Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This is 50 weeks that shaped America, and this week we are in the summer of 1980, where we are talking about the Mario Boat Lift, tens and tens of thousands,

more than 100,000 in the end.

Cuban refugees head from Cuba to Miami and then spread out through the American South.

It is an acute crisis.

Jimmy Carter had been trying to normalize relations with Cuba, but this puts a stop to that.

So let's pick the story back up in the spring of 1980

with the fallout. As public opinion has turned, we mentioned some 70% of Americans in a poll

that spring had said that they did not support refugees from Cuba coming to the United States.

So here to discuss, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. All right, we told people Bill Clinton was part of this story. Let's talk about Bill Clinton being part of this story. I have to say, Jody, I think both you and the Democratic Party really overestimated how much people want Bill Clinton. In the year 2026. Yeah. But this is a fascinating little part of Bill Clinton story that I did not know.

I mean, this is pre-whitewater.

I was going to say pre-infidelity, but it's probably not pre-inidelity.

I don't think so.

But pre, you know, on the record, infidelity.

He's cutting his political teeth in this moment, for sure.

In every way.

Yes.

But he was just a newly minted governor of Arkansas

at this point. And in Arkansas, in northwest Arkansas, there is actually pretty close to Oklahoma,

like pretty far from Miami is one of the things to point out here. There's a base called Fort Chaffee.

And Fort Chaffee had actually served as a relocation center for Vietnamese

refugees in the mid-1970s. Well, it gets called into action in late May of 1980, and some 25,000

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