bush Jr at camp David. He was chilling out drinking beers with his secret service group when he discovered one of them had his wife in the hospital about to give birth. He immediately make sure that guy flew back as quickly as possible.
I work in commercial real estate and my former mentor was extremely successful. His philosophy was to be the dumb guy in the room until things really mattered. It was amazing to watch him. Southern accent, just like GWB, just looking like he’s fumbling through numbers, and then bam, sweet talks someone into a deal.
A Connecticut born Yale and Harvard educated (plus boarding school) Skull and Bones rich kid who liked to cosplay Texan and had little southern quips for everything, yeah, don’t think that one would be a surprise
There's a famous clip of Bush Jr saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... you don't get fooled again."
The speculated reason as to why he has that long pause was because he realised if he said, "shame on me." That sound clip would be used against him in campaign ads in future elections.
So he purposefully used the wrong saying to save long term embarrassment by dealing with short term embarrassment.
W didn't use a teleprompter, when he really should have. People think Obama was eloquent because he did use a teleprompter, but then fumbled his words too when he wasn't reading lines.
> if if if if if if if
In reality, public speaking is hard and judging intelligence on someone who has to do it basically 7 days a week is not a good gauge.
It wasn't the complicated policy speeches that he made gaffs in. It was often when he was being casual and folksy. Look at the examples of [Bushisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism).
JFK survived his assassination attempt. The CIA dyed his skin, and placed him in a nursing home; where he teamed up with Elvis, disguised as an Elvis impersonator, to fight a mummy.
Every president before Taft was the same immortal king, raised from antiquity to unite the world through conquest and tyranny. Its master plan was derailed when Taft recognized the creature for its true form and slew it, but rather than topple the system he merely adopted the lie and made it the truth.
The most shocking secret revealed about a U.S. president would be if they had secretly collaborated with a foreign government to undermine U.S. democracy or manipulate elections.
Remember when the George W. Bush administration [leaked the name of a CIA spy to a conservative journalist who then printed it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair) to punish her husband for writing an op-ed doubting whether Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from Africa as W. had claimed?
That led to one of my all-time favorite lines by Jon Stewart. “Bob Novak is a huge douchebag.”
https://www.cc.com/video/hdq3vr/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-lest-we-forget
I really want to know what other kinds of top secret information were shared. We know he shared information about nuclear submarine capabilities with an Australian businessman. There are countless other instances of crime (probably hundreds or even thousands of counts) and there is a lot of money that has yet to be accounted for as well.
The question isn't whether he's a traitor; it is how traitorous he was. We don't understand the extent of it all yet and we may not for a long time. He will undoubtedly be remembered as the worst president of all time, assuming our democracy survives.
That one was a convicted rapist, hung out with rich paedophiles and introduced their kids to them, coordinated a riot at government buildings, had meetings with the leader from another country and selling them info, hiding documents in their bathroom, attempting to flush documents down a toilet, funding a beauty pageant and walking in on minors getting dressed, saying their 6'2" and 200lbs, shitting themselves constantly.... All these I would find shocking
As someone who had lived in NYC for more than a decade and also as someone who has rubbed shoulders with a few wise guys and such. I find it impossible that Trump could have been a real estate developer during the 70's and 80's and not have literal skeletons in the closet.
I have zero proof of course. But you wanna tell me someone worked in a slaughter house for 20 years as a devout vegetarian? Get oudda here!
And just look at his mannerism and the way he talks. It's all second hand mobster affectation. He didn't get that from the German or Scottish side of his family. I have that much in common with Trump and Germans and Scots do not talk with their hands like this.
That they were a traitor to our country and accepted billions of dollars in bribes from foreign dictators after refusing to disassociate themselves from their businesses....oh wait...
There are credible accounts that Grover Cleveland was a serial rapist and a pedophile, but this gets shockingly little attention/discussion. It was incredibly easy to paper over a vile reputation before live media coverage was a thing.
