The Worst Wing with Nicole Hemmer and Kevin Schultz (UNLOCKED LIVE SHOW)

Summary

This Guy Sucked – The Worst Wing (Live Show)

Host: Dr. Claire Aubin
Guests: Professor Kevin Michael Schultz & Professor Nicole Hemmer
Recorded: October 2025, Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival (Released July 9, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this special live episode of This Guy Sucked, host historian Dr. Claire Aubin invites political historians Nicole Hemmer (Vanderbilt University) and Kevin Michael Schultz (UIC) to compete in a hilarious, critical game show: "The Worst Wing." Each guest must defend their pick for “worst” US President—Schultz representing Andrew Johnson and Hemmer, Richard Nixon—before audience and host, while also navigating a gauntlet of presidential trivia games. Expect a freewheeling roast of infamous White House residents, a treasure trove of disturbing presidential facts, and a through-line that even the nation’s most lauded leaders have skeletons (or giants egos, or drunk parrots...) in the closet.

Theme:
Critique and darkly comic deep-dive into US presidential history, exposing the flaws, scandals, and bizarre behaviors of past American presidents.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction and Episode Premise ([01:13])

• Claire Aubin welcomes live audience; sets the stage for a show where "we prove it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead."
• Announces The Worst Wing as an irreverent, points-based competition between two historians over which president sucked most.
• Context: Neither guest was forced to choose Nixon or Johnson—they did so "immediately," noting these are popular picks among historians for “worst president.”

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2. Presidential "Filibusters": The Case Against

Kevin Schultz on Andrew Johnson ([06:09])

• Opening Quote:

  “This country is for white men, and by God, as long as I'm president, it shall be a government for white men.” – Andrew Johnson (as quoted by Kevin, [06:14])

• Major Critiques:
  • Squandered post-Civil War opportunity for racial equality; let southern white aristocracy regain power.
  • Impeached: First US president to be impeached (escaped removal by one vote).
  • Undercut the Freedmen’s Bureau; vetoed progressive initiatives, purged civil rights supporters.
  • Personality: Openly racist, thin-skinned, "terrible drunkard," and "terrible personality."
  • Restored planter class property and denied land redistribution to freedpeople (nullifying "40 acres and a mule").
  • Set precedent for Southern racial subjugation and “black codes”: “slavery by another name.”
• Memorable Moment:
  • Cabinet loyalty oaths, firing dissenters ("illegal, by the way"). ([08:38])
  • Johnson’s self-centeredness: egotistical speech on Washington’s Birthday mentioning himself 200 times and Washington only a handful. ([11:43])
• Summary Judgement:

  “After four years of bloodshed... because of what Andrew Johnson did, we did not have racial equality in the United States. When there was a small sliver of hope that it could come about… we've been living with the consequences ever since.” – Kevin Schultz ([15:33])

Nicole Hemmer on Richard Nixon ([18:00])

• Opening Rationale:

  “There are a lot of people who are trying to rehab the reputation of Richard Nixon... conservatives who actually didn't like Nixon until Watergate have been working in the 50 years since.” – Nicole Hemmer ([18:18])

• Major Critiques:
  • Derailed Vietnam peace process to win 1968 election; prolonged war, resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths ([19:26]).
  • Orchestrated rightward transformation of Supreme Court; weaponized ethical scandals to remove Warren Court liberals ([21:01]).
  • Intervened on behalf of war criminals (e.g., William Calley of My Lai massacre) ([23:13]).
  • Paranoia and intoxication while in charge of nuclear arsenal.
  • Precedent of lawless executive power: Claimed, “When the President does it, it's not illegal.” (Frost/Nixon interviews, [24:56])
  • Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982): legal immunities—laying groundwork for future abuses of power.
• Memorable Quote:

  “Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives. He has poisoned our water forever... a smart man shitting in his own nest... but he also shit in our nests.” – Hunter S. Thompson, as read by Nicole Hemmer ([27:16])

• Summary Judgement:

  “He is somebody who made the world that we live in now. And you'll hear echoes through Andrew Johnson...” – Nicole Hemmer ([18:43])

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3. Game Time: "Name That President" Presidential Trivia ([30:25])

A rapid-fire segment uncovering bizarre, disturbing, or embarrassing facts about former presidents—with bonus points for added context.

• Lyndon Johnson: Drove guests into his lake with an amphibious car for laughs ([31:22]).
• John Quincy Adams: Skinny-dipped daily in the Potomac (with manservant); kept a pet alligator in the White House bathtub ([33:40], [34:19]).
• Calvin Coolidge: Had Vaseline massaged into his hair every breakfast-in-bed ([35:49]).
• Donald Trump: Ate mostly McDonald's due to fear of poisoning; favorite order: “two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, and a chocolate malt and a Diet Coke.” ([38:52])
• Andrew Jackson: Taught his parrot to curse; parrot “Poll” may have cussed at his funeral ([40:16]).
• Zachary Taylor: Died of gastroenteritis, allegedly from raw milk and cherries at a July 4 picnic ([42:26]).
• Grover Cleveland: Married his adopted daughter, Frances Folsom (a relationship begun when she was an infant, he became her guardian) ([44:12], [48:25]).
• George H.W. Bush: Vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister and fainted at a state dinner; event dubbed “Bushesuru” in Japan ([50:32]).
• Jimmy Carter: Promised presidential openness about UFOs—a platform plank after sighting in 1969 ([52:45]).
• Warren G. Harding: Gambled away the official White House china in a crooked poker game, had a penis named “Jerry” ([55:13], [55:37]).

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4. "Bad Libs": Fill-in-the-blank Infamous Quotes ([57:56])

Historians competed to recall the most notorious or cringe-inducing presidential remarks, often marked by racism or imperial arrogance:

• Nixon: “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” ([58:14])
• Andrew Johnson: “Mr. Jefferson meant the white race.” ([61:00])
• James Buchanan: “History will vindicate my memory from every unjust aspersion.” ([62:13])
• Richard Nixon to Henry Kissinger: “You're so goddamn concerned about civilians…” (regarding nuclear bombing of Vietnam, [65:45])
• George W. Bush: “Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.”
• William McKinley (re: Philippines): “I have been criticized a good deal about the Philippines, but I don't deserve it. When they came to us as a gift from the gods, I didn’t know what to do with them.” ([69:46])

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5. Dinner Party Dealbreakers: Why Your Guy Is a Nightmare Guest ([72:15])

Historians volleyed reasons their “chosen” worst presidents would be unbearable companions over a meal:

• Nixon: Drunk/high at dinner, “let the slurs fly” (racist, sexist comments), cottage cheese & ketchup for breakfast ([72:55], [73:25], [75:29]).
• Johnson: “Drunk all the time,” likely to pick fights or go on racist tirades, “famously boring when sober” ([73:32], [76:14]).
• Paranoid, egotistical, and, across the board, historically damaging.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sakes. You’re so goddamn concerned about civilians... and I don’t give a damn.” – Nixon ([65:45])
• “His [Johnson’s] speech [on Washington’s Birthday] mentioned his own name 200 times, Washington’s name only a handful.” ([11:43])
• “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” – Nixon in Frost/Nixon interviews, 1977 ([58:14])
• “History will vindicate my memory from every unjust aspersion.” – James Buchanan, 1868 ([62:13])
• “Cleveland was the executor of Oscar Folsom’s—her dad’s—estate and had supervised Frances’ upbringing.” – Claire, on Grover Cleveland ([48:26])
• “He has poisoned our water forever… By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States... Nixon broke the heart of the American dream.” – Hunter S. Thompson obituary for Nixon, read by Nicole Hemmer ([27:16])

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Game Highlights & Timestamps

• Filibuster: Schultz on Johnson – [06:09]–[15:53]
• Filibuster: Hemmer on Nixon – [18:00]–[28:06]
• “Name That President” Trivia – [30:25]–[56:12]
• "Bad Libs" Presidential Quotes – [57:56]–[71:56]
• Dinner Party Head-to-Head – [72:15]–[77:21]

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Episode Tone & Style

Fast-paced, irreverent, and brutal in its academic takedown. The historians are unfiltered yet always witty—gleefully surfacing the weird, the shameful, and the outright dangerous legacies of American presidents with the expertise and teasing camaraderie of friends at the bar. The show’s motto—“you can’t libel the dead”—sets the stage for both scathing critique and dark historical fun.

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Final Scores & Winner

• Winner: Nicole Hemmer (18 points)
• Runner-up: Kevin Michael Schultz (14 points)

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Summary Judgment:
This This Guy Sucked live special is indispensable listening for history fans who love both substance and shade. By demythologizing US presidents and revealing their most ignoble moments, the episode reminds us that critical, expert history can be as entertaining as it is enlightening.

