The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 288 - Ross Perot

Episode Date: August 15, 2017

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine Texan Ross Perot. SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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each week. Hi. Cat photographer. Maker of rice. Oh Dave. Donut-eater Dave Anthony. He's a story from American history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is gonna be about a couple things. Yeah go ahead. So you make rice and eat donuts do you? Go for Dave. All right and also it's not bi-weekly right now. So I don't know what we... We've established that word means whatever I want to mean. Okay so by the Anthony rule. Once a week. Bi-weekly nominates one a week. Sure. Because you said so. God do you want to look who to do? I'll do one buck. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun?

And this is not going to come to tickle you. Okay. You are Queen Fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to Mingle. And do what? Hey everybody. Hey. We are we're part of the ATC comedy network which is a group of great podcasts like Bill Burr has one is a bunch of other assholes. June 27th 1930. You don't like it when I want it. What's your deal? It's not how we do it. Okay let's start again. No it's different. Let's start again. Are you ruining it? I don't want you in this mood when we're doing it. You ruined it. No. Come on please. Ross Perot was born... Wait what is the year? 1930. Okay. Ross Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas. Wow. Okay. Which is right on the border. You got there right at once. You're right at the same place I was born.

So you know this guy. I was born right there. Which is right on the border of Arkansas in Texas there. His father Gabriel Perot was a commodity broker specializing in cotton contracts. Okay. So he worked in the alliteration business. They were not rich or poor. They were not rich or poor basically middle class. But Ross was always told he could be anything he wanted. Okay. The classic American. Sure. He'd be whatever you want son. Remember when we used to tell that to our kids. Yeah. Now we just say you're gonna die in a hellfire. Yeah. Now we're just like you can eat beetles. Just a heads up in a pinch. Eat a beetle. At the 1936 State Fair six year old Ross was dazzled by all the cars and remembers one day of dreaming of owning one. Dreaming of owning a car. Yeah. So this is where his life is. Sure. After the US

Underworld War two Ross joined the Boy Scouts of America in 1942. In just 16 months he made Eagle Scout. What is that? How does that work? That's a dude who's overdoing it. That's a lot. Like about to have a life. It used to be an Eagle Scout. That means he was just just like a badge obsessed lunatic. Right. Right. As we learned that that either results in being Ross Perot or creating a radiation ship. Either with those only two ways it goes. So that's the if you don't know about the Scouts that's the highest rank. Ross had an uncle Henry Ray who was very badly wanted to be a fighter pilot. Okay. Okay. So he built his own plane out of wood. Decorated in US insignia and put a old World War One engine in it. Hey bud. Huh. Can I jump in. What's happening. So Uncle Hank built a plane out of wood in World War One. No. It was nice. It was World War Two. So he put a World War One engine in it. You know because it's a. Right. That's what I mean. He was building a. It's a wood plane. He has a

wood plane. He made a wood plane. Can I keep going. Wood planes. How do they do. I hear they're not. It's not. It's not something they like to use this wood. Right. Okay. Although Spirit Arrow used a lot of wood planes. That's right. Spirit does use those. I got a wood plane and I'm delayed again. Okay. So he built a wooden plane. Sure. So this made a big impression on young Ross thinking that he could do whatever he wanted if he put his mind to it. So he wasn't there for the attempt to take off. I don't think so. There's no way that you walk away from that. Like anything's possible. When he was when he was had to play a tennis match against a very good player. He practiced in secret until he was good enough to win. Okay. So who. Okay. He's tenacious. He's got to also weird. Sure. Like who practices in secret. It's tiny too. He's also a very small man. He's made of wood right. Yeah. Right. As a teenager Ross found out that he was a very good salesman. He

sold garden seeds, saddles and newspaper subscriptions. Okay. And in 1949 Ross entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland and thrived. Though he was only five foot six inches. Okay. He grew in stature and had a trademark ramrod straight posture. So he. So he had that little weird posture that he has where he stands up super straight. Sure. Sure. To make up for his tiny, tiny, tiny. Right. He taught the class that year and became five six straight up straight up. He taught the class this year that year and became vice president. And he was chairman of the honor committee in his senior year. So he's a fucking achiever. Sure. When a classmate from a well to do family committed a violation, many want to sweep it under the rug. So Ross resigned from the committee. The admiral was so impressed with his principles that he pushed the that he punished the offender and convinced the righteous Ross to return

as chairman. Okay. Right. Smart play. Snitch. Sure. Ross Perot married Margo Birmingham in 1956. Margo Perot. Yeah, I guess it would be Margo Perot. It's not that great. It's tough. It's tough. It's tough one. The next year he left the Navy and became a salesman for IBM. Okay. He was incredibly successful. One year he hit his annual sales quota by January 19th. Wait, what did the I'm assuming quotas start January 20th? Well, he was doing so well that IBM was capping his commissions. So, well, so at some point he he hit it 19 days. And they were okay. So and that year he showed up at his office and swim trunks in a towel then went for a swim to show his unhappiness. That'll that'll show. So he's like, what do I have to fucking do? You're gonna cap me in 19 days. How about I take a swim, bitch? So he's just showing up

swimming in the IBM pools. I guess so. Well, he went to the YMCA. Oh, okay. Ross then tried to pitch his ideas for innovation at IBM to his supervisors. And he was completely ignored and dismissed. So he left IBM in 1962 to found electronic data systems EDS in Dallas with just $1,000. He went to large corporations offering his data processing services. He was refused 77 times before he was given his first contract. Okay, the company struggled for four years until the government got into the health insurance business in 1965 and EDS began landing lucrative contracts from the government computerizing Medicare records. Okay. So he's now it's happening. The company went public in 1968 and the stock price rose from $16 to 160 within days. Soon it was worth $41.5 billion. That's quite a jump. It started

with $1,000. Is that the right number? That's a lot of money. That's got to be a wrong number. It's got to be 4.15 or maybe it isn't. Anyway, he's worth billions now. Wow. Okay. In a 1968 cover story, Fortune magazine called Perot the fastest richest Texan ever. Okay. Which is saying something. Sure. Jerry Jones is on record on notice. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. But you said it first. Thanks. Jerry Jones is on record. I mean notice. Thank you. He had a certain type of employee he looked for. Those who liked to win first and then those who hated to lose. Okay. Right. So winners. Winners or people who didn't want to lose. Sure. Those are winners. Right. He hired tons of war veterans and had a written dress code.

