October 1, 2024 • 58 mins
In 2016, one man in a red sweater became the nation's sweetheart... until he didn't. Ken Bone became a celebrity overnight after a star turn at the height of an October 2016 political nightmare. Just two days after the infamous Access Hollywood tape made many think Trump's first run for president was a lost cause, after a year of "her emails" and what felt like an infinity war of an election cycle, the world took comfort in a normal midwestern man who worked at a power plant and loved anime.
What made Ken so appealing, and -- apologies for taking us back to such a cursed period -- what shitstorm was he caught in the middle of? In part one, Jamie examines the media environment that made Ken a star, and the milkshake duck cycle and a Reddit scandal that made him one of the seminal internet main characters to this day.
Next week... we talk to Ken.
Donate to Ken's nonprofit of choice, the St. Patrick Center of St. Louis here: https://www.stpatrickcenter.org/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Presidential debates. I wonder why I decided to talk about
them this week.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
With the COVID, I excuse me with dealing with everything
we have to do.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
With in Springfield.
Speaker 5 (00:20):
They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, They're
eating the cats, They're eating the pets of the people
that live there.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Talk about extreme.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And not a candidate willing to put an arms embargo
on Israel in sight. Whether you watch these debates or not,
if you live in the US, and for a lot
of people if you live outside the US, these debates
end up affecting you, whether you engage with them or not.
For voters, televised debates can range from an annoyance to
either affirming a decided vote to swinging a less certain one.
(00:58):
And an American presidential debate, they adhere to the two
party system that is definitely working and helping us. Debates
have been around forever, literally for all of recorded history,
because there is no time in recorded history where people
have agreed on things. They can be one with facts,
but the more necessary component is charisma. Things you can
(01:18):
accomplish with raw charisma are limitless. And let's see how
far into the debate episode. I can go without saying Riz.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
When I say Riz, you can shoot me.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Here in the US, presidential debates have not been around
for as long as you probably think. The kinds of
debates that hold the Internet in a vice grip like
they have in the last few weeks and apparently won't
again in this election cycle have only been around for
as long as television has. And I want to be clear,
So let me be clear. I'm only talking about presidential
(01:51):
debates here, not on other issues. The first example comes
in nineteen fifty six, during the race between Dwight Eisenhower
and Adelai Stevenson. Erase that Eisenhower eventually won, which we
know because unless you're a dork, you probably don't know
who Adlai Stevenson is.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Sorry to dorks.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
During this cycle, the first televised presidential debate is aired
during the primaries. Stephenson is up against opponent Esday's Keif
Foffer in May of nineteen fifty six, dogging it out
for the Democratic nomination. A Miami ABC affiliate broadcast the
debate and it's it's pretty boring, Honestly.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
A presidential campaign must not degenerate into a mere personal
conflict our candidates are.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Only as important as the ideas they represent.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Well, brother, this guy stinks.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's like these losers don't know they're supposed to run
ads on this. This doesn't sell aggressively gendered soap in
the future, but choosing this moment to start broadcasting and
putting more emphasis on debates is done very intentionally. By
nineteen fifty six, Americans were adapting to and building their
life around TV at a very fast rate. TV had
(03:10):
been in development since the late nineteen twenties, but as
far as the home TV set goes, it's all about
the fifties. According to the Digital Public Library of America,
only a few thousand Americans had TVs before nineteen forty seven.
Five years later, this number had reached twelve million, and
by nineteen fifty five, the year before this very boring broadcast,
(03:31):
half of American households were rocking a TV. Now that
the majority of Americans had a video component to engaging
with a debate, people wanted to hear more than just
a candidate's voice on the radio, chillingly similar to what's
happening with podcasts. Please don't make me pivot to video.
I'm so close to a nervous breakdown as it is.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
The Republican candidate Vice President Richard M. Mixon and the
Democratic candidate Senator John F.
Speaker 8 (03:55):
Candidate.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But indeed, there was the first televised president residential debate
between the two parties as we know it today on
September twenty sixth, nineteen sixty, between eventual election winner John F.
Kennedy and then Vice President to Eisenhower Richard Nixon. Every
president is a fucking moron, but this is a significant
(04:18):
debate that there is a lot of lore surrounding. It
does define how debates look moving forward. At the time,
it pulled as many as seventy million viewers and was
an opportunity for Americans to see how young Senator Kennedy
and Vice President Nixon composed themselves when speaking to the nation.
Speaker 7 (04:39):
I think we can do better. I don't want the
talents of any Americans to go to Waite. I know
that there are those who say that we want to
turn everything over to the government.
Speaker 8 (04:48):
I don't at all.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
I want the individuals to meet their responsibility, and I
want the states to meet their responsibility. But I think
there is also a national responsibility.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
There is no question but that we cannot discuss our
internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they
have a tremendous bearing on our international position.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
As the story goes, people who listen to the debate
on the radio thought that Nixon won, and people who
watched on TV thought Kennedy one. And this is for
a bunch of reasons, very likely oversimplified because of the
sample size of people surveyed, But hey, Kennedy won the election.
What was clear was that the debate itself was a
conceptual success and set this new precedent moving forward because
(05:34):
on TV, Kennedy does genuinely look more confident, and Nixon
then and now looks kind of sweaty. Not that sweaty
people shouldn't be president, but Nixon's not a good example
of someone who should. And weirdly, it is why all
debate venues are generally freezing cold today. Stet stet Stett.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And if TV was going to be the new norm
for debates, successful candidates would have to learn to sell
themselves using it. So moving forward, candidates who thrived in
the press, regardless of their actual politics, tended to win
the elections. Think Reagan think Clinton, think Obama, think Trump
for one term. Hopefully that's not to say every elected
(06:21):
president was a natural on screen. Looking at you, George
Bush Senior.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Well, I'm caught up in super Bowl Mania here and
I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No charisma whatsoever. Kind of incredible but unmeimable presidents become
increasingly rare as the years go on, mainly because the
technology evolved to make it possible to memify them, and
especially as social media took off, that became necessary for
a candidate to be remembered and successful. Ironically, George Bush
(06:53):
Senior's warmongering son is a great example of this.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I always say that George W.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Bush is the reverse Hitler because he started as a
warmonger and then became a horrible painter later on. Anyways,
as technology continued to evolve, the presidential debate attempted to
evolve alongside it. And while there were plenty of debates
of consequence between the nineteen sixties show down between Kennedy
and Nixon and debates today, things really lock into the
(07:26):
format we recognize sometime in the eighties, take this very
Reagan quip against Walter Mondale in nineteen eighty four that
further proved that Riz, Oh, no, you have to shoot me. No,
I said, Riz, I think I'm too old to say Riz.
That proved that Riz is more important than anything in politics.
(07:52):
This moment was not to tackle a common criticism of
Reagan at the time. His age soundfamiliar, but he dealt
with it so well in the debate that he surged
ahead to win and continued to ignore the AIDS crisis
for more than another year.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
Here's the clip, mister Truett and I and I want
you to know that also, I will not make age
an issue of this campaign. I am not going to
exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Then, in nineteen eighty eight, a nonprofit called the Commission
on Presidential Debates was founded. The CPD sponsored every presidential
debate from nineteen eighty eight until twenty twenty, featuring ninety
minute long debates with no commercials, and most of them
were held on school campuses. And the eighties was a
great time to bring in some steadiness and structure to
debates because with this decade came the age of the
(08:45):
twenty four hour news cycle as cable TV became increasingly popular.
Ted Turner founded CNN in nineteen eighty, forever changing the
way that we consume political news. It was around the
clock thing now, and so if.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There were stories, stories.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Would be found, and if you were running a campaign,
it gave you far more opportunities to make an impression.
In general, debates don't just reflect the time they take
place in. They also reflect the media environment they make
their way into. Reagan was a trained and lightly successful
movie actor, and you can tell Trump is a seasoned
(09:24):
reality and tabloid star who's known for his shamelessness. And
you can tell if.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
They win, I should get all the credit, and if
they lose, I should not be blamed at all.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So presidential debates became more showy as the years went
on and the media cycle escalated. The two thousand and
eight race between Obama and McCain was the first to
meaningfully include social media and a candidate who knew how
to use it. Obama was the first president to use
social media consistently throughout a presidency.
Speaker 10 (09:54):
Is there any way we could fly Obama to some
golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there. Well,
RWs surfer girl, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And because social media meant that everyday people were locked
into the twenty four hour news cycle just as much
as the traditional media, the political theatrics increased, and by
twenty sixteen we have Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Maybe
you remember this time, and also sorry, this was the
(10:26):
era of but her emails of Mexicans are rapists of
grab them by the pussy. It's rhetoric we're used to
hearing more of now, after nearly a decade of Donald
Trump running as a mask off fascist, doing things like
attempting to overthrow the government and trying to wipe immigration
(10:46):
and social safety nets off the country's radar for good.
And in response to this, the Democratic Party has gone
further right, with current candidate Kamala Harris's campaign recently bragging
that former Reagan Republicans were thrilled with her platform, which
is not the flex they.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Seem to think that is. But in twenty.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Sixteen, the mask offness of this rhetoric still felt pretty
new in the US. Yes, Trump's proposed policies were an
escalation of the rights already bad agenda, but he just
said hateful things versus couching violence in cushy political language.
And this was something that American debates weren't really built for.
(11:27):
As became clear during the Republican primaries.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
This is a tough business.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
So you're a tough guy, j It's and we need
to have a leader that is preered top.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
You're never going to be president United States high insulting
your way to.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Let's see, I'm at forty two and you're at three,
So no matter I'm doing better, doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
So far I'm doing better.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yes, Indeed, this was the Jeb Bush please clap era.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Please clap.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's so funny it still hits. And eventually, during Trump
and Clinton's first debate on September twenty six, twenty sixteen,
at Hofstra University, which is to this day the highest
viewed debate in American history with over eighty four million viewers,
tensions between the candidates were at an all time high.
Speaker 11 (12:12):
I have a failure that by the end of this evening,
I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Why not? Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 12 (12:19):
Why not?
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I will release my tax retarge when she releases her
thirty three thousand emails that have been deleted. As soon
as she releases them, I will release I will.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Release, yes, the her emails era. And you remember, these
debates got a ton of internet traffic from every kind
of voter you can imagine. It was the first election
of my lifetime where people gathered to watch debates in
bars like they were football games. Because it was fucked
up and it was scary, and it was also good TV.
(12:55):
And of course, the two main characters were pitted against
each other in the media as you might expect, the
reality TV mega millionaire pandering to the rights worst tendencies,
and the season politician with a spotty record and a
hellbent mission to become the first woman to hold the
American presidency. Sometimes the moderators would be memed and commented
on during these debates, but there was never a question
(13:17):
of who the two protagonists of this fucked up, consequential
TV show were. Until October ninth, twenty sixteen, at Washington
University in Saint Louis, the second debate between Clinton and Trump,
and one that featured the town hall format. This format
had been in play with the Presidential Commission back since
(13:39):
nineteen ninety two, which featured an in the round setting
where local people classified as quote unquote undecided voters by
the Commission, and online question submitters could ask the candidates
about the issues most important to them. The online questions
and general moderation was done by Anderson Cooper and ABC's
Martha Radditts, and the questions were very of the time.
