90: James Garfield Fights For The Presidency (Part 2)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, Comedy, History

4.9 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As James Garfield’s surprise presidential campaign got underway, he knew he didn’t have it in the bag. The Republican party was divided. The Democratic party was united. And there was some weirdo third-party candidate campaigning for an 8-hour workday. *I guess people don’t wanna work anymore!?*

The fact that many members of his party — including his own vice president — were, at best, mildly enthusiastic about his candidacy made his road to victory even less likely. And yet? A strange little man named Charles Guiteau campaigned hard for Garfield. He was convinced that he’d be rewarded for his efforts.

Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from:
The book, “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President,” by Candice Millard
The book, “Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield,” by Kenneth D. Ackerman
“Murder of a President” documentary and additional resources from PBS.org

Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!

Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso.
0:08.0	And I'm Norman Caruso. And on this episode, James Garfield runs for president. Part two.
0:14.9	We're ready to party. We're ready. What? I hope you bring lots of spaghetti.
0:20.5	Oh, is this a Garfield song? It's the Garfield and Friends theme song. Oh my God. What if, just to be a dick, I was doing this series, and in the middle of it, people are hooked because, you know, they just have to be. I do just an episode about Garfield, the cartoon, totally in the middle of this series oh i confused my
0:39.9	notes i'm all i've got a future doing a future episode on the garfield and friends cartoon show from
0:48.0	1994 so folks a lot of people don't know that the american of people elected a cartoon cat for president, but the 1800s were weird. Oh, you, yeah, you got your notes all mixed up. It's really intermingled. Oh, my gosh. I'm ready to go, but, okay, no, you've got stuff to say. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Tap the brakes there, Missy. I've got no breaks and I'm going down to hill. Because I have to tell a very troubling story to our listeners. Oh. You know, the other night, you and I were getting ready for bed in the bathroom. Okay. I don't know that this is appropriate. We're both at the double vanity. Uh-huh. I bent down to get a cue tip out of the drawer.
1:28.5	Uh-huh.
1:29.0	And that's when you unleashed...
1:31.5	Norman.
1:32.8	The most earth-shattering belch of all time.
1:38.5	Norman.
1:40.0	This is all true.
1:41.8	Also, how dare you add that to the soundboard?
1:44.3	Now people are going to be calling for us to get rid of the soundboard again.
1:48.7	Well, this is what the people wanted, okay.
1:52.4	Ew, stop.
1:54.1	Listen, in a matter of seconds, I was trapped inside the noxious fumes of your burp.
2:00.2	It was like a spicy combo of black beans and some onion.
2:08.1	To be fair, I belched and then you put your face into it.
2:12.4	So you kind of came into my zone.
2:14.2	The order of operations, you know, it's questionable what exactly happened.
2:17.8	But either way, I was trapped inside the noxious fumes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from An Old Timey Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of An Old Timey Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.