American Presidents Marathon #1

just because you were once the commander-in-chief that doesn't mean you can now do whatever you want from driving cars to using cell phones these are the rules that former presidents have to follow one of the greatest perks of being president is not having to deal with traffic every day for one thing you've got drivers who can take you anywhere you need to go and for another the secret service can block off traffic for you to ensure your security it's no fun for anyone else on the road but hey you're the president and you have important things to do there is a downside though once a president's term is over they can never drive a car on an open road again the reason is because of the lifetime secret service detail that all ex-presidents get after all one of the least safe places you can be is on the road and that's just under normal circumstances add in that ex-presidents are always a target and things get even hairier so to ensure their safety they're not allowed to hit the road as george w bush explained to jay leno he's only allowed to drive on his own private property far from any reckless drivers or people who wish him harm he must be driven everywhere by secret service agents trained in evasive and defensive driving maneuvers the rule was instituted after john f kennedy's assassination in 1963 lyndon b johnson was to date the last president to drive on public roads one of the president's most important duties is to be aware of any potential threats to the security of the united states these briefings are carried out constantly throughout a president's tenure even multiple times a day if necessary because the world is always changing and threats can come up unexpectedly you'd think former presidents would no longer need to be bothered about such things since they're retired from the job and are now private citizens but you'd be wrong they continue to receive national security updates for the rest of their lives not necessarily because they're expected to actively do anything about them but just in case they have advice they can offer the current administration or if they get asked about the situation by the press even if being president isn't their job anymore they still need constant updates about what's going on this actually became newsworthy in 2018 when president donald trump allegedly threatened to revoke barack obama's access to national security briefings according to newsweek president trump was rumored to be unaware that former presidents received the briefings and had to be informed that this was normal and nothing to be concerned about though trump later said these rumors were untrue whether or not it really happened the story shined a light on just what kind of access ex-presidents have to day-to-day information about the country's security have you ever noticed that everyone who serves as president gets a library named after them when they leave office there's a good reason for this it's a law the 1955 presidential libraries act established that each president would oversee the creation of a library in their name while having a library named after yourself is definitely a cool perk residential libraries are a little different they contain every non-classified word a president has written in office even the stuff that may not be so good such as bill clinton's library in little rock arkansas which features information about his impeachment scandal they're not allowed to keep certain materials out of their libraries as anything created during a president's term is legally considered to be public property this was decided after richard nixon attempted to leave out materials regarding the watergate scandal the lights are off and they must be looking for a fuse box or something because in flashlights they're keeping me awake the individual presidents do have some control over how much a certain subject is featured though for example george w bush's library in dallas texas does mention his invasion of iraq but instead of shying away from it the materials on display defend his decision to go to war we all assume that the government is listening to everything we do these days especially after numerous scandals have come up in the last two decades where the government was caught doing exactly that by surveilling u.s citizens without a warrant the intelligence community has since tried to clean up its image by being more transparent about this and it now requires warrants in many situations however the secret service often gets exceptions to these rules in cases relating to the security of current and former presidents for example according to the hill the secret service got an exception to warrant laws regarding so-called stingray devices that can monitor the location of cell phones with the department of homeland security arguing it was impractical to require them to obtain warrants to monitor the president and other important individuals while this particular device doesn't monitor the contents of communications passed by the phones this is just one of many techniques that law enforcement can use for surveillance and the secret service has pretty sweeping jurisdiction over keeping former presidents safe whether that's from threatening phone calls suspicious tweets or anything in between routinely monitoring a president or former president's communications is an invasive but necessary activity the secret service has to undertake to ensure the security of those they are sworn to protect former presidents don't have much privacy and those snoopy secret service agents even get to paw through their mail an ex-president's regular old snail mail and packages must be examined by agents before they can be delivered that may sound like overkill but they've caught several dangerous deliveries by doing this even as recently as 2018 according to bloomberg law the secret service successfully identified explosives on route to former presidents bill clinton and barack obama among other vip targets and it's not just a random agent shuffling through and opening the ex-president's mail on the way back from their mailbox it's all screened off-site by trained security staff with knowledge of dealing with explosives dangerous chemicals and so on every male piece is meticulously examined for any possible threats to the former president what's more the secret service agents aren't the only ones keeping an eye on ex-presidential mail the united states postal service also gets in on the act as they monitor any suspicious packages sent through the mail no matter who they're going to through a program called dangerous mail investigations which sounds like a show that cbs will be picking up any day now it's my opinion that it is utter nonsense every so often you just need some alone time people take walks seek out a quiet room or whatever they need to find a little peace and quiet if this is you becoming president might be a bad idea because you're literally never alone and that continues even after you've left office secret service detail is a 24 7 thing and former secret service agent jonathan wackrow described presidential protection to nbc news is quote the most intrusive thing that anyone could ever experience basically you're constantly surrounded by people you barely know and since agents can be swapped out or moved around ex-presidents are likely to be surrounded by strangers for the rest of their lives and these agents don't take a break when things aren't going well like when there are arguments between spouses agents are even with former presidents during holidays imagine not being able to eat thanksgiving dinner without a bunch of people in black suits posted up nearby this actually happened to donald trump when he was president-elect when he and his family sat down to holiday dinner at mar-a-lago more than 150 secret service agents were there too since all of his family members who were in attendance had secret service details of their own being one of the most powerful individuals in the world might seem like it would include the ability to do well pretty much anything you want this isn't necessarily the case because of that 24 7 365 day a year secret service detail it's hard to be spontaneous if a regular person wants to pop down to starbucks and get a grande french vanilla latte or whatever they just head that way get their coffee and get on with their day due to a former president's large secret service detail though anything they want to do even normal everyday stuff becomes a huge undertaking think of something you like to do every day like taking a walk or going out for dinner now imagine you have to do that thing with an entourage of strangers disrupting everyone around you for the rest of your life for example president barack obama made a starbucks run while he was still in office and it ended up with the secret service blocking off much of the street and moving pedestrians away from the president the president even asked the secret service to give him a little space just a small indicator of how frustrating constant security must be speaking of president obama he was a pretty notorious fan of playing games to pick up basketball something he spent a lot of time doing while in private life and as a senator once he became president though the secret service told him that they needed four hours notice before such a game which president obama wasn't terribly happy about according to nbc news so what's a former president to do if they get sick of all these rules and stipulations they have to follow why even be president if you don't get to spend your retirement years doing whatever you feel like right well there is a way they can get out of having to deal with all this and go back to how things were before they took office by declining the secret service detail as it turns out this is an actual option the secret service only protects those who accept the protection if a former president or anyone else with security detail waives those protections they're free to accept responsibility for their own safety and security or maybe hire their own private security that might be willing to let them do more things without restrictions former president richard nixon actually did this in his later years though the reason he gave was to save the government some money according to the new york times then in 2017 president trump's son donald jr willingly declined secret service protection as reported by the times citing privacy as his reason for doing so while the secret service heavily discourages protectees from choosing to do this it's absolutely an option if a president ever wants to drive their own car again of the four american presidents who've been assassinated john f kennedy's death is the one that haunts people the most it's not just the grisly public manner in which he was killed that confounds the crowds there's also the matter of the rampant conspiracy theories apparent official cover-ups and eerie missing links that still exist around the attack on the 35th president of the united states the president of the united states is dead here are just some of the many things that don't add up about the jfk assassination south of the border despite having one of the nation's most recognizable names there's a lot we don't know about lee harvey oswald we still don't know why he did it and we certainly don't know what he was up to in mexico city during the weeks leading up to the assassination mexico city in the 60s was to cold war spies what miami beach is to spring break bros it's been called the spy capital of the western hemisphere cuban agents soviet moles and cia operatives all rubbed shoulders there oswald was a defector who tried to pledge himself to the ussr so he partly used his time in mexico to attempt to secure a soviet visa but the day he visited the soviet embassy just so happened to be the day the cia's camera broke so we have no pictures of him there to flesh out the details coincidence and while he's often referred to as the lone gunman now oswald wasn't sipping on margaritas solo in mexico city he was spotted at a party which may have featured cuban diplomats joking about how useful it would be if kennedy were killed considering the cia disparaged june cobb the spy who told them about the possible fiesta plot however it's hard to know if that was the source of his scheme speaking of the government's shady lack of interest without a trace perhaps the strangest thing about oswald is that he didn't spend the run-up to kennedy's death being tailed by the cia fbi or any other department with an acronym for a name despite being a known defector oswald had gone to moscow in 1959 and renounced his american citizenship when the kremlin rejected oswald's overtures he tried to kill himself this desperate act was enough to bag oswald a temporary stay in the ussr so the kgb shipped him out to minsk to work in a radio factory oswald wanted more than just to help make stereos in eastern europe though he later claimed he'd offered the soviets information on america's u2 spy planes a few years later oswald moved back to the states with his wife and daughter but instead of being flagged and interrogated by intelligence officials he was largely ignored and left to waltz around town like he wasn't some traitor to the nation secret service slump the secret service is known for being quick on their feet during assassination attempts but when it came to jfk's death they were curiously slow to get to their eagle perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the potus mobile had its running boards retracted so his protection officers were farther away than usual but there were still about five seconds between the first shot which hit jfk in the neck and the second shot which struck his head and ended his life a high speed response might have saved the president but instead no one seemed to move driver william greer didn't take evasive action paul landis following the kennedy car didn't jump on board and shield the president with his body the only secret service guy that can be seen jumping onto the car in the footage is clint hill who was part of the first lady security detail and was fulfilling his duty to protect her it wasn't until after the second shot that feet really seemed to hit the pavement in pursuit of the president's doomed ride post-mortem morbidity the bizarre aspects of the kennedy assassination didn't end with jfk's actual death if anything things only got weirder the body was taken