Speaker 13 (14:02):
Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, It is not affordable.
What will you do to bring the costs down and
make coverage better?
Speaker 14 (14:14):
There are three point three million Muslims in the United States,
and I'm one of them. You've mentioned working with Muslim nations,
but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help
people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled
as a threat to the country After the election is over.
Speaker 15 (14:30):
Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is a
Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most
important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I viscerally remember watching this debate because it was a
shit show. The layout of the space meant that both
candidates were standing up for most of the time in
this weird performance to connect with normal people, but it
did give Trump the opportunity to famous lear behind Hillary
Clinton in a bunch of camera shots, just like standing
(15:05):
uncomfortably close to her in what is an attempt to
intimidate her. And I am in no way a fan
of Hillary Clinton's but it was spooky and weird and uncomfortable,
and the whole debate just felt very unproductive, and I
spent my time watching it between talking to my friends
at this bar and looking at my phone as people
screenshotted weird moments as the candidates, in classic candidate fashion,
(15:29):
picked at each other and.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Did not answer a single question.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
But throughout all of this, there was this guy in
the audience the whole time, the whole time, just sitting there,
one of the undecided voters, sitting right in the front,
and you kind of could not take your eyes off
of him, Like literally you couldn't. This was a very
blue space where most voters were wearing muted colors, but
(15:54):
the guy I'm talking about was very attentive and wearing
a bright red sweater. And every once in a while, while
they keep cutting away to audience shots, and again you're
looking at this guy, but the guy never talks until
the very end. Weirdly, the very end just under eight
minutes before the ninety minute broadcast is over, and all
(16:15):
of a sudden, this guy you've been staring at during
this depressing, weird end day's show for over an hour
is standing up and he says this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
What steps will your energy policy take to meet our
energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly
and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
An innocuous question, a valid question, even from the man
in the red sweater. He's balding, he's wearing glasses, he's
on the heavier side, and the sweater. I can't emphasize
this red eyes on sweater enough and most importantly, the
chiron below him, which reads ken bone undecided? Did voter
(17:01):
Your sixteenth minute starts now. Sixteen oh baby, Welcome back
(17:56):
to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look
at the most notre glorious Internet characters of the day
and see how their moment affected them and what it
says about us and the Internet. And in honor of
the very chill presidential debate cycle that's taken place in
twenty twenty four, by the way, the first to be
separate from the Commission on Presidential debates since nineteen eighty eight.
(18:18):
Today we're going to look at the most famous non
candidate debate participant of all time, one Kenneth Bone. So
today we're going to look at the extremely chaotic political
landscape that Ken was launched into, and in part two
next week, we will talk to the man himself. As
I was digging into the original reaction to Ken, one
(18:42):
tweet stood out to me from a user at the
Shrill List that really succinctly states the tenant rule of
the main character experience that we break every single time.
Speaker 16 (18:54):
It's this, y'all, don't mess up this Ken Bone thing
by interviewing him or finding out anything about him.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Well, sorry.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Ken isn't the only person who's ever spoken or was
invoked at a debate that made us stir, but he is,
from what I could find, the only person who directly
asked a question as an undecided voter in this town
hall format who's remembered today. And I kind of have
an issue with the term undecided voter, But Ken and
(19:25):
I get into that in our interview, because yes, folks,
we got Kenny. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I threw
(19:49):
a birthday party from my cat flea over the weekend,
a fact that just may send jd Vance into cardiac arrest.
And this week we are talking about the tumultuous political
environment that brought us one ken bone. There might not
be many ken bones because there haven't actually been many
presidential debates broadcast in this format. The first was in
(20:11):
nineteen ninety two, a town hall debate between three candidates,
because remember there can be more than two between Bush Senior,
Bill Clinton, and Ross Perrot with the same undecided voters
ask the questions format, and like Kennedy before him, Bill
Clinton thrived on TV and it was thought at the
time to help him pull.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Ahead and defeat Bush.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
The format made a comeback in nineteen ninety six between
Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, but then we don't see
it again until twenty sixteen and haven't since.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Why is it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Such a Clinton specific format?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Conspiracy theories enjoy yourselves. And now that the Commission on
Presidential Debates is out of commission, I doubt we'll see
it anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But why can bone?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I have my theories, and so does Ken himself. We'll
talk about it in a bit after rewatching the full debate.
I do think it comes down to a little bit
of plant and payoff. Like we've been staring at this
guy wearing a bright shirt for an hour and a
half of some of the most depressing debating I've ever seen,
and then he talks and seems sweet and has a
(21:22):
funny name and is smiling and doesn't seem nervous. He's
just like Chekhov's ken bone. Another reason is you kind
of had to be there, so we have to go there,
because understanding this particular moment in the twenty sixteen election
cycle is pretty crucial.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So come with me.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Sorry again to October twenty sixteen. So this was the
second of three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
and what I don't need to tell you was a
jarring and deeply contentious race. My memory is that this
election cycle took forever, and that's not just psychic damage.
(22:08):
Talk of Trump planning a run began in March twenty fifteen,
around the same time as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich,
Ben Carson please clap.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Please clap, I think that was the candidate's name.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
The Republican ticket was chaotic this cycle. Twenty twelve, candidate
and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney decided not to rerun,
and there was no real, presumed ideal candidate that emerged
in his stead sidebar Also, I'm from Massachusetts and I
was going through some childhood journals recently from when I
(22:42):
was like ten, and I wrote a whole journal entry
about how I thought Mitt Romney was going to be
bad for the children of Massachusetts. On the Democrat side,
Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in April twenty fifteen, soon
followed followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who many preferred,
(23:05):
but this race was far less contentious. By February of
twenty sixteen, only Clinton and Sanders remained, and the two
ran a tighter race than many expected. Sanders actually didn't
drop out before the Democratic primary.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And Trump famously.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Announced his candidacy in June of twenty fifteen after descending
an escalator with Milania, saying.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Wow, whoa that is some group of people thousands.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
This is not true, according to campaign reporter Alana Wise
dozens and Trump is running then and now with the
slogan make America Great Again, a phrase that isn't just
implicitly racist, misogynist, and xenophobic, but also means that I
finally gave up and just threw my red Bubba Gump
hat away. So by the time the ken Bone debate
(23:54):
aired in October twenty sixteen, we'd been getting regular updates
on this election cycle on so social media every day
for close to a year and a half. Both the
Republican and Democratic primaries were closely monitored. As the primaries
rolled out and Republican candidates started dropping from the race
like flies, Trump succeeded in appealing to voters who felt
(24:16):
failed by the Republican Party by loudly saying the most
unhinged thing he could think of, and Hillary Clinton ran
a very middle of the road centrist Democrat campaign, dodging
criticisms of her past policy and putting emphasis on the
historic nature of her candidacy, which was true. Clinton's status
as the first woman to be a presumed nominee stood
(24:37):
in stark contrast to Trump's history of allegedly raping, assaulting,
and harassing women, an issue that came up consistently during
his campaign, in addition to his history as a racist, landlord,
failed businessman, islamophobic, and in general you name it.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
In terms of being overtly hateful.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Another thing we heard a lot about was Hillary's emails,
which I'll be honest, I needed a refresher on because
they were largely invoked throughout the election without context. The
email's issue boiled down to an issue of national security
related to when Clinton was Secretary of State for Barack
Obama and routed all of her emails, both personal and
(25:19):
those of international importance, to the same private server for
what she said was convenience. This became a massive story
in twenty fifteen. This resulted in in order to have
these emails reviewed and have professional emails sent over to
the State Department, and a huge scandal for Clinton, one
that would continue to escalate after the October ninth debate.
(25:41):
She presented it in the media as a mistake, and
Republicans generally positioned it as proof that she would be
a deceptive and corrupt president. So when Bernie Sanders says
this in an October twenty fifteen primary debate against Clinton, the.
Speaker 7 (25:56):
American people are sick and tired of hearing about your
damn emails.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Hako, that's what he's talking about. And a year later,
when Trump is.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Saying, we have a question here from Ken Carperwicks. He
has a question about healthcare, Kent. I'd like to know, Anderson,
why aren't you bringing up the emails.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
I'd like to know, why aren't you brought up No,
it hasn't, it hasn't, and it hasn't been finished at all.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
That's what he is talking about.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Throughout the election season, Clinton had to answer for scourges
on her political record, including her previous endorsement of the
Iraq War, a resistance to single pair healthcareized to Wall Street,
and a general lack of liberal accomplishment during her time
as Secretary of State. Her record was not winning leftists
over at all, and then there was just genuine misogyny.
(26:47):
Outside of the email scandal, Probably her most notorious public
appearance was the whole basket of deplorables thing, a turn
of frase she used at a campaign event in September
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 12 (27:00):
You know, did just being Rosseley John wistic, you could
put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the
basket of deplorables.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So Trump wins the Republican nomination with VP Mike Pence
in July twenty sixteen, and Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic
nomination a few days later with Tim Kine. And while
Clinton was fending off the email scandal, a number of
things were dogging Trump. To name a few, there was
an ongoing lawsuit about the fraudulent Trump University. There were
(27:33):
a series of extreme or overtly.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
False tweets, including continued.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Obama Birtherism conspiracies, and a retweet of a Mussolini quote.
And as was a major media focus, Trump's treatment of women.
This had been a conversation for years. Trump's ex wife,
Evanna had previously accused him of marital rape, and throughout
the campaign, women who had previously associated with him or
(27:59):
compete in his beauty pageants came forward with allegations of
inappropriate touching, comments or coercion. But late in the election cycle,
one damning tape had a lot of people, including me,
thinking that there was no way Trump could bounce back
from the Access Hollywood tape. If you don't remember the
(28:22):
clip of Donald Trump and then host of Access Hollywood
Billy Bush from two thousand and five, I.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
Got to confuse some ticktacks, just a casst kissinger. You know,
I'm automatically a drag kit. The beautiful. I just started
kissing them.
Speaker 12 (28:35):
It's like a magnet.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
He just didn't And when you're a start, they let
you do it.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
You can do anything whatever you want to grab him
by the.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I can do any of that. I don't really have
any desire to play more of this.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
This is the most famous section, but it's worth mentioning
that the actual Access Hollywood tape is much longer than this,
and includes a protracted session where Trump is telling Billy
Bush about shamelessly harassing Billy Bush's co host Nancy O'Dell,
and then goes on to talk about her body disparagingly.
The woman he's referring to in the clip I just
(29:10):
played is someone that two are about to interview, a
soap opera actor named Arianna Zucker. This tape was leaked
to The Washington Post two days before the town hall
debate and was absolutely top of mind for both voters
and media. Trump defended the behavior during the debate, infamously saying.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
I apologize to my family, I apologize to the American people.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is locker
room talk.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The day after this leaks, Hillary Clinton condemns Trump's statements,
and Trump defended himself using the phrase locker room banter.
