Mmm, Hello friends, I am Robert Evans and this is again Behind the Bastards to show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Today with me is my guest who I will be reading a story about a terrible person to My guest is coming in cold. His name is Dave Ross. He is the host of the Suicide Buddies podcast and a comedian. Dave, Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me man. Thank you. Um, I'd already thank
you before, but you deserve to thank you? Isn't at least one more? But that one's going to be a secret thank you? Man, thank you? You know what I mean? No, no, because now I have to give you my third thank you now, but that thank you was planning for later. You can also say you're welcome if you want to save your thank you. I've never heard those words before. Right, Well, no one really is, all right, So today we're gonna be talking about a guy, Paul Manafort. What do you
What do you know about Paul Manafort? I know very little about Paul and Afford he was, wasn't he Trump's campaign manager for a half a minute? Yeah? Yeah, A couple of months. He was one of the guys that got fired, and UM, yeah, I really don't know any more than that, you know, alone, he's in jail. I did not know. Wow, Okay, yeah he's he's fucking in jail. Mueller caught him on a bunch of getting into that. I am viciously not plugged in to current events or
pop culture always my entire life. That's the sane thing to be. Yeah, it's more so now because I'm forced to be. But yeah, well all right, yeah, I'm gonna guess what most people listening know about Paul Manifford's Yeah, he was Donald Trump's campaign manager for a while. Uh, Mueller caught him doing some shady stuff and he's in jail now. And uh maybe he did something shady in the Ukraine, but they probably don't have fun the details, good stuff. We're gonna be getting into all that today.
But um, you know, Maniford is definitely most well known and most hated for the role he played in getting Donald Trump elected president. Um, and I the big point of this podcast to day is to let people know that Paul Manifford's work with the Trump campaign is probably the least objectionable thing he did in his entire life. Um yeah, he is a major bad guy and so far, I would I would venture to say he's done more
damage to the world than Donald Trump so far. I mean we're only two years into this presidency, so Trump can grow. But Paul Manaford is a world class historical great asshole. And that's what today's story is about. Oh my god, um wait yeah, yeah, So join me, won't you on a journey that I like to call Paul Manafort is just as bad, if worse than Donald Trump. And I hope a hype a fire ants sets up shop in his colon. That's a working title. Is that
the whole story? Because we can't talk about that for a while. I mean, how would you get fire ants inside of a man's colon? Horn surgery is involved horn surgery, so either at knife or either a knife or a horn, yeah, or I don't know, somehow some sort of funnel co were simm into sitting on a pile of fire ants for long enough, and you have to course the ants up into his rectum like it's a two part until they get up there, or he has to be held down.
Either way, it's workable. I think we can there's a there's a road to this destination? Um okay anyway. Paul Manafort Jr. Was born on April one, nineteen forty nine, making his entire life and career essentially one very dark April fool's joke on all of us. Uh. He was raised in New Britain, Connecticut. His grandfather immigrated there from Italy in nineteen oh seven and started a construction company.
But Paul's father, Paul Manafort Senor, wanted more than just the lucrative corpse burying mafia contracts an Italian contractor could expect to earn in the nineteen sixties. He wanted political power, so in nineteen sixty five, Manafort Senior ran for and one election to become the mayor of New Britain. He was a Republican and his easy charm made him popular with voters. Manafort Jr. Worked on his dad's campaigns as
a teenager. He has happy memories of going to bars with his dad, who buy rounds and drinks for and schmooze with potential voters. Manaport Senior was mayor until nineteen seventy one, and, as you might expect from the Manafort name, he was outrageously corrupt. Uh In nineteen eighty one, he was charged with perjury for lying in court about a
municipal corruption investigation. A major source for this episode is the Atlantic article Paul Manafort American Hustler, and it brings up a report from a lawyer, Palmer McGhee, which is a fun name for a lawyer cute, who was hired by New Britain to report on the hilarious corruption in their town. Quote in his findings, he pointed a finger straight at Manafort senor, calling him the person most at fault.
According to the testimony of a whistleblower, Manafort had flatly announced that he wanted to hire someone flexible to manage his personal office, a place that would quote not be by the rules, which is a very nice way of saying he was going to commit major crimes while the mayor of a town. Years later, in an interview, Paul Manafort Jr. Would say, some of the skills I learned there I still used today. That's where I cut my teeth.
What criminal mayor dad wow man. And so this isn't even his career yet, he hasn't even this is not even his final form. He was just starting on the road to being shitty and looking at his dad and going, but what if I was worse? Yeah, and I imagine his dad as the mayor from Jaws. I know that's I cannot recall Jaws well enough. Oh well, it's got a great shitty mayor, one of the great shitty mayor's and shitty mayor movies. Great. Yeah, yeah, I love a
shitty mayor. Oh man, it's one of my favorite. I love it when he become a shitty governor, you know what I mean? Yes, several y Rob Ford, that's what I'm talking about. Wow, I guess he's not a You know, I expected a Reagan reference there, and we didn't. You didn't give me one. That's nice. Yeah, I mean we could do that. We could do Chris Christie if you want um more. George Bush. George Bush for a while. Yeah, he was a shitty baseball team owner for a while.