to dallas parkland memorial hospital but it barely got through the doors before a fight broke out over who got to slice and dice it the local coroner was a guy named earl rose who thought he had dominion over the autopsy since jfk was killed in texas when rose tried to physically block the secret service from the corpse he was thwarted by kennedy's detail who took the body back to bethesda naval hospital in maryland but that's not where the autopsy drama ended either jfk's autopsy doctor james joseph humes admitted to failing to remove and weigh the organs per protocol and what's worse is that he destroyed the original report humes claimed he hand copied and burned his original report to stop the blood-stained document from being a source of morbid fascination but it was still a completely perplexing move on his part on top of that the woman who developed the autopsy images that are preserved in the national archive claimed that the ones she delivered were different than what can be seen now the photo paper type was different than what her lab used too which suggested that they came from a different printing session altogether and those weren't the only documentation oddities that happened disappearing evidence if you've ever watched a detective drama you'll know that long before the good cop bad cop routine commences a tape recorder is turned on and plopped on the table but for some reason that wasn't the case when it came to the interviews done with lee harvey oswald after his arrest in fact there are almost no official notes of oswald's questioning by dallas police or the fbi the only record of oswald's interrogation exists in the form of notes made by the two interviewers which are themselves rough and incomplete and what's even crazier is that some of the notes weren't discovered until the 1990s when they were found among the belongings of a deceased officer and donated to the public the notes are very clear on one thing though oswald repeatedly declared his innocence claiming that the images of him posing with the rifle used to kill kennedy were faked other documents surrounding the investigation that have since gone missing include a note from oswald himself an intelligence file on him and the secret service records pertaining to a trip jfk was supposed to take in chicago a month before his death perhaps most curiously the tissue samples of jfk's brain which were under lock and key at the national archives were stolen from their storage container a few years after his death talk about a head scratcher document dump what documents do remain intact regarding jfk's assassination may become public sooner than later in 1992 george h.w bush signed the assassination records collection act which sets the date for all jfk records to become public as of october 26th 2017. in july 2017 some of those files came through early including one that indicated that by the mid-1970s the cia no longer believed the story that lee harvey oswald was a lone actor despite maintaining that position publicly who knows what the rest of this document drop will reveal one thing's for sure with all of these bizarre question marks looming over the incident and subsequent investigations it's really no wonder jfk's assassination is still the most conspiracy theory riddled case in american history if the 2016 race for the white house is any indication anyone who actually wants to become president has to be at least a little off their rocker that he learned a lot of things what do you think he took away from from today my luggage um hold on okay throughout our country's history many of the men who ultimately served as president of the united states have had some pretty unusual facts attached to their biographies here are seven u.s presidents who are really weird people john quincy adams skinny dipper here's something that could only have happened in the age before the internet and smartphones according to many reports our sixth president john quincy adams had a thing for skinny dipping and he'd often go for a quiet dip in dc's potomac river at around 5 am to help him deal with the stress of being president adam's love for nude swimming was actually well known among the press so journalist and convicted public nuisance anne royal was able to secure her history making interview with adams by taking his clothes until he agreed to answer her questions strangely enough adams was not the only president who loved to take his clothes off and go for a dip among the others according to the new republic teddy roosevelt lyndon b johnson and perhaps less surprisingly john f kennedy [Music] mr president grover cleveland former hangman according to a new york times article published all the way back in july of 1912 grover cleveland actually had to execute multiple murderers by hanging while he served as the sheriff of erie county at one point during his term a young irishman named jack morrissey was convicted of killing his mother and cleveland surprised the community by announcing that he would actually go through with performing the execution much of cleveland's motivation was due to the fact that he was sick of people passing off the difficult task of executing murderers to the office's deputy sheriff jacob emmerich whom the public had nicknamed hangman emmerich much to emerick's dismay after performing morrissey's execution cleveland was reported to have been sick for several days but he did not shirk further execution which paid him twenty thousand dollars a year or about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today's cash jimmy carter ufo observer in 1969 governor of georgia jimmy carter along with two dozen other witnesses claimed he saw an unidentified flying object during a visit to the lions club in leary georgia calling it the darkest thing i've ever seen it changed color and then it stayed there for a while and then it disappeared into the distance and none of us could ever imagine what it was and i still don't know what it was carter filed a report on the incident four years later and made ufo research a component of a successful presidential campaign in 1976. carter later backed off in the platform of releasing ufo information to the public saying that it would be a threat to national security however decades later carter still stands by his original statements carter now also claims it was impossible that the unidentified object was actually aliens leading conspiracy theorists to claim that the whole thing is a cover-up i uh give you our 39th president jimmy carter oh come on eat history's greatest monster calvin coolidge vaseline head plenty of people resort to alternative medicine to stay healthy but kelvin coolidge may ultimately take the cake according to the sleazy sounding book white house confidential our 30th president quote enjoyed having petroleum jelly slathered on his head every morning while he ate breakfast in bed [Music] the reason coolidge apparently believed that slapping out a bunch of jelly would be great for his health to be fair this is also around the same time that cocaine and morphine were considered perfectly okay as over-the-counter medicines too john f kennedy lots and lots of drugs our 35th president may have been one of the most charming and good-looking presidents in u.s history he was a hyper charismatic telepathical knight jff but behind closed doors john f kennedy was battling multiple illnesses and used just as many drugs to treat them kennedy's secrets were uncovered by professor robert dallas book an unfinished life john f kennedy reportedly kennedy suffered from colitis prostatitis addison's disease and osteoporosis of the lower back among other things by the time he was 17 years old his health was so questionable they sent him off to the mayo clinic in rochester minnesota to try and figure out what his problems were according to dalek kennedy frequently took drugs ranging from codeine to ritalin and a thyroid hormone often taking as many as 12 medications at once and more during times of stress shockingly enough despite kennedy's overflowing medicine cabinet he was mostly able to keep his ailments private from the public which seems almost absurd nowadays lyndon b johnson supremely gross it's hard to choose one detail to focus on when discussing the strange predilections of jfk's successor lyndon b johnson do we talk about his car which was also a boat do we talk about the fact that he was reportedly obsessed with his manhood and allegedly nicknamed it jumbo maybe we'll discuss his habit of holding meetings while he was on the toilet as described in numerous articles and books in flawed giant lyndon johnson and his times presidential historian robert dalek explained that his abuse of aids shouting at them in public and calling them into the bathroom while he sat on the throne was well known to reporters considering how much time he seems to have spent hovering over water it's starting to make sense why johnson loved to drive an amphibious car harry s truman the s is silent if you thought those other presidents were weird wait until you hear this crazy secret you'd think that the s in harry s truman stands for something like stanley or stephen or stephanie or something but you'd be wrong in fact it's just s put it down as best you can okay what's the shape of the snake letter look like you don't know what a s looks like yes john f kennedy is often remembered as one of the most popular american presidents of all time but his life was cut all too short when he was assassinated in 1963. we've learned a lot about jfk in the decades since his death here's how it all changes the historical narrative on january 20th 1961 kennedy kicked off his presidency with a masterful speech his inaugural address possessed a powerful balance of hope and foreboding as it issued warnings to america's potential enemies and urged allies across the globe to band together against the common enemies of man then came a quote for the ages ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country kennedy saw greatness on the horizon and he needed his fellow americans to join him but it turns out that the iconic quote might have been inspired by an important figure from jfk's past a notebook was discovered in 2011 that belonged to george st john former headmaster of the choate school in connecticut a teenage jfk sat through st john's sermons and the headmaster's notes included this familiar-sounding quote from harvard dean lebaron briggs the youth who loves his alma mater will always ask not what can she do for me but what can i do for her even before briggs's quote came to light historian thurston clark pointed out in a 2004 book about kennedy's inauguration that saint john was known to say it's not what choke does for you but what you can do for choate inga arvid was a journalist and beauty queen in her native denmark but to jfk she was inga binga and he was her boston bean according to kennedy scholar nigel hamilton arvid was the great love of kennedy's life when arvid first met the future president in 1941 she was married to one of the world's richest men four years older than kennedy arvid acted as a sort of mentor she critiqued his writing dispensed political advice and gave very hands-on lessons about the birds and the bees unfortunately adolf hitler also enjoyed knowing her arvid had interviewed hitler who called her quote a perfect example of nordic beauty she was extremely chummy with the german viewer and her husband may have been a nazi agent suspecting that arvid was a spy fbi agents kept a close watch on her they even eavesdropped on her pillow talk with jfk kennedy's father understandably didn't want him sleeping with a possible enemy so he put a stop to the romance for decades americans have received the cuban missile crisis which was dramatized in the 2000 film 13 days as a game of apocalyptic chicken that started when an unprovoked soviet union placed nuclear weapons in cuba luckily jfk had the fortitude imprudence needed to prevent an apocalyptic calamity he made the soviets back down with neri a concession by america that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island but it turns out that that entire narrative is rather misleading since 1997 scholars have had access to recordings that kennedy secretly made of meetings with his top advisors and they've been trying to set the record straight since then the truth is that jfk inflamed the cold war by placing missiles in turkey and italy uncomfortably close to the soviets american plots to take out cuban leader fidel castro further stoked hostilities the communists responded with ominous posturing but soviet premier nikita khrushchev knew that the us had a much larger arsenal and even though kennedy spread the lie that the u.s forced the soviets to unilaterally remove their missiles jfk withdrew american missiles as well however he threatened to scrap the arrangement if the soviets disclosed that fact people often associate jfk with vim and vigor but they probably don't think of another v word vomiting that's one of the many symptoms associated with an adrenal disorder called addison's disease that was one of the multiple ailments that kennedy grappled with throughout his life while projecting an image of physical robustness to the public he was so ill that his father had put cortisone treatments in safe deposit boxes around the country if he ever needed him because of his addison's disease kennedy spent much of his presidency in physical misery due to severe back trouble and addison's which in addition to the vomiting causes infections fatigue joint and muscle pain depression skin discoloration and various abdominal problems with the help of his family jfk mostly hid his ailing health however political rivals caught wind of his condition and tried to expose him during the 1960 presidential race democratic hopeful and jfk's future running mate lyndon b johnson told the press via his aides that jfk had addison's disease but the revelation was dismissed as a smear also during that year's general election richard nixon supposedly orchestrated a watergate style break-in to obtain jfk's medical records though he failed well before kennedy became president the united states had become involved in the vietnam war but it wasn't until the gulf of tonkin incident of 1964 that america opted to wage a full tilt military campaign against north vietnam had kennedy still been president then that escalation may never have happened pentagon documents that became declassified