united states flew to california to give a speech. it was a speech that he knew he would be giving to some of his most die hard fans. people who would follow him until the end of the earth. and that was crucial at that moment in his political life, because just a few weeks earlier, the wall street journal was first to report that that same vice president, spiro agnew, he was under federal criminal investigation for potential felony corruption charges, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, a bunch of stuff. this was very shocking front page news at the time. it was very damaging news, for obvious reasons, to the vice president, and he was just completely enraged about it. so he flew out to california september 29th, 1973, to give a talk to his most rabid supporters. it was the national conference of republican women. and, um, these women were hard core activists. as a group, generally speaking, they were quite right wing and quite devoted to spiro agnew. agnew was seen as being
core activists. as a group, generally speaking, they were quite right wing and quite devoted to spiro agnew. agnew was seen as being much more hard right, much more pugnacious and compromising than the old squish president nixon was. so the hard right and real activists of the republican party, they loved agnew even more than they loved richard nixon. so while agnew, their guy, was embattled by this reported criminal investigation, he goes up there to give a speech. and what he told them at that speech started off blunt, but kind of normal. he said i am innocent of the charges against me. he then told them, this was slightly more surprising, he told the crowd that he was going to use the courts himself to turn the tables and