Men had to wear dark suits, white shirts, and subdued ties. Facial hair was forbidden. Oh my God. Women could not wear pants except when there's very cold weather. Okay. Pants. You can wear pants. Pants today. It's freezing outside. Take two degrees out. Go ahead and cover up your vaginas. Everyone stand up straighter. There's also a moral code. Oh really? They avoided hiring anyone who was divorced and if you had an extramarital affair you could be fired from the company. Okay. Wow. This is starting to get religious. I don't even think it's religion. Sounds commandmenty. During the Vietnam War, Ross was critical of the treatment of POWs. He launched a media campaign to call attention to it and he appeared on the Today Show and took

out ads in hundreds of newspapers. Okay. Just raising awareness? Yeah. They're not being treated well over there. Okay. But he really made a splash in the political limelight when in December 1969 he flew to Indochina with 30 tons of medicine and food for US POWs in Vietnam. I'm going to make it rain. Get ready. He made sure he was also accompanied by a plane load of reporters. He spent $1.5 million on the effort. Oh my god. Although the flights were blocked when they got to Vietnam. So... They didn't really. It was for nothing. Okay. Interesting. Well, who wants medicine?

Got a lot here. Got a lot of it. Have yourself. Get some penicillin. Get your needles. But the effort brought the plight of the POWs to the world's attention and they were soon being treated better. That's how it actually worked. Right. Now, Ross had found a cause. He could champion. With his undying support of Richard Nixon, he became known as a right-wing super patriot. Okay. But in 1970, Ross was again on the front pages this time for something not so great. He became known as, quote, the biggest individual loser ever on the New York stock market exchange when his company shares dropped $450 million in value in a single day. Oh my god. That's not a good day. It's a tough day. That's a bad day.

That'll make your posture slump. But he said he didn't care about money and he would care more if one of his children broke their finger. What? Well, okay. And then they all broke their fingers. Oh my god. This is worse. But the stock eventually recovered and the fable of Ross Pro grew. Okay. Ross also said that in 1970, five armed men snuck onto his compound to kill him but were chased away by a guard dog. What? What? Is he being honest? I don't know. How do you know? This sounds a little... Why would you question a man who was almost killed? Well, one dog gets five men away. I think he might be telling... Maybe it's a big dog. It sounds like he's being a little of a parochial. Maybe it's a dog that can cover a lot of ground.

A lot of five guys. Maybe it's a big lot of teeth. I don't know. He told the press that the FBI told him that year that the North Vietnamese and the Black Panthers had targeted him and his family for assassination. How? Okay. All right. So we're laughing at this man. Well, they were working together. The North Vietnamese and Black Panthers to kill Texans. Sure. No, they... I do know there was a lot of crossover between those two factions. The FBI, unfortunately, had no record of any such plot. Okay. Well, interesting. Who are you going to believe? The guy whose dog killed five men or the FBI? For a while, he started donating heavily to politicians. In 1974, he gave more money than any single person in the country. That's a terrible trend to be at the helm of.

$90,000. Well, I'm going to throw this microphone through the wall. Oh, my God. Think of how... Oh, my God. Yeah. Boy, just to go back to the time when we were bitching about 90 grand. Yeah. Yeah. But he soon stopped doing that. It's like 90 grand for balloons now. Yes, for balloons. But he soon stopped when he realized there wasn't much of a payoff. Just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government Iran imprisoned two EDS employees. Okay. William Gaylord and Paul Acheparone for bribery. They had done nothing wrong. Iran just took them as hostages, hoping it would convince EDS to stay in Iran as things fell apart. Okay. Iran had wanted EDS to run their computer system. So they basically...

Right. Hostages that... I mean, they wanted to... They could have increased their pay. Right. That is a different way to go. Right. But instead, they were like, well, keep you here. No, I have to go back to America. You're going to work on computers. In America. Forever here. Forever here. No. Forever here. No, we have to go. I mean, it's not up to us. They want us to go back. So we got to get out all... So good to meet you guys. Get out of the way of the door. So good to meet Al. If you could just get out of the way of the door. Just be... You'll live here. You'll live here.

Yep. I think I do. Yep. Okay. It's like doing on the computer. Yeah. Yep. Let's get to work. Good working with you. Okay. Okay. So Ross sent a negotiating team to Tehran to try to get the release of the hostages. Right. It failed. Okay. But Ross was preparing for that the whole time. While the teams were in Iran, he contacted Arthur Bull Simmons. Simmons was a retired colonel who in 1970 had led a raid on a Vietnamese POW camp only to find that the prisoners had been evacuated a few days earlier.

Still, that's, you know, that's like... Not real. Now why you can't say who knows? Chicken or the egg? Chicken or the egg? Chicken or the egg? Simmons agreed to put together a team for the rescue but said he wanted no compensation for his services. I'll do this as long as you don't pay me money. For love of the game. Yeah. What condition? I can't make anything. Nothing. Simmons and Ross decided on an attack. I'm paying you guys. Understood? Okay. You suckers. No, that's... Light the cigar. Simmons and Ross decided on an attack on an attack on the prison where the Americans were being held. Ross went to Iran and posed as a journalist to get in. Okay.

