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They dont appear to be policemen, not really. They carry themselves sort of like policemen. And they are wearing uniforms, but their uniforms are plain black and theres a shield on their caps. But its a generic shield. If you squint, it kind of seems like a police thing. Its not, theyre not cops. One reason you can be sure theyre not cops is that when the real cops show up, the real cops kind of freak out. Its December 1, 1954, and no one is supposed to be holding loaded revolvers at the doors of the United States Capitol. But these men are, and they have orders. They are there acting on behalf of a new group that is mobilizing and now, for some reason, brandishing weapons in defense of their political hero.

One of the most controversial figures ever to appear on this nations political stage.

These men at the Capitol have unholstered their guns. Theyre holding them at their sides as heavy cardboard boxes are loaded out of an armored truck. The presence of an unexpected, uninvited armored truck at the doors of the US Senate. The presence of these men with their weapons drawn, it creates some alarm on the Senate floor, especially when senators learn that one of the armed men has actually come inside, has entered the Capitol. The sergeant at arms is called to investigate. And the Washington police. not the breadth but the depth of his political support.The crowd here shouts in approval when speakers denounce, quote, the leftist press at the mention of the words New York Times, they boo and scream. Theres a female photographer here from Time magazine. She has to be escorted out of the event for her own safety. When the crowd turns against her, theyre screaming at her, hang the communist bitch. Here at the rally up on the dais is a former congressman Hamilton Fish.I have no patience with those Americans who tremble every time Hitler sneezes or get jittery every time he opens his mouth.After a long career in the US House, Hamilton Fish had finally been voted out of office once his dealings with a nazi agent, George Sylvester Virk, were exposed to the public.And over on the House side, ham Fish of New York winds up a 22 year record.Former congressman Hamilton Fish had been there in Washington at the emotional event at Constitution hall for McCarthy. And now at Madison Square Garden, heres fish again with pride of place upon stage. Here in the audience is Gerald LK Smith whose magazine the cross and the flag just last month included pronouncements like the international jew machine resolved to destroy the german race. This months edition has a full page cover, the fearless fighting patriot, US Senator Joseph McCarthy. A large contingent of the crowd here has been organized by the neo Nazi National Renaissance party.They considered him, as they would say at meeting St. Joe, and he was a true american patriot.The National Renaissance Party leader who helped organize this rally is the same guy who led that pro german Holocaust denial rally in Yorkville, New York, that had scheduled Joe McCarthy as its headline speaker , is now pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment in order.To drag out the censure debate as long as possible.Pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment, people also called this Joe McCarthy's elbow filibuster. But it did work. The republican Senate majority leader was more than happy to treat the elbow story with all the seriousness he could muster. He announced that the McCarthy censured debate and vote would be delayed a further ten days.McCarthy is calling for time to permit the rolling up of 10 million signatures.If McCarthy has bought himself ten whole days with this elbow gambit, well, his supporters are going to make the. They say it is a service to the thousands of central Florida citizens who believe in the principles for which Senator McCarthy stands and who are eager to do their part for the preservation of our american way of life. The group that forms to collect the signatures announces plans for offices from coast to coast.We've had requests from people all over the country to set up auxiliary headquarters. I remember one from basin, Wyoming, Yakima, Washington, all the way to the west coast. This particular petition has been mushrooming at such a tremendous rate that it's beginning to look like that. Not 10 million, but we could probably get 20 million signatures if we just had the time.20 million signatures if only we had a few more days. A member of the neo nazi militia group the National Renaissance Party takes over as the New Jersey co chair of the 10 million Americans effort for McCarthy. The groups leader, James Madal, starts urging New Yorkers to sign those McCarthy petitions.Madol found Joe McCarthy the only american politician really worth listening to and supporting.The National Renaissance Party even starts using a new name. The group starts holding meetings under the name Patriots for McCarthy. A Washington reporter, Robert L. Riggs, writes that McCarthy is, quote, appealing over the heads of the senators to the people of the country. He is drawing a picture of himself as the crucified enemy of traitors within our gates. If your political hero, your saint, is being crucified, how much is too much when it comes to showing your support for him? When it comes to backing him up?The day before the censure vote, an armored car pulls up to the Capitol building with armed guards.Armed guards at the entrance to the Senate with their pistols drawn. The day before the censure vote that same day, as that unfolds outside the Senate, that literal show of force to the senators inside, the republican Senate majority leader announces that hes made his decision on censure. His vote will be no. Hes standing with McCarthy. The pressure campaign thats been building for weeks with the pro McCarthy rallies and the petitions and this weird, threatening spectacle of how the petitions were brought to the Capitol. McCarthy supporters harassing senators with hate mail and late night phone calls to their homes, threats of violence, death threats, that kind of stuff isnt just for fun. Its for effect. And there are Republicans in the Senate who initially supported censuring McCarthy who now change their minds.Here is the backstage reason why Senator case of South Dakota suddenly went into reverse. And without telling what on top of.Everything else theyre doing, McCarthy and his allies start hunting for dirt on individual senators to use as leverage to get them to vote no.McCarthy has a secret bombshell to explode against Senator Flanders. He will charge.McCarthy insists publicly that hes going to win this fight either way.McCarthy has admitted to friends privately that he wants to be censured and go down as a martyr. Friends have begged him to make a public apology, but McCarthy stubbornly refused and snorted that he would rather be censured than apologize.That idea that McCarthy wanted to be able to claim martyrdom, that even as he fought it he might welcome censure because it would allow him to portray himself as the victim of political persecution. The fact that that was increasingly clear as his political strategy, it didnt make it any easier to combat.Would his strategy be to put himself in a position before the country of being a martyr and that his friends would play along that strategy line? Well, Dick, I have