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For more episodes and access to all content:
patreon.com/thisguysucked

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Transcript

[A]

Hi there, Happy just after the 250th birthday of the United States. To celebrate, we've decided to do two things. One, make our live show episode about how horrible all our presidents are available to the public and two, give our paid subscribers a bonus audio with fan favorite Devin o' Shea about how horrible their horses were too. We recorded this last October at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival, which we will be returning to this year with a new special guest and theme. More on that, including ticket info soon. Anyways, please enjoy learning about some really awful presidential meals if you haven't heard the episode before and being reminded of them if you're a paid member of the pod, back with a new episode next week. A list of sensitive themes and topics included in this episode can be found in the episode description.

[B]

Welcome to the stage.

[C]

This Guy sucked Live. Tony ball hey, Welcome everybody to the very first LIVE edition. Oh shit, I'm dropping my stuff already. Shout out to the people at home listening this and not seeing this happen.

[B]

Wait, we're allowed to cuss?

[C]

Absolutely. Welcome to the very first Live edition of this Guy Suck the show where we prove it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I am your host, Orion in Chief Claire Aubin, and I am so incredibly excited to bring you the premiere and probably only episode of our presidential game show, the Worst Wing. I am joined by two unbelievably cool and exciting and smart and well dressed guests, both of whom are very fancy political historians. So. So I am very confused about why they agreed to do this. First up is Professor Kevin Schultz. He's a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago and an author of the brand new book why Everyone Hates White Liberals, including white liberals and a returning guest of the pod. Go check out his Spiro Agnew episode. Kevin, are you aware that you are the first person to be on the show twice?

[B]

I'm so honored. Oh my goodness.

[C]

So exciting.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

I mean, kind of a dubious honor because I'm subjected connecting you to this. But yeah. We also have the brilliant Nicole Hemmer, who is a professor at Vanderbilt University and the director of the Carolyn T. And Robert M. Rogers center for the American Presidency. If her voice sounds familiar to those listening at home or in the audience, she's also got a podcast. Hers is called this Day. It's by Radiotopia and it's much more serious than this one. Nicole, why on earth would you subject yourself to this?

[D]

I mean, we get to talk about presidents and we get to rag on presidents for a full hour. I'm 100% in.

[B]

Perfect.

[C]

Thank you both so much for agreeing to do this and also for flying here for it.

[D]

And boy, are my arms tired.

[C]

Despite a government shutdown on dad jokes immediately, the format for the night is fairly simple. I have invented a game show. You've each picked a president that you think is the absolute worst. You also both know, theoretically, a lot about other presidents. Over the course of the next 50 minutes, we are going to talk about the guys that you picked and we're going to play some bad president themed games and at the end, everyone will be sad. But good thing you can go buy drinks at the bar to drown those fears. Anyways, this is going to be a points based on where whoever ends up with the most points wins so that we don't have to decide which one of your presidents is worse than the other because they are all bad in different overlapping ways, which is something we all agreed on backstage. We're doing points because that feels slightly better to me than deciding that one of you chose a worse president. The most fun part about this for me is that I don't even know that much presidential history. So it's really just kind of like a sadistic thing that I'm making you two do. Much like many presidents, I was given power and immediately abused it. So should we play some games?

[D]

Let's do it.

[E]

Let's go.

[C]

Wait, Back, back.

[A]

All right.

[C]

The first game of the night is called the filibuster. Basically, you each get 10 minutes. We will cut you off to tell me and the audience everything they need to know about your guy and why he was the absolute worst. Unlike a normal filibuster, we, meaning me and the other guests and possibly the audience, I don't know, haven't really thought that far ahead. Can ask follow up questions. At the end of this, I will award one of you three points and one of you five points in relation to an utterly arbitrary vibes based system that I'll figure out as we go Shout out to Amanda McLaughlin for being our scorekeeper for the night. Up front, the first filibusterer. Filibusterer is the one and only Kevin Schultz, who has told me I'm supposed to call him Professor Kevin Michael Schultz the whole night. And he's here to talk about our. Nope, wrong direction. 17th President, take it away. Oh, wrong. One day I will press this. Therehere we go. 17th president. Take it away, Kevin.

[B]

Okay, on the way over, I was looking up actual quotes and things that I can use.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And I did it on a janky back of an envelope, literally speaking. So I want to start with a quote to start us off on why Andrew Johnson is the worst president. So this is just going to kick us off with a little light stuff here. This country is for white men, and by God, as long as I'm president, it shall be a government for white men. So we can go from there, right? Do I win already? Is that it? So Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States. And for those who don't know, he was the guy who became president after Abraham Lincoln got shot and died. He was the vice president at the time. And he was the one who famously allowed the Civil War, four years of bloody war, awful killing. 600,000 people died in the Civil War, all to end slavery and to create a more just country. Then Andrew Johnson let it all slip away. He was, I think, because of some of the things that he did, which was basically allow the white Southern aristocracy to go back into power. All the awful presidents that came after him could do the kinds of things that they did. For instance, sort of, let's just say, Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, trying to undermine the opposition here, which is premised on racial subjugation of black people. Where does this continue when it was almost open for equality? Andrew Johnson, thanks so much for that. Okay, a couple things. Obviously, he was openly racist. I already started off with a quote that set that up for us. He also used his own personal insecurities to make the battle of the Civil War a war that the north actually won. Or as I like to call the north, the United States of America, actually won over not the south, but the Confederate States of America to bring those states back into the United States of America. And that was a war that the north won. But the south ended up with all the spoils of victory in the long term. And that was because of Andrew Johnson. Okay, he was born poor, that's fine. I've got no beef with that. He never went to school.

[C]

Crazy thing for you to be, I've got to deal with that poor kid.

[B]

But what he did was he was always super insecure about the Southern wealthy planter elites who would literally ride around on horses, head high above him, looking down on him. And he thought those were the people that you needed to impress in order to make your way in the world. So he spent his whole career trying to kiss the ass, trying to of the rich white Southerners. He had a terrible personality as well, partly because he was so insecure about this. He obviously used swear words all the time. He was a terrible drunkard who went around and just sort of picked fights all the time. He famously got so drunk at the inauguration of 1865, when he was sworn in as Vice President of the United States, that it became national news. That is very, very drunk. And he had no curiosity at all, no curiosity about how the world worked, about what other people's lives might be like. All he wanted to do was empower himself and impress that Southern white aristocracy. So anybody that got in his way, he picked a fight, and all he wanted to do was fight. Abraham Lincoln, we all know, is famous for his band of brothers attitude, his cabinet of dissent, bringing together all these factions in the United States to try and forge together to create a nation. Andrew Johnson comes in, and that is not at all what he wants to do. He wants to destroy the country and make sure that everybody pays homage to him. One of my favorite things that happened, a horrible thing, but it maybe hits a little close to home, is he made his cabinet swear loyalty oaths to him. And if you did not want to swear a loyalty oath to the President of the United States, he summarily fired you. The problem was that was illegal. So he is the first president to ever be impeached. Yet another reason to hate this guy. He was the first president to be impeached. He barely, barely escaped by one vote, his impeachment vote, or else he would have lost his job. And that was because there was no vice president at the time, because he had just become president after Abraham Lincoln was shot. So people were too nervous about what would happen if he actually got kicked out. The other thing I'm learning. What's that?

[C]

I'm learning. Oh, you're learning, all right.

[B]

Two more things, and then I'll cede my time.

[C]

You have five minutes and 18 seconds left.

[B]

Okay, this is great. This is great.

[D]

Now he's going to drag it out because he only has two minutes of content.

[B]

After the Civil War, they created a Freedmen's Bureau, which was a government agency that helped the previously enslaved black population get things like an education, Learn how to read, learn how to vote, health care, Things like this was under the operation of the Freedmen's Bureau, which was run by a guy named OO Howard, who is the namesake of Howard University. You might have heard of Howard University in Washington, D.C. where my dad went to dental school.

[C]

I don't know if you knew, and that's why I know about Howard University.

[B]

There you go. Exactly.

[C]

That's their main thing.

[B]

Well, Andrew Johnson fought against the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau. When that was over, he vetoed it. And when that was overruled by the Congress, he ended up purging all the leaders and putting all of his own personal people in charge so that they could use that to do all sorts of terrible things so that the government administhis is really sounding very familiar, isn't it? So that the federal government would use the powers that to do not great things. He spent his time on George Washington's birthday celebration, giving a speech that lasted an hour where he mentioned George Washington's name only a handful of times, but he mentioned his own name 200 times.

[C]

Oh, my God, it's the same guy. They're all the same guy.