But then for some reason, when he got there, he just decided to blow his cover and went straight to the Iranian government to give them one last chance to fix the situation. He's making demands. Yeah. I can't imagine being around somebody with such an impulsive nature. He went to the Iranian government and made demands. They were holding the hostages. Right. Right. No, it is backward. Usually the demand guys are the guys who have the guy. Right. Yes. It doesn't really go that way. But again, I mean, this could be one of those situations where it's just... We're very hostage. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are now my hostages. What? This is our country. What are we... What are you... That's right. Now you give me my hostages

back then you guys won't be hostages any longer. What's happening? Stand up straight. You look ridiculous. I have a spina bifida. Yeah, because you're slumping, mister. Anyway, the Iranian government refused. Okay. So they had played this game before. Yeah. It turns out they thought he was an idiot. Right. I'm from Texas. Right. While this was happening, Simmons... Let me tell you a little story about an armadillo burying himself into a lawn. I think you'll find it pretty appropriate to the situation we find before us right now, gentlemen. I should have written some of his quotes down. There's so many like that. So while... That was his deal, right? He would say... It's crazy. It's like, you give toilet paper to a homeless man, he ain't gonna make a house out of it.

That's exactly what he would do. Right. Yeah. While this was happening, Simmons was putting the other team of seven men and was smuggling them into Iran. Okay. But before... He was working angles. Yeah. Right. But before they did this, they trained at pro's weekend house. He had a weekend house? Uh-huh. On the shore of Lake Grapevine near Dallas. Okay. They built a mock-up of the Tehran prison, which they spent weeks training storming. What? They were... They... Okay. So Rossborough has a weekend house. So... On that house? Sure. They built a replica of the Tehran prison. Sure. And then eight guys would attack the prison every day. Every day. So this was... went on for a couple months. Huh. Okay. So they were... Yeah. How did they know what the prison

looked like, you ask? Sure. Rossborough had cased it. So we were going off of Peropris? The mind of the man. Rossborough's mind. They off... That wall was way shorter. That window was over there. Are you guys even listening? But when the group got to Iran, the months of planning quickly fell apart. Oh, okay. The EDS employees had been moved to another prison. Oh, God. All right. Let's just... Okay. We're gonna have to go rebuild. We're gonna build another one. From my mind! I took four more face pictures. Now they were in one of Tehran's largest and most fortified prisons. Hopefully. So Ross and Simmons improvised.

Simmons knew Iran's revolution was peaking. So the revolution's already happened. Sure. Right. He used the anger in the street. They had an Iranian EDS employee named Rashid start a riot. And he then led the mob straight to the prison. Which was a symbol of the Shah, right? The prison is... So at this point things were so bad in the streets of Iran that you could almost catch wind like a sail and just be like, just get the mob over this way for my thing if they have a two-thirty open. I found an article and I couldn't verify it was real. Okay. But Rashid said that he just... There were so many people just milling around the streets. He just went and go, I'm going to the prison! Let's get the prison! Let's get to the prison!

And people started following him. Oh, man. That's gotta be quite a thing. Come in for the days. Oh, man. Let's just... All right. Well, we're going in the White House. We're going to the White House! Let's go! So when the mob got to the prison, Rashid stoked the mob's anger until they attacked the prison. So there's a bunch of political prisoners in the prison from the Shah and blah, blah, blah. So they attacked the prison. They set all the prisoners free. Okay. Seventy thousand inmates pour out into the street. My God. Seventy thousand. Wow. Including the two EDS employees. Well, so there you go. That's why when Perot comes over and wants to make a deal, you make it. Yeah. Everyone then met back up at Simmons' room at the Tehran Hyatt Regency. So he had a room

that fit 70,000. No, just the EDS guys and the other guys. Okay. Then Bull Simmons got everyone out of the country. Some got on two planes like Ross, while others were put in Range Rovers, and they used Rashid as a guide and fled into Turkey. There they got on planes and flew back to the US like the ending of a kick-ass 80s movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Okay. We have sound effects for this one. Shortly after the Iran hostage crisis erupted, Bull Simmons died three minutes later of a heart attack. Okay. So one of our heroes is... Bulls gone. We lost one. It's tough to... I mean, it's a cool story until you think about the fact that he released a bunch of murders and rapists onto the street to get a couple guys out of prison. Come on, you need to get

two people. Come on. You don't understand? Seventy thousand. Seventy thousand. Quite an influx of... It's a big group of folks. Yeah. And you thought it was easy to get a street mob before 70,000 convicts. Now it's fucking batshit crazy. Ross then got best-selling author Ken Folay to write a book about the rescue. Okay. It was called On Wings of Eagles and became a best-seller. He's super obsessed with eagles. Ross Perot. Yeah. One of his sayings was eagles don't flock. Fair. They don't. They don't. And he would give his employees an eagle for doing like a little silver eagle for doing a good job. Hey, got you an eagle. Really touching. How you handled that meeting earlier? Got you an eagle. Hey, call me to my office just because I don't want to be around

the bush. I get emotional. There you go. Go ahead. Touch it. Touch it. Touch it. Doesn't that flock? See? I'll get out of here. In 1986, the book was made into a TV movie in which Perot was portrayed by Richard Crenna. Crenna, of course, played Trotman in the Rambo movies. Which guy's that? That is like his kernel or whatever. Is it right? The guy was just like, God damn it, Rambo. I told you not to do this. Well, Rambo, I don't know. Something tells me Rambo going rogue isn't good. As well as being a famous businessman, Ross was now an early day reality television star because he's just on TV so much because he's just because he's Perot. Yeah. Because he's this short little like who who attacked Iran. You know, if you during the Iran

