ken bone, pt. 1

Al zone media.

Presidential debates. I wonder why I decided to talk about them this week.

With the COVID, I excuse me with dealing with everything we have to do.

With in Springfield.

They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, They're eating the cats, They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

Talk about extreme.

And not a candidate willing to put an arms embargo on Israel in sight. Whether you watch these debates or not, if you live in the US, and for a lot of people if you live outside the US, these debates end up affecting you, whether you engage with them or not. For voters, televised debates can range from an annoyance to either affirming a decided vote to swinging a less certain one. And an American presidential debate, they adhere to the two

When I say Riz, you can shoot me.

Here in the US, presidential debates have not been around for as long as you probably think. The kinds of debates that hold the Internet in a vice grip like they have in the last few weeks and apparently won't again in this election cycle have only been around for as long as television has. And I want to be clear, So let me be clear. I'm only talking about presidential debates here, not on other issues. The first example comes in nineteen fifty six, during the race between Dwight Eisenhower

Sorry to dorks.

During this cycle, the first televised presidential debate is aired during the primaries. Stephenson is up against opponent Esday's Keif Foffer in May of nineteen fifty six, dogging it out for the Democratic nomination. A Miami ABC affiliate broadcast the debate and it's it's pretty boring, Honestly.

A presidential campaign must not degenerate into a mere personal conflict our candidates are.

Only as important as the ideas they represent.

Well, brother, this guy stinks.

It's like these losers don't know they're supposed to run ads on this. This doesn't sell aggressively gendered soap in the future, but choosing this moment to start broadcasting and putting more emphasis on debates is done very intentionally. By nineteen fifty six, Americans were adapting to and building their life around TV at a very fast rate. TV had been in development since the late nineteen twenties, but as far as the home TV set goes, it's all about

The Republican candidate Vice President Richard M. Mixon and the Democratic candidate Senator John F.

Candidate.

But indeed, there was the first televised president residential debate between the two parties as we know it today on September twenty sixth, nineteen sixty, between eventual election winner John F. Kennedy and then Vice President to Eisenhower Richard Nixon. Every president is a fucking moron, but this is a significant debate that there is a lot of lore surrounding. It

I think we can do better. I don't want the talents of any Americans to go to Waite. I know that there are those who say that we want to turn everything over to the government.

I don't at all.

I want the individuals to meet their responsibility, and I want the states to meet their responsibility. But I think there is also a national responsibility.

There is no question but that we cannot discuss our internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they have a tremendous bearing on our international position.

As the story goes, people who listen to the debate on the radio thought that Nixon won, and people who watched on TV thought Kennedy one. And this is for a bunch of reasons, very likely oversimplified because of the sample size of people surveyed, But hey, Kennedy won the election. What was clear was that the debate itself was a conceptual success and set this new precedent moving forward because on TV, Kennedy does genuinely look more confident, and Nixon

That's what it's all about.

And if TV was going to be the new norm for debates, successful candidates would have to learn to sell themselves using it. So moving forward, candidates who thrived in the press, regardless of their actual politics, tended to win the elections. Think Reagan think Clinton, think Obama, think Trump for one term. Hopefully that's not to say every elected president was a natural on screen. Looking at you, George Bush Senior.

Well, I'm caught up in super Bowl Mania here and I'm happy to be here.

No charisma whatsoever. Kind of incredible but unmeimable presidents become increasingly rare as the years go on, mainly because the technology evolved to make it possible to memify them, and especially as social media took off, that became necessary for a candidate to be remembered and successful. Ironically, George Bush Senior's warmongering son is a great example of this.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

I always say that George W.

Bush is the reverse Hitler because he started as a warmonger and then became a horrible painter later on. Anyways, as technology continued to evolve, the presidential debate attempted to evolve alongside it. And while there were plenty of debates of consequence between the nineteen sixties show down between Kennedy and Nixon and debates today, things really lock into the format we recognize sometime in the eighties, take this very Reagan quip against Walter Mondale in nineteen eighty four that

Here's the clip, mister Truett and I and I want you to know that also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.

Then, in nineteen eighty eight, a nonprofit called the Commission on Presidential Debates was founded. The CPD sponsored every presidential debate from nineteen eighty eight until twenty twenty, featuring ninety minute long debates with no commercials, and most of them were held on school campuses. And the eighties was a great time to bring in some steadiness and structure to debates because with this decade came the age of the twenty four hour news cycle as cable TV became increasingly popular.

