Summary8 min read

Too Many Tabs with Pearlmania500

Episode 153: The Secret Banking Clan That Bought Multiple Presidents

A Detailed Summary

Overview of Episode Theme

In this engaging, irreverent deep dive, hosts Pearlmania500 ("Mrs. P" and "Mr. P") unravel the hidden influence and history of the Mellon family—a secretive, staggeringly wealthy Pittsburgh banking dynasty whose quiet power has shaped more than a century of American politics, economics, and even catastrophes. Centered on the news that Tim Mellon, fourth-generation heir, clandestinely covered the U.S. military payroll during a 2025 government shutdown, the hosts trace the intricate, shadowy roots and wide-reaching consequences of Mellon money—from 19th-century tycoons to present-day power-broking and campaign financing.
Tone: Whip-smart, sarcastic, history-nerd energy, with plenty of comedic asides and contemporary analogies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mystery of the "Secret Billionaire" (01:00—09:12)

Opening Setup: The episode opens with the revelation that an "unknown billionaire" gave $130 million to cover military salaries during the 2025 government shutdown, as announced by then-President Trump.
Speculation: The hosts riff on how unusual it is for billionaires to hide their acts, contrasting current flashy, celebrity-style billionaires (Elon, Bezos, Zuckerberg) with this anonymous approach.
Big Reveal: The New York Times outs the secret benefactor as Tim Mellon, scion of the historic Mellon family of banking fame—setting up the episode’s "lore hole" into Mellon clan history and influence.

“We're used to billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg losing at an MMA fight. But we're not used to a billionaire like Tim Mellon… part of the Mellon banking clan, a clan from Pittsburgh that reaches back over 175 years into the very depths of American history.” – Host 1, 01:00

2. Mellon Family Deep History: From Ireland to Pittsburgh (11:07—15:51)

Origins & Immigration: Mellons were Scots-Irish Protestants strategically transplanted to Northern Ireland to destabilize Catholic power, later emigrating to Pittsburgh in the early 1800s.
The First Tycoon: Thomas Mellon, born 1813, goes from exposed tenant farming to law, then amasses wealth through real estate and the founding of T. Mellon & Sons Bank (opened 1870).
Inheritance & Wealth: Thomas hands generational wealth (and a trust designed for perpetual enrichment) to the line; the Mellons become some of the richest Americans.
Old Money Tactics: Unlike nouveau billionaires, the Mellons followed the motto, “Nothing should be noticed” (Bunny Mellon, 19:12)—mastering discreet, durable wealth preservation.

3. Mellon Power Grows: Industrialization, Oil, and Printing Money (34:02—38:12)

Vertical Integration: Andrew ("not Andy") Mellon (Thomas’ son) drives vast expansion into coal, oil, gas, and aluminum, mastering vertical monopolies in true Gilded Age style.
Banking Privilege: Mellon Bank gains the right to print money—directly likened to today’s cryptocurrency ambitions.
Environmental Apathy: The family’s oil exploits leave thousands of abandoned wells—a legacy of disregard for public health.

4. The Johnstown Flood: First Catastrophe Bought and Paid For (40:30—51:17)

Disaster Recap: The Mellons (and fellow barons like Carnegie) co-founded the South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club, maintaining a badly-modified dam for their private lake retreat. Neglect and selfish alterations (fish screens, lowering the dam) lead to the catastrophic Johnstown Flood of 1889, killing 2,209 people.
Total Lack of Accountability: Despite community lawsuits, Mellon and friends escape all legal responsibility, claiming the disaster an “act of God”. Mellon donates a pittance (~$35k in today’s money) to relief, reinforcing the era’s impunity for the ultra-rich.

“Imagine if you heard there is $4.4 billion in destruction and you gave $35,000 and you were one of the people who was supposed to be in charge of updating the dam.” – Host 1, 49:30

5. Mellon Influence On Politics: Buying Presidents, Breaking Laws (61:14—71:58)

Bank-to-Bureaucrat Pipeline: Andrew Mellon’s investments and strategic campaign donations ensure his appointment as Treasury Secretary under Warren G. Harding (who was, incidentally, heavily indebted to Mellon Bank).
Conflict of Interest & Loopholes: Despite 18th-century laws barring Treasury Secretaries from commercial interests, Mellon evades this by “selling” assets to his brother—a maneuver likened directly to modern Trumpian blind-trust antics.
Policy Havoc: Mellon slashes taxes for the wealthy, engineers high protective tariffs, and fundamentally shapes the boom of the Roaring Twenties.

“Mellon, the Melon bank, had lent $1.5 million to Harding’s campaign... He’s Elon Musking it.” — Host 1 and 2, 66:39-66:42

6. The Great Depression & Aftermath: Disaster and Evasion (77:21—84:50)

Denial & Laissez-Faire Cruelty: During the 1929 crash and resulting Great Depression, Mellon insists on austerity and non-intervention, offering the infamous advice to Hoover:

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate, purge the rottenness out of the system. ... Enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” — Mellon, quoted by Hoover’s memoir, 81:10
Ultimate Fallout: Mellon becomes the second most hated man in America (after Hoover), only escaping impeachment by being sent as ambassador to the UK—where he lobbies for US oil expansion into Kuwait, indirectly setting up future wars.
Death in (Dis)grace: FDR reverses his policies; Mellon faces tax fraud investigations and dies in 1936.

7. The Middle Generations: Paul & Bunny Mellon—Old Money Decorum and Social Connections (86:10—95:16)

Paul Mellon's Profile: Archetypal mid-century WASP billionaire: obsessed with horse racing, art collecting, and writing a “boring, shallow” memoir (Reflections in a Silver Spoon—87:45).
Family Dynamics: Bunny Mellon, Paul’s second wife, is a beloved Democratic garden designer and confidante of Jackie Kennedy. She embodies tasteful, old-school Democratic elite, in contrast to the increasingly secretive and conservative Tim.
Long Lives, Long Shadows: These generations wield cultural and philanthropic influence; Bunny Mellon’s lifespan (103) stretches until 2014, acting as a moderating force on Tim.

8. Tim Mellon: Secret Kingmaker, Reactionary Superdonor (99:00—118:47)

Character Sketch: Tim is socially awkward, obsessed with “boy’s toys” (trains, planes), and reputedly difficult. He grows up with immense privileges—his trust fund equals his parents’ wealth—but feels alienated.
Political Radicalization: At Yale in the ’60s-‘70s, Tim briefly experiments with progressive causes before taking a hard-right turn with the rise of Reagan.
Autobiographical Views: In his self-published book (Pan Am Dot Captain Pan Am), Tim derides social welfare as “slavery redux,” targets Black and poor Americans as “belligerent,” and rails against academic disciplines like Black Studies and Women’s Studies.
Supercharging the Far Right:
- Becomes second-largest donor ($150M) to Trump’s 2024 campaign and super PACs—outranked only by Elon Musk.
- Gives millions to notorious right-wing candidates, “spoiler” third parties (RFK Jr.), and—crucially—anti-immigrant hate groups labeled by the SPLC.
- Deliberately trolls the Democrats, e.g., giving to AOC’s campaign just to force a refusal.

“He calls himself an entrepreneur repeatedly.” — Host 1, 105:39
“Being born into a pile of money like Scrooge McDuck does not make an entrepreneur.” — Host 2, 105:42

Lack of Taxation: Hosts emphasize the poisonous effects of unchecked dynastic wealth, pointing out Tim donates a higher share of his wealth (to far-right causes) than he would have paid in taxes under a fairer system.

9. Mellon Family Legacy: Philanthropy, Culture, and Control (112:56—115:15)

The Mellons founded and shaped major U.S. institutions (Carnegie Mellon University, National Gallery of Art), hold vast investments in oil, media, transportation, and more.
Their philanthropy often masks their deep entanglement in American inequality and reactionary politics.

“Tim Mellon is the product of a tax system pioneered by his grandfather that allowed the perpetuation of dynastic wealth and the maintenance of its political power.” — (Quoting Robert Reich & hosts, 115:29)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Old vs. New Money:

“Wealth whispers. Money talks.” – Host 1, 17:53
“Really truly wealthy people are very secretive and you don't see them running around...” – Host 2, 18:07
On the Johnstown Flood:

“A survivor named Gertrude Gwyn Slattery said this quote. ‘It was like the Day of Judgment… Pandemonium had broken loose…’” – Host 1, 47:01
On Mellon’s Influence:

“Andrew Mellon’s appointment as the Secretary of Treasurer, probably illegal… Mellon overcame these legal restrictions by pretending to sell his assets to his brother, the same way Donald Trump often pretends to sell his assets to his sons or say that it's in a blind trust.” – Host 1, 67:24–67:44
On the Great Depression:

“In his own memoirs, President Hoover wrote that Mellon advised him to, quote, liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate, purge the rottenness out of the system…” – Host 1, 81:10
On Tim Mellon’s Appalling Views:

“Timothy Mellon wrote that black people were, quote, even more belligerent after the explosion of social programs in the 60s and 70s… That Americans who rely on government assistance were, quote, slaves of a new master. Uncle Sam.” – Host 1, 104:38–105:03

Important Timestamps by Segment

| Topic | Timestamps | |------------------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Opening / Secret Billionaire Mystery | 01:00–09:12 | | Mellon Family History – Thomas Mellon | 11:07–15:51 | | Banking, Oil, Industrial Growth (Andrew Mellon) | 34:02–38:12 | | The Johnstown Flood Disaster | 40:30–51:17 | | Mellon Political Power & Laws Broken | 61:14–71:58 | | The Great Depression & Mellon’s Downfall | 77:21–84:50 | | Paul & Bunny Mellon: Socialite & Gardener | 86:10–95:16 | | Tim Mellon: The Present Day Reactionary Billionaire | 99:00–118:47 | | Family Philanthropy & Dynastic Control | 112:56–115:15 | | Host Reflection and Closing Thoughts | 118:14–119:50 |

Conclusion & Overall Takeaways

The episode delivers a comedic but searing indictment of the Mellon clan’s unchecked, nearly invisible power: a family that weathered empires, bought presidents, shaped depressions and disasters, and remains richer and more influential than ever while hiding behind the very walls of secrecy and silence that their “new money” peers disavow. From man-made floods to man-made presidents, the Mellons are exposed as the ultimate case study in American dynastic rule.

Final moral:

“There’s no such thing as a good billionaire. We’re gonna repeat that over and over again.” – Host 1, 95:22

And as for Tim Mellon—
A cautionary tale: that wealth without the constraint of taxation, social pressure, or accountability breeds not innovation, but isolation, paranoia, and the perilous temptation to buy the future for personal pique.

For listeners:

This episode is a masterclass in fun, accessible history and power analysis—highly recommended for anyone interested in American oligarchy, the traps of dynastic wealth, and the (literal) costs of billionaire discretion.