hostage crisis, which has just happened, if you have a guy who on his own went into Iran and got a couple guys out, you're a fucking God. Right. Okay. Being a big rich guy in Texas, people like the governor wanted Ross's input on things. He was asked to help a chair committee on public education, though a local writer said he had a mind quote, half an inch wide. No, it's not big, huh? No, that's small. Okay. But you really couldn't peg Ross and what he was. I'm a grower, not a shower. I'm a maker, not a taker. You couldn't peg him on what he was politically and he gave a lot to charity. People write him letters or come asking for cash. So people would just constantly write him letters saying, Hey, man, any money for

this or people actually people actually come to him and be like, Hey, can I get some money? Here's a new car and he just buy it. He would do it. Sometimes a lot of times he'd give people money. Okay. In 1969, a group of West Coast hippies came to ask if he would fund the revolution. Did they have a follow up? Do they have more to the pitch? What does that mean? Ross shot back with how long will it take and how much will it cost? What? Because that's what he asked everybody who had a pitch. Well, I'm going to stick to my original thought. How long will it take? How much does it cost? He didn't, he didn't fund the revolution. No, okay. Well, it just cost too much. But he's willing to listen.

Pretty cool. He didn't have an ideology and he saw life as a puzzle. When he was asked to help with the war on drugs, he pushed for longer harsher sentences. Okay. And when he was taken for a ride along in drug riddled South Dallas neighborhoods. Why can I not picture him in a lot of these situations? I just pictured him so small. Look at all these drugs. Yeah. Holy moly. Can I have another phone book for the back seat? Can I get a, maybe like a telephone book? Come on. I'm slapping back here. I'm timing. Booster seat. I'm slight. Right. So they take him on a ride along. Adorable. Through one of the worst neighborhoods in Texas. Sure.

So he immediately came up with a solution. Oh, good. Here we go. No more police. He said the city should cordon off sections and send in hundreds of cops for a house-to-house person-to-person confiscation raise for drugs and weapons. Oh my God. Good Lord. I just... Hold on. I got an idea. Well, how much are you gonna cost? How long are you gonna take? That really is though. That like, when people float stuff like that out there, I mean, I mean, what constitutionalists are just like, yeah, just take everyone's drugs out of their homes in this area. It's pretty crazy. Well, they didn't do that.

Right. They thought that was a super illegal idea. Right. But still, somebody who, yeah. I'm really rich. It's fine. Yeah. But he was about to really strike it rich. In 18... 1984, General Motors bought a controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion. Okay. The deal made Perot the largest individual shareholder of GM and gave him a position on the board as chairman of EDS. But the honeymoon didn't last long. Ross liked doing things his way. And he soon started publicly attacking GM management for being sluggish and bureaucratic. Okay. And in 1985, Pro stopped GM's attempt to buy Pixar. Oh, wow. Good Lord. This guy was on a roll. It's weird, too, because he looks like

he's from a Pixar movie. He does. Pixar had recently been spun off of Lucas Films with the help from Steve Jobs. If the deal had gone through... Oh, boy. Pixar's technology would have been used to model cars instead of making movies. Whoa. And one of their movies is Cars. What? That's crazy. Yeah. I would have loved to have seen what they came up with car wise. Oh my God. Good Lord. This car has an old man in it, and it's powered by balloons. After Steve Jobs lost his mind... Sorry. After Steve Jobs lost his mid-80s powers... Wow. After Steve Jobs lost his mid-80s power struggle at Apple and left to found next in 1985, his angel investor was Ross Perot. Perot invested over 20 million. Ross believed in Steve Jobs and did not want to miss out as

he had with his chance to invest in Bill Gates, Microsoft. Good Lord. He was sniffing around everything. Yeah. He briefly considered a takeover attempt of GM, but then accepted a buyout instead for $750 million. I mean, he'll live. But he wasn't done. In 1988, he founded Perot Systems Corporation Incorporated in Texas. It would do exactly what EDS did. He just had to wait a year or so before he could legally go after the same clients, which he did, which resulted in endless lawsuits between the two companies. I'm going to start the same company. I'm going to do it right over here. Yeah. Get all your people. He hired like tons of the... He just went and hired all his old employees like he just took. Kind of a fun tour. During this time, he never forgot about the POWs

in Vietnam. Okay. Ross was convinced hundreds of POWs have been left behind in Southeast Asia and he continued to fight for the cause. Now, is this based on... Do you remember this sort of hysteria? Like there are all these people that believe that there are all these POWs. I mean, there was a... I believe there was a Rambo based on that, wasn't there? But there was this big idea in America that all of these POWs have been left behind and they would always be like, I was supposed to meet a guy at a river, but before he got there, something happened. He didn't make it. There was always a guy who went somewhere. Wait a minute. You mean in this war zone? One of the guys wasn't there at the arrival time? It's not a war zone anymore. It's in the

80s now. You mean to tell me that what are your buddies? But there was always a guy who went to meet a guy who had a POW and then it didn't work out because something happened. Right. But it was always that. Ross accused the government of covering up POW-MIA investigations to avoid revealing a drug smuggling operation that used to finance a secret war in Laos. So he's saying that they are funding a side war in Laos with... Yeah. Laos, which then they're using a drug smuggling operation and because of that, they're hiding that there are POWs. What's his deal? Well, he's a thinker. He seems to be a thinker, but then it seems like, you know, I mean, for every investment he gets with Steve Jobs, there's a... Batshit crazy? Yeah. We built a replica prison and they've

been moved moment. He went as far as to engage in unauthorized back channel discussions with the Vietnamese government. I mean, this, it really does. It sounds so much like how we operate today with stuff where it's just, we're like, right is right. All right, I'll do it my way. I'll negotiate with these people. I got this. The negotiations ended his relationship with the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. A lot of people believed there was a Texan rivalry between Bush and Perot. Sure. In 1990, Ross reached an agreement with Vietnam's foreign ministry to become its business agent in the event that diplomatic relations were normalized with the United States. He made a deal. Go ahead with the country. Yep. With the country that...