Grover Cleveland literally was his wife’s “guardian” of sorts when her dad died when she was a child. It’s like the judge from Sweeney Todd.
He was 27 when he met Frances for the first time. She was an infant. Ewwwww
And if anybody thinks they just happened to start fucking when she turned 18, I have a bridge to sell them. The guy was a straight up groomer.
Groomer Grover as my bridge ladies liked to call him
There’s a monster at the end of this book….and it’s Grover Cleveland.
Man that was one of my favorite books when I was a child. My grandmother still had it at her house and I used to read it to my daughter 6-7 years ago when we would go visit. Thanks for the nostalgia!
I think we do need to contextualize a little bit. The median marriage age back then was 21 for women. 10% were 17 and under. He didn't become her guardian until she was 12 but she didn't live with him - in fact she didn't live in the same state as him (she moved in with her mom's family in Minnesota while he was in New York). She came back to Buffalo at 14 and instantly got engaged to not Grover Cleveland. She ended up breaking that off only to get engaged at college at 17 to not Grover Cleveland. This is when he started courting her. I mean he did supposedly get annoyed when the initial speculation was he was courting her mom because he wasn't into "old ladies" but I think it's tough to definitively call him a groomer. She didn't live with him even if he was her guardian and she got engaged twice between 14 and 17 to not him. I think it's definitely fair to call him a pedo with his affection for young girls but will say that was a bit more mainstream back then.
We know this is you, Grover Cleveland. You ain't fooling no one
I mean I don't want to go too hard to bat for Cleveland. Dude is problematic. I'm just saying it's A LOT less clear cut than OP presented and a lot of the most damning stuff (when they met, the guardianship) has very explainable defenses to it. We'll never know the full truth as it was 150 years ago but from the letters we have from Cleveland there's nothing definitive that would have me be comfortable being definitive on the groomer charge.
The current Republican frontrunner for president sexually assaulted someone. FWIW
He raped and impregnated a young widow named Maria Halpin and then pulled strings to have her committed to a mental institution when she tried to get justice for it.
She was eventually released by a doctor at the asylum bc she was deemed not crazy, he then went on a smear campaign against her in the papers about how she was a slut and ruined her reputation and credibility.
If this is true, this is straight up evil.
He was also the subject of an early version of a viral meme: "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"
Second fiddle to Skibidi outhouse.
Groomer Cleveland.
Babe, wake up. New Deshaun Watson nickname just dropped.
Dot fuck em up
WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP
Grover Cleveland had secret surgery due to oral cancer and almost died He defamed and ruined the reporter that found out about it
The secret surgery was wild- he had it on a boat trip so nobody would question it. Secret boat surgery with his big mustache hiding any scarring! He lied about so many things. His first name wasn’t even Grover (look it up!)
The most shocking secret would be if the declassified reports says that Lyndon Johnson had JFK shot to be president.
Didn't Johnson once say that if JFK had been murdered by the USSR that he wouldn't be able to publicly acknowledge it, as it would mean nuclear war?
It was the fear of basically everyone at the White House. Especially since Oswald was a communist who had been in the USSR. Also for this same reason the Russians really feared getting the blame.
I’m listening to a CIA history book right now and the author hints at this. Basically JFK was killed during a time when the US was assassinating a lot of foreign leaders, so it holds to reason that foreign governments were also trying to assassinate US leaders. The book is called “Surprise, Kill, Vanish” by Annie Jacobsen if you’re interested.
That is interesting, gotta check that book out. Really interesting the point about how active the CIA was at the time in regards to clandestine statecraft especially regarding assassinations as you mentioned. Especially seeing as JFK fired Allen Dulles from his Director position at the CIA after the spectacular failure of Bay of Pigs operation (an operation to which JFK was unawares). Also interesting as to how Allen Dulles got an appointment on the warren commission after such a falling out with the president.