in 1997 revealed that in october 1963 jfk ordered the withdrawal of 1 000 military personnel from vietnam by the end of the year publicly kennedy called withdrawal quote a deep mistake but behind closed doors he rejected the joint chiefs of staff's advice to take overt action and instead instructed them to take decidedly less action by leaving roughly a month after jfk's withdrawal order the south vietnamese president who had fallen out of favor with the u.s military was assassinated jfk was killed three weeks later and when lyndon johnson assumed the presidency he bolstered both military and cia operations almost immediately experts disagree on whether kennedy would have followed through with the exit plan but according to johnson's former deputy national security adviser kennedy planned to have most u.s forces out of vietnam by the end of 1965. on april 14 1865 just days after the surrender of confederate general robert e lee president abraham lincoln was assassinated by john wilkes booth the killing took place while the president and his wife attended the comedic play our american cousin booth himself a famous stage actor at the time entered the box in which the lincolns were seated and waited for a moment in the play that he knew would elicit a big laugh at that point he burst through the box's inner door and shot lincoln in the back of his head with a 44 caliber derringer pistol booth also slashed one of lincoln's guests with a knife and then jumped onto the stage where he yelled either the south is avenged or sick semper tyrannus the latter is latin for thus always to tyrants the state motto of virginia a phrase which has long been associated with the assassination of the dictator julius caesar the shooting occurred at some point between 10 and 10 30 pm booth quickly escaped from the theater and the 26 year old actor would not be located by federal troops until 12 days later he died in the ensuing standoff lincoln meanwhile immediately fell unconscious in the theater an army surgeon charles leel ran to treat lincoln and surmised that the wounds were likely fatal the president was carried to a nearby boarding house and observed throughout the night by dr robert king stone lincoln's personal doctor stone recorded the change in lincoln's appearance throughout the night when he arrived lincoln was breathing softly and he hoped that this might mean his wounds were not mortal but the president's respiration soon became more labored stone noticed that lincoln's right eye was surrounded by discoloration and the pupil itself was dilated while the left eye appeared normal throughout the night however the left pupil grew and by the time of lincoln's death both pupils were equally enlarged at one point stone made an unsuccessful attempt to locate the bullet by probing the wound potentially causing lincoln more harm in the process in the end stone concluded that there was nothing left he could do lincoln was pronounced dead at 7 22 am on april 15th lincoln's autopsy was performed at the white house by army surgeons edward curtis and joseph jean vie woodward while surgeon general joseph k barnes was also in attendance in a letter to his mother curtis wrote that lincoln's body was placed on boards and covered with sheets and towels he and woodward began by removing the top of lincoln's skull to trace the path of the bullet that killed him they didn't locate it until they removed the brain from lincoln's body at which point the bullet fell out of the organ and into a china platter below his head in his letter curtis wrote there it lay upon the white china a little black mass no bigger than the end of my finger dull motionless and harmless yet the cause of such mighty changes in the world's history as we may perhaps never realize in woodward's autopsy report the doctor noted that the bullet entered through the occipital bone about one inch left of center and just above the left lateral sinus the bullet lodged itself in the white matter of the cerebrum damaging the left lateral ventricle in the process and filling the brain with blood the track of the bullet was found littered with clotted blood and bone fragments as well as fragments of the bullet itself externally the area around lincoln's eyes were discolored and his eyes themselves were slightly bulging which was the result of the build-up of blood in that area when curtis washed and weighed the brain he found that it was of ordinary size and weight apart from the areas that had been damaged in the shooting in addition to performing the autopsy the doctors also cut off a lock of lincoln's hair at the request of his widow mary todd lincoln the embalmer then prepared lincoln's body for its public viewing the former president went on display in an open coffin in the white house the capitol and then across the country on a 13-day train journey reportedly millions of americans traveled to pay their respects to the late president the kennedy family was iconic glamorous and very polarizing they created as many enemies as friends and they saw many individuals as enemies here are some famous people the kennedys couldn't stand while both john and robert kennedy became known throughout the 1960s as supporters of the civil rights movement that didn't stop them from holding a lot of animosity toward the face of the movement itself according to the king institute dr martin luther king jr was the subject of fbi investigations from the montgomery bus boycott of 1955 until his assassination in 1968 the investigations during the kennedy administration were carried out with their knowledge and approval their relationship was as described by the christian science monitor one of quote wary allies in october 1960 then candidate kennedy made a call of support to dr king's wife coretta scott king during one of his many imprisonments robert kennedy jfk's campaign manager called officials in the state of georgia and a judge to help get the civil rights icon released from jail many believe this public act helped shore up kennedy's election chances despite this the kennedys were wary of coming across as too strong on civil rights while king and the people in the movement constantly held the administration's feet to the fire according to the atlantic when the kennedy administration learned of a connection between king and the new york lawyer and financer for the communist party usa stanley david levinson rfk ordered the fbi to have wiretaps placed on king's phone the wiretaps introduced the kennedys to king's extramarital affairs jackie kennedy followed her husband's and brother-in-law's belief about dr king according to politico the first lady referred to king as quote phony and terrible in a conversation with historian arthur schlesinger talk about keeping your friends close and keep your enemies closer by 1963 president kennedy had spoken privately with his wife about his worries of an lbj presidency and sought a way for his brother bobby who was the attorney general to take the white house following jfk's presidency my colleagues including senator kennedy and senator symington and 62 other beloved democrats had selected me as their leader jackie remembers that her husband had no plans for selecting another vice president during his administration but look forward to the 1968 democratic primary if he could influence the party to select another candidate aside from johnson still jfk was willing to treat lbj with respect during their time in washington the same could not be said of johnson and robert kennedy according to politico johnson hated the president's younger brother to the point that during his own presidency following jfk's assassination he signed a nepotism statute the law was seemingly a shot at bobby whose appointment as attorney general had sparked controversy in 1968 johnson faced off against rfk one last time the escalating vietnam war had made johnson very unpopular and in march rfk announced that he would run for president the history of conflict among nations does not record another such lengthy and consistent chronicle of error as we have shown in vietnam despite being the incumbent johnson saw the writing on the wall two weeks later he announced he would not seek a second term and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president it is almost ridiculous how many attempts on the life of fidel castro were made by the united states government according to cnn the cuban revolutionary survived over 600 assassination attempts castro's reign in cuba just a stone's throw away from the united states irked both jfk and rfk and the two obsessed over ways to topple the communist leader in just his third month in office president kennedy authorized an invasion of cuba made up of 1400 cuban exiles trained and armed by the cia the plan according to the jfk library started during the eisenhower administration in march 1960 and the u.s hoped that local cubans would join with the exiled invasion force and overthrow castro on april 17 1961 the bay of pigs invasion launched by april 19 1961 it was over the exiles were captured castro's popularity was increased and the kennedy administration was left with egg on their faces for attempting to topple a foreign nation the administration exchanged 53 million dollars worth of baby food and medicine for the return of the captured soldiers while jfk questioned their ability to get rid of castro bobby kennedy took command of the situation and the administration organized operation mongoose which sought to destabilize cuba's economy and society in order to undermine castro and his government j edgar hoover was instrumental in founding the fbi in 1935 and was its director until his death in 1972 hoover compiled fouls on seemingly every figure in dc including the young kennedys and he let them know it when hoover became the head of the fbi he had a very close relationship with both franklin roosevelt and dwight eisenhower whom he saw as an ideological ally throughout the 1950s the fbi expanded their number of illegal microphones and wiretaps while president truman didn't have the best relationship with hoover and the fbi they were best friends compared to hoover's relationship with the kennedys unlike previous administrations during which hoover could work directly with the president john kennedy's attorney general and de facto protector bobby kennedy made it so that hoover had to go through him to get to jfk in response hoover cut the number of political intelligence reports to the white house and started to delve into jfk's personal life hoover leveraged kennedy's affairs to get his own agenda across the washington post reported that in 1963 hoover told rfk that he'd discovered payments his brother made to a jilted lover furthermore it was also later revealed that hoover blackmailed bobby to wiretap dr king with evidence of jfk's affair with judith campbell who also shared a relationship with infamous chicago mobster sam giancana the kennedy family's history of feuding started long before jon and bobby the two brothers followed in their father's footsteps who are working as the u.s ambassador to the united kingdom had a tense relationship with president franklin roosevelt joseph kennedy senior originally had a great relationship with fdr in 1918 the businessman entered politics when he contributed money to the campaign of his father-in-law john f f fitzgerald during the same time kennedy started to support roosevelt fdr did not forget kennedy's support and after he became president in 1933 he appointed joseph as head of the securities and exchange commission however joseph kennedy had other goals like running for president following the end of fdr's second term in 1938 kennedy took a major step toward the oval office when fdr made him the ambassador to the united kingdom kennedy entered into a political whirlwind as europe was on the cusp of war despite both english officials and fdr having given up on appeasing hitler kennedy believed he could pay germany to end their territorial expansion throughout europe kennedy then met with a top nazi economic advisor in london thus going against fdr's orders by the autumn of 1940 kennedy was forced to resign from his position following controversial comment stating that democracy was dead in england and questioning if it could survive in the u.s the comments also ended his chances at the presidency some feuds might end in a fist fight some feuds end in cutting a person out of one's life this feud between kennedy and the leader of the soviet union nikita khrushchev nearly ended the world jfk's first year in office was a disaster from a foreign policy perspective when he and khrushchev held a meeting at vienna only two months after the failed bay of pigs kennedy was overwhelmed by khrushchev's experience and intelligence two months later the soviets began construction on the berlin wall separating east berlin from west berlin the next year their feud almost reached apocalyptic levels during the cuban missile crisis when the ussr placed nuclear missiles in cuba bobby kennedy had spent the year following the bay of pigs preparing for the possibility of cuba being used as a weapons hub in the early days he kept the option of invasion on the table however the kennedy administration avoided nuclear war by agreeing to remove their own missiles in turkey and promising not to invade cuba again in exchange for the soviets removing their own missiles from the island nation thus ending the two-week situation the president of the united states is the commander-in-chief of the military throughout the 1950s the commander-in-chief was dwight eisenhower a conservative older man who had built his reputation as the supreme allied commander in europe during world war ii so it's not shocking that the men of eisenhower's era clash with the young jfk to his credit kennedy was a world war ii hero himself rescuing 11 of his navy men and swimming for hours to an island after their ship went down from torpedo fire still kennedy wasn't as hawkish during his presidency as other officials in his administration following the bay of pig's failure jfk questioned the cia and national security council and concluded that he could not solely rely on them the administration's policy-making process changed with a greater willingness to consider the pros and cons of decisions and how they would affect allies during the cuban missile crisis this process helped prevent an invasion of cuba which would have led to nuclear war this was despite pressure from