There were stories, stories.

Would be found, and if you were running a campaign, it gave you far more opportunities to make an impression. In general, debates don't just reflect the time they take place in. They also reflect the media environment they make their way into. Reagan was a trained and lightly successful movie actor, and you can tell Trump is a seasoned reality and tabloid star who's known for his shamelessness. And you can tell if.

They win, I should get all the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all.

So presidential debates became more showy as the years went on and the media cycle escalated. The two thousand and eight race between Obama and McCain was the first to meaningfully include social media and a candidate who knew how to use it. Obama was the first president to use social media consistently throughout a presidency.

Is there any way we could fly Obama to some golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there. Well, RWs surfer girl, I think that's a great idea.

And because social media meant that everyday people were locked into the twenty four hour news cycle just as much as the traditional media, the political theatrics increased, and by twenty sixteen we have Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. Maybe you remember this time, and also sorry, this was the era of but her emails of Mexicans are rapists of

Seem to think that is. But in twenty.

Sixteen, the mask offness of this rhetoric still felt pretty new in the US. Yes, Trump's proposed policies were an escalation of the rights already bad agenda, but he just said hateful things versus couching violence in cushy political language. And this was something that American debates weren't really built for. As became clear during the Republican primaries.

This is a tough business.

So you're a tough guy, j It's and we need to have a leader that is preered top.

You're never going to be president United States high insulting your way to.

Let's see, I'm at forty two and you're at three, So no matter I'm doing better, doesn't matter.

So far I'm doing better.

Yes, Indeed, this was the Jeb Bush please clap era.

Please clap.

It's so funny it still hits. And eventually, during Trump and Clinton's first debate on September twenty six, twenty sixteen, at Hofstra University, which is to this day the highest viewed debate in American history with over eighty four million viewers, tensions between the candidates were at an all time high.

I have a failure that by the end of this evening, I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.

Why not? Why not? Yeah?

Why not?

I will release my tax retarge when she releases her thirty three thousand emails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release I will.

Release, yes, the her emails era. And you remember, these debates got a ton of internet traffic from every kind of voter you can imagine. It was the first election of my lifetime where people gathered to watch debates in bars like they were football games. Because it was fucked up and it was scary, and it was also good TV.

Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, It is not affordable. What will you do to bring the costs down and make coverage better?

There are three point three million Muslims in the United States, and I'm one of them. You've mentioned working with Muslim nations, but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to the country After the election is over.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is a Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?

I viscerally remember watching this debate because it was a shit show. The layout of the space meant that both candidates were standing up for most of the time in this weird performance to connect with normal people, but it did give Trump the opportunity to famous lear behind Hillary Clinton in a bunch of camera shots, just like standing uncomfortably close to her in what is an attempt to

Did not answer a single question.

But throughout all of this, there was this guy in the audience the whole time, the whole time, just sitting there, one of the undecided voters, sitting right in the front, and you kind of could not take your eyes off of him, Like literally you couldn't. This was a very blue space where most voters were wearing muted colors, but the guy I'm talking about was very attentive and wearing

What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?

An innocuous question, a valid question, even from the man in the red sweater. He's balding, he's wearing glasses, he's on the heavier side, and the sweater. I can't emphasize this red eyes on sweater enough and most importantly, the chiron below him, which reads ken bone undecided? Did voter

It's this, y'all, don't mess up this Ken Bone thing by interviewing him or finding out anything about him.

Thanks.

Well, sorry.

Ken isn't the only person who's ever spoken or was invoked at a debate that made us stir, but he is, from what I could find, the only person who directly asked a question as an undecided voter in this town hall format who's remembered today. And I kind of have an issue with the term undecided voter, But Ken and I get into that in our interview, because yes, folks,

Ahead and defeat Bush.

The format made a comeback in nineteen ninety six between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, but then we don't see it again until twenty sixteen and haven't since.

Why is it.

Such a Clinton specific format?

I don't know.

Conspiracy theories enjoy yourselves. And now that the Commission on Presidential Debates is out of commission, I doubt we'll see it anytime soon.

But why can bone?