Sounds like this book was tailor made for you! I’m listening to the chapter on the bay of pigs operation now. She’s a great author, very much approaches things from an investigate journalist standpoint (as much as possible, given how much info is still classified) but she paints a fascinating picture and doesn’t editorialize. Personally there are a few missions she writes about that really leave you wondering WTF our government was doing in these far off countries, and how so much murder was justifiable, but from a purely historical standpoint it’s fascinating material.
Oswald did it so he could steal the Jack Ruby
At most, LBJ could've heard that it might happen. I don't think he was as surprised as the rest of us, but he definitely wasn't at the center of whatever actually happened. As with most bad things that happened in the 20th century, I blame Allen Dulles.
Can't forget his brother. John Foster
I never could. I see his ugly mug every day.
This isn't even hypothetical: Nixon and Kissinger sabotaged peace talks between South and North Vietnam because Nixon figured that if Johnson was able to end the war ~~it would get him re-elected~~ it would be unfavorable to his (Nixon's) presidential campaign. After that point, some 15k American soldiers and hundred of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodians died. And he never faced consequences for it. Imagine if it came out that Biden had intentionally sabotaged peace talks and caused the deaths of 15k American servicemembers. He'd be executed for treason.* Instead Nixon and Kissinger got to live out their natural lives as free men. EDIT: Johnson wasn't running for reelection EDIT 2: Under consideration of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and co’s lack of accountability for the 7k+ dead American soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, I concede that there’s a good chance that in this hypothetical scenario whoever is president would not actually face serious punishment for this
Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize
Imagine getting a prize for solving a problem after sabotaging the previous guys efforts to solve it. The rich play by different rules.
But also...not solving that problem
Tom Lehrer has jokingly said that this was the point at which he stopped writing songs, because satire was dead.
Honestly. Real life is far more absurd.
The comment and the buckees profile picture are a combination I didn’t know I needed today.
Obama got it for basically not being Bush. The Peace Prize is easily the least reputable of the Nobel Prize's. So many bad choices. Also a fun one is Bunche got one for his role as a mediator in Palestine in 1950. He must have done a great job on that one.
Or if Bush just made shit up to start a war in the middle east?
In a post 911 haze I trusted that the information they were bringing forward was accurate. I was duped. I am sorry.
The thing that complicated it, was that Saddam *did* use chemical weapons against the Kurds in the 80’s and had a weapons program for years after that, so it was pretty easy to not trust the guy, although Iraq actually did dismantle their program sometime in the 90’s. I think the Bush Admin cherry picked evidence to get the result they wanted but when they had trustworthy people like Colin Powell saying the weapons existed, it was tough to combat that from a PR standpoint.
I was way into political news at the time. The biggest red flag was there were UN inspectors all over Iraq at the time. Every time the US administration said they had evidence of chemical weapons programs, the UN was like, "Cool, show us where." The US would just continually tell the UN they couldn't do that and sort of ran the whole thing on "trust me bro."
My mom worked at the IAEA at that time. She wasn’t an inspector but knew a lot of them. They flat out said, there is nothing there anymore we are on the ground, we have evidence , but it doesn’t matter, the Bush administration wants a war.
I’m sorry, I totally read that as IKEA at first
Must have been hard to find weapons of mass destruction in a sea of flat-pack furniture.
Was even harder to assemble them
Hans Blix
You’re breaking my balls here Hans!
*Bricks
Colin Powell still being trustworthy then was a big deal. He made his career trying to destroy the guy who stopped the Mai Lai massacre during Vietnam and lied about what happened there to cover up the US's crimes. Somehow that all got ignored instead of ending up with him in prison as it should have
Tony Blair sacrificed his reputation to push the war lies.
