Special Guest Episode: Monika Wiesak, Author of "America's Last President"

🎉 Special Guest Episode! If you listened to my "Bonus Episode: JFK - The Pleasure of His Company ☘️" I talked about how I enjoyed Monika Wiesak's book America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy and how I'd like to have her on the show. It's my pleasure to have her as a guest.

Topics:

➡️ Going out to read books about JFK leads to a trail of bizarre, often contradictory propaganda and hit pieces.
➡️ What changed the narrative for Monika? What inspired her to write her book?
➡️"I wanted to give him space to speak."
➡️ Murder and slander as forms of ultimate censorship.
➡️ Kennedy vs Big Business and Wall Street.
➡️ The domestic economy under Kennedy.
➡️ Given that JFK came from a wealthy family, why did he care about the less fortunate? Was he "a class traitor?"
➡️ Considering that he was President during the Cold War, why did JFK push for détente?
➡️ What did we lose when Kennedy was killed?

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Last-President-World-Kennedy/dp/B0B92L1HT3

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14601950

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14548032

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Sara: Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. I have a very special episode tonight, because I have a very special guest. If you caught the bonus episode that I did for JFK 's birthday titled the pleasure of his company, then you may remember that I mentioned I read Monica Wiesak’s book America's Last President, and I really liked it, and I thought it would be awesome to have her on as a guest. Well, drum roll please. Dreams do come true, because she's here with me tonight. Now, if you're not familiar, Monica Wiesak is an IT professional and also a concerned citizen, who authored the fantabulous book America's Last President What the World Lost When it Lost John F Kennedy, so first things first, I want to welcome you on. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and be with me tonight.

Monika: And thank you for having me on. I look forward to this conversation. 

S: Yay. So I noticed straight away in the early pages of America's last president, you talk about looking for information to learn more about John F Kennedy's life, and then being disappointed by what you found. Tell us more about that experience. 

M: Yeah, so I was, I've always kind of had a curiosity about him in the back of my mind since I was a little kid, because I had seen a civil rights speech, which I thought was just he seemed, you know, really sincere, compassionate, thoughtful, someone with a lot of moral courage. But I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so there was a lot of just really sleazy, gossipy stories about him during that time. There was a lot about him making deals with the mob, him trying to kill Castro, you know, him being a DR drug addict, the womanizer, all these things. So I was a little bit confused as a child. I was, you know, when you're a child, everything's really simple. There's no right complexity. And I certainly knew nothing about propaganda. And so I was always a little bit curious. And then when I became an adult, one day, I decided to pick up a book about him, and it sort of showed me that same dichotomy that I had seen as a child, like it would say some nice thing he did here or there, but then it would make some snide comment about something or other that just seemed inappropriate in the book, like I wasn't. I'm the kind of person that you know says, If you don't have something nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all. Yeah, you know. And not to say that, you know, people don't deserve to be criticized. But, you know, when I read a book, I kind of, I want to read about this guy's policies. I want to read about what he was doing for Americans. I want to read about his struggles. I don't want to read like sleazy, snide comments every other page. And that's what I kind of felt a lot of the books were like or the the first few books I read about him, I wish I remembered what books those were, but it was so long ago, like 2008 that I don't really remember at this point. But eventually, you know, I got into more academic books. But even those, some of those would make snide comments here and there, which I really didn't like. And so that's when I started really going to the primary source material. I started listening to speeches, his press conferences, reading his letters, and the image I was getting was very, very different from the image that was being sold. And so that, to me, was just fascinating, that dichotomy of here's this person that I'm interpreting based on firsthand material, and here's this person that is being sold to me, and it's just not adding up. It's just not making sense. And with time, I kind of realized that everything was upside down. You know, there was a coup committed against JFK in 1963 but instead of writing about that, it seemed like people were writing that he committed a coup against Nixon in 1960 to steal the election. You know, JFK was murdered. Instead of writing about that, they were writing about who he wanted to murder Castro, you know, and then they were saying, you know, he's doing all these sleazy things on the side, yet nobody could figure out how to blackmail the guy. They had to murder him. So, like, it's just none of it was adding up. You know, everything was just upside down. And even his health, like he definitely had health issues. But on the, you know, plane ride to Dallas, he says, I've never felt healthier in my life. I know in Jackie's oral history, she said he was getting into more natural health and doing these exercises, which are really helping him. But then every book you read he it's like he was on his deathbed. Who cares that he was murdered? He was dying anyway. And so I started to kind of realize that this was all, in a way, propaganda to and I'm not saying everything's 100% false. You know, propaganda can be true or false or anywhere in between, but it seemed like they were trying to flip the script, and everything was getting inverted. And that's kind of what I came away with after a while. And so I just became fascinated by. Just by his story and everything he was doing, because I became so impressed with what he was doing, but I also kind of became fascinated with the propaganda around him and surrounding him. So it was like a dual interest for me, I think.