A lot of shittiness out there. Yeah, the artist. Now, it's amazing the news today. James Gunn just just lost a movie for things a decade ago. But if you're a terrible governor, you can do anything. It doesn't matter how corrupt you've been. Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, it's amazing. You can become fucking president like several times. Yeah, what a great what a great system we've developed. Alright. Uh so Paul Manafort Jr. Hereafter the only Paul Manafort will be
talking about. So just forget, forget to set that, senior dude, got it. Uh he first, Paul Manafort first got into national politics in nineteen seventy six. That was the year President Gerald Ford ran for reelection. Manafort was his delegate coordinator and basically helped him fight off a primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. So always a Reagan connection. Lost that Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah against Gerald Ford was the president at the time. You know, it's pretty hard to unseat. Yeah, I didn't
realized we were talking about president for Yeah. No, I don't know why I would have thought that Gerald Ford would have beat Ronald Reagan in like a comptroller seat when they were one or whatever. He definitely would have beat Reagan in a fist fight, because if oh, man, if I think you're put I think of our modern presidents, Gerald Ford is probably close to the top of half presidence. I think could win in a fist fight. He's built like a boxer. Yeah, yeah, face, white face. He could
definitely take a punch. Yeah, yeah, for sure, Gerald Ford could take a punch. But in he did not succeed in winning the presidential election that year, which is won by Carter, which led to four years of Carter is um um in. Manafort took a job as the Southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign because Reagan decided he was going to try and unseat Carter, gave it another shot. Uh Manaford held this position for two years and used
it to begin his first experiment with dirty tricks. There was this guy, Neil Acker, who had helped Manafort and his partner Roger Stone a couple of years earlier, during the mid terms. Manafort, Yeah, that's the only proper reaction to Roger Stone's name. He's he's he's history. He's a monster. He is a monster, admittedly a monster. He says. Yeah, I like to piss people off. I like it when
people hate me. Yeah. Well, uh so, Manafort and Stone had worked at this guy, Neil Acker during the mid terms, and he'd been a big help to them. So manaforted Stone had promised to support Acker as a replacement for Roger Stone at the head of the influential Young Republicans group. But in nineteen seventy nine, when it kind of came time to put up her shut up, Manafort backed out of the deal and told Acker that now he wouldn't
help unless Ackers swore loyalty to Ronald Reagan. Acker wanted to stay neutral, and so Paul Manafort burned him to the ground. One week before the Young Republican convention, Manafort went to the delegates who had already promised to support Acker and told them to leave. Then he took over managing Acker's opponents campaign. Acker lost the election and what one of Manafort's whips called one of the great funk
jobs and party politics. Yeah, politics, people always have fun ways of talking about how they funk with the government and the planet. Man. This is why I love VEEP so much. It's the only show that's really accurately portrayed how much they say fucking funk job and make fun
of each other in our assholes, you know. In my private career as a journalist, I interviewed a number of congressional aids and like gubernatorial assistants and stuff like that, people who had worked in like national and high level state politics, and every single one of them said VEEP was the only TV show about politics that was accurate to how people talk in politics. Yeah, yeah, none of them. None of them chose the West Wing. Well, of course, not west wing is liberal porn, which makes it the
greatest TV show of all time in my opinion. But wow, it's soothing to watch the totally it's like a backrupt Nobody with that much like backbone and moral certainty has ever been presidents. There are no people that are that altruistic. They're just are not. And we all wish there were. We all flip out like they could be, but they're not. No, No, they just they just don't get that far in politics. So President Reagan won the election nineteen eighty with Paul
Manafort's help. It was the name of the guy that they buried, Neil Acker. Neil Acker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Neil Acker. Um. So in nineteen eighty Reagan wins with Paul Maniffort's help. Uh. And this gives Manafort the access and cloud he'd always needed. Uh. He was appointed Associate director of the Presidential Personnel Office. This meant he got to help pick the people who would work in Reagan's White House, which would be a huge benefit to someone who happened to also own a
lobbying firm. And on an unrelated note, in nineteen eighty, Paul Manafort started his very own lobbying firm with his good buddy Roger Stone and a man named Charles Black. Their company, Black, Manafort and Stone would soon become a DC legend. Now when you hear the phrase DC lobbyist today, it probably has a pretty strong negative connotation because now we just assumed that corrupt asked lobbyists from the n r A and the tobacco company is in the oil
and gas industry or constantly deep dicking our democracy. But it didn't always used to be this way. In nineteen sixty seven, there were just sixty four registered lobbyists in the entire United States. WHOA, yeah, this has not been a thing we've always done. In nineteen sixty three, several political scientists studied the few lobbyists in d C and concluded, and I found this quote in that Atlantic article, when we look at the typical lobby we find its opportunities
to maneuver are sharply limited. It's staff mediocre, it's typical problem not the influencing of congressional votes, but finding the clients and contributors to enable it to survive at all. So lobbying is like not a thing for a long time. Yeah, and in nineteen eighty lobbying was still a very small field. Foreign lobbying, like lobbying on behalf of a foreign country, was even rarer, thanks in part to our special bonus bastard of the week, Ivy Lee. I should have called
for an air horn there. I don't know, we can do it. Nailed it. Who is Ivy Lee? I've never heard this name. Most people have not. Ivy Lee was a PR man and one of the trailblazers of that profession. He is sometimes called the father of public relation. So he's like the George Washington of PR. Yeah. He worked for John D. Rockefeller. In the early nineteen hundreds. Mr.
Rockefeller owned a number of coal mines in Colorado. His company came into conflict with the United Mine Workers of America, a union who wanted better pay and conditions in exchange for dying and mining disasters. The union went on strike and set up a gigantic tent colony outside of the town of Ludlow, Colorado for themselves and their families. Things got heated and the National Guard was brought in to
break up the strike. This quickly turned into a battle, and twelve children were burnt to death inside a tent. A total of nineteen strikers and their family members, mostly their family members, and one National guardsman died. This became known as the Ludlow massacre, and it was very bad pr for Rockefeller and his company. Ivy Lee jumped to his aid and wrote a publicity leaflet blaming the child
deaths on quote agitators paid for by the union. He didn't quite call the dead kids crisis actors, but the implication was there. This inflamed tensions between the strikers and the National Guard that led to ten more days of violence. Another fifty people were killed in The actual Army had to be called in to calm things down via bullets. Ivy Lee was called in before a US Commission on
Industrial Relations and asked, in essence what the fuck? He explained that he and Rockefeller had been lied to by mine managers. They hadn't meant to massacre anyone, They just trusted those conniving managers who told them the strikers were super dangerous. So it wasn't Rockefeller's fault or his fault
that all those kids got burned to death. Right. It's also such a funny argument, like, yeah, no, we killed them because we thought that they were mad, and when we found out that they weren't mad or whatever, not that they weren't mad, but weren't they weren't monsters. Yeah, totally, And then we felt bad after we murdered them. Our first hour go to is murdering, but in this case
it was the wrong thing. We apologize. Yeah, in the future we might murder people, but so you know, every time we murder people from now on, it's gonna be because someone told us that they're mean. Yeah. So the miners started calling ivy Lee poison ivy Lee, which is you know, it's the ninth early nine hundreds. Nicknames are a new science. They were doing their best, I don't know, bad, Yeah, poison ivy you know you get it's itches, it itches, Yeah,
it's it's causes good, real real problems. Uh So, ivy Lee Poison Ivy Lee spent the next twenty years representing a variety of corporations. He eventually landed a contract with the I g Farban Chemical Company and traveled to Berlin in nineteen thirty four to give them advice. During this trip, he also had a meeting with a guy named Adolf
Hitler and another guy named Joseph Gebbels. He did free work on their behalf, speaking to a number of American journalists in Berlin to try and put a positive spin on their coverage of the Nazis. So I started my research on Mr Lee on a website called pr Place, which describes itself as quote where public relations and communications practice meets scholarship, where insight is derived from evidence, and
where questions of career development and professionalism are explored. Since this guy is the founder of PR in a lot of ways, PR Place at a largely positive description of it. Really, they talk about the controversy and he did some bad things with the Nazis, but he was just giving them advice. He was an unpaid consultant. You know. It was it was and it was a real you know, it was a bad error of judgment. But you know, he has a mixed legacy and we have to consider all the
parts of it. So that's their take on this guy. I am. We are fifteen minutes in I and I am tired. I am fucking tired. We are four out of twenty four pages in. This was a long week of research, my friend. Yeah, okay, so I might get coffee, you know, And I feel like I could leave, go get coffee and come back and not miss anything. Miss a lot of things, but not miss anything. Because the general theme here is all these people are huge pieces of ship, and you should probably you should feel validated
in being a nihilist. H I think it's fascinating that they're all pieces of ship in the same way the pieces of ship that still are dealing with their piece, right, Well, that's exactly what I mean. Yeah, And it's also even the term piece of ship is reductive. It's like evil if you believe that evil exists in a lot of ways.