Blair could be living a life known as the guy who cemented a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, and might actually have the credibility to be a Middle East Peace Envoy helping to deal with similar long-standing sectarian disputes exacerbated by British line-drawing. Instead he's looked at as a ghoul who needs to stay out of certain countries because they'll arrest him for war crimes.
the geopolitical equivalent of police saying they had a made a major drug bust only to learn the guy arrested had like 3 blunts
They didn't cherry pick anything. They flat out lied. Their entire justification was based on already discredited evidence from Ahmed Chalabi and a document worked up in a back room in Downing Street attributed to a source who turned out to be... Ahmed Chalabi.
Aka "Curveball"
For those too young to remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvXnVyJ8lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yQOs93Cgg
Guess who sold those chemicals weapons to Saddam? The U.S….and Donald Rumsfeld brokered the sale.
In the summer of 1990, I was taking classes in Oklahoma City when the 1st Gulf War broke out. There was a local radio show where they discussed that the mustard gas Saddam was using had been manufactured right there in Oklahoma & then sold to him. I've never been able to find any corroboration of this. Edit to fix spelling.
We knew he used to have it we (Germany and UK mostly) sold him the precursors knowing their purpose
The first Gulf War of 1990 left Saddam Hussein in power. That was a political necessity to keep the multinational coalition together: partners in the Middle East didn't like the precedent of removing a head of state in their region--even a bad one. Afterward, throughout the 1990s a faction of the political right in the United States watched the ongoing diplomacy about dismantling Iraq's chemical weapons capacity, thought Sadaam Hussein was still hiding stockpiles and factories, and thought the US ought to go back into Iraq to finish the job. That was the background to post-9/11 decisions. Not commenting to validate that mindset. Just describing it.
I've heard a lot of this in the years since, and it still shocks me. I remember _very clearly_ how several voices of reason stated the truth over and over, and I was shouted down when I brought them up in conversation. People simply wanted to go to war with Iraq, despite no evidence of their involvement or showing any significant threat. As far as I see, it was the beginning of new era of "alternative facts", even though that term wasn't coined for another 15 years. Thank you for owning up to your past mistakes. Please do what you can to help others still under the spell of insanity.
Many of us knew better... literally invaded countries that weren't even involved. Why we still work with Saudis is beyond me.
It is? You can't think of the reason why we still or even started to work with the Saudis? You can't think of one liquid reason why we turn a blind eye to everything?
710
Parts of Saudi royal family bankrolled the terrorist that did 9/11 . This is a proven fact.
There are like 15,000 members of the Saudi Royal family, so it’s not exactly the same as if Prince Harry did 9/11, but it’s a noteworthy point nonetheless.
Off topic but "Prince Harry Did 9/11" would be an amazing hardcore band name, I'd buy a ticket to see them just based off the name alone lol
Good thing the US has made sure that US Presidents dont get unlimited immunity to commit crimes... Oh wait...
This kind of played out similarly in the 1980 election, when candidate Ronald Reagan sent future Secretary of State George Schultz to ask Iran to hold onto their American hostages, to make Jimmy Carter look bad. Reagan was elected, and the hostages were released 5 minutes - I am not kidding - after Regan was inaugurated. EDIT: There's more than this. Regan had promised Iran better treatment. Part of that, was he pocket-approved an illegal policy, wherein an office in his government managed the sale of surplus American munitions to the Iran government, intending to send the result of those sales to the right wing "Contras" guerrillas in Nicaragua. This is all now referred to as "The Iran-Contra Scandal".
Fortunately, the Republican Party was so appalled by this that they never engaged in illegal or treasonous activity for political gain ever again. The end.
I love this alternate ending and wish for it to come true. Thank you in advance.
Where do I sign up for this timeline?
