Ford's (Second) Assassin (1976)
This Day (An America 250 History Show)
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s January 14th. On this day in 1976, Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life for her attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford.
Jody and Niki discuss Moore’s life, motivations, and the landscape of apocalyptic political violence that extended from the late 60s into the mid-70s.
Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Abergen. |
| 0:10.0 | This day, January 14th, actually it was January 15th, 1976, Sarah Jane Moore was sentenced to life in prison for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. The previous September Moore the She tried to shoot again, but was tackled to the ground, arrested, and then a few months later she pled guilty and was sentenced to life, which is what we are discussing today. |
| 0:39.0 | At her sentencing on this day, Moore said, quote quote am I sorry I tried yes and no yes because it |
| 0:46.8 | accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life and no I'm not sorry |
| 0:51.6 | I tried because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger |
| 0:56.1 | So here to discuss Sarah Jane Moore of fascinating character. I think a bit of a forgotten character |
| 1:02.4 | And you know we'll discuss a little bit of what she saw as her expression of her anger |
| 1:08.1 | Here as always is Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello, Nicky |
| 1:11.1 | Hello Jody. Yeah, I'm actually kind of obsessed with Sarah Jane more now |
| 1:15.0 | after reading about her because I think that she is somewhat forgotten. |
| 1:20.0 | She's fallen off our radar. |
| 1:22.0 | Yeah, as have just kind of the Ford assassination attempt, |
| 1:25.4 | not one but two. |
| 1:26.9 | You know, I don't think there's that many people walking around |
| 1:29.2 | keeping in mind that there were two very, very close assassination attempts on Gerald Ford himself |
| 1:36.2 | an accidental president who had spent some time studying assassinations I think he |
| 1:39.9 | wrote a short book about assassinations in 1965 because it was an era of political |
| 1:46.0 | assassinations and he as a politician became really interested in them. |
| 1:50.1 | Yeah and the two assassination attempts are linked a little bit and we'll get into that. |
| 1:54.4 | But I actually want to take a little bit of a step back because this is kind of the first episode we've done together |
| 2:00.0 | since the events at the Capitol on January 6th, and this is kind of the first time we've touched on political violence and I just kind of want to see where your heads at and talk a little bit about how certainly to me, you know, in researching this episode and we've talked about |
... |
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