I have my theories, and so does Ken himself. We'll talk about it in a bit after rewatching the full debate. I do think it comes down to a little bit of plant and payoff. Like we've been staring at this guy wearing a bright shirt for an hour and a half of some of the most depressing debating I've ever seen, and then he talks and seems sweet and has a funny name and is smiling and doesn't seem nervous. He's

So come with me.

Sorry again to October twenty sixteen. So this was the second of three debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and what I don't need to tell you was a jarring and deeply contentious race. My memory is that this election cycle took forever, and that's not just psychic damage. Talk of Trump planning a run began in March twenty fifteen, around the same time as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ben Carson please clap.

Please clap, I think that was the candidate's name.

The Republican ticket was chaotic this cycle. Twenty twelve, candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney decided not to rerun, and there was no real, presumed ideal candidate that emerged in his stead sidebar Also, I'm from Massachusetts and I was going through some childhood journals recently from when I was like ten, and I wrote a whole journal entry about how I thought Mitt Romney was going to be

And Trump famously.

Announced his candidacy in June of twenty fifteen after descending an escalator with Milania, saying.

Wow, whoa that is some group of people thousands.

This is not true, according to campaign reporter Alana Wise dozens and Trump is running then and now with the slogan make America Great Again, a phrase that isn't just implicitly racist, misogynist, and xenophobic, but also means that I finally gave up and just threw my red Bubba Gump hat away. So by the time the ken Bone debate aired in October twenty sixteen, we'd been getting regular updates on this election cycle on so social media every day for close to a year and a half. Both the

In terms of being overtly hateful.

Another thing we heard a lot about was Hillary's emails, which I'll be honest, I needed a refresher on because they were largely invoked throughout the election without context. The email's issue boiled down to an issue of national security related to when Clinton was Secretary of State for Barack Obama and routed all of her emails, both personal and those of international importance, to the same private server for what she said was convenience. This became a massive story

American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.

Hako, that's what he's talking about. And a year later, when Trump is.

Saying, we have a question here from Ken Carperwicks. He has a question about healthcare, Kent. I'd like to know, Anderson, why aren't you bringing up the emails.

I'd like to know, why aren't you brought up No, it hasn't, it hasn't, and it hasn't been finished at all.

That's what he is talking about.

Throughout the election season, Clinton had to answer for scourges on her political record, including her previous endorsement of the Iraq War, a resistance to single pair healthcareized to Wall Street, and a general lack of liberal accomplishment during her time as Secretary of State. Her record was not winning leftists over at all, and then there was just genuine misogyny.

You know, did just being Rosseley John wistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.

So Trump wins the Republican nomination with VP Mike Pence in July twenty sixteen, and Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination a few days later with Tim Kine. And while Clinton was fending off the email scandal, a number of things were dogging Trump. To name a few, there was an ongoing lawsuit about the fraudulent Trump University. There were a series of extreme or overtly.

False tweets, including continued.

Obama Birtherism conspiracies, and a retweet of a Mussolini quote. And as was a major media focus, Trump's treatment of women. This had been a conversation for years. Trump's ex wife, Evanna had previously accused him of marital rape, and throughout the campaign, women who had previously associated with him or compete in his beauty pageants came forward with allegations of

Got to confuse some ticktacks, just a casst kissinger. You know, I'm automatically a drag kit. The beautiful. I just started kissing them.

It's like a magnet.

He just didn't And when you're a start, they let you do it.

You can do anything whatever you want to grab him by the.

I can do any of that. I don't really have any desire to play more of this.

This is the most famous section, but it's worth mentioning that the actual Access Hollywood tape is much longer than this, and includes a protracted session where Trump is telling Billy Bush about shamelessly harassing Billy Bush's co host Nancy O'Dell, and then goes on to talk about her body disparagingly. The woman he's referring to in the clip I just played is someone that two are about to interview, a

This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it.

I apologize to my family, I apologize to the American people.

Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk.

The day after this leaks, Hillary Clinton condemns Trump's statements, and Trump defended himself using the phrase locker room banter. But just remember while these days, Trump's base will slurp up any horrifying shit he can think of. At the time, something this transparent, horrible, this close to an election day, a lot of people thought he was done, including some

As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump in the eleven year old video released yesterday. I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend him, and.

It obviously feels naive now, but I can't overstate how bad this was perceived to be for his campaign. At the time, CNN called it the worst weekend for any presidential candidate ever. I wasn't aware of this phrase, but in American politics, a reveal of a damning further indictment of Trump's character could be classified as an October surprise or a late in the game reveal that could be a deciding factor to swing undecided voters like Ken Bone

Certainly has made it interesting.