individuals such as air force chief of staff general curtis lemay who was recorded arguing with the president according to the oregonian when jfk was assassinated teamsters union president jimmy hoffa stood up in his chair and cheered at the announcement hoffa's anger was however less directed toward jfk and more at his younger brother bobby kennedy who was involved in a quote blood feud with hoffa according to kennedy's aide pierre salinger in 1957 the 32 year old bobby kennedy was made chief counsel of senator john mcclellan's committee whose primary focus was to investigate organized crime and corruption within labor unions history states that this was where hoffa and rfk first came in contact and began their contentious relationship as kennedy questioned the leader of the teamsters union hoffa took enjoyment in antagonizing the young kennedy while kennedy's profile was raised throughout the hearings hoffa beat the charges levied against him during the 1950s making him more popular within the teamsters though when jfk became president and bobby his ag the younger kennedy set up a git hoffa squad made up of 20 prosecutors in the department of justice in 1964 hoffa's luck ran out that march hoffa was found guilty of bribery and jury tampering and in july he was found guilty of misusing the union's pension funds i'm going to jam you understand i'm going to prison because of you the relationship between marilyn monroe and jfk while certainly not kennedy's only affair is hands down the most disgust of the president's extramarital relationships as monroe and jfk were two of the biggest sex symbols of their time because of this it has become close to impossible to nail down the extent of their relationship as well as monroe's relationship with bobby kennedy according to people monroe and jfk were introduced to each other in 1954 by actor peter lawford who was married to bobby's and john's sister at the time monroe's biographer james spader said that monroe and jfk had a relationship for a time but after getting bored kennedy quote passed her off to bobby kennedy in may 1962 monroe performed at a birthday celebration for jfk which involved her singing a sultry version of happy birthday understandably jackie kennedy was fuming though surprisingly not at monroe but at her brother-in-law who had arranged for the performance four months after the performance monroe would die of a barbiturate overdose while the coroner concluded it was a quote probable suicide unsubstantiated conspiracy theories have emerged that jon bobby or someone in the government had monroe killed furthermore just two years after her death and a year after jfk's assassination business insider reports that the fbi contacted bobby kennedy about a book being made blaming him for monroe's death and revealing their alleged affair in america we tend to think of our presidents as having the best security and unrivaled health care however our leaders are still susceptible to all the functions that make us human like death here are the presidents who suffered the most tragic deaths the country's first president was only about two and a half years into his retirement when he suddenly took ill from start to finish the national constitution center says that washington's illness lasted about 21 hours by late afternoon of the day he passed america's first commander-in-chief knew that the end was near in the centuries sense medical professionals have debated exactly what killed the first president and guesses range from diphtheria to an inflammation of the larynx which would have caused the breathing difficulties that he experienced one of the popular contenders now is acute bacterial epiglottitis here's what happened washington had been out riding on a cold damp day and opted to stay in his wet clothes so he wasn't late for dinner the next day he sent for the doctors and according to the university of michigan's dr howard markle if the illness didn't get him the treatment did that included bloodletting and over the course of 12 hours about 40 percent of washington's blood was drained in an attempt to try to open his airway spanish fly was applied in an awful treatment that causes blisters to form on the inside of his throat there was also the administration of enemas additionally washington was given various concoctions to gargle including one mix of butter vinegar and molasses nothing worked and he thanked each doctor for their attempts at saving his life washington died at his home in mount vernon on december 14 1799. he was 67. historians at monticello say that it's unclear just what killed thomas jefferson at the age of 83 however they also note that in the years leading up to his death jefferson suffered from a massive list of health problems which we know in part thanks to his extensive writings his health started to go downhill after 1818. when he spent some time at the mineral baths of virginia's warm springs it was there that he developed a quote boil on his seat surprisingly in spite of the deep infection on his bottom he continued to take his daily horseback rides that said jefferson's death was likely the result of his treatment being worse than his actual illness jefferson's infection was treated with ointments containing high amounts of mercury and sulfur which did help get rid of the infection but caused all kinds of other problems like the quote chronic bowel problems he suffered from for years then in 1825 he struggled with the bladder issue that necessitated the use of what was basically a catheter this was before sterilization though and the bacterial damage that spread to his kidney sent him into a painful decline bedridden by june 1826 the nation's third president was also suffering from pneumonia and what doctors now believe was prostatic cancer jefferson died on july 4 and since he was mostly in a semi-conscious stupor his last words were unclear zachary taylor made some serious statements as the 12th president including telling the southern states who were threatening to secede that if they did he would order the hanging of anyone caught rebelling against the union that declaration happened in february 1850 by july 9th tyler was dead after just five days of a sudden and brutal illness on july 4th taylor laid the cornerstone for the washington monument ate a lot of fruit drank some milk and hours later he was crippled with agonizing crams a fever and severe gastrointestinal distress he was then treated within normal remedies like opium mercury chloride and quinine but the symptoms never disappeared and he died shortly after even though it was often repeated that he died from a reaction caused by eating cherries and drinking milk history.com says it's more complicated the official cause was cholera but not everyone's happy with that leading to conspiracy theories that taylor's anti-slavery anti-secessionism stance got him assassinated how true that might be isn't clear when taylor's remains were re-examined in 2014 the chief medical examiner of kentucky announced that the levels of arsenic in his system were completely normal but the autopsy still hasn't been able to prove what really caused the sudden excruciating illness that killed him the medical examiner did add however that it's entirely possible that the medicine tailor was given was more lethal than his actual illness he may have actually recovered from it but the medical theories and practices of the day pretty much assured his death the assassination of president abraham lincoln is one of the most often told stories in american history so most americans have probably already heard how lincoln was shot while attending a play at ford's theater but there are still some questions for example why didn't lincoln have any security at the theater well according to the smithsonian he did and his name was john parker parker was lincoln's only protection that night and he was one of washington dc's first police officers bizarrely parker's career is something out of a bad 90s sitcom filled with reprimands for being drunk on duty visiting local brothels and sleeping on street cars while he was supposed to be on patrol on the night lincoln was shot parker had been three hours late for his shift guarding the president and during the intermission he decided to head next door to the star saloon where booth had been drinking up his courage earlier for a few beverages parker was still there when the shooting took place and he was blamed by other officers and by mary todd lincoln for being the reason lincoln died that night immediately after the shooting lincoln was taken to the nearby peterson boarding house where more than 40 people came and went from his room as he lay dying among those at lincoln's side was andrew johnson who left when it became clear he needed to get ready for his own inevitable inauguration while ulysses s grant might be remembered as one of the nation's most famous generals the story of his death is nothing short of heartbreaking it started in 1884. the year grant realized that a shady investment parker had convinced him to invest his entire life savings into a pyramid scheme that ultimately collapsed the bad investment left civil war hero and former president penniless even worse a few months later a visit to the doctor confirmed that his chronic throat pain was advanced throat and tongue cancer confronted with his imminent death grant realized that his previous financial miscalculation was going to leave his wife and family destitute so with the help of his old friend mark twain he threw everything into one last ditch effort to secure their future grant signed a contract to write his memoirs for twain's new publishing house what followed was a race against time and his advance in cancer fueled by pure grit determination as well as morphine and topical cocaine to dull the pain grant wrote as much as 10 000 words per day first in his own hand and later while whispering to a stenographer within less than a year grant finished his 366 000 word memoir and when twain brought news that he'd already pre-sold 100 000 copies grant knew he'd provided for his family and twain realizes at once that what grant has written is a monument in american literature grant died on july 23 1885 seven days after he finished writing when the book was published julia grant received royalties that today would equal around 12 million dollars when charles guiteau shot president james garfield at the baltimore and potomac train station the first shot nicked his arm while the second embedded itself in his abdomen the 20th president remained completely conscious and shocked throughout the entire episode after the shooting garfield was subjected to some of the most brutal treatment in the medical history of the white house if he hadn't been there's a chance garfield might have lived the shooting happened in 1881 and it was a time when things like germ theory and sterilization hadn't gone mainstream yet and that's important to keep in mind because it puts things in perspective garfield was taken to the white house where doctors became determined to remove the bullet from his abdomen the working theory was that if it were left in it would cause something called morbid poisoning and essentially causes organs to fail not only did doctors not wash their hands before they went poking around inside his guts the three-inch wound left by the bullet was ultimately opened to 20 inches and unsurprisingly infection and sepsis set in garfield survived for 80 days during which he lost around 80 pounds his last words were quote this pain this pain the official cause of death was massive hemorrhage blood poisoning and a heart attack william mckinley was at buffalo's pan-american exposition on september 6 1901 when he decided to ignore the advice of his advisors and hold a meet and greet handshake session with members of the public that says the national constitution center is when he was shot by leon childish initially it was believed mckinley was going to survive doctors were so confident mckinley would live that his vice president theodore roosevelt didn't return from his family vacation one bullet was deflected by the buttons on his suit and the other punctured his stomach and lodged in his abdomen the emergency surgery that was performed was successful and just a few days later the president was even requesting copies of the newspaper to be brought to him in bed on september 13th though mckinley took a turn for the worse the unsanitary conditions in which he was operated on which were still pretty common for the time had led to gangrene forming on his stomach that in turn led to a fatal case of blood poisoning and he died early on the morning of the 14th countries across the globe declared official mourning periods to grieve the beloved president warren g harding might not be a household name anymore but when he died suddenly in 1923 he was absolutely a topic of household conversation harding was on a 15 000 mile speaking tour when he started feeling pretty funky assuming that the indigestion fever and difficulty breathing coupled with chronic signs of heart disease was just stressed from the trip he kept going until that is the evening of august 2nd when he suddenly collapsed and died what followed was a lot of finger pointing from the public who accused harding's doctors of everything from malpractice to incompetence then in 1930 a former harding official published a book claiming that harding's long-suffering wife florence had finally gotten so sick of his numerous affairs that she'd decided to put it into it once and for all the lethal way florence's case wasn't helped much by the fact that she'd ordered her husband embalmed immediately before any autopsy could be performed although the wild rumors that harding had been poisoned were ultimately debunked the scandals for the recently deceased president kept piling up there were even rumors that harding had at least one illegitimate child while in the white house but here's the bottom line harding died of a heart attack it's no less tragic of an ending for an american president just less scandalous it's commonly said that franklin delano roosevelt hid the fact that he was crippled by polio from the public but that's not entirely true major news outlets regularly mentioned his wheelchair and he very publicly upgraded the white house to make it more wheelchair accessible he did however hide other health problems that included things like hypertension and a severe iron deficiency in 1944 