thought of that. I've never thought of it in exactly the words that you put it up. Would that be his strategy? But I have thought that events could turn around so that the public would accept him as a large part of the public would accept him as a martyr. It seems to be their stock in trade or their battlefront.McCarthy and his allies also mounted another defense as well. In addition to the political persecution claim aside entirely. The day after the Senate vote, the very next day the National Renaissance Party gathers in New York under its new meant to be less nazi seeming banner calling themselves patriots for McCarthy. According to FBI records, at waved in air. At the end a wild burst of applause and cries. Anyone present would have thought, this man cannot miss the White House.The accepted common wisdom today when it comes to Joe McCarthy is that the Senate censure vote spelled the end for him. It started a quick and then uninterrupted descent into irrelevance. In reality, for a large part of the republican party and its base and for the american ultra right which supported him to the hilt, in which he had never disavowed, McCarthy remained as popular as ever.The people who loved Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 still loved Joe McCarthy at the end of 1954. And they loved Joe McCarthy. You know, in all caps.He was their champion, the only one they believed in. He'd taken that censure vote for them to show them that the so called system, the american system that could allow this to happen to their hero, it was corrupt and rotten and ripe to be overthrown. For all the slings and arrows that he had borne on their behalf, they were going to repay McCarthy by elevating him to the highest office in the country.Drafting McCarthy for president was a way. It was a way for right wingers to assert, in a sense, their own dignity in the face of what they perceived to be this horrific and anti american spirit Mirror campaign.Just two months after that censure vote, there was Joe McCarthy being greeted by a minute long standing ovation from a crowd of 2000 Republicans in Chicago. As the 1956 presidential election hit high gear. There was Joe McCarthy speaking before a capacity crowd of 4000 people at Carnegie hall in New York City. A month after that, it was a pro McCarthy rally of another 4000 people in Washington DC and a specific plan of action as the censure of McCarthy enraged the right, as their arguments turned angrily to the idea that normal electoral american politics couldnt be trusted anymore, that there would have to be some new way to save the country, a group founded and funded by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, started promoting a plan, a new plan to basically monkey wrench the next presidential election.The inevitable chanted response was how? Tell us how. The final recommendation for popular action was so simple and so practical that it startled the assembled patriots.The plan would not be to compete in politics in the normal sense, to try to win the most votes. Instead, the plan would be to grab hold of the fragile, arcane system of counting the votes.The nationwide popular vote that is apparently cast for a presidential candidate in the November election has nothing at all to do with his victory or defeat.They would gin up new slates, surprise slates of electors in enough states to mess with the electoral vote count in Washington, which is, after all, what actually decides the presidency.Every american voter is qualified under state statutes rather than by national laws. Each state may select these electors in any manner that the state legislature desires. I am more than ever convinced that not one American in 10,000 completely understands the constitutional power of the 531 presidential electors.All told, Robert McCormick's group, which was called for America, they might not be able to field a candidate who could win the presidency in the normal sense of the word. But with a plan like this, a plan focused on messing up the electoral college count, well, they might be able to get it anyway.We can get our wish by qualifying a slate of american presidential elector candidates in our respective states. In some jurisdictions, the process is more difficult than in others. In a number of states, patriots are already far advanced on these necessary prerequisites.If you could just inject enough chaos into the counting of the electoral college vote that the election could be thrown to Congress, to a vote in the US House of Representatives, well, maybe at that point you could get a real patriot over the top and into the White House, no matter how the country had voted in the election.Some of my wise and trusted friends in certain states of the union are confident that their existing local political organizations can be trusted to protect the voters of those states against the dreaded possibility of two one world socialist tickets in November.It would come to a head. Not in November, not during the vote, but afterwards, in the first week of January, when Congress would gather in special session to count the electoral vote.This is the master key to any plan for pro american electors in 1956.The master key to unlock an America where a real patriot can win, or where he doesn't need to win, but he'll take power anyway. That is next time on the final episode of Rachel Maddow presents Ultra.Between these contending viewpoints, my friends, lies a long stick of political dynamite. With fuses now burning at both ends.Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written to by myself, Mike Yarwitz and Jen Mulraney Donovan. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz it's produced by Jen Mulraney Donovan and Kelsey Desiderio. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Kloptchin. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory and Kathryn Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Drew Pearson estate, for which we're very, very grateful. Thanks to David Austin Walsh. David has a great book that I highly recommend. It's called taking America back, the conservative movement and the far right. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com ultra.I think it was four solid years and it was intense beyond words.It sounds like long days leaving at midnight, doing research. And it was, you were an irritant.To McCarthy and to his people just.By doing your job.I would often be in the office till 1011 o'clock at night. My colleague Phil Potter, he would say, well, what do you think we're accomplishing? I said, we have to operate on the premise, the only premise I know of, that if you keep putting enough light on a situation, you will, you'll hopefully have some consequence. Something will happen as a result. What the hell do you think is going to happen out of this? I said, well, eventually people are going to see what this is like and be repelled by it. They understand what is happening and, well, what's that going to do to them? I said, well, that makes him the subject of ridicule. Well, who the hell, he doesn't care if anybody ridicules him or not. I said, yes, he will. He will. It can only operate on the journalistic premise that I know is that it has some effect. If it doesn't have an effect, we should all be in the bottling business or something.That's right.Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com app to download.