End of Summary

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Transcript1,116 lines

[00:00]
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[00:30]
Ryan Seacrest
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[01:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's no secret that America is run by billionaires. But what if a secret billionaire is running America? That's right. It's recently been announced that a billionaire has given $130 million to cover the US military payroll during the shutdown. But nobody knew his name. But we now have it. We're used to billionaires jumping out with their tummies like Elon Musk. We're used to billionaires like Jeff Bezos strutting with his gal pal. We're used to billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg losing at an EMM MMA fight. But we're not used to a billionaire like Tim Melon. No, Tim Melon, part of the Mellon banking clan, a clan from Pittsburgh that reaches back over 175 years into the very depths of American history. A banking clan that may have had direct impact on the Great Depression. A banking clan that has made money on World War II, the Iraq War, and so many more. And why don't we know who Tim Mellon is? Well, I'm gonna tell you because I opened up tabs on Tim Melon. How many tabs?
[01:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Too many tabs.
[01:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Dick Shady is de dead. Remember to smile. Dick Cheney was dead to begin with. That's right. We just want to. Before we get into the show, we just want to start out because we're recording this on the day that it was announced that Dick Cheney is dead. Yeah, it's election day. 2025.
[02:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Only hours ago, we awoke to the. To the joyous sounds of trumpets from the sky.
[02:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I popped out of bed like the grandpa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I literally removed my bedrot, and I started doing a little dance.
[02:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And.
[02:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that's how we're going to tell you. Welcome to Too Many Tabs, a podcast where a husband and wife duo sit next to each other at a table. And if you're looking at us on YouTube right now, you might notice something a little different. Something has changed. Oh. In front of Mrs. P, usually there's a laptop. That laptop is usually full of research from something that she has studied voraciously over the week.
[02:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Not today, baby. No, not today. Took a week off.
[02:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Where is the laptop, Mrs. Pull?
[02:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Uh, it's in the other room.
[02:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, but where is a laptop?
[02:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Right. There's a laptop in front of you. Yes, that's right. Because you've done research.
[02:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I have done research because I fell down a little lore hole. And we all know what happens when I fall down a lore hole. I get really, really weird about it. I get it's nowhere near as fun. So I'm going to aggressively shout facts at you probably for approximately the next two hours.
[03:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's different vibe.
[03:19]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's totally different vibe. You're like, oh. And then I'm going to boom with this, and I'm going to do this again. I'm like, no. Are you prepared for how many deaths were caused by a man whose last name is Melon?
[03:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Melon.
[03:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Melon.
[03:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Like Melons.
[03:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No. Not a fun way. None of this is fun.
[03:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Why? This is a fun comedy history podcast.
[03:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, no, no. We are fun.
[03:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[03:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
What's in this laptop? Straight up evil babe. No. Okay. I want to start with you at the very beginning.
[03:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay?
[03:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. The very beginning is as of a couple. Where I got where I began.
[03:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Where this started.
[03:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. You know how last week's episode, you. You started because you heard Argentina was getting 40 billion DOL. Yeah, I heard the number. 130 million. Okay. $130 million.
[04:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yes.
[04:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that is the amount of money that the President of the United States, Donald John Trump.
[04:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Ew. His name's dj.
[04:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, my God.
[04:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, dj.
[04:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's President DJ Trump. Oh, no.
[04:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Ever.
[04:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, no. Hey, hello, everyone. It's DJ Trump. He sat in front of the press.
[04:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Cover your drinks at that club.
[04:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, I'm on the ones and twos. So President Trump was talking about the government shutdown, as one does. All right, you've heard about the government shutdown.
[04:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No. What?
[04:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, so the government, when it's shut down, federal employees don't get paid, but.
[04:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They still have to work.
[04:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They still have to work. And the biggest sector of federal employees is the United States military.
[04:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[04:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We currently have 1.3 million. That's 1,300,000 active duty service members in the US military.
[04:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[04:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. And then Donald Trump made this announcement while speaking to The Press on October 23, 2025. I'm gonna play for you now. Friend of mine, a man. That's great. I'm not gonna use his name unless he lets me do it. He called us the other day and he said, I'd like to contribute any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown. And today he sent us a check for $130 million.
[05:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I have a lot of questions.
[05:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You have a lot of questions.
[05:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Number one, who's writing checks like this? Like, we're writing a paper check for that much money. Why are that. Shit.
[05:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[05:32]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Actually, knowing this president, it's probably like Venmo, so you can't trace it.
[05:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel. They sent it by a PayPal. Yeah, I did a PayPal. It was. Why not through crypto.
[05:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[05:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
What about crypto? The dog from Superman?
[05:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I just had to write a paper check, and it's got, like, the grandma background on it. Okay, so. So first question. I can't believe it was a check. Yeah, not really question. Just me being like, I don't know.
[05:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
If I'm going to be. I'm going to be honest with you right now. I don't know if it's actually a checker, if that's just verbiage that he uses because he. Remember, the President famously is 79 years old.
[06:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[06:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. So he doesn't still understand a lot of things. He thinks AI videos are real often.
[06:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[06:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Especially ones about himself. He's like, I did that.
[06:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He gets a check in the mail, and it's like one of those fraud ones. And he's like, we got to check.
[06:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, my God, we want publishers clearing out.
[06:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
My other question, really? Like, if somebody pays money. A private citizen pays money to pay for troops.
[06:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[06:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Is that not his army?
[06:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. And that is exactly how the Roman Republic fell.
[06:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm sorry.
[06:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But so, yeah, so you know. You know how ancient Rome was a republic.
[06:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yes.
[06:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. One of the problems they had was that the generals that were in charge of each army, they paid the troops.
[06:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[06:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Not the government. Oh, so the Senate didn't pay them.
[06:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[06:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. So the. So the Troops were. And famously, like Julius Caesar paid his troops. So at the end of the day, who is troop going to be loyal to? Well, the troop is loyal to hunger.
[07:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[07:00]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Troop is loyal to family money and silver and gold and all these different things.
[07:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, you're describing the cats that live in the alleyway when you feed them.
[07:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes, 100%. Or crows, when you give crows food.
[07:13]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And then before you know, little trinkets.
[07:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. And then you have a murder of.
[07:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Crows that protect your neighbors.
[07:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. And when Jehovah's Witnesses come for the front door, you go get them crows anymore. Yeah.
[07:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Or.
[07:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Or just put up a pride flag. Either one works. Either one works. It also works on Mormons, but the.
[07:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Crows are funnier than.
[07:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The crows are much funny. Crows carrying pride flags. Crows with trans exclusive, trans inclusive pride flags.
[07:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Absolutely.
[07:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Swooping in, dive bombing Mormons. Anyway.
[07:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[07:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
What I need to know is on ancient Rome, Julius Caesar paid his troops, okay. While there was a bunch of issue with the money. So when he was like, we're going to march on Rome, bang, bang, boom.
[07:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay?
[07:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The troops were more loyal to Caesar, Julius Caesar than they were to the government. And that's how that fell. And then Caesar became dictator for life, got murdered, and then bing, bang, boom, we got Octavian becomes Augustus, and here we are all these years different later.
[08:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And now talking about old shit.
[08:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Still talking about old shit. But let's not talk about old shit. Let's talk about this mysterious benefactor.
[08:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Yes. Secret billionaire.
[08:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because that was the whole thing. It was a secret billionaire. And a lot of people were really confused. Some people thought maybe Trump is lying.
[08:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, no, because we live in a time where all of our billionaires want to be celebrities.
[08:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes, 100%. And that was part of the. Part that was confusing. We've had guys like Elon Musk jump out and straight up by elections, Jeff Bezos buy islands. How many with the islands? But in this case, a lot of people were looking around going, number one, it's weird that we've. We've never heard of a billionaire being this quiet.
[08:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yep.
[08:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And number two, is Trump even lying? Because Trump sometimes makes up excuses and lies to move money around, which again, is illegal because Congress is supposed to decide where the money is supposed to go. And Trump has come in quite a few times and said, no, I'm going to use that for other things. And. Which is against the law. But again, laws aren't real.
[09:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Laws aren't real.
[09:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes, but it came out about. About 10 days ago, it came out that the New York Times figured out who this mysterious patriotic benefactor is.
[09:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, really?
[09:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes.
[09:13]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[09:13]
Ryan Seacrest
Who is that?
[09:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, his first name is Tim.
[09:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[09:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And his last name is a fruit Banana. Tim Banana.
[09:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I don't know.
[09:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You could have gone with Tim Apple. That was the joke I was aiming for.
[09:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Tim. Who's Tim Apple? I've never heard.
[09:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's actually Tim Cook. But last, during the first Trump administration, Trump couldn't remember Tim Cook's name.
[09:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay?
[09:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So he called him Tim Apple.
[09:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[09:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And so everybody calls him Tim Apple. But this isn't about Tim Apple.
[09:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's like very grade school coded. It's 100% made a mistake once and then you're stuck with that nickname forever.
[09:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Forever. We know because we already gave one to one on the after party. We gave a great school nickname to our. One of our new Patreon members. Just Jess. But anyway, it wasn't Tim Apple. It was Tim Melon.
[09:57]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Tim Melon. Why does that sound familiar?
[09:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Timothy Melon.
[10:01]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Should I know who that is?
[10:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, let's go down some things that have Melon in the name, right? Besides like awesome gazongas. Honk.
[10:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Honking.
[10:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There is no. Is that too much?
[10:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You know what? No.
[10:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No.
[10:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, I'm voting. Yeah.
[10:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You're voting? Yeah.
[10:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[10:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, good.
[10:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
For Gazonga's clown misogyny. Clown misogyny. That's what it was. It's like a silly clown doing it. Yeah, it's like. Ah.
[10:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. Yeah, you tell I've grown because I did that to myself. Now T. Tim Melon, have you heard of Carnegie Mellon?
[10:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, yeah.
[10:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, so what immediately are you starting to think?
[10:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Pittsburgh.
[10:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay.
[10:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm thinking about the Carnegie's who invested a lot of their money into libraries and the arts.
[10:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, but before that, what did they do?
[10:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Barons.
[10:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, barons.
[10:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
But they were the kind of barons that were afraid of the people.
[10:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, they were. No, no, they weren't. No, no, you're talking to a lot of. A lot of later stage propaganda. Yeah, a lot of later stage propaganda.
[11:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, so tell me about this.
[11:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay, fine. Tim Mellon is the fourth generation heir of a secretive Scots Irish banking clan that has controlled the United States government since the late 1870s.
[11:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, okay, so fourth generation, fourth generation secretive Scott, Irish banking.
[11:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Now you. Now you notice I had to put Scott's Irish in there. Yeah, because when you say the secret banking clan that controls the United States government, it immediately got real crazy down here.
[11:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
But.
[11:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But they're actually Scots Irish. You know what Scots Irish is?
[11:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's When Scots and Irish are together.
[11:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, absolutely not.
[11:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I don't know what it is.
[11:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's actually. It's actually even worse. What it is, it is. They are Protestant Presbyterian Scots who were imported into Northern Ireland to. To destroy the Catholic power base of the indigenous Irish people. They're also known as Ulster Irish.
[12:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, okay.
[12:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Or Ulster Scots. They are the reason there's a Northern Ireland.
[12:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, got it.
[12:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So his family immigrated over into Ireland sometime after the Tudor royal dynasty.
[12:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[12:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Of England conquered big swaths of Ireland.
[12:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Got it.
[12:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. Probably during the Stuart reign, which were the Scottish. When the Scottish king and the Irish throne, the Scottish throne and the English throne became united, creating the United Kingdom. That's probably when his family went over there. However, his family then moved.
[12:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[12:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All the way to America. To America in the 1810s.
[12:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[12:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But we're gonna get back to that because let me tell you a little bit more about Timothy Mellon.
[12:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[12:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was born July 22, 1942.
[12:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
42.
[12:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. So he's a young man.
[12:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, yep.
[12:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Young, young, young, young. Yeah.
[12:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He could run for anything now for. In politics.
[12:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. No, he would be. This would be a great time to become the junior senator of Wyoming, for sure. He is the son of Paul Mellon.
[13:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[13:07]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Paul Mello first wife, Mary Conover Brown.
[13:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[13:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And he is the grandson of Andrew Melon.
[13:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
All right.
[13:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And he is the great grandson of Thomas Melon. Now, when Tim was born, he inherited wealth immediately as part of the Melon family. Okay.
[13:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. So as soon as he comes out.
[13:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
As soon as he came out, just.
[13:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Hand him a bag of money like.
[13:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A can can handed a trust fund that was designed by his grandfather.
[13:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's funnier if you do, in mind, where it's like the sack of money where it's got the money symbol with.
[13:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A big dollar sign on it.
[13:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And then, like, you know how, like, the. Brings the bag with the baby. The stork comes back this time, but drops off money at the baby.
[13:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. So the difference is, the big thing is, is all of his funny. His funny money.
[13:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Funny money.
[13:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All of his money comes from wealth that was started with the founding of the bank T. Mellon and Sons.
[13:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. The Melon Bank.
[14:00]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. Mellon Bank. That is. This is the Mellon bank family.
[14:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Got it.
[14:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It was later changed to Mellon Bank. That bank was founded in 1870. And the big thing to note is that unlike many other old money, the melons are still loaded. They're worth over $14 billion under some estimates.
[14:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, okay.
[14:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay.
[14:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So generational.
[14:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, we're talking about Eyes Wide Shut party.
[14:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, yeah, yeah.
[14:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. We're talking about war crime. We're stacking war crimes. Well, okay. It's been 175 years.
[14:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Cheney over for dinner.