S: Yeah, so I relate to that in a lot of ways. Another reason, selfishly speaking, why I wanted to have you on was I wanted to get a gauge of generation, because I'm a Gen Xer. And for me, and I've told this story before on the air, but for me, growing up 1980s Midwest, I don't really remember that in school, we learned a whole lot about JFK. Obviously, we knew that he was a president. But what I think back, gosh, I think really the main thing was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We studied that to some degree, and then, unfortunately, he gets murdered in 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a communist kook the end. I mean, it was a very abbreviated history. I'm using air quotes here, history of JFK. So I think I diverged from you a little bit, because I never really cared. And there's this propaganda that goes out about Gen X that we all collectively in 1991 as an entire generation. We went to the movie theater to see Oliver Stone's JFK, and we took it as actual, literal history. We as a generation, we're not smart enough to know that it was a Hollywood film. We took it as actual, literal history, like we were watching cinema verite or a documentary of some kind, and then we got our collective underwear in a twist and caused a lot of ruckus. And I never went to the theater to see the movie. And again, just kind of speaking for my experience 1980s and 1990s Midwest, growing up, we were told like, okay, Oliver Stone is some Hollywood liberal. He's trying to stir up mess. Jack is dead. Nobody can bring him back. Why is he getting everybody in a in a tizzy about this? So I never really cared, until one day, I did. I finally not this past Memorial Day weekend, but last year's Memorial Day weekend had a long weekend. Didn't have much going on around the farm. And I thought, I'm going to finally watch that. I love a good conspiracy theory. I'm all about it. It doesn't matter to me if it's aliens, if it's the government, if it's whatever, if you've got a good a good yarn to spin, I want to hear it. I want to think critically about what you have to say. So I watched the film, and I just sat there when the film ended in silence, and I thought, if even a scintilla, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of this is true, we need to all be asking a hell of a lot more questions like this. It was I found it to be really interesting, not that I took it as actual, literal history, but just I thought there are so many things about this story that I never knew that are highly problematic to me. So fast forward, what do I do as an English major and a bookworm, nerd, I go and start checking out books, and I wanted to know not only about his murder, this happened to me also, by the way, with Dag Hammarskjold, I go down the rabbit hole of this person was killed under really mysterious, weird circumstances. And then I start to ask myself, well, who were they? What did they stand for? What were they really about? And when I went down that rabbit hole with JFK, that was my experience. That's where my experience mirrors yours completely, because I'm checking out these books, whether you're talking about the mainstream WASP historians, the old white guys, minorities need not apply. That's how the the old guard takes it. So it's always these white, Anglo, Saxon, Protestant, straight men that tell us how to think. And it was the same thing, sex. He he had sex constantly. He was somehow a moron that didn't have any deep ideology. But then, on the other hand, he's supposedly a mafia crime boss slash super intelligent, nefarious criminal. And I'm looking at all of this going, first of all, I don't care about what kind of consensual sex that somebody has behind closed doors. I'm super libertarian in that regard. It doesn't matter to me. But when you're talking about, all he ever did was sex, drugs and rock and roll. He was a himbo. He looked cute, but he had nothing going on upstairs. So who really cares that he died? I'm like, this cannot possibly be true. And I'm wondering for you, like, Okay, after you hear this very mainstream story that JFK was 24/7 sex, drugs, rock and roll, just a general piece of dirt trying to murder Castro trying to do all of these political assassinations himself. What did you read? Or what did you encounter? I know you said you went back to source material, so tell us about the moment when the narrative changes for you and you go from like, okay, maybe he was a ball of contradictions, or maybe this is all just a bunch of lies to formulating your own opinion. 

M: Yeah, so that was a long process, but going back to the Oliver Stone film for a sec, I actually had a unique experience with that film, because I kept hearing it every day on TV, and I wasn't really paying attention. I just kept hearing the word JFK, JFK, and I kept seeing Kevin Costner space, so I thought it was a film about JFK. And Kevin Costner was JFK. And I went to see it when I was maybe, like 1012, years old, and I remember feeling so incredibly disappointed that first five minutes in the theater, because I realized this film is not about JFK, and Kevin Costner is not JFK, right? And I just had no interest in watching this assassination film. I wanted to understand who Kennedy was as a president. So I think from a young age, my interest was in who was this guy, what kind of president was he? What were his policies? Because I think if you understand that, then you understand maybe not the specifics of why he was killed, but the general reasons of why, you know, the quote, unquote establishment didn't like him or whatnot. And so I was always much more interested in that than the actual mechanics of the assassination. So I remember that, just even at that age, feeling so disappointed in the first five minutes of that film, but in terms of learning about him, I think it was really just, you know, I start I read as many books as I could, and then so within each books you could pick out, you know, you could tell which stuff was just like snide comments and which stuff was like useful information. And then I started listening to his press conferences. And I listened to every single press conference, I listened to every single speech, and it just, you could just tell from the press conferences and the speeches that he was a really thoughtful person. He was a really considerate person. And you can tell a lot by a person's tone of voice as well. So it wasn't just his words, it was the way he was responding to certain questions, you could, like, feel the empathy he had in his voice, you know, and how he was thinking about things. And so I was like, Really, this is not this shallow, superficial, like male bimbo that he's like made out to be. You know what? I mean? This is a really intelligent, really thoughtful guy who really wants to create a better world and play a role in creating a better world and a better America, and who takes his job very, very, very seriously. I think that's the one thing I really learned, is just how seriously he took his job. You know, he was an extremely hard worker, and he really wanted to be a good president, and that doesn't come across in the mainstream image at all. And it was also the variety of policies he was involved with, you know, Latin America, Africa, just everywhere. I had no idea how busy he was as president, because, to your point, all I remember in school was, I think civil rights and maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't think I learned anything else about him in school. So there was just so much to his presidency, and it just really got me thinking as to how much better America would look today if he had not been assassinated, if maybe his brother had followed up, and, you know, maybe after that, someone he endorsed like we could have just gone down a completely different path. And that's it was really jarring for me to sort of understand, or begin to understand, how much was lost with his assassination. Because nobody really talks about that. Even the assassination books don't really talk about what we as a country and as a world lost when he was assassinated.