So he basically was like, if we're ever back to normal, I'm your guy. Yeah, I'm your guy. I'll handle your business. Which sounds like it's in a little bit of poor taste. With the POW thing? Yeah. It's a weird transition. How does he... You can tell he's separative. He knows how to compartmentalize. I'm having trouble. I... Ross also launched a private investigation and a tax on U.S. Department of Defense official Richard Armatach. Boy, I really did not remember him as this crazy. I mean, I was... granted, I was a kid, so I don't remember much of him, but I just always thought he was like the cutie pie who just screamed. Well, because he was super fun to watch. Yeah. He was super

fun to watch. Well, thank God we don't elect people like that. Around the same time in Florida, a retired financial planner named Jack Gargin funded a series of newspaper articles denouncing Congress for voting for pay raises for themselves when average wages nationwide were not increasing. The ads centered on the phrase, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore, which of course is from a movie. It's from a news... 1976. What is the newsroom? Network. Network. That's it. Hey. Hey. Gargin later came up with the phrase, throw the hypocritical rascals out. Throw, which Ross Pro supported. So the hypocritical rascals out.

Throw. Throw. Throw. Throw. THRO. Throw. Throw. Throw. Throw. Right. I thought you were saying that quote was from... Oh, throw. No, that was not from throw. So I thought you were saying, throw them out. Throw. People are now... You can see my confusion. Yep. People are now encouraging him to run for president. Uh-oh. People would actually yell at him on the street, run, Ross, run. Oh my God, I will. Hey, I'm going. I'm going. Where am I running to? Is he being attacked all the time? Oh, fuck me. Took me two and a half years before I realized people wanted me to run for president. Till then, I thought I was being attacked. On February 20th, 1992, Ross was on Larry King Live and he announced his intention to run for president of the United States of America

as an independent against George Bush and Bill Clinton. Okay. Pro urged his supporters to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. Bush was president, but his approval had sunk below 40%, and the economy was in the shitter. At the time of pro's announcement, 73% of Americans thought Bush wasn't doing enough to improve the economy. At this point, the Dems and Republicans had picked their candidates, but it was several months before they held their conventions. So pro's candidacy just filled a giant vacuum in election news, and he got tons of media attention. Meanwhile, the supporters started petition drives to get him on the ballot in all 50 states. This created a huge momentum, which was reinforced when pro

brought on two very savvy campaign managers, Democrat Hamilton Jordan and Republican Ed Rollins. Okay. So he's like, I don't care about parties. Only party I want is an election party after I become the president of the United States. Also running. Stand up straight. That ties pretty loud. Also still running were white nationalist and Republican Pat Buchanan and big time lefty populist Democrat Jerry Brown, though their campaigns were now totally floundering. So pro became the beneficiary of populist resentments toward the establishment politicians. Okay. Public trust in government in 1992 was at its lowest levels since Pew started measuring it in 1958, even lower than during Watergate. Only 22% of Americans said they trusted the

government to do what was right most of the time. We're close to that now, right? Huh? Yeah. This is coming up after I ran Contragay and the Savings and Loans scandal and like a bunch of bad shit to go down. Bro, then picked his running mate, retired vice admiral James Stockdale, a highly decorated former Vietnam POW who had zero political experience. Okay. And oh, that's right. You know that guy? That's right. One of the worst debates of all time. He was crazy. Fucking unbelievable. Right? Yeah. He was just like. Oh, he was horrendous. It was unbelievable to watch. Right. It was unbelievable to watch. It was like they put hair on a ham. Oh, he was just, he just was bombing. Oh. So Bush was the favorite and everyone expected him to win,

but his approval rating was falling dramatically because he had gone back on a promise of no new taxes. And ads were hitting him hard about that. I mean, you can't say read my lips and then lie. Right. Read my lips, no new taxes and then raise taxes. Sure. Clinton was seen as slimy and untrustworthy as a sort of a sort of model, whatever she was, Jennifer Flowers came out during the campaign and said she had had a 12 year affair with him. He had also dodged the draft. Democrats felt he was unelectable because of these things, but the rest of the pickings were slim. Don't you worry about me. Rosper went on and on about government. He reeled against Pax and foreign lobbyists. He funded his own campaign, which he constantly crowed about proving he was not

beholden to special interests. He campaigned in 16 states and spent an estimated 12.3 million dollars of his own money. Crazy. I mean, if you have enough money, look under your chairs, you all get an eagle. Oh, they're supposed to be dead. Dead? Stop! Step to death! Ross ran on a platform of reducing national debt, which he said was destroying the country. This was a bit weird since he made most of his money off the government. Sure. In 1980, EDS won a contract paying over 390 million per year for administering healthcare, and that was just in Texas. It had similar contracts in other states. The belligerent profit board started government work, but whatever. He was at some point called the

welfare billionaire. The welfare billionaire. Okay. Ross promised to balance the federal budget within five years through tax increases with harsh cuts. But these were ideas or bad politics, so he didn't release them. And then his plan to introduce a 50 cents gas tax was leaked per gallon. Oh, God. Per gallon. You know, we will take it nine different ways. If you raise our gas prices, food prices have gone up. You don't hear anything about that, and that's because of gas prices for the most part. But still, it's like anything could be happening. We could say hypothetically, North Korea could be aiming nukes at us. Gas goes up 50 cents. We are like, oh, get them out. Get them out of office. But this video isn't a gown. So you're talking about