Twenty four hours and that Saturday night, Alec Baldwin and I can't, we just can't. Alec Baldwin parodied the moment on SNL two nights before the debate.

Mister Trump, this leaked audio showed you saying, you know, I can't.

I can't quite say it on live television, but basically you said you wanted to.

Grab them by the book.

For what it's worth, this was not a great weekend for Clinton's campaign either. On the seventh, WikiLeaks began to publish emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta that addressed one of her massive vulnerabilities, the fact that the candidate courting the left had been giving paid speeches to

In nineteen seventy five.

I had completely forgotten about this until Trump brought it up at the debate itself, saying that the women were attending the debate as his guests.

If you look at Bill Clinton farward, minor words, and his was action.

His was what he's done to women.

There's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill.

Clinton was abusive to women.

Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attack them viciously, four of them here tonight.

This is just so nasty to me, because Bill Clinton's history of abusing women and predatory actions should be talked about just as much as Donald Trump's history of abusing women should. But Trump choosing this moment to highlight this abuse is incredibly transparent. He's backed into a corner and pointing at his former friends, the Clintons, and saying, I know you are, but what am I to discredit his opponent? Here's when Eda Broderick in a press conference Trump held four hours earlier.

Okay, I'm ready to Broadrick, and I'm here to support Donald Trump. I tweeted recently, and mister Trump retweeted it that actions speak louder than wards.

Mister Trump may have said some.

Bad words, but Bill Clinton riped me when Hillary Clinton threatened. I don't think there's any comparers.

The stories of these survivors deserve a platform. Bill Clinton is a piece of shit, but it's a valid discussion that couldn't be coming from a worse source. I believe Bill Clinton survivors, and I also think Trump was really obviously using them as political pawns to make the words he said in two thousand and five sound less significant

He's bullshitting.

Here's how he's talking at that press conference.

These war very courageous women have asked to be here.

And it was a June Help.

Them, Loah, and the Access Hollywood tape didn't doom Trump's campaign, as we now know, the lesson here. Never underestimate how much people of every political.

Persuasion hate women.

So it's this environment that is surrounding this group of undecided or, as I think is a more appropriate term, uncommitted voters who had questions about issues they felt that neither candidate had sufficiently addressed. As Ken tells me in our interview, the whole idea of undecided even being a question after the Access Hollywood tapes had the participants kind of on their heels and feeling foolish the day of. They'd been selected weeks earlier, far before the tape came out.

Ken told me all about what this day was like. It was very long.

They took your phone, so you couldn't have access to the outside world while on property, and because of that, they gave the town hall members these little disposable cameras to remember the event by some of the pictures that when viral of Ken featured him with his disposable camera taking a picture of the technical equipment that furthered this vision of him as a geek. So Ken doesn't even turn his phone off until well after the debate has ended.

Assault as locker room talk.

And other language implying autocracy over democracy, including threatening to put Hillary Clinton in jail if elected, appealing to the lock her up contingency. So people really glombed on to him. Here are some tweets.

Kenneth Bone is here to remind you it's sweater weather.

Thank you Kenneth Bone for breaking the tension with being named Kenneth Bone.

How will you protect my job as a card and guess who?

Hashtag debates Ken Bone an undecided voter, but not an undecided dresser.

US History Books, twenty one fifty and in that moment, the Republic was saved by a man named Ken Bone.

At the time, this was still unusual for debates. But even in the midst of this chaos. By the time Ken Bone arrived home in nearby Belleville, Illinois, he was a star. Here's Jake Tapper the day after All day long, my staff and I we've been pondering this important question what makes Ken Bone so awesome? And Fox and Friends the day after that.

The votes are in and this undecided voter has won over all of our hearts.

If I showed you every news broadcast that made reference to remember that guy in the red sweater from last night with the funny name, well, we loved him, it would be here for hours. People loved him, and Ken was pretty receptive to the attention. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. When the twenty sixteen election results came in, I'd just been broken up with by a malevolent prop comedian who

Does it still seem a little random?

Sure, But Ken Bone was the only fun part of watching the debate, a living meme in the middle of an eventful and largely depressing couple of news days. People just fucking went nuts for this guy. I mean full disclosure.

