Reagan and the Modern Political Era

Want to explore even more history Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world from the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland There is plenty to discover With your subscription, you'll unlock hundredundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exxploring everything from the ancient world to World War II Just visit historyhit d. com slash subscribe bring the past alive The image is already iconic Former President Donald Trump, standing defiantly, fist in the air against a cloudless blue sky. The American flag waves overhead Secret Svice and sunglasses surround him A scarlet trail of blood trickles across his face Despite his brush with death just seconds before saved perhaps by the smallest turn of his head Trump instinctively understood powerful this imagery would be. from this extraordinary moment. at an otherwise routine campaign rally in Pennsylvania. I say extraordinary, but Assassinations and attempted assassinations of U. S. presidents have sadly happened many times before We know the tragically successful ones, of course Lincoln Garfield, McKinley whichich by the way, keep an eye out for two special episodes on him next week. And of course, there's JFK But what of all the failed attempts Ronald Reagan for one, march, nineteen eighty one. outside the Hilton in Washington D.C He is the last U. S. president to have been injured in an attempt on his life I vividly recall that dreary gray morning and how almost mundane it seemed. Reaggan, startled, confused, trundled into the limo. Was he shot? Did the guy miss It turnurned out Reagan was struck and badly so. through the ribs and close to the heart. He very nearly died Today as bonus content, We're bringing you an episode from our sister podcast, Dan Snow's History Head Dan covers assassination attempts and successes throughout American history From Lincoln, FDR, Reagan Clinton and Bush and talks about how it's altered the course of our nation Don't forget there are new episodes of Dan Snow's History hit throughout the week every week. So if you like this episode Don't forget to check out his podcast and the thousands of other fantastic history episodes available with the show and I will be back with you on Monday Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History On Saturday evening Pennsylvania Shots were fired at former President Donald Trump One one hundred and fifty yards the north of where Trump was speaking during a campaign to be elected president once again this November. A gunman identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks was lying on the roof of a building Six minutes into Trump's speech He fired a number of rounds from an assault rifle Dl Trump One of those shots skimmed Trump's ear Duct to the ground five seecret Svice agents. immedately rushed to the stage and covered the former present with their own bodies. Less than a minute after those shots were fired, the Secret Svice said that the shooter himself had been killed by Snpers Trump bleeding, but seemingly unbowed was brought to his feet. He raised a fist of defiance four agents hustled him offstage. We now know that a man called Cori Comparato was killed a volunteer firefighter He died throwing his body over his family to protect them David Dutch and James Copenhaler were both injured badly but are believed to be in stable condition That means that today The world is once again talking about American political violence this week I guess I should start by saying the Brits shouldn't feel too smug political assassinations George III survived several attempts, including one in a theaterre shhots were fired at himan Narrowly missed him. Not long after, Spencer Percival, the prrime M minister was shot in the House of Parliament Our prrime mininisters themselves, strangely, have come close to killing or being killed in jewels Pet the younger for to jewel Canning and Castleay fought a famous duel Wellington fought a duel as prrime Minister Queen Victoria survived By the skin of her teeth, multiple assassination attempts, some of which came very close to success Margaret Thatcher was blown up. John Major was mortred Elizabeth II, the former queen was shot at with a rifle on a trip to New Zealand, just one of several plots to assassinate her But people will be more familiar with the fact that in the USA and America, four sitting presents have been killed. We have Abraam Lincoln, killed in nineteen sixty five. James Garfield was killed in eighteen eighty one. William McKinley in nineteen oh one and John F. Kennedy On that day in Dallas in nineteen sixty three Others have been injured in assassination attempts, as you'll be hearing about in this podcast. We have Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty one Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen twelve and now Donald Trump's name. can be added to that list. The story of political violence in the US goes much deeper than presidents Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons. He was Murdered as he ran for president The Ku Kux can assassinated pololitical leaders, Republicans, particularly in the Southern states in the