Assassination Week #3: How The Reagan Assassination Attempt Made Everything Worse

Wilson Reagan. Um, with me today James Stout, Garrison Davis, Um and of course, of course, the ghost of Ronald Reagan, who was a regular contributor to our to our podcasts, along with the ghost of the Queen. And Yeah, now the ghost of the Queen has joined the team. Very excited. Um. So, obviously, John Hinckley shot Reagan. We're gonna get into a lot of detail about Mr Hinckley's life. This is something that

is joked about a lot on the Internet, including by me. Um, but you know, it's it's it's interesting because there's there's two strains of people who will like come out and tell you it's not cool to joke about John Hinckley JR shooting Ronald Reagan. And one of them is right.

which are the people who are like, well, actually like it's pretty messed up story, and he like it's it's kind of messed up to to laugh about this family's tragedy, because it was a family's tragedy, and the other people are like, no, it's fucked up because he had the hots for Jodie foster and what was actually going on

there was a lot more complicated um than that. So we're gonna talk about all of the things that happened in this shooting, which was messed up and which I probably shouldn't joke about on twitter, Um, because it's actually really bleak Um, and in order to understand both why it's sad on a personal level and why it's a

tragedy for the entire country. Um, yeah, I'm just gonna start by talking about John Warnock Hinckley Jr, who was born on May nine and more Oklahoma, which is about two and a half hours from where I grew up in Oklahoma. Unlike me, John's Dad, who was John Warnock Kinkley SR, was the chairman and president of Vanderbilt Energy. So they had lots of money, a lot of a lot of walking around money and vanderbilt money. Yeah, and like most people who have good money, they don't stay

in Oklahoma. Um, they have any owls and the vanderbilt is big must. I'm certain they did add owls to this story. As you picture John's childhood. Um, so their richest hell and they get the funk out of Oklahoma and moved to Dallas Texas when John was four, which is so far weirdly like my life in a lot of ways, although I was a bit older. Um, maybe that's why I didn't get the madness. So that's not why. Normally, getting kids away from Oklahoma really really fix his stuff.

But John was taken. John was taken to the only place more toxic than small town Oklahoma, a wealthy neighborhood in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. He attended highland park high school. This school where I would later lose several speech and debate competitions and when one or two as well. Um, it's where, if you if you're in the DFW area, the rich kids who don't have good drugs go to highland park, but which rich kids with good drugs go

to Jesuit because they're private school kids. But Highland Park is like the rich kids who are gonna like try to sell you a shitty ditch weed. Anyway, these are this is important Dallas Fort Worth context, and I assume it was the same when he was a child. Um, as far as I've ever found any information, he was a pretty your normal young man for that time and place. UH, there's no one really seems to notice anything particularly different

about him. Um, he does reasonably well in school. Uh, later in life he's going to express some racist thoughts in his diary and in other writings prior to the shooting. It doesn't really seem to have ever been a motivating factor in his life and to the extent that he had regressive beliefs, they seem to have been due to the fact that he grew up in a sheltered, rich, all white environment. Um, and that's not great for you. Um, shocked. Yeah, shocked one in Texas no less one right up in

the new republic describes his childhood this way. Perhaps it is fear of what lies outside that makes the interior of the family so rigid and subdued, like life in a well run bunker. The world of the hinkleys was the rootless middle class sun belt culture that nurtures pro family values, Christian fundamentalism and occasional mass murderers. Families move frequently, but without compromising their parochialism. Everywhere people are White, Christian Republican.

Joanne explains John's egregious prejudices by saying he had never been around people of other races. Somewhere outside there are malign elements, minority groups, rock musicians, big government and the cynical Gosmus cosmopolites who dominate the media. Mothers in this culture do not lavish attention on their children, but on their furniture. Now that is a coastal liberal elite like fucking paragraph. Trying to describe like people who grow up in this situation as someone else who grew up in

a similar area. I think most of that is pretty silly and, more to the point, it doesn't get to why John does this. We're getting to why John does this. It's not because he grew up sheltered and a little racist. Um. That is not why he shoots the president. Um. There is, however,

a bit of that that that does strike me as accurate. As, again, a kid who grew up near here a couple of decades later, which is the description of his childhood as life and a well run bunker, which is kind of how it feels to live in these wealthy enclaves in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I grew up in plain Oh, which is, you know, a couple of steps down the economic rung from Highland Park, but not all that far. and Um yeah, that's that's not a bad description of it.