But just remember while these days, Trump's base will slurp
up any horrifying shit he can think of. At the time,
something this transparent, horrible, this close to an election day,
(30:03):
a lot of people thought he was done, including some
of his own supporters. Dozens of present and former Republican
lawmakers made public statements on the Access Hollywood tape as
further proof that Trump was unfit to serve as president
or as their candidate, while others who had endorsed him
condemned the comments and still supported the man. Particularly is
(30:26):
lukewarm soup eating VP pick Mike Pence.
Speaker 16 (30:30):
As a husband and father, I was offended by the
words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven
year old video released yesterday. I do not condone his
remarks and cannot defend him, and.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It obviously feels naive now, but I can't overstate how
bad this was perceived to be for his campaign. At
the time, CNN called it the worst weekend for any
presidential candidate ever. I wasn't aware of this phrase, but
in American politics, a reveal of a damning further indictment
of Trump's character could be classified as an October surprise
(31:05):
or a late in the game reveal that could be
a deciding factor to swing undecided voters like Ken Bone
away from a certain candidate. And while the Access Hollywood
tape is the most remembered of Trump's October surprises, this
was actually the third damning thing that it hit his
campaign that week. On October first, the New York Times
(31:25):
reported that Trump likely avoided paying his taxes for almost
twenty years, and hours before the Access Hollywood tape dropped,
Trump said that the Central Park five should never have
been exonerated. It looked so bad for him, and liberal
media seemed to agree. They oscillated between disgusted with the
(31:45):
tape itself and started taking this preemptive victory lap, a
general feeling that surely this would be the thing that
would get Donald Trump out of the race. If not
the refusal to release the tax statement, if not, the
mass govzenophobia, if not the pending fraud litigation, surely this
(32:06):
The day after the tape was released, Trump tweeted.
Speaker 16 (32:09):
Certainly has made it interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Twenty four hours and that Saturday night, Alec Baldwin and
I can't, we just can't. Alec Baldwin parodied the moment
on SNL two nights before the debate.
Speaker 7 (32:22):
Mister Trump, this leaked audio showed you saying, you know,
I can't.
Speaker 14 (32:27):
I can't quite say it on live television, but basically
you said you wanted to.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Grab them by the book.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
For what it's worth, this was not a great weekend
for Clinton's campaign either. On the seventh, WikiLeaks began to
publish emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta that
addressed one of her massive vulnerabilities, the fact that the
candidate courting the left had been giving paid speeches to
Wall Street groups and refused to release the transcripts. But
(33:01):
a paid speech on Wall Street was nothing next to
the Access Hollywood tape, and it didn't register as Wiki
Leaks probably would have liked for it too, And this
left Trump on the major defensive. How is he going
to survive this debate when half of his party was
very ready to walk away from him? The afternoon of
(33:22):
October ninth, he retaliated, organizing a press conference just hours
before the debate with three women who had previously accused
Bill Clinton of assault and rape. Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones,
and Kathleen Willie, and a fourth person named Kathy Shelter,
whose attacker had been legally represented by Hillary Clinton in
(33:43):
Arkansas back.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
In nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I had completely forgotten about this until Trump brought it
up at the debate itself, saying that the women were
attending the debate as his guests.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
If you look at Bill Clinton farward, minor words, and
his was action.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
His was what he's done to women.
Speaker 5 (34:04):
There's never been anybody in the history of politics in
this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you
can say any way you want to say it, but Bill.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
Clinton was abusive to women.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attack them viciously,
four of them here tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
This is just so nasty to me, because Bill Clinton's
history of abusing women and predatory actions should be talked
about just as much as Donald Trump's history of abusing
women should. But Trump choosing this moment to highlight this
abuse is incredibly transparent. He's backed into a corner and
pointing at his former friends, the Clintons, and saying, I
(34:46):
know you are, but what am I to discredit his opponent?
Here's when Eda Broderick in a press conference Trump held
four hours earlier.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
Okay, I'm ready to Broadrick, and I'm here to support
Donald Trump. I tweeted recently, and mister Trump retweeted it
that actions speak louder than wards.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Mister Trump may have said some.
Speaker 12 (35:09):
Bad words, but Bill Clinton riped me when Hillary Clinton threatened.
I don't think there's any comparers.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The stories of these survivors deserve a platform. Bill Clinton
is a piece of shit, but it's a valid discussion
that couldn't be coming from a worse source. I believe
Bill Clinton survivors, and I also think Trump was really
obviously using them as political pawns to make the words
he said in two thousand and five sound less significant
than Bill Clinton's alleged actions. He says as much in
(35:44):
the debate, and that might mean something if there weren't
ample alleged and proven actions of Trump's own.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He's bullshitting.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Here's how he's talking at that press conference.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
These war very courageous women have asked to be here.
Speaker 11 (36:00):
And it was a June Help.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Them, Loah, and the Access Hollywood tape didn't doom Trump's campaign,
as we now know, the lesson here. Never underestimate how
much people of every political.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Persuasion hate women.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So it's this environment that is surrounding this group of
undecided or, as I think is a more appropriate term,
uncommitted voters who had questions about issues they felt that
neither candidate had sufficiently addressed. As Ken tells me in
our interview, the whole idea of undecided even being a
(36:36):
question after the Access Hollywood tapes had the participants kind
of on their heels and feeling foolish the day of.
They'd been selected weeks earlier, far before the tape came out.
But it's this moment that a random man in a
red eyes On sweater somehow manages to steal the show.
(36:57):
Ken was and is a normal guy. He worked at
a power plant in the area. He had a wife
and a teenage son. He'd been raised conservative and was
slowly unlearning a lot of it. He liked sports, he
liked anime, he liked video games. He was just some guy,
(37:18):
and he asked a question about energy policy because it
would directly affect his life.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Ken told me all about what this day was like.
It was very long.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
They took your phone, so you couldn't have access to
the outside world while on property, and because of that,
they gave the town hall members these little disposable cameras
to remember the event by some of the pictures that
when viral of Ken featured him with his disposable camera
taking a picture of the technical equipment that furthered this
vision of him as a geek. So Ken doesn't even
(37:52):
turn his phone off until well after the debate has ended.
By the time he left Washington University, he still didn't
know he was becoming famous. As the live reactions to
the debate were unrolling everywhere on TV and definitely on
social media. The general feeling was that Clinton had prevailed
(38:13):
as the winner of the debate, but not by as
much as Democrats hoped. She was still extremely vulnerable on
issues like immigration and healthcare. As for Trump, he'd made
a debate defining statement of dismissing.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Assault as locker room talk.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And other language implying autocracy over democracy, including threatening to
put Hillary Clinton in jail if elected, appealing to the
lock her up contingency. So people really glombed on to him.
Here are some tweets.
Speaker 16 (38:46):
Kenneth Bone is here to remind you it's sweater weather.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Thank you Kenneth Bone for breaking the tension with being
named Kenneth Bone.
Speaker 16 (38:56):
How will you protect my job as a card and
guess who?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Hashtag debates Ken Bone an undecided voter, but not an
undecided dresser.
Speaker 16 (39:07):
US History Books, twenty one fifty and in that moment,
the Republic was saved by a man named Ken Bone.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
At the time, this was still unusual for debates. But
even in the midst of this chaos. By the time
Ken Bone arrived home in nearby Belleville, Illinois, he was
a star. Here's Jake Tapper the day after All day long,
my staff and I we've been pondering this important question
(39:35):
what makes Ken Bone so awesome? And Fox and Friends
the day after that.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
The votes are in and this undecided voter has won
over all of our hearts.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If I showed you every news broadcast that made reference
to remember that guy in the red sweater from last
night with the funny name, well, we loved him, it
would be here for hours. People loved him, and Ken
was pretty receptive to the attention. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
(40:23):
When the twenty sixteen election results came in, I'd just
been broken up with by a malevolent prop comedian who
fears me to this day. And this week we're revisiting
the saga of ken Bone, just in time for another contentious,
consequential election cycle. We're voting anything but down ballot makes
me feel sick as Ken starts to make public appearances,
(40:45):
just showing up on TV in the order he received
requests in we see him speak to people across the
political spectrum, because at least initially, he was embraced by everyone,
and in a move that reminds me of Hawk to
a girl. More recently, both liberal and conservative media establishments
made attempts to claim Ken as it were, but Ken
(41:08):
would not be claimed. So, having now thoroughly revisited this
cursed forty eight hours of American history, it's a little
easier to understand why ken Bone became such a big deal.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Does it still seem a little random?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Sure, But Ken Bone was the only fun part of
watching the debate, a living meme in the middle of
an eventful and largely depressing couple of news days. People
just fucking went nuts for this guy. I mean full disclosure.
On October eleventh, twenty sixteen, I published a fake diary
(41:47):
written by Ken Bone in Paste magazine, And so if
you're Ken Bone, you're presented with an immediate choice of
whether you want to engage with this or not, and
he decides he's going to the next few days are
filled with ken interviews, and his general vibe seems to
be just as sweet as the man we saw on
screen at the debate. His social media following exploded.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
His Twitter follower.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Count went from literally seven to over two hundred thousand
in the space of a few days. Everyone was talking
Ken Here he is with Anderson Cooper.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It's been very strange, and I'm very sorry to all
the Ken Bone twenty sixteen people, but I am only
thirty four years old. You'll have to wait for Ken
Bone twenty twenty. And if you want to addresses me for Halloween,
you better be quick. The sweater is sold out on Amazon,
and these mustaches don't come.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Overnight with Jimmy Kimmel, very grateful to you for spending
time with us tonight.
Speaker 16 (42:45):
Do you have any idea of how adorable you are?
Speaker 4 (42:48):
First, I want to say.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
That's a definitive guess.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yes, Okay, good?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And on Comedy Central Late Show at midnight, Trigger warning
for Chris Hardwick jump scare.
Speaker 11 (43:00):
Thanks Chris. It was a real thrill to see ken
Bone facts trending on Twitter on Monday night. I loved
every one of them, but I can't pick my favorite
because I'm undecided, So I'm going to read a few
of the best mines.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Sure, it's basically the same three things over and over,
but it's not like the other news turn of the
debate left anything remotely fun to talk about. In the
week after Trump's obfuscation about the Access Hollywood tape, a
number of women decided to come forward with their own
allegations about how Trump had treated them to give further
(43:33):
credence that the two thousand and five tape was no joke.
And while the Stormy Daniel's allegation wouldn't become public, then
many women's stories did. I could find fourteen accounts of
women coming forward with allegations of harassment and assault from
the past that were reported in the week after the
October ninth debate. It was nuts, but at first ken
(43:57):
Bone was something everyone could agree on. He was profiled
just about everywhere that first week.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
The New Yorker, The New.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
York Times, Fox, the Washington Post, you name it. They
wrote about him in those first few days, and most
of the pieces have a similar tilt that Ken Bone
was a breath of fresh air, the working class everyman personified.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
He was good on.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Camera, he didn't seem to be hawking anything, and bonus,
he was using many of his appearances to raise money
for a local shelter for the unhoused, the Saint Patrick
Center in Saint Louis. But we know this story right,
Something was going to give. The sudden increased public scrutiny
led to a phenomenon we've talked about on this show before,
(44:42):
the inevitable milkshake duck moment. Fox's Asia Romana described the
pattern in twenty twenty.