[14:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, hey, not anymore. Not anymore. Tim Allen does live in Wyoming where Dick Cheney was the congressman from. Oh, yeah. Oh, there's. Trust me, we're about to start stitching some things. If I had a big board, if somebody hadn't taken my big board away from me, we'd have red string all over this board. So it's been 175 years since T. Mellon and Sons bank was founded.
[14:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[14:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
During that time, the melons at this moment in time, have never been richer. Oh, they've actually just been on the up, almost the entire swing. Always up. The. The Forbes magazine stated that the melons have staying power. Of America's billionaire dynasties, only the Duponts have had a longer run. But the Duponts have nowhere near the power of the melons today. Yeah, the Dupont's really started to fall off in the 1980s.
[15:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They went a little cuckoo bananas.
[15:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They went nuts. The one guy bought a tank and killed a wrestler. A bunch of the other ones started selling, carving and selling off the company for parts for to use as personal wealth. And typically what you have is you have these situations where after a few generations, generations of massive generational wealth like this, they aren't usually able to hold on to it in this way. The melons are very, very, very confusing in that way. Now, the thing is about Tim, specifically. Tim Melon is very different than all the other billionaires you mentioned earlier.
[15:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Why?
[15:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because he likes to stay secret. Yeah, he likes to stay secret. Let's go down the top six billionaires in the world right now.
[16:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You're going to upset him by writing a whole episode about him. Probably not, no.
[16:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He doesn't like to be on camera. And in fact, when you go look a picture.
[16:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, I do respect that.
[16:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I know, I know you, I know you respect not being on camera. But if you go and look like, if you go to his Wikipedia, the picture of him is super old. It's from the 80s. There's two pictures of him. One is from the 80s and the other one was from like a corporate website.
[16:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And him high fiving Dick Cheney.
[16:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's none of him high fiving.
[16:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
All you say hi to make one.
[16:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. There you go.
[16:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Hey, he's not bad after all.
[16:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But look at the top six richest men in the world right now. Okay, let's go down all of them. Number one, Elon Musk. Who owns Twitter and Tesla.
[16:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Lame.
[16:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, Twitch and mgm.
[16:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Metro.
[16:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Goldmeier. Mark Zuckerberg, who owns Instagram, Facebook.
[16:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
The worst.
[16:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Larry Ellison, who owns TikTok, Oracle, and now Paramount through his family.
[16:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Cool.
[16:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And then there's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who own Google and YouTube. Yep. They are the founders of Google and YouTube, and so they still have ton of stuff.
[17:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They're cool. I love YouTube.
[17:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You love. Yeah, we love. No, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have.
[17:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Leave those out of there.
[17:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They're super cool. They're, they're, they're. They're billionaires.
[17:13]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Button, baby.
[17:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Do no evil. Right. That was their thing that they weirdly pulled out of their lexicon.
[17:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Change that.
[17:19]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
See, all these guys have been very public about how much money they have. They're very flashy. And we have this whole generation of millionaires. There's not only so much, not only just new money, but also just like this idea that they have to display their wealth. Because everything I've mentioned, there is stuff where the idea to build their money and to use their product is to show off. Yeah, right.
[17:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, it's like that thing where they're like. What's it called? Like, oh, like, fuck. I can't think of the saying. It's like wealth whispers, but the other one screams or something.
[17:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Wealth whispers. Money talks.
[17:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. Maybe that's what it is.
[17:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[17:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's about how, like, people that are new money, they're really flashy and they like to show off and they're like, designer. This big thing. Run out an island to marry my weird wife.
[18:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[18:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's all about flash, flash, flash.
[18:07]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[18:07]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Whereas really, truly wealthy people are very secretive and you don't see them running around in the same way.
[18:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, and the reason for that is because when you go all the way back to think about this, going all the way back to 1870, the Mellon family has seen the rise and fall of the literal dynasties.
[18:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[18:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We're talking about the death of the czars, the Kaisers, the overthrow of monarchies across Europe. The ending of the Chinese Empire, the fall of the Japanese Empire. How many the British Empire rose. The sun used to never set on it, and now it's. It's just a collection of crumpled islands. All these different things they have sat and watched and survived while being in the shadow of the Civil War. This is all what this one family has done. Right. And the thing is, is Tim Mellon follows old money advice that has been summed up by his stepmother.
[19:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[19:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A woman Named Rachel Bunny Melon.
[19:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Bunny.
[19:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Bunny. Good old Bunny Bunny had a very famous saying about being wealthy.
[19:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What's that?
[19:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Nothing should be noticed.
[19:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Smart, smart. Smart.
[19:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's incredibly smart. And that's the reason why when you look into Tim Mellon, you will notice that there are very few articles about him. There is a wedding announcement in 1963, and there are occasional articles that are all really pinpointed on his. His really obsessive interest in trains and planes. Okay.
[19:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[19:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But unlike other elites that have access to huge levels of power, Tim Mellon, until very recently, barely engaged in politics. Between 1996 and 2017, when they went through all of the roles of how much money he had given to campaigns, he had given roughly $350,000 over all of those years.
[20:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[20:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I did the math. That works out to about $16,666.66 per year.
[20:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's nothing. I know. This guy doesn't tip at a restaurant either.
[20:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, exactly. But this guy's giving just under $17,000 a year.
[20:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So when did he start big donating?
[20:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
2018, do you think?
[20:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Because, again, this guy's age. Do you think that he got brainwashed by Fox News?
[20:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I think. I think there's a few things that are going to go into that, and we'll cover it more. A big part of it being his stepmother died in 2014.
[20:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[20:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
His stepmom passed away. And we'll talk more about Bunny a little bit later. Funny, but that she was a Democrat and also kind of a balancing force. And so there was a little bit of like, don't embarrass the family. Yeah. And all of those people were kind of gone from the board.
[20:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[20:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Trump came to power, and he got to see what billionaires could start to flex their money. We also have the falling apart of things because of the Supreme Court with Citizens United. Yep. Tim started sending millions to super PACs that run ads on behalf of Republican candidates. He started giving millions of dollars to Donald and beyond. By 2024, Tim became the second largest contributor to Trump MAGA Super PACs with $150 million in donation.
[21:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Huh.
[21:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's number two out of all the billionaires. Number three is Israeli billionaire Miriam Adelson, who gave $106 million.
[21:32]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
She sucks so hard.
[21:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And number one was Elon Musk, who gave $276 million, who also.
[21:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So he bought a chunk of the government.
[21:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's right in the middle.
[21:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[21:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So before we go deeper into Tim.
[21:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[21:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We're going to take a break, and when we come Back. We are going to go all the way back to even before 1870 to see where the Mellon family came from. We're going to talk about their rise. We're going to talk about how they used it to capture multiple presidencies. We're going to talk about how they were directly involved with causing the Great Depression or World War II, benefiting off of the Spanish American War, and probably just leading to almost everything bad that has happened in this country off and on for over 175 years.
[22:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
All right, I can't wait to come back from this commercial.
[22:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, it's the holiday season, so you need to look sharp for family gatherings, office parties, and Black Friday fights, you need Chubby's. This year, Chubby's has the cold weather essentials. Their flannels pullovers, quarter zips, and newly dropped winter jackets are perfect for upgrading your winter gear.
[22:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And we love Chubbies in this house.
[22:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We really do.
[22:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They got us with showing a little thigh meat in the summer.
[22:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[22:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Now in the winter, we're still happy about it.
[22:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We are still happy about it. And you like the way I look whenever I go out in those Chubbies. And for your Christmas list this year, you can get the perfect item for your football uncle. And you can check out their new NFL by Chubbies collection with stretch polos and swim trunks for all 32 NFL teams. Go, birds. You'll make any degenerate single dad happy this Christmas. For a limited time, Chubby's is giving our fans 20% off your purchase at Chubby's with the promo code TMT at checkout. But if it's Black Friday, skip the code and take advantage of even bigger markdowns during their exclusive Black Friday sale. Just head to Chubby Shorts.com and make sure to support the show. And tell them too many tabs sent you. And just a reminder, Dick Cheney is still dead. I just. I just gotta. Just gotta remind everybody every. Now I'm literally wearing the shirt. I'm wearing a specific shirt. Coming. We're looking at you, Mitch. All right, so let's go back in time. We're gonna go all the way back to 1813.
[23:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[23:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. And we're gonna talk about the birth of Tim Melon's grandfather, Thomas Mellon.
[24:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Tommy Mellon.
[24:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Tommy Mellon was born in Northern Ireland in 1813.
[24:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Sure.
[24:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. And actually, this family is so rich, they bought almost the entire village he was born in.
[24:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[24:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And they set up an entire museum. It's like, you know, like, when you go down. Not Bushcraft. When you Go down to Colonial Williamsburg.
[24:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[24:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They made basically a Colonial Williamsburg in the little town where you can go there, be like, this is what life was like when Tommy Mellon lived here.
[24:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[24:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's a whole thing about the Ulster Scots, Irish and all this different stuff. At the age of five, Tom Mellon's father, Andrew.
[24:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[24:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Moved the entire family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[24:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Hey. Nailed it.
[24:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You did nail it. This is. There's gonna be a lot of Pennsylvania in this story.
[24:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
There always is.
[24:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's always gonna be the Western ourselves. They were following the footsteps of Andrew's grandfather, of Thomas's grandfather, Archibald Melon.
[24:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Archibald. Archibald is an evil millionaire's name.
[25:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. So Archibald had moved, heard about land and opportunities in America. He moved over there, then wrote back, said, it's great over here. Come see scenic Pittsburgh.
[25:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They got kabasi.
[25:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So many bridges. Got pierogies. No, this is pre Kasi and pierogis. The polish aren't there yet. Go there. I don't know.
[25:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
There's no reason.
[25:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So the whole family moves there originally when they get there. So Thomas gets raised in the Pittsburgh area. They're just outside of Pittsburgh, the main. The main town. But he was originally being raised to be a farmer. And that's what the family was. They were farmers. But Thomas starts walking around, he starts seeing like, hey, there's people here that are richer than I've ever been or have ever seen. Because where he grew up in Northern Ireland, a lot of the landlords and wealthy landowners, they were actually all back in England. They were back in London. Yeah. They weren't in the area. Now he's in a place where the landlords live just around the corner from the actual land. And he started to notice something. He goes, landlords fucking make a lot of money, man. Being a landlord's pretty sweet. And then he started doing this thing called reading. And he read a book.
[26:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[26:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And you won't believe who the book he read.
[26:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Chicken Soup for the Landlord's Soul.
[26:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Close enough. The Autobiography of Ben Franklin.
[26:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Betty.
[26:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No. Yeah. And while reading this, that's when Thomas Mellon realized that in America, you can have a rags to riches story.
[26:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[26:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In America, unlike where he came from, you can just make money. So he did. He started making money eventually. He went to college, he became a lawyer, and then after a very contentious engagement, he married into some money.
[26:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[26:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And they used that money to grow a law practice. And eventually, by growing a law practice and getting involved with local Republican politics, he became. And got elected as an assistant judge. He took all the money that he was making as a judge and as a lawyer. And he started reinvesting all of that into real estate, buying up most of downtown Pittsburgh and then renting it back out to the people who needed to use it.
[27:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Ah, yes.
[27:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
By 1869. Okay. He retired from being a judge.
[27:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That didn't feel like a lot of time as a judge.
[27:19]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He. It's about a 10 year term. Literally right now it's election day in Pennsylvania. There's 10 year terms for a lot of our judgeships here. And Pennsylvania is, I think, only four states in the union where we actually have elections for our judges. Most of the other states they're appointed. Yeah. And so he got to that point. I'm good, I don't need this. And he opened a bank and he called the bank T. Mellon and Sons.
[27:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
T. Mellon and Sons.
[27:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yep. Because he. His idea was that his sons were going to work for him. His sons are Andrew W. Mellon and Richard B. Mellon.
[27:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[27:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Andrew does pretty quickly start to work there at the age of 15.
[27:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, yeah.
[27:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, the original.
[27:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Get a job.
[27:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The original bank door were giant cast iron doors.
[27:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[27:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because the old banks, you wanted everything to be like, you had to actually lock the bank.
[28:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[28:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because you're like, I don't want people to break in and all this different stuff. Right above the cast iron doors, there was a life size statue of Ben Franklin.
[28:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I mean, I'm mad, but I'm not.
[28:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was super into Ben Franklin. But in 1873. So the bank opens in 1870.
[28:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Uhhuh.
[28:19]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's the official starting date of the bank.
[28:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[28:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In 1873. The bank nearly goes under.
[28:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[28:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because America nearly goes under. Yeah. We had a thing in 1873 called a financial panic. And now these happened a lot in many of our prior episodes that we talked about, especially focusing on like the late 1800s, going into the early 1900s, there was this constant and consistent cycle. Whereas about every 12 to 18 years, the entire economy of the United States of America would damn near collapse.
[28:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[28:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It just kept happening over and over and over again. But the banks survived and the bank survived in a big deal, in a big way. Because of the work of his son Andrew. At this point, it's 18 years old.
[29:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
18 year old Andy. How do you save the bank?
[29:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He just ran around a lot. He was just like, he knew he, he was looking into future investments. He knew where to. Like when you have a big collapse, one thing that happens is a lot of stuff becomes very cheap.
[29:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Buy cheap.
[29:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And he did. And so they started investing even more into real estate holdings, and they started buying up coal fields. They started investing heavily into railroads. And eventually he was able to get to a point where he handed the entire bank control to Andrew. By the time of his death on his 95th birthday.
[29:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He died on his birthday.
[29:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
On his birthday in 1908, the Mellon family, including his five living children, were the wealthiest and most prominent industrialists in the entirety of America.
[29:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So I know this is a pivot. Okay. And I know that you're saying he was. They were industrious and they were doing all this, I feel like. And maybe it's because we're coming at the end of ooky spooky month, and maybe I've been watching American Horror Story again, as I do this time of year, every single year.
[30:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[30:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
This entire family, for the listeners that have watched American Horror Story, is giving me the Witch Hunters Guild in that show. So in American Horror Story, Coven, okay. There is an elite business that has been generationally wealthy for years. Hundreds and hundreds of years.
[30:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[30:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And they're. They're running, like, a big bank and of course, have, like, land holdings and all this stuff, and it's like the Sons are helping run it, but they actually just made a deal with the devil before they started their first bank. And the deal was they had to become witch hunters, basically.
[30:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And kill witches.
[30:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And kill witches. And then they would say, steal that energy or whatever, and that's.