Drunk with power, these guys and Paul Manifort are kind of the truest form of evil, because it's like, it's one thing to believe a crazy thing about the world, like that this race is superior, and to do terrible things based on that. It's another thing to support that guy just for cash. Absolutely. Yeah. It's also I mean, I think a lot of our conception of evil comes from people getting like I just said, drunk with power. You get power and you end up doing awful things.
You mad, right, exactly. But these people aren't even really that powerful before. They just want power, and so they're like, Oh, if I help this person by doing this manipulative thing, because I'm super good at manipulating people. I've learned over who knows where he learned how to be manipulative, you know what I mean. Like in comedy, you have to go to open mics to get good. Oh, but mikes
for these assholes are just like the people they date. Well, that and mining disaster and then yeah, and then the next level of mining disasters. Then eventually you get to
destroy an entire country. Yeah. Uh. So here's how that wonderful website pr Place summarized the meeting between Hitler and Ivy League, The founder of pr I Can't Even Lee, reportedly advised Girbels to see propaganda efforts in the United States and urged him to meet personally with foreign diplomats and press in an effort to establish better relations with them. So that doesn't sound too bad. He was asking them to stop propagandizing two Americans. Maybe this guy is a hero.
Only I dug a little bit deeper. It's a little bit deeper, and I found a Time article about Mr Lee. Now Time is much harser on his work with the Nazis. It also mentioned some facts pr Place decided not to include for some inexplicable reason, like the fact that Lee's salary with I. G. Farman went from three thousand a year to twenty five thousand a year as soon as Hitler came to power, which is probably just a coincidence.
It also fails to mention that IG Farban was nationalized, so his paid work for that company was also paid work for the German government a k a. The Nazis. Now Time includes a quote from Jonathan Arbach, author of Weapons of Democracy, Propaganda Progressivism in American public Opinion. Our box suspects the main purpose of the meeting was to provide the Nazi high command with quote some insight into
how Americans think about Nazis. It was also to advise them on how to make us quote, think more positively about Nazis now. Mr Lee was called to later testify in front of a Congressional committee for all of this Nazi stuff. Time reported on that testimony back in nineteen thirty four. So in the article they site themselves from
the past writing about Mr. Lee. I have told them, repeatedly, testified Mr Lee that the dissemination of the organization of German propaganda in the US was just a mistake and feudal, that it was bad business, that complete reliance should be placed upon getting news to the American people through normal channels of publicity. I told them that there were certain policies which Germany had on Jews which were bound to
antagonize American public opinion. So basically he advised Hitler and Gebels to x nay on the u J while they were trying to court public opinion in the US. This
is exactly what happened in the early thirties. The first couple of years after power or there was a distinct drop in the anti Semitic mentions and Hitler's speeches and in like their communications to foreign powers, which sort of culminated in the Olympics where they removed all signs of anti Semitism just long enough for the world to visit for the Olympics, and then when you know, put it in the high gear after that. So they took this
guy's advice. In other words, Now, Lee died almost immediately after testifying in front of Congress. Pr Place says that the stress of his testimony is what killed him. So hopefully right, like fuck the guy, but his mild hitler NG went on. They have ramifications that are still with
us today. Good ramifications. In nineteen thirty eight, the US pass the Foreign Agents Registration Act or FARA, which requires Americans to register with the government before working on behalf of a foreign government to say, influence public opinion towards an authoritarian regime in another country. Now we're gonna hear
more about Farah later. For right now, it's important to understand that another aspect of Ivy Lee's little freelance Nazi career was a decade's long depression in the lobbying for sketchy foreign governments industry. It just wasn't done for a while. Again, there weren't very many lobbyists anyway, and sort of the stigma attached to Lee had kind of stopped it from happening for quite a while. Black Manifort, so Paul Manafort is the one that brought him back here. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I wish I were dead. This is fucking crazy. That might might as well be the tagline for this pot. I wish I were dead, so I feel every time I watched the news. Now, yeah, oh sho, you got a tide pod sitting here. Yeah, we always have a tide pot in the ok. I'm we're millennials. Half an hour more, I'm gonna eat that ship. Um, you will die, right, probably? Yeah, has anyone ever done it? I think you'll die. It's it's hard to say. It might be one of those
things that's either way. We always have a tide pot around. I appreciate it. So yeah, Black, Manafort and Stone were the lobbing firm that brought this back with a vengeance. Um. Now, they started by working with standard, respectable American corporations like Bethlehem Steele, Johnson and Johnson, trans World Airlines, Tobacco Institute. Um, it's fine. Probably they probably weren't hiding anything. Tell me that was a university. Tell me that was a real
college that people went to. It's where you learned how to grow the best at back. Yeah. They were innovators in the lobbying field, and we're the first company to combine lobbying consulting and pr into the same business. Time magazine called them a supermarket of influence peddling. In other words, they were the Walmart of propaganda. Black Manifort and Stone was the first lobbying firm to also include political consultants, which meant they could run campaigns and then lobby the
politicians they put in power simultaneously. What a value. And like all true innovators, Paul Manafort wasn't willing to sit on his laurels. He and his partners introduced another lobbying innovation in working for both sides at once. In Louisiana, Vermont, and Florida, the firm represented both Republican and Democratic candidates in that year's elections, guaranteeing they'd have a lobbying in no matter who won. Oh yeah, see, we're we're well
into it now. Yeah. Uh, and we will. We will get back into it, but first we have to have some ads. And and before we get into the official ads, I'd like to talk a little about our unofficial sponsor, Derritos, who have not yet given us any money, but who I think. I'm a big advocate of Dorritos. After and after a long day of reading about terrible things. At least you're gonna have some dirits. You can have some derritos, which should be their new tagline. At least you can
have some derritos. I remember when Taco Bell first came out with the Doritos Locos tacos. Everyone in my world was making fun of them, but my immediate reaction was like, man, that sounds great, and then I went and had one, and you know what, it was great. And to this day I still eat them and it it hurts me, you know, it hurts my butt, but it's all right, yeah,
and it's sometimes works. Just need that dorrito's flavor, and you also need the other products and services that are advertised on our podcast and helped to support the show, which are coming up now. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're eating fruit, leather and our mouth. It's all good. Whatever kind of leather you have to put in your mouth to hear the rest of the story is fine. It's a rough one. So Paul Manafort, God, that would be the right drink, because gin is terrible and this
is a terrible story as Yeah, he nailed. It's like a woodpeg to chew on and gin to drink. Yeah, I want to feel like a junifer berries fucking me in the mouth. It's time for gin. I always want to feel like that. Yeah, okay, So we just talked about how Black Manifort and Stone, Paul Maniforts lobbying firm, had sort of invented the idea of just funding both sides of an election and not really caring who wins because you can sell you know, corporate access to them
either way. So The Atlantic around this time in the early eighties quoted a congressional staffer who joked, why have primaries for the nomination? Why not just have the candidates go over to Black Manafort in Stone and argue it out. So that's sort of the attitude in the belt Way about these people, and Manafort was very much into that attitude.