S: Oh, that's so true. It makes my heart hurt a little bit to to think about that, just from an emotional and a spiritual point of view, when I think about those types of people, when I think about what if they hadn't murdered, Dag Hammarskjold, what if they hadn't murdered? JFK, what if they hadn't murdered? RFK, like if all, if we just look at those three individuals, if those three individuals had lived out a normal lifespan and been able to do some of the things that they were intending to do for the betterment not only of the US, but for the world, you just wonder how different the world would be that we're living in. On that note, I would love to know about the moment because there's one. It's one thing to do research or even to start a podcast. But you wrote a book, you did a thing. So tell me about the moment when you decided I need to write my own book about this. 

M: I think that just felt obligated to do it in a way, because I felt that book didn't exist. So sort of to what I said. There were a lot of books about the assassination, there were a lot of sleazy books about him, or there were academic books, but they tended to focus on, you know, this subject or that subject. But there was no broad book that really focused on, what did we lose when we lost this man? Like nobody had really properly answered that question. And I always kind of felt a certain sadness for him, that all the books were about his murder, and nobody was really talking about him or talking about him in a positive way, and everything he sacrificed, really for the world to try to help the world. And so I just felt that book needs to be on the market, and I felt like nobody else was putting that book out there. So I wanted to put that book out there. And I also wanted to give him a voice, because I quoted him quite heavily in the book, and I wanted to give him space to speak, because I felt like his voice had in many ways been censored. You know, murder is like the ultimate form of censorship, but slander is another form of censorship. So he had been, yes, you know, censored in various ways. And I thought. Like he really deserved a voice, and so I wanted to create a book to give him as a voice, you know, to quote him as much as I could, to let him speak more so than me, speak for him as much as I could, obviously, and that's really why I decided to write the book. It was just something, and I also felt like we were living the ramifications of his assassination, like, you know, there's just so much suffering going on in the world and in America. And just after studying his presidency, like, while I was studying it, had no intention whatsoever writing a book at it, about it. I was just studying it for my own interests. But after I had studied it, I just felt this great depth of loss, and I felt like Americans need to understand what happened to their country. They need to understand what was lost so they can try to recreate it. Because until you understand what was lost and how it was taken from you, it's very difficult to recreate it. And so that was, those were the reasons I sort of decided to write the book.

S: Yeah, wow, that's, that's deep. I'm processing some of that, because what you said is so spot on. Murder is obviously a form of censorship. It's the ultimate way to silence somebody and to keep them from moving forward, but then also the slander component of it, defaming someone's character. And for me, I'm just going to throw this out there, because it's my opinion. It could be wrong. I think Jim Garrison was kind of sort of of the same vein. And I'm wondering what you think about it. For me, it seems like all roads lead to Rome. And you touched on this earlier with the idea that he was in very poor health. He was at death store anyway. But I think when we have these portrayals, and even though it's at some points, they're disparate portrayals. He was a moron, he was attractive, but had nothing going on in the brain. And then, on the other hand, he was a criminal mastermind, and he was doing all these nefarious things, blah, blah, blah. I think that all roads lead to Rome. It always leads back to this core issue of, well, we didn't lose anything significant that day. It doesn't really matter. There's no reason to rehash it. I mean, is that sort of a similar conclusion that you came to? 

M: Yes, absolutely. That's kind of where I realized all the propaganda was leading. It was flipping everything upside down, and it was saying, Who cares that he was murdered. Nothing was lost. This guy was just an airhead that was just chasing skirts all day long and making mob deals. Who cares move on. And every piece of propaganda seemed to be, in one way or another, feeding into that image. And it took me a while to realize that, you know, it wasn't really until I after, I mean, I had understood it to in some extent, but I think it wasn't really until I understood what his presidency was all about and what he was doing, that all that propaganda suddenly made sense, that it's, you know, came off as very nefarious suddenly, and not just trying to sell sleazy books, but with an actual nefarious motive behind it. 