It just doesn't generally lead to kids shooting the president. More often it leads to them shooting up heroin and then dying of heroin overdoses, which was the big problem in Plano when I was a kid. That said, it's also worth noting that his parents are not, as far as I can find, like fifties stereotypes, like his dad's not this super masculine I who's like mentally abusive to his kid. His his MOM's not like checked out. Neither of them are against the idea that their son might

have a mental illness and need help for it. In fact, it seems like they're kind of more open to the idea of reaching out for professional mental health for their kids than a lot of parents would have been at the same time period in nineteen seventy six, John Drops out of Texas tech to go to Hollywood and try to make it as a musician again. His parents are very supportive of him. One cannot say they didn't try

to help their son live his dreams. When he gave up on music and he wanted to be a writer, they paid for him to take a class at Yale. We'll get to that in a second. It doesn't go well, UM, because he's yeah anyway. But John's not being honest with his ambitions, nor is he open with his parents about his mental health. We now know that John Developed Schizophrenia as a young man and had a series of psychotic breaks.

When he would get money to do stuff like this Yale writing class, he would take it and buy guns. He did go to Yale, but it was mainly to Stalk Jodie Foster, who was going to ill at the same time. Um, now this is all occurring in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, which is the fucking Dark Ages for treatment of this particular condition and a lot of other conditions. There are not a lot

of good options. Among other things, I just said, he's not open with his parents about the fact that his mental health is declining. I don't know how he really could have been I don't understand. I don't think it's likely. It's certainly not the case. This didn't happen to John, but I don't think it's very likely for a young man in this time and place to be well equipped by his education or society to express what is going

on in his head to his parents. Um, and it's, you know, to be fair to his parents, they're not equipped with a lot of like, you know, an ability to really help him out here, and they're doing the things you would want them to do. Again, they repeatedly are bringing in professionals to try to help. Um. None of it is particularly useful, but it's not for lack of trying. Um, like a lot of people who struggle with similar mental health issues, John Seeks refuge in fiction.

Unfortunately for everybody, the movie that he finds himself most drawn to is taxi driver, and I think most people are aware of this part of it. It's a bad choice. That's a really bad choice. Yes, if he had found maybe adventure time or something, it would have been a lot healthier, but instead taxi driver. If you haven't seen it. There's the main characters. His Kid, Travis bickle, played by

a very young Robert de Hero. It is weird to watch him because we're also used to old man Bob Denro Um, who is thinking about assassinating like a presidential candidate, and then kind of through movie magic, rescues a child prostitute, played by Jodie Foster, from a pimp. Um, and Hinckley thinks the movie is kind of talking to him and providing him with like information about how he can fix

his own life. He starts dressing like Travis bickle. He starts wearing like an army jacket and boots and drinking the way that bickle drank. He starts buying guns. He gets really into guns for you know. Um, he starts, you know, in letters that he's writing home to his parents. He starts talking about this relationship he has with a woman named Lynn, who isn't real but who sounds a lot like one of the women that Travis Beckel has

an interest with in the movie. Um. And Yeah, this is kind of the start of his obsession with jodie foster. And there are people who will like say that he's a pedophile because she's thirteen. In the movie. That doesn't seem to be the case when he is actually stalking her and most obsessed with her. She is eighteen and he is stalking her in real life and calling her on the phone and stuff, which is like bad and messed up. But he's not into her because she's young.

In this movie. He's into her because he's he's kind of losing his mind and obsessing with her. Right. So, while this is all going on kind of in the late stages of this, his parents bringing a psychiatrist Um again, they're they're willing to fund and support him and seeking professional help. The doctor they wound up getting for him. I don't know if he's a bad doctor for the time,

but he's wrong as Hell. He kind of looks at the fact that John has been normal, quote unquote and quote unquote, in high school and like at the start of his college career, and so he looks at this kid who's like seems to be developmentally normal up to a certain point and then goes off the rails and says, well, it's because you were sheltered and coddled by your rich parents and you're just lazy, right. That's that's that's what

