Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 25th, 1972 is the day in between two really big days in

Edmund Musky's political career. So Ed Musky of Maine was a candidate in the 1972 Democratic Party, not just a candidate

he had won the Iowa primary and was considered the favorite heading into the New Hampshire

primary and beyond.

And then two things happen in the run-up

to the New Hampshire primary.

On February 24th, an anonymous letter

is published in the influential Manchester Union

leader newspaper, and it claims that Musky had made

disparaging remarks about Canadian Americans in his home state of Maine referring

to them as Canucks. This is what would come to be known as the

Canuck letter that gets published. And then the second thing that happens is

two days later on February 26th in what's come to be known as the crying

speech, Muske gives a speech outdoors in the New Hampshire snow where he rails against this anonymous letter,

also claims that the publisher of the union leader had made disparaging comments about his wife but

the news reports of this speech in many of them they refer to Musky as not just

being angry but emotional and crying which becomes a bit of a controversy and there's some interesting history to look into there.

Before we get into, I want to, you know, just spoil this story and say that this actually genuinely hurt Musky.

He wins New Hampshire by much less than you would expect.

The air is sort of going out of the balloon of his campaign.

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