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deadpresidents · 4 hours

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SmartLess Podcast Welcomes Presidents Biden, Obama & Clinton

SMARTLESS’ UNITES PRESIDENTS BIDEN, OBAMA, AND CLINTON FOR HISTORIC PODCAST INTERVIEW

While one former president is in court defending himself against hush money payments to a porn star and to a Playboy playmate, three other Ex-POTUS's discuss gun violence, foreign relations, Biden’s re-election campaign, what they miss about being in office, the State of the economy, passing the baton Between Presidencies, and more on the Smartless podcast.

SmartLess hosts Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes have brought together three U.S. Presidents, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton, for a historic podcast interview.

The momentous episode is available early on Amazon Music/Wondery+ here. It will be wherever podcasts are available on Monday, April 29.

The podcast interview was recorded in-person recently with the hosts and the Presidents in New York City.

SmartLess with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity.

The award-winning podcast was launched in July 2020 and is consistently among the top five most listened-to podcasts monthly. Guests have included Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Don Cheadle, Larry David, Greta Gerwig, Idris Elba, Kristen Stewart, Pedro Pascal, Selena Gomez, and many more.

INTERVIEWS CLIPS AVAILABLE HERE:

Sean Hayes: Do you all miss something specific about holding office, obviously except for you because you’re in office, but do you guys miss something?

President Biden: I miss not having an office.

President Obama: Well, look, everybody talks about Air Force One.

Sean Hayes: Yeah, sure.

President Obama: Marine One. It’s pretty convenient, I won't lie. But I’ll tell you the thing I miss the most. Remember those music concerts I used to do at, you can basically invite anybody, and you have this concert and I mean we got you know Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney.

Sean Hayes: Everybody will show up.

President Obama: They’ll show up. And they do these rehearsals the night before a lot of times and you can kinda sneak down and could just sit there and watch Mick Jagger practicing with BB King or something on a blues night. I do miss that.

President Clinton: I miss the fact that they don’t play a song when you walk in a room anymore.

Sean Hayes: We should’ve done that today.

President Clinton: I was lost for three weeks when I left office. But let me tell you something serious, this is one reason that I so badly want President Biden to be re-elected. What I really miss is the job. Not doing it, I'm glad, I believe in the two-term limit strongly, but what I learned was on the worst day, when nothing was going right, problems are everywhere, there was still something you could do that would make somebody's life better. There is no job like that on earth.

Sean Hayes: I love that.

Clinton: And I want somebody..

President Obama: Who appreciates it.

President Clinton: …that I trust to make the most of that every day. Cause they’ll be bad days no matter who gets elected. But he’ll get up and he’ll start thinking about that. And I think his opponent will be thinking about…

President Obama: Himself.

President Clinton: …yeah, who I can get even with, who I can send away. Joe Biden will make the best of the bad days.

Jason Bateman: And the team that you have assembled and your comfort with deferment. For me personally, I love leaders that have the confidence to hire those that they respect, that might make them a little nervous.

Will Arnett: And also not to think that you're the…

President Obama: That you’re the smartest guy…

Will Arnett: Yeah, that you’re gonna have every…. We had leaders like that in the middle part of the last century who were put into government by presidents of old, and they made a lot of decisions that they thought they were right about, and they were terrible people. And when that happens, when you think that you’ve got all the answers, is the moment you don’t.

Jason Bateman: Like Ron Klain, bringing us out of COVID. It’s just on and on and on, the way in which you’ve surrounded yourself with the absolute best this country has to offer.

President Biden: I made a commitment, having an administration that looks like America. I have more women in my cabinet, I’ve appointed more Black Circuit Court judges than every other president combined in American history. I’ve kept my commitment about putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court. I’ve had an opportunity to go out and get the best people - and by the way, I sometimes pick up the phone and ask these guys who they think are the best people. And I’m looking for people that most of all, not just are good, but care about what they’re doing.

Jason Bateman: Whereas the other guy is only hiring people that won’t talk back and that’s…

President Biden: Oh mine talk back.

CLIP 2 - Download Here

Sean Hayes: What are the issues coming up that people are focusing on that you believe are the wrong things, or they may be the right things, and what should they be focusing on?

President Biden: I think they should be focusing on a couple of things. Number one, we’re gonna, in the second term, God willing, we’re gonna make sure that we do something about gun violence in this country.

Will Arnett: Yes.

President Biden: The idea that we allow assault weapons to be sold, and magazines with 100 rounds, is just bizarre.

Will Arnett: Well, President Biden, I’m so glad to hear you say that because that was gonna be my other question. Which is, the Democrats never say we want to take your guns away.

President Biden: Absolutely not.