Speaker 16 (44:49):
One as a mild mannered commoner unexpectedly gains attention and
briefly captures the heart of the nation, or at a minimum,
the bored attention of Twitter and the nation's meme makers,
only for a horrifying revelation about them to surface before
fifteen minutes of Internet fame have even elapsed.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And less than a week later, Ken's milkshake duck moment came.
He was asked to host a Reddit ama Ask Me
Anything to adoring commenters. Introducing himself from his actual Reddit
account username Stan Gibson eighteen.
Speaker 16 (45:27):
He writes, Hello Reddit, I'm just a normal guy who
spends his free time with his hot wife and cat
in Saint Louis. I didn't see any of this coming.
It's been a crazy week.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
The replies match the fawning nature of how ken was
talked about in those early days. A kid commented that
he wrote an essay about him called ken Bone Our
Deliverance from Evil, and there were questions about his opinions
on certain political policies and how he met his hot wife.
But some people clicked on the username Dan Gibson eighteen
(46:01):
and found some pretty sketchy Reddit user behavior. I'm not
going to rehash it all here. Ken Bone has addressed
it publicly numerous times and in our interview, But the
comments people pulled to disseminate on social media ranged from
as innocuous as ken commenting on not Safe.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
For work pictures who Cares.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Too genuinely offensive comments about Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes, and
the murder of Trayvon Martin. This last one is worth
honing in on. In particular, Ken.
Speaker 16 (46:31):
Wrote it doesn't have to be a one or the
other view here. From what I read about the case,
the shooting of Trayvon Martin was justified. But from what
I've learned of Zimmerman through statements, interviews, and behavior, he's
a big old shitbird, bad guy legally kills kid in
self defense. Sucks for everybody, including us due to the
(46:52):
media fuckery.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
This is the statement that has brought up the most,
and there are many interpretations of this comment that made
it sound like ken Bone was completely okay with Zimmerman
murdering Trayvon Martin in cold blood, which doesn't seem to
be the statement here, but the fact remains that it
is deeply insensitive and beside the point. And once these
comments were discovered, ken acknowledged and apologized for them in
(47:16):
short order, and apologizing to Jennifer Lawrence directly and saying
this about the Trayvon Martin comments on October fourteenth.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
There's some that I'm not super proud of, and a
part of my message is being positive and holding our
leaders to a higher level of discourse, so I need
to hold myself accountable for that too. I like to
feel like I've grown and evolved as a person in
the time since then, if I could personally apologize to
any of the people who are offended by what they read,
then I absolutely would do that, and maybe I'll get
(47:46):
that chance to this platform. But if you were offended
by that and you listen, I take responsibility for that.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
And so less than a week after ken had become
a public figure, he was persona non grata. Time This
started some conversation around what this kind of Internet fame
really meant and if it was productive to dig up
whatever one could on someone who was a normal person
just days before. What are we really getting out of
(48:14):
headlines like the New York Posts ken Bone is actually
kind of an awful guy, the New York Times.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
We may be leaving the Ken Bone zone.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
GQ's j Willis meditated on it in a piece at
the time called the Internet came for Ken Bone and
it will drag you too.
Speaker 16 (48:32):
Now you may be thinking, wait, I haven't copped to
insurance fraud or publicly expressed my appreciation for pregnancy porn.
But the Internet is an involuntary time capsule that preserves
all forms of imprudence. If you were wearing Ken Bone's
grass stained new balances, it would just be some other
(48:53):
offensive element of your past displayed as proof of your fallibility.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
So this was written eight years ago, when the rhythms
of random online fame were beginning to be policed and
reported on by online users as much as, if not
more so, than traditional media outlets. Like if Ken Bone
came to prominence twenty years earlier, no one would know
his feelings on police brutality or pregnancy porn. That's the
(49:19):
development and how fame works now, and Ken certainly lost
a lot of fans as a result. Nearly a decade on.
The milkshake duck phenomenon does feel like an inevitability unless
you've lived a completely moral, upright life online, which almost
no one has. This isn't to excuse Ken's comments at all.
(49:40):
He doesn't excuse them himself. But I think what defines
the main character is how they managed to navigate these moments.
Did they grow defensive and double down? Did they say nothing?
Did they apologize? Do they really apologize? All of these
are functionally pr questions, and when someone becomes famous overnight
that they're supposed to be able to answer right away.
(50:03):
So a few days after becoming notorious, Ken Bone had
to do something. If he wanted to maintain his persona
in any way, and he does. He apologizes for the
comments and leaves them up on his Reddit page so
as not to be seen as scrubbing his problematic online history,
and he keeps going. We're going to talk about all
of this in our interview as well. So at the time,
(50:26):
if you were a Ken fan, all you could do
is make your own judgment and see if he took
the constructive criticism to heart and move past the unproductive
element of dog piling, because there are elements to this
process that are extremely unproductive, the fact that ken Bone's
family was threatened, that his home was swatted, and he
(50:46):
was made to feel generally unsafe. But even as all
this is going on, Ken never hired a manager or
a publicist or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
All the appearances he made during.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
This intense month leading up to the election were done
around his work schedule and facilitated by Ken And during
this peak moment, even through the controversy, there was no
shortage of interest.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Of giving this guy attention.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
He tweeted out an ad for Uber which almost got
him in trouble with the.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
FTC whoops, and of course Izod, the.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Maker of the original Red Sweater got in touch and
put Ken in an ad on October twenty first, called
ten Bones, fifteenth Minute That's all but like worshipful and
includes Ken's wife Heather.
Speaker 17 (51:30):
I'm about as pumped up as I can get, and
it's just fun letting it carry me.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
So you just never give up hope.
Speaker 17 (51:40):
Why I'm there right on.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
To see other people who enjoy him as much as
I do is real fun.
Speaker 17 (51:48):
It's really important that we don't give up on the
political process. I really do expect at the end of
the election that it winds down and when it's over,
it's over, and I'm happy to have played my role.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Someone tell passed Ken what happened. And even after the election,
Ken continued to make appearances, one of which he used
to reveal that he eventually did become a decided voter
and went for Hillary. But the intensity of this first
week was never matched again. His rise was steep and
connected to a specific moment, and the fall was pretty
(52:26):
steep too. And then the media cycle kept moving, and
in October twenty sixteen, that was no joke back at
the election ranch Hillary Clinton's real October surprise. The thing
that was thought to be. The final wrecking ball to
her campaign didn't come until the end of October, when
FBI Director James Comy announced that her email server had
(52:49):
put classified insensitive information at risk and that there would
be an investigation. That investigation was concluded two days before
the election and stated that no charges would be filed
and weren't necessary, but the damage was already done. Clinton
had been leading in national polls by as much as
seven points before this announcement and plummeted after the investigation
(53:12):
was announced. So as the US began to navigate what
the fuck a Trump presidency was going to mean after
he was declared the winner, ken Bone had to come
to grips with what his viral fame was going to
look like moving forward, and what he wanted to do
with it.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Like most main.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Characters I talked to who had a life prior to
their moment, ken Bone had no desire to quit his
day job or move to Hollywood, but he did want
to engage with this fame to the extent that he
could manage it alongside his normal life. While he remained
firmly in this debate moment for most people, here are
some of the appearances he made in the years that followed.
(53:50):
In twenty seventeen, an appearance on Bill Maher, I.
Speaker 16 (53:55):
Want to convince you that you should have voted for
Hilary instead of Godzilla.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
Well I didn't. I'll tell you that much. I didn't
vote for Godzilla. I didn't vote for Jill Stein either,
not Godzilla and not Jill Stein.
Speaker 4 (54:06):
But are you going to reveal who you did vote
for now?
Speaker 3 (54:09):
I'm waiting for my book deal to come through.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Is that true?
Speaker 11 (54:16):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
I promised before the election that I wouldn't say who
I voted for because like it or not, we're obsessed
with celebrities in this country, and even like an F
list celebrity like me, people put stock in my opinion
and it's not fair to the democratic process if I
tell them what to believe. You're an informer. That is
your job to inform people, educate them, entertain them. I'm
(54:39):
a random due that works at the power plant. People
don't need to be informed by me.
Speaker 4 (54:43):
Someone cooked here.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Ken also made an appearance at Sea Pac in twenty seventeen,
serving as a representative for a polling company called Victory
Insights and an app called Donor Decks, which was a
software that aimed to get normal people involved in politics.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
I and just running into these consultants or these committees
can cost you as much as a family makes in
a year fifty sixty eighty thousand dollars. Well, donor decks
can get you in touch with potential donors for a
couple hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, it kind of sounds like a scam. He was
a paid spokesman and it's not around anymore. These appearances
were both twenty seventeen, so you can see even though
he ultimately votes Democrat, there is still a conservative tilt
to what Ken is interacting with publicly. But even as
he's doing so, it's clear that he's deeply unsatisfied with
(55:32):
how Trump's presidency is going, so for a while, he
still appears to be the independent voter he became famous
for being. In general, his appearances and his opinions don't
really seem to follow one political line or another, but
that changed over time. As the years pass Ken continued
to occasionally engage with the press while maintaining his normal life,
(55:54):
and in doing so, he did a lot of the
things we now associate with niche celebrity cameo account where
you could order a custom video message for your friend
from Ken Bone, a short lived podcast called The Ken
Bone Show, and he also did paid talks around the country.
But over the years, you can sort of track a
shift in his politics just by scrolling up. There's a
(56:17):
lot of stuff he was posting in the back half
of the twenty tens that I don't agree with at all,
particularly around gun control. But the closer you get to
the present, the more left Ken seems to go. He
maintains his Internet presence and would occasionally speak out on
political issues that meant something to him. The way COVID
was catastrophically handled in the US had a demonstrative effect
(56:39):
on Ken. He donated some of his cameo proceeds to
COVID relief and was extremely critical of anti VAXX freaks
who refused a social distance.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
He said he.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Voted third party in twenty twenty and was unsatisfied with
the two main candidates, and in the last two years
he's advocated for better public education on a indigenous American history.
He's been extremely critical of Israel, and he's called people
encouraging student protests for Gaza to be shut down Boot Liquors,
and he's advocated for healthcare for all.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Ken's kind of based.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
Now you guys, and in Part two, releasing next Tuesday,
we'll hear about this.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
Saga from the man himself.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Part two with Kenneth Bone See you then, and before that,
a moment of fun. One more Cursed George W. Bush
Poll Bye.