He filled out a questionnaire for the Washington Time somewhere around this this period, and he stated that Machiavelli was the person he most wanted to meet, which is like, okay, dude, Okay. So things started getting very busy for Paul Manafort in the mid nineteen eighties. He's revolutionizing the way Washington works. His first daughter, Andrea, was conceived in between conference calls. She later wrote that he quote, how much do you
know that this is what his daughter said? How does she know that that's I don't know how I'm just I'm guessing that's what Paul Manafort told her. Yeah, right exactly. I mean, I don't know. It's pretty ridiculous for me to call bullshit on any of these facts at this point, but that one's just like, it doesn't painting have a good light, she said. He quote hung up the phone, looked at his watch, and said, Okay, we have twenty minutes until the next one, meaning the next conference call.
So she's not painting a good pick, sure of her dad here, but we'll We'll hear more from Andrea later, especially knowing that he told her that, whether it's true or not, he was like, how old was she when he told her? This is clearly the story he wanted her to know. Yes, yeah, and it's wanted her to be us and evil when she grew up to yeah,
and it worked out. Um, So Paul and his fellow partners started taking home big fat four hundred and fifty thousand a year on paychecks, which back then was like a million dollars a year. The company was also full of money, so they started throwing massive yearly parties, golf parties, which got rowdy enough that they were apparently kicked out of every venue they booked. They never got to use the same venue two years in a row. Yeah. One former employee and good friend of Paul Manafort is quoted
in the Atlantic as saying this. A couple of women in the firm complained that they weren't ever invited. I told them they didn't want to be. So that's what that gross at all. Yeah, So damn it, these people, it's just garbage. Paul Manafort ran the company's social committee. It was his job to arrange these fuc duranch golf parties and also to pick themes for their yearly gathering. During one three year period, the themes were excess, exceed
excess and excess as best. These are lovely people may super creative, No, and you can just couldn't just say caligula. That would be more creative creative. You could be fucking pouring wine down your faces and having slaves peel you grapes. But now we just go with fucking Gordon Gecko bullshit, straightforward. So manaforts demanded a loyalty test for employees hoping to make partner, but they were lame loyalty tests. Like you hear loyalty tests and you expect him to be like
cutting people and stuff and planning them. But no, he would just like he had one guy entertained his friends from law school for several hours when he didn't want to deal with him. He gave two guys a day to find a Billy Barty impersonator for St. Patrick's day, so it would be like dumb ship like that. Well, it's a little better than what you would think. You know. At this point, I just I take points away from
him for not leaning into being aman. Yeah, if you're already ruining thousands of people's lives, yeah, you might as well demand a kidney from someone who wants to make partners so you have an extra kid what he's just lame over On the global stage. During the Carter administration, the US has started supporting some nice boys in Afghanistan called the Mujahadeen. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, liked this Carter era gun running operation and suggested it
be expanded into at least nine other countries. So when President Reagan was elected. The Reagan doctrine wound up being exactly what the Heritage Foundation had suggested, sending arms and
advisors to aid anti communist forces around the world. The goal essentially was to bleed the U s s R. White by engaging them in a bunch of Vietnam style conflicts, and we would just give guns to whoever was against the communists, and if they were, you know, dictators or murder squads or whatever, we supported people like the Nicaraguan Contras and the camer People's National Liberation Front and Cambodia.
So strong men, rebel leaders, and dictators the world over suddenly realized that if they could charm the Reagan administration, they could win a shipload of guns and money. But to get those guns and money, they'd need lawyers. Enter Manifort, Black and Stone or Black, Manifort and Stone as the actual name. But you know who cares fuck him. Yeah, So Paul Manafort particularly developed an expertise for helping these people. His first big fish was the President of the Philippines,
Ferdinand Marcos. Now I say a president, but I mean dictator. Amnesty International estimates Marcos tortured more than thirty four thousand people and had three thousand, two d forty political opponents killed, which was bad in the eighties and now sounds like like almost a nice guy just by the our standards of tyrants at the moment. Yeah, yeah, well, what did he do anything good? No? I mean he embezzled ten billion dollars of the country's wealth to his own pockets.
It is also funny that we're hearing you're telling me a story of one man, and that story just lightly involves other sort of I don't even know the word for its tail is a gentle caressing hand on the faces of like half a dozen different terrible people, are right, Yeah, a lot more because we could do a whole episode on Roger Stone because he's a real piece of ship. I feel like you can do and there's there's an episode.