[30:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And they could use it to power Excel spreadsheets.
[30:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, that's how they use it to fuel them. They use money, magic.
[30:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay.
[30:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Type of deal. And so I. As. I'm picturing this. I'm very much picturing this boardroom, I mean, currently now, where it's like, now, now times like a boardroom in Pittsburgh on the 57th floor, where all these guys are having discussions about their investments, but then they have to look over and be like. And of course, we need to find the early sacrifice. That's I'm picturing right now, because I'm still in the oogie spooky mood.
[31:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, no, I get that. I get that a lot. And.
[31:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And I'm assuming that they're making deals with the devil.
[31:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I didn't get to use that button a lot, so I just wanted to use that button right now just to. Just to put a pin and all of that, because it is pretty close.
[31:37]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.
[31:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And. And the thing is, is we're going to talk now about Andrew.
[31:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Andy.
[31:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Andrew Mellon. He does not deserve to be called Andy.
[31:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Not like our beautiful Andy Richter.
[31:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, not like our beautiful Andy Richter. We love him. God bless his knees. Not. He does not deserve it.
[31:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That man get off that show.
[31:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, he wants. We need him to win.
[31:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He needs to rest.
[31:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, he's going to get double knee replacement when he's done. But Andrew Mellon is probably one of the more evil people to have ever lived.
[32:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[32:07]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He, we're going to talk about this more. So at 18. So I said at 15, he starts working at the bank.
[32:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[32:12]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
At 18 the financial panic of 1873 happens. Andrew runs around a lot in the background and is like a foot soldier really for Thomas. He's able to spot good ideas and do all these different things. By the age of 21, Andrew is handed direct power of attorney over the entire bank. Okay, I want you to think about that.
[32:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I don't want to think about a 20 year old.
[32:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A 21 year old.
[32:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No.
[32:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Controlling a bank who grew up rich.
[32:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No thanks.
[32:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He, he grew up, he grew up pretty well. He wasn't super rich.
[32:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You just said earlier they owned almost all of Pittsburgh.
[32:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh yeah, no, that's true.
[32:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I didn't think about walking around and I'm thinking billionaire.
[32:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I'm thinking about billionaire, but I forgot about the real estate. Yeah, but so, so he is already. I want you to think though about like, I mean the best thing today.
[33:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Is I'm just picturing salmon shorts with boat shoes ruining everybody's day.
[33:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, but this is back in the day when they didn't dress like that. This is back in the day where young men dressed like, like old guys. Yeah, so he's more along.
[33:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Salmon shorts and boat shoes is a spiritual look. It's a, it's I, I, when I see that walking towards me with a little white polo. Spiritually, that could be any other outfit. It's, it's a vibe and he has that vibe. There's no doubt.
[33:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So by 1882 when Andrew was 27 years old, he then had full, complete ownership of the bank.
[33:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[33:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It was solely his. He wasn't just power of attorney anymore. He had total control.
[33:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, total.
[33:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But eventually his brother, Richard B. Mellon Dick joined the bank as a co owner and as a vice president. Richard was always under Andrew, but he also heavily invested in industrial things that are happening now.
[33:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm just picturing succession at this point.
[34:00]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It is, this is very succession.
[34:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And he's Scottish.
[34:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[34:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's Irish.
[34:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, exactly. It's just bury that this entire time. Andrew invests heavily in aluminum, coal mining, energy production and more in the area. This is all barren stuff. This is all evil Baron stuff.
[34:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Baron coded.
[34:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It is. In the 1880s, Andrew aggressively expanded the bank, eventually gaining the ability to print banknotes. Okay, so this is insane back then. Now we have the Federal Reserve. Right. And the Federal Reserve bank is who actually physically prints the cash.
[34:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[34:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And those are done in specific bank printing presses all over the United States, there's different regions. You can look at your money, look at the coins, all these different things. Back in these days, we went to the biggest banks and said, well, you guys have the ability to do that because we didn't want the government to do anything.
[34:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[34:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Including print our own money. So in the 1880s, he is literally printing money.
[34:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[34:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is why crypto is so fucking dangerous, because crypto is trying to do the digital version of that. Guys are minting, slash creating money. This is that same bullshit all over again. Andrew also bought and or founded an insurance company, a title company, trust companies and more. In the area, he became director of a petroleum exchange while founding a natural gas company.
[35:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, man.
[35:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The Mellon brothers moved heavily into petroleum, founding an oil company, a pipeline, a refinery, and at one point, they produced 10% of all exported oil in America. They eventually sold that entire sector of their business off to Standard Oil. But one thing a lot of people don't realize is that Pennsylvania, at 1, was Proto Texas.
[35:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, really?
[35:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We have across Pennsylvania now we. We talk a lot about fracking. Yeah. The reason fracking, and they need to use these special things to get so deep to get the oil, is we already sucked off the top level of oil. We did. And in fact, across Pennsylvania, we did. We. But across Pennsylvania, there is so many uncovered wells.
[36:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I know.
[36:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And one of the things RuPaul's been.
[36:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Running around looking at him, just fracking.
[36:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But. But one of the things, actually, that Josh Shapiro, our current governor, one of the big focuses of his governorship, has been going around and covering these uncovered wells because they seep into groundwater. Their danger, all these different things, because back in the day, you would go and you'd work this well until it ran dry, and then you just literally walked away.
[36:32]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[36:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They didn't care.
[36:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What?
[36:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They just didn't care. They're like, well, I'm done with this. I'll move on to the next thing. And they. That just kept going until they got to Texas or Wyoming. This entire thing grew their wealth substantially.
[36:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, yeah, for sure. We're oil barons now.
[36:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, we're.
[36:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Pittsburgh also bought all the different parts of the sector, you know what I mean? So they're not just like, oh, we pump oil. They're also refining it. They're also exporting it. They're doing, they're, they're buying every part of it so that they, they don't have to.
[37:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's called vertical vert integration. It's part of monopolies. It's like the true part of like the crazy monopoly stuff that we spent at We. By we, I mean the United States spent years breaking up.
[37:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. Back when we did that kind of stuff.
[37:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. It's. This was a huge part of it. It'd be similar to being like, hey, Google, you shouldn't be the search engine and the browser and the phone and the. Oh, wait, no, we found that you're, you're actually a monopoly by doing all that. Well, you can just pay an annual fee.
[37:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[37:35]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And then the President will make a big deal about that while having a big table discussion surrounded by other tech billionaires. I don't look into that one.
[37:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Anyway, doing the Gilded Age again is totally cool.
[37:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's, it's, I love, I love that it's gilded with NFTs. Can I tell you, I love.
[37:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Back then it was gilded with real gold.
[37:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. I think we're gonna go with crypto age. I think this is just the crypto age. Yeah. Because it has to be because we have crypto money. We have crypto billionaires, we have crypto fascism. We're being run by men who should be in cryptos because they're so old. We have crypto keepers. There's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot going on.
[38:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Cryptids running around cause chaos and Mrs.
[38:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Pete, can I tell you what we're going to do is we're going to take a little break and we come back. I'm going to tell you about how Andrew melon killed over 2,000 Pennsylvanians.
[38:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, cool.
[38:29]
LifeLock Ad Voice
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[39:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
[39:59]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. As winter approaches, make sure you set aside some time for self care. Now through December 2nd. Get great savings on personal care essentials when you shop in store or online. Buy two participating self care items and save $3. Shop for items like Tresemme Shampoo, Dove Shampoo, Dove Men's Care Body Wash, Dove Body Wash and Axe Shower gel. And save $3 when you buy two or more items. Offer ends December 2nd. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
[40:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This next segment has been highly requested. Okay, because I'm going to talk to you about the Johnstown flood.
[40:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
All right.
[40:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And this is a very, very famous flood that happened in Pennsylvania, happened in western Pennsylvania. And I want to go ahead and warn everybody about that because this is going to get, this is, this is a very sad story. So Andrew Mellon, as you mentioned before, he was friends and he would be, it was a baron himself.
[40:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[40:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was an oil baron, he was a banking baron, all these different things. And he hung out with a lot of fellow barons. Like Andrew Carnegie. Yeah. He and all of these different high society types would not only hang out in Pittsburgh, but during the summer when the, the soot from the coal and like the heat and the oppressive nature of all this stuff would happen, they would go out into the woods, they would go to these hunting lodges, they would build these clubs all over Western pa. And in fact, later in life, if you go to go see Andrew, was it not Andrew Weber, Andrew Lloyd Wright. White Andrew Lloyd Wright.
[41:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[41:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Falling Water is near Pittsburgh.
[41:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[41:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And this is that same idea of like, this is where rich people like to go out to the woods, get away from it all, be in nature. Let's go. Hang on. The areas we haven't completely destroyed with our love of capitalism and gold, that's.
[41:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Again to be very regional. West Philadelphia. That's how West Philadelphia started.
[41:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[41:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So like when you look at West Philadelphia and the big like Victorian style houses and all that, that's because all the people that lived in like Old City and the main area of downtown Philly.
[42:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[42:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
When they were wealthy enough, they'd be like, let's go out to the woods. And they would go all the way to west Philadelphia because there was more trees out there.
[42:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. And they built these big mansions out there. And then they didn't have to breathe in horseshit. Literal farm animals. Because for a very long time we used to slaughter farm animals downtown.
[42:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[42:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
If you go like New York, there's area called the meat packing district. It literally is where they packed meat. Yeah. We used to keep pigs in open styes. Horses were shitting everywhere. Garbage being thrown about this. There's so many.
[42:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Is there any books that are famous about this?
[42:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No. Which? Oh, yeah. The jungle. So Melon. Tim Mellon was one of the first members. I couldn't find the word founding. But he was one of the very early members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting club.
[42:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[42:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In 1881, this is when that opened. So when he's a very young man. The South Fork fishing and hunting Club counted many of Pittsburgh's leading industrials and financiers. Among its 61 members was very exclusive. That included Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, and Philander Knox. Philander Knox is a very famous attorney.
[43:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[43:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. This was organized completely in 1879. And then they bought the land and they opened it all up in 1881 1. The purpose of the club was to provide members and their families an opportunity to get away from the noise, heat and dirt of Pittsburgh. The club had a man made dam on the property and that was named the south fork dam. That held back reservoir waters into a man made lake. And then all around the man made lake, they built cabins.
[43:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[43:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So there's a ton of cabins built around the lake. Now the club did engage in some maintenance, periodic maintenance of the dam.
[43:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[43:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Not a lot, though.
[43:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[43:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And people in the area complained, you need to do better.
[43:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[43:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They made some harmful modifications to the dam. They installed what are called fish screens. So they wanted to make sure, you know, they would restock with fish. And they wanted to make sure that expensive game fish, the ones that you want to catch, stayed inside of the man made lake. So they put these screens up so the fish couldn't escape by going downstream.
[44:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[44:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Those screens, however, caught debris like leaves and twigs and rocks and all those different things. And that kept the spillway from draining the lake's overflow. So the waters of the lake were higher than they should be. They also lowered the dam by a few feet because it was higher, going to a point. And it was like, I think it was 76ft high.
[44:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[44:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They lowered it to 72. That way they could fit two carriages that could cross.
[44:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, my God.
[44:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Like cop cars talking to each other. You know what I mean? So they could cross at the same time. Because God forbid people.
[44:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Shit.
[44:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
God forbid rich people wait for. Oh, Carnegie wants to cross. Well, he must wait. Sir, I am Andrew Mellon, and I.
[44:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Thought when you said 61 rich people built a little log cabin area. We were gonna be hunting people.
[45:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No.
[45:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Instead they're just doing the same thing they always do, which is modify the area around them to suit their needs with no regard for how it's gonna translate long term.
[45:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. So they had, at one point during all this changing, they removed some drainage pipes.
[45:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Sure.
[45:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And they never reinstalled them, of course. So on May 31, 1889, it rained. It had been raining for days. It had been raining for a very, very long time. And they had. There had been warnings about the dam, but again, it was one of those things that were. If it was an earthen dam, it's not made of concrete. Yeah. It's just made. Every time there was leaks or things like that would happen, it. They would literally patch it with mud and straw. Because this is just what they did.
[45:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They hire a bunch of beavers.
[45:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No.
[45:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Get a bunch of beavers.
[45:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No. I wish.
[45:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Underpay them.
[45:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You could underpay the beaver.
[45:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Underpay a beaver.
[45:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
On May 31, 1889, after days of rain, the dam broke. Only about a half dozen members, so about six people or so were on the premises of the actual dam area there at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Because it was early summer.
[46:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[46:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's early May. Why they don't. They usually didn't come there till late July.
[46:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[46:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You know, once it gets real muggy out. When it's real muggy out. The flood, according to history.com is the deadliest in American history. Torrents of water rushed downstream as the dam failed, inundating Nearby Johnstown with 16 million tons of water and wiping out most of the town. The flood was as wide as the Mississippi river and three times more powerful than Niagara Falls. As it hit Johnstown, all hell broke loose. Locomotives weighing 7,170,000 pounds were wrenched from railroad tracks and swept thousands of feet. Debris piled up to 40ft high. Some caught fire as it hit bridges and buildings. People were sucked from buildings and tossed into a raging torrent.
[47:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It.
[47:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A survivor named Gertrude Gwyn Slattery said this quote. It was like the Day of Judgment I have since seen pictured in books. Pandemonium had broken loose. Screams, cries and people were running pets and people struggled to escape the rushing waters. But when the wall of water arrived, they were helpless. It was a moving black mass with houses, trees, boulders, logs and rafters coming down like an avalanche. If you've ever seen the footage from Japan of the tsunami that was that hit around Fukushima power plant.
[47:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[47:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The darkness of the water is what's so terrifying. And you can see homes, boats. Now, this is, this is also one of those crazy situations because they're in western pa. They're far from the ocean, they're far from the Great Lakes. Yeah. This is to them a little river, a stream.
[47:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[47:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Just having this level of water coming.
[48:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Through it reminds me of what just happened in Texas where, where all the camp got washed away. And it was. One of the causes was that they didn't take care. The local government didn't take care of the situation. And so they didn't have the correct response.
[48:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
When the waters finally receded, the extent of the damage became clear. According to the Johnstown area Heritage Association, 2,209 people died, almost 400 of them children. Among the dead were 99 entire families. The $17 million in damage today would total 4.4 billion in 2025 numbers. This included 1600 obliterated homes and 4 square miles of complete destruction. In the aftermath, bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio. That's 400 miles away. And that's according to history.com.
[49:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[49:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
According to Mellon's own biography, Mellon never publicly commented on the flood. He did donate $1,000 to the relief fund.