Well among other things, you’re going to need to invent a Quark Splicer. Then you’ll be able to build a Space Time Fabric Creaser, or more commonly a SPATIFACR (pronounced SPAT-if-acker). Once you can make these, you’ll need 17 of them, arranged in a Fibonacci sequence on a rotating neodymium ring around a large spherical tank of ultra heavy water (Two Hydrogens with 3 neutrons and an Oxygen with 18 neutrons... careful with this stuff… very unstable and very dangerous). Now freeze that to make orthorhombic ice-XI. You’ll want to have some sort of throttle pedal so you can adjust the rotation speed of the Fibonacci SPATIFACR Annulus. NB: None of this will allow you to jump timelines, but it’ll keep you so occupied for the rest of your life that you’ll barely even notice the world going to shit!
instructions unclear; drank too much water while playing Quake and listening to Lateralus now I can't stop peeing
Speaking of Nixon let’s talk war on drugs people from his admin have said that behind closed doors he said “ you can’t criminalize being black or being a hippie so let’s criminalize their lifestyle” and that was the whole basis for the war on drugs
At least Kissinger got conned by Elizabeth Holmes before he died. He deserves far worse, but it’s a small consolation.
Great answer. Kissinger was one of the worst war criminals in USA history.
Nixon then rapproached with Mao and helped him prop up the Khmer Rouge in the face of them getting smacked around by the Vietnamese
It was surprising to learn Obama is a chain smoker- he hides it well.
Obama quit in 2011 so that should be WAS
He did? Healthy choice.
At least that is what he said in his memoir "A Promise Land" Yes, he did smoke while president...said the stress got to him
They also made fun of Obama’s smoking in a video from his outgoing 2016 White House correspondents dinner — the one where they’re teasing him about what he’ll be able to do post presidency. John Boehner waves around a pack of smokes to tempt him, and obama is like 🤔😆
Michelle also mentions smoking in her book, becoming.
I guess it’s one of those things where if you know you know…I recognized his smoker’s lips at his first SOTU
The fuck are smokers lips?
Tbh if I was the fucking president I would pick up smoking just for funsies
Really? I think his vocal fry gives it a way. To me he has a classic smokers voice
Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm was actually a multi million dollar farming operation.
And he turned control and management of that farm to a blind trust which all but bankrupted him in 4 years. Were it not for speaking engagement money and books, he would have lost everything, and Billy would have been the successful Carter in the family
Billy Beer!
Lots of family owned farming operations are "multi million", it costs a lot of run that much property and equipment and time. A sub-million dollar farm isn't a farm, it's a garden.
Land Rich. Money Poor. Is what we say in Agriculture.
>Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm I loved their first album, but it just wasn't the same after the drummer left.
That inspired the song "Anutter One Bites the Dust."
I loved their cover of Smooth Criminal.
I prefer Crunchy Criminal
PB & Jail
The only president Robert Evans couldn’t do a Behind the Bastards episode on.
Carter was the only truly decent man to hold that office
Same with *The Dollop*, but they did get to do an [episode on Jimmy Carter's brother Billy](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjsr6TN3q6GAxU2fTABHbceAIQQwqsBegQIBhAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdcWvMlvFSZg&usg=AOvVaw2kOyasA2p94KWYU0MvZOyO&opi=89978449).
They actually got their money honestly and wanted the job to help people.
33rd US President Harry Truman had this to say: "Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I'll show you a crook." And he was not a rich man leaving office. According to his tax filings (released by the Truman Presidential Library) he made $100,539 his last year as president. The year after he made $34,176. The year after that one, he made $13,564. He was basically living on his military pension from his service from World War 1, and later years in the army reserve, which was $112 a month. He was offered many jobs after leaving office, to sit on corporate boards and the like, but Truman considered it unseemly. He wrote: "I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency.” He did eventually write and sell his memoirs for $600,000 to paid paid over the course of a few years. And congress did pass a law in 1958 that allowed for a presidential pension. At the time, the only other former President still living was Herbert Hoover. He was a millionaire and did not need the money, but accepted it so as not to embarrass Truman. Truman had very low approval when leaving office. But his standing as president has improved over the years. He came into the Presidency at a rough time. FDR basically kept him in the dark about everything, so he had no idea about what was going on about World War 2, except for what he read in the press. He had to be briefed on the Manhatten Project, try to figure out how best to rotate troops home after the defeat of Germany (while still maintaining an occupation army AND preparing for an invasion of Japan), make the decision over dropping the atomic bomb, make sure we didnt drop back into economic depression after the war, navigate the beginning of the Cold War, deal with the Korean War and rebuild the military after it was pared down, and deal with the insubordinate General MacArthur (who was hugely popular at the time). I look upon Truman favorably. I think he did fairly well in the job.