There's you could do an episode on fucking Ferdinand Marcos because he's a real all of these he exclusively works with pieces of ship. That's that's the Paul Manafort brand. Um, he's single, he's about to be because he's in fucking jail and we'll hopefully die there. Yeah. He starts working for Ferdinand Marcos, who had again tortured thirty four thousand people by this point, and all of that murdering and
torture was bad. Pr Ferdinand set aside something like fifty seven million dollars for Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty four campaigns. He didn't actually pay all that money to Reagan, because it's illegal for foreign powers to directly donate to US political candidates. But Marcos did give Paul Manafort's company a whole lot of money, at least nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and possibly much much more. Manafort's job was to improve the image of
the Marcos regime, especially among the Reagan administration. That shouldn't have been a hard job. The first couple, the Reagans, had met the marcos Is in the late sixties and become good friends. Ronald Reagan had danced with Emelda Marcos. Nancy Reagan may have received in the legal emerald necklace as a gift from him, But by the midnineteen eighties, Marcos was just killing way too many people to receive open support from his old friends, the President and the
first Lady. Now we don't actually know how or if that earmarked fifty seven million dollars was spent. There are rumors that Paul Manafort himself was handed at least ten million dollars of it, some of it in cash in a briefcase like given to him million dollars he so Marcos had set aside. We know that he set aside fifty seven million dollars to help the Reagans, and hopefully he didn't give that directly to them, And we don't
know how much of that money was actually spent. There is a rumor that at least ten million of it wound up in Paul Manafort's hands, that Emilga Marcos just walked it over to him in briefcases filled with cash. Um. But we don't know because none of it was reported. Um An effort denies that he spent any of this money, that he received it, that he was that he spent. Manafort denies that he received any money that he didn't
report to the government. But as we'll see in the rest of the story, he has a history of not reporting all the money he gets from dictators to the government. So the rumor is that he was given at least ten million dollars by the Marcos regime personally as a bribe. And we know that one of the guys Reagan sent over to tell Marcos when he finally had to leave because the rebels were at the gates. One of the guys the US sent over to like give him this information.
Marcos kept saying to him, but I you know, I paid ten million dollars to Ronald Reagan's campaign. How am I not getting help right now? And he didn't know. This guy didn't know what he was talking about, because there was no record of that. Right. What it is is he he gave ten million dollars to Paul Manafort, who just wanted away with it, which is a thing that Yeah, Manafort says that's totally fiction and that he
did everything by the book. But we'll read the rest of the story and you can tell me how much you believe that Paul Manafort didn't just steal ten million dollars from a dictator. Right. Well, that's the thing with these people, right Eventually, I'm sorry, I don't mean to derail you entirely. When you really think about people like Roger Stone and Paul Manaford and Donald Trump, people who just funk with the world, they yeah, right, that's what
they do. I think they come from such a unique perspective on life, whereas I feel like, even though people do awful things all the time, are rude to each other, disrespectful to each other, we've all messed up, and we've all bullied and been bullied and all that stuff. I think a great many people are trying to do the right thing. But I think these in order to be like that, you literally have to think, like man, life would be fun if I didn't care about anyone else's
pain at all, it would be super fun. And I really think that's what it is. And I know that shouldn't be shocking to me. It shouldn't be that weird to me that people think that way, but I can't accept it. But I really think that they look at the world as an amusement park in which they get to do whatever they want, and they don't care about
their legacy at all. They just think, like, man, if I could have the most sex and a bunch of money, and my whole life could be an adventure, even if millions of people die, then that would be pretty fun. You only live once, right, And I think your big part, right. I think Roger Stone is that kind of guy, which is why he's very carefully picked the jobs he's picked. Paul Manafort wanted a legacy and wanted power, and that
will wind up being his downfall later in this story. Interesting, it wasn't happy, just enjoying life, Okay, So, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. So Politico looked deeper into the story of Marcos or of a Manafort receiving ten million dollars from Marcos after Manafort started working for Trump, and they found a lot of information that had never been made public because nobody back then had cared what some shady guy with connections to Reagan did in the Philippines.
I'm gonna quote Polico here. Manafort and his associates advised the couple on electoral strategy, the marcos Is on electoral strategy, and in Washington, where they worked to retain goodwill by tamping down concerns about the Marcos regimesman rights record, theft of public resources, and ultimately their perpetration of a massive vote rigging effort to try and stay in power in
the Philippines nineteen eight six presidential election. So Manafort became so well known in the Philippines as the guy who was essentially lying to the rest of the world about what was going on in their country. Corazon Aquino, the woman who ran against Marcos in that election, actually brought up Paul Manafort a lot during her campaign. Um Teddy looks In, a Filipino journalist, said, quote, Manafort's name was
like Voldemort today. So he made the Harry Potter And I'm not a guy for making Harry Potter connections to politics, but he fucked did so. That nineteen six election was a snap election, and I think it was Manafort's advice to Marcos that he holds a snap election. And the goal was people say, I'm not a Democratic leader. So if I hold an immediate election right now, you know, it happens out of nowhere. And it's just so he can prove that he's the man that people want to charge.
And they were hoping to just rig the election and coast on it. Manafort said at the time about this snap election, what we've tried to do is make it more of a Chicago style election and not in Mexico's. And back then, saying something was a Chicago style election meant that it involved blatant voter fraud, which it did. Um. Yeah, so after the snap election, the Marcos regime claims victory
that they solidly won the election. International observers say no, like this is clearly fraudulent and here is a shipload of evidence, and it leads to like a gigantic a three week standoff between Marcos his opponent, and the whole country standoff, like an armed standoff, like rebels taking to the round his palace or whatever, like the like the stereotypical the rebels are at the gates of the palace, shaking on the gigs and guns point like that happens,
and Marcos has to like depart the country with his wife. They wind up in Hawaii with one of Paul Manafort's employees, like flies out with them, and yeah, still just helping them get set up in their new line. Remind me real quick, what the investment for Paul Manafort in the Philippines and the Marcos government. Shipload of money, that's the that's a percent of it. They're giving him a shipload
of money. He's received on paper at least a million dollars a year from them, which is more like two million a year in our modern and he has almost certainly received at least ten million dollars in straight up cash for him, not for his company. Yeah, so this is a good business for him. So yeah, six was
a busy year for Paul Manafort. In addition to everything he was doing with the marcos Is, he also did a lot of work for a client named Jonah Savimbi, a former Maoist war lord who had become an anti communist war lord. His army kind of sword absolutely turned women into sex slaves and murdered children. So you can see why he needed the pr genius of Paul Manafort to refurbish his image. He's working with this guy the
same year he's working with fucking Ferdinand Marcos. Yeah. So Manafort had Sevembi make a pilgrimage to New York and d C to charm journalists and politicians with the hope of getting aid from the US government and former shipload of weapons to continue perpetrating his war. He had Savimbi were an expensive suit and right around in a stretched limo from fancy hotel to fancy hotel. Here's how A Time magazine article from nineteen eighties six the slickst shop
in Town, which is what they called. Manafort's firm described the charm tour. When Savimbi came to Washington last month to seek support for his guerrilla organization and its struggle against the Marxist regime in Angola, he hired Black Manifort. When the what the firm achieved was quickly dubbed Savimbi chic. Doors swung open all over town for the guerrilla leader, who was depardly attired in a Nehru suit and ferried
about in a stretched limousine. Dole had shown. Bob Dole had shown only general interest in Savimbi's cause until Black, the majority leader's former aid, approached him on his client's behalf. Doll promptly introduced a congressional resolution backing Unita that was his his organization's insurgency, and sent a letter to the State Department urging that the US supply it with heavy arms. The firm's fee for such services was report at least
six dred thousand dollars. It's a bargain, so yeah, that comes from where terrorist warlord give him grand and they get him in touch with the halls of power, who then send him missile launchers and ship and Bob Dole at the time was a senim majority leader. And then how did so All that happened was that Black was his aid and he walked in him was like, hey, would you do this? And he just did it. That's that's what you're paying for when you pay for Manafort,
Black and Stone. They have connections in Congress, and so if you're a warlord, you give them a shipload of money, they will make you look good. They'll advise you how to talk in order to be acceptable to d C. And then they'll go to their friends who were in Congress who they helped get elected and be like, this guy needs a shipload of guns, and we got plenty of guns. Why don't we give him some. Man, I'm realizing I'm super naive. I'm just like, why would they
do that? Meaning because they don't get because they don't care. Yeah, just and you're like money man, and I'm like what, Um, if you're disturbed. All of this was disturbing to people at the time because it was goody new at this time. UM Paul Manafort assured everyone who was disturbed that his firm was quote loyal to the president and added, we would never lobby against Star Wars for example. Ah, it's
such a piece of ship um. Paul Manafort also assured everyone that Black Manafort and Stone did turn down some jobs, like a possibly lucrative account with Momar Kadafi, So they won't work with everybody. Everybody now the lobby they worked with Hitler, No, that was Ivy. That was Ivy that was far too young to work with Hitler. Either way, they worked in thirty four percent. Paul Manafort would have been loving Hitler. They worked with Ivy Lee pretty rough. Yeah.