Speaker 9 (57:31):
We got an issue in America. Too many good dots
for getting out of business. Too many obgyns aren't able
to practice their their love with women all across this country.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Sixteenth minute as a production of Whole Zone Media and Iheartwordtaps.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
It is written, posted and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. He
Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog
producer Anderson, my cats Flee and Casper, and my pet
rock Bird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Bye
Al zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Presidential debates. I wonder why I decided to talk about
them this week.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
With the COVID, I excuse me with dealing with everything
we have to do.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
With in Springfield.
Speaker 5 (00:20):
They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, They're
eating the cats, They're eating the pets of the people
that live there.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Talk about extreme.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And not a candidate willing to put an arms embargo
on Israel in sight. Whether you watch these debates or not,
if you live in the US, and for a lot
of people if you live outside the US, these debates
end up affecting you, whether you engage with them or not.
For voters, televised debates can range from an annoyance to
either affirming a decided vote to swinging a less certain one.
(00:58):
And an American presidential debate, they adhere to the two
party system that is definitely working and helping us. Debates
have been around forever, literally for all of recorded history,
because there is no time in recorded history where people
have agreed on things. They can be one with facts,
but the more necessary component is charisma. Things you can
(01:18):
accomplish with raw charisma are limitless. And let's see how
far into the debate episode. I can go without saying Riz.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
When I say Riz, you can shoot me.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Here in the US, presidential debates have not been around
for as long as you probably think. The kinds of
debates that hold the Internet in a vice grip like
they have in the last few weeks and apparently won't
again in this election cycle have only been around for
as long as television has. And I want to be clear,
So let me be clear. I'm only talking about presidential
(01:51):
debates here, not on other issues. The first example comes
in nineteen fifty six, during the race between Dwight Eisenhower
and Adelai Stevenson. Erase that Eisenhower eventually won, which we
know because unless you're a dork, you probably don't know
who Adlai Stevenson is.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Sorry to dorks.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
During this cycle, the first televised presidential debate is aired
during the primaries. Stephenson is up against opponent Esday's Keif
Foffer in May of nineteen fifty six, dogging it out
for the Democratic nomination. A Miami ABC affiliate broadcast the
debate and it's it's pretty boring, Honestly.
Speaker 6 (02:31):
A presidential campaign must not degenerate into a mere personal
conflict our candidates are.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Only as important as the ideas they represent.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Well, brother, this guy stinks.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's like these losers don't know they're supposed to run
ads on this. This doesn't sell aggressively gendered soap in
the future, but choosing this moment to start broadcasting and
putting more emphasis on debates is done very intentionally. By
nineteen fifty six, Americans were adapting to and building their
life around TV at a very fast rate. TV had
(03:10):
been in development since the late nineteen twenties, but as
far as the home TV set goes, it's all about
the fifties. According to the Digital Public Library of America,
only a few thousand Americans had TVs before nineteen forty seven.
Five years later, this number had reached twelve million, and
by nineteen fifty five, the year before this very boring broadcast,
(03:31):
half of American households were rocking a TV. Now that
the majority of Americans had a video component to engaging
with a debate, people wanted to hear more than just
a candidate's voice on the radio, chillingly similar to what's
happening with podcasts. Please don't make me pivot to video.
I'm so close to a nervous breakdown as it is.
Speaker 7 (03:50):
The Republican candidate Vice President Richard M. Mixon and the
Democratic candidate Senator John F.
Speaker 8 (03:55):
Candidate.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
But indeed, there was the first televised president residential debate
between the two parties as we know it today on
September twenty sixth, nineteen sixty, between eventual election winner John F.
Kennedy and then Vice President to Eisenhower Richard Nixon. Every
president is a fucking moron, but this is a significant
(04:18):
debate that there is a lot of lore surrounding. It
does define how debates look moving forward. At the time,
it pulled as many as seventy million viewers and was
an opportunity for Americans to see how young Senator Kennedy
and Vice President Nixon composed themselves when speaking to the nation.
Speaker 7 (04:39):
I think we can do better. I don't want the
talents of any Americans to go to Waite. I know
that there are those who say that we want to
turn everything over to the government.
Speaker 8 (04:48):
I don't at all.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
I want the individuals to meet their responsibility, and I
want the states to meet their responsibility. But I think
there is also a national responsibility.
Speaker 8 (04:58):
There is no question but that we cannot discuss our
internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they
have a tremendous bearing on our international position.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
As the story goes, people who listen to the debate
on the radio thought that Nixon won, and people who
watched on TV thought Kennedy one. And this is for
a bunch of reasons, very likely oversimplified because of the
sample size of people surveyed, But hey, Kennedy won the election.
What was clear was that the debate itself was a
conceptual success and set this new precedent moving forward because
(05:34):
on TV, Kennedy does genuinely look more confident, and Nixon
then and now looks kind of sweaty. Not that sweaty
people shouldn't be president, but Nixon's not a good example
of someone who should. And weirdly, it is why all
debate venues are generally freezing cold today. Stet stet Stett.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
And if TV was going to be the new norm
for debates, successful candidates would have to learn to sell
themselves using it. So moving forward, candidates who thrived in
the press, regardless of their actual politics, tended to win
the elections. Think Reagan think Clinton, think Obama, think Trump
for one term. Hopefully that's not to say every elected
(06:21):
president was a natural on screen. Looking at you, George
Bush Senior.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
Well, I'm caught up in super Bowl Mania here and
I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No charisma whatsoever. Kind of incredible but unmeimable presidents become
increasingly rare as the years go on, mainly because the
technology evolved to make it possible to memify them, and
especially as social media took off, that became necessary for
a candidate to be remembered and successful. Ironically, George Bush
(06:53):
Senior's warmongering son is a great example of this.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I always say that George W.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Bush is the reverse Hitler because he started as a
warmonger and then became a horrible painter later on. Anyways,
as technology continued to evolve, the presidential debate attempted to
evolve alongside it. And while there were plenty of debates
of consequence between the nineteen sixties show down between Kennedy
and Nixon and debates today, things really lock into the
(07:26):
format we recognize sometime in the eighties, take this very
Reagan quip against Walter Mondale in nineteen eighty four that
further proved that Riz, Oh, no, you have to shoot me. No,
I said, Riz, I think I'm too old to say Riz.
That proved that Riz is more important than anything in politics.
(07:52):
This moment was not to tackle a common criticism of
Reagan at the time. His age soundfamiliar, but he dealt
with it so well in the debate that he surged
ahead to win and continued to ignore the AIDS crisis
for more than another year.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
Here's the clip, mister Truett and I and I want
you to know that also, I will not make age
an issue of this campaign. I am not going to
exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Then, in nineteen eighty eight, a nonprofit called the Commission
on Presidential Debates was founded. The CPD sponsored every presidential
debate from nineteen eighty eight until twenty twenty, featuring ninety
minute long debates with no commercials, and most of them
were held on school campuses. And the eighties was a
great time to bring in some steadiness and structure to
debates because with this decade came the age of the
(08:45):
twenty four hour news cycle as cable TV became increasingly popular.
Ted Turner founded CNN in nineteen eighty, forever changing the
way that we consume political news. It was around the
clock thing now, and so if.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
There were stories, stories.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Would be found, and if you were running a campaign,
it gave you far more opportunities to make an impression.
In general, debates don't just reflect the time they take
place in. They also reflect the media environment they make
their way into. Reagan was a trained and lightly successful
movie actor, and you can tell Trump is a seasoned
(09:24):
reality and tabloid star who's known for his shamelessness. And
you can tell if.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
They win, I should get all the credit, and if
they lose, I should not be blamed at all.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
So presidential debates became more showy as the years went
on and the media cycle escalated. The two thousand and
eight race between Obama and McCain was the first to
meaningfully include social media and a candidate who knew how
to use it. Obama was the first president to use
social media consistently throughout a presidency.
Speaker 10 (09:54):
Is there any way we could fly Obama to some
golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there. Well,
RWs surfer girl, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
And because social media meant that everyday people were locked
into the twenty four hour news cycle just as much
as the traditional media, the political theatrics increased, and by
twenty sixteen we have Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Maybe
you remember this time, and also sorry, this was the
(10:26):
era of but her emails of Mexicans are rapists of
grab them by the pussy. It's rhetoric we're used to
hearing more of now, after nearly a decade of Donald
Trump running as a mask off fascist, doing things like
attempting to overthrow the government and trying to wipe immigration
(10:46):
and social safety nets off the country's radar for good.
And in response to this, the Democratic Party has gone
further right, with current candidate Kamala Harris's campaign recently bragging
that former Reagan Republicans were thrilled with her platform, which
is not the flex they.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Seem to think that is. But in twenty.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Sixteen, the mask offness of this rhetoric still felt pretty
new in the US. Yes, Trump's proposed policies were an
escalation of the rights already bad agenda, but he just
said hateful things versus couching violence in cushy political language.
And this was something that American debates weren't really built for.
(11:27):
As became clear during the Republican primaries.
Speaker 8 (11:31):
This is a tough business.
Speaker 5 (11:33):
So you're a tough guy, j It's and we need
to have a leader that is preered top.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
You're never going to be president United States high insulting
your way to.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Let's see, I'm at forty two and you're at three,
So no matter I'm doing better, doesn't matter.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
So far I'm doing better.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yes, Indeed, this was the Jeb Bush please clap era.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Please clap.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
It's so funny it still hits. And eventually, during Trump
and Clinton's first debate on September twenty six, twenty sixteen,
at Hofstra University, which is to this day the highest
viewed debate in American history with over eighty four million viewers,
tensions between the candidates were at an all time high.
Speaker 11 (12:12):
I have a failure that by the end of this evening,
I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Why not? Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 12 (12:19):
Why not?
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I will release my tax retarge when she releases her
thirty three thousand emails that have been deleted. As soon
as she releases them, I will release I will.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Release, yes, the her emails era. And you remember, these
debates got a ton of internet traffic from every kind
of voter you can imagine. It was the first election
of my lifetime where people gathered to watch debates in
bars like they were football games. Because it was fucked
up and it was scary, and it was also good TV.
(12:55):
And of course, the two main characters were pitted against
each other in the media as you might expect, the
reality TV mega millionaire pandering to the rights worst tendencies,
and the season politician with a spotty record and a
hellbent mission to become the first woman to hold the
American presidency. Sometimes the moderators would be memed and commented
on during these debates, but there was never a question
(13:17):
of who the two protagonists of this fucked up, consequential
TV show were. Until October ninth, twenty sixteen, at Washington
University in Saint Louis, the second debate between Clinton and Trump,
and one that featured the town hall format. This format
had been in play with the Presidential Commission back since
(13:39):
nineteen ninety two, which featured an in the round setting
where local people classified as quote unquote undecided voters by
the Commission, and online question submitters could ask the candidates
about the issues most important to them. The online questions
and general moderation was done by Anderson Cooper and ABC's
Martha Radditts, and the questions were very of the time.
Speaker 13 (14:02):
Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, It is not affordable.
What will you do to bring the costs down and
make coverage better?