[B]

Oh, wait. Somebody said, is there anybody in politics that you don't like? And he said, I have an enemies list.

[C]

Shut up.

[B]

And he went on to name Thaddeus Sherman and Charles Sumner, two radical Republicans who were pushing for black rights at the time. And he said, they have a dastardly plot out to kill me. Which wasn't true so far as I know. But lo and behold, all of a sudden, his supporters went after Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens for their supposed and as far as I can tell, make belief assassination attempts. Sure, but here's the worst thing that I could say about Andrew Johnson. When the Civil War ended, all of a sudden the Union army, the United States army, as I like to call it, came through the south. And all the planter class, the rich white slaveholders, they fled or they were imprisoned, or they had fought and just went away. And the formerly enslaved people followed the Union soldiers and they freed themselves. As us historians like to say, they weren't freed, but they said, no way, I'm out of here. And they got behind the Union lines and freed themselves. Then some of those formerly enslaved people, now free people, now going to freedmen schools, now going to freedmen hospitals to get health care. They started to work the land that had been places where they were enslaved. They started to take over the land. They. There was this promise that Spike Lee reminded us of called 40 acres and a mule. We should give all the formerly enslaved people 40 acres and a mule was the promise. And where is this land gonna come from, all of those huge plantations that were owned by the planter class? Well, when Andrew Johnson was president, instead of allowing that to happen, he decided that he was gonna offer amnesty to the rich white Southerners who he had looked up to as a boy but in order to get amnesty and get your land back, you had to travel to Washington D.C. and plead personally to the President. And once he thought that you were worthy and you sucked up enough, then he would give you amnesty. There was a line of suitors around the White House waiting to get all their land back. And guess what? They all showed up. They all kissed the ring. They got their land back. Those formerly enslaved people were legally tossed off the land. And shortly thereafter, these Southern states get invited back into the United States of America and they all pass what are called black codes, which some historians call slavery by another name. These were laws put in place that kept black people from basically being free, from being allowed to transport themselves, from being allowed to own land. So after four years of bloodshed in the name of slavery because of what Andrew Johnson did, we did not have racial equality in the United States. When there was a small sliver of hope that it could come about, and whatever hope there would be, Andrew Johnson pulled the rug out. And we've been living with the consequences ever since.

[C]

That was very good. That was a very good filibuster. That guy sucks. That was. That guy sucks and he sucks. He sucks so much. And you came in 20 seconds with 20 seconds to spare. Well done. My third point, I will. I do like that you added the reason. One of the reasons he's a bad person is that he swears a lot. And if that's the case, I'm fucked. Let me just say know thyself. Do you have any follow up questions for that, Nikki?

[D]

I. I just need to agree that that guy sucked. Like he did a lot of sucky things. He was a bad president.

[C]

I will say also that this was like when I say Kevin snapped up Andrew Johnson immediately when he was invited on, that was part of him agreeing to come on the show was being like, okay, but only if I get to say Andrew Johnson as my guy. And when I invited Nikki, she was like, does he already have Andrew Johnson?

[A]

Hello, everybody, it's Claire. If you're hearing me, that means you're currently listening to the free version of our show. Because we're trying to make accessible, engaging history independently and sustainably. We switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of public history made by actual experts and it's in the budget for you, consider supporting our Patreon. It's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board for the price of a pint of beer. You'll get access to a new episode every week instead of just the bi weekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives to sweeten the deal. Just head over to patreon.com thisguysucked or follow the link in our episode description to sign up.

[C]

All right, let's move to our next filibuster. The second filibuster is, you guessed it, Nicole Hemmer, who came here to make a statement about our 37th president,

[D]

also a guy who sucked. Look, I think we can all agree Andrew Johnson, terrible president. So terrible, in fact, a little obvious now in the case, in the case of Richard Nixon. I personally think it's a little obvious too, but there's actually a case that needs to be made because there are a lot of people out there who are trying to rehab the reputation of Richard Nixon. Conservatives who actually didn't like Nixon until Watergate have been working in the 50 years since.

[C]

True story.

[D]

They come to his side once he's being attacked by those dastardly Democrats and that liberal media. They've been building the case for Nixon for the past 50 years. But there are other people who got in on the game too. 1994, Richard Nixon's funeral. George McGovern gets up there. Bill Clinton gets up there. They say the nicest things about this guy. And historians have gotten in on this too, right? Historians have reevaluated Nixon. Some call him the last liberal president, which is actually a meaner thing to say about liberals than either Kevin or I have ever said. But this idea that he was the last one who was defending the New Deal state, I disagree with that. I think that Nixon is the architect of our modern politics. Derogatory. He is somebody who made the world that we live in now. And you'll hear echoes through Andrew Johnson. You will hear basically just like deep foreshadowing with Richard Nixon. He's somebody who came up, he made his name through red baiting, ruining people's lives by accusing them of being communists. But I want to get immediately into his run for the White House in 1968. The thing about Richard Nixon is historians are still learning more and more bad stuff about him. And one of the things that was revealed in the last 10 years is, is how he manipulated the 1968 election. That one of the things that he did was he sent people over, intercessors over to Vietnam to interfere and to kill the peace talks that the Johnson administration was involved in trying to end the war in Vietnam. He promised that they would get a better deal when Nixon came into office as president. He would treat them better. And it does actually end up killing the peace talks. Does Richard Nixon end the war when he gets into office? Not in 1969. He doesn't end the war until 1973. So at a time when four to 500American soldiers were being killed every day in Vietnam, when tens of thousands of Vietnamese people were being killed on a regular basis, Richard Nixon said, it's more important that I'm president than that war stops. That's very bad.

[C]

My next podcast is this War Sucks.

[D]

Yes. Okay, so what about something like the Supreme Court, which has been. You should boo and hiss when I say Supreme Court, too. The Supreme Court, which has come. I think it has been. Look, the Supreme Court has not been a great force in our politics over the past, certainly the past 30 years. And why has it become so bad? Well, there was the Warren Court, which was the only progressive Supreme Court that we've ever had. And Richard Nixon hated it, as did his supporters. They wanted to change the court. And the problem was there were all these liberals on the court. Some of them were kind of young. And Richard Nixon didn't have enough openings. So what did he do? He worked with Republicans and Dixiecrats in order to engineer openings on the court. Weaponizing ethics in order to push people off the court. He does this first with Abe Fortas. Abe Fortas is under attack by Dixiecrats in 68 who are trying to end the Warren court. In 1969, the attacks are renewed. Fortas ends up resigning. Nixon is so excited that he's created an opening on the court. He looks around and he's like, well, William Douglas is also a liberal on the court. Well, let's just come up with something that we can push him out for, too. And so they spend much of 1970 trying to create a new opening on the court by just coming up with new charges against Douglas. Now Douglas sticks it out. And in fact, Douglas, who was thinking about retiring, says, over my dead body am I going to leave this court while Richard Nixon is president? And he stays on. He stays on until after Nixon resigns. But Nixon does dedicate himself to putting what he calls strict constructionists on the court, including William Rehnquist, another guy who really sucks and starts to remake the court into what we know it as today. Well, let's take somebody else, William Calley. The Vietnam War is A through line for Nixon. And so are sucky guys who he's surrounded by. William Kelly, for those of you who don't recognize the name, was one of the main architects of the My Lai massacre. This was a massacre in Vietnam that many US Soldiers participated in. They killed hundreds of women and babies and old men who were unarmed. And William Callie goes to trial for this. And Callie is found guilty for 22 murders. He's sentenced to life with hard labor. And as soon as he's sentenced, Richard Nixon interferes in the process. He says, ah, you know this guy. Why should he suffer by spending his time in the brig? Let's put him on house arrest while he plays out his appeals. Because, I mean, he did volunteer to serve his country. Like, why would we punish him by throwing him in prison? So Richard Nixon also went to bat for war criminals, which is another bad thing that he did. He was high a lot of the time and drunk a lot of the time. He was on pills. Yeah. And, like, if you're a dj, that's awesome. Like, great. I have nothing against getting a little high or getting a little drunk. But he was the person in charge of the nuclear arsenal when Andrew Johnson was drunk. You know, what was he gonna do when Richard Nixon was drunk? He could have literally ended the world. Seems pretty bad.

[C]

Part of your argument is that the nuclear arsenal didn't exist yet.

[D]

Yeah, that is my argument. It did not exist in 1865 high

[B]

school debate, where you go nuclear right straight back into it.