So the lobbying work with Savimbi, a warlord, also meant that Manafort and his company now had a vested interest in keeping the war in Angola going because they keep getting money as long as they keep and by the into the nineteen eighties, the country seemed close to peace, especially since the Soviets had stopped giving aid to angle Is communist government. So the side should have been able
to work something out. USSR stopped aiding the communists and Angle if you stopped aiding the insurgents, then they had to workout we want to keep the war going. Well, Paul Manafort wanted to keep the war going, and he was able to guarantee additional shipments of weaponry, which allowed
the war to continue into the late nineteen nineties. By the late nineties, more than two hundred people per day, we're dying in the fighting, and it's possible that the extension of the war that he's partly responsible for killed hundreds of thousands. Holy shit, he's a real piece of shit.
And you know, I have to think that a man like Paul Manafort has never enjoyed the cheesy crunch of a nacho derrito, because I think that a guy like Paul Manafort probably subsists entirely on fancy caviars and in four hundred dollar cheeses. He doesn't enjoy common pleasures like the doritos. True, there's no caviar flavored dorrito. There's not. Because they're an honest working man snap and for some other honest products that may or may not be angled
towards working men. But definitely support this podcast. Here are some ads and we're back. Goodness, those were some good products and or services. All right, let's get back into the maniforting. So we we just talked about sort of the lobbying work that Manafort did for Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines up until he got ousted by rebels, and the work he did supporting rebels and helping to extend a civil warrning Gola. Uh. And now we're getting into
the rest of his career. Um. Yeah. I think the best summary of what his firm was doing at this time was actually by his business partner, Roger Stone. He gave it last year or h and Kin Ruden's political Junkie podcast, so which I don't think is a gigantic podcast, but he said, of this era, black Manafort, Stone and Kelly lined up most of the dictators in the world that we could find pro Western dictators. Of course, dictators are in the eye of the beholder. You're saying dictator. No,
he's completely admitting it. And in two thousand fifteen, well, yeah, I mean that dude is a complete sociopath. Yeah, he is a hundred percent soulless. It's weird too, though. I mean, he's the only sociopath I'm aware of that is aware he's a sociopath and acts on it, like knows what sociopathy is and how it can be advantageous in the n Maybe isn't the sociopath He's he's actively bad. Yeah,
I almost, I almost. I hate him less than most of the terrible people today, just because he never seen there seems to I don't think there's any doubt in his head that he's making the world worse. Cares and it's just okay, Well, you just need to be stopped somehow, hopefully by just being ostracized politically in some glorious day in the future, other people who pretend to be good, I guess, or who we have to go after first, I don't know. I don't know what you do with
Roger Stone. So over the course of the nineteen eighties, Stone and Black of you know, Black Manifort and Stone got even deeper into Republican Party politics. Paul Manafort, though, did a little bit, started doing a lot less work in the US and fell in love with working for shady for an oligarchs. Um. He did continue to do some work in the United States. He was the deputy convention manager for George H. W. Bush's Republican Convention. Uh. It was at that convention in New Orleans where Paul
Manafort and Donald Trump first met. This is in nineteen eight Here's how Slate described the encounter. Trump was in town and curious to see how a convention was really run. Manafort thought it'd be neat to get his picture with the Donald. The two convened in a trailer outside of the Louisiana super Dome during a steamy weekday for a friendly chit chat. This friendly chit chat would eventually lead to a decades long personal and professional relationship between the
two men. For now, Manafort was by far the political senior of the two. He hadn't just succeeded in politics, he'd helped change the game entirely. See in eighteen sixty seven, as I said, there were sixty four registered lobbyists in the entire United States due to the lobbying boom that Paul helped ignite. By nineteen ninety, there were more than ten thousand registered lobbyists in the United States. That's Paul
Maniforts doing in large part. That's yeah. So by nineteen two, people with actual souls had started to take notice of Paul Manafort's work. The Center for Public Integrity published a report on foreign influence pedaling called the Torturers Lobby. They called it this because the people Manifort and his colleagues represented were guilty of torturing hundreds of thousands of people.