not the breadth but the depth of his political support.

The crowd here shouts in approval when speakers denounce, quote, the leftist press at the mention of the words New York Times, they boo and scream. Theres a female photographer here from Time magazine. She has to be escorted out of the event for her own safety. When the crowd turns against her, theyre screaming at her, hang the communist bitch. Here at the rally up on the dais is a former congressman Hamilton Fish.

I have no patience with those Americans who tremble every time Hitler sneezes or get jittery every time he opens his mouth.

After a long career in the US House, Hamilton Fish had finally been voted out of office once his dealings with a nazi agent, George Sylvester Virk, were exposed to the public.

And over on the House side, ham Fish of New York winds up a 22 year record.

Former congressman Hamilton Fish had been there in Washington at the emotional event at Constitution hall for McCarthy. And now at Madison Square Garden, heres fish again with pride of place upon stage. Here in the audience is Gerald LK Smith whose magazine the cross and the flag just last month included pronouncements like the international jew machine resolved to destroy the german race. This months edition has a full page cover, the fearless fighting patriot, US Senator Joseph McCarthy. A large contingent of the crowd here has been organized by the neo Nazi National Renaissance party.

They considered him, as they would say at meeting St. Joe, and he was a true american patriot.

The National Renaissance Party leader who helped organize this rally is the same guy who led that pro german Holocaust denial rally in Yorkville, New York, that had scheduled Joe McCarthy as its headline speaker , is now pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment in order.To drag out the censure debate as long as possible.Pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment, people also called this Joe McCarthy's elbow filibuster. But it did work. The republican Senate majority leader was more than happy to treat the elbow story with all the seriousness he could muster. He announced that the McCarthy censured debate and vote would be delayed a further ten days.McCarthy is calling for time to permit the rolling up of 10 million signatures.If McCarthy has bought himself ten whole days with this elbow gambit, well, his supporters are going to make the. They say it is a service to the thousands of central Florida citizens who believe in the principles for which Senator McCarthy stands and who are eager to do their part for the preservation of our american way of life. The group that forms to collect the signatures announces plans for offices from coast to coast.We've had requests from people all over the country to set up auxiliary headquarters. I remember one from basin, Wyoming, Yakima, Washington, all the way to the west coast. This particular petition has been mushrooming at such a tremendous rate that it's beginning to look like that. Not 10 million, but we could probably get 20 million signatures if we just had the time.20 million signatures if only we had a few more days. A member of the neo nazi militia group the National Renaissance Party takes over as the New Jersey co chair of the 10 million Americans effort for McCarthy. The groups leader, James Madal, starts urging New Yorkers to sign those McCarthy petitions.Madol found Joe McCarthy the only american politician really worth listening to and supporting.The National Renaissance Party even starts using a new name. The group starts holding meetings under the name Patriots for McCarthy. A Washington reporter, Robert L. Riggs, writes that McCarthy is, quote, appealing over the heads of the senators to the people of the country. He is drawing a picture of himself as the crucified enemy of traitors within our gates. If your political hero, your saint, is being crucified, how much is too much when it comes to showing your support for him? When it comes to backing him up?The day before the censure vote, an armored car pulls up to the Capitol building with armed guards.Armed guards at the entrance to the Senate with their pistols drawn. The day before the censure vote that same day, as that unfolds outside the Senate, that literal show of force to the senators inside, the republican Senate majority leader announces that hes made his decision on censure. His vote will be no. Hes standing with McCarthy. The pressure campaign thats been building for weeks with the pro McCarthy rallies and the petitions and this weird, threatening spectacle of how the petitions were brought to the Capitol. McCarthy supporters harassing senators with hate mail and late night phone calls to their homes, threats of violence, death threats, that kind of stuff isnt just for fun. Its for effect. And there are Republicans in the Senate who initially supported censuring McCarthy who now change their minds.Here is the backstage reason why Senator case of South Dakota suddenly went into reverse. And without telling what on top of.Everything else theyre doing, McCarthy and his allies start hunting for dirt on individual senators to use as leverage to get them to vote no.McCarthy has a secret bombshell to explode against Senator Flanders. He will charge.McCarthy insists publicly that hes going to win this fight either way.McCarthy has admitted to friends privately that he wants to be censured and go down as a martyr. Friends have begged him to make a public apology, but McCarthy stubbornly refused and snorted that he would rather be censured than apologize.That idea that McCarthy wanted to be able to claim martyrdom, that even as he fought it he might welcome censure because it would allow him to portray himself as the victim of political persecution. The fact that that was increasingly clear as his political strategy, it didnt make it any easier to combat.Would his strategy be to put himself in a position before the country of being a martyr and that his friends would play along that strategy line? Well, Dick, I have thought of that. I've never thought of it in exactly the words that you put it up. Would that be his strategy? But I have thought that events could turn around so that the public would accept him as a large part of the public would accept him as a martyr. It seems to be their stock in trade or their battlefront.McCarthy and his allies also mounted another defense as well. In addition to the political persecution claim aside entirely. The day after the Senate vote, the very next day the National Renaissance Party gathers in New York under its new meant to be less nazi seeming banner calling themselves patriots for McCarthy. According to FBI records, at waved in air. At