[49:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm sorry, what? A thousand dollars?
[49:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
$1,000 in 2025. That is the equivalent of $35,000.
[49:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
But you said that it was $17 million in damage. Their. Their money, yes. And he donated $1,000.
[49:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Imagine if you heard there is $4.4 billion in destruction and you gave 35,000 and you were one of the people who was supposed to be in charge of updating the dam.
[49:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Dam, yeah.
[49:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The survivors and people in the area did take it to court.
[49:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[49:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In court they claimed that they, the, the, the South Fork Hunting and Dam Lodge association obviously had top lawyers. This is some of the richest people in the world. You got Mellon, Andrew Carnegie and others in court. The lodge and this hunting lodge association claimed that they only lowered the dam by one foot. And they also claimed that the flood was an act of God. Individuals who sued all lost in court and some of them even went bankrupt. Trying to sue them through the American legal system soon adopted precedents that made it possible to hold defendants liable for their modifications to land. The magnates behind the Johnstown flood walked off scot free. Nobody, it seemed, was willing to challenge America's most powerful men. It turns out that the flood could have 100% been prevented if only these barons had actually been willing to trade in a bit of their leisure for the safety of the entire town below them.
[50:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What you would want the barons.
[50:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Just a few safety measures.
[50:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Just a couple.
[50:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Just a couple taking their time crossing a dam that could have saved 2,209 lives. 99 families, 400 children ridden.
[51:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, wow. But it sounds like it was slightly inconvenient.
[51:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It would have been slightly inconvenient. Oh, but then he can't see my carriage in passing. Oh, but we might lose a couple fish. What about the fish?
[51:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Not like they can't afford more fish.
[51:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They can't afford more fish. But don't worry. I know you were concerned that during all of this time, Andrew Mellon might be losing money.
[51:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I. You know what I was so worried about?
[51:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You were so worried. You should be.
[51:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[51:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But don't worry. He never stopped making money. He formed this thing called the Union Trust Company and that got into commercial banking.
[51:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, thank God.
[51:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And then he bought glass companies, construction companies, more coal, and he even got a write off from Andrew Carnegie, who actually had a monopoly on most steel production in the company. And he started getting into his own steel company.
[51:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, my goodness.
[51:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. And guess what? Around this time we had a thing called the Spanish American War, when we probably did a false flag attack on ourselves to blow up a ship called the Maine in Cuba. And guess what that did? That made America really want to start building battleships. So Andrew Mellon bought a shipbuilding company and he used his own steel to build the ships.
[52:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, my God.
[52:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And then he got, he got. He looked around at the. The bank that he and his dad built.
[52:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[52:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
T. Mellon and Sons. And he said, that name is old. That's old. That's from the.
[52:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
We need a rebrand.
[52:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's from the gay 90s.
[52:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Let's get fresh.
[52:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's what they called it, by the way.
[52:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
The gay 90s.
[52:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The gay 90s. The 1890s are remembered as the gay 90s.
[52:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[52:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And it's the reason why TGA Fridays looks like that. I swear to God, it's so confusing. But there's a whole period of time. The gay 90s are this weird period between major wars. And the same way we kind of view the 90s of the 1990s, we look back, it Was gay.
[52:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It was so gay.
[52:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But back then gay just meant happy.
[52:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Brown lipstick, talking on our phone.
[52:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[52:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Wearing shoulder pads sometimes.
[52:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But all these different places, Applebee's, all of them are based on the 1890s. Because in the 70s when a lot of these restaurants were founded, that's what your grandparents living room would look like and that's where you'd feel safe. It's a whole confusing thing. I'm not going to get in more into it. Anyway, he renamed T melanin Sons to Mellon National Bank.
[53:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yep. Okay.
[53:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because he wanted to update it some more. And guess what?
[53:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What It.
[53:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He started investing in more companies.
[53:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's really diversifying his portfolio.
[53:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's literally printing money. He kept buying and selling. Selling through the panic of the 1907.
[53:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
We talked about that before.
[53:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, the panic in 1907 when it.
[53:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Was with the onion lady who's in.
[53:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Remember the witch of Wall Street. Yeah, yeah. He then reorganized Gulf Oil.
[53:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Wait.
[53:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because he was invested heavily. Gulf Oil.
[53:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, I know. What Golf.
[53:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, it was named after a different guy. They changed the name to Golf Oil. And then he installed a different member of the Mellon family as head of the company.
[53:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Yeah.
[53:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
By this point in time, he installed an oil dictator basically into the company itself. He was just like, no, you. You're a fudgeing idiot.
[54:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Get out of here.
[54:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Get it. You. Go on, get. Dumb cousin. You're the president now. That's literally what he did.
[54:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[54:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, it was just like in this movie.
[54:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's what our government does. Yeah, America.
[54:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But this is also just like the show succession. By this point, Mellon national bank had the most deposits in Pittsburgh. It was the number one deposit bank in Pittsburgh. Yeah. Also owned a large chunk of the second largest bank of deposits in Pittsburgh too, because he funded them through his union company, the Union Trust Company. As a commercial bank.
[54:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Didn't have unions in it.
[54:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, he hated unions.
[54:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I was about to say this is the way this guy likes unions.
[54:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
By the way, this entire time in the background, he is also investing heavily into breaking up unions, typically through using racist tactics through his friends. Friend Frick. So especially around coal mining, around aluminum mines. There's a lot of. Any western Pennsylvania mining story involves the melons somewhere in the background funding gangs of men to go attack whole villages.
[55:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[55:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And we actually don't have time to cover that. Well. Because there's happening. There's so many more crimes to cover.
[55:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Crime time.
[55:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Let's talk about personal life for a minute.
[55:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[55:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. In 1907, Andrew and his English Wife Nora had Paul, their second son. Their second kid. Actually, their first child was a girl.
[55:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So we don't need to know her name.
[55:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We don't need to know her name at all.
[55:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
History's not gonna remember her. She's a woman, pretty much.
[55:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's kind of how this goes. But the thing is, you need to know about Nora. Nora's a bad bitch.
[55:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay?
[55:35]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because Nora cannot stop cheating on Andrew. She fucking hates him.
[55:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, he's not home. He has, like, 400 businesses.
[55:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Oh, yeah. 100%.
[55:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That man is not. He's at the office.
[55:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh. Well, you know, and the whole thing was he fell in love with Nora after the woman that he was really interested in, she got tuberculosis. He went, ew, Stinky. And then he ran away. And then he met her when she was, like, 19. He was like. And she's English. I can feel like a Lord. And that's kind of why he married her. Then she was like, this dude sucks.
[56:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. Nora's like, fudge, this guy.
[56:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So she requested a divorce shortly after Paul was born.
[56:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[56:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. Paul Mellon.
[56:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
She said, like, you got your son.
[56:12]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. She got your heir. You're good. I need to get out of here because I like getting dick. Other places. Places.
[56:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Whoa.
[56:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So, to avoid a public scandal, Andrew reluctantly agreed to the separation in 1909. Now, this is the part that is difficult.
[56:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[56:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And this is immediately where we see money come in. Back in 1909, in Pennsylvania, to get a divorce, you had to have a public jury trial.
[56:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[56:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You could not do it privately. Not just in front of a judge. You had to sit in front of a jury of your peers. And then 12 random men had to decide whether or not you were allowed to be divorced.
[56:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[56:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And it was very public and very messy. So divorces were always really piled up. Now we have what's called no fault divorce. If one day out of nowhere, Mrs. P just says, I'm done with you. She can be. She can legally do that. There are some time waiting.
[57:01]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Period.
[57:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Every day, every day. Every day she decides she's not done. But back then, in 1909, when she requested a divorce, they would have had to go through a jury trial. So Paul convinced the Pennsylvania legislature, convinced the Pennsylvania legislature to change that law. And he got rid of.
[57:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Not Paul's. The baby.
[57:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Sorry, Tim.
[57:26]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Tim.
[57:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, Andrew. There's too many melons.
[57:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yes.
[57:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Mr. Mellon went to Harrisburg, but I.
[57:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Was picturing a boss baby.
[57:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[57:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Boss baby yeah.
[57:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Go. No, Thomas. That was the. See that? So many melons. Andrew.
[57:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[57:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Andrew Mellon. Went to Harrisburg. He went to the Pennsylvania state senate. He went to the Pennsylvania state legislature, which is our house. And he said, change that law. I need to get fucking divorced. I don't need anybody to fucking hear about in the paper.
[57:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So he just did what all the kings in England did.
[57:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. And this is what's funny. In response to all of this, Nora then went crazy in the press. And she was like, like, fuck you. Fuck you. He's trying to divorce. We're trying to get divorced. He's holding these fucking things up. I should. These things should be more fair for me. And she started slandering him across the media. Nora went as far as to contest the divorce in both Pennsylvania and in England. She, because she's an English woman, she appealed to the king of England and a Parliament. And by 1912, Melon and Nora finally agreed on a divorce settlement and largely on Melon's turn.
[58:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, I love that. She asked for the divorce, but then appealed it and was like, no, you're gonna do it my way.
[58:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Yeah.
[58:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Incredible.
[58:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Jeb was a jerk the entire time.
[58:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[58:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, I'm sure.
[58:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm sure this guy doesn't not suck.
[58:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, and you know what, Mrs. P? I'm gonna tell you how much this man. This man sucks so hard.
[58:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[58:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He probably directly caused the Great Depression in the United States.
[58:57]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
States. Can we take a break?
[58:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We are going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to cover how Andrew Melon broke so many goddamn laws and probably set up precedent as to the reason why Donald Trump is able to break so many as well.
[59:11]
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[59:42]
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[60:42]
Ryan Seacrest
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[61:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Just a reminder to everybody, Dick Cheney is still dead. Rip Bozo. Rip Bozo.
[61:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Anyway, you want to hear us talk more about Dick Cheney's death? I'm sure we're gonna cover it on next week's after party. Oh, on Promania.
[61:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, Gates of Hell. The Gates of Hell episode. Yeah. Because on Pearlmania500.net this is a good, great promo. You're doing great. No, you got it. You got it. On our Patreon, which you can find@pearlmania500.net or by going to patreon.com Pearlmania500 we do a thing called the after party.
[61:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[61:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that is our parasocial Pearl Maniac paywall podcast where we react to your comments. The very comments you're leaving down there on YouTube. The very comments you're leaving on Patreon. Occasionally, every once in a while, we remember to go check those Apple reviews for Apple podcasts where we have over 1, 000.
[62:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's right, baby.
[62:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Five star reviews. We're so. We're doing a great time. We're doing great, honestly. You're doing great.
[62:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Thanks. I'm doing great.
[62:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
We're. You know who we're doing better than?
[62:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Fucking Dick Cheney.
[62:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
High five. All right, now let's talk more about Andrew Mellon. I'm gonna keep these names straight.
[62:26]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[62:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. Andrew Mellon. This entire time, we talked about his divorce. 1912 Andrew Mellon. While his divorce is going terribly, he's also getting more and more frustrated with the Government. United States federal government.
[62:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Rich people hate the government.
[62:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, and this is during a very time when rich people really started to hate, hate the government. You have the trust busters come in. These are guys like Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and even Woodrow Wilson. All of these presidents come in and they break up monopolies and they try to curb the power of industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and Standard Oil and all these different things that they're doing. In 1912, the Taft administration under William Howard Taft tried to investigate the practices of Alcoa. Alcoa is an aluminum company that the Mellon brothers are highly, highly, highly invested in.
[63:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[63:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is one of their big companies. In fact, the Mellon family is still invested heavily into Alcoa to this day.
[63:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[63:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is a massive company. They start looking into it more. And Andrew gets really fucking pissed off about this. And he's just like, the government shouldn't be involved with business whatsoever. His view in general is that government should only be there to help business.
[63:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Got it.
[63:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Andrew, meanwhile, is invested heavily into the war machine for World War I. He spends a ton of money buying war bonds and promoting war bonds and doing the good patriotic thing of standing up for the war. However, as the war ends, Andrew then spends a ton of money supporting Republicans who refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
[64:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[64:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Do you know what that is?
[64:07]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I know what the Treaty of Versailles. I don't know why he wouldn't want it to be ratified.
[64:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So the big reason and the big thing that held up the Treaty of Versailles was the idea of the League of Nations, which is what the United nations is now built off today. There was a feeling in the Senate especially that signing off in the League of Nations would somehow hurt the sovereignty of the United States.
[64:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[64:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Andrew spent a ton of money financially supporting one man in particular, Henry Cabot Lodge, to make sure that he could stand up against this. So it never got ratified.
[64:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Huh.
[64:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And so officially, going into the election of 1920, the US was still technically at war.
[64:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh.
[64:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because we hadn't reached an agreement and agreed to the Treaty of Versailles. So we had to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. And by not being inside the Treaty of Versailles, there were all these other different things of, like what the United States could and could. Couldn't say in there and all these different things. And so inside of that, this is probably one of the things that actually directly led to the inevitability of World War II.
[65:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[65:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because we didn't. The. The League of Nations was. So without having the United States in it and without having, you know, these different parts of. Led to the fact we weren't able to negotiate our ways out of keeping the nations calm from actually going into this fight. So. So after getting a real big taste of spending money on Republican politicians, he actually then spends a lot of money backing a man named Warren G. Harding to become the President, United States.
[65:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[65:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Warren does win. Warren is a reaction to the progressive politics of the 1910s. Harding specifically believed that government should aid business as much as possible with that idea in mind. Mind. President Warren G. Harding formally appointed Andrew Mellon as the Secretary of the treasury of the United States.
[66:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, okay. But he said he don't like government. He said, and now he's the treasurer.
[66:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He said, Warren Harding said that Andrew Mellon should be the treasurer because, quote, he's so rich he couldn't be bought.
[66:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's literally Trump's campaign.
[66:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's literally what he said about Elon.
[66:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. Trump and Elon both said that about themselves and each other. Like, no, I'm just.
[66:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[66:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's not going to steal any money, Rich.
[66:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, Exactly. This is 100%. But the real reason was that Mellon, the Melon bank, had lent $1.5 million to Harding's campaign.