fdr was looking at running for his fourth term and according to the washington post his health was so bad at that point that his doctors warned him not to do it he suffered from fatigue and exhaustion and a listen to his lungs revealed to doctors at walter reed that fluid was building up there he was very slowly drowning fdr historians say knew that he was dying but he also knew that world war ii was coming to an end and he firmly believed that he needed to be there for it fdr easily won another term but while putting on a happy and optimistic face in public he struggled with severe chest pains high blood pressure and illnesses like bronchitis on april 12 1945 fdr complained of a massive headache and died two hours later he was 63. there are few moments in american history that are as famous as the assassination of john f kennedy everyone has seen the footage and here's a brief recap jfk was gearing up for announcing a run for a second term as president and as part of a series of campaign engagements he was in dallas texas on november 22 1963. gunfire erupted over his motorcade at 12 30 pm and he was pronounced dead half an hour later the flash apparently official president kennedy died at 1 pm central standard time at 2 38 his vice president lyndon b johnson was sworn in as the new president assassin lee harvey oswald had already been arrested more than half a million people made the trip to washington dc to pay their respects in person and of all the photos of his death perhaps the most moving is the one that captures his son standing by the side of the road giving his father one final salute that son was john f kennedy jr the assassination also gave rise to an almost insane number of conspiracy theories and while nothing's been proved on the alien front yet here's a weird bit of trivia the infamous card that jfk was killed in was only briefly impounded for evidence gathering the lincoln continental was then returned to active duty at the white house where it was used by johnson nixon ford and carter it's now at the henry ford museum lyndon b johnson took over after the assassination of jfk only to leave the presidential office behind in 1968 from there he did what he loved best tending the animals on his texas ranch it was on his texas ranch that johnson suffered a massive heart attack on january 22nd 1973. the former president died that same day in the years after the presidency johnson became increasingly despondent that the good things he'd done like overseeing the civil rights act the voting rights act and the fair housing act were overshadowed by the giant stain that was the vietnam war according to pbs his depression was deep so deep that he'd sometimes just sit and listen to simon and garfunkel's bridge over troubled water on repeat with three heart attacks already on his medical record and regular heart and chest pains it's not entirely surprising that johnson's doctors had warned him way back in 1955 that if he continued to smoke he would die early still after 1968 johnson went right back into his chain smoking habit claiming that it was better than facing his nerves and depression nicotine-free lbj said that he knew he was going to die young which is why he didn't run for re-election he told the atlantic my daddy was only 62 when he died and i figured that with my history of heart trouble i'd never lived through another four years the american people had had enough of presidents dying in office jonathan gasty would die at the age of 64 and he did it was 1994 when ronald reagan went to the mayo clinic reagan had been getting increasingly forgetful and he and his wife nancy already knew that something was terribly wrong the diagnosis was alzheimer's and on november 5th of that year reagan penned what would be his last open letter to the country in it the former president wrote we feel it is important to share the alzheimer's diagnosis with you i only wish there was some way i could spare nancy from this painful experience when the time comes i am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage ronald reagan died on june 5th 2004 after what nancy reagan called a quote long goodbye a family friend told newsweek we all said goodbye 10 years ago when he still knew who some of us were she took responsibility in caring for what was left by the time he broke his hip in a fall in 2001 doctors gave reagan three months to live he would of course live another three years but family insiders revealed that while they were prepared for him to go nancy's grief began to set in only after her husband was buried the insiders told newsweek that was really the beginning of her pain she's in that house all by herself james baker iii george h.w bush's former secretary of state was among the last to visit him before he died in 2018 recognizing his old friend the 41st president asked where are we going bake when baker replied that they were going to heaven the former president agreed telling him that's where i want to go that was november 30th and those who knew him best have been surprised that he'd lived that long after burying his beloved barbara a few months earlier in april he really wasn't ready to go after barbara died in fact he said so when he was hospitalized days after her death abc news says that those closest to him were preparing for him to follow her his white house photographer said we thought you know he's just dying of a broken heart bush was also suffering from vascular parkinson's according to the michael j fox foundation this particular condition is caused by a series of small sudden and unpredictable strokes that impact a person's mobility balance and ability to speak bush had been confined to a wheelchair since 2012 and in 2017 he was the target of accusations of improper touching and groping while posing for pictures according to usa today medical experts had explained that could have also been caused by his illness as the former president's diagnosis included possible symptoms like performing involuntary behaviors that were not entirely under his control or volition they cited things like bush's seemingly forced smile as evidence noting it was a common symptom known as quote abnormal grimacing thankfully george h.w bush's passing was peaceful the past decade has seen plenty of american political firsts from the first black president to the first female vice president but there are many people in america's history who have since been forgotten that paved the way for these historic changes one groundbreaking activist working for equal rights was george edwin taylor so who was he and why don't we learn about him in history class george edwin taylor was the first african american to run for president as the candidates of a national political party he was the nominee for the national liberty party also known as the national negro liberty party taylor ran against teddy roosevelt in the 1904 presidential election a 1957 journal article by howard h bell explains that the national liberty party was founded by abolitionists in 1840 to bring attention to the issues facing current and former slaves for the most part they didn't expect their candidates to get any major slice of the boat they just wanted a platform to bring black rights in front of the nation taylor was a gifted speaker and an active labor rights activist so he was the perfect man to go up against a charismatic roosevelt so where did it all begin george edwin taylor was born in little rock arkansas in 1857 as the son of a slave and a free woman of color we actually happen to know a lot about his youth even his exact birth date august 4th because he was born to a free woman george 2 was considered free due to the laws at the time this played a role when taylor moved north at a young age and got a remarkably good education but moving north wasn't exactly a choice his mother amanda hines was forced to leave arkansas by the pre-negro expulsion bill a law requiring all three blacks to vacate or else face re-enslavement after one year amanda died of tuberculosis in illinois when taylor was just four or five leaving the little boy to fend for himself bruce s mouser details in his book on taylor for labor race and liberty how the boy managed to get from illinois to wisconsin on a paddle boat in 1865 and was eventually taken in by a paddle boat worker and then by nathan smith and his wife sarah who ran a politically active black farming family he worked hard saved up and eventually went to wayland university in wisconsin from 1877 to 1879. unfortunately his limited finances didn't allow him to complete his formal education and grammar and language and he was forced to drop out just a year short to graduation even though he never graduated george edwin taylor had managed to lead an independent life with a solid education and the support of a strong personal network taylor had no intention of wasting his talents or advantages he put his education to use as a writer in 1879 reporting for various local newspapers in la crosse wisconsin as well as one in chicago his experience with writing and publishing eventually led him to owning a national magazine the wisconsin labor advocate this period saw him blossoming into both an excellent journalist and an agitator for social and economic change among the working classes taylor got married during this period as well but little is known about his wife mary by the time taylor moved to oskaloosa iowa in 1891 he had established himself as a writer to reckon with and a fierce political force even early on in his life george edwin taylor had already taken an interest in politics he was actually more interested in labor policy and workers rights than racial politics and was very active in midwestern labor unions and organizations at the turn of the century his first political office was as a representative for the wisconsin union labor party where he fought for improvements to the lives of the working classes by the time taylor relocated to iowa he was fully immersed in black politics and activism starting the negro solicitor magazine and standing as a delegate to several national conventions focused on black issues though incredibly active in politics for most of his life george edwin taylor wasn't loyal to a party he was loyal to his cause and whoever would best move it forward like many free blacks of the immediate post-civil war era taylor started out as a republican the party of lincoln and a very different republican party than the one we have today taylor even served as a delegate at large for iowa to the republican national convention in 1892 however the work he and others did at the convention to advance civil rights was pretty much ignored by the party disillusioned and frustrated taylor returned home to iowa and promptly switched allegiance to the democratic party black pass notes that he led the national negro democratic league for several years agitating for more representation for african americans in the democratic party within the party he emerged as a leading light of the movement to pay more attention to every man regardless of color when the democrats too turned out to be less than responsive to issues facing black americans taylor abandoned that party and hooked up with the national liberty party a national third party dedicated specifically to black rights after being active in politics for years taylor had started despairing of the increasing marginalization of black issues and rights when he decided to run for president it wasn't because he thought he'd win it was to try to get the spotlight back on black concerns in fact in 1904 he wrote of african american rights quote we are doomed he had good reason to despair as the encyclopedia of arkansas notes segregation was taking hold the jim crow laws were repressing freed african americans throughout the south and the rights former slaves had won were disappearing it seemed like no one cared about the working man let alone ex-slaves so when the national liberty party needed a presidential candidate the fiery journalist was ready to step up he knew he wouldn't win and in fact because of racist ballot laws he couldn't even technically run in a bunch of states but taylor had to make an attempt to bring his issues to the national stage while the national liberty party might have been started by abolitionists it became george edwin taylor's true political home because of its definition of equal rights and liberty taylor really was an equal opportunity freedom fighter his presidential platform focused on exactly that equal rights we hold these tools to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights taylor wasn't the party's first choice however william thomas scott a black tavern owner and newspaper editor has that on but scott's business ventures which often involve liquor and gambling eventually prevented him from attaining political office he served as the leader of the national liberty party but unpaid fines related to past business dealings landed him in jail after he began campaigning leaving taylor as the go-to candidate as black passed highlights his campaign had a focus on the universal right to vote federal protection of equal rights national anti-lynching laws equal representation in the military and federal pensions for all former slaves beyond that though he campaigned for residents of washington dc to have full voting powers and called for freedom for puerto ricans and filipinos as well as the encyclopedia of arkansas points out these are incredibly progressive issues today let alone in 1904 and they brought us pursuit of equal rights for all to a broader audience than ever before no matter how fiery flamboyant and gifted george edwin taylor was he knew that there was no hope for his campaign to be treated as anything other than a sideshow to the inevitable election of teddy roosevelt in 1904. he gave a newspaper interview where he stated yes i know most white folks take me as a joke but i want to tell you the colored man is beginning to see a lot of things that white folks do not give him credit for seeing he's beginning to see that he has got to take care of his own interests and what's more that he has the power to do it taylor received only about 2 000 votes in the national election for npr even though estimates at the time thought the total may have been as high as 65 000 votes taylor's name didn't appear on any ballots the party was not endorsed by any newspaper and there's no clear record of the number of votes today but taylor did