thanks for being with u tonight. it is very, very good to hav you here so, it was labor day weekend 1936 it was hot it was around 90 degrees and 100,000 people turned ou to see him he himself said from the stage from the podium at the front o the crowd that the crowd was about 80, 000, but the polic actually said it was bigger. the police said it was 100,000 people and, again, this was in 1936 so, if you want to adjust that for inflation, like it was $ amount, if you want to adjus that to account for how big th whole population of the countr was at the time compared to now, 100,000 people then compared t the overall size of the country, that will translate today to a crowd of, like, 250, 260,000 people which is a really big crowd, particularly since the perso that they were all there to se was just some guy with a radio show have you ever heard of a politician named william lemke it s okay if you haven t william lemke was a candidate for president, a third party candidate i
this time, he had tens o millions of americans. listen listening to him. this is at a time when the country had a population o less 130 million people, but h had 30 million people listenin to him every week. i mean, that is among th conservative estimates of hi reach, something like a quarte of the entire population of th united states was listening to him on the radio every week. until they weren t his name was father charle coughlin and while he was being the biggest most dominant medi figure this country has ever known, he was also serving as catholic priest. and while he just became a bigger and bigger and bigger deal on the radio, and he go more and more political, and more and more radicall right-wing in his politica broadcasts, you know, sometime his views allied with the view of the interest of the catholi church, sometimes they didn t. but thanks to his massive reac