[66:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, he's Elon Musking it. Yeah, damn it.
[66:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's Elon Musking it. And I want you to think back to the money. This is. This is very similar money to the level Elon spent.
[66:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, yeah.
[66:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Mellon had become bored with being a mere tycoon, as one of his enemies put it. Quote, andrew Mellon needed a change, and the Grand Old Party needed the cash.
[67:01]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
There it is.
[67:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The Grand Old Party is Republican Party. It's actually weirdly like the Bolsheviks. The Democrat Party is the older party of the two. The Republican Party is the younger party. But they call themselves the Grand Old Party the same way the Bolsheviks in Russia actually means majority when they were actually the minority inside of this group of Communists.
[67:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Just like they're always telling us they're the silent majority, but they're never 100.
[67:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's the same exact type of thing. Yeah. The Grand Old Party is the gop, and they needed the money. Andrew Mellon's appointment as the Secretary of Treasurer, probably illegal.
[67:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Just like Elon Musk.
[67:35]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Just like Elon Musk. And here's the thing. There's a statute from 1789.
[67:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's before this happened.
[67:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's before this happened. That's back when the founders were still alive.
[67:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[67:45]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That statute from 1789 specifically prohibits the Treasury Secretary from engaging in commerce or trade. An absurd expectation for a man with such industrial power. The founders had also written a law blocking the treasury secretary from holding bank stocks. In particular, another absurdity for the owner of Mellon Bank. Mellon overcame these legal restrictions by pretending to sell his assets to his brother, the same way Donald Trump often pretends to sell his assets to his sons or say that it's in a blind trust. Right. Uh, the rules existed for a good reason. These specific laws were supposed to be there as guardrails, because a man who is clothed in public power should not be able to use that power for his own private ends. And this is exactly what Andrew Mellon did throughout the 1920s. 20s, yeah.
[68:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's just a little insider trading with Nancy Pelosi. No big deal.
[68:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, but it's actually even more beyond that. This is more along the lines of making sure that you add in tariffs specifically to protect the domestic industrial monopolies that are held by Andrew and his brother and their good friends.
[69:01]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, man.
[69:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So they did. They raised tariffs, and they specifically pushed Warren Harding to have tariffs. Even before the election, Harding said that we needed these tariffs to protect American industries, to protect American steel, oil, and others. And Hardy. Harding dutifully mentioned tariffs in his inaugural address. Mellon even left other millionaire politicians shocked at the scale of his reach, especially in industry and power. Right. In one cabinet meeting, the discussion turned on whether or not the government should shut down a war plan plant that they used during World War I, or should they refurbish it with additional investment? Mellon, sitting at the table, observed that he actually had a plant that was very similar to this that cost him about $12 million, roughly the same value as the one the government was considering closing. And he said that he had had the same dilemma. To spend money maintaining an unprofitable but valuable plant. And he finally said, I scrapped my mine. And so the government did just that. They just followed exactly what he did in business. Harding died after two years. Yeah, he was incredibly, incredibly popular at the time of his death. And then a lot of scandals came out about secret children and all this other different stuff. But that doesn't really matter, because what does matter is that Calvin Coolidge then becomes president. He's the vice president. He becomes the president, and he is president until 1929. Then Calvin Coolidge leaves office, and he's succeeded by Herbert Hoover in 1929.
[70:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
It's about to get great.
[70:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's about to get great because you've seen the musical Annie. You know how this goes with the Hubertvilles.
[70:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Thank you very much.
[70:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But all this entire time, Andrew Mellon is still Secretary of the Treasury.
[70:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[70:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So he is still the Treasury Secretary for three presidencies now.
[70:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[70:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So he's sitting there, he's deciding US Economics.
[70:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
This is Martha stewarding in the.
[70:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This.
[70:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's got all the insider knowledge.
[70:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's insider trading like a motherfucker. And again, there is no. There aren't as many guard rails around.
[71:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[71:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And because it's the roaring twenties, everything's going so well. Nobody's saying anything because everybody's making mad money.
[71:09]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Do you think that Martha Stewart just every morning wakes up just punching the air because, like, she had to go to prison for what everybody's doing just freely. Lucy Goose in everybody's faces all day.
[71:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[71:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And she had to go make poncho.
[71:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Well, do you know who the, you know who, who sent her to jail? The one who's his name? The FBI director, Comey.
[71:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, yeah. She's like, yeah, you come.
[71:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Because Trump's now going after Comey and trying to send him to jail for a bunch of.
[71:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Listen, I'm not saying she didn't commit a crime. I'm just saying it's a crime all the guys in the government commit all the time. And I don't know why my girl Martha got in trouble. Women are allowed to commit crimes. Crimes.
[71:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, it's witchcraft. When women do it, Lame. When men do it, it's smart business.
[71:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Because they're witch hunters.
[71:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes.
[71:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And they're the. They're stealing the witch's power.
[71:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes.
[71:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Which is their crimes.
[71:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Now the whole 20s. Yeah. There's some things we should talk about with their economic policies.
[72:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Flappers, Gin. On not understanding the meaning of the book. The Great Gatsby.
[72:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
What else? So, well, the Gatsby book came in, I think late, a little bit later, but that's today now with Trump literally having a Gatsby party. He literally had a Gatsby party on Halloween. Yeah. The day before SNAP benefits are being got cut, slashed all across America.
[72:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Listen, I know that we have short time, but I do want to just yell quickly about the Gatsby party.
[72:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Go ahead.
[72:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Because when I saw the Trump Gatsby party with the girls dancing in the martinis and their scandaly clad outfits while we were on the precipice of all the SNAP benefits being cut completely for the health care costs and health care and all that stuff. Stuff. I was just like, I was thinking back to a time that I cursed out one of my old bosses about a Gatsby party. Because I was working at a nonprofit at the time and I was working at this nonprofit and our. One of our jobs was to help people apply for SNAP benefits. And so I worked in a department where I helped what are referred to as limited English speaking seniors. So seniors that English is not their first language language. I would help them apply for SNAP benefits and Medicaid and other benefits that seniors can get in the state of Pennsylvania. Right. So I do other paperwork for them with their help so they could get those benefits. Because sometimes that paperwork's really hard to do, especially if English isn't your first language. Right. This is the nonprofit I work for. And my bosses were like, oh, we're gonna throw a Gatsby theme party and we're all gonna dress up like the Roaring twenties and blah, blah, blah. And we weren't getting raises that year because they said, oh, we can't give out raises because we're going to throw this big gala Gatsby party. And so then I'm in the break room one day, bop, bop, bopping. And the manager comes in and she goes and snitches about how I'm over here basically talking like a union leader about this fucking Gatsby party and the cognitive dissonance you would need to run a non profit that does what we do. And then in the face of that, be like, yeah, the Gatsby party. I was like, you don't make any sense. Anyway, they didn't listen to me. I did have to go into an office meeting where I was almost written up for it, but I told her exactly what I thought of the whole situation. And then they all. We were required to go to the gala event as employees. And they're like. And everybody dress up like flappers. And me and my dear friend both dressed up like dusty like dust bowl. The victims of the dust bowl.
[74:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You dressed up as newsies?
[74:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No.
[74:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You were like, but you had. No but for people, for the image.
[74:36]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, okay.
[74:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You had suspenders and the hat on and you were going, hello, Sarah, how are you doing today?
[74:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, and we had mustaches.
[74:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[74:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And. But we covered ourselves in dirt so we looked like victims of the dust bowl.
[74:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[74:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And we got yelled at the days after when they were like, you didn't come in theme. And I was like, I was more on theme of the 1920s than anybody. And so anyway, that all to say, that's what I first thought of when I saw Trump's gaffy party.
[75:00]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And the other part that you're leaving out, you're leaving out the biggest part of what that nonprofit did. Their number one funder was the Walton family.
[75:07]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh right.
[75:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because about this before, we've mentioned it before on other podcasts. Their number one founder was a funder was the Walton family who owns Walmart.
[75:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yes.
[75:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And their job was to help Walmart employees be able to get SNAP benefits and other benefits.
[75:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
There was one section of the program that sole purpose was to help Walmart employees employees fill out SNAP paperwork benefits while we were being paid by Walmart as a non profit. Because then Walmart gets to take our salaries and write it off because it was a donation to a non profit. So they get a tax write off of that. Right. But the Walmart donation actually paid me more money hourly than a Walmart employee. But so they could have just paid the Walmart employee enough money to not need SNAP benefits and not pay up us.
[75:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But what was really crazy about it was they paid you guys just enough to not be able to get any benefits. But also it wasn't enough to live on.
[76:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Paid us $1 more than an hour than it would have been to qualify for SNAP benefits. Cuz they thought it would look bad if the our we meanwhile we could.
[76:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Have just raised the minimum wage the entire time.
[76:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Minimum wage?
[76:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The minimum wage is $7 and 25 cents an hour. Okay, okay.
[76:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So back to the melons.
[76:24]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Let's go back to the 1920s. This is specifically we're talking about during the 1920s, farmers specifically were hurting a lot. Soy boys, the farmers were hurting a lot. They're having issues there. The Harding and Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge, they all refused to help them. Mellon and the Republicans blocked relief for them. During this time, the courts regularly weakened unions by attacking protections for strikes by saying employees weren't allowed to go on strikes.
[76:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yep.
[76:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Factories were getting more and more efficient, but wages stayed relatively flat.
[77:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[77:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Over the year. Over the years. In 1928, a foreign visitor who came to America said, quote, America is an employer's paradise, not employees. That's not good employer.
[77:13]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You don't want to be an employer paradise.
[77:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
If you own a company, you can do whatever the fuck you want to these people. All of this quickly pivoted.
[77:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[77:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
On October 28, 1929.
[77:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[77:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's known as Black Monday.
[77:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[77:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Black Monday was then followed by Black Tuesday. The Dow crashed. The stock market went into chaos. Rich men started throwing themselves off the roofs of buildings.
[77:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Ticker tape went wild.
[77:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Everything went crazy. President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon led the way with optimistic predictions that business Was fundamentally sound and that a great revival of prosperity was just around the corner. The prosperity never came because this was the beginning of the fucking great depression. Yeah, this is it. This is the great Depression. You always go from the roaring twenties into the fascist thirties. Mellon reacted to the stock market crash by demanding cuts to the federal reserve rate, which he had typically tried to keep higher because he was really upset about speculators. Speculators. He thought that there was a lot of people who were trying to get rich quick using the stock market. But he was, you know, just. He didn't try to do any regulation around that. He was like, oh, we'll just make money harder to borrow.
[78:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Can I tell you something? I know, I know I'm pivoting again. But the only time I know about speculators and specifically where I learned a lot of background information about this crash, specifically, is. Is from the AA big book. Did you know that there is an entire chunk of the AA big book that is about a speculator being a part of the crash? And, like, his perspective on what's going on. And he's like, I'm not gonna jump out a window. I'm gonna get drunk. Yeah, that's great.
[79:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that's his bottom.
[79:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You wish.
[79:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay.
[79:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You wish it would be all right. Like, it's just so funny that like. Like, growing up, it was like, there's just this chunk of alcoholics anonymous culture that is built on this speculator who is a. Who's being crushed by the great Depression. And they built the entire, like, system, the. The 12 step system off of that.
[79:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, the speculators on top of that, too, are basically gambling addicts. It's layers and layers and layers of addiction. So, like, it's crazy. It's so wild, but real fast. So this is how he. This was how he tried to handle the great depression. The stock market crash in 1929, cut the federal reserve rate, Passing a bill through Congress for even more tax breaks.
[79:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yes.
[79:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was like, the one that we need right now is less money for us, More tax breaks. And then he didn't try to hold up the Smoot Hawley tariff act at all.
[80:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[80:00]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That specific act was supposed to save American industry by raising tariffs to the highest level in U.S. history.
[80:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[80:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Until that point.
[80:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Until that point.
[80:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[80:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Because I have a suspicion they might be high right now.
[80:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. About six months ago, we were higher than that. Than the Smooth Hawley tariff act. The economy reacted to all of this by tanking further. Banks failed in waves, and unemployment at one point reached 20%.
[80:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[80:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Which is huge.
[80:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's crazy.
[80:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There are breadlines. There's. All the famous images you've seen of the Great Depression come from this particular period in time. The whole movie Annie, like this is like kind of that. Most of Annie.
[80:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Put a clip in.
[80:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Don't use one that's copyrighted. The whole time, Melon is telling Hoover to not intervene. It's called laissez faire.
[80:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And the good guy in that movie is a baron.
[80:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And the good guy in the movie is a baron. Daddy Warbucks.
[80:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[80:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The whole time, he is who he's. Mellon's telling Hoover don't intervene. Intervene. Everything will fix itself. In his own memoirs, President Hoover wrote that Mellon advised him to, quote, liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate, purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. Enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.
[81:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[81:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is literally the exact thing they're pushing on us right now. Now they want people to starve to death in this country right now under the idea that smarter people will then inherit the earth. The exact opposite, by the way, of what Jesus Christ said. Jesus Christ said the meek would inherit the earth. Yeah, the meek, the people who don't have the means. These are the people we should be preserving the world for. And instead they said, no, the smarter, the more competent.
[81:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Also, the idea of liquidating people. Crazy, crazy thing to say.
[81:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's literally people right now who are in food lines. I read an article about people in Erie, Pennsylvania, who are in food bank lines who are saying sometimes when you're. When you're dealing with a house that's burned down, you have to demolish everything before you can rebuild. You are the people who will be demolished. And this is the mentality of barons and the rich the entire time. By 1932, Congress raised taxes back up to prior levels because the entire. Throughout the whole 20s, by the way, he was slashing taxes. Slashing taxes for the rich. For the rich.
[82:26]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. Okay. It's like we're not getting tax cuts by 1932.
[82:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Not only did they turn back on him about the tax levels, they also started impeachment proceedings against him. Against specifically Melon. And the thing is, his investigations had happened against Melon before, but he was so fucking popular throughout the entire 20s because everything was going good that nobody could touch him.
[82:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[82:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But this time around, down, he was the second most hated man in America.
[82:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Well, who's the first?
[82:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
President Hoover Melon. Melon was claimed had used his government positions to enrich himself through all of his conflicts of interest.
[83:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What?
[83:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Hoover offered Melon an escape.
[83:07]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, boo.
[83:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, he did. He named him the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
[83:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
To the Argentina.
[83:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That'd be so much more on the nose. Mellon fled to England as ambassador, and while he was there, he convinced the British to allow Gulf oil to operate in Kuwait.
[83:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No.
[83:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That probably set up the conditions for the first Iraq War when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
[83:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Hey, speaking of the Iraq war.
[83:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[83:32]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You heard about Dick Cheney?
[83:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, yeah. Dick Cheney. It's still dead.
[83:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[83:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
After all of this was said and done, Mellon eventually retired from public life in 1933 when FDR came to power.