succeed in his aim of highlighting the us populations who were being consigned to second-class citizenship with that goal accomplished taylor retired from politics and moved to ottumwa iowa and then to florida where he occasionally returned to politics and raised poultry but also resumed his career as a journalist managing the promotion publication company until his death in 1925. in 1912 taylor even attended a state convention of progressive republicans to support the return of teddy roosevelt for a third term after the one-term presidency of william howard taft while roosevelt lost the election to woodrow wilson taylor had no qualms about supporting the very candidate who defeated him years earlier taylor went on to march in wilson's inaugural parade for a supposedly failed presidential candidate george edwin taylor left a strong legacy a few remembered his losing candidacy his work as a labor rights promoter and black rights activists paved the way for improvements all over the u.s as npr points out prior to the civil war black people could only vote in five new england states in new york and even after the emancipation proclamation americans of different backgrounds were far from equal in how they were treated while taylor had seen himself as equal to any man during his time as a labor rights activist in wisconsin others sidelined him and attempted to shove him out of leadership positions as his biographer recounts taylor's lifelong conviction that no one's economic status ethnic background or place of residence should determine what they were able to do with their lives was truly progressive and his pursuit of equal rights for all paved the way for later activists and politicians to push through the equal rights amendment and more by running for office and putting black issues front and center george edwin taylor paved the way for later african american politicians to make their groundbreaking moves in fact as his biographer relates in an article on history news network taylor shares a number of coincidental attributes with barack obama including sharing a birthday and running for president at the same age given his impassioned speeches polished appearance brilliant writing and lifelong activism it's shocking that more people don't remember the life and work of george edwin taylor but even if he doesn't have the fame he rightly deserves he still broke down barriers for blacks and politics and helped make today's activist culture possible taylor lived and breathed the ideas of black liberation and asserted that once black lives and issues were taken seriously we could tackle issues of social inequality and equal rights for all creating the kind of america that we all deserve one that values nothing more than life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all in the months leading up to election day trump repeatedly circulated the unverified claims that mail-in voting would be rife with fraud according to the bbc he has tweeted over 70 times about what he considered to be the unreliability of mail-in voting voter fraud or otherwise rigged elections since april but as numerous news organizations have repeatedly pointed out studies consistently show that voter fraud is extremely rare according to usa today no losing presidential candidate in modern history has refused to concede defeat once the numbers have come in but there is also no law requiring a concession it's actually up to the losing candidate to be a good sport and admit defeat without a concession usually hidden parts of the election process such as the inner workings of the electoral college could be ripped open and used to decide the election in an unprecedented way it would mean a raise could be headed for a result decided by the courts or by obscure parts of the law according to live science no sitting president has ever rejected the results of an election contests in 1824 and 1876 went to the house of representatives after neither candidate came away with a majority in the electoral college but no one has ever actually refused to leave the white house for centuries it's been little more than faith in institutions that has ensured the peaceful transfer of power history professor jonathan geanapp told stanford news in october that the constitution does not require a losing incumbent president to vacate the office we have institutions that can be called upon to arbitrate disputes but the safeguards that will decide matters are more political than constitutional it may fall to elected political leaders to work out some sort of compromise or the people will need to exercise their fundamental right to assemble and protest the biden campaign has said it's not worried about trump refusing to step down if he loses the race the new york times reported on november 6 that the campaign reiterated its statement from july that the american people would ultimately decide the election adding and the united states government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the white house and trump's attempts to cry foul could end up backfiring on him the new york times reported that officials from his own party reacted in very different ways some including members of his family supported the president's baseless claims of fraud while others reprimanded him for questioning the country's time-tested institutions republican senators pat toomey and mitt romney to name two directly censured him romney said that trump has the right to request recounts of tight races and present valid proof of fraud if he has it but added trump is wrong to say that the election was rigged corrupt and stolen doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the republic and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions it's a day that americans will never forget the assassination of john f kennedy but what really happened after those fateful shots rang out keep watching to discover the disturbing details found in john f kennedy's autopsy report after shots rang out in dallas's d lee plaza on november 22 1963 the entire trajectory of american history changed in a matter of seconds john f kennedy was assassinated at the age of 46. just hours after the president's death an autopsy was performed and its findings were recorded in a report which is publicly available through the united states national archives the report outlines the autopsy findings including the severity of kennedy's injuries and what happened in the moments after he arrived at the hospital one of the first pieces of information mentioned in the autopsy reports is the president's time of death listed as 1pm central standard time on november 22 1963. the autopsy itself was performed just hours later at 8 pm eastern standard time this means the findings contained in the autopsy came extremely early in the investigative process the report's clinical summary offers many of the details that were known about the assassination at the time including the president being in an open car and mentions the locations of each of the car's occupants the president and first lady sat in the back seat with the governor and first lady of texas in front of them both president kennedy and governor connolly were seated on the passenger side of the vehicle one other interesting piece of information in the summary is the mention of an eyewitness statement from dallas times herald photographer bob jackson he claimed to have seen a rival barrel disappearing into the upper story window of the texas school book depository building after hearing three gunshots ring out through dv plaza after being wounded the president was immediately driven to dallas parkland hospital there he was tended by dr malcolm perry despite the massive trauma he had suffered the president was still alive upon arrival at parkland according to the reports dr perry immediately noted the two separate wounds the president had received a large one to the head and a small one to the neck he performed a tracheostomy a procedure intended to allow access to the breathing tube on the president by extending the smaller wound in the president's neck it was at this point that doctors observed blood bubbling through the wound an indication of escaping air and damage to the president's tracheal wall kennedy received intravenous blood and saline transfusions as well as oxygen despite the efforts the president went into cardiac arrest attempts to save him after that failed and he was pronounced dead the autopsy report also mentioned several scars on the president's body one was on his right thigh and another was an 8 centimeter incision from an appendectomy the final one was located on the president's back the origins of where it came from are unclear kennedy himself cited a football injury he sustained while attending harvard in 1937. kennedy's back pain was made worse during his time in world war ii and it led to his first of three surgeries one of which was responsible for the large scar in the autopsy reports it's mentioned that president kennedy's brain was removed for further evaluation and the details of that evaluation are included toward the end of the document the pathologist observed that the right hemisphere of the president's brain was severely damaged by the shooting the reports asserts that the president's death was due to two perforating gunshot wounds inflicted by high velocity projectiles fired by a person or person's unknown it also mentions that the projectiles were fired from a point behind and somewhat above the level of the deceased pictures were taken during the autopsy and the report mentions that they were exposed but not developed and given to secret service agent roy h kellerman those photos have since been released even with the details provided in the autopsy report there are those who still believe that there is more to this tale they don't shoot him coming up houston which is the easiest shot for a single shooter in the book depository is there a conspiracy to be found maybe time will tell the kennedy family's wealth and political power are legendary three u.s senators two u.s ambassadors and of course president john f kennedy but where did they get their money here's how the kennedy family really got so rich the source of those riches began with one man joseph kennedy senior kennedy's life and early business dealings have been the subject of several on-screen adaptations including a story arc on hbo's boardwalk empire born in boston in 1888 he faced discrimination from his working class background and irish catholic identity but he quickly made his name known graduating from harvard in 1912 he entered a banking career and started donating to the democratic party forming important political connections along the way he married rose fitzgerald in 1914 a wise political move because her father john was none other than the mayor of boston but john resented the upstart joseph marrying into a family better connected than the kennedys were so he sent rose off to a european convent school for a year apparently hoping distance would end the marriage not to be their marriage set off a lifetime of establishing important social connections for joseph though rose would be left to play a compliant political wife raising nine children and turning a blind eye to her husband's affairs by the 1920s joseph kennedy senior was an investor who wasn't all that concerned about the ethics of how he got his money his part in the 1929 stock market crash is in that gray area between legitimate and illegitimate as history reports kennedy was already known as a savvy investor by 1929. in that year he saw his fellow investors taking part in what appeared to be a booming market though on looking closer he thought that they were pretty overvalued he sold off some stocks and began shorting others betting they would very soon be worth a lot less he was right and he made money when the stock market imploded in 1929 where others were bankrupted kennedy wasn't above insider trading either according to pittsburgh quarterly though it wasn't strictly illegal at the time still he knew the window was closing telling an associate we better get in before they pass a law against it according to pittsburgh quarterly joseph kennedy senior's first foray into the movie business came about in the 1920s when kennedy had purchased 31 movie theaters as part of a business group in the 1920s but couldn't get an in to buy a studio thanks to a connection he made with the prince of wales in paris however he got a letter of introduction and eventually some heavyweight british banking money to become a studio boss in hollywood he would later open his studio fbo with another to create radio keith orpheum eventually known as the big name hollywood studio rko pictures by enacting more business deals and shuffling around shares he came out of the whole venture with more than 15 million dollars of today's money in profit all in the span of only a few years some of that trading was based on insider information but that wouldn't become illegal until the securities and exchange commission or sec decided it was under the direction of joseph as its first chairman rumors of joseph kennedy being a bootlegger were apparently just rumors only springing up in the wake of president john f kennedy's assassination some wondered if mobsters may have been involved with the family since prohibition chicago boss sam giancana told a friend that joe kennedy was one of the biggest crooks that ever lived though those types of allegations probably aren't true joseph did get in on the legitimate alcohol business before prohibition finally collapsed creating a new business called somerset importers and securing contracts on a trip to britain to import a variety of liquors to the united states i made the same deal you know excuse me across the pond to import doors when the country returns to its senses that happened thanks in part to his connections with franklin roosevelt due to some key political donations and the business went into operation mere months before prohibition went bust in 1933 on a momentous trip to britain in 1933 to secure that business time reports that future prime minister winston churchill connected with joseph he got the liquor importing deal done thanks in part to his donation-funded connections to the roosevelts helping him become the first head of the sec in 1934 though some people expected joseph to act like a crook after president franklin d roosevelt named him sec chairman he surprised them and kept everything