Will Arnett: You never said that, you said we gotta be smart about what’s going on.

Jason Bateman: You don’t need to kill a deer with an AR15.

Sean Hayes: Right.

President Biden: The Second Amendment, when I taught law school, the Second Amendment wasn’t absolute ever. You weren’t able to have a cannon when you were, you know, the liberty is ordered with the blood of patriots. I mean, it’s a bunch of crap.

This episode of Smartless will be available wherever you get your podcasts on Monday, April 29.

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deadpresidents · 6 hours

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The fact that three of the Supreme Court Justices who may decide whether Donald Trump -- and any other President -- should have absolute immunity for things they may have done during their Presidency are unitary executive theory fanboys Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh (two of whom were appointed by Trump) is pretty frightening.

#Supreme Court #Trump Immunity Arguments #Donald Trump #President Trump #Unitary Executive Theory #Samuel Alito #Neil Gorsuch #Brett Kavanaugh #Presidency #Presidents #Presidential History #Constitution #Immunity

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deadpresidents · 1 day

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Volcanoes

It was the crowning moment in Richard Milhous Nixon’s long career of political ups-and-downs. For the fifth time, Nixon had been a candidate on the national ticket (twice as Vice President, three times as President). In 1952 and 1956, the focus was on the top of the ticket, Nixon’s running mate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1960, Nixon narrowly lost to – and some would say was the victim of electoral theft from – John F. Kennedy. In 1968, Nixon finally won election to the Presidency, but he did so with some bitterness: the country was in shambles and the two people he wanted to oppose more than anyone else in the election – Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Kennedy – had respectively quit and been murdered during the turbulent campaign. Not only that, but in victory, Nixon had garnered only 43.4% of the vote – a full 6 percentage points less than he had earned in his 1960 loss to JFK.

On November 7, 1972, however, Nixon’s “Silent Majority” spoke loud and clear – and truly gave him both a majority victory and a strong mandate for his second term in the White House. Nixon trounced his opponent, Democratic Senator George S. McGovern, on election night. His popular vote victory was 61%-38% and Nixon’s margin in the Electoral College was even larger, 520-17. Nixon won every single state in the country except for Massachusetts. Nixon even won McGovern’s home state of South Dakota.

As the election returns rolled in and Nixon’s family, supporters, and staff celebrated, the man who had received the votes of 47,169,841 of his fellow Americans that day to be their President noted that he felt “a curious feeling, perhaps a foreboding, that muted my enjoyment of this triumphal moment." In his Memoirs (BOOK | KINDLE), Richard Nixon elaborated further, "I am at a loss to explain the melancholy that settled over me on that victorious night…To some extent the marring effects of Watergate may have played a part, to some extent our failure to win Congress, and to a greater extent the fact that we had not yet been able to end the war in Vietnam. Or perhaps it was because this would be my last campaign. Whatever the reasons, I allowed myself only a few minutes to reflect on the past. I was confident that a new era was about to begin, and I was eager to begin it.”

The new era began the next morning. At 12:00 PM on November 8, 1972, President Nixon gathered his Cabinet in the White House. Nixon seemed tired and was suffering from a painful toothache. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger noted that the President seemed “grim and remote”. Nixon’s loyal Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman was at his side as the President nonchalantly thanked his Cabinet and then described his recent readings about 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and how Disraeli described a need to refresh the British government and rid it of the “exhausted volcanoes” in William Gladstone’s Cabinet. Nixon’s Cabinet was perplexed and curious as to where the President was headed. He had just won a historic landslide victory in the Presidential election, but he spoke as if he had lost everything.

After a few more minutes of talking about his plans for a second term that wasn’t “lethargic” such as those of some of his predecessors, Nixon simply stood up and walked out of the Cabinet Room, headed across the South Lawn, boarded Marine One and flew to his Camp David retreat. When the President stands, everyone stands but as soon as he left the room, the Cabinet sat down and looked at Bob Haldeman, who took over the meeting. Haldeman handed pieces of paper out to the Cabinet and said, “You’re all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes”. Then he immediately demanded everyone’s resignation. Nixon had won one of the biggest victories in American electoral history, and 24 hours later, he was basically firing everyone who had helped him to do so – earlier in the day, he had done the same thing that he did to the Cabinet to his White House staff.

Henry Kissinger summed it up by saying that, “It was as if victory was not an occasion for reconciliation but an opportunity to settle the scores of a lifetime." For Richard Nixon, victory was never enough. He needed destruction. Nixon got rid of his exhausted volcanoes, but he was sitting on top of another volcano named Watergate. His abbreviated second term, which had been won the night before, would end less than two years later in his own personal and professional destruction.

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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You have nice handwriting.