[83:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, he saw FDR come and he said, I better get out of here.
[83:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, you know, he lost his.
[83:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I better get the out of here.
[83:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent basically the entirety of the 1930s undoing every idiot mistake that Tim. That Tim Melon, that Andrew Mellon had made. He went through and he heavily regulated the banks, which Melon hated that. And then Melon at first went back to Pittsburgh and then discovered everyone there hated him as well. So he fled back to Washington, D.C. where he sat in a mansion and watched his control over Pennsylvania politics evaporate. Local Democrats started winning across the board, including the governorship of Pennsylvania. And they used Mellon's face as an example of Republican corruption. Yeah, Mellon, at the very end, was being investigated for tax fraud by the IRS when eventually he died of cancer in 1936.
[84:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Pennsylvania, Capone style. Baby, we're going to get you. It's going to be for tax fraud.
[84:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It's going to be for tax. And that, therefore, that is the death of Andrew Mellon, a man who I'm.
[84:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Glad to see he died.
[84:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, yeah. And we know what we're doing next, Mrs. P. We mentioned him a little bit before. We talked about Paul Mellon, the baby. The baby growing up. I'm going to tell you all about Paul and Paul's wife, his second wife, Bunny Melon, right after this.
[85:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, only 10 more presents to read wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes.
[85:38]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. As winter approaches, make sure you set aside some time for self care now through December. December 2nd. Get great savings on personal care essentials when you shop in store or online. Buy two participating self care items and save $3. Shop for items like Tresemme Shampoo, Dove Shampoo, Dove Men's Care Body Wash, Dove Body Wash, and Axe Shower gel. And save $3 when you buy two or more items. Offer ends December 2nd. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
[86:11]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Gonna have a little fun here.
[86:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[86:12]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. This is a little bit less horrifying because Paul Mellon is the most regular rich guy that you expect. He's a very classic 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s rich guy of just like. I have a person for that.
[86:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[86:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Paul Mellon is known for being super into thoroughbred horse racing.
[86:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, that's rich people for sure.
[86:35]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He wrote a book about himself. Myself.
[86:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay. Yeah, it's like, like he wrote like a book about his life.
[86:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Yeah. It's a memoir about his silver spoon upbringing.
[86:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, I bet it's really entertaining.
[86:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. You want to know what's called.
[86:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[86:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Reflections in a Silver Spoon?
[86:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Shut the up.
[86:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A dead serious.
[86:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Honestly. Honestly, I appreciate that.
[86:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. No, he leaned in. He was just like, yeah, I'm rich. I'm rich. I love horsies. Like, so the sad beige helped me with the research on this one and she did something that I would never think of doing.
[87:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What's. What's that?
[87:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
She went and checked the Goodreads on the book. Oh, and she got reviews of Reflection in a silver shout out. Sad Beige Shout out to sad beige. We'll throw her. We'll throw her handle and all of our links down in the show. Description. Goodreads reader Janet offered this delicious one sentence review. Has a 2.0 on goods. Reads 2.
[87:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's not great.
[87:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's not great. Quote, Paul Mellon comes across as one of the most boring, shallow people ever to write a memoir. Yeah.
[87:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, you know what? I bet it would have crushed as an audiobook. Cuz you have to record them yourself when you do memoirs.
[87:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Got them.
[87:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's the key.
[87:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Other succulent reviews. This is sad. This is sad. Beige's exact words. I just copy pasted this whole thing. Other succulent reviews included, quote, my God, I couldn't get through this. I tried. From Lori.
[87:57]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Classic Lord.
[87:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And oh, to have a billion dollars from Barbara. They're just like, look at this. Rich. Paul was dumb rich the entire time. Yeah. In 1957, Fortune magazine prepared its first list of wealthiest Americans.
[88:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[88:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister Alyssa Mellon, Bruce, his cousin Sarah Mellon, and Richard King Mellon were all among the richest eight people in the United States with fortunes between 400 million and 500 million each, which in today's money is between 4.3 and 7.6 billion dollars.
[88:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[88:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So out of the eight richest people in America, the Mellon family was 50% of them.
[88:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[88:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That's crazy.
[88:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And then Kylie Jenner.
[88:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Meanwhile, Elon's. They believe that Elon will be worth a trillion in soon. That is unfathomable amounts of money. That is. That is shoot somebody into the sun amount of money. So, guys, well, you might want to edit that one out. Bleep that. Throw a bleep over whatever that was. Mr. Third. Thank you. All right, so Paul's first wife, Mary Conover Brown.
[89:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Mary Conover Brown.
[89:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Conover Brown. She died in 1946.
[89:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[89:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But this was shortly after their second child was born. They had two kids. Kids Catherine and Tim Mellon, who's really about. Timothy Mellon.
[89:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Got it.
[89:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Okay. Paul shortly remarried afterwards to Rich Rachel Lambert Melon, who is known affectionately as Bunny.
[89:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Classic Bunny Bunny.
[89:37]
Ryan Seacrest
All right.
[89:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Bunny Melon is famous. She gets around. All right? Not like.
[89:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Like.
[89:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, no, no, no, no. She's. She is just this. Oh, like, rich lady in the background.
[89:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Bunny money.
[89:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But she also, her. She herself comes from a shit ton of money. Her dad was president of Gillette Safety Razors.
[89:55]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[89:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And her grandfather invented Listerine.
[89:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, so she's like the. The bathroom princess.
[90:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, basically. Yeah. If you walked into a bathroom, you're paying Bunny Melon a little bit of money. Paul and Bunny collected art. A lot of art. Paul was super into horse racing. He is one of only five people to be designated as an exemplar of racing by the National Museum of Racing and hall of Fame.
[90:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[90:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was that good at horse race.
[90:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
The biggest fan, or he's the best racer.
[90:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He was like. He, He.
[90:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Because horse jockeys are famously.
[90:31]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, no. He was the owner. He was the owner. He owned the horse, he owned the jockey, he owned the stable. He did the breeding. He was always there, much. Just like Queen Elizabeth. He was super into. Yeah, super into horses.
[90:44]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[90:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
All right. Love the horse.
[90:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
A big horse girl.
[90:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Big horse girl. Energy. Bunny super into gardening.
[90:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I love that bun.
[90:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
She was never formally trained, but she was super rich, so she could just learn. And she was a longtime lifetime friend of Jackie Kennedy.
[91:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, of course.
[91:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yes. And Bunny helped then first Lady Jackie.
[91:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Kennedy in 1961 bring up this rose garden right now.
[91:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Jackie. She helped Jackie Kennedy do and choose the art for the White House restoration. And then she helped redesign the White House rose Garden. After JFK's assassination, Bunny Mellon picked and designed all of the flowers for JFK's funeral. And then after that, she was Hand picked and chosen by Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of Lyndon B. Johnson, the Kennedy's Vice President, who became the President. She was chosen and followed through to help design a second White House garden that was dedicated in 1965 to Jackie Kennedy. And it was known as the Jackie Kennel, the first Lady Jacqueline Kennedy garden. And it existed on the east wing of the White House next to the colonnade until about three weeks ago, when it was bulldozed for no reason. Reason.
[92:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
After he paved the rose garden.
[92:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
After he paved the rose garden, which.
[92:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Had like hand selected specific breeds of roses. If you've studied roses, which somebody in this room has like, ro. Like, the breeding of roses is like, it just. It's so much work. Roses are such divas. To take care of having a rose garden is a labor of love. And to have a friend like, so, like, if I had a friend like Bunny who helped me do that and had all that knowledge of roses for me, and then, you know, after my husband passes and she picks out all the flowers because, you know, they're beautiful, you know, she knew every specific type of breed and she called everybody that got the most beautiful fresh flowers. Oh, my God.
[92:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And her stepson funded the man who destroyed it.
[92:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I'm sorry, what?
[92:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Her stepson funded the man who destroyed both of those gardens.
[92:56]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And this is why. Why stepmothers get a bad rap because she had an evil stepson.
[93:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So that's the thing is actually Bunny is a lifetime. She's a lifetime Democrat. She's. Everybody who meets her loves her. Paul is a Republican. All the melons are Republicans, but they're like this old, the old money. We like business Republicans. They weren't this newer crazy lunatic type.
[93:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And people that say, oh, they're like, oh, you're rich and like, more comfortable.
[93:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But Bunny was also like, Bunny had friends, you know, who were Republicans and all this different stuff. It was one of these types of things where. When the way Biden would talk about fudgeing Republicans, where he was like, I have friends. That there was good Republicans out there. And we're like, no, there isn't. Because we come from a generation of people like, we've never seen a good Republican. Yeah, there would be at least be somewhere we could come and there'd be something that we could agree on. Right? Bunny comes from that. The Barbara Bush era, the, the. This era, the Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie Kennedy. We can still all come together and we, we all can agree that we're Americans level. This is where she's from. Paul dies at 1999. At the age of 91.
[94:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
These guys be living long.
[94:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They're super fucking rich, these guys.
[94:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's what it is. When you're rich, you don't.
[94:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
When you're this rich, you got so much money. So. Paul. 91 1, 1999. Bunny keeps living.
[94:14]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I bet she.
[94:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But she stayed involved with politics. And in fact, she was actually involved with a presidential scandal.
[94:19]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, bunny.
[94:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Around the 2008 presidential election. Uh, John Edwards, who was John Kerry's 2004 VP nominee. He was a senator from North Carolina. He had a very specific haircut. Talk like this. Uh, she loved John Edwards. She really thought he could become president. She paid out of pocket for a lot of his different things, including covering up a secret love child that he had with a videographer for his 2008 campaign. Uh, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny. Bunny was very specifically involved with that. That Bunny died in 2014.
[94:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[94:55]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
At the age of 103.
[94:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's what I'm saying. Gardening is good for your spirit.
[95:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The actor Frank Langela gave her eulogy and Bette Midler performed.
[95:07]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Bet. Midler.
[95:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Midler performed at Bunny's.
[95:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Midler.
[95:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
It was an event. It was an event. We Stan a Bunny. I don't know.
[95:16]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
A lot of. There are.
[95:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, listen, what I know. I want to tell you something that.
[95:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Miller wants to sing. Come on.
[95:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I want to tell y' all something right now.
[95:22]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[95:23]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's no such thing as a good billionaire. We're going to repeat that over and over again. There's no such thing as a good billionaire.
[95:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Tax them.
[95:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The taxes should be higher. All these different people. All of that being said, there was a Bunny. I'd be like, yo, what up, Bunny? Like, I'd be like, okay. I would not care if some leftist did a. This you to me standing next to Bunny at a gal. Yeah. I'd be like, yeah, that's me and Bonnie Melon, bitch. That's what I would do.
[95:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
And then you're, like, kicking Paul.
[95:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[95:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
We're screaming at him like he's the My pillow guy.
[95:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, I'd be kicking Tim. I'd be kicking her stepson Tim. And. Because here's the thing. But he's the evil stepchild. This is this. He's a bad guy. And we're gonna go. And this episode is actually about him. But I needed everyone to have the background, the context. I needed you guys to sit through an hour, 15 minutes or so of all of this. This. And to have a minute of Bunny Light before we get into the horror that is the secretive billionaire known as Timothy Mellon.
[96:26]
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[97:56]
Ryan Seacrest
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[98:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And if you're tired of hearing all the ads, you can always join us at Pearlmania500.net where you can get ad free versions of both the audio and visual visual of this very podcast.
[98:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Have you been watching this podcast or listening to this podcast for an hour? Leave it five stars.
[98:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Leave us five stars wherever it is.
[98:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, leave us comments wherever you're at.
[98:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Like this.
[98:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
A little positive vibes please Like Comment.
[98:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Subscribe Hit that hype button. Dick Cheney is still dead. I Don't. I don't know what music to hit there that wouldn't be copyright struck anyway. Let's talk about Tim Melon.
[99:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[99:01]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I hate this man.
[99:01]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[99:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The more I learned about him, the more I hate him.
[99:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[99:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Tim Melon. Just to. Just the quickest summary is this dude sucks. Quote. This is. This is from some of the research I got here. A highly private individual, according to some who know him, Tim Mellon divides his time between his vast properties in Wyoming and Connecticut. Two places that suck. He's had three wives and four weddings, but no children of his own.
[99:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Wait, what? Where's the fourth?
[99:29]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I think he remarried one of them. I didn't look too much into it because again, this dude sucks on these things. I really want to concentrate on the horrors that he's done.
[99:35]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
All right.
[99:36]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
According to people who knows him, he's socially awkward.
[99:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[99:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And he wears old aviator glasses with tape on the bridge.
[99:42]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[99:43]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He is apparently fond of Patsy Cline. Well, he's obsessed with Amelia Earhart. And he also has a weird obsession with a specific medieval Norwegian church.
[99:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay, so. And then I remember you saying something about being in the trains, Right?
[99:58]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He's super. At one point, he owned a train company. He's also super into planes.
[100:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[100:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
As a little boy, I was about.
[100:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
To say this is real little boy energy.
[100:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is. No, he's very rich. Little boy energy.
[100:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[100:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
As a little boy, he was very gregarious. In time, he became a brilliantly mathematically minded child. This is according to Bunny.
[100:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[100:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He has confidence, but not curiosity to branch out. That was according to Burton Hirsch in the Mellon family. In that same book, it was noted that Tim's political and social mindset is very different from Paul's. And that started emerging during adolescent to the alarm of his father. If Tim had a radical idea, Paul pounced on it and smashed it down.
[100:40]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[100:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, you'll learn better. You'd better change. Bunny recalled to the historian. The problem was that Tim was already rich.
[100:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[100:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
This is where the big issue is. Tim was born rich.
[100:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[100:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
His grandfather gave him a hundred million dollar trust in instrument.
[100:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah. That was the. The stork bag I talked about at.
[101:02]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The very, very beginning. According to this and other things that was left behind from his grandfather, the children were equal economically to their parents.
[101:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, yeah. Situation.
[101:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Because he would be like son in this house. I have my own house, dad.
[101:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[101:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I got my own house.
[101:20]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[101:20]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, one of these days, when you have money, when you have to pay. But I have to pay taxes every year, dad.
[101:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Dad. Yeah.
[101:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I got a trust fund. According to a recent biography about Bunny Melon.
[101:30]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[101:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that biography, by the way, is called I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise.
[101:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[101:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Quote, paul agreed with Bunny that Tim was a very difficult child. So they sent him away to boarding school.
[101:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[101:42]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
At the age of 10, he was enrolled in FEN near Boston. And then he was sent to Milton Academy, also in Massachusetts. And finally, he went to Yale.
[101:49]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yale is a boarding school. In this. In this timeline.
