S3E12: Leaving on a Jet Plane | The 2020 Republican Primary Field & John Denver

We love going a little bit sideways with our season finale episodes! Stacie has the scoop on a weird historical moment we’re in: For the first time ever, an American political party has fielded a presidential primary contest featuring only divorced people. Seriously, this has never happened before and would have been unthinkable until very recently. Now, we’re the only people even mentioning it (it’s kind of our brand). Come meet your 2020 Republican primary field and get the scoop on all their trashbaggery! Let’s give it up for Donald Trump, Bill Weld, Joe Walsh, and Mark Sanford!

Then, Alicia ends her string of podcast no-tears with the story of soothing 1970s crooner and trashbag (it turns out), John Denver. He had two marriages that ended in divorce, and both experiences revealed some disturbing things about the man.

We’re off next week, but we’re asking for your divorce stories! If we get enough, we’ll put together an episode for you featuring listeners’ trashy divorces! Got a trashy divorce in your life? Share the dirt (no real names, please!) at trashydivorces@gmail.com.

Stacie’s Receipts

Our Cats in the Cradle episode about President Dirtbag himself.

Bill Weld’s Wikipedia bio (there’s actually a lot more than I shared, including open sparring with Jesse Helms):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Weld

Reporting on his marriage with Susan coming to an end:
http://edition.cnn.com/2000/LOCAL/northeast/06/30/boh.weld.marriage/index.html

Here’s just a catalog of Joe Walsh trashbaggery:
Dave Weigel’s obvious amusement is Slate is also amusing.
The NYT on Walsh’s first beclowned race for congress.
The Chicago Tribune had a lot of thoughts about ol’ Joe and his past.
The Trib’s coverage of his child support settlement in 2012.

On to Mark Sanford:
The mystery begins. Where is Gov. Sanford?
This is what is looks like whan a reporter just crushes a story. Incredible work here from reporter Gina Smith at The State, tracking a vanished governor down at the Atlanta airport.
Cringey interviews follow.
Jenny Sanford gets her say.
HuffPost wonders about that airplane thing. Me too, HuffPost. Me too.