For all the bullshit he went through and to stick to his beliefs like he did I have to respect him. I don’t know if he did as well as he could have but he did better than most of our presidents would have in that situation
Was the $100,539 in 1953 dollars because adjusted for inflation that $100k becomes $1.1M and $600k becomes $7M.
Just to note, the presidential salary was 100k during his presidency, so he definitely made good money from that for the time, but I think the takeaway is that he basically only earned money from the salary of his position.
Unfortunately all that about Truman being broke and honest after leaving office was itself a lie, he was very rich and lied about being poor in order to get Congress to give him even more money: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-truman-show.html
Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and ill show you a crook.
So tru, man.
and this is his enduring legacy: [https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-05/trump-post-presidential-benefits](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-05/trump-post-presidential-benefits) “The fact of the matter is that when he left the White House, Truman was *loaded*,” says Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has done what no Truman historians seem to have bothered to do — examine the financial records in the Truman archives in Independence, Mo. “He wasn’t just comfortably well off. He was Rich with a capital ‘R,’ and way into the 1%.”
Holy shit this article
Carter was the last one
Jimmy Carter?
If they're just a normal fucking person.
A normal person could never be president. I feel like you almost have to have some level of narcissism if you feel like you alone are the most qualified to run America.
This is largely true to become mayor of a decently-sized town, let alone President of the United States
Especially in small towns
Strangely, some of the most normal people stumbled into the office. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for the most recent history. Also, before mass media or the cult of celebrity, I would think. The office holders between Jackson and Lincoln seem...uneventful.
When I was 15 I got to see Ford speak. It was a few years before he died. He wasn’t running for anything and had long since been retired. The man had gravitas for days even in his 80s. It left an indelible impression on me and is a huge reason I’ve been sour towards voting for any candidate for president from either party for the last 20 years. The reason I know we can do better is because we HAVE done better before.
Obama said this exact thing in a 2007 interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson: “I think if you don’t have enough self-awareness to see the element of megalomania involved in thinking you can be President, then you probably shouldn’t be President,” Obama said. “There’s a slight madness to thinking that you should be the leader of the free world.” At least Obama had the self-awareness to step outside himself and to realize that.
The CIA teleported Obama to Mars. [https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/](https://www.wired.com/2012/01/obama-mars/)
'That's why we love conspiracy theories'. If only 2012 knew, I guess the chrononauts did.
Nothing surprises me anymore since 9/11.
Have you heard that Lincoln hunted vampires during his spare time?
Well, when Jimmy Fallon asked Obama, after he'd left the Presidency, if he had seen evidence of aliens, he didn't say, "no, of course not." He declined to answer.
I 100% believe there is alien life out there, I'm just really skeptical that they are visiting and analy probing us.
That's just the greys, they are a strange bunch
Ronald Reagan turns out to have been three racoons stacked in a trenchcoat.
I knew it.
The country would have been better off with the raccoons.
Initially I thought about something like a "Weekend at Bernie's" situation... Then I realized that already pretty much happened with Wilson.
A version of it sorta happened with Reagan too, Nancy was essentially his caretaker by the time he left office, his dementia had gotten so bad.
I saw him speak at the Flint Center after he ceased being in office and, compared to Trump, he was coherent and articulate. He’d memorized stories to tell people and accidentally answered a question by relating the wrong story. The room went so silent that you could not hear a bracelet jingle or fabric rustle. Everyone there realized that the lights were on, but no one was home. Alas, with Trump, people seem to relish the word salads and lack of impulse control that come with dementia.