the end a wild burst of applause and cries. Anyone present would have thought, this man cannot miss the White House.The accepted common wisdom today when it comes to Joe McCarthy is that the Senate censure vote spelled the end for him. It started a quick and then uninterrupted descent into irrelevance. In reality, for a large part of the republican party and its base and for the american ultra right which supported him to the hilt, in which he had never disavowed, McCarthy remained as popular as ever.The people who loved Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 still loved Joe McCarthy at the end of 1954. And they loved Joe McCarthy. You know, in all caps.He was their champion, the only one they believed in. He'd taken that censure vote for them to show them that the so called system, the american system that could allow this to happen to their hero, it was corrupt and rotten and ripe to be overthrown. For all the slings and arrows that he had borne on their behalf, they were going to repay McCarthy by elevating him to the highest office in the country.Drafting McCarthy for president was a way. It was a way for right wingers to assert, in a sense, their own dignity in the face of what they perceived to be this horrific and anti american spirit Mirror campaign.Just two months after that censure vote, there was Joe McCarthy being greeted by a minute long standing ovation from a crowd of 2000 Republicans in Chicago. As the 1956 presidential election hit high gear. There was Joe McCarthy speaking before a capacity crowd of 4000 people at Carnegie hall in New York City. A month after that, it was a pro McCarthy rally of another 4000 people in Washington DC and a specific plan of action as the censure of McCarthy enraged the right, as their arguments turned angrily to the idea that normal electoral american politics couldnt be trusted anymore, that there would have to be some new way to save the country, a group founded and funded by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, started promoting a plan, a new plan to basically monkey wrench the next presidential election.The inevitable chanted response was how? Tell us how. The final recommendation for popular action was so simple and so practical that it startled the assembled patriots.The plan would not be to compete in politics in the normal sense, to try to win the most votes. Instead, the plan would be to grab hold of the fragile, arcane system of counting the votes.The nationwide popular vote that is apparently cast for a presidential candidate in the November election has nothing at all to do with his victory or defeat.They would gin up new slates, surprise slates of electors in enough states to mess with the electoral vote count in Washington, which is, after all, what actually decides the presidency.Every american voter is qualified under state statutes rather than by national laws. Each state may select these electors in any manner that the state legislature desires. I am more than ever convinced that not one American in 10,000 completely understands the constitutional power of the 531 presidential electors.All told, Robert McCormick's group, which was called for America, they might not be able to field a candidate who could win the presidency in the normal sense of the word. But with a plan like this, a plan focused on messing up the electoral college count, well, they might be able to get it anyway.We can get our wish by qualifying a slate of american presidential elector candidates in our respective states. In some jurisdictions, the process is more difficult than in others. In a number of states, patriots are already far advanced on these necessary prerequisites.If you could just inject enough chaos into the counting of the electoral college vote that the election could be thrown to Congress, to a vote in the US House of Representatives, well, maybe at that point you could get a real patriot over the top and into the White House, no matter how the country had voted in the election.Some of my wise and trusted friends in certain states of the union are confident that their existing local political organizations can be trusted to protect the voters of those states against the dreaded possibility of two one world socialist tickets in November.It would come to a head. Not in November, not during the vote, but afterwards, in the first week of January, when Congress would gather in special session to count the electoral vote.This is the master key to any plan for pro american electors in 1956.The master key to unlock an America where a real patriot can win, or where he doesn't need to win, but he'll take power anyway. That is next time on the final episode of Rachel Maddow presents Ultra.Between these contending viewpoints, my friends, lies a long stick of political dynamite. With fuses now burning at both ends.Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written to by myself, Mike Yarwitz and Jen Mulraney Donovan. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz it's produced by Jen Mulraney Donovan and Kelsey Desiderio. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Kloptchin. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory and Kathryn Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Drew Pearson estate, for which we're very, very grateful. Thanks to David Austin Walsh. David has a great book that I highly recommend. It's called taking America back, the conservative movement and the far right. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com ultra.I think it was four solid years and it was intense beyond words.It sounds like long days leaving at midnight, doing research. And it was, you were an irritant.To McCarthy and to his people just.By doing your job.I would often be in the office till 1011 o'clock at night. My colleague Phil Potter, he would say, well, what do you think we're accomplishing? I said, we have to operate on the premise, the only premise I know of, that if you keep putting enough light on a situation, you will, you'll hopefully have some consequence. Something will happen as a result. What the hell do you think is going to happen out of this? I said, well, eventually people are going to see what this is like and be repelled by it. They understand what is happening and, well, what's that going to do to them? I said, well, that makes him the subject of ridicule. Well, who the hell, he doesn't care if anybody ridicules him or not. I said, yes, he will. He will. It can only operate on the journalistic premise that I know is that it has some effect. If it doesn't have an effect, we should all be in the bottling business or something.That's right.Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com app to download.