10 bucks, a $10 jack up in a Philippa U-Tank, right? And in the 90s. Yeah. But when it was leaked, he didn't back away from it. He defended it and said he could use it to raise billions to fix the infrastructure of America, but it would have clearly been devastating for the poor and middle class. He was against gun control. He wanted to end the outsourcing of jobs, and he was a protectionist on trade. He predicted NAFTA would lead to a huge increase in illegal immigration and send factories and jobs to Mexico. Hmm. Well, his favorite saying was, and that huge second sign you hear will be the sounds of jobs going to Mexico. That huge what? Sucking sound you hear. That huge sucking sound. That huge second

sign you hear will be the sound of jobs going to Mexico. Dude, when he first said that, don't you think Clinton was just like, uh. Not me. Oh, wow. Not me. I thought you were talking about something else there for a minute, sir. He channeled all the economic resentment in the country with his opposition to free trade. Ross also said he would demand U.S. allies pay more for defense. I mean, again, I mean, obviously we're correlating that to nothing. Can't just say can't just say that. Like, how do we believe that? Like, honestly, of all the crazy shit, when he when he kept saying that Mexico will pay for it. Yeah. And it was just like when a comedian riffs that he's just, you know, steal. Like if it's like if a comic like rift and stole another

comedian's joke because it was perfect in their riff and they're like, oops, one time I stole a comedian's joke. And then they just put it in their act and then we're didn't understand why people were pissed. Yeah. Like when Trump was talking about Mexico, Vicente Fox was like, we're not going to pay for it. And he was still like, they'll pay for it. Trust me. Just got 10 feet higher. No, there's no way. A lot of his proposal proposals, however, were just very, very vague. Somehow Ross started pulling almost even with Bush and Clinton. They wanted Bush. They must have been freaking out. They wanted Bush out after 12 years of economics and Clinton was just seen as slimy. They really wanted anything else. On May 25th,

1992, he was featured on the cover of Time with the title Waiting for Perot, an allusion to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. CableTV loved Ross Perot and he was often on talk shows like Larry King Live. He was the straight shooting little guy. He also didn't mind working outside the usual political box to get his message across. He started buying 30 minutes of Time on Nature Networks. That's right. Right. Yeah, he would like, yeah. 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Which is basically infomercial type campaign advertising. And he'd have like graphs and boards. He should have just written a sitcom called Waiting for Perot. Yeah. We came. Why not? Because we're waiting for Perot.

Put a left track in there. Here. We'll fix it in post. He pulled in more viewers. Oh, boy. Then a lot of sitcoms. One Friday night slot brought in 10.5 million viewers. Oh my god. Well, those days are gone. He used charts and other props and was very entertaining. In one show, he used what he called... So Stockdale tonight after that was pretty entertaining. Sorry, what the hell is this? Who am I? In one show, he used what he called, quote, a voodoo stick as a pointer. Oh, boy. It had horse hair at one end. What? He said it had been sent to him by a, quote, great young lady in Louisiana. In his thick Texas accent, he said, quote, it's appropriate because as you know, we aren't deep

voodoo. What? Oh, voodoo economics. Is that what he's talking about? Yeah. Okay. This is a dig at Reaganomics, which was called voodoo economics. Right. Right. The program was titled deep voodoo chicken feathers and the American dream. Sorry. Sorry. This was... Okay. Even though I was alive for this ship, Friday night, Ross Perot had 30 minutes, a 30 minute show called what? Deep voodoo chicken feathers and the American dream. What? It was he? Did anyone talk to him? Was anyone available to talk? I don't think you could. Wow. The press saw Perot as a total lunatic. Well. But Ross used the public's dislike for the media to deflect criticism. All right, dude. All right. He knew how to be self-depreciating, which is part of his charm and something he probably learned as a salesman.

He adopted the Patsy Kline tune crazy as his campaign song. Oh my God. What? What? I mean... Oh, that's the craziest thing I've heard since the chicken bone title. What? So he's like, and that is why jobs will be started in America and we will fix the economy and we will fix our infrastructure. God bless you. God bless the United States. Crazy. Crazy for feeling. What? You'd be there like, uh, I mean, I like what he said, but he played crazy. So no. It's so great. Perot went after Congress, which obviously voters did not like Congress. He denounced Congress for its inaction in a speech at the National Press Club in March 1992, quote, the city's become a town filled with soundbites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who post

your great images, talk, shoot off Roman candles, but don't ever accomplish anything when he dates, not words. How can you criticize soundbites mid soundbite? It's... Well, what he just said is like a soundbite. Yes. Absolute soundbite. I don't know what to tell you. At one point in June... It's exactly the kind of stuff that you would say. At one point in June, Ross led the polls. Oh, my what? I mean... 39%. This is the correct... Versus 31% for Bush and 25% for Clinton. Oh my God, what? It just, if we hadn't had this election recently, this would be even crazier. It's almost like we could have seen something coming. By mid July, the Washington Post reported that Ross's campaign managers were becoming

increasingly delusioned by his unwillingness to follow their advice. Okay. They wanted him to be more specific on issues. Sure, but that doesn't play with the voters. But Ross needed to be in full control of the operation and did things like forcing volunteers to sign loyalty oaths. Oh my God. So he's a Scientology extension? Well, his campaign managers could barely get him to... All you gotta do is clean this boat for a billion years and then you're in the cabinet. Here's your toothbrush. His campaign managers could barely get him to read one-page summaries of issues. Does he sound like anybody? Do you want a scotch? When he was questioned on foreign policy, he would give brief and often contradictory answers.