years following the Civil War John Hines and John Stehvens, for example both killed to intimidate people who sought to run on a a ticket of construction of civil and political rights for all Americans regardless of skin color Robert Kennedy JFK's younger brother was killed while running for president in nineteen sixty eight Dror Martin Luther K Civil rights leader, activist was killed in that same year Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California was murdered in nineteen seventy eight For list goes on, Anton Kermack, mayor of Chicago, Hughie Long, another presidential candidate, George Lincoln Rockwell, American Nazi Some were killed by people deemed subsequently to be not of sound mind Others were killed because of personal grudges, some very personal grudges Losing a fist fight some sort of financial betrayal But many were killed for political for strategic reasons to remove a leader to remove a voice, an activist working for a cause The assassin passionately disagreed with In this podcast, we'll be reflecting on political assassination, but we're going to particularly focus on the times when the victim. survived The failed assassination attempts Because we don't really know What would have happened if Lincoln had lived. if Kennedy had lived But we do know. What happened Because Roosevelt lived We do know what happened when Lenin survived his very, very close brush with death in august nineteen eighteen The jaws of terror that he opened as a result We know what happened when We know what happened when Hitler survived when George Elser placed a time bomb meticulously in a beerhole in Munich where Hitler was due to give his annual speech In nineteen thirty nine Hitler survived only because he left slightly earlier than scheduled Elsa brought the beer hole down killing eight people and injuring sixty two others But Hitler his intended to target Survived and went on to lead Germany From that attempt in ninetineeen thirty nine all the way to his catastrophic death and downfall in nineteen forty five, making a blizzard of decisions that remain some of the most consequential of the twentieth century. So this is a podcast about survival What a failed assassination attempt Mean in the history of the United States of America. And H talk about it all. We got Gary Gerssel He's been on the podcast before. He's the Paul Mellon, prorofessor of American History Emeritus at Cambridge University. He's the director of research in American History. He is as engaging as he is brilliant And he's going to tell me all about those American politicians who live to fight another day It was at right the end of January, january thirtieth, eighteen thirty five that Andrew Jackson got the dubious honor of becoming the first president to experience an assassination attempt Richard Lawrence charged towards him holding two pistols in the east portico of the capapitol. as Jackson was leaving a funeral that had been held in the House chamber For some reason, the pistols failed to go off, even though later tests showed they were both in working order And as they say comeome for the king You best not miss Well, Jackson, whatatever you think of his politics, he was certainly a force of nature and he was arrested But only after President Jackson himself had beaten him severely cane that he was holding in his hand Let's hear from professor Gary Garssel about what this failed attempt on Jackson's life. meant for the subsequent career of this presresident Carry Andrew Jackson, massive impact on the presidency. if he'd been killed in eighteen thirty five when he was almost shot in the Ports go over the Capitol builduing. wouldould that have changed the course of U.S history No I don't think so. We enter the world of counterfactuals, which I find very interesting myself But I don't feel as though the course of American history would have been dramatically changed. The issue with which Jackson is most closely associated is westward expansion conquest of the Indians introduction of a more Cleibbean style, populist style to American politics. I think those were all set in motion and well underway. And much as has now created a bunch of Aolytes and descendants Those Piticians of Jackson's time were already watching Jackson very carefully and beginning to mimic and imitate his style And that would increasingly become the style of the Democratic partarty And also he some of his greatest contributions were not as president. They were as a general in the war of eighteen twelve and beyond war on the indigenous populations expanding the United States, consolidating the territory, setting in series a set of events. You know, one of the ways of testing this is the Mexican American War, which was in the eighteen forties a war in which the U.S. was an aggressor against Mexico and took half of Mexican territory. That's a very Jaxsonian policy, but Jackson was long gone from the presidency by that time Would the Bank of the United States have been disestablished in favor of state banks. I think it would have been anyway. So I don't see that as as decisive It was eleven o'clock. on a warm August night in eighteen sixty four Private Joh Nichols was on sentry duty