S: Yes, yes. Well, speaking of nefarious motives, there's a great segue - chapter two of your book focuses on the CIA, and I'm curious, what role do you think that the agency played in terms of Kennedy's geopolitical struggles? Because we know that he wanted to make the world a better place, but in some instances, was quite hamstrung really by his own CIA. And I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

M: Yeah, so the CIA, he had sort of quite a rough introduction into the world of intelligence with the Bay of Pigs. They convinced him it was actually set up under Eisenhower. You know, they wanted to send these 1400 Cuban exiles onto the island to replace Castro. And Kennedy agreed to it reluctantly, because he didn't know what else to do with those exiles. You know, it's already long underway, but he said this needs to be small, quiet, no military involvement, you know, beyond just getting these guys back on the island. But it seems obvious from a CIA perspective, they knew that was never going to succeed, and they were hoping that Kennedy would be embarrassed enough to then send in military support to save the day. And he kind of realized he had been, he had been played, and he's like, No, this is we're not an imperialist nation. We're not just going to barge in with the military everywhere. And obviously he felt then that would give Khrushchev a reason to take over West Berlin, which Khrushchev was threatening to do. And so that was his sort of first rough introduction. But he was dealing with the CIA, you know, in the Congo and Indonesia. And they seem to be all about, you know, securing access, cheap access to resources for Wall Street or for these, you know, wealthy oligarchs or whatnot, whereas JFK was about, you know, setting up constitutional governments, supporting nationalist leaders, supporting policies that would help the people in the various regions across the globe. He wasn't concerning himself with oligarchs and you know, at what rate they can get cheap resources, because he just felt, you know, uplifting everyone's lives will uplift Americans as well, and we see how great the economy did under him. So. It sort of shattered that myth of you need to treat others like crap to have a good economy at home. He showed no, you can actually treat others really well and you can still have a robust, growing economy at home. And so I think that in itself, I think says a lot his presidency, I think reveals a lot about what could be possible versus what we have, and I think it shatters a lot of the myths of I think a lot of Americans do believe, Oh, we have to treat others like crap to have a good life at home. But that's not the case, and I think his presidency shows that very clearly. So there was definitely a lot of tug of war between him and the CIA, but it's really him and Wall Street, because CIA is really a servant of Wall Street.

S: Oh, preach. Uh huh, uh huh. Oh yes, you're touching on my uh crony capitalist spot. I'll get there in a minute. But, but first I want to ask you write about Wall Street and the domestic economy, and as I've shared with you, that really what I remember studying in school as it related to JFK was the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think there are some people that maybe have at least some general sense of Kennedy in terms of foreign policy and the Cuban missile crisis and the discussions with Khrushchev, but I don't think enough is talked about regarding Kennedy and the domestic economy. So I'm wondering, like, if you could tell us more about Kennedy's battles with big business and the Wall Street set. 

M: Yeah, so I was quite impressed just with how he handled the economy and how he handled these various skirmishes he had with big business. So the biggest one he had was with the steel industry. They essentially so Kennedy was obsessed, and I would say completely obsessed, with keeping inflation low, because he called inflation accrual tax upon the week. And we see that happening now. You know, inflation is going through the roof. People can't afford to buy groceries. And he had actually increased minimum wage. He had increased social security benefits. He has significantly reduced unemployment, all these things, tremendous things he did to help the economy. Well, he knew if there was inflation, then people's wages weren't really going up. They were just going up nominally, but in real terms, they weren't going to go up. And he wanted to increase people's living standards. So he was obsessed with keeping inflation low. And steel is a commodity that is like in every other commodity, or impacts the price of every other commodity. And so he had negotiated with the unions, the steel unions, to basically forego a wage increase during that year, to basically ensure that the steel companies would not raise their prices, and that, you know, there would be price stability throughout the economy. So the unions graciously agreed. And then the steel industry, US steel, which was the major steel company, came to the White House and told Kennedy, you know, you know, we know they did. They agreed not to raise wages, but we're going to raise prices anyway. So JFK was just livid. Ian Jackie said there was like this flash of anger in his eyes like she had never seen him so angry. So he was absolutely livid. And he essentially, you know, went on national TV and he said, This is not, not acceptable. These guys are greedy, they're selfish. They're ruining the economy for everybody. There's absolutely no need for them to raise prices. And it wasn't just us steel, all the major steel companies joined with us steel, so there's clearly some kind of price collusion going on. So JFK is calling that out. He sends his brother Bobby, the Attorney General, after the steel companies an event, and basically because of the pressure from the Attorney General and the pressure from Kennedy speaking out publicly, the six steel companies agreed to resend their price increases, and the economy remains stable, and prices remain stable, and he had much lower and I think his average inflation during his three years was, I don't want to quote the exact number, I think was like one or one and a half percent. And I think the average over the last 100 years is like 3% something like that. So he was much lower than any other president, and it's because he did things like this, because he stood up to the steel industry, that he was able to keep inflation low. And I just can't see, you know, Joe Biden going head to head with some industry that's impacting prices and forcing them, you know, to keep their prices down. But steel wasn't the only industry he battled with. He also battled with the chemical industry. So Rachel Carson was a biologist. She put out this book called Silent Spring, and she was basically saying that these pesticides that DDT in particular, but pesticides in general, that we're putting out there, you know, are causing poisoning our not just our food, but our environment, and ultimately poisoning the human body, because all of nature is interconnected, and humans are part of nature, and so the chemical industry basically saw her as a public relations problem. They, you know, started track trashing her as a quack. And you know, someone who doesn't understand anything about science. Plans and food safety. But Kennedy took her book really seriously, and he, in the late 1962 set up a commission to study the health effects of pesticides and environmental impacts of pesticides. In the middle of 63 they came out with a report that basically called for, you know, a severe reduction in the use of pesticides, much greater testing of pesticides, testing synergism, you know, how do pesticides interact with drugs? How do they interact with each other? Because, for example, one chemical may not be harmful, but it mixed with another chemical might be very harmful, right? So, just testing synergism, you know, educating doctors on pesticide induced health issues, things like that. Now obviously those recommendations didn't follow through, because they came out in the middle of 63 so I think JFK was working on it for 1964 his top two issues were going to be poverty and the environment. So I think this pesticide thing and these recommendations were probably going to be a big part of his future legislative proposals, which he obviously never got to you know, he also stood up to the pharmaceutical industry. There was a scandal over a drug called thalidomide. Was a headache drug, but it was causing birth defects. And essentially the FDA employer Francis Kelsey, it was approved in Germany, and it had been distributed widely in the US through clinical trials, she refused to approve the drug, and Kennedy gave her the highest award that a civilian can be given for refusing to approve the drug, because that's really the job of the FDA is to not approve stuff. If they approve everything, there's no point in them even being there, right? So Kennedy understood, you know, what the job of the FDA was, and he rewarded that job. You know, he rewarded someone looking out for the health of Americans, over looking out over pharma profits. And not only did he reward her, but a few months later, he passed legislation that required greater disclosure of side effects on drugs and also required efficacy testing. Because up to that point, there was only safety testing required for approval. You didn't have to do efficacy testing, yeah. So you could put anything out there and claim it helps headaches, but you don't have to prove it. And so he put in legislation that you have to prove both safety and efficacy. And then they did a He also ordered a retrospective or retroactive review of the last 25 years of drugs approved, and some by the early 1970s something like 600 drugs were taken off the market because they weren't they showed that they couldn't show that they were effective, and what they were claiming to be effective for he gave this amazing consumer rights pledge where he said, every consumer has the right to safety, the right to be heard, you know, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and this goes across all industries, all products. So he was really big on protecting the average American against industry corruption. And these are the kinds of things that you don't really see from our political leaders today. Both sides seem to be, you know, owned by corporate interests at this point. And so I think that is a huge part of his presidency that's just greatly overlooked. And even from an economic perspective, you know, I think GDP, or GNP, went up something like 20% when he was president. Unemployment went down by 50% prices remain stable. I mean, those are incredible outcomes, and he did this all while decreasing taxes, you know, so people's social security benefits went up, other benefits went up, unemployment benefits went up, but taxes went down. And so it really was, it just kind of shows you again, the potential of what would be possible if you have a leader in there who's actually trying to do his job and who's actually trying to serve the public. Because that's what JFK said, he said, My job as President is to protect the public interest against all the narrow private interests that operate in our society. And you can see that through everything he did. And it's very clear when you look at his relationship with big business, that he was absolutely trying to do that.