this guy says. So a big part of his like advice to mom and dad is you gotta cut him off. You can't. Can't keep giving him stuff, can't keep giving him money, can't keep taking care of him. Um. So while this is happening and this guy is like making them make plans for John to be less reliant on his parents, John Hankley is getting way more into guns. He does a lot of target shooting. He also plays a lot of Russian roulette with himself alone in his basement,

which is not not great. Um, in Christmas of nineteen seventy nine, he takes a very famous photo of himself holding a handgun to his temple. Now John is increasingly harassing jodie foster in this period. Now, what he's doing is not he's not just obsessing with her and it's one sided. He is reaching her on the phone. They talk a couple of times, yes, they do. She is always very terse in their calls. Always you can tell is kind of frightened, but is very controlled and careful.

I would describe the way she handles this is very responsible and, like you can tell, she's talked with like people. I think like her manager or something and been like I have been advised, like I don't want you calling it. She's very tries to be very clear here. Um, and I think handles this as well as a person can possibly handle, you know, being stalked in this way. I believe he's able to get her number because, like, it's

the eighties and people just have numbers in the phone book. Um. Again, she's kind of taking a break from Hollywood right now and is going to Yale. Um, his obsession with foster veers between these kind of like fantasies of like harming her or harming a guy that she's with, or harming himself and eventually harming the president of the United States. Now he is not want to shoot the president for

political reasons. He has no kind of particular her anger at the president that he wants to work out with a gun. He wants number one to impress her and he wants everyone to know his name and know his name associated with jodie foster. Right, because, again, he's very ill. Um, he starts following Jimmy Carter around. He goes to like three different Jimmy Carter rallies in D C and in Ohio. There's video of him twenty feet away from Carter at one point. He probably has a gun on him. Um,

like he gets really close to Carter again. One of the through lines here is that, like presidential security wasn't great a night. Yeah, it's not very good. Um, Carter. John Thinks about shooting Carter. He's probably there and equipped to do it, but he just can't get himself into the frame of mind to shoot Jimmy Carter, which is understandable because it is. It is Jimmy Carter right, like he is a hard Amanda want to shoot to death. So there's a moment where he like yeah, so he's

he's kind of bouncing around. After this period where he like is he thinks about shooting Carter, but he doesn't. He is in communication with this Nazi ideologue and they almost have a meeting, but they don't. Um, that's all kind of obscure, kind of unclear. And then on October six nineteen eighty, he gets arrested at the Nashville airport with a briefcase full of handguns and a pair of handcuffs. Now,

hoops hasn't been in this situation. The gun bag and oops, yeah, he says he's just trying to sell them and they're like, well, you still can't get on a plane with a bunch of guns, Johnny. This is yeah, this is pre night eleven. So he you have to assist. He's looking weird. He's like sweaty and in an army jacket and talking to it, and they're like, well, we've literally never searched a single person before in the entire life of this airport, but

let's check this guy. What's this massively heavy brief case? There's a fun there's a dude just walking in with a Stinger and they're like no, no, let that guy on, but we gotta check John Ainkley Um. So he flies to Dallas, where he buys more handguns and some explosive twenty two caliber bullets. We will talk about that in a little bit, but they are explosive bullets, twenty two caliber bullets. There are bullets that are to explode on impact.

Is he like reading soldier of Votune magazine at this point? Because this is nobody. He's like a gun culture. So I haven't we have to assume. I think his family's kind of casually conservative. He is kind of maybe as is embodied by the Nazi thing, probably dabbling in some areas again. I think that's that's certainly not good for him. It's also, I don't think politics. I haven't seen any

real evidence that politics is a motivating factor. And what this guy is doing, Um, he does get explosive bullets. Probably helps that he has explosive bullets in terms of making this less dangerous. These are not good explosive bullets. They are meant to be fired out of a larger weapon than he fires them out of, but they are supposed to. Basically, the idea is this. These are twenty two caliber round, so the idea is that this little explosive charge in them makes them more like a thirty eight.