His Twitter follower.

Count went from literally seven to over two hundred thousand in the space of a few days. Everyone was talking Ken Here he is with Anderson Cooper.

It's been very strange, and I'm very sorry to all the Ken Bone twenty sixteen people, but I am only thirty four years old. You'll have to wait for Ken Bone twenty twenty. And if you want to addresses me for Halloween, you better be quick. The sweater is sold out on Amazon, and these mustaches don't come.

Overnight with Jimmy Kimmel, very grateful to you for spending time with us tonight.

Do you have any idea of how adorable you are?

First, I want to say.

That's a definitive guess.

Yes, Okay, good?

And on Comedy Central Late Show at midnight, Trigger warning for Chris Hardwick jump scare.

Thanks Chris. It was a real thrill to see ken Bone facts trending on Twitter on Monday night. I loved every one of them, but I can't pick my favorite because I'm undecided, So I'm going to read a few of the best mines.

Sure, it's basically the same three things over and over, but it's not like the other news turn of the debate left anything remotely fun to talk about. In the week after Trump's obfuscation about the Access Hollywood tape, a number of women decided to come forward with their own allegations about how Trump had treated them to give further credence that the two thousand and five tape was no joke. And while the Stormy Daniel's allegation wouldn't become public, then

The New Yorker, The New.

York Times, Fox, the Washington Post, you name it. They wrote about him in those first few days, and most of the pieces have a similar tilt that Ken Bone was a breath of fresh air, the working class everyman personified.

He was good on.

Camera, he didn't seem to be hawking anything, and bonus, he was using many of his appearances to raise money for a local shelter for the unhoused, the Saint Patrick Center in Saint Louis. But we know this story right, Something was going to give. The sudden increased public scrutiny led to a phenomenon we've talked about on this show before, the inevitable milkshake duck moment. Fox's Asia Romana described the pattern in twenty twenty.

One as a mild mannered commoner unexpectedly gains attention and briefly captures the heart of the nation, or at a minimum, the bored attention of Twitter and the nation's meme makers, only for a horrifying revelation about them to surface before fifteen minutes of Internet fame have even elapsed.

And less than a week later, Ken's milkshake duck moment came. He was asked to host a Reddit ama Ask Me Anything to adoring commenters. Introducing himself from his actual Reddit account username Stan Gibson eighteen.

He writes, Hello Reddit, I'm just a normal guy who spends his free time with his hot wife and cat in Saint Louis. I didn't see any of this coming. It's been a crazy week.

The replies match the fawning nature of how ken was talked about in those early days. A kid commented that he wrote an essay about him called ken Bone Our Deliverance from Evil, and there were questions about his opinions on certain political policies and how he met his hot wife. But some people clicked on the username Dan Gibson eighteen and found some pretty sketchy Reddit user behavior. I'm not

For work pictures who Cares.

Too genuinely offensive comments about Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes, and the murder of Trayvon Martin. This last one is worth honing in on. In particular, Ken.

Wrote it doesn't have to be a one or the other view here. From what I read about the case, the shooting of Trayvon Martin was justified. But from what I've learned of Zimmerman through statements, interviews, and behavior, he's a big old shitbird, bad guy legally kills kid in self defense. Sucks for everybody, including us due to the media fuckery.

This is the statement that has brought up the most, and there are many interpretations of this comment that made it sound like ken Bone was completely okay with Zimmerman murdering Trayvon Martin in cold blood, which doesn't seem to be the statement here, but the fact remains that it

There's some that I'm not super proud of, and a part of my message is being positive and holding our leaders to a higher level of discourse, so I need to hold myself accountable for that too. I like to feel like I've grown and evolved as a person in the time since then, if I could personally apologize to any of the people who are offended by what they read, then I absolutely would do that, and maybe I'll get

And so less than a week after ken had become a public figure, he was persona non grata. Time This started some conversation around what this kind of Internet fame really meant and if it was productive to dig up whatever one could on someone who was a normal person just days before. What are we really getting out of headlines like the New York Posts ken Bone is actually kind of an awful guy, the New York Times.

We may be leaving the Ken Bone zone.

GQ's j Willis meditated on it in a piece at the time called the Internet came for Ken Bone and it will drag you too.