The report noted that quote. Both Kenya and Nigeria, who were clients of Maniforts, have widely criticized human rights records. Last year, Kenya received thirty eight million in US four and aid and spent over one point four million on Washington lobbyists to get it. Nigeria received eight point three million and expended in excess of two and a half million. Whom did both countries call upon to do their bidding for the US government? Why? It was Black Maniforts, Stone
and Kelly. They added a Kelly at this point. Yeah. Uh. Macaw Matua from Harvard Law Schools Human Rights Program stated of this quote, it's morally objectionable all this influence peddling. There's no doubt several of these countries couldn't afford these lobbyists without the help of American taxpayers. In other words, the aid that these dictators received subsidized their ability to
afford Paul Manafort and his fellow travelers. Wait to say that again, So they would get eight or ten million dollars in aid from the US and then they pay a million or two to Paul Manifford, so he was he was getting the US government to pay these guys and the Ganella afford to pay him because they were getting so much aid from the US. Right, that doesn't seem like it should be doable, it doesn't. It seems like the kind of thing that a sane in ethical
society would say. No. But yeah, at some point, at the very least, we never did. Um. So yeah, I'm gonna quote from that report the tortures lobby again. A spokeswoman for Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly told the Center that the firm does not quote attempt to explain away concerns about human rights. Instead, she said, we try to open a dialogue. So that's nice conversational tortures about torturing,
which they need more money to do more of. Well, you've got to be civil, yeah, and heard that somewhere recently. Civilities critical, It's the most important thing, even matter you're talking. You couldn't call a guy like Paul Manafort like a ship drenched ass nozzle because that's not civil. No, it doesn't deserve to be treated that way, even though he's enabled the deaths of hundreds of thousands. I mean, yeah, that's crazy, this person like committed genocide. It's sort of so, yeah,
he's definitely committed world class human rights violations culpable anyway. Uh. Spy Magazine wrote an article on all this with the wonderful title Publicists of the Damned, which is solid titling spy. Uh. They didn't talk to Paul Manafort, but they interviewed his friend and colleague, John Donaldson. I think Donaldson's interview helps explain how these fuckers justified their factory to themselves. They didn't talk to Paul Manifort, but they interviewed his friend
and colleague, John Donaldson. I think Donaldson's interview helps explain how these fuckers justify their fury to themselves. Quote when a friendly Congressional aid took Donaldson aside to express his misgivings about the black Manifort clients Kenya and Somalia, saying, John, these guys are real bad. Donaldson responded, Yeah, I know, but we're really trying to persuade them to clean up their act. Yeah, well for him, good for him, and I think things are going well in Somalia these days.
I haven't checked up on them since the early nineties, but yeah, it seems like a country that's just straight, straight rocket. Yeah. No, everything has been good there since the early nineties. Definitely seems like it seems like it. Um. Yes, So most of that article, the Spy magazine article folks to round a different firm Van Kloburg and associates, who are the PR dudes for Saddam Hussein. But Spy recognized and gave credit to Paul Manifort's company first starting this
industry and dominating it. They ranked all of the influence peddlers in terms of the amount of bloody hands and uh Manafort black yeah number one, but on hands rating, which is the right way to rate this industry absolutely Yeah, wait that was it was an American PR firm that these are all supported. This is I can't even handle it, man, I don't. I guess I knew, I knew it was this level of corruption, but wow, Okay, it's unspeakable. I
think I'm gonna need more fruit leather pretty soon. Yeah, fruit leather and Derrito's will help, will help cleanse our moral pal Yeah. So in the early nineties, Paul Manifort was a busy guy, as we've just gotten through talking about. But he was not too busy to help out a friend in need, a friend like his buddy Donald J. Trump.
Mr Trump came to Paul Manifort with a problem Peaquat Indians had opened up a casino that was apparently taking business away from Trump's casinos in Atlantic sit Now, it's hard to say what exact advice Manaford gave Mr. Trump, but Trump wound up testifying in front of the House Native American Affairs Subcommittee, and he said, among other things, those don't look like Indians to me. What yes? And so his argument was he was trying to convince them
they're not Native Americans. That's at West where he started. He was asked, what were they have been? People with like toner on Native American face? He was crazy what an Indian looked like in Congress and he responded, you know, you know. He also insinuated the mob was heavily involved with these Indian casinos, without any evidence. He claimed that Indian gaming had been quote a total disaster for Connecticut
man the origin of the phrase a total disaster. I feel bound by honor to read you this excerpt from a Hartford Courant article about his testimony. When it was finally Trump's turn, he discarded the seven page statement he was going to read. I had a long and boring speech, he told the panel. It was politically correct and something that would have gotten me into no trouble whatsoever. With that, he offered off the cup remarks about some of the things bugging him lately, such as the mob forget the
Justice Department shrug. Organized crime is rampant, people know it, people talk about it. Trump insisted, I wonder what j Edgar Hoover would have said about this. Now. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii, wind up getting in the last word. And that Hartford Corn article and his speaking on that in nine inadvertently provides the best summary of modern politics I've ever heard free speech reins, no matter how idiotic. Yeah,
he really nailed totally. So. Other coverage by Hartford Current at the time revealed that by this point Trump had been retaining the services of Black, Manifort and Stone for
years for their advice on quote, housing matters. When he was asked why he needed mister Manifort's services, Trump laughed, I don't know if this lobbying does anything, but they've represented me over the years and I'm very loyal because if we know one thing about Donald Trump Trump crazy left turn, it's weird because he he seems so maniacal and so self important that you forget that he's really
like socially incredibly smart. Yeah, Donald Trump, Yeah, he's he's dumb at so many things that you forget that he's a genius in one thing, right, absolutely, which is the most dangerous. There's nothing as dangerous as an idiot with a trick up his sleeve. I also wonder how dumb he is. I wonder how much of it actually is calculated, even like tweeting of like co Fe Fey, you know how on purpose that was? Yeah, it's it's I've just stopped paying attention to any anything funny because like he's
we should be laughing at him now. It doesn't matter how ridiculous the ship he does. He should anyway. This is not the Donald Trump episode. Although did he this subcommittee that those are those people were not Native Americans? Okay, no, No one had to listen to Donald yet. So this was still that beautiful period where you could just ignore him. Did they just call him dumb and move on? They
called him dumb and racist, like the people. Yeah, they were like, this was really racist testiment because he said they're not they don't look like Indians. It's insanity. Um. So during the nineteen nineties, Paul began a friendship with another guy to an arms dealer named Abdul Rahman las Here, who paid him like ninety grand and nineteen four to help broker a deal with a French politician to help Pakistan make submarines. It didn't end well and like eleven
people were murdered, but Paul Manafort still got paid. Um. According to The Atlantic, las Here was something of a bad influence on Paul Manafort. They quoted one of his friends as saying, Paul became aware of the difference between making three hundred thousand and five million. He discovered the south of France las Here would show him how to