Speaker 14 (14:14):
There are three point three million Muslims in the United States,
and I'm one of them. You've mentioned working with Muslim nations,
but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help
people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled
as a threat to the country After the election is over.
Speaker 15 (14:30):
Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is a
Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most
important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I viscerally remember watching this debate because it was a
shit show. The layout of the space meant that both
candidates were standing up for most of the time in
this weird performance to connect with normal people, but it
did give Trump the opportunity to famous lear behind Hillary
Clinton in a bunch of camera shots, just like standing
(15:05):
uncomfortably close to her in what is an attempt to
intimidate her. And I am in no way a fan
of Hillary Clinton's but it was spooky and weird and uncomfortable,
and the whole debate just felt very unproductive, and I
spent my time watching it between talking to my friends
at this bar and looking at my phone as people
screenshotted weird moments as the candidates, in classic candidate fashion,
(15:29):
picked at each other and.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Did not answer a single question.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
But throughout all of this, there was this guy in
the audience the whole time, the whole time, just sitting there,
one of the undecided voters, sitting right in the front,
and you kind of could not take your eyes off
of him, Like literally you couldn't. This was a very
blue space where most voters were wearing muted colors, but
(15:54):
the guy I'm talking about was very attentive and wearing
a bright red sweater. And every once in a while, while
they keep cutting away to audience shots, and again you're
looking at this guy, but the guy never talks until
the very end. Weirdly, the very end just under eight
minutes before the ninety minute broadcast is over, and all
(16:15):
of a sudden, this guy you've been staring at during
this depressing, weird end day's show for over an hour
is standing up and he says this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
What steps will your energy policy take to meet our
energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly
and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
An innocuous question, a valid question, even from the man
in the red sweater. He's balding, he's wearing glasses, he's
on the heavier side, and the sweater. I can't emphasize
this red eyes on sweater enough and most importantly, the
chiron below him, which reads ken bone undecided? Did voter
(17:01):
Your sixteenth minute starts now. Sixteen oh baby, Welcome back
(17:56):
to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we take a look
at the most notre glorious Internet characters of the day
and see how their moment affected them and what it
says about us and the Internet. And in honor of
the very chill presidential debate cycle that's taken place in
twenty twenty four, by the way, the first to be
separate from the Commission on Presidential debates since nineteen eighty eight.
(18:18):
Today we're going to look at the most famous non
candidate debate participant of all time, one Kenneth Bone. So
today we're going to look at the extremely chaotic political
landscape that Ken was launched into, and in part two
next week, we will talk to the man himself. As
I was digging into the original reaction to Ken, one
(18:42):
tweet stood out to me from a user at the
Shrill List that really succinctly states the tenant rule of
the main character experience that we break every single time.
Speaker 16 (18:54):
It's this, y'all, don't mess up this Ken Bone thing
by interviewing him or finding out anything about him.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Well, sorry.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Ken isn't the only person who's ever spoken or was
invoked at a debate that made us stir, but he is,
from what I could find, the only person who directly
asked a question as an undecided voter in this town
hall format who's remembered today. And I kind of have
an issue with the term undecided voter, But Ken and
(19:25):
I get into that in our interview, because yes, folks,
we got Kenny. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I threw
(19:49):
a birthday party from my cat flea over the weekend,
a fact that just may send jd Vance into cardiac arrest.
And this week we are talking about the tumultuous political
environment that brought us one ken bone. There might not
be many ken bones because there haven't actually been many
presidential debates broadcast in this format. The first was in
(20:11):
nineteen ninety two, a town hall debate between three candidates,
because remember there can be more than two between Bush Senior,
Bill Clinton, and Ross Perrot with the same undecided voters
ask the questions format, and like Kennedy before him, Bill
Clinton thrived on TV and it was thought at the
time to help him pull.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Ahead and defeat Bush.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
The format made a comeback in nineteen ninety six between
Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, but then we don't see
it again until twenty sixteen and haven't since.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Why is it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Such a Clinton specific format?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Conspiracy theories enjoy yourselves. And now that the Commission on
Presidential Debates is out of commission, I doubt we'll see
it anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
But why can bone?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I have my theories, and so does Ken himself. We'll
talk about it in a bit after rewatching the full debate.
I do think it comes down to a little bit
of plant and payoff. Like we've been staring at this
guy wearing a bright shirt for an hour and a
half of some of the most depressing debating I've ever seen,
and then he talks and seems sweet and has a
(21:22):
funny name and is smiling and doesn't seem nervous. He's
just like Chekhov's ken bone. Another reason is you kind
of had to be there, so we have to go there,
because understanding this particular moment in the twenty sixteen election
cycle is pretty crucial.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So come with me.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Sorry again to October twenty sixteen. So this was the
second of three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
and what I don't need to tell you was a
jarring and deeply contentious race. My memory is that this
election cycle took forever, and that's not just psychic damage.
(22:08):
Talk of Trump planning a run began in March twenty fifteen,
around the same time as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich,
Ben Carson please clap.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Please clap, I think that was the candidate's name.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
The Republican ticket was chaotic this cycle. Twenty twelve, candidate
and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney decided not to rerun,
and there was no real, presumed ideal candidate that emerged
in his stead sidebar Also, I'm from Massachusetts and I
was going through some childhood journals recently from when I
(22:42):
was like ten, and I wrote a whole journal entry
about how I thought Mitt Romney was going to be
bad for the children of Massachusetts. On the Democrat side,
Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy in April twenty fifteen, soon
followed followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who many preferred,
(23:05):
but this race was far less contentious. By February of
twenty sixteen, only Clinton and Sanders remained, and the two
ran a tighter race than many expected. Sanders actually didn't
drop out before the Democratic primary.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And Trump famously.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Announced his candidacy in June of twenty fifteen after descending
an escalator with Milania, saying.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Wow, whoa that is some group of people thousands.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
This is not true, according to campaign reporter Alana Wise
dozens and Trump is running then and now with the
slogan make America Great Again, a phrase that isn't just
implicitly racist, misogynist, and xenophobic, but also means that I
finally gave up and just threw my red Bubba Gump
hat away. So by the time the ken Bone debate
(23:54):
aired in October twenty sixteen, we'd been getting regular updates
on this election cycle on so social media every day
for close to a year and a half. Both the
Republican and Democratic primaries were closely monitored. As the primaries
rolled out and Republican candidates started dropping from the race
like flies, Trump succeeded in appealing to voters who felt
(24:16):
failed by the Republican Party by loudly saying the most
unhinged thing he could think of, and Hillary Clinton ran
a very middle of the road centrist Democrat campaign, dodging
criticisms of her past policy and putting emphasis on the
historic nature of her candidacy, which was true. Clinton's status
as the first woman to be a presumed nominee stood
(24:37):
in stark contrast to Trump's history of allegedly raping, assaulting,
and harassing women, an issue that came up consistently during
his campaign, in addition to his history as a racist, landlord,
failed businessman, islamophobic, and in general you name it.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
In terms of being overtly hateful.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Another thing we heard a lot about was Hillary's emails,
which I'll be honest, I needed a refresher on because
they were largely invoked throughout the election without context. The
email's issue boiled down to an issue of national security
related to when Clinton was Secretary of State for Barack
Obama and routed all of her emails, both personal and
(25:19):
those of international importance, to the same private server for
what she said was convenience. This became a massive story
in twenty fifteen. This resulted in in order to have
these emails reviewed and have professional emails sent over to
the State Department, and a huge scandal for Clinton, one
that would continue to escalate after the October ninth debate.
(25:41):
She presented it in the media as a mistake, and
Republicans generally positioned it as proof that she would be
a deceptive and corrupt president. So when Bernie Sanders says
this in an October twenty fifteen primary debate against Clinton, the.
Speaker 7 (25:56):
American people are sick and tired of hearing about your
damn emails.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Hako, that's what he's talking about. And a year later,
when Trump is.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Saying, we have a question here from Ken Carperwicks. He
has a question about healthcare, Kent. I'd like to know, Anderson,
why aren't you bringing up the emails.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
I'd like to know, why aren't you brought up No,
it hasn't, it hasn't, and it hasn't been finished at all.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
That's what he is talking about.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Throughout the election season, Clinton had to answer for scourges
on her political record, including her previous endorsement of the
Iraq War, a resistance to single pair healthcareized to Wall Street,
and a general lack of liberal accomplishment during her time
as Secretary of State. Her record was not winning leftists
over at all, and then there was just genuine misogyny.
(26:47):
Outside of the email scandal, Probably her most notorious public
appearance was the whole basket of deplorables thing, a turn
of frase she used at a campaign event in September
twenty sixteen.
Speaker 12 (27:00):
You know, did just being Rosseley John wistic, you could
put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the
basket of deplorables.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
So Trump wins the Republican nomination with VP Mike Pence
in July twenty sixteen, and Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic
nomination a few days later with Tim Kine. And while
Clinton was fending off the email scandal, a number of
things were dogging Trump. To name a few, there was
an ongoing lawsuit about the fraudulent Trump University. There were
(27:33):
a series of extreme or overtly.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
False tweets, including continued.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Obama Birtherism conspiracies, and a retweet of a Mussolini quote.
And as was a major media focus, Trump's treatment of women.
This had been a conversation for years. Trump's ex wife,
Evanna had previously accused him of marital rape, and throughout
the campaign, women who had previously associated with him or
(27:59):
compete in his beauty pageants came forward with allegations of
inappropriate touching, comments or coercion. But late in the election cycle,
one damning tape had a lot of people, including me,
thinking that there was no way Trump could bounce back
from the Access Hollywood tape. If you don't remember the
(28:22):
clip of Donald Trump and then host of Access Hollywood
Billy Bush from two thousand and five, I.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
Got to confuse some ticktacks, just a casst kissinger. You know,
I'm automatically a drag kit. The beautiful. I just started
kissing them.
Speaker 12 (28:35):
It's like a magnet.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
He just didn't And when you're a start, they let
you do it.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
You can do anything whatever you want to grab him
by the.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I can do any of that. I don't really have
any desire to play more of this.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
This is the most famous section, but it's worth mentioning
that the actual Access Hollywood tape is much longer than this,
and includes a protracted session where Trump is telling Billy
Bush about shamelessly harassing Billy Bush's co host Nancy O'Dell,
and then goes on to talk about her body disparagingly.
The woman he's referring to in the clip I just
(29:10):
played is someone that two are about to interview, a
soap opera actor named Arianna Zucker. This tape was leaked
to The Washington Post two days before the town hall
debate and was absolutely top of mind for both voters
and media. Trump defended the behavior during the debate, infamously saying.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
I apologize to my family, I apologize to the American people.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is locker
room talk.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The day after this leaks, Hillary Clinton condemns Trump's statements,
and Trump defended himself using the phrase locker room banter.
But just remember while these days, Trump's base will slurp
up any horrifying shit he can think of. At the time,
something this transparent, horrible, this close to an election day,
(30:03):
a lot of people thought he was done, including some
of his own supporters. Dozens of present and former Republican
lawmakers made public statements on the Access Hollywood tape as
further proof that Trump was unfit to serve as president
or as their candidate, while others who had endorsed him
condemned the comments and still supported the man. Particularly is
(30:26):
lukewarm soup eating VP pick Mike Pence.