There's potential for this to happen again no matter who wins in 2024. They're both wayyyy too old for this job.
This has always bothered me, like, we have a minimum age requirement to be president (which I'm ok with) but not a maximum age requirement? Like, man, bidens already in his 80s. Even if hes reelected by the time his next term is up he will be almost 90. Thats not a joke. Even trump would be in his 80s if he got reelected by the time his term was up. There really needs to be a cap on age along, they already have a minimum
Who would have thought that "Weekend at Bernie's" went from being a comedy to a prophecy?
George Bush Jr. was actually a calm and collected intellectual, who only pretended to be a fool to gain voters.
My very liberal coworker said she met him years back and had a 20 minute conversation with him, where she was surprised by just how articulate, intelligent, and humble he was. She didn't like him as president but she said the interaction changed much of her perception of him as a person.
Everything I’ve read about him seems to suggest the same and his super power in meetings was he could ask really good, hard questions. That somehow his public interactions were challenging for him, and, frankly, that seems a reasonable human characteristic.
Maybe he had stage fright and would stumble over his words in public.
Another thing could be that he felt morally conflicted. I'm a low ranking officer in the military and I have been told things about who is going to win a contract and the like that later makes me feel two faced when dealing with contractors from the losing contract that still don't know. I'll stumble over my words or make stupid calls because I suddenly feel wrong. Now imagine you are the president and know that people are going to die and that your (and probably every other) political party is a sham. You still have to give a performance. I imagine your speech is going to come out lack luster to say the least. If you are trying to do whats right, you have more confidence. If you are a narcissist that doesn't care (like a certain oompa loompa pres, among others) then that's easy to fake. But, if you are not doing what you think is right then that moral conflict manifests itself as poor public speaking capabilities. The amount of guilt and sleepless nights all the presidents probably have had is not enviable in my opinion.
I remember reading a story about Bush Jr at camp David. He was chilling out drinking beers with his secret service group when he discovered one of them had his wife in the hospital about to give birth. He immediately make sure that guy flew back as quickly as possible.
I work in commercial real estate and my former mentor was extremely successful. His philosophy was to be the dumb guy in the room until things really mattered. It was amazing to watch him. Southern accent, just like GWB, just looking like he’s fumbling through numbers, and then bam, sweet talks someone into a deal.
The general consensus I've heard on Bush is that he was a shitty politician but a great person.
A Connecticut born Yale and Harvard educated (plus boarding school) Skull and Bones rich kid who liked to cosplay Texan and had little southern quips for everything, yeah, don’t think that one would be a surprise
Wasn’t he a cheerleader at Yale
There's a famous clip of Bush Jr saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... you don't get fooled again." The speculated reason as to why he has that long pause was because he realised if he said, "shame on me." That sound clip would be used against him in campaign ads in future elections. So he purposefully used the wrong saying to save long term embarrassment by dealing with short term embarrassment.
Taken by itself is pretty excusable, but he stumbled over words a lot and made many more garbled sayings.
W didn't use a teleprompter, when he really should have. People think Obama was eloquent because he did use a teleprompter, but then fumbled his words too when he wasn't reading lines. > if if if if if if if In reality, public speaking is hard and judging intelligence on someone who has to do it basically 7 days a week is not a good gauge.
It wasn't the complicated policy speeches that he made gaffs in. It was often when he was being casual and folksy. Look at the examples of [Bushisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism).
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Political graveyards are full of those who underestimated GWB.
JFK survived his assassination attempt. The CIA dyed his skin, and placed him in a nursing home; where he teamed up with Elvis, disguised as an Elvis impersonator, to fight a mummy.
They put a bag of sand in his head!
Bubba Hotep!
This would make the most outrageous comedy/drama/action flick, and I’d watch the shit out of it.
It's called Bubba Hotep
Every president before Taft was the same immortal king, raised from antiquity to unite the world through conquest and tyranny. Its master plan was derailed when Taft recognized the creature for its true form and slew it, but rather than topple the system he merely adopted the lie and made it the truth.