Washington was at the heart of a nation at war with itself. The civil War was still raging. The streets would have been full of uniformed men And it was eleven o'clock that night that Private Nichols heard a shot Moments later she saw An instantly recognizable man riding towards him Rather shocking for the time that he was wriding Bearheaded That manan was Abraham Lincoln the wartime president of the Republic. and his hat had been knocked off by a sniper whose identity remains mysterious to this day Lincoln had been wriding, as he often did from the White House to the soldier's home, which was a place he would work and sleep before returning to the office, the White House, in the morning Unguarded, he used to make that journey himself Hellone And on this occasion, someone took the opportunity H have a shot at him. In eighteen sixty four, like nearly year before Lincoln is successfully murdered in for theatre. He was had his hat shot off his head by a sniper apparently, but that stage the Civil War was It was creeping towards successful conclusion for the North. It wouldn't have made it a huge difference if Lincoln had been removed. I shudder at the thought of Lincoln being taken out of American politics at any point before his death There was still a lot to be negotiated about the war. There was strong sentiment and quarters of the Democratic Party and in quarters of the Republican Party for striking a deal with the Confederates that would end the bloodshed sooner than it was ended Ulyss S. Grant was Lincoln's great general And Sherman was one of his great generals And in that last year of the war, he struck through the South, headitting not just military installations, but building the infrastructure of Southern cities like Atlanta There was a lot of opposition to that mode of warfare, a lot of calls on the part of humanitarians for compromises. so It's possible to imagine a war having come to some kind of negotiated end. before the time when Lee surrendered to grant at Appomatoics in eighteen sixty five. So I'm never one to bet against Lincoln and also I mourn his His passing and his killing and his murder when he was desperately needed. for the job of reconstruction. the job of reconstruction being twofold, rein incorporating a defeated South into the nation and putting African Americans on a plane of full e ququality with white Americans. And that remains one of the most vexatious and failed projects in American history and I'm mindful of his being taken too soon Now There are certain situations and scenarios that can't be solved by any politician no matter how committed and how talented. So Who knows whether he would have come out of reconstruction with a better settlement for the United States, but the failure of reconstruction hangs seriously over The United States, still to this day in the twenty first century, there echoes of that failure and the resurgence of the Confederate South and the support for Trump whichich makes Lincoln's murder in eighteen sixty five still a devastating moment and possibly a turning point for the United States One of the most remarkable and in some ways celebrated assassination attempts has to be that against Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen twelve Roovelt was both the former president and a presidential candidate interestingly Three and a half years after he left office and whilst campaigning to be president again in the election of nineteen twelve Roosevelt was in Milwaukee It was october fourteenth, nineteen twelve. A man called John Shrank, He ran a bar in New York. He'd been stalking Roosevelt for weeks He got up close to him and fired a single round from a ct pistol straight into Roosevelt's chest Roosevelt was saved because he had his stump speech. He had his fifty page speech folded over twice in his breast pocket He also had a metal glasses case there So collectively, the metal all that paper slowed the bullet down evenven though it did penetrate the skin, it did lodge itself in Roosevelt's chest Remarkably, Roosevelt's first action was to save the life of Shrank because he was immediately captured, he was immediately set upon by the mob and it seems like he would have been lyched So Roosevelt shouted for Shrank to remain unharmed Then he told everyone was all right Made sure Shrank went into police custody and then gave himself the once over, realized he wasn't coughing up blood, so despite the bullet having entered his chest cavity, it hadn't gone into a lung and he decided to Rather than go to hospital immedately carry on with the campaigning of it He carried on and made the speech. pages of that speech, not only had a bullet hole in them, but they were covered blood from his chest wound. Only after something like an hour and a half of speaking, the mind boggles Did he go and accept medical attention His opening line was ladies and gentlemen I don't know whether you fully understand that I've just been shot. It takes more than that to kill. Bull M The X ray showed that the bullet lodged itself in the muscle The doctors said it was too difficult to get rid of it So that bullet stayed in there for the rest of his life Interestingly, though, He didn't