Speaker 16 (30:30):
As a husband and father, I was offended by the
words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven
year old video released yesterday. I do not condone his
remarks and cannot defend him, and.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
It obviously feels naive now, but I can't overstate how
bad this was perceived to be for his campaign. At
the time, CNN called it the worst weekend for any
presidential candidate ever. I wasn't aware of this phrase, but
in American politics, a reveal of a damning further indictment
of Trump's character could be classified as an October surprise
(31:05):
or a late in the game reveal that could be
a deciding factor to swing undecided voters like Ken Bone
away from a certain candidate. And while the Access Hollywood
tape is the most remembered of Trump's October surprises, this
was actually the third damning thing that it hit his
campaign that week. On October first, the New York Times
(31:25):
reported that Trump likely avoided paying his taxes for almost
twenty years, and hours before the Access Hollywood tape dropped,
Trump said that the Central Park five should never have
been exonerated. It looked so bad for him, and liberal
media seemed to agree. They oscillated between disgusted with the
(31:45):
tape itself and started taking this preemptive victory lap, a
general feeling that surely this would be the thing that
would get Donald Trump out of the race. If not
the refusal to release the tax statement, if not, the
mass govzenophobia, if not the pending fraud litigation, surely this
(32:06):
The day after the tape was released, Trump tweeted.
Speaker 16 (32:09):
Certainly has made it interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Twenty four hours and that Saturday night, Alec Baldwin and
I can't, we just can't. Alec Baldwin parodied the moment
on SNL two nights before the debate.
Speaker 7 (32:22):
Mister Trump, this leaked audio showed you saying, you know,
I can't.
Speaker 14 (32:27):
I can't quite say it on live television, but basically
you said you wanted to.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Grab them by the book.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
For what it's worth, this was not a great weekend
for Clinton's campaign either. On the seventh, WikiLeaks began to
publish emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta that
addressed one of her massive vulnerabilities, the fact that the
candidate courting the left had been giving paid speeches to
Wall Street groups and refused to release the transcripts. But
(33:01):
a paid speech on Wall Street was nothing next to
the Access Hollywood tape, and it didn't register as Wiki
Leaks probably would have liked for it too, And this
left Trump on the major defensive. How is he going
to survive this debate when half of his party was
very ready to walk away from him? The afternoon of
(33:22):
October ninth, he retaliated, organizing a press conference just hours
before the debate with three women who had previously accused
Bill Clinton of assault and rape. Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones,
and Kathleen Willie, and a fourth person named Kathy Shelter,
whose attacker had been legally represented by Hillary Clinton in
(33:43):
Arkansas back.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
In nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
I had completely forgotten about this until Trump brought it
up at the debate itself, saying that the women were
attending the debate as his guests.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
If you look at Bill Clinton farward, minor words, and
his was action.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
His was what he's done to women.
Speaker 5 (34:04):
There's never been anybody in the history of politics in
this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you
can say any way you want to say it, but Bill.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
Clinton was abusive to women.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attack them viciously,
four of them here tonight.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
This is just so nasty to me, because Bill Clinton's
history of abusing women and predatory actions should be talked
about just as much as Donald Trump's history of abusing
women should. But Trump choosing this moment to highlight this
abuse is incredibly transparent. He's backed into a corner and
pointing at his former friends, the Clintons, and saying, I
(34:46):
know you are, but what am I to discredit his opponent?
Here's when Eda Broderick in a press conference Trump held
four hours earlier.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
Okay, I'm ready to Broadrick, and I'm here to support
Donald Trump. I tweeted recently, and mister Trump retweeted it
that actions speak louder than wards.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Mister Trump may have said some.
Speaker 12 (35:09):
Bad words, but Bill Clinton riped me when Hillary Clinton threatened.
I don't think there's any comparers.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
The stories of these survivors deserve a platform. Bill Clinton
is a piece of shit, but it's a valid discussion
that couldn't be coming from a worse source. I believe
Bill Clinton survivors, and I also think Trump was really
obviously using them as political pawns to make the words
he said in two thousand and five sound less significant
than Bill Clinton's alleged actions. He says as much in
(35:44):
the debate, and that might mean something if there weren't
ample alleged and proven actions of Trump's own.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He's bullshitting.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Here's how he's talking at that press conference.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
These war very courageous women have asked to be here.
Speaker 11 (36:00):
And it was a June Help.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Them, Loah, and the Access Hollywood tape didn't doom Trump's campaign,
as we now know, the lesson here. Never underestimate how
much people of every political.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Persuasion hate women.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
So it's this environment that is surrounding this group of
undecided or, as I think is a more appropriate term,
uncommitted voters who had questions about issues they felt that
neither candidate had sufficiently addressed. As Ken tells me in
our interview, the whole idea of undecided even being a
(36:36):
question after the Access Hollywood tapes had the participants kind
of on their heels and feeling foolish the day of.
They'd been selected weeks earlier, far before the tape came out.
But it's this moment that a random man in a
red eyes On sweater somehow manages to steal the show.
(36:57):
Ken was and is a normal guy. He worked at
a power plant in the area. He had a wife
and a teenage son. He'd been raised conservative and was
slowly unlearning a lot of it. He liked sports, he
liked anime, he liked video games. He was just some guy,
(37:18):
and he asked a question about energy policy because it
would directly affect his life.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Ken told me all about what this day was like.
It was very long.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
They took your phone, so you couldn't have access to
the outside world while on property, and because of that,
they gave the town hall members these little disposable cameras
to remember the event by some of the pictures that
when viral of Ken featured him with his disposable camera
taking a picture of the technical equipment that furthered this
vision of him as a geek. So Ken doesn't even
(37:52):
turn his phone off until well after the debate has ended.
By the time he left Washington University, he still didn't
know he was becoming famous. As the live reactions to
the debate were unrolling everywhere on TV and definitely on
social media. The general feeling was that Clinton had prevailed
(38:13):
as the winner of the debate, but not by as
much as Democrats hoped. She was still extremely vulnerable on
issues like immigration and healthcare. As for Trump, he'd made
a debate defining statement of dismissing.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Assault as locker room talk.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And other language implying autocracy over democracy, including threatening to
put Hillary Clinton in jail if elected, appealing to the
lock her up contingency. So people really glombed on to him.
Here are some tweets.
Speaker 16 (38:46):
Kenneth Bone is here to remind you it's sweater weather.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Thank you Kenneth Bone for breaking the tension with being
named Kenneth Bone.
Speaker 16 (38:56):
How will you protect my job as a card and
guess who?
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Hashtag debates Ken Bone an undecided voter, but not an
undecided dresser.
Speaker 16 (39:07):
US History Books, twenty one fifty and in that moment,
the Republic was saved by a man named Ken Bone.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
At the time, this was still unusual for debates. But
even in the midst of this chaos. By the time
Ken Bone arrived home in nearby Belleville, Illinois, he was
a star. Here's Jake Tapper the day after All day long,
my staff and I we've been pondering this important question
(39:35):
what makes Ken Bone so awesome? And Fox and Friends
the day after that.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
The votes are in and this undecided voter has won
over all of our hearts.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If I showed you every news broadcast that made reference
to remember that guy in the red sweater from last
night with the funny name, well, we loved him, it
would be here for hours. People loved him, and Ken
was pretty receptive to the attention. Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
(40:23):
When the twenty sixteen election results came in, I'd just
been broken up with by a malevolent prop comedian who
fears me to this day. And this week we're revisiting
the saga of ken Bone, just in time for another contentious,
consequential election cycle. We're voting anything but down ballot makes
me feel sick as Ken starts to make public appearances,
(40:45):
just showing up on TV in the order he received
requests in we see him speak to people across the
political spectrum, because at least initially, he was embraced by everyone,
and in a move that reminds me of Hawk to
a girl. More recently, both liberal and conservative media establishments
made attempts to claim Ken as it were, but Ken
(41:08):
would not be claimed. So, having now thoroughly revisited this
cursed forty eight hours of American history, it's a little
easier to understand why ken Bone became such a big deal.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Does it still seem a little random?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Sure, But Ken Bone was the only fun part of
watching the debate, a living meme in the middle of
an eventful and largely depressing couple of news days. People
just fucking went nuts for this guy. I mean full disclosure.
On October eleventh, twenty sixteen, I published a fake diary
(41:47):
written by Ken Bone in Paste magazine, And so if
you're Ken Bone, you're presented with an immediate choice of
whether you want to engage with this or not, and
he decides he's going to the next few days are
filled with ken interviews, and his general vibe seems to
be just as sweet as the man we saw on
screen at the debate. His social media following exploded.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
His Twitter follower.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Count went from literally seven to over two hundred thousand
in the space of a few days. Everyone was talking
Ken Here he is with Anderson Cooper.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It's been very strange, and I'm very sorry to all
the Ken Bone twenty sixteen people, but I am only
thirty four years old. You'll have to wait for Ken
Bone twenty twenty. And if you want to addresses me for Halloween,
you better be quick. The sweater is sold out on Amazon,
and these mustaches don't come.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Overnight with Jimmy Kimmel, very grateful to you for spending
time with us tonight.
Speaker 16 (42:45):
Do you have any idea of how adorable you are?
Speaker 4 (42:48):
First, I want to say.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
That's a definitive guess.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yes, Okay, good?
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And on Comedy Central Late Show at midnight, Trigger warning
for Chris Hardwick jump scare.
Speaker 11 (43:00):
Thanks Chris. It was a real thrill to see ken
Bone facts trending on Twitter on Monday night. I loved
every one of them, but I can't pick my favorite
because I'm undecided, So I'm going to read a few
of the best mines.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Sure, it's basically the same three things over and over,
but it's not like the other news turn of the
debate left anything remotely fun to talk about. In the
week after Trump's obfuscation about the Access Hollywood tape, a
number of women decided to come forward with their own
allegations about how Trump had treated them to give further
(43:33):
credence that the two thousand and five tape was no joke.
And while the Stormy Daniel's allegation wouldn't become public, then
many women's stories did. I could find fourteen accounts of
women coming forward with allegations of harassment and assault from
the past that were reported in the week after the
October ninth debate. It was nuts, but at first ken
(43:57):
Bone was something everyone could agree on. He was profiled
just about everywhere that first week.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
The New Yorker, The New.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
York Times, Fox, the Washington Post, you name it. They
wrote about him in those first few days, and most
of the pieces have a similar tilt that Ken Bone
was a breath of fresh air, the working class everyman personified.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
He was good on.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Camera, he didn't seem to be hawking anything, and bonus,
he was using many of his appearances to raise money
for a local shelter for the unhoused, the Saint Patrick
Center in Saint Louis. But we know this story right,
Something was going to give. The sudden increased public scrutiny
led to a phenomenon we've talked about on this show before,
(44:42):
the inevitable milkshake duck moment. Fox's Asia Romana described the
pattern in twenty twenty.