S: Yeah, wow, wow. My brain is awash with thoughts right now, because I, first of all, I agree with you. It wouldn't matter if we're talking donkey, elephant, red versus blue. In my mind, that's really, in modernity, just a false dichotomy. It's like the cartoon of the cow standing outside the slaughterhouse saying, Do you want to go in the left way or do you want to go in the right way?

M: Yeah, I've seen that. It's hilarious. 

S: Well, you're screwed either way. So you know, it doesn't really matter. But I remember reading that Blough, the CEO of US Steel, had gone into JFK like he had met with him at the oval office after he had already announced this, like hasty press release to say that they were doing the price hike. And he just like slides a piece of paper across JFK’s desk to let him know that they've made this press announcement. And I'm sitting here thinking, can you imagine the cojones on that guy? I mean, that shows you that somebody who is the CEO of a major company would have the chutzpah and the ability. Not just that the guy would have the moxie to do it, but that he would feel empowered enough to go to a sitting US president, after this negotiation has been brokered, and just freaking slide a piece of paper across the desk like ta-dow. Here we go. This is how business is actually going to run. I you have to wonder, like, how, how much power these people have. I feel like it's not only the power to manipulate somebody that's in office, but to also make the decisions about who gets elected or elected wink and then who gets eliminated. I mean, did you come to any similar conclusions like that in your research?

M: Yeah. I mean, it's clear that there was a huge struggle between private and public power during JFK presidency, and it's clear that private power was used to having its way, and that's why Roger Blau could have the guts to do that, to just go up to JFK and slide this piece of paper and say, I know you're president. I know we made a deal, but this is how it's going to go. And so it took a tremendous amount of courage on JFK part to push back and say, No, actually, this is not how it's going to go. Yeah, you know. So I do think there's a certain arrogance there, because they can typically buy politicians, they can typically manipulate politicians. And so I think they assumed they could do the same with JFK. And I think they realized, no, we can't do that with this guy. And I think that was hard on a lot of powerful people to realize that this guy was not going to be pushed around.

S: Yes, yes. Well, they're accustomed to sock puppets, and I feel like in modernity, a lot of us expect crony capitalism. We've seen so much of it, and this is to your point of how different things were and how different things could have been had JFK lived. It's difficult for us now. I mean, we're sitting here in 2024 there's an election coming up that most people have heartburn and indigestion about. It's difficult for us to really hope for anything different or better. I also think that it's something of an open secret, if you will, that wealthy fat cats and billionaires. I mean, the WEF is already saying that within the next decade, we'll have trillionaires. So you're talking about obscene amounts of wealth. If, to me, it feels like it's an open secret that these fat cats, these power brokers, these corporate CEOs have tremendous, tremendous amounts of power. So I've got a two part question here for you, given that JFK himself, let's be honest, came from a wealthy family, what do you make of his commitment to help the less fortunate?