So we're not talking about like military grade weaponry or anything here. Why is he doing? You may not know, of course, but like if he's a massive gun dog, he's not a massive no, gun culture is different than right. He's buying a bunch of handguns. He's shooting a lot. I don't know that it would be. He's not particularly good or knowledgeable with right. Okay, yeah, yeah, but gun cultures very it's harder to get information about guns right. Maybe the day, he would have gotten a lot more

into you like just flipping through magazines exactly. You can't look something up online. Yeah, yeah, he's twenty two, good for assassination, just exactly. And this is also like this is what he can afford. He gets kind of he's lost his better guns right their property of the state, so he winds up with this twenty two and he gets these explosive bullets to try to make it give more of a kick. Obviously, the thing that's going on in the background here is that Jimmy Carter and Ronald

Reagan having a presidential election which Reagan wins. Um, we'll talk a little bit about kind of that a bit later, but that happens. Reagan is the president elect. Um, he flies home, Hinckley flies home. Things continue to deteriorate in his own life. He's continue to like travel around. John Lennon is assassinated and he kind of goes a little bit nuts over that because he loves John Lennon. Also might kind of think that he is John Lennon. So that does not help his mental state. He visits the

the the what is it? The shrine to him in New York at one point and kind of. When he gets back in March of nine, his dad cuts him off basically like says, you know, you've got your here's your car, here's two hundred dollars. We can't take air of you anymore. John, and I think this is his dad basically trying to take that psychiatrist advice of like it. We need to have tough love. He has to be

forced to kind of get his ship together. But John Hinckley is not really capable of getting his ship together because he is profoundly ill. So he uses that money to pay for hotel rooms in Denver where he sits alone watching television with a gun. Um. Not Great Treatment for schizophrenia. Reagan wins the election, uh, in what was a sweep electorally but fairly tight in terms of popular vote. He's got like fifty point five percent of the popular vote,

something like that. It's pretty close. And soon after taking office he gets hammered on a bunch of stuff. Right, the economy is not great, he's this, he's he's back. He's like going for a bunch of far right policies to unwind the new deal, a lot of which are unpopular and some of which, he said he wasn't gonna do and debates with Carter. He's not. He doesn't have the kind of traditional grace period most presidents get where

they're broadly popular. Right, Um, it's not looking great for kind of the midterms, is what I'm getting at Um. So Reagan's a is struggling to right the ship, trying to figure out like, how do we how do we fix all this? Reagan or Hinckley while this is going and gets convinced that like shooting the president is a pretty good idea. He doesn't have a lot of other options. He's kind of like running out of money and he's able to get a little bit more from his mom,

but he's he's increasingly unhinged and alone and desperate. On March twenty nine, he checks into a hotel in D C where he finds in a local paper the president's schedule. He loads his twenty two caliber revolver, he writes a letter to Jodie foster and he travels to the Hilton where the president is set to deliver speech to union workers. Here is how John's letter to uh to her ends. Quote. I will admit to you that the reason I'm going ahead with his attempt now is because I just cannot

wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do something now to make you understand in no uncertain terms that I am doing all of this for your sake. By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jody, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your respect and love. I love you forever,

John Hankley. It's not great. Yeah, yeah, not a great letter to get, not a great letter to send. was was this actually like delivered in the mail? I believe so. Yeah, I think this she ends up getting this. I mean, like she has to come to court and stuff when he goes on trial. It's like something he kind of demands and I think she does to just make it easier for things to move along. Um, obviously she. She

does nothing wrong at any point in this process. She's just living her life and this guy is out of his out of out of his head and has easy access to guns, Um, which is a problem at PM on March nine. One John Hinckley JR opens fire at the president's entourage from just a few feet away. Reagan had been speaking to a bunch of union guys at this this thing at the Hilton Anyway, and they're kind of like walking out into towards the Lima when this happens.

John's first shot hits James Brady, the press secretary and former PR man for Philish loafly in his head. Uh. He then wounds a police officer and a secret service agent. He actually does not hit probably doesn't. I don't. I think there's still a little bit of debate because it's like ballistics are kind of fucky. But he probably doesn't directly hit Reagan. Instead around fragments and bounces off the

armored limousine, penetrating the president's lung. None of the explosive bullets explode because they're not the right bullets for the gun. The barrel is too short, Um, so it doesn't. It might even do less damage than it would have done, although maybe they fragment because they're these weird explosive bullets and that's why Reagan gets hurt. Anyway. Hard to say. Nobody really understands ballistics. That all that well. Today there's a lot of debate over how all this stuff works.