, is now pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment in order.

To drag out the censure debate as long as possible.

Pleading the Bethesda hospital amendment, people also called this Joe McCarthy's elbow filibuster. But it did work. The republican Senate majority leader was more than happy to treat the elbow story with all the seriousness he could muster. He announced that the McCarthy censured debate and vote would be delayed a further ten days.

McCarthy is calling for time to permit the rolling up of 10 million signatures.

If McCarthy has bought himself ten whole days with this elbow gambit, well, his supporters are going to make the. They say it is a service to the thousands of central Florida citizens who believe in the principles for which Senator McCarthy stands and who are eager to do their part for the preservation of our american way of life. The group that forms to collect the signatures announces plans for offices from coast to coast.

We've had requests from people all over the country to set up auxiliary headquarters. I remember one from basin, Wyoming, Yakima, Washington, all the way to the west coast. This particular petition has been mushrooming at such a tremendous rate that it's beginning to look like that. Not 10 million, but we could probably get 20 million signatures if we just had the time.

20 million signatures if only we had a few more days. A member of the neo nazi militia group the National Renaissance Party takes over as the New Jersey co chair of the 10 million Americans effort for McCarthy. The groups leader, James Madal, starts urging New Yorkers to sign those McCarthy petitions.

Madol found Joe McCarthy the only american politician really worth listening to and supporting.

The National Renaissance Party even starts using a new name. The group starts holding meetings under the name Patriots for McCarthy. A Washington reporter, Robert L. Riggs, writes that McCarthy is, quote, appealing over the heads of the senators to the people of the country. He is drawing a picture of himself as the crucified enemy of traitors within our gates. If your political hero, your saint, is being crucified, how much is too much when it comes to showing your support for him? When it comes to backing him up?

The day before the censure vote, an armored car pulls up to the Capitol building with armed guards.

Armed guards at the entrance to the Senate with their pistols drawn. The day before the censure vote that same day, as that unfolds outside the Senate, that literal show of force to the senators inside, the republican Senate majority leader announces that hes made his decision on censure. His vote will be no. Hes standing with McCarthy. The pressure campaign thats been building for weeks with the pro McCarthy rallies and the petitions and this weird, threatening spectacle of how the petitions were brought to the Capitol. McCarthy supporters harassing senators with hate mail and late night phone calls to their homes, threats of violence, death threats, that kind of stuff isnt just for fun. Its for effect. And there are Republicans in the Senate who initially supported censuring McCarthy who now change their minds.

Here is the backstage reason why Senator case of South Dakota suddenly went into reverse. And without telling what on top of.

Everything else theyre doing, McCarthy and his allies start hunting for dirt on individual senators to use as leverage to get them to vote no.

McCarthy has a secret bombshell to explode against Senator Flanders. He will charge.

McCarthy insists publicly that hes going to win this fight either way.

McCarthy has admitted to friends privately that he wants to be censured and go down as a martyr. Friends have begged him to make a public apology, but McCarthy stubbornly refused and snorted that he would rather be censured than apologize.

That idea that McCarthy wanted to be able to claim martyrdom, that even as he fought it he might welcome censure because it would allow him to portray himself as the victim of political persecution. The fact that that was increasingly clear as his political strategy, it didnt make it any easier to combat.

Would his strategy be to put himself in a position before the country of being a martyr and that his friends would play along that strategy line? Well, Dick, I have thought of that. I've never thought of it in exactly the words that you put it up. Would that be his strategy? But I have thought that events could turn around so that the public would accept him as a large part of the public would accept him as a martyr. It seems to be their stock in trade or their battlefront.