M: Yeah, so that's a really interesting question. Obviously, I can't say definitively what it was. I think a lot of it had to do with his struggles with health issues when he was young, because he did stay in bed a lot. You know, he wasn't always out playing with other kids. He was in pain a lot. And I think he was sitting at home reading books, or sitting in bed reading books when he was suffering. And so I think he was learning about history, learning about all the great men in history. And I think he wanted to be one of those great men. And I think he wanted to make the world a better place. He didn't want people to suffer the way that he was suffering. And I think also, you know, when he was in World War Two, he almost died, and it was indigenous islanders that saved him and rescued his life. And so I think he was indebted and realized that, you know, these are human beings. These are people. I'm only alive because of them. And I think he wanted to help. And he was Irish also, right. So he knew about the famine, you know, the Irish famine. He probably heard about it from his grandparents. He knew how much the Irish had struggled under British colonial rule. So I think all of these things, like understanding how the Irish struggled, having other colonized people save his life, having all these health issues, the horrible back injury during World War Two, you know, he had horrid back spasms throughout his life, largely as a result of that injury. So he knew what it was like to suffer. And I think people that know what it's like to suffer tend to have more empathy for others who are suffering. So it may not have been financial pain like he obviously didn't experience that, but he experienced other forms of suffering that maybe a lot of wealthy people don't experience. So I'm guessing that probably had a part all those things in combination, probably had a big part of him being the way that he was, but it is very unique, because usually when you run into someone that wealthy, you don't expect them to empathize with people who are struggling or people who are suffering. You expect them to serve other wealthy wealthy people, because it's good connections with other wealthy people that maintains your own wealth, you know, because a lot of your wealth is based on business connections or whatnot. And you see our, some of our congressmen and senators are like, multi millionaires. They're not getting that off their Congress or Senate salary. You know, they're getting it because they're serving wealth and power. So obviously, he. Interested in accumulating more wealth and power, which is rare, because most people, even in wealth and power, still want to accumulate more. So he was very unique, and it's, I guess it would have to be his struggles in early life. I'm not sure what else it would be that made him that way, though. It's hard to say. Obviously.

S: Yeah, so here's the second part of my question, given that he was against this imperialist American expansion type of attitude, he was pro self-determination for nations that wanted that, and pro help for people that were less fortunate. And I think that there were people that viewed him as a class trader, so to speak. So do you feel like there were powerful interests, maybe other wealthy people? And by the way, I remember reading that he was talking about the Rockefeller family, for example, and saying like, no, they have money. You think the Kennedy family has money? No, the Rockefellers have money. They've got way more money than we will ever have. So I'm just wondering, like, do you think that some of these powerful interests, these corporate CEOs, Wall Street, like the fat cats at the top of the pyramid, who control everybody else? Do you think that they really had some sort of concerted effort put together to prevent him from doing all of the good that he intended?

M: Yeah, it's hard to say. I think definitely every sector of power didn't like him. You know, whether you go to Wall Street or whether you go to the CIA or the military, or whatever it may be, he just there was no sector of power that had any use for him. And I think that's a very rare situation. You know, you may have instances where someone's anti war, but they'll still sell out to all the corporations as long as they don't have to go to war, for example. But he's really standing up to every power structure that you can imagine. And I think that's what was really unique about him, you know, he wasn't taking on one battle or another battle. He was taking on all the battles. And that's really insane when you think about it. So it almost makes you feel like he just never stood a chance. There was just never this guy was never gonna make it eight years, because he was just pissing off way too many people. 

S: Yeah, yes, that's so true. And I, I feel like sometimes we can judge people by their enemies, and so when, when we're looking at this sort of, I don't know, in my mind, a trifecta, as I said, Dag Hammarskjold, JFK, RFK, and you look at the people that hated them, I'm like, That only makes their stock go up in my book.

M: Yes, I agree. I think you can. And a lot of ways, I think that goes back to the media slander. The more the media attacks someone you're probably pretty sure bet, the better of a person they are, because they usually prop up the people that are really like that. Serve the serve the establishment, so to speak. If you serve the establishment, you get amazing press coverage. You know, you're the greatest thing since sliced bread. But if you don't serve the establishment, you tend to get really bad press coverage. So I think you can also tell by the press coverage he continues to get to this day that he is not a darling of the establishment by any means. You know, even though some people will claim, oh, there's this Kennedy power machine. No, no. If there was a Kennedy power machine, they would not be like, you know, slandering him left and right, you know, for 60 years straight.