That is one of my few talents. Admittedly, I would have been much happier if I had been given the ability to shoot free throws instead.

#You don't get much street cred for having nice handwriting #Unless you're a graffiti artist I guess

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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Have you read Ours was the Shining Future by David Leonhardt? It's more a history of the American Dream and 20th century America than a presidential history, but several presidents feature prominently (mainly Roosevelt, Nixon, and Reagan).

No, I have not, but it looks like an interesting read. I'll have to remember to check it out.

#Books #Ours Was the Shining Future #David Leonhardt

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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LOL you obviously haven't read the Jim Ross book because I have it ordered and it doesn't come out until May 7th. I guess you are magic.

#Books #Is it not clear how book publishing and publicity campaigns work?

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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What books have you been reading since your last update?

I don't remember what I shared with my last update, so apologies if I repeat anything, but these are some of the books I've read over the past couple months:

•An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) I'm actually still reading this new book by the legendary Doris Kearns Goodwin, so I still have a couple of chapters to go, but I can definitely recommend it. This is undoubtedly the most personal book that DKG has ever written, and it's a fascinating story.

•Charging a Tyrant: The Arraignment of Saddam Hussein by Greg Slavonic (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Life: My Story Through History by Pope Francis with Fabio Marchese Ragona (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy by Sally Bedell Smith (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Byron: A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski

•Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Making of a Leader: The Formative Years of George C. Marshall by Josiah Bunting III (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Year of the Three Kaisers: Bismarck and the German Succession, 1887-88 by J. Alden Nichols

•God Is Ever New: Meditations on Life, Love, and Freedom by Pope Benedict XVI (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Paul VI: The Divided Pope by Yves Chiron (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Buffalo Bill and the Mormons by Brent M. Rogers (BOOK | KINDLE)

•The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union by Stephen Puleo (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage by Jon Finkel (BOOK | KINDLE)

•Business Is About to Pick Up!: 50 Years of Wrestling in 50 Unforgettable Calls by Jim Ross with Paul O'Brien (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Zanzibar Was a Country: Exile and Citizenship Between East Africa and the Gulf by Nathaniel Mathews (BOOK | KINDLE)

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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To give a more serious answer to that earlier question about whether any Presidents were able to fly, yes, there were three who were trained as pilots.

The most famous is indeed George H.W. Bush, who was the youngest U.S. Navy aviator during World War II, and flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific during the war. He was shot down during a bombing mission over Chichi Jima, an island in an archipelago between Guam and the Japanese mainland in September 1944 and had to be rescued from the Pacific Ocean by an American submarine. That was just a few months after he was also forced to ditch his TMB Avenger bomber in the ocean -- while it still was fully loaded with the bombs for the mission he was on -- and barely escaped the plane before it exploded.

His son, George W. Bush, had a much-less decorated and much-more maligned military "career", but he was trained as a military aviator in the Texas National Guard. Bush 43's most famous flight was as a passenger while President when he landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln for the infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, but he was definitely a trained pilot.

The first President to earn a pilot's license was actually Dwight D. Eisenhower. Despite his background as a career military officer, Eisenhower was not trained as a military aviator -- he earned a private pilot's license in 1939.

#History #Presidents #Presidential History #Presidential Backgrounds #George H.W. Bush #Bush 41 #President Bush #George W. Bush #Bush 43 #Dwight D. Eisenhower #President Eisenhower #General Eisenhower #Pilots #World War II #WWII #Pilot's license #Presidential Pilots

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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Is DJT the only genuine "modern" style celebrity (i.e. post-"talkies") to become president? Ronnie was a B-lister.

I think people might be forgetting that Donald Trump was a D-list celebrity at best before he had a career renaissance of sorts with "The Apprentice", and even then, he was a two-bit reality show host who stole his catchphrase from Vince McMahon of all fucking people.

Trump had been famous for a long time, but before 2015 he was a joke who would do any and all publicity that he could get. (He was a joke after 2015, too, but a joke who somehow tricked 70 million+ Americans into buying into a dangerous personality cult that has destroyed the nation.) He used to go on anybody's radio show at any time and I know this because one of my best friends has been a longtime talk radio host in various cities and he could get Trump on whenever he wanted for as long as he wanted before Trump ran for President.

Ronald Reagan was certainly never an A-list movie star, but he was a far bigger (and more respected) star in the 1940s and 1950s than Trump was in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. Even after Reagan's movie career cooled off he spent nearly a decade as the host of a weekly prime-time national TV show which, at times, was one of the most popular weekly series in the country.