Reagan had been in office for sixty nine days and no real plan existed for what to do if the president gets shot and is alive but is unable to do the job of the president. Um, fucking George H W Bush is in the air a bunch of this time and like people can't reach him, Um, and they're like but he's they're saying you need to come back

to watching now. Um. So kind of the people running the country for a few hours is Al Hague, the Secretary of state, and like a room full of guys in the cabinet who were all disagreeing about everything and none of whom are constitutionally supposed to be running the country. Um, it's a real big problem. Like the fucking like the press ask at one point, because hey goes out there triping, like hey, the president's in surgery, and they're like, well, who's?

WHO's in charge, like with the nukes and stuff? WHO's running the country? And he's like we got a whole room for the guys. Don't worry, it's all fine, and they're like is that with the law? Sense because I don't think that's how it's supposed to go. Um, it's it's not great. It's actually a real problem. And they do they make a bunch of changes after this to make sure that, like we never don't know who the president is when, if this kind of thing happens, at

least Um. But on a political level this is fucking Yang Busters for the Reagan administration, and I'm gonna quote from a write up an Lpie here. The assassination attempt silenced criticism of his administration at a critical point early in his term. Explains H W brand's, author of the biography Reagan the life in an email the good humor

he exhibited during his recovery. He spent only twelve days in the hospital, convinced many skeptics, some of some of his followers believe that God had forgiven him to allow him to finish his work, and it is possible that Reagan thought so too. On the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination attempt, journalist Del Wynton Wilbur published raw hide down, a thorough investigation full of revelations of what happened that day.

The book is written in the style of true crime and its title is a reference to the Secret Service Code name given to Reagan, raw hide. Joe Biden's code name is Celtic and jnald trump's was mogul. It reaches two important conclusions. Firstly, it argues that Reagan became the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms because of the way he and his team handled the assassination attempt. And secondly, the White House did not reveal the seriousness

of his injuries. He walks into the hospital and then stops breathing and collapses Um like. He walks in specifically because he wants to be seen walking in, and it's like they don't know that he's been shot at first. It's not like bleeding a bunch outside, he's bleeding internally. So it's this is like legitimately the best case scenario. It would have been hard to figure out what had happened to him, kind of because you can't immediately tell

that he's bleeding. A lot of people have been shot and so everyone just kind of assumes he's having a heart attack, which is why they take him to the hospital. He thinks, actually, I think he believes that his secret service agent broke his ribs getting him into the Limo. Um, but if they've taken him to the White House first, he would have fucking died. He loses half of his blood in the surgery, like it's that's which is like bad if you lose half your blood. That's not like

a great injury. Um, just it's his lung collapsing. Is that was happening, like yeah, they've got him on oxygen and stuff. He's like barely able to joke with the doctors, which he does, which is one of the things that like goes viral from this and make some so popular, because he's he's Yucking it up old Ronnie um his yeah, this is believed. There's a number of massive long term

fucking consequences. One of them is that this is why h Nancy brings in Joan quickly the astrologer, like this is when she you can refer back to behind the bastards two part or on the Reagan astrologer. But this is why the Reagan astrologer becomes like they start they

stopped having him do events. When the astrologer says it's a bad day for it and ship because, like Nancy, this kind of breaks her and it also kind of breaks Ronald he's not the same man after getting shot, which, to be fair, he is seventy when this happens, so getting shot in the lung at seventy, most people are gonna come back all the way. This is also probably

doesn't help. The Alzheimer's May accelerate the timetable there. But on a political level this goes fucking great for the Republicans and it allows them to do a lot of really fucked up ship, and I'M gonna quote from CNN here. Today, Reagan is the only modern president who receives high marks from Republicans, Democrats and independence alike. A look at the

polls can quantify the roots of this enduring goodwill. Despite elect an electoral landslide over Jimmy Carter with a forty four state win in nineteen eighty, Reagan won a narrow popular margin, a fifty point seven percent. Moreover, gallops, valuable presidential poll tracker, shows that Reagan's approvable ratings were significantly split along partisan lines after his nineteen eighty one inauguration, with seventy four percent Republican support and fifty three percent