McCarthy and his allies also mounted another defense as well. In addition to the political persecution claim aside entirely. The day after the Senate vote, the very next day the National Renaissance Party gathers in New York under its new meant to be less nazi seeming banner calling themselves patriots for McCarthy. According to FBI records, at waved in air. At the end a wild burst of applause and cries. Anyone present would have thought, this man cannot miss the White House.The accepted common wisdom today when it comes to Joe McCarthy is that the Senate censure vote spelled the end for him. It started a quick and then uninterrupted descent into irrelevance. In reality, for a large part of the republican party and its base and for the american ultra right which supported him to the hilt, in which he had never disavowed, McCarthy remained as popular as ever.The people who loved Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 still loved Joe McCarthy at the end of 1954. And they loved Joe McCarthy. You know, in all caps.He was their champion, the only one they believed in. He'd taken that censure vote for them to show them that the so called system, the american system that could allow this to happen to their hero, it was corrupt and rotten and ripe to be overthrown. For all the slings and arrows that he had borne on their behalf, they were going to repay McCarthy by elevating him to the highest office in the country.Drafting McCarthy for president was a way. It was a way for right wingers to assert, in a sense, their own dignity in the face of what they perceived to be this horrific and anti american spirit Mirror campaign.Just two months after that censure vote, there was Joe McCarthy being greeted by a minute long standing ovation from a crowd of 2000 Republicans in Chicago. As the 1956 presidential election hit high gear. There was Joe McCarthy speaking before a capacity crowd of 4000 people at Carnegie hall in New York City. A month after that, it was a pro McCarthy rally of another 4000 people in Washington DC and a specific plan of action as the censure of McCarthy enraged the right, as their arguments turned angrily to the idea that normal electoral american politics couldnt be trusted anymore, that there would have to be some new way to save the country, a group founded and funded by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, started promoting a plan, a new plan to basically monkey wrench the next presidential election.The inevitable chanted response was how? Tell us how. The final recommendation for popular action was so simple and so practical that it startled the assembled patriots.The plan would not be to compete in politics in the normal sense, to try to win the most votes. Instead, the plan would be to grab hold of the fragile, arcane system of counting the votes.The nationwide popular vote that is apparently cast for a presidential candidate in the November election has nothing at all to do with his victory or defeat.They would gin up new slates, surprise slates of electors in enough states to mess with the electoral vote count in Washington, which is, after all, what actually decides the presidency.Every american voter is qualified under state statutes rather than by national laws. Each state may select these electors in any manner that the state legislature desires. I am more than ever convinced that not one American in 10,000 completely understands the constitutional power of the 531 presidential electors.All told, Robert McCormick's group, which was called for America, they might not be able to field a candidate who could win the presidency in the normal sense of the word. But with a plan like this, a plan focused on messing up the electoral college count, well, they might be able to get it anyway.We can get our wish by qualifying a slate of american presidential elector candidates in our respective states. In some jurisdictions, the process is more difficult than in others. In a number of states, patriots are already far advanced on these necessary prerequisites.If you could just inject enough chaos into the counting of the electoral college vote that the election could be thrown to Congress, to a vote in the US House of Representatives, well, maybe at that point you could get a real patriot over the top and into the White House, no matter how the country had voted in the election.Some of my wise and trusted friends in certain states of the union are confident that their existing local political organizations can be trusted to protect the voters of those states against the dreaded possibility of two one world socialist tickets in November.It would come to a head. Not in November, not during the vote, but afterwards, in the first week of January, when Congress would gather in special session to count the electoral vote.This is the master key to any plan for pro american electors in 1956.The master key to unlock an America where a real patriot can win, or where he doesn't need to win, but he'll take power anyway. That is next time on the final episode of Rachel Maddow presents Ultra.Between these contending viewpoints, my friends, lies a long stick of political dynamite. With fuses now burning at both ends.Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written to by myself, Mike Yarwitz and Jen Mulraney Donovan. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz it's produced by Jen Mulraney Donovan and Kelsey Desiderio. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Kloptchin. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory and Kathryn Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Drew Pearson estate, for which we're very, very grateful. Thanks to David Austin Walsh. David has a great book that I highly recommend. It's called taking America back, the conservative movement and the far right. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com ultra.I think it was four solid years and it was intense beyond words.It sounds like long days leaving at midnight, doing research. And it was, you were an irritant.To McCarthy and to his people just.By doing your job.I would often be in the office till 1011 o'clock at night. My colleague Phil Potter, he would say, well, what do you think we're accomplishing? I said, we have to operate on the premise, the only premise I know of, that if you keep putting enough light on a situation, you will, you'll hopefully have some consequence. Something will happen as a result. What the hell do you think is going to happen out of this? I said, well, eventually people are going to see what this is like and be repelled by it. They understand what is happening and, well, what's that going to do to them? I said, well, that makes him the subject of ridicule. Well, who the hell, he doesn't care if anybody ridicules him or not. I said, yes, he will. He will. It can only operate on the journalistic premise that I know is that it has some effect. If it doesn't have an effect, we should all be in the bottling business or something.That's right.Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com app to download.