on the straight and narrow deftly navigating a complicated political landscape full of both friends and enemies those were skills highly useful in the realm of diplomacy too an fdr would eventually name joseph u.s ambassador to the united kingdom from 1938 to 1940. years later carolyn kennedy his granddaughter would serve as u.s ambassador to japan from 2013 to 2017. though joseph kennedy senior engaged in some political work himself it seems pretty clear that his real political ambitions were reserved for his sons and it all started with harvard thanks in large part to their dad's efforts and the fact that he had already graduated from the university in 1912 the kennedy children were pretty much guaranteed admission to harvard themselves says the crimson joseph junior got his degree in 1938 followed by his younger brothers john robert and ted in succession meanwhile joe senior had been making significant donations to political groups to help pave the way for his kids to get involved in politics eventually according to pittsburgh quarterly he backed fdr with a pretty significant 25 000 donation back when roosevelt was still just the governor of new york that was followed up by even bigger donations and fundraising for fdr's democratic party over the years presumably making it all the easier for a kennedy to get a warm reception by party members the kennedy son who had been joe's focus for a political career was joseph kennedy jr but he died in a top top-secret mission for the u.s military in august of 1944 when an explosive aboard his plane detonated unexpectedly and killed both him and his co-pilot with joseph jr's death reports pittsburgh quarterly the next eldest son john became the focus of joseph senior's political ambitions it was a focus that apparently helped a young john f kennedy make extra friends pbs says john's friends knew that though he was loaded he never carried money so whenever they spent time together the friends could pay the tab and then be promptly reimbursed by joseph senior with this helpful backing jfk capitalized on political connections opened by his dad entering national politics with his 1947 election to the house of representatives in 1953 jfk married jacqueline bouvier from an old money family the new yorker reports that the match opened the kennedy clan up to additional circles of power by then the kennedy's wealth and political connections reinforced each other arguably helping jfk secure a senator's seat and in 1960 the white house this opened the way for more important political connections not to mention some serious donations for election campaigns even jfk's popular books may have been boosted by not only his family's name but by sales finance through the kennedy millions along the way the connections and large campaign donations kept pouring in expanding the kennedy web of wealth and power that sort of easily accessible wealth later made it all the easier for jfk to donate his 100 000 presidential salary to charity certainly helping the optics of his time in the white house with investments and business deals in a wide variety of different ventures from liquor imports to hollywood film studios joe senior launched a winning strategy of diversification that paid off with monetary and political returns and like so many investors before and after him the father of the kennedy clan put a decent amount of his money into real estate too as the book the patriarch tells it by the first couple of decades of the 20th century kennedy was already deep into the boston real estate market which of course earned his family a large income real estate continues to be a significant part of the modern kennedy fortune as pbs reports the land and homes owned currently by the kennedys are high-end there are famous family compounds in upscale locations like cape cod and palm beach as well as more commercial properties like miami's heilia racetrack that pay into kennedy coffers according to forbes the kennedy family also has a stake in vornado realty which gives them millions through an investment deal with the company via incorporated entities and trusts as of 2014 it was estimated that the family had earned 170 million dollars from this deal alone since 1998. with a pretty hefty amount of money rolling in the kennedys have strong reasons to get laser focused on what happens when their money crosses paths with the irs and like other ultra wealthy people who can afford to hire exclusive tax advisors they've learned how to take advantage of some seriously lucrative tax exemptions specifically much of the kennedy fortune has avoided run-ins with the capital gains tax the capital gains tax as explained by investopedia is essentially a tax levied against investments when a person or corporation sells an investment any growth between when the investment was taken on and when it's sold is subject to that tax so with a lot of investments that could grow quite a bit over time the capital gains tax can make you feel pretty anxious except as forbes reports the kennedy family appears to have deferred and maybe even completely avoided the capital gains tax for many of their investments due to significant loopholes in the rule at this point the kennedy family is now one of the most recognizable names in america with a fortune to match it's also grown beyond the enterprising joseph kennedy senior with far more family members who might have access to those funds without the oversight of the family patriarch who originally brought it all together so how is a fortune supposed to sustain itself in the face of say a wayward family member who is an absolute dud when it comes to money management no one's thrown out any names of actual kennedys here but in case anyone ever tries spending the fortune recklessly the kennedy money is probably safe that's because according to forbes a large amount of the family fortune is tucked away in a series of trusts some of which are managed in kennedy senior's name joseph p kennedy enterprises ties many of these disparate funds together and those funds can contain anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars yet while a kennedy or two might be on the board of the organization much of the actual work of handling investments falls to outside advisors and money managers for the kennedys who collect the money at the end of the day that's probably just fine by them if you're trying to dig into the nitty-gritty of the modern day kennedy riches you might run into quite a few walls over the course of your quest according to forbes much of the kennedy family's holdings are now in private securities meaning that public information about them is pretty tough to come by family member christopher kennedy said that we are a very public family with a very private investment philosophy there are some glimpses into the exact state of the fortune though as newsweek reports kennedy's serving in congress have had to list their income just like other senators and representatives however also like their fellow politicians they have been allowed to do so in very broad difficult to track brackets that allow them to hide at least part of their full wealth ted kennedy the youngest of jfk's siblings earned a 165 200 yearly salary as a senator though thanks to the income from the kennedy's vast network of investments he likely could have foregone that income entirely and hardly noticed just look at the numbers on joseph kennedy senior's death in 1969 he left about 400 million or 2.67 billion in 2018 money to his family setting them up for a good long while history books are filled with all sorts of information about america's presidents but your teachers may not have told you some of the strangest facts about them here are some surprising quirks you wouldn't expect of american presidents for years ronald reagan and his wife nancy were known as devotees of the astrological arts in 1967 for instance reagan was sworn in as governor of california at 12 10 a.m allegedly because it was an astrologically fortuitous time after president reagan was shot on march 30th 1981 though astrology reportedly turned into an obsession for nancy as astrologer joan quigley had allegedly warned nancy that something bad would happen that day nancy began to rely more and more heavily on quigly nancy admitted in her memoir that the astrologer was consulted to help determine the president's schedule while quigley herself claimed that through nancy i really had a direct line to the president i timed all the press conferences i timed most of the speeches i timed when he would take air force one when he would take off and when he would land another astrologer joyce jilson even claimed she helped pick george bush as reagan's running mate and here we thought that was actually voodoo all along what i'm saying is that this type of what i call a voodoo economic policy it just ain't gonna work president dwight eisenhower liked to relax by playing golf and in 1954 he had a putting green installed at the white house it should have been relaxing except for one persistent issue squirrels see eisenhower's predecessor president harry truman liked to feed the squirrels so they were accustomed to having the run of the place when they began burying nuts in eisenhower's new putting green though the former world war ii general declared war on the squirrels saying the next time you see one of those squirrels go near my pudding green take a gun and shoot it his staff decided shooting guns at the white house was a bad idea instead his groundskeepers tried to scare the squirrels off when that didn't work they started a trap and release program where they let the squirrels out in some park in dc it didn't really help but it did get eisenhower in trouble with his political rivals who called ike nuts for being so hostile to his new fuzzy friends at least it wasn't gophers though that could have gotten real bad i want you to kill every gopher on the course check me if i'm wrong sandy but if i kill all the golfers they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key go first president herbert hoover liked his privacy in fact he liked it so much that he arranged it so all the servants working in the white house had to pretend they weren't actually there yup it sounds weird but it's true hoover was so adamant that he didn't want to see or be seen by the mostly african american workers that the white house staff created a secret code to alert each other when the president or his wife were coming after ringing a bell they would then dive behind bushes or hide in closets until the president passed it became such a tradition that the staff kept on doing it for well over a decade before president truman finally put a stop to it when president warren harding felt overwhelmed by the pressures of his job he didn't turn to golf he turned too gambling yep harding would call in a bunch of his crooked old pals to play poker while they drank and smoked teddy roosevelt's daughter alice described the atmosphere at these games the study was filled with cronies the air heavy with tobacco smoke trays with bottles containing every imaginable brand of whiskey cards and poker chips ready at hand a general atmosphere of waistcoat unbuttoned feet on the desk and spittoons alongside unfortunately harding was pretty bad at poker and at one point he ended up gambling away the official white house china whoops william howard taft has a unique resume in the history of american politics not only was he president of the united states he also later served as the chief justice of the supreme court making him the only person in american history to fill both positions yet nowadays he's mostly remembered for being america's fattest president thanks to an apocryphal antidote about him getting stuck in a bathtub so did he actually get stuck in a bathtub nobody knows for sure but we do know that he actually had a special oversized bathtub made for himself in 1909 the engineering review published an article about a seven foot one inch long bathtub taft had custom built and installed on the uss north carolina for a trip to the panama canal after the trip the special tub was removed and sent to the white house where it remained for the rest of his presidency most people know that abraham lincoln grew up with modest means moving around with his family from his birthplace of kentucky to the wilderness of indiana and on to illinois even after bucking all the odds to go on to be america's 16th president with a fully staffed kitchen though his taste in food was simple and humble in her 2014 book abraham lincoln in the kitchen a culinary view of lincoln's life and times ray catherine amy explains that lincoln learned to cook for himself and his family at a young age because someone had to do it after his mother died when he was just nine years old according to amy he continued being helpful in the kitchen after he was grown and married tying on a blue apron after a day of working in the law office and helping his wife cook dinner president lincoln's cottage tells us that he also loved foods such as oysters baked beans and gingerbread cookies but as time went on and lincoln's responsibilities grew to include being the head of a country split by the civil war his appetite lessened his weight dropped and very few victuals could tempt him away from his work breakfast was just an egg toast and milk or coffee and lunch was even more austere often just an apple or biscuit with milk and despite what you may have seen he wasn't known to loudly eat popcorn and candy at the theater stick it here hey i'm sorry pal look send me a cleaning bill to my gettysburg address it's interesting to view lincoln's presidency through the lens of food after all food is a tether to both our humanity and our culture and according to lincoln cottage the lincoln family's practicality showed through despite the pomp of the office for instance mary todd lincoln reportedly sent frequent gifts of food to local hospitals including highly desirable items the couple would have had access to like citrus fruits that may not have been available to everyone while many of us react to life's stresses by eating too much lincoln seemed to be a person more inclined to skip meals particularly as the war raged on his wife mary becoming concerned about his lack of appetite often asked anyone in close proximity in the white house to join the family for a meal banking on lincoln's amenable nature to compel him to leave his work and join his guests for