What? The campaign would later try to explain it away as meaning something else. At least those times are over. Yeah, those are past. Now, the LA writes... They can get a fire hose and get the hobos out of the car, but they'll just jump to another train. Is that about... you're talking about Iran? Sure. Okay. Or whatever. Or whatever. Well, yeah. Look, if you raise the bar high enough, somebody's gonna be low enough to live by. Okay. Look, you can take the shell off a tortoise. Don't make it a frog, buddy. Wait. Look, you can do as many jumping jacks upside down as you need to, but it's still just a headstand. No. Okay. Look, you can kick

box all you want, but you're still just using your feet and your hands are sore. I don't even remember what my question was, sir. Well, yeah, it doesn't matter how much soda you drink. You ain't gonna become a pony. This ain't a waterfall. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's fair. Sign this out. I've actually got enough. Sign this out. Got it. Here you go. Sign this. Now, the LA writes that occurred earlier in the year, which made race a big issue in the campaign. Right. Ross wanted to give a speech to the NAACP and address them as, quote, no, no, Dave, Dave, Dave. Okay. Here's something you don't want. You never want this sentence, the start of it associated with your name,

because if it's being brought up what you called them, it means you didn't do it right. He just must quote you people. He emphasized crime as a top national issue and spoke of it solely as drug driven inner city. Oh, boy. He then called for a paramilitary operation to rid a Black Dallas neighborhood of guns and trucks. No, where did he think was he? Did he have it? It's an NAACP. Did somebody pitch a different venue on his eyelids? I'm gonna say he didn't have a lot of experience with Black people. Well, you didn't. And his final crime plan was a three strikes law and keeping criminals in prison until they knew how to read.

What's the fuck? What? Even in a world of crime? I mean, it feels like a lot of his roles are mad lives. Oh, fuck. What? Now, he didn't seem to stoke the embers of racism on purpose, and he came across more naive than just being a straight up racist asshole. Right. And next to Pap Buchanan, he looked like a choir boy. That's why Buchanan's always done racist sounds. Yeah, he's the philosophical ancestor to Trump. And Clinton had what was known as his sister soldier moment at the time when he compared author and hip hop artist sister soldier to a white supremacist. How do I not remember that? I mean, that checks a lot of boxes.

Oh, the fucking 90s, man. Coming off the NAACP speech, he decided to air his opinions on gays. Oh, boy. When asked if he would allow gay people in the military, he said no. Okay. He then said they wouldn't be allowed to be in his cabinet either. Okay. Okay. Ross justified it. Quote, I don't want anybody there who will be a point of controversy for the American people. It will distract from the work that needs to be done. God. Ross' support collapsed to 20%. Oh, boy. After that? After all that stuff. Then ACP. After he started releasing the hits. Clinton shot up to 42%, Bush stayed at 30. Campaign manager Ed Rollins quit his campaign on July 15th.

The next day, Ross Pro announced on Larry King Live that he would not seek the presidency. Okay. Wow. I don't remember that. You don't remember that? No, I don't remember. When pushed on it a few days later. I inhaled it. Yeah. When pushed on it a few days later, Pro said that Republican operatives had wanted to reveal compromising photographs of his daughter. Hmm. She was about to get married and he said that that would ruin the wedding. The guard dog chased him off? Probably. Then he thought Pro was obsessed with his own image and lost interest when he faced tons of critical news reports and was no longer the outside darling,

so he quit and made up the story. Boy. Now his reputation was badly damaged. His supporters felt betrayed and public opinion polls suddenly showed a lot of people didn't like Ross, which had never, even though his support dropped 20%, people still liked him, but now they did not like him. Right. Okay. Then in September, Joe suddenly qualified for all 50 state ballots. All the petitions came in and worked, and now he's on all 50 state ballots. Okay. So on October 1st, he suddenly announced what? Dude, he farmed it? He farmed it. No one knows what that means. He farmed it. On October 1st, he suddenly announced he was back in the presidential race.

That is, I do not, I was going to say, I remember, I, okay, okay, keep going. So he was out from July 15th until October 1st. What a run. What? But this was just one month before voting. Oh my god. Just before the debates in October, he only now had seven and nine percent in nationwide polls, but there were three debates starting on October 8th. Okay. In the first debate, Ross kicked off his opening statements by responding to the others who were talking about his lack of experience. Quote, they got a point. I don't have experience in running up a $4 trillion debt. The audience laughed and ate it up. Oh, good. He continued, quote, I've got a lot of experience in not taking 10 years to solve a 10 minute problem.

If it's time for action, I think I have the experience that counts. Ross said he was leading a movement from the people. Many of his answers weren't specific, but he talked about stuff most wouldn't go near. Quote, keep in mind, a constitution predates the industrial revolution. Our founders did not know by electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There's a lot they didn't know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they draft today. Just keep it in frozen and time won't hack it. Wow. Okay. Okay. Right. So here's the thing. He's fucking crazy. Yeah. Like, like what's his face, the fucking,

who was the old white guy that ran in the Libertarian? Oh, Nader? No. Oh, old white guy? He ran like the past two years. His son's a Kentucky senator now. Oh, fuck. Why am I asking you? Wait, who? Seriously? Paul? Yeah. Paul. Was his dad's name? Old man Paul? Old man Paul's what we call him. That shit crazy, but every once in a while says something and you go, fuck yeah, you nailed it. Fuck his name. Let's go with Rand's dad. Okay, Rand's dad. That people are screaming right now. Screaming. They're screaming. I gotta know. I gotta know. Screaming. Now I don't want to, now I don't want to say it because I just want people to lose their

minds. You love that you. I kind of do. It makes you happy. But he, but he would say batshit crazy shit and then he would say something super spot on and you'd be like, oh, I mean, that's true. That's what he's doing here. Like the Constitution does need to be redone too. What is it? You want to know? Yeah. I thought you wanted people to go crazy. Okay. I'll move on. What is it? You said you didn't care. Okay. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone pretty much agreed. He won the debate. Okay. Wow. During the second debate, he made his case against NAFTA. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple. If you're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of

the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, there'll be a giant sucking sound going south. When Mexico's jobs, when Mexico's job jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you wreck the country with these kind of deals. Oh, if only that had been true. Yeah. So he said shit that was spot on. Right. And again, it really is crazy when you live, like when you live within the timeframe of some of these things happening. Yeah. Yeah. Just think to how simple it is when it's just all words coming out of people's mouths, and it doesn't see, and then the ripple effect that what these fucking things do from so many

things, the prison industrial complex being one where you're just like, fuck. Again, he did well in the debate, but that was kind of it. In the final five weeks of the campaign, he rarely left Dallas doing so just for a few rallies. But did he win Dallas? Oh, I don't know. Well, and the election, Ross pro received 18.9% of the popular vote. This was almost 20 million votes, though he got no electoral college votes. He was the most successful third party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election. Clinton won with 43% to Bush's 37. He did manage to finish second in Maine and Utah, but that was the best he did in any state. So where is