aside entirely. The day after the Senate vote, the very next day the National Renaissance Party gathers in New York under its new meant to be less nazi seeming banner calling themselves patriots for McCarthy. According to FBI records, at waved in air. At the end a wild burst of applause and cries. Anyone present would have thought, this man cannot miss the White House.The accepted common wisdom today when it comes to Joe McCarthy is that the Senate censure vote spelled the end for him. It started a quick and then uninterrupted descent into irrelevance. In reality, for a large part of the republican party and its base and for the american ultra right which supported him to the hilt, in which he had never disavowed, McCarthy remained as popular as ever.The people who loved Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 still loved Joe McCarthy at the end of 1954. And they loved Joe McCarthy. You know, in all caps.He was their champion, the only one they believed in. He'd taken that censure vote for them to show them that the so called system, the american system that could allow this to happen to their hero, it was corrupt and rotten and ripe to be overthrown. For all the slings and arrows that he had borne on their behalf, they were going to repay McCarthy by elevating him to the highest office in the country.Drafting McCarthy for president was a way. It was a way for right wingers to assert, in a sense, their own dignity in the face of what they perceived to be this horrific and anti american spirit Mirror campaign.Just two months after that censure vote, there was Joe McCarthy being greeted by a minute long standing ovation from a crowd of 2000 Republicans in Chicago. As the 1956 presidential election hit high gear. There was Joe McCarthy speaking before a capacity crowd of 4000 people at Carnegie hall in New York City. A month after that, it was a pro McCarthy rally of another 4000 people in Washington DC and a specific plan of action as the censure of McCarthy enraged the right, as their arguments turned angrily to the idea that normal electoral american politics couldnt be trusted anymore, that there would have to be some new way to save the country, a group founded and funded by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, started promoting a plan, a new plan to basically monkey wrench the next presidential election.The inevitable chanted response was how? Tell us how. The final recommendation for popular action was so simple and so practical that it startled the assembled patriots.The plan would not be to compete in politics in the normal sense, to try to win the most votes. Instead, the plan would be to grab hold of the fragile, arcane system of counting the votes.The nationwide popular vote that is apparently cast for a presidential candidate in the November election has nothing at all to do with his victory or defeat.They would gin up new slates, surprise slates of electors in enough states to mess with the electoral vote count in Washington, which is, after all, what actually decides the presidency.Every american voter is qualified under state statutes rather than by national laws. Each state may select these electors in any manner that the state legislature desires. I am more than ever convinced that not one American in 10,000 completely understands the constitutional power of the 531 presidential electors.All told, Robert McCormick's group, which was called for America, they might not be able to field a candidate who could win the presidency in the normal sense of the word. But with a plan like this, a plan focused on messing up the electoral college count, well, they might be able to get it anyway.We can get our wish by qualifying a slate of american presidential elector candidates in our respective states. In some jurisdictions, the process is more difficult than in others. In a number of states, patriots are already far advanced on these necessary prerequisites.If you could just inject enough chaos into the counting of the electoral college vote that the election could be thrown to Congress, to a vote in the US House of Representatives, well, maybe at that point you could get a real patriot over the top and into the White House, no matter how the country had voted in the election.Some of my wise and trusted friends in certain states of the union are confident that their existing local political organizations can be trusted to protect the voters of those states against the dreaded possibility of two one world socialist tickets in November.It would come to a head. Not in November, not during the vote, but afterwards, in the first week of January, when Congress would gather in special session to count the electoral vote.This is the master key to any plan for pro american electors in 1956.The master key to unlock an America where a real patriot can win, or where he doesn't need to win, but he'll take power anyway. That is next time on the final episode of Rachel Maddow presents Ultra.Between these contending viewpoints, my friends, lies a long stick of political dynamite. With fuses now burning at both ends.Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written to by myself, Mike Yarwitz and Jen Mulraney Donovan. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz it's produced by Jen Mulraney Donovan and Kelsey Desiderio. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Kloptchin. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory and Kathryn Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Drew Pearson estate, for which we're very, very grateful. Thanks to David Austin Walsh. David has a great book that I highly recommend. It's called taking America back, the conservative movement and the far right. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com ultra.I think it was four solid years and it was intense beyond words.It sounds like long days leaving at midnight, doing research. And it was, you were an irritant.To McCarthy and to his people just.By doing your job.I would often be in the office till 1011 o'clock at night. My colleague Phil Potter, he would say, well, what do you think we're accomplishing? I said, we have to operate on the premise, the only premise I know of, that if you keep putting enough light on a situation, you will, you'll hopefully have some consequence. Something will happen as a result. What the hell do you think is going to happen out of this? I said, well, eventually people are going to see what this is like and be repelled by it. They understand what is happening and, well, what's that going to do to them? I said, well, that makes him the subject of ridicule. Well, who the hell, he doesn't care if anybody ridicules him or not. I said, yes, he will. He will. It can only operate on the journalistic premise that I know is that it has some effect. If it doesn't have an effect, we should all be in the bottling business or something.That's right.Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com app to download.

waved in air. At the end a wild burst of applause and cries. Anyone present would have thought, this man cannot miss the White House.