dinner on the occasions where lincoln could be tempted to the table he hoped to see the simple country foods he liked yes lincoln liked his comfort food in the book a treasury of white house cooking francois risavi said abraham lincoln dined in a spartan fashion one of the few entrees that would tempt lincoln was chicken fricasee he liked the chicken cut up in small pieces fried with seasonings of nutmeg and mace and served with a gravy made of the chicken drippings homemade italian cooking says that in abe's time it would have been made by dredging the chicken and flour and frying them in lard for the gravy they added cream in addition to the nutmeg and mace not the self-defense mace but rather a spice derived from the dried coating of the nutmeg seed then to really thicken it a ball of butter coated in flour was added at the end and the whole thing was served over biscuits geez louise that all sounds delicious if you want to try your hand at the food of one of america's most beloved presidents you can find the recipe online a luxury lincoln unfortunately didn't have who knows how much sooner the civil war would have ended if honest dave only had access to doordash [Music] in 1848 as president james k polk's first term was coming to a close he announced that he had no intention of running for a second term despite still having the support to the democratic party in fact he couldn't leave the white house fast enough according to the white house historical association polk wrote in his diary that he felt exceedingly relieved to rid himself of the duties associated with being president so he had every intention of ending his term at noon on march 4th 1849 inauguration day and not a moment later on that morning polk signed the last piece of legislation on his desk at the white house and at 6 30 a.m recorded in his diary thus closed my official term as president there was just one problem the new president hadn't taken over yet which is how we ended up with the surprising story of the man who was president for one day of course in movies and tv shows there have been lots of unlikely presidents [Music] oh god but in this case truth is stranger than fiction you see in 1849 inauguration day fell on a sunday and incoming president zachary taylor was a deeply religious man who refused to be sworn in on sunday instead taylor and his vice president millard fillmore decided they would take the oath 24 hours later at noon on monday march 5th but polk's urgency to vacate the premises and taylor's pious ways presented a new question who would serve as president in that 24-hour gap the answer lies in a two-term senator from missouri by the name of david rice atchison throughout his senate career atchison was popular among his colleagues and they elected him 13 times to serve in the role of president pro tempore the second highest ranking official in the senate it's a position that's accounted for in article 1 section 3 of the constitution which provides that the vice president of the united states is the president of the senate and mandates that the senate must choose a president per temporary to act in the vice president's absence it was a stipulation that mattered greatly in the early days of the republic when the vice president regularly presided over senate sessions on march 2nd 1849 outgoing vice president george m dallas took leave from the senate for the remainder of the session and the senate once again elected atchison as president for temporary that designation allowed atchison to make the case that he was president for a day just two days later in order to avoid an interregnum a period where there is no acting government at all atchison told the plattsburgh lever it was plain that there was either an interregnum or i was the president of the united states being chairman of the senate a great many such questions are liable to arise under our form of government he added however that he quote made no pretense to the office that might not have been strictly true however by some press accounts atchison took the role so seriously that according to senate history he sent to the white house for the seal of the great office and signed one or two official papers as president some of atchison's democratic colleagues reportedly even made the playful suggestion that he could call upon the army to prevent taylor a wig party member from taking office the next day some scholars argue that atchison wasn't really president and the nation was actually without one for 24 hours either way for the most part atchison didn't take his one-day presidency on a technicality all that seriously he noted that he was never sworn in as president and later wrote a never for a moment acted as president of the u.s he did however like to joke that his time in office provided the nation with quote the honestest administration this country ever had atchison's life became emphatically less humorous as he left the senate in 1855 and took up arms to defend slavery atchison led the missouri border ruffians on raids into the kansas territory and he fought for the confederacy at the outset of the civil war on january 26 1886 at the age of 78 atchison died at his missouri home he got one last word in on the matter by having president of the united states for one day etched into his grave marker there are a few rules that even close friends are subject to when a buddy gets elected president and it really is a life-changing deal which means there's stipulations that continue even after their term ends here are some rules that friends of the american president have to follow presidents are allowed to largely set their own sort of schedule what that looks like depends largely on the president in question president trump for example had a schedule interspersed with executive time for watching tv and tweeting president obama on the other hand made sure he was always home for family dinners president jimmy carter was notorious for working long hours and getting little accomplished but when it comes to personal time that's subject to some serious oversight according to virginia commonwealth university's homeland security professor matt pinsker phone calls and video chats between the president and his personal friends can't just happen anytime meaning friends aren't allowed to just pick up the phone and call activities are coordinated by the secret service and that includes a friendly chat about how the kids are doing in school the president has to let them know about the call first and a secure line has to be used for all that trouble they'd better have something good to say so what do you have in the white house for toilet paper got now charmin angel soft i don't know i have to tell you that quilted northern is terrific all business owners know how important a shout out from the right people can be while it might seem like a given that an endorsement from the president might be even better not even close friends should expect some free publicity for the simple reason that it's illegal in 2017 president trump tweeted thank you to linda bean of l.l bean for your great support and courage people will support you even more now ill being u.s news and world report said the tweet came in response to l.l bean's 30 000 donation supporting the trump cause it came with something else too a very direct reminder from the office of government ethics they posted a refresher announcement to all employees of the executive branch of the government and it was a reminder that they are prohibited from endorsing any quote product service or company director walter shop went even further specifying that it was absolutely forbidden for anyone to use public office for their own private gain or for the private gain of their friends so as awesome as it would be to have the president do an instagram post promoting their buddy's startup soap company it just can't happen he said the stake company and we have trump stakes and by the way if you want to take one we'll charge you about what 50 bucks a steak according to the washington post the obamas became another first in 2018. they were the first modern post-presidential family to remain in washington dc after his term was up the announcement that they were staying was a huge deal but it quickly became clear that they were enjoying being private citizens once again but that's not to say they're just like every other american citizen former presidents and their families are still afforded protection by the secret service and in the case of the obamas here's hoping their neighbors are cool with it too why because not only does a police car sit at and block the street in front of their home 24 7 365 but all visitors to not just the obamas but any house on the block needs to check in with security first that's got to be hugely inconvenient but honestly there's worse excuses for running late it's rarely been just a president in office by himself there's typically been a first lady and children along for the ride too so what happens when a friend's dad gets himself elected president in 2019 michelle obama spoke candidly about how difficult things were for their girls at times things that most teenage girls might take for granted like spending the night at a friend's house were extremely complicated she spoke with gail king about just what a standard sleepover for malia and sasha obama entailed and it's far from simple it started with a phone call to the friend's parents and a request for information like social security numbers and birthdates then there was a knock on the door from men who were sent to sweep the house for anything illegal or questionable when all was clear the former first lady was informed that a man with a gun would be sitting outside of her house all night does that sound complicated absolutely in her interview with gail king michelle obama jokingly said quote i'm surprised my kids have any friends for most people email is pretty standard stuff the worst thing that might realistically happen is that a snooping co-worker might peak at your mail while you're at lunch and get an eyeful of some home drama when it comes to the president's friends however the stakes are a little higher there's been a lot of news about the use of private email servers and the suggestion that something shady is going on in 2020 the washington post ran a story that said melania trump had been regularly using private email accounts throughout her time in the white house here's where technicalities come into play technically the presidential records act does allow the use of private email but not when discussing official business or classified information also it's entirely possible that the courts might subpoena those emails so they need to be kept and produced if anyone asks for them the website just security says that the president and any white house staffers who use private email have just 20 days to forward any and all communications to a secure official and archived server for the white house that includes any emails simply sent to the president they don't have to respond but they do need to forward every communication even from a best friend asking what's up presidential pardons are powerful things and according to pbs the official wording in the constitution reads the president shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the united states except in cases of impeachment while it seems like the potential to issue a massive get out of jail free card to personal friends might be a conflict of interest there's nothing in the u.s laws that prevents the president from handing them out to his buddies according to the washington post president trump's pardons of personal friends like louis scooter libby and maricopa county sheriff joe arpaio are perfectly legal but that certainly doesn't make them any less controversial i stand by my pardon of sheriff joe and i think the people of arizona who really know him best would agree with me thank you very much interestingly pbs also points out that historically presidential pardons have been handed out to enemies instead of friends george washington pardoned some of the men sentenced to death for their participation in the whiskey rebellion abraham lincoln pardoned army deserters and gerald ford pardoned 13 000 draft evaders from the vietnam era today though it's friends of the president that are most likely to get pardoned drumstick you are hereby pardoned when barack obama was elected president there was one thing that he fought to keep his blackberry according to the new york times he became the nation's first emailing president when he won the right to keep his own phone but it did come with restrictions and i was the first president to have a blackberry not only was security on the specially made blackberry heightened to a level more fitting for the leader of the free world but there were an incredibly limited number of people who could reach him on it including the senior members of his staff and a very small very select group of personal friends it follows then that not all his friends made the cut for those that did however they had to go through a white house briefing first all of the messages fell under the same restrictions as any other emails and could potentially become public domain of subpoenaed for this reason obama also had to change his email and everyone knows what a pain that is in order to avoid any awkward situations and accusations of bribery there is a ton of rules in place for the giving and receiving of gifts executive branch employees are only allowed to accept gifts if they're less than twenty dollars not cash or the equivalent of cash and they can't be interpreted as bribery there are however a handful of exceptions to the rule for example if the gifts are received because of the president's spouse's employment that's all right it's also completely fine for friends and family to give any kind of gifts they want those who want to give the president a birthday gift can definitely do so as long as they can prove a history and personal relationship with the president they're not bound by the long list of stipulations there is one stipulation gift-giving friends of the president have to abide by however they have to personally pay for the gift themselves and not just pass it along from someone else

Channel: Grunge

Views: 183,390

Keywords: grunge, presidents, us presidents, potus, american history

Id: U-BDX4hHlLI

Length: 114min 13sec (6853 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022