#Donald Trump #Presidents #President Trump #Ronald Reagan #President Reagan #Celebrities #Celebrity Presidents #Pre-Presidency #Before they were Presidents #History

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deadpresidents · 2 days

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Did any of our presidents have the ability to fly?

Like Superman? Just Chester Arthur. Or do you mean fly a plane?

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deadpresidents · 5 days

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"It hurt to lose to Ronald Reagan. But after the election, I tried to make the transition as smooth as possible. Later, from my experience in trying to brief him on matters of supreme importance, I was very disturbed at his lack of interest. The issues were the 15 or 20 most important subjects that I as President could possibly pass on to him. His only reaction of substance was to express admiration for the political circumstances in South Korea that let President Park close all the colleges and draft all the demonstrators. That was the only issue on which he came alive."

-- Former President Jimmy Carter, on losing the 1980 election and the transition leading to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, interview with TIME Magazine, October 11, 1982.

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deadpresidents · 5 days

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Did you still want to brag about your Sacramento Kings after they lost to New Orleans?

I don't know what you're talking about. That doesn't sound like something that happened. I would never, ever brag or gloat or do anything that could be misconstrued as boasting about sports. Nope. Not me. Never.

That's fake news. I know you asked this question anonymously, but falsely accusing me of bragging about my favorite sports team is disrespectful and you are prohibited from visiting my blog and you are required to ban yourself immediately. I don't even follow basketball. I've never mentioned it before. Not once. If there was anything resembling a boastful post about a sports team on my blog then I'm pretty sure that a rogue AI model or state-sponsored hackers from Russia or Iran were likely responsible because, again, that's not something I would ever do.

#Sacramento Kings #NBA #Basketball #National Basketball Association #NBA Playoffs #NBA Play-in Games

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deadpresidents · 6 days

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Have you ever seen the diaries of Rutherford B. Hayes? There's so many of them

Yes, well, he kept a diary for nearly 60 years. I'm so appreciative of the Presidents who kept diaries during their lives because they are priceless historical resources, particularly those of John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk (who kept a fascinating, often bitchy diary throughout all four years of his Presidency), and Hayes. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan kept diaries during their Presidencies, too, and Reagan's is surprisingly good because he was a much better writer than most people would think.

The Hayes diaries are a valuable resource, but not as easy to read as those of JQA or Polk without the help of annotations from a good editor.

#Presidents #Presidential Diaries #Rutherford B. Hayes #President Hayes #John Quincy Adams #JQA #President Adams #James K. Polk #President Polk #Jimmy Carter #President Carter #Ronald Reagan #President Reagan #Books by Presidents #Presidential Writings #History

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deadpresidents · 6 days

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November 12, 1899 MAN FATTENED, DOG STARVED. Connecticut Caretaker Ate All the Food Intended for the Animal, Which Finally Died of Hunger.

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deadpresidents · 6 days

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This feels like a direct attack on me. (Not from you @caitlinfaith.)

occasional posts from users

#I might be taking this too personally

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deadpresidents · 6 days

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Their paths into politics could hardly have been more different, and their first encounter was rough. In 1999, both George W. [Bush], as Governor of Texas, and Jeb [Bush], newly elected in Florida, visited the White House during a Governors' conference. [President] Clinton liked Jeb right away but found George W. downright surly. Still, when Clinton's aides noted that the Texan seemed particularly uncomfortable, Clinton came to his defense: "Look, the guy's just being honest. What's he supposed to do, like me? I defeated his father. He loves his father. It doesn't bother me -- this is a contact sport." During the 2000 campaign, Clinton watched George W. with growing respect -- "compassionate conservatism" is a "genius slogan," he warned Al Gore's team -- and when George W. paid a visit after he won, Clinton came away from their meeting and a long lunch in the White House residence saying, "It's a mistake to underestimate him."

-- Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, on the first impressions and interactions between then-President Bill Clinton and Texas Governor George W. Bush, TIME Magazine, August 3, 2015.

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deadpresidents · 7 days

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President Rutherford B. Hayes (far right), First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes, and their party visiting Yosemite -- which was still ten years away from becoming a National Park -- on October 21, 1880. President Hayes was not only the first President in American history to visit the West Coast of the United States while in office, but he was the first incumbent President to travel west of Salt Lake City and only the second to travel west of the Rocky Mountains (his immediate predecessor, Ulysses S. Grant had visited Utah in 1875).

The President's "Great Western Tour", which lasted from August 26-November 6, 1880 took the Presidential party through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming Territory, Utah Territory, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington Territory, Arizona Territory, New Mexico Territory, Colorado, and Kansas en route to the Hayes family home, "Spiegel Grove" in Fremont, Ohio in time for Hayes to cast his ballot for fellow Ohioan James Garfield to be his successor.

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