(Aug 27, 1908 – Jan 22, 1973) A corrupt politician who became 36th US President after the JFK Assassination. He put together the sham Warren Commission charged with investigating the assassination. Through his entire career, Johnson was the man of the Suite 8F Group, a deep state faction of Texas businessmen. Johnson is generally reckoned to have been the deeply involved with the JFK Assassination, and was named as such by the deathbed confession of CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.
In Texas, Johnson stole his first election to the U.S. Senate, as recounted by historians.[2][3] As president in 1964, Johnson ordered the CIA to infiltrate and spy on his conservative opponent, Barry Goldwater, which enabled Johnson to preempt Goldwater’s initiatives with Johnson’s own. Johnson also lied about the Gulf of Tonkin attack in order to boost his re-election efforts in 1964.
President Kennedy was reluctant to choose LBJ as his vice president, but felt forced to select him as vice president. Mark Gorton alleges that LBJ “had his own personal hit man, Mac Wallace, who had been killing people for a decade to keep LBJ’s crimes from being exposed.“[1]
Johnson began his career as a liberal New Dealer, later when he became a senator he initially aligned himself with the Southern Democrats, although by the time he ascended to Senate Leadership he espoused moderate politics in an attempt to bridge both wings of the fractious Democratic Party. However, as president, he seized the leadership of liberalism citing Franklin D. Roosevelt as his role model. Johnson moved the Democratic Party to the left, and pushed through Congress the Great Society, comprising liberal economic policy including Medicare (free health care for the elderly), Medicaid (free health care for the poor), aid to education, and a major “War on Poverty”. As part of his jobs program, he greatly escalated the American troop strength in Vietnam through conscription, from 16,000 in 1963 to 23,000 by the end of 1964 and finally to 550,000 by early 1968. Unemployment consequently remained in check.
Johnson won re-election in a landslide in 1964 over conservative leader Barry Goldwater, and proceeded to push through a massive expansion of federal programs known as the “Welfare State.” This included Medicare, food stamps, and federal spending on education. Johnson also supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which passed over a Democratic filibuster.
Johnson’s popularity steadily declined after 1966 and his reelection bid in 1968 collapsed as a result of turmoil in his Democratic party primarily due to Johnson’s mishandling (and micromanagement) of the Vietnam War (which also ironically involved the intentionally false reporting by Walter Cronkite on the Tet Offensive). Johnson was humiliated by a primary challenge to his reelection from fellow Democrat Eugene McCarthy in early 1968 in New Hampshire, and then LBJ withdrew as a candidate for reelection. His Vice President Hubert Humphrey lost in the general election due in part to Johnson’s unpopularity.
Vulgar Manners
LBJ he used crass behavior to bend people to his will. At 6-ft., 3-in. tall and 210 lbs., he liked to lean over people, spitting, swearing, belching, or laughing in their faces. His favorite power ploy was dragging people into the bathroom with him—forcing them to continue their conversations with the president as he used the toilet.[7]
Seymour Hersh, in his memoir Reporter tells an anecdote from one of Hersh’s older colleagues, Tom Wicker. He recounted the reaction of LBJ to a highly critical story about Vietnam he wrote in late 1965, when the war was still highly popular with the American public. Right after it was published, Wicker was at LBJ’s Texas ranch with a bunch of other reporters when the whole press corps was told to be at a remote spot at a certain time.
Right after they arrived, a big Lincoln convertible came screaming up to them at top speed. The driver–Johnson–slammed the car to a halt and yelled for Wicker to climb in. “Tom got into the car and the two of them sped off down a dusty dirt road. No words were spoken. After a moment or two, Johnson once again slammed on the brakes, wheeling to a halt near a stand of trees. Leaving the motor running, he climbed out, walked a few dozen feet toward the trees, stopped, pulled down his pants, and defecated, in full view. The President wiped himself with leaves and grass, pulled up his pants, climbed into the car, turned in around, and sped back to the press gathering. Once there, again the brakes were slammed on, and Tom was motioned out. All of this was done without a word being spoken.”
Vietnam War
LBJ stoked war fever by characterizing North Vietnam’s attacks on the Maddox – and the later attack on the Maddox and the Turner Joy – as “unprovoked aggression.” A very different picture is revealed by a phone conversation he had on August 3 with his Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, which the latter secretly recorded:
“OK. Here’s what we did. We [were] within their 12-mile limit, and that’s a matter that hasn’t been settled. But there have been some covert operations in that area that we have been carrying on – blowing up some bridges and things of that kind, roads, and so forth. So I imagine they wanted to put a stop to it. So they come out there and fire and we respond immediately with five-inch guns from the destroyer and with planes overhead. And we cripple them up – knock one of them out and cripple the other two. And then we go right back where we were with that destroyer [the Maddox], and with another one [the Turner Joy], plus plenty of planes standing by. And that’s where we are now.”
LBJ – 1964-08-03[5]
Sources:
- https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Lyndon_Johnson
- https://www.conservapedia.com/Lyndon_B._Johnson