The accepted common wisdom today when it comes to Joe McCarthy is that the Senate censure vote spelled the end for him. It started a quick and then uninterrupted descent into irrelevance. In reality, for a large part of the republican party and its base and for the american ultra right which supported him to the hilt, in which he had never disavowed, McCarthy remained as popular as ever.

The people who loved Joe McCarthy at the beginning of 1954 still loved Joe McCarthy at the end of 1954. And they loved Joe McCarthy. You know, in all caps.

He was their champion, the only one they believed in. He'd taken that censure vote for them to show them that the so called system, the american system that could allow this to happen to their hero, it was corrupt and rotten and ripe to be overthrown. For all the slings and arrows that he had borne on their behalf, they were going to repay McCarthy by elevating him to the highest office in the country.

Drafting McCarthy for president was a way. It was a way for right wingers to assert, in a sense, their own dignity in the face of what they perceived to be this horrific and anti american spirit Mirror campaign.

Just two months after that censure vote, there was Joe McCarthy being greeted by a minute long standing ovation from a crowd of 2000 Republicans in Chicago. As the 1956 presidential election hit high gear. There was Joe McCarthy speaking before a capacity crowd of 4000 people at Carnegie hall in New York City. A month after that, it was a pro McCarthy rally of another 4000 people in Washington DC and a specific plan of action as the censure of McCarthy enraged the right, as their arguments turned angrily to the idea that normal electoral american politics couldnt be trusted anymore, that there would have to be some new way to save the country, a group founded and funded by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, started promoting a plan, a new plan to basically monkey wrench the next presidential election.

The inevitable chanted response was how? Tell us how. The final recommendation for popular action was so simple and so practical that it startled the assembled patriots.

The plan would not be to compete in politics in the normal sense, to try to win the most votes. Instead, the plan would be to grab hold of the fragile, arcane system of counting the votes.

The nationwide popular vote that is apparently cast for a presidential candidate in the November election has nothing at all to do with his victory or defeat.

They would gin up new slates, surprise slates of electors in enough states to mess with the electoral vote count in Washington, which is, after all, what actually decides the presidency.

Every american voter is qualified under state statutes rather than by national laws. Each state may select these electors in any manner that the state legislature desires. I am more than ever convinced that not one American in 10,000 completely understands the constitutional power of the 531 presidential electors.

All told, Robert McCormick's group, which was called for America, they might not be able to field a candidate who could win the presidency in the normal sense of the word. But with a plan like this, a plan focused on messing up the electoral college count, well, they might be able to get it anyway.

We can get our wish by qualifying a slate of american presidential elector candidates in our respective states. In some jurisdictions, the process is more difficult than in others. In a number of states, patriots are already far advanced on these necessary prerequisites.

If you could just inject enough chaos into the counting of the electoral college vote that the election could be thrown to Congress, to a vote in the US House of Representatives, well, maybe at that point you could get a real patriot over the top and into the White House, no matter how the country had voted in the election.

Some of my wise and trusted friends in certain states of the union are confident that their existing local political organizations can be trusted to protect the voters of those states against the dreaded possibility of two one world socialist tickets in November.

It would come to a head. Not in November, not during the vote, but afterwards, in the first week of January, when Congress would gather in special session to count the electoral vote.

This is the master key to any plan for pro american electors in 1956.

The master key to unlock an America where a real patriot can win, or where he doesn't need to win, but he'll take power anyway. That is next time on the final episode of Rachel Maddow presents Ultra.

Between these contending viewpoints, my friends, lies a long stick of political dynamite. With fuses now burning at both ends.

Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written to by myself, Mike Yarwitz and Jen Mulraney Donovan. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz it's produced by Jen Mulraney Donovan and Kelsey Desiderio. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Kloptchin. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Mallory and Kathryn Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Ayesha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. Additional archival material is courtesy of the Drew Pearson estate, for which we're very, very grateful. Thanks to David Austin Walsh. David has a great book that I highly recommend. It's called taking America back, the conservative movement and the far right. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com ultra.

I think it was four solid years and it was intense beyond words.

It sounds like long days leaving at midnight, doing research. And it was, you were an irritant.

To McCarthy and to his people just.

By doing your job.

I would often be in the office till 1011 o'clock at night. My colleague Phil Potter, he would say, well, what do you think we're accomplishing? I said, we have to operate on the premise, the only premise I know of, that if you keep putting enough light on a situation, you will, you'll hopefully have some consequence. Something will happen as a result. What the hell do you think is going to happen out of this? I said, well, eventually people are going to see what this is like and be repelled by it. They understand what is happening and, well, what's that going to do to them? I said, well, that makes him the subject of ridicule. Well, who the hell, he doesn't care if anybody ridicules him or not. I said, yes, he will. He will. It can only operate on the journalistic premise that I know is that it has some effect. If it doesn't have an effect, we should all be in the bottling business or something.

That's right.

Go beyond the headlines with the MSNBC app. Watch your favorite shows live. Get analysis from live blogs to in depth essays and the latest updates on the 2024 election. Visit msnbc.com app to download.