S: Yeah. And it seems to me that any world leader, whether you're talking about a US president, a UN Secretary General. It doesn't matter, any world leader who truly, sincerely pushes for things like peace and disarmament. And they're not just paying lip service to the idea, like wink wink. I'm telling the public I want peace. I'm telling them I want nuclear disarmament. Then really, I'm funding the hell out of the military industrial and military intelligence and defense contractor complexes. But they're really sincere about it, and they're trying to do something about it. It seems to me that those people tend to not have a long lifespan. And I'm wondering, like, what do you think contributed to or inspired JFK desire for detente, because he was in office during the Cold War and even within my lifetime, thinking back to the 80s, in particular, Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall and the evil empire and the Iron Curtain. When we think about him being in office at a time when the Cold War was pretty hot, what do you think inspired his desire for detente? 

M: I think a lot of it was children. That's what he would say all the time, and not just his children, but children in general. You know, he made the comment multiple times that there are kids all over this planet like playing right now, and they don't have a clue what's going on. They did not contribute to this mess that we're in at all. And it's not. Right that we end their lives because of a mess that we've created as adults here. And so I think a lot of it was that he just felt nobody had a right to mass murder, people, that that just wasn't the way to conduct business, and that we should be able to find peaceful resolutions to problems. We should be able to talk to the other side. We should be able to negotiate. And that's not to say that he was a pushover, because he obviously wasn't, you know, if push came to shove and there had to be war, you know, he was going to do that, but he was going to do absolutely everything in his power to avoid that situation. And if it didn't have to come about, he was going to be very strategic about it, very gradual, you know, give the other side plenty of opportunity to change course, you know, to basically end the war as quickly as possible. And so I just feel like he felt he didn't have the right to send children to war, or had to have children have bombs dropped around their home, or to, you, you know, drop all these bombs into the environment, all the nuclear testing they were doing. He's like, this isn't right and fair to future generations to be dropping all these nuclear bombs all over the place. You know, obviously, until the test ban treaty, he was, in a way, pressured, or he had to do a little bit of that as he was president. But his goal was always we need to stop this. This isn't fair. It isn't right. It isn't fair to the environment, it isn't fair to future generations. It isn't fair to children. And so I think that was a big part of his reason in pushing for detente. I think he just abhorred war. I think he hated it. And I think I read someone said like his abhorrence was of war ran even far deeper than his rhetoric about it like he really, really despised it, didn't like it, and didn't see it as a practical way of solving problems. That's why, in his peace speech, you know, if you listen to that speech carefully, you know he says Peace is a process. It's a practical way of solving problems. It's not really an outcome. It's a process, a way of solving problems. And I think he just felt that this is the practical way to address differences. It's not to bomb each other, you know? It's to talk, it's to negotiate. And I think that's where a lot of his views came from. And he was so, so serious about detente, about disarmament. You know, he was extremely committed to it, according to Jackie, you know, he'd been thinking about it since they were married for really, really long time, long before he became president. And I think that's this other misperception. There's this perception out there that he had this epiphany during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he completely changed. No, he was always interested in disarmament. He was always interested in detente. Now he became better with in time with President as president, you know, I think he maneuvered out of the Berlin crisis in 1961 I think by 1962 he was a little easier for him to maneuver out of the Cuban missile crisis because he'd already gone through Berlin. So obviously he gained experience, and he became better as president with time. But his views were always his views. They didn't really change. I didn't see much change. I just saw him better at implementing, you know, as he had more experience, basically.

S: Yeah, I'm so glad that you brought that up, because one facet of the smear campaign, and there are many, but one facet of them, is this idea that JFK was dropping tabs of acid with one of his mistresses, one of his 18,000 bajillion, million mistresses and decided to become a peace warrior because he was having out of body experiences on hardcore drugs, and I'm sitting here like this cannot possibly be true. Again, I'm very libertarian about most things. Consenting adults behind closed doors, I don't really care, as long as you're not forcing anybody against their will. But I mean, do you ever hear some of these things, whether it's like, JFK knew about aliens, or JFK was dropping tabs of acid, JFK was smoking PCP. I mean, do you ever hear these things and you just sort of put your head in your hands and go, What the eff am I even hearing right now?

M: Yeah, and it's funny, it's that's the kind of stuff that made me really skeptical of a lot of the affair stuff. Because, you know, they would say, like, you know, some woman would say, Oh, he was really wanted to murder Castro. He was talking about it all the time. And you know this, I know who that you're talking about, Mary Meyer. How they're like, she changed him from a warmonger to a peacenik. I'm like, he didn't change. He wasn't trying to murder Castro. Like, where are these stories like, coming from? It's just it's so bizarre. And when I listened to Jackie's oral history was about eight to 10 hours long. There's absolutely nothing she said that that wasn't sensical, like everything she said. I could be like, Yeah, I see that. Like, that makes sense based on everything I know about JFK policies. But you hear some of these other stories and you're like, This just makes. No sense whatsoever from a policy perspective. So I'm like, if it's dead wrong from a policy perspective, should I really be taking it seriously at all? And that's kind of the conclusion I came to. And again, I have no idea if he had affairs or not, and I'm with you. I really don't care if he did or not, because he was obviously an amazing president, and that's all that matters. But you do have to question those things, because they mix it in with policy stuff and the policy stuff I know, like, obviously I wasn't there. I have no idea what he was doing, you know, behind closed doors, but I know his policies, so I know if they're lying about that. Then I have to look at the other stuff with a skeptical eye. Clearly. 