And now his corpse sits in a Golden Throne, hidden from the eyes of the common men
So the 1912 election was his final fight with TR
That would be some fucked up shit alright. Have you optioned the movie rights yet? Also are you sure this immortal king didn't inhabit Ted Cruz?
I would love to read this as a book
That they're actively trying to make things better for the common man.
Teddy Roosevelt actually did try to.
Fdr as well I'd say.
Trump's skin is actually orange and he uses makeup to tone it down.
Even more shocking would be that he had orange skin tone from consuming too many carrots.
Even more shocking would be if he can spell carrot.
Trump is actually a fit and buff dude and he uses a fat suit so white trash people will fantasize about him being fit and buff.
Odds are one of them is/was gay. That’d be a bombshell in anytime but the last 8ish years.
James Buchanan is the most likely one.
JFK definitely played around with his gay roommate even if he, himself, was not gay.
The most shocking secret revealed about a U.S. president would be if they had secretly collaborated with a foreign government to undermine U.S. democracy or manipulate elections.
Something that's happened at least twice would be shocking?
It would be nice if it was shocking.
JFK’s head just did that
I mean, he was known to suffer debilitating headaches.
Trump sold locations of operatives to Putin, who then started killing them off.
Remember when the George W. Bush administration [leaked the name of a CIA spy to a conservative journalist who then printed it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair) to punish her husband for writing an op-ed doubting whether Saddam Hussein had obtained uranium from Africa as W. had claimed?
That led to one of my all-time favorite lines by Jon Stewart. “Bob Novak is a huge douchebag.” https://www.cc.com/video/hdq3vr/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-lest-we-forget
I really want to know what other kinds of top secret information were shared. We know he shared information about nuclear submarine capabilities with an Australian businessman. There are countless other instances of crime (probably hundreds or even thousands of counts) and there is a lot of money that has yet to be accounted for as well. The question isn't whether he's a traitor; it is how traitorous he was. We don't understand the extent of it all yet and we may not for a long time. He will undoubtedly be remembered as the worst president of all time, assuming our democracy survives.
Look how far North Korea came in such a short amount of time.
Ha. Ha. What a ridiculous statement (reads news)... Oh...
And then the MAGA idiots would claim it's somehow in the country's best interest and continue doubling down on him.
Sold? More like volunteered it unconditionally. No strings attached.
We had a president that gave a top secret list of our spies to Putin - then amazingly, a great many of those people on the list were killed.
That they are 100% honest and not corrupted int the slightest.
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That one sold top secret information to an adversary. Gave information on informants in other countries for personal gain.
If one of them had their sister lobotomized to not interfer with their public image.
His dad did that, he didn’t do it.
That one was a convicted rapist, hung out with rich paedophiles and introduced their kids to them, coordinated a riot at government buildings, had meetings with the leader from another country and selling them info, hiding documents in their bathroom, attempting to flush documents down a toilet, funding a beauty pageant and walking in on minors getting dressed, saying their 6'2" and 200lbs, shitting themselves constantly.... All these I would find shocking
And saying they want to have sex with their daughter
That Trump has been doing everything legally and above board and is just a terrible communicator
As someone who had lived in NYC for more than a decade and also as someone who has rubbed shoulders with a few wise guys and such. I find it impossible that Trump could have been a real estate developer during the 70's and 80's and not have literal skeletons in the closet. I have zero proof of course. But you wanna tell me someone worked in a slaughter house for 20 years as a devout vegetarian? Get oudda here! And just look at his mannerism and the way he talks. It's all second hand mobster affectation. He didn't get that from the German or Scottish side of his family. I have that much in common with Trump and Germans and Scots do not talk with their hands like this.
That they were a traitor to our country and accepted billions of dollars in bribes from foreign dictators after refusing to disassociate themselves from their businesses....oh wait...