live that life. So Paul is now hanging out with like a fucking arms merchant multimillionaire if not billionaire, and he realizes that like his just millionaire lifestyle is small, not enough. Yeah, so Paul starts spending less and less time at the office and more time jet setting around with Ellis here. Uh. He also started spending money like
he was worried it might evaporate. When his daughter Andrea decided she wanted a horsey, Paul Manafort bought a farm in Palm Beach and filled it with pure bred Irish horses. He also hired a full staff to take care of them. In nineteen and one, his firm gets bought by another company, and he makes a bunch of money, and he leaves in in nineteen five in order to set up another lobbying firm of his own, more focused on overseas deals, so he leaves. Black Man of hort and Stone gets
bought and he leaves after a couple of years. Um, but he keeps. He starts a couple of different firms, all doing the same thing. Yeah. Um, his life isn't all fun and games. His wife was injured in a horrible horseback riding accident in and by all accounts, he was very devoted to her while she healed. So that's okay, nice thing. Yeah. One way he seemed to deal with his stress was by buying houses. Often side unseane. He
just decide I want a new house, and boom. As Johnny Depp's example proves, this kind of lifestyle is not sustainable without regular injections of cash. Uh and since working with dictators wasn't always enough to make the bills, Paul decided to get it on a great scam opportunity with his arms dealer buddy las Here. Here's the Atlantic quote. In two thousand two, he and Manafort persuaded the bank to invest fifty seven million euros in a Puerto Rican
biometrics company. According to reporting by the Portuguese newspaper Observator, Manafort was the lead American investor in the company. His involvement helped justify the bank's investment despite evidence of the company's faulty products and lacks accounting. Elas Here is alleged to have extracted bloated commissions from the deal and to
have pocketed some of the banks loans. Manafort reportedly made one and a half million dollars selling his shares of the biometrics firm before the company eventually came tumbling down. So he's just fine fucking over everybody, damn yeah, uh so yeah. By two thousand and five, Paul Manapour is known as the guy. If you were a shady dictator or criminal looking to improve your image abroad, maybe get
in the good graces of US politicians. This led him to Ukraine and the employee of its wealthiest citizen, a steel billionaire named Renat Akhmatov. According to PolitiFact, Manafort advised one of Akhmatov's companies on corporate communication strategy. But it turned out Akhmatov was a friend of this guy, Viktor Yanukovich, who was really in a bit of a pickle. Now, Victor was the Prime Minister of Ukraine and a buddy
of the Putin regime. He wanted to move Ukraine closer in the geopolitical sense to Russia, but most Ukrainians, particularly in the western part of the country, did not want this. They hoped to eventually become part of the EU. It was a big issue for the country and it came up front and center in the two thousand five election when Victor Yunukovitch went up against Victor Yukashenko, who was pro West. Yukashenko was horribly poisoned with dioxin during the
campaign and Yanukovich was declared the winner. People thought this was shady and they took to the station yeah to protest. Uh the Supreme Court ordered a revote, which is apparently an option in some countries, and yeah, they held a revote two weeks later. So this guy Yanukovich calls Paul Manafort two weeks before the new vote and asked him to help save his ailing presidential campaign, which is very unpopular since he poisoned. That guy had to have been him.
Oh yeah, sure, I mean, of course, Um, I don't know why people don't like me. Yeah, yeah, Anyway, Manaford, being an honest guy, told him that there wasn't much he could do at this late hour, and Yanukovich did lose, but he wound up hiring Manafort shortly thereafter. The two worked together for nearly a decade. On paper, Manafort was an advisor to Yanukovich's party. In reality, he was also
helping revamp Yanukovich himself. Here's the Washington Post quote. Manaford and half a dozen businessmen, lawyers, and political analysts involved in Ukraine at the time brought discipline and focus that the Yanukovich led campaigns had lacked. He got Yanukovich to comb his hair better to stay on message during public appearances. He drilled them on talking points and told them what
suits to wear. He tried to control everything. A former member of Yanukovich's party recalled how people who represented the party would be dressed the words they said, their makeup and style lists, every small detail, and it's it's one of those things people at the time will say, he just advised Yanukovich to dress like himself and Comba's hair. Paul Manafort did because they were kind of the same size, and Manor was like, just be more like me and
you'll win the election. Wow. Did it work? Well? Uh, that's just getting a little bit ahead of us. Yeah. Uh sorry, I I know you're the one with the yeah spoiler. Yet did totally did, but it took a while. Uh. In two thousand five, Manaford decided he needed some side action while he was starting up work with this Yanukovich guy, so he went to a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripashka
with an offer. If a Leg would put up a shitload of money, Paul would put together a program to, according to the AP quote, influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States, Europe, and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's government. So Derri Pashka says he didn't wind up going through with this idea
and maybe it's true. In any case, that's where Paul Manaford's head was at in two thousand five visa v. Vladimir Putin, totally happy to pedal influence to the guy to the west. So yeah, Paul Manafort spent the early aughts using his American political know how to shape Victor Yunukovich in to the kind of guy who could win an election. Apparently Paul's a strategy was yet to make
you look and dressed exactly like him. Maniford also advised Ynukovich's party, the Party of Regions, to focus on one single theme every week, rather than come to grips with the opposition over a bunch of different issues. Just always say focus on one thing that week, you know, you don't ignore anything else, and just yeah, shout about that. I forget because there's so much death in in these stories that he's giving them political advice that seems to
be working. Yeah, he's advising him to act like American politicians in a country that doesn't have a long history of democracy, be manipulative. Yeah, and so he's just like, yeah, I just say one thing a bunch uh yeah, right, yeah, Now we're going to get into a lot more about Manifort's work in Ukraine and and how that all ended in blood and fire and horrible death, as well as
the rest of the Paul Manafort story. But that is going to have to come in another couple of days because this is the end of part one of our Paul Manafort podcast, So we'll get back into it on Thursday. You can hear the conclusion of this thrilling story. Until then, do you want to plug some plug doubles for the people? Oh sure, I'm at Dave to the Ross on everything.
That's da V E T O T H E R O S S, Twitter and Instagram, and it's my website and also listen to my podcast Suicide Buddies Suicide Buddies. I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I write Okay, just two letters. You can find this podcast at at Bastard's Pod on Twitter. You can also find our website behind the Bastards dot com. Or we'll have pictures from this episode and a list of all
of the many, many sources that were used. So yeah, come check us out next Thursday and we will we will continue to talk about what a fantastic piece of ship. Paul Manaford is. It's a little bit of a spoiler. He's probably the guy that we're talking about on this show that I have the most of a personal connection to because I reported extensively on the Ukrainian Revolution and on their civil war back in two and fifteen. So you can you can prepare for me to get real
angry in the next podcast. Can't wait. Yeah, it'll be exciting. H