So where did his votes come from? 20% of his votes came from the left 27% from conservatives and 53% from moderates. 57% of pro voters were middle class and the rest were from the upper class like Trump. He did not. They were pro choice. He did not swing the vote. According to exit polls, Ross drew his vote equally from Bush and Clinton supporters 38% each, but a pro myth developed which said that he had had he not run in the election, Bush would have won. There's actual evidence that pro helped split the anti-Bush vote and helped Clinton and cut into Clinton's base. So there was an anti-Bush vote, right? That would the pro myth actually came from anger towards Bush from the right. Pappy Cannon riled up nativists and nationalists,

which Bush had not done. So the white supremacy guys were angry at Bush for not. In the end, despite his scandals, Clinton was charismatic and voters took a second look at him. Bush never led Clinton at any point in the race, but Ross Perot wasn't done. Based on his percentage of the part of the vote, he was entitled to receive federal election funding for 1996. Ross tried to keep his movement alive, continued to speak about the national debt when he re-could. He campaigned against NAFTA and even debated NAFTA with Vice President Al Gore on Larry King Live. But this time, his behavior during the debate was mocked, including his repeated pleas to quote, let me finish. The debate was the end of his political career.

After support for NAFTA went from 34% to 57%. But he would not give up. In 1995, he founded the reform party and won their presidential nomination for the 1996 election. He was now soundly being mocked. The Philadelphia Inquirer called him Spacey. The Richmond Times Dispatch said he was running a gong show. The LA Times ran a Pew poll in which voters offered words that came to mind upon hearing his name. Rich, crazy, idiot, egotistical, nuts, money, and arrogant. And the weekly standard ran the cover line is he nuts. He was now no longer cute. He'd become angry. An LA Times political writer said, quote, he's jumping down people's throats. He's got a very short fuse. People think of him as a willful eccentric whose stability is

questionable. He had never stopped talking about, quote, dirty tricks of his political opponents since he quit the race in the last election. He then told the Washington Post that one of the two main parties had tried to recruit him to finance a million dollar dirty tricks campaign in the 1994 elections. But he refused to provide any evidence of the allegations. He repeated the charge on Meet the Press, suggesting it was all the Republicans. But again, he would not provide any specifics. Quote, I'm going to wait till the right time and nail that one. I'll probably save it. I'll probably save that one till fall. What? He never gave it up. Ross also complained publicly about ads Republicans

were running in California that did not exist. Well, I mean, okay, so we're getting into a new area public. He was also he was always discussed. He always discussed the time the guard dog had driven off assassins on his property in 1970 and the FBI had warned him, which the FBI continued to say it was never a thing. Sure. Anyway, this time he received 8% of the popular vote much less than in 1992. It was worse, but still a very successful third party showing by US standards. Later in the 1990s, reform party members accused Ross of not allowing the party to develop into a real national political party, saying he instead used it as a way to promote himself. He apparently had installed his own operatives from his campaigns into party offices.

Ross then did not endorse Jesse Ventura's reform party run for governor in Minnesota in 1998. I'm still offended by that. Instead, Ross made fun of Ventura at a conference after Ventura had argued with the press. Boy, that is not. You do not want to make fun of Jesse Ventura if you're five six on a good height day. During the 2000 presidential election, Ross did not get involved as a reform party as the reform party splintered into groups. 3. Donald Trump briefly flirted with running for president as the reform party candidate. Donald Trump briefly flirted running a president. Ross was not happy as the party disintegrated, and now he was portrayed in the press as crazy so he stayed quiet.

He then went on Larry King four days before the election and endorsed George W. Bush. After that, he was quiet on political issues and refused to answer the media's questions. When interviewed, he stuck to talking about his business career and refused to answer any questions about politics, candidates, or past activities. Though in 2008 and 2012, he made endorsements. In 2008, he publicly came out against John McCain and endorse Mitt Rodney. He also announced that he would soon be launching a new website with updated economic graphs and charts. In 2008, the blog launched, it was focused on entitlements, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the thing he made all his money off of, the national debt, and related issues.

In 2012, he endorsed Romney for president again. Pro did not give any endorsements in 2016. He did recently come out because he had a book coming out about his life, and he said that our national debt was so high that we were open to invasion. That book about his life, that's if and a perot, don't fix it. I think so. Today, he has an estimated worth of $3.9 billion. What's he doing? He was ranked by Forbes as the 142nd richest person in the United States in 2016. That's pretty good. I mean, what are we? We're like 160? Me and you? Yeah. We're about 160.

When we pull the stuff together in the hotel bed like we do, we just put all the money in there. Yeah, I think that's about right. God damn. So do you see anything? It feels like there were signs there. Of what? Of just other things that might happen. Like what? Like people being upset at the... Like who? Parties that exist. This is when saying crazy things actually eliminated you, but at some point, people just didn't give a fuck anymore.

Yeah. Well, it is a very difficult time to feel like any good is coming out of the crazy shit that's being said. When you can't condemn... Like the bar is so low to condemn what just happened in Charlottesville. Nazis? Yeah. I mean, it's just like so easy to do and so telling that this dude can't fucking say it. I mean, obviously, people know our leanings and stuff, but just straight out, if you can't condemn Nazis, you're a fucking piece of shit. A lot of people died fighting Nazis. A lot of fucking people died fighting Nazis.

Nazis are super bad. They want genocide. They're terrible fucking people. If you can't condemn that, go fuck yourself.