S: Oh, I agree. And my final question here is, there has been this strong smear campaign against JFK more specifically, but really, I would say anybody with the last name Kennedy has been smeared in one way or the other. There was actually an episode I released earlier this year where I had reviewed this interview because RFK Jr had sat down with VladTV for like an hour, and it was this really good interview, I felt. And one of the things that he brought up is how there was somebody now, this is his allegation, not mine and not yours. I want to be very clear to the listeners here, but RFK Jr said that there was somebody, allegedly from the CIA whose entire job, like this man's raison d'etre was to blacken the name Kennedy, to just have a smear campaign against anybody affiliated with the family, or anybody in the family, which I thought was really interesting. And so I want to wrap this up people sometimes, like little sound bites, little pull quotes, if you had to pick a few top things, like, if you really wanted to drive something home, if somebody's listening to this episode, because some of my listeners are super into the JFK stuff, and some of them aren't. So if somebody is listening to this and they're thinking, Well, what should I know about JFK’s life and his legacy, from somebody who literally wrote a book on what the world lost the day that he died, what would those things be that you would want to leave the audience with about JFK life and his legacy?

M: I would start with the fact that he was doing everything he absolutely could to do his job, which was to serve the American people and also the broader global public. So he was absolutely 1,000% committed to doing a good job and to serving the people he was elected to serve. I think that's the biggest distinction, because I don't think we've had any politicians sense or any president sense, who viewed that as their job. So that's the very first thing, obviously. And then there's everything that comes as a result of that, which is pushing for peace, pushing for economic prosperity, pushing for self determination and sovereignty, pushing for good relations with other nations. All of that stuff is secondary. It flows from the fact that he understood what his job was, and he was 1,000% committed to doing his job. And if we had, you know, if every president since him had been 100% committed to representing the average American, our country would look completely different. It would be a complete 180 this country would look nothing, absolutely nothing like it looks right now. You know, people would be living better. There would be less war, less debt, better relations with other countries more freedom, you know, for the average citizen, it would just be a completely different world. And I feel like so much that's happening in our world today is a direct result of the Kennedy assassination, or would not be happening if he had lived like the border crisis, for example. You know, he gave a lot of effort to treating Latin America, Great, helping them grow, treating Africa, great, treating Asia, great. If that had continued to happen, there would be no border crisis. You know, he battled a lot with Israel when he was president. He tried to stop them from getting nukes. He tried to get the lobby to register as a foreign agent. He tried to resolve the Palestinian refugee issue. All that situation happening in Gaza right now would not be happening if Kennedy lived. So there's just so many things happening today, and even, like the tensions with this, with Russia right now, and just you know, like, Who knows if World War Three is going to start at any moment? If he had achieved nuclear disarmament, we'd be on a lot less fear over that happening. And there's just so many things that happened 60 years ago that impact us today. And I feel it's so so important for every American to understand that and to try to raise the standards we set for our politicians and to say no, we want leaders like JFK. We want leaders who care about every person, both in America and abroad, but obviously serving America first, and that really want to push for peace, want to push for prosperity, that really care about people's health, their well being, and we don't have that at all. We haven't had that in 60 years, and I think we should, you know, it's our right to demand that as voters and as citizens.

S: Yeah, very well said, Wow, I think in a lot of ways, he was America's last president, and it makes my heart hurt. Everything that you just said makes my heart hurt because we could be living in a different situation. We shouldn't have to settle for crony capitalism and for insane, absurd amounts of inflation and picking between two sock puppets. So it makes me sad at heart to think about how different things could have been. I remember in JFK and the unspeakable, James Douglass quotes Sergey Khrushchev as saying, had Kennedy lived, we would all be living in a different world. And you think about how much better, or at least potentially, how much better we could all be in if he hadn't been murdered and really cut down in his prime?

M: And that's, you know, that's why I felt almost obligated to write the book, because I was like, This country needs to understand what was lost when this man was murdered. Every American citizen needs to understand that.

S: Awesome. Well, tell us where, if someone does not own your book, if they're listening to this episode and they're trying to frantically write down a place to go, where would you prefer they go to buy a copy of America's Last President? 

M: It's available on most of the online bookshops. It's available on Amazon, thrift books, Barnes and Noble all the typical bookshops. It is available in audio as well, for those that prefer audio and ebook and hardback, paperback, all the formats.

S: Cool. Well, I cannot recommend the book highly enough. I read it, and from the introduction, I was hooked in because of the similarities between what I experienced when I woke up and joined the party and decided to look into the life of JFK and what Monika talks about in her situation of the constant murder, the constant whoring around, blah, blah, blah. And it's like so refreshing to actually get some real information from someone who cares enough to talk about the policy and the man's life and not always focusing on the man's murder and the gory details of the autopsy and some things that get really hairy. So one of the things I want to say before we sign off is thank you for not only appearing today on this podcast with me, but also for taking the time to do all that research and write that book. It is really a treasure.

M: And thank you for reading it like I really appreciate every person that reads the book, because I, you know, I wrote it to try to share that information with as many people as possible.

S: Good. Well, I encourage everyone listening if you can't afford to buy it, check it out at the local library, but get your hands on a copy of it, because it is excellent, excellent stuff. And I want to thank you again for taking time out of your day to be here with me.

M: Thank you for having me.

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