[D]

But the other thing that I think is worth talking about with Richard Nixon is how he set the precedent for presidential lawlessness. Now, I think Nixon is often held up as, like, the guy who got caught, the guy who was forced to resign, the guy who the Supreme Court looked at and he said, well, I have all of this executive privilege. I don't have to turn over evidence to you. And the Supreme Court said, no, you have to turn over evidence. And the idea that after Nixon, the presidency was constrained, and it felt like that for a moment. But I think Nixon is part of the reason why we have impunity at the presidential level for conservative presidents. And I think that for a couple of reasons. One, Nixon creates a theory of the presidency that he lays out in 1976 in an interview with David Frost, the British journalist who asks him about illegal activities that he engaged in while as president. And Nixon very famously says, well, when the President does it, it's not illegal. And he gets roasted in the press for this. Rightly so. People are like, you sound Like a king. You sound anti democratic, you sound illiberal. But ultimately, Nixon was right about how presidential power would play out come 2025. And it wasn't just his sort of theory of presidential power, but actually in the courts as well. In 1982, Nixon is the subject of another Supreme Court case, Nixon v. Fitzgerald. This was a case that never should have gone to the courts. We can get into that if you want, but it does. Nixon and Fitzgerald have a bet on how this is going to play out. It's a civil suit that's being brought against Nixon. And the question on the table is, can you sue civilly a president for the things he does while in office? And the Supreme Court, again, never should have taken the case, Takes the case and they invent the doctrine of presidential immunity. They say presidents are absolutely immune from civil suit. So a good 40 years before Trump v. US, we have Nixon v. Fitzgerald. That is beginning to lay the groundwork for a legal theory that says when the President does it, it's not illegal. How much time do I have left?

[C]

55 seconds.

[D]

55 seconds. Okay, then I am going to end with somebody whose words are even better than mine when it comes to Richard Nixon, and that is Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote an obituary for Richard Nixon in 1994. And he said, nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives. He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest.

[C]

You're a bad person.

[D]

Now, I know, he continues, but he also shit in our nests. And that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States. By fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American dream.

[C]

That was also a very good fill of us. Can I just say. And you ended exactly at 10 minutes, which is incredible.

[D]

Clock management, baby.

[C]

You've done this before. Kevin, do you have any follow up questions?

[B]

Normally I wouldn't help your cause, but since we found out that Claire forgot to buy the prize for the winner. It doesn't matter.

[C]

That's not true.

[D]

What are we even doing up here?

[B]

Yeah, what are we even doing up here? Exactly. I would say that one of the great joys of being an American in the 21st century is every so often you get a new batch released of the Nixon tapes because he recorded everything in the White House. And so they're really entertaining to listen to, except when you realize the sort of awful drama and trauma that he brought about. You didn't even mention any of the casual racism, the targeting the Jews, the anti Semitism and all this kind of stuff. But what really comes out in the tapes is he really set in motion the us versus them politics that we have now. The polarization he followed. Not necessarily the Southern strategy, because I baited you into saying that. So you pulled it out. Darn it.

[D]

Pulled out the enemy's list, too.

[B]

Yeah, the enemy's list, too. But this notion that the Republican Party in particular could have a majority just by focusing on the south and the Midwest and it could use the east coast and the west coast to create resentments. And that's the kind of politics Nixon helped usher in and I think we live with today. So that's a point in your favor.

[D]

I'll take it.

[B]

Welcome.

[C]

Speaking of points, it's the first points giving moment of the night. I think five points is gonna go to Professor Kevin Michael Schultz for arguing two presidents for some reason for deciding to do is president and saying. And you know what? Nikki's right on top of that. Here's more about Nixon. And Nikki will get three points for the first round. I will say that's also the. The round where you get the least points for the most amount of work, which feels really stupid that I planned it this way. For our second game of the night, we will be playing Name that President. Like all of.

[D]

Sure.

[C]

Like all of the games for the night. It's very simple. I will tell you a weird thing a president did. Our players will get to ring their little bells, and whoever rings in first will get to tell us which president it was for a point and any other interesting context for a potential bonus point. So if you can explain what the fuck is going on here or tell us what you know about this, you might get two points. There are 10 weird things. So a whopping 20 possible points. I have no idea if you'll know these or not. We'll find out. I knew.

[D]

We are also not confident that we'll know them.

[C]

I knew almost none of them going into this, so that's. I had a fun time planning this. Again, I'm telling you, this is like a very sadistic thing I'm doing to you guys. Okay, first up, which president regularly drove his car into a lake to scare his guests?

[B]

Lyndon Johnson.

[C]

You're so right. Our first lbj. Well, our only LBJ of the night,

[B]

that was in Texas on the Johnson farm. And if you go visit it today, it's a delightful museum. But then you see the lake, and if you talk with the poor person who's working there, but probably unemployed currently. Well, yeah, then they'll tell you the story.

[D]

So how many cars did he go through?

[C]

Oh, here's the fun thing about this. Two points to Kevin for that. Can I just say. Because he knew the context. So he had something called an Amphicar, which was manufactured in West Germany. If that's not the most West German shit you've ever heard in your life. Amanda's making a crazy phase from the audience right now. She knows. Manufactured in West Germany and could be both a car and a boat. He used to drive his guests down a hill, and when he was doing that, he would freak out and say that the brakes were malfunctioning to terrify his guests, whereupon they crashed into his lake.

[A]

You know what?

[D]

That's awesome.

[C]

What a dick. For sure. So the answer is one car. That's how many cars he went through.

[D]

Honestly, more economical.

[C]

Yeah. And can I also just mention that we could have talked about, like, a thousand things that LBJ did that were extremely far outside of the, like, accepted social norm.

[B]

What a dick.

[C]

What? Well, in more ways than one. Can we just say, like, usually they involve his genitalia or, like, bathroom stuff.

[D]

Jumbo.

[C]

Yeah, his. Yes, his. You know, I.

[B]

That's what he called it.

[C]

His penis was named Jumbo. So that's a bonus LBJ fact for you. But I went with one that I thought was just, like, kind of strange and not disgusting.

[B]

We thank you.

[C]

But there are many, many things that he did that were very weird and bad. Can I just say, for our next one, which president skinny dipped in the Potomac every morning? You can also guess.

[D]

Fdr. Like, he swam in order to rehabilitate his legs from polio.

[C]

Oh, well, okay, so I can't laugh at that one anymore.

[D]

Actually, yeah, laugh at the guy with a disability.

[C]

Well, it was not fdr.

[B]

Can I just say Teddy Roosevelt.

[C]

Not Teddy Roosevelt.

[B]

I thought it was a manhood thing.

[C]

You thought there was a Roosevelt? Either way, we went through all of them. We thought it was the two. No, it's weirder than that. It was John Quincy Adams. He would go between 4 and 6am every morning. He would swim in the Tiber Creek, which is a tributary of the Potomac, get butt, ass naked and go for a swim. Sometimes he would involve his manservant who would also have to swim naked with him.

[D]

Okay, that's amazing.

[B]

I actually studied John Quincy Adams trivia and I thought you were gonna Ask. I was ready for this one. Who had a pet alligator live in the White House for.

[C]

Is it John Quincy Adams?

[B]

John Quincy Adams.

[C]

And you know, I would not have gotten that if you hadn't said. I studied John Quincy Adams trivia before this.

[D]

It was a tell.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was a gift from Lafayette, who was made famous by the Hamilton musical. And he toured the south and brought an alligator back to John Quincy Adams. And they didn't know what to do with it. So he lived in the bathtub of the White House for a short period of time.

[C]

I love also the idea of Lafayette famous from Hamilton. The one thing people know of him from.

[B]

We could start singing it and everybody in the audience would know it right away, probably.

[C]

If they're hanging out.

[D]

How did the alligator not make them use it?

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

That's a good question. Yeah, that should have. There should have been an alligator cameo in Hamilton. For some extra context here. JQA began. Everyone is just getting acronyms now. I don't know what's going on. He began doing this while he was the Secretary of State. And he continued doing this for a very, very long time before cameras existed, thankfully.

[B]

And in the winter, too.

[C]

Every day. Yeah, every single day. What a man. All right, next question. Which president had Vaseline massaged into his head every morning at breakfast? I told you, presidents are weird freaks. Nikki got there first.

[D]

I'm gonna say Eisenhower.

[C]

That is an Eisenhower behavior. But no, he was bald.

[D]

He didn't have hair.

[C]

Baldness. Main.

[B]

Calvin Coolidge.

[C]

You're so right. It was Calvin Coolidge.

[D]

Going to be super honest, I didn't know that Vaseline was already invented in the 1920s.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

You call yourself a historian.

[F]

What?

[D]

Soi disant.

[C]

Do you have any idea of context at all for this?