from independence, but thirty eight percent from Democrats. When Reagan came back to the capital on April to push for his economic recovery act, he was greeted by a hero's welcome. In a three minute Standing Ovation, he leveraged his political capital to help publish pass his agenda. Before the end of the summer, the Reagan tax cuts had passed the House of Representatives, led by Democratic speaker tip O'Neil, and the Republican controlled Senate, reducing the top tax rates from

a confiscatory seventy and unleashing an entrepreneurial era. That's how CNN categorizes that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, and in nineteen eighty four, again winstine states and the popular vote. It is very clear kind of how this happens and what this allows Reaga to do. It's fascinating because you

have in Britain, like less than a year later. All right, we have Margaret Thatcher right like, who is similarly not doing very well, until she gets to go to war for two tiny little cold islands in the Atlantic and no one knew about before, and then they proceed to just ravage like the post World War Two social democracy consense. Just suck it up and fucking here we are now here. We are two and people are going to die of

cold in Britain this winter. I will say in terms of just to be fair, one of the things people will say is a positive from this is that this is one of the things that helps push the arms treaty deals with the Soviet at union, because Reagan is like God saved me for a reason, and maybe it's to make nuclear war less likely. That's a bigger topic

than today. It's a thing that he will claim and generally speaking, the fact that the Soviet Union and Reagan started talking about nukes during this period is not a bad thing. Um, always good to be talking about nukes, Um. But yeah, what I will say, if we're looking at kind of the only clearly good thing that came out of the shooting, it's the fact that the justice system actually worked in this one instance pretty much exactly how

you would want it to. Hinckley was clearly not mentally competent to understand his actions, what he had done or to stand trial, and he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. His father, tearful took blame for the shooting for cutting his son off from resources. The psychiatrist who had botched his diagnosis, admitted his mistakes on the stand and expressed regret. Hinckley was sent to a psychiatric facility where he received decades of treatment. The treatment seems

to have really helped him. On December seventeen, two thousand three, a federal judge ruled that Hinkley was entitled to unsupervised visits with his parents. This is five years before his dad died, so they get time together again. In two thousand seven he has a request for unsupervised visits as long as one month. This is denied, not because of any problems but because of issues the hospital had not

taken to prepare for the transition. In July of two thousands sixteen, Judge Paul Friedman concluded that Hinckley did not pose a threat to himself or others and ordered him released Um. The conditions initially limited him to his residence, residence where he lived with his mother in parts of southern California. He was obviously forbidden from contact with pastor president presidents of the United States or any of their

family members or graves. From banning. He was banned from contact with Jodie foster or other entertainers he was prohibited from watching violent movies, television or online media. In two thousand eighteen, a restriction confining him to his mother's house ended. Uh, he can now live anywhere he once with doctor's approval. Uh. And on September one, John Hinckley Jr, age sixty six, was approved for unconditional release by district judge Paul Friedman.

Friedman noted that, quote, very few patients at St Elizabeth's Hospital have been studied more thoroughly than John Hinckley. And again, that's pretty much how it ought to work, right. Like, yeah, he shoots the president, but clearly because he's sick and you don't just punish sick people when they don't know what they've done. So he gets treated for decades until he's better. And now, yes, it's really good. Quite surprising.

It is very surprising, and part of why it's surprising is that one of the other negative lingering effects of John Hinckley attempting to shoot the president is that a lot of changes are made in many states to make it much less likely that people benefit from the same understanding judicial system that John Hinckley Jr does. Okay, I'm gonna quote now from a write up from famous trials DOT COM, which has a pretty good, pretty good bit on just kind of everything that happened here. A fair,

Pretty Fair summary, I think. Within a month of the Hinckley verdict, the House and Senate we're holding hearings on the insanity defense. A measure proposed by Senator Arlen Specter shifted the burden of proof of insanity to the defense. President Reagan expressed his support for the measure with the comment if you start thinking about even a lot of your friends, you would have to say, Gee, if I had to prove they were saying, I would have a hard job. All Right, tells us more about you that.