get much of a bounce He lost the presidency defeated by Woodrow Wilson I think one of the more consequential near misses could be an attempt on another Roosevelt, a distant cousin FDR made on the fifteenth of february, nineteen thirty three. He'd won the election of nineteen thirty two. It was just days before his first inauguration. FDR was heading for the White House, and a man called Guseppe Sangara fired five shots at him in Miami, Florida. Sangara missed the president elect, but he did kill or did mortally wound the Chicago mayor And injured for other people as well What about Roosevelt's lucky escape in february nineteen thirty three? He was president elected. He wasn't even in job yet, It was the height of the depression America without Roosevelt. Can't imagine it. canan't imagine the world either actually This was a moment that most people don't know about, not just most people in Britain or Europe orver your show goes in the world, It's not known to most people in the United States. But at the time, a president was elected in November, but he did not take office until March And so the interrectnum was months long. And this was During the worst oppression in American history Banks were failing. The economy was failing In february nineteen thirty three, Roosevelt is riding in an open air car with Anton Surmac, mayor of Chicago withithout any protection and he's riding through Miami and out of the crowd jumps A small stature anarchist Wh fires five shots Roosevelt from nearly point blank range. and all the shots Ms. Roosevelt Most of them hit Anton Sermmac. The mayor of Chicago who dies prettyty soon thereafter. You take nine out of ten other occasions of this attempted assassination Roosevelt is dead And this is before he even assumes office before the fable hundred days, before He has a chance to unveil his New Dal, his vice president was a man by the name of Garner from Texas pretty undistinguished man sitting in Congress Without Roosevelt's vision, without Roosevelt's support in the North, without the ability to hold the country together I shud her to think what would have happened? A Roosevelt died. And that day, no Roosevelt presiding over the New deeal and then no Roosevelt bringing America into the Second World War at a time when most educated opinion in America did not want America to go to another world warar goddamn Europeans had started yet again Excuse my langu That's not my sentiment. I'm just reporting what Americans were feeling at the time There is some mystery surrounding this one, but it does seem like there could have been a German plan kill SS plan to kill Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt Tehran when they all met there in Iran in nineteen forty three for a conference Soviet sources say that German agents were dropped into Persia They made their way to Tehran where they established radio contact with Berlin and they were doing the preparation work for an attack on the big three decapitate the Allied suupreme commommand The Soviets th take the credit for breaking up this particular plot by arresting some and forcing the others to flee but it's all a little bit murky But we're going to count that one as well. Mistry it will return after this short break As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets the history of sex scandal and society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit A closer attempt took place in the life of the Pident on november first, nineteen fifty two Puerto Rican independence activists tried to kill President Truman The White House was undergoing some renovations, so Trum was living at Blair House These two men broke into Blair house. There was a gunfight One Wiles policeman was injured Another was mortally injured so he would be killed One of the terrorists were shot, another one was badly injured. so Truman wasn't harmed. but his life was certainly in grave danger Harry Truman survives an extraordinary assassination attempt in nineteen fifty. But what impact do you think Truman had between fifty and fifty three when he leaves the office? I hate to say that a man's death would not have been that consequential or you're putting me in difficult situations here, but If I think in crudely pragmatic terms or if I think in Ral politk and I think what are the interests and what direction is the economy and politics going. Truman by that time had committed himself to the Cold War He had committed himself to preserving and extending the New Deal where he could By nineteen fifty, he was pretty much stalled in terms of what he could do or Congress The Korean War had been engaged with. And the most important fact to bring into this is that his successor in the White House Dwight D Eisenhower elected in nineteen fifty two comes into office in nineteen fifty three. He's the first Republican president in twenty years. and the big question is, Will he preserve the New Deal or will he dismantle it? The New Deal being America's version of social democracy. It's a big deal in America, big reform movement Eisenhower acquiesces to the New Deal Truman had embraced it as well. So I think the contours of American politics by nineteen fifty, both internationally