[B]

The context is everybody's probably seen the picture of him. By say, everybody, I mean professional historians,

[C]

the three people on the stage right

[B]

now, and a few others here. The picture of him with Babe Ruth. The famous picture of him showing the 1920s when presidents didn't give a shit about anything and didn't pass any laws and saw this financial cliff that they were about to. And they didn't do anything. But he had such slick hair that I thought there must have been a pomade thing or something. So I went with Vaseline because it was. You're, like, shiny, nice and tight.

[C]

Yeah. And you're totally right. So he did this every morning or had this done to him. Again, not him massaging his own head with Vaseline. Having a vaseline person.

[D]

I feel like we could talk about the president's Mansfield servants, and they're very

[C]

weird jobs, for sure. So he did this. He also did this while eating breakfast in bed, which he did every day. So this was in bed, getting massaged, eating breakfast.

[B]

I kind of want to know the angles of that. Like, was the.

[C]

Yeah. Was he eating Someone's behind him?

[B]

Yeah. What's happening?

[C]

I don't know.

[D]

Maybe the bed was in the middle of the room.

[C]

There are no. I don't know if there are photos of the Vaseline. The Vaselineing. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that that is a term that exists.

[B]

Can you imagine the job description for man servant is to be a Vaseline boy.

[C]

So that is one point for Kevin. I don't think Babe Ruth's shiny picture counts as actual context for this. I think he went back a point.

[B]

No, she gave me two because she thought Babe Ruth counted as context, which I appreciate.

[C]

Maybe we should just trust Amanda. Okay, next one. We got 10 of these to get through. Whose fear of poisoning caused him to primarily eat fast food in the White House. This is a gimme. It should be a gimme.

[B]

I have two ideas.

[D]

I mean, I'm gonna say Nixon because he was the most paranoid.

[C]

Not Nixon.

[B]

Ronald Reagan.

[C]

No, I told you, there's no Reagan. That's the one secret I forgot to include.

[B]

Donald Trump.

[C]

It is Donald Trump.

[D]

To be fair, I have a block on that.

[C]

Yeah, in your mind, you're like, I don't. I don't know.

[D]

This President and Donald Trump.

[C]

I'm still Are like, disconnected. Yes, it is.

[D]

Donald Trump was a gimme.

[B]

I mean, he's got the great picture of him with all the great. The great picture. He has the picture of him with all of the fast foods all surrounding him all the way through that he

[C]

bought for the basketball team, Right?

[B]

Yeah. But he eats it every day. He eats it every day.

[D]

He definitely eats it every day.

[C]

He literally doesn't know.

[D]

He was afraid of being poisonous.

[C]

I have his order.

[B]

The healthiest president ever. Six foot three, 175 pounds or something like that.

[A]

Yeah. Svelte.

[B]

How can you do this?

[C]

His favorite dinner. You're. Are you ready for this? His favorite dinner is two Big Macs, two filet o fish sandwiches, and a chocolate malt and a Diet Coke.

[D]

The filet o fish is the real. The real crime there.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to yuck anybody's yum. But I will say, when you're the president, you don't have to do that. You straight up do not have to do that.

[D]

He's really using that presidential immunity. He's like, they can't come after me for this.

[C]

Yeah, immunity, like, also for his immune system, hopefully.

[B]

Can you get a Malt at McDonald's?

[C]

According to this, he does something. So whoever was. What's his name?

[B]

And then the second question is, did he bring a McDonald's into the kitchen of the White House or does he have.

[C]

Do they plate it up?

[B]

He have like Uber eats every night or something like that.

[C]

Imagine being the guy who delivers McDonald's or women who delivers the McDonald's UberEats to. To the lighthouse nightly. Terrible job. Should we do another one?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Who taught these? I thought these would be fun. Who taught his pet parrot? Oh, yeah, there's a monitor. Oh, one second.

[A]

Sorry.

[D]

I'm for the listeners doing the jeopardy thing.

[C]

Who taught his pet parrot. Parrot. Fuck. Who taught his pet parrot to curse vividly, which it allegedly then did in the middle of his funeral?

[D]

Andrew Jackson.

[C]

You're so right. It was Andrew Jackson.

[D]

We know that Andrew Jackson is a bad man because he swore and his parents wore. So his parrot is in hell with him, I guess.

[B]

Oh, wait, how do you know this, though? Is there.

[D]

Oh, how do I know it?

[B]

I'm trying to give you.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What's the context for the fictional prize that Claire.

[D]

Bobby.

[C]

Actually, no, the prize right now is stickers. I told you this already. You have stickers. I. For everyone at home and in the audience. I ordered the prize too late and it didn't get here in time. So they get New York themed stickers as their. As their prize for the night.

[D]

So he was very much a man of the people kind of person. And so that explains the swearing. It was actually kind of like think of the parrot as like a proto Nixon tape. They didn't have the technology, Kevin, or the arsenal yet.

[C]

That's right.

[D]

Yeah. And I think that we have an episode of this day where we talk about the swearing parrot of Andrew Jackson.

[C]

Whoa. Leg up on this.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

The parrot was named Poll, like P O L L, sometimes called Pol, was an African grey, and he had originally bought her as a gift for his wife. The funeral part of this anecdote is somewhat apocryphal, although we do know for sure that he taught her to swear. He did a lot of very horrific things. This being one of the least bad, least weird things that he did.

[D]

He has a cool bird.

[C]

Yeah, that's great. There's also. There was a letter Written between his nephew used to watch the parrot for him when he was off doing president things. And his nephew wrote him a letter saying, she's still good. She's fat and saucy. Fat and saucy. To describe her, like, temperament.

[D]

I like it.

[C]

Such a fun thing.

[D]

And African Grace lived for such a long time.

[C]

She outlived him, obviously, through the funeral situation. And, like, his kids had to deal with this parrot, with that fat and saucy parrot. A fat and saucy parrot. Okay, next one. This is the only thing I know about this president who died of gastroenteritis, possibly caused by his consumption of a copious amount of milk and cherries at a Fourth of July picnic.

[B]

Is it Taft?

[C]

Not Taft.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Ding in. Not Taft, though.

[D]

Now I can't remember who. Like, obviously it's, like, a guy who died in office. And there aren't, like, a ton of them. It's from the 19th century.

[B]

He died of consumption.

[C]

I don't know if he died in office.

[D]

I'd say William Henry Harrison because that's the only one that I can remember who died. They say he died because he wasn't wearing a hat, but maybe it was the cherries.

[C]

What?

[D]

No. He didn't live long enough to make it to July 4th because he died a month in.

[C]

It was Zachary Taylor. So Zachary Taylor died in 1850, and pasteurization did not hit the American mainstream until the mid-1880s. So that's what can happen to you if you drink raw milk. Rfk. Do you just die immediately.

[B]

Can I justify my Taft answer?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

He was the last president to have cows on the White House lawn. And he would drink milk from the cows every single morning. Also our fattest president.

[C]

Yes, that's true. Famously.

[B]

But did not get stuck in a bathtub.

[A]

That's not real.

[B]

Yeah, that is not true. But our largest president.

[D]

Yes, but he was possibly the only president who saw the presidency as a stepping stone to higher office because he becomes a Supreme Court justice after this, which was the job he always wanted

[B]

and a job for life.

[C]

Yeah, that's so true.

[D]

The good ones.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Next one. I'm not good at the transition part of this. Who married his adopted daughter?

[D]

Oh, Teddy Roosevelt.

[C]

Not Teddy Roosevelt.

[D]

His daughter was the First Lady. Which is what I was thinking.

[C]

This is also now the only thing I know about this guy.

[D]

I can't help you.

[C]

They're staring. Do you want me to just give

[B]

it Martin Van Buren?

[C]

No, I know nothing about Van Buren either. There are a lot of things I don't know anything about. All right, it was Grover Cleveland.

[B]

This is all this 19th century.

[D]

We were like, if it's any Gilded Age presidents, we're so screwed.

[B]

Well, you have Grover up there, which I appreciate. I want to call that out right there.

[A]

I want to tell you about a show hosted by my also friend. So like your friend by marriage, I guess. Medievalist and noted Charlemagne and Richard the Lionheart hater Professor Matthew Gabriel American Medieval is a podcast about the Middle Ages, but with an American twist. Every week Matt is joined by an expert scholar to talk about either some bit of the medieval world itself or how Americans have, throughout our history, used the Middle Ages to say something about ourselves. Because if America has never been fully modern, it might be because we've always been a little bit medieval. Matt is the best and he puts up with all of my terrible, terrible jokes at his expense. And I'm so incredibly stoked that this show exists, if only because now we're pretty close to having a critical mass of historians that can bully all of the many scientists at multitude. New episodes are available every Wednesday. Look for them wherever fine podcasts can be found. It's probably somewhere near those podcasts. Go give it a listen and check out americanmedievil.com to learn more. So I feel like some things in the world right now are really great and really looking up and exciting and a lot of things are pretty bad. And on top of that, trying to figure out how to get the right mental health treatment to deal with all the bad things can feel pretty overwhelming.