[101:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In this timeline line, in the 1960s and 70s, Yale did something to Tim. It made him seem almost progressive. He started funding liberal charities. He actually funded a feminist law practice.
[102:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh. He did that thing where you go to college and you meet people that you didn't grow up around.
[102:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, he started. He changed a little bit.
[102:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You start to grow, mature and gain empathy.
[102:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. But then this weird thing happened.
[102:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What's that?
[102:16]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Ronald Reagan came to power.
[102:17]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Son of a bitch.
[102:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And Tim looked at Ronald Reagan and said, that is. Is the perfect man.
[102:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That is the best guy I've ever seen.
[102:25]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
In his auto, owned by autobiography. Tim Mellon wrote his autobiography, by the way.
[102:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
These people need to stop writing books about themselves.
[102:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You wanna know what's called what? Pan Am Dot. Captain Pan Am.
[102:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Like the planes?
[102:35]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, because they own Pan Am.
[102:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, God. Okay.
[102:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He views himself as a captain.
[102:41]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No, because.
[102:41]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And on. It has a picture of a private plane. On the front, I think he flies his own plane.
[102:45]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Jesus Christ.
[102:46]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
But in pan. Pan Am also, whenever I read it Pan, I kept thinking, not Panem.
[102:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[102:50]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
From Hunger Games.
[102:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh. From Kylie Minogue. Copyright.
[102:57]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Copyright in Panem. He wrote Ronald Reagan, quote, understood that people did best for themselves when shackled with the least amount of governmental constraints.
[103:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[103:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. When Tim Mellon looks back on his Yale education, he trashes it as, quote, a mishmash of pseudo scientific sociological clap trap, largely based on progressive dogma related to the redistribution of wealth.
[103:23]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[103:25]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.
[103:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So he's voting for Andrew Cuomo.
[103:27]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Oh, he definitely. I. We'll get into it. But I don't doubt that he actually throw money at Cuomo. Oh, it usually takes a little bit after an election to go find these things, but I wouldn't doubt if he has throw money back there in his biography. Tim writes little about his family or personal life. It's very much an obsession in there about his efforts to build a railroad company and how long it took him to learn to fly. That takes up Most of the 171 pages of the book.
[103:53]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[103:54]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's an appendix in the book. He reveals his itinerary of a trip in which he flew around the world. And he also has his medical history listed in there with the notation 2008 Prostate Remove.
[104:06]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Why would he put that in the book?
[104:07]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
I don't know. But again, there is nothing about his family as a whole. He does not talk about his family.
[104:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's like, not. I'm not talking about the family, but I'll tell you about my medical history.
[104:15]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. He also lists his 20 favorite movies. Number one is Casablanca. Number six is My Cousin Vinny.
[104:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
I mean, they're both good movies.
[104:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They're both good movies. But I was just like, who read this book?
[104:25]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No one.
[104:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
A lot of people did. Slowly, over time, as people start to notice it because the book was initially released. Released as an ebook in. And then people noticed, and then it got pulled as an e book.
[104:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Why did it get pulled as an e book?
[104:39]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Well, let me read you some quotes from the book that. About some of his beliefs. Timothy Mellon wrote that black. Timothy Mellon wrote that black people were, quote, even more belligerent after the explosion of social programs in the 60s and 70s. That Americans who rely on government assistance were, quote, slaves of a new master. Uncle Sam.
[105:03]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[105:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Melon called social safety net program slavery redux, adding, quote, for delivering their votes in the federal election, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies. Food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on and on and on. The largest is funded by hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or proud to allow themselves to. To sink into this morass.
[105:28]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
This guy is morass. Okay, I can. I've heard these arguments before from many people in the world, in the Internet, but what does this man know about a hard day's work?
[105:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, he calls himself an entrepreneur repeatedly.
[105:43]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Being born into a pile of money like Scrooge McDuck does not make an entrepreneur.
[105:47]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, but, babe, he learned to fly and he tried to build a railroad. Mellon blames academia for introducing, quote, a mishmash of meaningless traffic tripe, unquote, not limited to, uhhuh, Black studies, women's studies, LGBT studies that has been used to, quote, brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the dependency S syndrome, invoking the spirit of Abraham Lincoln and abolishing chattel slavery. Mellon insisted that the GOP's job, the Republican Party's job now, is to, quote, deal with the contemporary counterpart. So basically, he claims that the way Lincoln freed the slaves believes the modern Republican party, through Donald Trump, needs to defeat and free us from woke and dei.
[106:31]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, okay.
[106:32]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[106:33]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Uh huh.
[106:34]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So when this book was kind of discovered and commented upon, it got pulled, but then it eventually got released again in paperback. In paperback? Yeah. In a statement, the book's publisher, his name is Tony lyons, he defended Mr. Melons view views, saying that he had used, quote words that some readers might now consider harsh, but it's not racist to report that reality and truth. Okay, so Tony Lyons is the publisher. That's the name of the owner of the publishing company. Publishing company is called Skyhorse.
[107:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Sky Horse.
[107:09]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
You've heard this name before. I have, yes, in the RFK episode. It's the same publishing company that started publishing RFK Jr. After he got canceled for becoming a psycho anti vax axer.
[107:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yep. Okay.
[107:22]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Tony Lyons also then co founded The American Values 2024 Super PAC and backed RFK Jr Y Y Melon gave that pack $25 million to boost Robert F. Kennedy, specifically as a spoiler in the 20122024 election, hoping to pull votes away from Joe Biden.
[107:46]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, yeah, yep, that checks out.
[107:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. Tim Mellon has spent the last bunch of years throwing unregulated campaign money at virtually every Republican politician you can think of. Do you want to Hear some?
[107:59]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[107:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
J.D. vance, he gave to his Senate campaign.
[108:02]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[108:03]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Lauren. Hand job Boebert.
[108:04]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Oh, gave her money. Beetlejuice.
[108:07]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Nancy, I'm going to fight you in a bathroom, Mace.
[108:10]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yep.
[108:10]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Love to give her money.
[108:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
He's always in a bathroom.
[108:12]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He even threw some money way back in the day to Florida Secretary, Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Do you remember that name?
[108:18]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
No.
[108:18]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
She was played by Anna Gastmeyer on SNL in the early 2000s during the Bush Gore Florida recount drama. Yeah, she was the Secretary of State who was in charge of the recount who muddied a bunch of the different shit. And in fact, he gave her money afterwards when she ran for Congress in 2002. In 2021, he gave $50 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott to form BOR and Protection Services against the, quote, influx of immigrants. And he did that by posting on a public forum that is run by a Texas government, saying, trying to reach you dead.
[108:58]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Are you kidding me?
[108:59]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He gave over a million dollars to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to push and defend Arizona laws that she had got through the government there that basically turned Arizona State Police into de facto ICE agents.
[109:12]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[109:13]
Ryan Seacrest
Yeah.
[109:13]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yep, yep, yep. In a rare interview with Bloomberg in 2020, because he has not given a lot of interviews, Mellon admitted that a $2,700 contribution he made to the House campaign of A then very upstart progressive candidate named Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. AOC was intended to boost a politicians whose lefty politics melon believed could roll wrong foot Mainstream Democrats. When AOC's campaign discovered this and tried to return the donation, Mellon bragged of foiling that too. Incest insisting, quote, he'd never cash or deposit the check, but rather he'd frame it and put it on his wall.
[110:00]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Again, 2700is not a lot of money. No, that's like to this guy.
[110:05]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, but again, he's not giving it to a undisclosed path pack to give directly to campaigns. There are caps.
[110:11]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
There's limitations.
[110:12]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's limitations. So he cut a little bit of money and he uses his money sometimes to troll. He has given money to some Democrats though. AOC specifically gave to again that idea of to take out the guy she ran against was a very long term congressman and all these different things. And actually there's now things. And people have been talking about whether or not he was supposed to replace Nancy Pelosi, which is the reason she stuck around so long because she actually they didn't want Hakeem Jeffries to become the Majority Leader of the Democratic Party.
[110:38]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
In the House because they hate having anybody young, yes. And strong to come in.
[110:44]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And also specifically in the leadership position, you want somebody who's been there longer because maybe they have more chance of understanding what's at stake and all those different things. No, I know, but also Hakeem Jeffries is a big old. Yeah, Hakeem Jeffries. Well, there a PAC Shakur. Anyway. Mellon has also previously offered financial support to Democrats who are notorious for being thorns in the side of party leadership. Okay, guys like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kirsten Sinema, both of which are no longer in the Senate. They have constantly, constantly succeeded in downsizing Democratic policy ambitions. Both eventually became independents. Mellon also donated to Tulsi Gabbard when she was running as Democratic presidential candidate in 2019. You might know her now as being the Director of National Intelligence under the Trump administration and is trying to constantly consistently game blame Obama for some weird shit. She's trying to come up with ways to just arrest Democrats, but she's always been a psyop. Mellon has given $10 million to the House GOP super PACs in 2024. So that's different super PACs. And this one's particularly. That was supposed to get members of the House of Representatives elected on behalf of Republicans. He gave $4 million to the Sentinel Action Fund that's run by the Heritage foundation and the Republican Senate leadership fund got $30 million directly to help elect Republicans into the Senate. And as we said at the very beginning, around $150 million to Trump super packs like MAGA Inc. And others. The Mellon family as a whole is worth $14.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. The Mellon family has founded the National Gallery of art in D.C. and they've heavily contributed to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Carnegie Mellon University was founded by the Mellon brothers and Andrew Carnegie Institutes coming together. And the Mellon family has also had financial ties to Gulf Oil, also known Chevron, Alcoa, Pittsburgh Tribune, Review, Review, Newsweek, General Motors, Pan Am, Westinghouse Electric, and so many more.
[112:57]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
To buy the newspapers for a minute. Yeah, I forgot. You have to buy the media. Yeah, like they don't own everything. They don't own the media yet. No, they do.
[113:04]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
No, they have some media.
[113:05]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Some media.
[113:06]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
They got some media back in there. But don't worry, they also, also, also, I've left out how many hate groups he's literally directly funded.
[113:15]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
What do you. Okay, why do you leave them out? What are they?
[113:17]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Because I wanted to save them as a boom at the end. This is how I boom you. You boom you with Kat Von D. I'm going to boom you with a bunch of Southern Poverty Law center designated hate groups like the center for Immigration Studies, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Colcom Federation, and anti immigration group, and Numbers usa, another anti immigration group that they absorbed. Numbers USA absorbed a group called California's for Population Stabilization.
[113:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[113:48]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[113:48]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Okay.
[113:49]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah, yeah.
[113:50]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
So he giving them money?
[113:51]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Oh, he's. Yeah, he's. He's funding them completely. And a lot of these are hate groups that are. They're like. They're like edge hate groups. So they put out statistics that then people like Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes or others will then point to and go, well, look at these statistics that came from Fair Federation for American Immigration Reform. And then senators can also call these guys up. But when looked at by groups like the SPLC and other others, they're like, this is clearly a hate group. They clearly hate people who are not white.
[114:21]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[114:21]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Like, they clearly have specific animosity towards minority groups and things like that.
[114:26]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[114:26]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
So these are all.
[114:27]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
They're gonna skew the numbers.
[114:28]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
The numbers are skewed. They're also pushed in these very different ways. Robert Reich. Have you heard of Robert Reich?
[114:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Wait a minute. I've heard of Robert Reich.
[114:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. You probably heard about him from Dropout tv. He's. Sam Reich is his son. Robert Reich was also the Secretary of Labor under President President Clinton. Yeah, he does a lot of really great content online. He has a recent substack article where he brought up Andrew Mellon. And he asserts in his article that public policies that were pushed by Andrew MELLON in the 20s, cutting the real estate attacks by half. Whittling down the top income tax rate from 73% to 25%, allowing him to shift so much of his fortune to heirs tax free. Free. Setting the stage for immense wealth and more specifically, enabling his grandson Tim to bankroll the Trump campaign today. Andrew Mellon is directly responsible for so many things, but mostly by making his grandson so fucking rich.
[115:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[115:30]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
That he could bankroll the horror that we're seeing. Tim Mellon is the product of a tax system pioneered by his grandfather that allowed the perpetuation of dynastic wealth and the maintenance of its political power. Wrote Reich. Tim Mellon rages against only handouts. That goes to those born without silver spoons.
[115:52]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, he loves a handout.
[115:53]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
He loves it as long as it.
[115:54]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Comes from his daddy.
[115:56]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Forbes magazine has declared that Tim Mellon has likely donated more than half his fortune to politics. In their recent headline, mellon says he isn't a billionaire. But Forbes estimates Mellon has worth around $1 billion before all of his donations. Donations over the past year based on his inheritance and proceeds from the sale of his railroad company. Depending on how much he really is worth, he's given anywhere from 20% to more than 30% to Trump and some 50% of his fortune to political causes of some sort or another. Mind you, 50% is much higher than the fucking tax rate he claims he's battling.
[116:29]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
You're so concerned about how your taxes are being used, but you're giving the politicians all your money.
[116:33]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[116:34]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Also, like, if you're going to give away all your money. Money, like give it away to something good.
[116:38]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah.
[116:39]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Not politicians.
[116:40]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And what's crazy is that they. They've interviewed people in his life. And like I said early on, I think that, I think when you see the big shift happen in 2018, I think part of that is the Trump election, but also Bunny being gone and the network of people that. That would have been around. Because when people talk to him, they say he's always been a contrarian. He's always been kind of a crank. He's always been a Republican. But something has changed. Something is different. He can't claim this is about taxes.
[117:08]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[117:08]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
There's a deep corruption and hate in his heart that he is gleefully throwing money at like a lunatic right now. And this is really like when people like, why should taxes be raised? It's because this money has poisoned his brain.
[117:24]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah, that and I. I really do think the Bunny passing away a group of people surrounding him, that kind of kept him in line socially. Yeah, because you're saying he's a contrarian. He's definitely always been one of those people. A rich, a born wealthy contrarian. I can think of nothing worse like what an asshole to be around. And then he gets isolated by the death of his stepmom. And then what's he doing is at home, he's clicking on the TV bep. And then just like millions of everybody's boomer dads, he gets fucking propagandized to. To hate everybody. And then it's just like those MAGA people that you see where like they're so viscerally happy hurting other people and then pretending they have the moral high ground and they're. It's gross. You can see it in the sneer of their lips and their vicious little eyes.
[118:14]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And we've seen that the amount of people who've been posting shit about people losing SNAP benefits or losing their health care, losing all these other different, different things. And this is all part of that fuel. And the thing is, the big difference between Tim and Tim Allen and Elon Musk and Larry Ellison and all these other fucking billionaires is that Tim's family was smart enough that until very recently were able to keep him in the background.
[118:37]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
Yeah.
[118:37]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
And that's the reason why he. He backed RFK Jr. He's given money. Remember, this is the exact guy who gave $130 million so Trump could claim that the troops are still being paid.
[118:47]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
That's only like a hundred bucks per troop. Yes, and that's not. That's not a lot.
[118:52]
Host 1 (Possibly Mrs. P)
Yeah. But I will tell you what is a lot. Everybody who supports us over on Patreon, everybody who gives us a comment, five stars. A like and more guys. Thank you, Mrs. P, for hanging out for this episode. Thank you all for listening, watching and enjoying. Just know that your life is fuller and just more beautiful than that of Tim Melons. But more important, your life is more alive than that of Dick Cheney. Rest in piss, Bozo. Too many tabs wherever you listen to podcasts. Too many frauds and too many scammers that we wish weren't real. Too many cons and too many spammers, and we're starting to feel like we've got too many tabs open it too many times. Remember to smile.
[119:51]
Host 2 (Possibly Mr. P)
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[120:04]
Ryan Seacrest
Verbal marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements announcements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.