and domestically had been set And so I don't think that Truman's death at that time would have led to a huge change in American or global history. And I apologize to Harry for that judgment. could be that John F. Kennedy family protects him from An earlier assassination attempt on december eleventh, nineteen sixty. actuallyctually he was then president elect. He just won the election against Nixon. He was about to enter The White House, he was taking a vacation after the election in Palm Beach, Florida and a seventy three year old with a passassionate hatred of Catholics Paul Pavlick made a plan to crash a Dynamite laden car into Kendys vehicle He followed him, he staked out the attack but he changed his mind after he saw Kendy's wife and daughter. Say goodbye He was then stopped in a routine bit of policing a few days later and taken into custody when they discovered what was in the vehicle So december eleventh, nineteen sixty JFK president elect, not even president yet is targeted by an older an older gentleman with a hatrred of Catholics who was going to drive a dynamite laden buick into Kendy's vehicle. He didn't do so No JFK No JFK there during the Cuban missile crisis. I mean, is this another big one? Well, it depends who we imagine the president. to have been His greatest rival at the time was Lyndon Johnson. And Blinston Johnson domestically was a much more capable president than JFK himself was. I think the million dollar question has to do with the Cuban missile crisis. I'm not terribly impressed with Kennedy's presidency. I think his charm and his charisma want them a lot of points that are not particularly deserved but his one moment of great strength, I think, and judgment was the Cuban missile crisis the moment when the Soviet Union and the United States probably came closer to a nuclear war than they had ever been before or that they would be again Since that time, even during the Reagan years, they were not as close to nuclear Armageddon at that time And I don't know whether Johnson would have been able to resist the pressure that the generals, some of the generals were exerting for a nuclear strike on Cuba I don't know if he would have been able to withstand that. So in that sense Had Kennedy been killed in December might have had enormous consequences. On the other hand differentnt president. maybe no ill considered Bay of Pigs invasion, which was an ill considered attempt by the U. S. to support Cuban exiles to mount an invasion of Cuba and Kennedy's refusal to send in any support for that failed invasion because it was mostly developed under Eisenower It gives Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union a sense that America is weak and vulnerable and may have tempted them to bring missiles to Cuba in nineteen sixty two. So president with a stronger profile in international affairs may have tempted Khrushchev less. So you see the contingencies that we get into once we get into these counterfactuals Like something have a spy thiller on february twenty second, nineteen ninety four Samuel Bike. plan to kill President Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House You went as far as actually hijacking this airliner in Baltimore, Washington International Airport He killed laaw enforcement officer on the ground He tried to take off, but the wheel blocks were in place. He shot both pilots, one of whom later died But at that point, law enforcement was trying to retake the cockpit. and bike shot himself before the plane or The assassination attempt really could get off the ground As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets the history of sex scandal in society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit. Je for had a couple of shots fired at him, but I want to skip forward now to march thirtieth, nineteen eighty one When Ronald Reagan was in Washington, he'd speaking at the Hilton Hotel and he was about to climb back into his limousine When a mancle John Hinley Junr. fired six shots at him He hit Reagan and three other people Reagan was wounded by a bullet that actually hit the side of the limousine and then ricochet off and smashed into his underarm which that broke a rib and punctured a lung and gave him significant internal bleeding. They apparently arrived the hospital at Death's door was stabilized in the emergency room. and then the famous story about Reagan is that he was composentous enough to say it just before he went under I hope you guys are Republicans to the doctors that would be operating on The White House press secret, James Brady was brain damaged and disabled A secret sererice agent at police officers were both wounded Shockingly, John Hinkley later said that he wanted to kill Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster Gary Reagan in eighty one. He was so badly wounded had he actually died That would have been an important one, wouldn't it? I think so. yeah, I think so His vice president was not nearly as committed to neeoliberal political economy is free markets and globalization of capitalism as Reagan was. I consider Reagan to be the second most consequential president of the twentieth century after Franklin Dylana Roosevelt