Now you may be thinking, wait, I haven't copped to insurance fraud or publicly expressed my appreciation for pregnancy porn. But the Internet is an involuntary time capsule that preserves all forms of imprudence. If you were wearing Ken Bone's grass stained new balances, it would just be some other offensive element of your past displayed as proof of your fallibility.

So this was written eight years ago, when the rhythms of random online fame were beginning to be policed and reported on by online users as much as, if not more so, than traditional media outlets. Like if Ken Bone came to prominence twenty years earlier, no one would know his feelings on police brutality or pregnancy porn. That's the development and how fame works now, and Ken certainly lost a lot of fans as a result. Nearly a decade on.

All the appearances he made during.

This intense month leading up to the election were done around his work schedule and facilitated by Ken And during this peak moment, even through the controversy, there was no shortage of interest.

Of giving this guy attention.

He tweeted out an ad for Uber which almost got him in trouble with the.

FTC whoops, and of course Izod, the.

Maker of the original Red Sweater got in touch and put Ken in an ad on October twenty first, called ten Bones, fifteenth Minute That's all but like worshipful and includes Ken's wife Heather.

I'm about as pumped up as I can get, and it's just fun letting it carry me.

So you just never give up hope.

Why I'm there right on.

To see other people who enjoy him as much as I do is real fun.

It's really important that we don't give up on the political process. I really do expect at the end of the election that it winds down and when it's over, it's over, and I'm happy to have played my role.

Someone tell passed Ken what happened. And even after the election, Ken continued to make appearances, one of which he used to reveal that he eventually did become a decided voter and went for Hillary. But the intensity of this first week was never matched again. His rise was steep and connected to a specific moment, and the fall was pretty steep too. And then the media cycle kept moving, and in October twenty sixteen, that was no joke back at

Like most main.

Characters I talked to who had a life prior to their moment, ken Bone had no desire to quit his day job or move to Hollywood, but he did want to engage with this fame to the extent that he could manage it alongside his normal life. While he remained firmly in this debate moment for most people, here are some of the appearances he made in the years that followed. In twenty seventeen, an appearance on Bill Maher, I.

Want to convince you that you should have voted for Hilary instead of Godzilla.

Well I didn't. I'll tell you that much. I didn't vote for Godzilla. I didn't vote for Jill Stein either, not Godzilla and not Jill Stein.

But are you going to reveal who you did vote for now?

I'm waiting for my book deal to come through.

Is that true?

No, not at all.

I promised before the election that I wouldn't say who I voted for because like it or not, we're obsessed with celebrities in this country, and even like an F list celebrity like me, people put stock in my opinion and it's not fair to the democratic process if I tell them what to believe. You're an informer. That is your job to inform people, educate them, entertain them. I'm a random due that works at the power plant. People don't need to be informed by me.

Someone cooked here.

Ken also made an appearance at Sea Pac in twenty seventeen, serving as a representative for a polling company called Victory Insights and an app called Donor Decks, which was a software that aimed to get normal people involved in politics.

I and just running into these consultants or these committees can cost you as much as a family makes in a year fifty sixty eighty thousand dollars. Well, donor decks can get you in touch with potential donors for a couple hundred dollars a month.

Yeah, it kind of sounds like a scam. He was a paid spokesman and it's not around anymore. These appearances were both twenty seventeen, so you can see even though he ultimately votes Democrat, there is still a conservative tilt to what Ken is interacting with publicly. But even as he's doing so, it's clear that he's deeply unsatisfied with how Trump's presidency is going, so for a while, he still appears to be the independent voter he became famous

He said he.

Voted third party in twenty twenty and was unsatisfied with the two main candidates, and in the last two years he's advocated for better public education on a indigenous American history. He's been extremely critical of Israel, and he's called people encouraging student protests for Gaza to be shut down Boot Liquors, and he's advocated for healthcare for all.

Ken's kind of based.

Now you guys, and in Part two, releasing next Tuesday, we'll hear about this.

Saga from the man himself.

Part two with Kenneth Bone See you then, and before that, a moment of fun. One more Cursed George W. Bush Poll Bye.

We got an issue in America. Too many good dots for getting out of business. Too many obgyns aren't able to practice their their love with women all across this country.

Sixteenth minute as a production of Whole Zone Media and Iheartwordtaps.

It is written, posted and produced by me Jamie Loftus.

Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. He Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from Grant Crater and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flee and Casper, and my pet rock Bird, who will outlive us all.

Bye