[C]

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[A]

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[E]

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[C]

I need to tell you the worst part of Frances Folsom Cleveland's Wikipedia page. It is the sentence, folsom first met Grover Cleveland when she was an infant.

[F]

Nope.

[C]

Nope, nope, nope. Yuck. Here's a horrible phrase on Grover Cleveland's Wikipedia page. Cleveland was the executor of Oscar Folsom's her dad's estate and had supervised Frances upbringing.

[D]

I don't like that.

[C]

Thumbs down for that. For sure.

[B]

There's a Melania joke in there, but I'm not gonna tell it.

[C]

Oh, no.

[D]

So they've honest joke in there.

[B]

And if you foia this bad guys out there where historians doing professional work.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

Including when Nikki said, I'm okay with people getting high and being drunk earlier

[D]

as long as they don't control the nuclear arsenal.

[C]

That's very important.

[B]

I love, by the way, that that was a point for Richard Nixon and against Andrew Johnson. Perfect.

[C]

Perfect. So they married. Just so you know about Francis Folsom Cleveland and Grover Cleveland. They married when she was 21 and he was 49 and already the president, making her the youngest first lady in history. Yuck.

[D]

There was also, I mean, Cleveland.

[C]

Yuck.

[D]

Cleveland's sexual habits had become part of the campaign when he was running, weren't they? Yep. That he had an illegitimate child.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[D]

No, because he would go out on the campaign trail and his opponents would chant, ma, ma, where's my pa? Because he'd abandoned this baby.

[B]

Right. And then the only president to have to do that.

[D]

No, you never have to do that,

[B]

but to choose to do that.

[D]

But when. When he won, they would respond, ma, Ma, where's my pa? And then go. Gone to the White House.

[B]

Ha ha, ha. I believe you deserve a point for that. That is pretty good right there.

[D]

I mean, I need all the help.

[C]

There we go. Now Kevin is giving out the night. Sorry, next one. No, I think you're right, though. That's wild. I didn't know any of that. Okay, who vomited on the Japanese prime minister and then fainted during a state dinner in Tokyo? George H.W. bush. Also, gastroenteritis.

[D]

It was amazing because it is caught on camera. So you can go on C span tonight. C span.org, you have a little hyphen between the C and the span, and you can watch George H.W. bush vomit on the Japanese prime minister.

[B]

Wait, without the hyphen, do you get a different site?

[C]

You get a racist C Span After Dark.

[D]

That's right.

[F]

Really?

[C]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

Hey, now I got something to do tonight.

[D]

Turn those safe searches off and have fun.

[C]

Do you have any other fun context for this that you know?

[D]

Well, look, George H.W. bush really struggled throughout his presidency with something that I think Time magazine or Newsweek called the wimp factor, that he was seen as somebody who just wasn't manly enough. And interestingly enough, the poor guy had a stomach flu. It's fine. But it is portrayed in the media as him being, like, not manly enough. Reagan wouldn't have thrown up on the prime minister. He would have choked it down and kept going.

[B]

That's like Ford, who is a college football player at the University of Michigan, but he stumbles down the stairs and he looks like the inept president.

[C]

You trip one time, trip one time,

[D]

your entire football career is just forgotten.

[B]

Right. The escalator stops and you jerk forward, and everybody just thinks you're an idiot.

[D]

Those stairs were sharp. That could have seriously injured him. And, Melania, If you're listening out there,

[C]

first, if I defended you listening the FBI agents in our phones for some more context for this. Yeah, gastroenteritis, which is maybe the real reason Donald J. Trump only eats fast food. It's the silent killer. This was in 1992, and immediately afterwards, a sort of jokey word was coined for it, bushesuru in Japanese, which means to do a Bush while laying on the ground. After the incident, President Bush told his doctor to roll me under the table until the dinner's over, which I feel like is fair. I would do the same. I would actually be like, roll me over and Shoot me. Actually, we've only got a couple more of these. Next one. Who included an openness about UFO's policy in his official presidential campaign platform. Nikki.

[D]

Was it Trump again?

[C]

No.

[B]

Oh, that's what I would have done, too.

[C]

Tentative.

[B]

Tentative. He's.

[C]

He's lingering above the. Do it. The dinghy thing. W. Not W. I'm gonna give this one to you. It is Jimmy Carter.

[B]

Oh, that's a surprise.

[D]

You know what? I like him better.

[C]

Yeah. He reportedly saw a UFO in 1969 in Georgia. A few years after which he filed an official report with the International UFO Bureau. During his. I didn't know he was taken. Yeah, what actually happened is that we have. We have a. We had a lizard Jimmy Carter.

[D]

Somebody should look into it.

[C]

Yeah. Following or. During his 1976 presidential election campaign, he said the following to reporters. One thing's for sure. I'll never make fun of people who say they've seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become president, I'll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and to the scientists.

[D]

Promise broken.

[B]

I feel like this was when he was doing those commercials with his brother, who was like a ne' er do well guy. So Jimmy Carter was sort of, you know, he was a planter, but also very smart and very accomplished.

[D]

Nuclear scientist.

[B]

Nuclear scientist. And his brother was not.

[D]

Not.

[B]

And he was. He drank beer and stayed home and ate peanuts. So in order to make Jimmy Carter seem more like a man of the people, they would do all these photo shoots with the two of them sitting around in T shirts, throwing peanut shells on the floors and drinking beer together, talking about stuff that they would, you know, locker room stuff that they would talk about. I wonder if it came up in one of these things that sounds like it would play to the people.

[C]

I have truly no idea.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I'm gonna be so real with you, I have no clue.

[B]

Or we have lizard Jimmy Carter, which

[D]

I think we should spend a little more time with.

[C]

That's what. Really, we need an openness policy about that. Let me be clear. The final name that president who gambled away the official White House china set while hosting a crooked politician poker night. A.

[D]

This is awesome.

[B]

Buchanan?

[C]

No, not Buchanan. Oh, you're right.

[D]

It probably is one of the older ones.

[B]

He's from Ohio.

[C]

You can ding in again if you want.

[B]

Oh, really?

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Well, they're all from Ohio.

[F]

Harding.

[D]

You think it's Harding? Oh, it would be interesting if it was Harding.

[B]

Well, ask Claire. She knows.

[D]

Do you want I'm gonna say McKinley.

[C]

So we have McKinley. And who do you. You think it's Harding? Yeah. You're so right. It's Harding.

[D]

I know. I just couldn't take it.

[B]

And also, glad you didn't say, what a dick.

[C]

This is another slightly Harding whose penis's

[D]

name was J. Jerry.

[C]

Those are the only two I know,

[D]

but I shared them both. I'm very happy about that.

[B]

How do you know this? Please inform our audience.

[D]

He wrote these amazing love letters to the woman he was having sex with, and they all became public, and they are awesome. He invited her to climb Mount Jerry.

[B]

Super dirty stuff.

[D]

It's super dirty stuff. And the New York Times published it all. So after you're finished looking at C Span after dark, then go to the New York Times After Dark and check out those love letters, because they are three chili peppers.

[B]

Spicy, like your rate my professor rating

[C]

C Span After Dark.

[B]

Can I get a context point?

[C]

Sure.

[B]

Okay. Warren G. Harding from Ohio, only because I thought of him as one of my possible worst presidents. He distrusted experts, so he fired all the experts at the White House and brought all of his Ohio boys to the White House. And then he ran the government like a mafioso king. And things did not go very well. There was one corruption scandal after another corruption scandal. And so it just tracks and makes some sense that he would be playing poker with all of his buddies.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And if this guy hadn't died in the middle of being president, he absolutely would have been impeached, don't you think?

[C]

Yeah. So this is another slightly apocryphal one that comes from an account told by one of his friends. So please just indulge me. We can't officially say he definitely did this, but we're pretty sure he did. Apparently, he would regularly hold game nights at the White House populated by his, like, less moral politician friends, and was also apparently very bad at gambling, leading to a losing hand that also lost some important dishes. And there you go. That was named that president. We've got our next game, which is Bad Libs, which is meant to be a play on Mad Libs, but also sounds like I'm criticizing liberals, which makes it an accidental double pun. I have seven quotes with a word or phrase redacted. If you can correctly guess or remember the phrase missing from the quote, you get a point. If you can remember the person who said it, you get another point. If you can tell me the context for it, you might even get a third point. Who knows? None of these mean anything. Oh, I Don't know what Ava is, but that's supposed to be Biden. That is Biden. Some. There's some strange thing floating in the middle. So let's start. This one is a gimme. When the President does it, that means it's not illegal.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I had to. I already said, you know that one.

[B]

You can have that one.

[C]

So you said 76. I have this as 77. I don't know which one is right.

[D]

No, I think you're right.

[C]

What context do you have for it?

[D]

Well, these were the Frost Nixon interviews, and they took place at the seaside home that one of Nixon's big donors owned.

[B]

In California.

[D]

In California. And it was the first interview that Nixon had really done since he had left office. And in many ways it was seen by the American people as like, we didn't get to see Richard Nixon on trial because Ford pardoned him. Another bad guy because Ford pardoned him. And so this will be our chance. The only thing was, of course, it's not a trial.

[C]

Right.

[D]

He's not under oath. He was paid $600,000 for the privilege of sitting down for these interviews. But this was the big moment that comes out of all those interviews.

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

That's what did I say. You got the person, you got the thing. So three points for that and the context. I told you, these are surging back, totally arbitrary. I don't fully know why some of these are where more than others. Next one, the blank offers a rare opportunity to move towards an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective, a new World Order, can emerge.

[D]

So I'm not going to know the exact phrase, I don't think, but let's say the end of the Cold War. That's what George H.W. bush, who says the quote.

[C]

Yes, one might think. But that's not what he says. That's not what he says, but that's who said it.

[B]

9 11.

[C]

So he wasn't president during 9 11. H.W.

[B]

bush, I thought.

[D]

I just didn't know what the phrase was.

[B]

Oh, but you know that it's.

[D]

I know that, yeah. It's in the New World Order.

[E]

Quote.

[C]

It's it. Well, this one is hw.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

So not.

[B]

She doesn't get a point. She didn't say hw.

[C]

You should.

[B]

Oh, darn it.

[C]

Okay, okay. The full quote is, the crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move towards an historic period of cooperation. This is set in 1990. You might be shocked to learn that the Gulf War, which includes things like Desert Storm, did not, in fact, lead to a historic period of cooperation and in fact led to the death of between 175,000 and 300,000 Iraqis, which I would personally describe as being slightly more than troubling times.

[D]

Not great.

[C]

Not great. We don't love that one. Next. Mr. Jefferson meant blank.

[D]

Think about Hamilton.

[B]

Okay, we got to start from the beginning.

[C]

Just staying all the way.

[B]

Mr. Jackson. Jefferson meant. I have nullification.

[C]

No clue. All right, it is. Mr. Jefferson meant the white race. From Andrew Johnson in 59. Yeah, this is. In his speech, while discussing the Declaration of Independence and the idea that all men are created equal, Johnson said, no, they're not, actually. And I added here for context, but you already said it, that he also said, this is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am president, it shall be a government for white men. So this guy really into white men. Let me tell you this, President.

[B]

What a dick.

[C]

We need, like, a what a dick sound button to press whenever this happens. Does anyone have any other interest? I mean, you already gave 10 minutes of context for this next one. History will blank from every unjust aspersion.

[A]

Wow.

[D]

I do not know. And I would embarrass myself by guessing.

[C]

That's totally fine.

[B]

I'm trying to make it out. Behind the little block out the redaction. Yeah, exactly. I don't know.

[C]

I thought these ones might be harder, and they are. History will vindicate my memory from every unjust aspersion. And that is James Buchanan in 1868.

[D]

Incorrect.

[C]

He said. Well, yeah, he said this on his deathbed. History did not, in fact, vindicate his memory, especially because of, like, the Civil War, which started at the end of his presidential term. His reputation has been consistently abysmal among historians, political scientists, and the general public alike. He is regularly ranked at last or near last in polls among historians and journalists of which presidents they think were the worst.

[B]

He was a finalist in my.

[C]

Was he.

[B]

He was a finalist.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. I was looking at, like, there are a bunch of polls in the 90s where they asked presidents who the worst or presidents. They asked historians who the worst president was. And James Buchanan ranked last in all

[D]

of them because he made things worse. And things were already pretty bad. And I think to the extent that you believe in contingency, Right. Like, maybe a different president, probably not by the 1850s, but, like, maybe a different president could have set the US On a different course. Instead, he sends it on, like, the crash course to war and just it just made everything worse.

[C]

I just love the idea of being on your deathbed and being like, eventually they'll know I was a good guy. Eventually they'll figure out like, he's literally dying and being like, history will vindicate.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Are people gonna hate me?

[B]

Can I advise you not to live your life like that? I don't think that's a bad idea right there.

[C]

Being like, it'll be fine probably one day. I don't know.

[B]

One of the interesting things about these polls of presidents that you're talking about, where Buchanan always ends up near the bottom, is they interviewed a bunch of historians or polled a bunch of historians before the civil rights movement on who the worst president was. And Andrew Johnson didn't even make the list because all the people they were asking were white dudes who didn't necessarily care about the fate of black people.

[C]

You mean the only people who are allowed to be historians? Or so on.

[B]

We wonder why everyone hates white liberals. Right?

[D]

This is back when Reconstruction was like the terrible Reconstruction boom because it brought

[B]

out all of these corrupt black people into political office. Right. This was the old theory that they had in the early 20th century about what Reconstruction was. And then the civil rights movement happened, and everybody said, oh, shit, we need to rethink where this all came from. Maybe Johnson started to go towards the bottom.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And then the universe gave us foner, basically.

[D]

To even the scales.

[C]

To even the scales. All right, next one. I just want you to think big, for Christ's sakes. You're so goddamn concerned about blank, and I don't give a damn. I don't care.

[B]

Re election.

[C]

No,

[D]

Yeah. I mean, it definitely has a Nixon cadence to it, which means, say the Jews. I was about to say, like, actually,

[C]

he did give a damn about the

[D]

Jews, which I'm really worried that the. That the blurred out word is a slur.

[C]

I would not do that. I want to be really clear. There's no point at which I will be saying a slur on this or any show. Yeah.

[D]

I don't know what it is.

[C]

All right. You're so right. It is Nixon. There's a part that I didn't include in this, too, which is, I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ's sakes. You're so goddamn concerned about civilians, and I don't give a damn. I don't care.

[D]

My war criminal Secretary of State has

[C]

too big of a heart. Exactly. And the context is he was asking if it would be fine to use a nuclear bomb in Vietnam. You have to be so awful if you feel like Henry Kissinger is the guy keeping you from doing bad stuff.

[D]

Henry Kissinger was the angel on his shoulders.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which is wild. That's bad because he's like just the devil in basically every other possible context.

[D]

Here's my other Nixon sort of fact. I spent a lot of years listening to the Nixon tapes, and Nixon was a Quaker, which means he should have been a pacifist.

[C]

But.

[D]

And in one of the tapes, he is talking about student protesters, and one of the student protesters was a Quaker. And he was like, I wish they would just shoot that fucking Quaker right in the face. It's like, I don't think you can say that. Certainly not as a Quaker.

[C]

I also don't think you could just say, like, that Quaker.

[D]

It's not great. Not the worst lyrics, but is it

[B]

anti Quaker if it's said by a Quaker?

[D]

I mean, it's Quaker and Quaker violence. I think it's more than aliens.

[C]

The first time that has ever been said, by the way, is the phrase Quaker on Quaker violence. He was an innovator ahead of his time. Next quote, we have one more after. Well, this one and then one more blank. Is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

[D]

So many options that could be. It could be a George W. Bush thing. What would the nation be?

[B]

Okay, the nation suffers from incredible disease. A big orientalism faction going on here.

[D]

I know we have to think, like, what is the racism of the person?

[B]

Right, exactly. And that'll. China.

[D]

Not China could be in Africa.

[C]

It is Africa. Oh.

[B]

Out of nowhere.

[C]

Who do you think said it before I reveal it?

[D]

I mean, I thought that it was George W. Bush, but I have no idea.

[C]

It is George W. Bush saying, Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease. So the main thing wrong here is that Africa is a continent, not a country, which is something we all mostly hope that our president knows.

[D]

But, like, there's more than one of them who doesn't know it.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. 100% there is. And when this happened, his aides said that he misspoke and said that he actually, like, loved Africa. They were like, actually, George W. Bush loves Africa more than any president has ever loved. Loved Africa. And then right around this time, Nelson Mandela refused to meet with him because he thought Bush was too uncouth, which I think is fair.