in the nineteen thirties in terms Putting America on a different course, especially in terms of political economy So I think that would have been very, very significant. At the same time, onene has to say that The economic crises of the nineteen seventies affecting the global North, not just America, but Britain, Europe, and the efforts to climb out of that in the sense that the social democratic regimes that had prevailed since World War II were no longer working as they once did This dissatisfaction ran pretty deep, which meant that someone trying to have a different kind of politics might have run into very strong headwinds The abandonment of Daytant and foreign affairs and the military buildup and the struggle with the evil Empire I do give Reagan credit for hastening the end of the Soviet emmpire And that is a world historical event of enormous importance and that's Soviet Empire collapsed Much more quickly and much sooner than anyone had expected. And if anyone tells you, they knew that was coming in nineteen eighty nine and they were alive at the time They are not telling you the truth because no one thought that. That's not how empires go out. If we think of how empires Go out of business slowly Reluctantly, they elect a reformer. That doesn't go so well. So then they become reactionary. If you think of Empires in recession. they hang on for as long as they can. It's true of The Ottoman Empire, it's true the Spanish Empire. Might we say the same about the British Empire? I'll let you be the judge of that Empire stone declare themselves out of existence the way Gorbachev did and the fact that this happened so quickly And decisively between nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety one is one of the more stunning events. in world history of the twentieth century an attempted assassination of a former president consequences because well His son would one day sit in the White House to some sources was motivated to take some revenge against those who tried to kill his father On april thirteenth, nineteen ninety three according to an FBI investigation Fourteen men, some Kuwaiti and some Iraqi, believed to be working for Saddam Hussein, smuggled bombs into Kuwait with a plan to assassinate former President Bush with a huge car bomb during a visit to Kuwait University He left office in january nineteen ninety three and he was He headading Kuwait, the country that he had led the coalition to liberate in nineteen ninety one The plot never got much further. than that. In retaliation for it, Clinton launched a cruise missile strike against Baghdad And it's said that the family Picularicallyly his son, George W. Bush. always harbored the desire for revenge. Can I ask about the ones strange perhaps, not really a near myst George H W. Bush, after the presidency goes to Kuwait They according to the FBI, there is an attempt seems up by Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq blow him up while he's in Kuwait Clinton launches a cruise missile strike on Baghdad in retaliation Do you think this event was important or played any role at all in George Bush's son, George W. Bush in planning for the removal of Saddam Hussein. I don't have access to the interior of George W. Bush's mind, so I can't say how dominant it was. I do consider the American invasion of Iraq in two thousand three to be the worst foreign policy mistake in US history O that the world will be paying for for fifty years after that event, and we're about halfway through that fifty year process now And certainly anger about his father was one factor But he had Cheney, the oil man at his side calling many of the shots. who was arguing about the international geopolitics of oil and how the U. S. had to position itself to Asure itself and its allies of a steady oil supply for the foreseeable future And then u Bush had a dream of I call it a Woodrow Wilson dream. He's the last of the Wilsonians that to spread democracy through the entire world and to be the person who brought democracy to the Arab Middle East. This was a genuinely held belief of his. I think it may have been noble in aspiration, but it was extremely poorly executed. and not well thought out at all. but he was animated by a dream of America as the wellspring of democracy the world. And in the final analysis, I think Ole and his dream of universal democracy for all the countries that didn't have it factored in his thinking far more seriously than avenging his father Here's an interesting one in november nineteen ninety six Manila. President Clinton's motorcade was rerouted before it drove over one particular bridge And that's because the Secret Service had accepted a message saying an attack was imminent Later The bridge was checked and a bomb was found under it The U. S. investigation revealed that there had been a plot masterminded by one Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan, hisis name was Osama bin Lad So Bill Clinton narrowly avoids being blown up in Mila when his motorcade had to be rerouted because a terrorist ultimately answering to or inspired by Osam binaden, plac a bomb under the bridge This was in nineteen ninety six Gary, does Clinton in your