Speaker 16 (44:49):
One as a mild mannered commoner unexpectedly gains attention and
briefly captures the heart of the nation, or at a minimum,
the bored attention of Twitter and the nation's meme makers,
only for a horrifying revelation about them to surface before
fifteen minutes of Internet fame have even elapsed.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And less than a week later, Ken's milkshake duck moment came.
He was asked to host a Reddit ama Ask Me
Anything to adoring commenters. Introducing himself from his actual Reddit
account username Stan Gibson eighteen.
Speaker 16 (45:27):
He writes, Hello Reddit, I'm just a normal guy who
spends his free time with his hot wife and cat
in Saint Louis. I didn't see any of this coming.
It's been a crazy week.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
The replies match the fawning nature of how ken was
talked about in those early days. A kid commented that
he wrote an essay about him called ken Bone Our
Deliverance from Evil, and there were questions about his opinions
on certain political policies and how he met his hot wife.
But some people clicked on the username Dan Gibson eighteen
(46:01):
and found some pretty sketchy Reddit user behavior. I'm not
going to rehash it all here. Ken Bone has addressed
it publicly numerous times and in our interview, But the
comments people pulled to disseminate on social media ranged from
as innocuous as ken commenting on not Safe.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
For work pictures who Cares.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Too genuinely offensive comments about Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes, and
the murder of Trayvon Martin. This last one is worth
honing in on. In particular, Ken.
Speaker 16 (46:31):
Wrote it doesn't have to be a one or the
other view here. From what I read about the case,
the shooting of Trayvon Martin was justified. But from what
I've learned of Zimmerman through statements, interviews, and behavior, he's
a big old shitbird, bad guy legally kills kid in
self defense. Sucks for everybody, including us due to the
(46:52):
media fuckery.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
This is the statement that has brought up the most,
and there are many interpretations of this comment that made
it sound like ken Bone was completely okay with Zimmerman
murdering Trayvon Martin in cold blood, which doesn't seem to
be the statement here, but the fact remains that it
is deeply insensitive and beside the point. And once these
comments were discovered, ken acknowledged and apologized for them in
(47:16):
short order, and apologizing to Jennifer Lawrence directly and saying
this about the Trayvon Martin comments on October fourteenth.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
There's some that I'm not super proud of, and a
part of my message is being positive and holding our
leaders to a higher level of discourse, so I need
to hold myself accountable for that too. I like to
feel like I've grown and evolved as a person in
the time since then, if I could personally apologize to
any of the people who are offended by what they read,
then I absolutely would do that, and maybe I'll get
(47:46):
that chance to this platform. But if you were offended
by that and you listen, I take responsibility for that.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
And so less than a week after ken had become
a public figure, he was persona non grata. Time This
started some conversation around what this kind of Internet fame
really meant and if it was productive to dig up
whatever one could on someone who was a normal person
just days before. What are we really getting out of
(48:14):
headlines like the New York Posts ken Bone is actually
kind of an awful guy, the New York Times.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
We may be leaving the Ken Bone zone.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
GQ's j Willis meditated on it in a piece at
the time called the Internet came for Ken Bone and
it will drag you too.
Speaker 16 (48:32):
Now you may be thinking, wait, I haven't copped to
insurance fraud or publicly expressed my appreciation for pregnancy porn.
But the Internet is an involuntary time capsule that preserves
all forms of imprudence. If you were wearing Ken Bone's
grass stained new balances, it would just be some other
(48:53):
offensive element of your past displayed as proof of your fallibility.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
So this was written eight years ago, when the rhythms
of random online fame were beginning to be policed and
reported on by online users as much as, if not
more so, than traditional media outlets. Like if Ken Bone
came to prominence twenty years earlier, no one would know
his feelings on police brutality or pregnancy porn. That's the
(49:19):
development and how fame works now, and Ken certainly lost
a lot of fans as a result. Nearly a decade on.
The milkshake duck phenomenon does feel like an inevitability unless
you've lived a completely moral, upright life online, which almost
no one has. This isn't to excuse Ken's comments at all.
(49:40):
He doesn't excuse them himself. But I think what defines
the main character is how they managed to navigate these moments.
Did they grow defensive and double down? Did they say nothing?
Did they apologize? Do they really apologize? All of these
are functionally pr questions, and when someone becomes famous overnight
that they're supposed to be able to answer right away.
(50:03):
So a few days after becoming notorious, Ken Bone had
to do something. If he wanted to maintain his persona
in any way, and he does. He apologizes for the
comments and leaves them up on his Reddit page so
as not to be seen as scrubbing his problematic online history,
and he keeps going. We're going to talk about all
of this in our interview as well. So at the time,
(50:26):
if you were a Ken fan, all you could do
is make your own judgment and see if he took
the constructive criticism to heart and move past the unproductive
element of dog piling, because there are elements to this
process that are extremely unproductive, the fact that ken Bone's
family was threatened, that his home was swatted, and he
(50:46):
was made to feel generally unsafe. But even as all
this is going on, Ken never hired a manager or
a publicist or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
All the appearances he made during.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
This intense month leading up to the election were done
around his work schedule and facilitated by Ken And during
this peak moment, even through the controversy, there was no
shortage of interest.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Of giving this guy attention.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
He tweeted out an ad for Uber which almost got
him in trouble with the.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
FTC whoops, and of course Izod, the.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Maker of the original Red Sweater got in touch and
put Ken in an ad on October twenty first, called
ten Bones, fifteenth Minute That's all but like worshipful and
includes Ken's wife Heather.
Speaker 17 (51:30):
I'm about as pumped up as I can get, and
it's just fun letting it carry me.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
So you just never give up hope.
Speaker 17 (51:40):
Why I'm there right on.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
To see other people who enjoy him as much as
I do is real fun.
Speaker 17 (51:48):
It's really important that we don't give up on the
political process. I really do expect at the end of
the election that it winds down and when it's over,
it's over, and I'm happy to have played my role.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Someone tell passed Ken what happened. And even after the election,
Ken continued to make appearances, one of which he used
to reveal that he eventually did become a decided voter
and went for Hillary. But the intensity of this first
week was never matched again. His rise was steep and
connected to a specific moment, and the fall was pretty
(52:26):
steep too. And then the media cycle kept moving, and
in October twenty sixteen, that was no joke back at
the election ranch Hillary Clinton's real October surprise. The thing
that was thought to be. The final wrecking ball to
her campaign didn't come until the end of October, when
FBI Director James Comy announced that her email server had
(52:49):
put classified insensitive information at risk and that there would
be an investigation. That investigation was concluded two days before
the election and stated that no charges would be filed
and weren't necessary, but the damage was already done. Clinton
had been leading in national polls by as much as
seven points before this announcement and plummeted after the investigation
(53:12):
was announced. So as the US began to navigate what
the fuck a Trump presidency was going to mean after
he was declared the winner, ken Bone had to come
to grips with what his viral fame was going to
look like moving forward, and what he wanted to do
with it.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Like most main.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Characters I talked to who had a life prior to
their moment, ken Bone had no desire to quit his
day job or move to Hollywood, but he did want
to engage with this fame to the extent that he
could manage it alongside his normal life. While he remained
firmly in this debate moment for most people, here are
some of the appearances he made in the years that followed.
(53:50):
In twenty seventeen, an appearance on Bill Maher, I.
Speaker 16 (53:55):
Want to convince you that you should have voted for
Hilary instead of Godzilla.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
Well I didn't. I'll tell you that much. I didn't
vote for Godzilla. I didn't vote for Jill Stein either,
not Godzilla and not Jill Stein.
Speaker 4 (54:06):
But are you going to reveal who you did vote
for now?
Speaker 3 (54:09):
I'm waiting for my book deal to come through.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Is that true?
Speaker 11 (54:16):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
I promised before the election that I wouldn't say who
I voted for because like it or not, we're obsessed
with celebrities in this country, and even like an F
list celebrity like me, people put stock in my opinion
and it's not fair to the democratic process if I
tell them what to believe. You're an informer. That is
your job to inform people, educate them, entertain them. I'm
(54:39):
a random due that works at the power plant. People
don't need to be informed by me.
Speaker 4 (54:43):
Someone cooked here.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Ken also made an appearance at Sea Pac in twenty seventeen,
serving as a representative for a polling company called Victory
Insights and an app called Donor Decks, which was a
software that aimed to get normal people involved in politics.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
I and just running into these consultants or these committees
can cost you as much as a family makes in
a year fifty sixty eighty thousand dollars. Well, donor decks
can get you in touch with potential donors for a
couple hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, it kind of sounds like a scam. He was
a paid spokesman and it's not around anymore. These appearances
were both twenty seventeen, so you can see even though
he ultimately votes Democrat, there is still a conservative tilt
to what Ken is interacting with publicly. But even as
he's doing so, it's clear that he's deeply unsatisfied with
(55:32):
how Trump's presidency is going, so for a while, he
still appears to be the independent voter he became famous
for being. In general, his appearances and his opinions don't
really seem to follow one political line or another, but
that changed over time. As the years pass Ken continued
to occasionally engage with the press while maintaining his normal life,
(55:54):
and in doing so, he did a lot of the
things we now associate with niche celebrity cameo account where
you could order a custom video message for your friend
from Ken Bone, a short lived podcast called The Ken
Bone Show, and he also did paid talks around the country.
But over the years, you can sort of track a
shift in his politics just by scrolling up. There's a
(56:17):
lot of stuff he was posting in the back half
of the twenty tens that I don't agree with at all,
particularly around gun control. But the closer you get to
the present, the more left Ken seems to go. He
maintains his Internet presence and would occasionally speak out on
political issues that meant something to him. The way COVID
was catastrophically handled in the US had a demonstrative effect
(56:39):
on Ken. He donated some of his cameo proceeds to
COVID relief and was extremely critical of anti VAXX freaks
who refused a social distance.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
He said he.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Voted third party in twenty twenty and was unsatisfied with
the two main candidates, and in the last two years
he's advocated for better public education on a indigenous American history.
He's been extremely critical of Israel, and he's called people
encouraging student protests for Gaza to be shut down Boot Liquors,
and he's advocated for healthcare for all.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Ken's kind of based.
Speaker 2 (57:13):
Now you guys, and in Part two, releasing next Tuesday,
we'll hear about this.
Speaker 1 (57:18):
Saga from the man himself.
Speaker 2 (57:21):
Part two with Kenneth Bone See you then, and before that,
a moment of fun. One more Cursed George W. Bush
Poll Bye.
Speaker 9 (57:31):
We got an issue in America. Too many good dots
for getting out of business. Too many obgyns aren't able
to practice their their love with women all across this country.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Sixteenth minute as a production of Whole Zone Media and Iheartwordtaps.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
It is written, posted and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2 (57:53):
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. He
Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog
producer Anderson, my cats Flee and Casper, and my pet
rock Bird, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Bye
Host
Jamie Loftus
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