[D]

Uncouth might have been the couth term

[C]

for what he was actually thinking. Yeah, absolutely. He went on this, like, Africa tour, basically. Like, I think this is right at the beginning of that, that he goes on this Africa tour and a bunch of the people are like, don't come here. Don't come to our country. We don't. Like, each of the different countries are like, don't. Not everyone in the nation of Africa. People in the different countries are like, we don't really want you to be here, brother. Like, go away. The final bad lib is I have been criticized a good deal about blank, but I don't deserve it. When they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them.

[D]

This could be Jimmy Carter Talking about the UFOs.

[C]

We're pondering. We're adjusting from the God.

[B]

I'm thinking it's slavery or black.

[C]

Could be.

[D]

It could be.

[C]

It's not, but it could be.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

That also would be something that a lot of presidents would have a category of racisms here. Yeah, I mean, you're on the right track with it.

[B]

Being racist and Native Americans would be my next thing. But then that doesn't, you know, gift from the gods.

[C]

Do we want the answer?

[D]

We do want the answer.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Is it the Irish?

[D]

We're doing some late 19th century racism. It is.

[C]

It is not the Irish, but It is late 19th century racism. It's. I have been criticized a good deal about the Philippines, but I don't deserve it. When they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. So for context, this is right after the Philippine War, which led to the death of nearly 250, 50,000 Philippine civilians. I would class that as a really awful gift if that's what your God is giving you, at least in, in my mind. And there are some other things to be said about this one. We definitely went to the Philippines. They did not come to us.

[D]

Definitely.

[C]

I want to be very clear about that. And secondly, I think it really illustrates the sort of classic old school colonial mindset that Americans had stretching past this point and far into the 20th century as well. This sort of like there's this great thing that we got handed over to us. The war. Eh, that doesn't count.

[D]

And the US had promised the Philippines once they occupied them that they would grant the Philippines independence in 1916 and they actually grant independence in 1946. So that colonialism, hell of a drug

[B]

and little known fact about the war in the Philippines. It's also the first recorded instance of Americans waterboarding people. They called it the water cure back in the day where they take a bamboo stick and pour buckets of salt water on these Filipinos trying to get information out of them, and then they would jump on their bellies, and then they'd do it all over again.

[C]

That's horrible.

[B]

And these American soldiers were writing these letters back to their mom about what they saw. So we actually have the letters where the soldiers are like, what the fuck is going on? And one of the mothers, maybe a Quaker, but I don't know, survived the Quaker on Quaker Violence. She sent them to newspaper editors, and they were published across the country, and it actually led to some national outrage against the war in the Philippines, the Spanish American War in general. Obviously, it didn't slow America's imperial adventure, but it did bring human rights to the table for the first time. Ish.

[C]

I mean, it is interesting to then after that be like, well, I didn't know what to do with them, and so I did something crazy with them, basically.

[B]

In.

[C]

In response. All right, we are on to our final game of the night. Right now, the scores for people who can't see back there is 10 points for Professor Kevin Michael Schultz and 15 points for Nikki Hammer. Just so you know, this is where we're at.

[B]

I don't know. Test the scoring here.

[C]

This brings us to our final minigame, slash sub game of the night. In this game, I would like you to just list reasons you wouldn't want your respective guys, AJ And Nixon, to sit next to you at a dinner party. We'll switch off between the two of you. So, like, Nikki will give a reason, then Professor Kevin Michael. I have to stop saying that. Then Kevin will give a reason, and then Nikki, and then until you run out of reasons and we run out of time, you are allowed and encouraged to expand on your reason and can be as obscure or as obvious as you like. You get a point for every convincing reason you list. And I will ding a bell to give. No, I don't have a bell. I'll say point. I'll ding a bell for a point, and then at the end, we'll have a winner for the night. Easy peasy.

[D]

All right, so my first reason why I would not want to have dinner with Richard Nixon is, again, this man was drunk and hopped up on pills a lot of the time. And again, while that makes some people very fun dinner party guests, it just amped up Nixon's paranoia. He got very slurry, and he, as I will talk about in my second point, let the slurs fly. And so I think he would be just miserable to sit next to at dinner.

[C]

Yeah, that's one point I don't know, should I keep dinging the bell? Yeah, of course. I just want to ding the bell, sound my turn.

[B]

Okay. I want to use your language. Exactly. Andrew Johnson was drunk all the time, I think you said. And sit next to. While that's fun for many people in the audience to be drunk next to Andrew Johnson was not. Because that would sort of lead to two things. One, him picking fights and starting fisticuffs and then also going on pretty elaborate racist tirades. So we'll talk about the casual racism, but the drunken part.

[C]

Drunkenness is the first real reason.

[B]

Not that drunkenness is bad per se. Unless you have an atomic bomb.

[D]

That's right.

[C]

That's the only situation which you absolutely cannot be drunk is if you have access to the nuclear arsenal. We're learning this over the course of the night. I just.

[D]

I want you to leave here knowing

[C]

one thing, but Donald Trump doesn't drink, and he has the. You know what? Ignore that. There are a lot of other things that are wrong with him having the nuclear coats. But that's a point for Kevin Hipp.

[D]

My second reason that I would not want to sit next to Richard Nixon is because he often had lots of things to say about Jewish people and black people and women, people that were not good. And as a woman person, I would hate that. I don't want to listen to racial slurs all night.

[C]

Okay, I think that's fair. And that gets a point.

[B]

And I could say the same thing. But also, I'll double down on this for my effort to get two points and catch up by saying not only racial slurs, but racial slurs in the name of overturning the military victory that was the United States States win in the Civil War, which was fought, I will say again, to free enslaved people.

[C]

What's the argument for getting two points for that?

[B]

Well, the racism.

[D]

Slavery is bad.

[B]

And then in the name of overturning this really rare chance to create a whole new social economic order in the United States of America.

[C]

Yeah, I think that gets two points. That means it gets about two times. Nikki, your turn.

[D]

My final reason is perhaps the most important. Do you know what Richard Nixon had for breakfast every morning? Cottage cheese mixed with ketchup. This man had a terrible palate, and that meal would have been disgusting. There's no way I'm going to dinner with him.

[B]

Okay, fair enough.

[C]

I think that's fair. I don't want to. You don't want to sit next to that and smell it. Did someone say two points for the audience? Someone with A heavy sense of disgust for food.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Point for Nikki. Kevin, I think it's your. Is it? You could also keep doing more if you had more after this and you wanted to catch up on.

[B]

I don't know, any dietary habits other than the excessive drinking. I should have studied that, but I

[C]

should have been Googling his menu.

[B]

I will say that he was also, when sober, famously boring.

[C]

Oh.

[B]

He was not interested in anything at all. He didn't even want to go into politics. His wife sort of said, you know, you're good with people. Sometimes you shake hands and laugh and all this stuff. You should do this. And he said, sure. Which maybe is a plus that he actually listened to his wife. That's one good thing. Or woman person or whatever you called it. But he was incredibly boring to talk with, so I think that would. Why? And this addresses your question exactly. He'd be terrible to sit at the. The dinner table with.

[D]

And I will say, to bolster Kevin's point, Richard Nixon actually had a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of the world. I'm sure it could get boring at some point, but, like, that's kind of interesting.

[C]

He.

[D]

He went around the world. He met famous people.

[B]

Sure.

[D]

As long as he wasn't drunk. And as long as he wasn't, you

[C]

know, talking about the Jews. So that's one point for Kevin. Yay, you got that. I love the idea of being like, he's boring drunk and sober. No, he's. He's fine. He's horror. Evil drunk.

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

Boring sober. So there's no context in which you would dinner or otherwise want to be near him at all.

[B]

Terrible guy. Didn't have free time. He upended the opportunity for racial equality in America. Just.

[C]

Yeah, that sucks. He sucks. I do this every. In every single episode. At some point, I'm like, yeah, well, yeah, that sucks. Yeah, he sucks. That's it. The argument is made. That is the end of our game show for the night. Let me just crown. We don't do crowns here. Let me sticker. Winner with 14 points, Kevin Schulz. And with 18 points, the winner of the night, Professor Nikki Hammer. Thank you so much for indulging me in this. And thank you to everyone who came out. Thank you to Amanda and Carly for keeping score. Thank you to Caveat for hosting us. Cheerful earful for putting on the festival again. I really am, like, amazed that you were willing to do this. So thank you for listening and for being here.

[B]

Thanks, Claire.

[C]

And I think that's it.

[A]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude Podcast Collective, this episode was Hosted by me, Dr. Claire Aubin and recorded live as part of the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival. It features special guests Nicole Hemmer and Professor Kevin Michael Schultz and was edited by Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by the alive and thriving Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month, and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our [e-mail] thisguysucked See you next week.

[C]

Foreign.

[E]

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[D]

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[D]

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