Harry Truman category of not super important What do we do with President Al Gul rom ninety six onwards. Well, I will say about Al Gore is that if he had been president, Starting in two thousand one, and I should say, He probably was the properly elected president in two thousand one There would have been no invasion of Iraq So in that sense George Bush's Asent to the White House which may not have been legal. was an extremely important event in American history and It may have been the wrong presresident sitting in the White House if the votes have been fully and fairly counted and if the Supreme Court had played a neutral. rather than partisan roles. So I can't say the non election of Gore because I think he was elected, but The non transfer of the presidency to Gore is a moment of extraordinary significance in American history. Assther Clinton You may have read my most recent book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order I've gotten a lot of flack for this. But I stand by it. I see Clinton, he was a very able politician I see his most significant contribution as acquiescing to The neoliberal political economy a political economy that prized free markets and globalization above all else that Reagan in the nineteen eighties had been the architect for. And I think that path was clearly set by nineteen ninety six. It had not been set By nineteen ninety three or nineteen ninety four, many undertook his massive health care. National Health insurance Reform Act, but when it gets crushed and when the Democrats get crushed in the nineteen ninety four election, he abandons that ambitious reform agenda and acquiescesces to the political economy that the Republicans in the eighties place. And so in that sense, I don't think that His death in ninety six would have altered the course of American history President George W. Bush was lucky to survive when he went on a visit to Tobilisi One man in the crowd threw a live Soviet made hand grenade towards the podium The pin had been pull out of the grade but it didn't explode because a handkerchief had been wrapped around it and had held the safety lever place During the course of his presidency, there were many plots and threats made against Barack Obama. Some packages were sent and were intercepted by the Secret Service containing either chemicals or explosives. But I want to move forward now to june the sixteenth, twenty sixteen When Michael Stepen Sandford, a Brit attempts to grab the gun of a police officer at a Trump rally in Las Vegas, Nvada He was arrested and he stated that he'd hoped to assassinate Donald Trump who would go on to win the presidency. That full. He was given around a year in prison before being deported. Back to the UK Last one, Gary, a British national did a year in prison for trying to grab a pistol at a rally in twenty sixteen in Nevada at a Trump rally. He said he was going to try and shoot Trump No Trump, No Trump twenty sixteen What do you think Well I'm trying to think who the Republican nominee would have been. Oh boy, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. I have to say Trump is one of the most significant political players of the first quarter of the twenty first century and has Rhapes American political life. prorofoundly. both in style and sububstance I would have said Hillary Clinton would have won, but we don't know who her opponent would have than if it had been a Marar Rubi may well have beat her in twenty sixteen On the other hand, twenty sixteen is a Brexit The rise of populism and authoritarian tendencies has been a global phenomenon. It's not been simply a U.S phenomenon And Trump is a pattern of rulers that find their counterparts throughout the world. Balsonaro in Brazil, Orban and Hungary, Erdogwan in Turkey, Putin and Russia, Netanyahu and Israel She in China, Modi in India This is an international Usurge And we also see the surge in right wing politics across Europe and Fraage threatens it in Britain. So if you ask me, would this have forestalled the populous surge and the world The answer is no I also must acknowledge that as much I dislike He is a politician of very dangerous charisma that has gripped the attention of the world like few other figures in American history. Gary, in history, we talk a lot about the substructural. it's all inevitable. it's all economics and resource and climate And then here you are also saying the two most consequential figures of the twentieth century, Reagan and Roosevelt Both survived by millimeters by millimeters to an assassin's bullet reasonably early on, very early on in the case of Roosevelt in their presidential career How I historian do you think about this? Do it just make you feel A sense of this sort of the chaos of the public realm of this little piece of dust that we're spinning on around the sun? Well, it makes me aware of how difficult it is to be historian, a historian speaking about this. present and writing about the present as I often do now. And I've been thinking about this issue since the attempted assassination of of Trump on Saturday because an inch You know, if he had not turned his head, we'll see more dissection of the photograph, but if he had not