Maybe that says a lot about your administration, who are, by the way, at this point, deep in like Iran, Contra, Shit, selling cocaine and in anyway. We were talking about all of this on an upcoming episode of bastards, but like yeah, they're all monsters. Joining con Congress and shifting the burden

to proof were a number of states. Within three years after the Hinckley verdict, two thirds of the states placed the burden on the defense to prove insanity, while eight states adopted a separate verdict of guilty but mentally ill. In one state, Utah, abolished the defense altogether, always delivering. So the system works really well for John Hinckley Jr. Um Ethically, I think the Justice Department of the United

States this is maybe one of it. Probably in history you will not find many cases of a guy shooting an active world leader and being treated ethically by the justice system like he's handled very reasonably, I think. Um, and never again, never and again will that happen for anybody, even if they don't shoot the president. So Um, obviously I wish John Hinckley jr well. I I hope his

musical career goes fine. Um, I fuck Ronald Reagan. Um, hate him and UH yeah, it's probably made the world a lot worse that John Hinckley Jr tried to shoot Ronald Reagan, because it empowered Ronald Reagan. One of the lessons here, if we're talking about assassinations, is that, um, it's a real wild cards trying to assassinate a president or any other politician and as a general rule, people are kind of programmed to think that somebody's cool if they get shot and don't die, like it's one of

the cooler things that like look it just objectively. It's what do you do if you want to show John Mcclain as hard as hell, even get like hit in the arm or something and just like work through it? Right, like what do people people talk about like Teddy Roosevelt when he was shot and how bad it was that he gave it bad asset was that he gave a speech, or how cool it is that fucking Andrew Jackson, who they don't say any of these things about, is JFK that's right. Is Not cool, not col not over the

roof of a church. Yeah, lame as hell, Um, but, like you know, this is the look. If, if you want John F Kennedy to stop being the president and you can successfully kill him, you will get what you want. He's no longer the president. Um, if you were to have a political motivation, and again, Hinkley doesn't. Hinkley, it's not thinking about the top marginal acts right when he

does this. Um. But if you if that had been his goal, this is the opposite of that, right, because it just makes Reagan look cool and helps him, makes everybody feel like an asshole for fighting him for a while. So, like he gets a bunch of ship through and also a bunch of laws get worse for mentally ill people and uh in. On the whole, bad, bad, bad assassination. Zero, zero. Yeah, I have to say, based on based on the evidence we have here, shooting Ronald Reagan not a good idea.

They didn't do it. Now let the whole team down and we should just plug his album. It's out on as Pesto. We should plug his out because, again, he's not responsible for this. Yeah, you know, I think he's if he's happy speaking songs, I'm happy for him. Yes, yes, I wish you the best of luck, John. You can buy his t shirts. He's got t shirts that he's

trying to move, which I don't know. I don't think it's bad to encourage his music career, like seriously, like we're all doing it with a little bit of a smile. But what's the harm? If John Hickley Jr thinks that people like his music, that doesn't hurt anybody. And maybe if people can see that, like if you treat people with mental illnesses like people who are ill, not sucking terrible people, then they can get to a place where they can sing songs on Youtube. And yes, that's good.

That's an example again of the only time it worked the way it's. It's but it did work out pretty well in this case. Yeah, UM, so I don't know. Yeah, take whatever lessons you want to out of this. Many, many possible things can be a lot, a lot of different lessons we can take out of this. Don't Hire Our Hague, but I feel like that's that's a generally good lesson. Yeah, there's a Phoenix Punch Bang called Jody Foster's army, I've just read as well. Who makes songs

about him. Great by their records too. Fine. Yes, no strong opinions on that either way. Anyone else got anything to say about John Hinckley JR or the assassination attempt on Ronnie Raw Hide Reagan? Also, we're talking about the I R a a lot this week. Probably not for nothing that Joe Biden's code name is Celtic. M MMMM, and the Queen Dies now makes you think you're telling

me it's a coincidence. I still suspects trust personally. I think that maybe Joe Biden shook hands with Liz trust and, like like, transferred a nerve poison onto her hand and then she touched the Queen, definitely possible. She wanted Joe Sipping againness on the plane back, knowing that he's done his job and his Batta clava and he speakably one anyway. Hopefully nobody who has stuff going on listens to that and takes the wrong message out of it. Yeah, kind

to one another anyway. We're done. Okay, it could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts from cool zone media, visit our website, cool zone media DOT COM, or check us out on the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening.