Iconic Senator Dick Clark Dies at 95

Former Iowa Sen. Dick Clark has died at the age of 95, his family has announced.

Clark, a Democrat, won his Senate seat for a single term using the inventive campaign strategy of physically walking around the state of Iowa, often joined by his supporters.

Clark defeated two-term incumbent Republican Jack Miller in 1972. He served just one term, and focused heavily on providing aid to Vietnam War refugees and opposing apartheid in Africa.

Despite winning a solid victory in 1972 with 55% of the vote, Clark was defeated in his re-election run in 1978.

Clark is survived by his wife, his daughter, two sons, three grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.

Former Iowa Sen. Dick Clark has died at the age of 95, his family has announced.

After leaving the Senate, President Jimmy Carter appointed Clark as ambassador-at-large for a refugee crisis related to the Vietnam War. Clark worked with Congress to help create a refugee policy and set up a structure to help refugees.

Later, Clark joined the Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit, and focused on helping members of Congress better understand specific foreign policy issues. He also worked to restore relations with Vietnam, including arranging meetings between U.S. and Vietnamese officials.

Prior to his life in politics, Clark was drafted into the Army and served in Europe from 1950 to 1952. He attended Upper Iowa University and the University of Iowa, obtaining bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees.

Clark was born Sept. 14, 1928, in the unincorporated community of Paris, Iowa. His parents made a living selling eggs door to door and later opened a grocery store.

Ted Cruz Predicts Michelle Obama Win Presidency in 2024

On Monday, September 18, Ted Cruz released an episode of his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” where he made a shocking prediction.

The Senator of Texas suggested that the Democratic party may replace Joe Biden before nominating him for the 2024 presidential election.

“Here’s the scenario that I think is perhaps the most likely and most dangerous,” Cruz said before he launched into his theory. “In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama.”

“Michelle Obama – number one, you don’t infuriate African-American women, which is a critical part of the constituency the Democrats are relying on to win. Number 2 – If you pick from any of the four, the other three are pissed.

Because they’re all to some extent, peers, they’re rivals, all jabbing knives at each other. Michelle Obama because she was the first lady has the ability to parachute in above all four and say, ‘Hey, we’re not picking among any of you,'” he added before noting that it could put the Republicans in “very serious danger” when it comes to winning the presidency.

“In terms of a solution that unifies Democrats, there ain’t nothing like that,” he continued, mentioning how Obama could come in and “wake up” with the most powerful job in the world.

As OK! previously reported, Cruz’s statements came after reports claimed the left-wing has been begging Obama to run for president as recent polls put her 48 percent while President Joe Biden sits at 36 percent.

The “secret back-channel talks,” reported by RadarOnline.com, apparently began after Democrats “panicked” due to Donald Trump’s rising poll numbers.

“Democrats say somebody has to stop Trump and Barack knows Michelle is the best person to do it! Party heavyweights are secretly testing the waters for support,” the source claimed of former President Barack Obama, adding that a “draft Michelle” campaign has gotten some traction.

“If Michelle announced, the election would go immediately from a hotly contested footrace to a landslide,” the insider alleged. “While Barack has already endorsed Biden, he’s reneged in private and will publicly throw Joe overboard in a heartbeat if he thinks that the election is on the line.”

“He had hoped that the president would have rallied and come into his own at this point, but that clearly hasn’t happened,” the source said. “With 2024 growing closer and closer, he had to act since he apparently fears Joe is getting too old and frail to win.”

Original Article

Witness to J.F.K.’s Killing Changes His Story 60 Years Later (Video)

Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents closest to John F. Kennedy during his assassination, has come forward with a new accounting of events six decades after the fact that raises questions about the official version.

The revelations center around the so-called magic bullet that struck and then exited the president before hitting then-Governor John B. Connally Jr. in such a way that caused injuries to his chest, thigh and wrist, according to conclusions drawn by the Warren Commission.

Landis challenged that accounting of events, claiming he found the bullet lodged in one of the seats of the presidential limousine.

Landis’ revelations came in an interview with The New York Times ahead of the publication of his memoir The Final Witness next month.

The new account of events by the now 88-year-old contradicts conclusions drawn by the Warren Commission and some statements Landis filed with officials on the day of.

On the possibility of there being multiple gunmen that day, Landis told the Times: “At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself. Now I begin to wonder.”

Original Article

Tucker Carlson is ‘Dead Man Walking’ Putin Ally Warns

A prominent Russian propagandist has claimed that former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson is a “dead man walking” for saying that the U.S. and Russia will go to war with one another in the next year.

The Rossiya-1 talk show host Vladimir Solovyov justified his own prophecy of an armed conflict between the two nations by referring to Carlson’s earlier comments, before implying that Carlson would be assassinated for telling the supposed truth.

He cited the presumed desire of the now-podcast host on X, formerly Twitter, to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, as something that “they will not forgive him for.”

Carlson has often been accused of repeating Russian talking points, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began last year. He questioned whether the perception that Putin—whose war has since cost the lives of an estimated 350,000 people—was justifiably the subject of hatred.

In July, he was criticized by a U.S.-based Orthodox Christian group for “spout[ing] Russian propaganda” about unfounded claims of the persecution of Christians in Ukraine.

Earlier in August, Carlson interviewed a former Pentagon official, who claimed Kyiv’s casualties were far higher than believed and that Ukraine was not winning the war, despite the fact that after 18 months of fighting, Russian forces control none of Ukraine’s major cities and have had to mobilize hundreds of thousands of reservists.

During a televised discussion on Thursday, Solovyov aired clips from a recent interview of Carlson with podcaster Adam Carolla, in which the former Fox News presenter predicted a “hot war between the U.S. and Russia in the next year,” which Carlson added he thought was a war America would likely not win.

According to a translation by the Daily Beast‘s Russia Media Monitor unit, Solovyov then says: “Who says that? A dead man walking.

“He sincerely believes that the next step after the accusations and the declaration of impeachment will be an assassination of Trump. But this man, who is currently the most popular English-speaking journalist, signed his own death warrant.”

It is unclear who Solovyov thought would be willing to assassinate Carlson. In Carlson’s interview with Carolla, he argued that both Democrats and Republicans were spoiling for a war with Russia.

Later in the discussion, Solovyov said that “they will not forgive him for the fact that he strives to interview our president and post the footage on a platform that has no censorship,” a reference to X under Elon Musk’s ownership.

According to top Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, Carlson has requested to interview Putin.

The editor-in-chief of the Russian state media organization RT said in April: “Tucker is doing a great job. By the way, he’s really asking for an interview with Vladimir Putin. It would be great if someone hears this and gets this message to the president.” Carlson has not publicly confirmed such a request.

Original Article

North Korea Rocked by ‘Kim Jong-Un Assassination Attempt’

As a result of this blast, the North Korean leader reportedly ramped up security measures around him.

To better protect himself, Kim has been alleged to have imported new explosive detection equipment and to have added briefcase-wielding guards to his security team. During a recent engagement, Kim was photographed surrounded by several men in suits and ties carrying briefcases.

Michael Madden, a leading expert on the North Korean elite and fellow of the Stimson Center in Washington DC, told the US Sun: “There has certainly been a tightening of security measures around Kim Jong-un.”

Speaking about the briefcases, Madden added they are objects made of carbon fiber known as “ballistic bags or ballistic briefcases” often used as bulletproof shields and to protect people against tasers and similar electronic-based weapons.

Explaining how these special briefcases are used, he also said: “If the spotters radio the guards about suspicious activity or if a shot is fired, they can raise the bags to protect Kim Jong-un.

“These bags also unfold – there is either velcro or a clasp which can be undone, which turns the bags into a kind of fabric shield. So if someone takes a shot at Kim they would open these bags, surround and then cover him until he can be tossed into a car.”

Madden also suggested the North Korean dictator may have taken a leaf out of his father’s book and equipped some of his security guards with a defibrillator in order to have immediate medical support if needed.

This report comes after Kim, the third member of the dynasty that has been gripping North Korea since the creation of the country in the late 1940s, was humiliated once again following the second botched launch of a spy satellite. Managing to send a spy satellite into space has been a priority for Kim, as it would allow him to monitor incoming attacks and plot his own offensive maneuvers.

Original Article

Melania Trump Threatening to Leave Donald Over Son Barron?

A furious Melania Trump has threatened to walk out on her marriage to continue Barron’s education in New York, leaving her husband alone in Florida.

As previosuly reported, the four-times-indicted Donald Trump, 77, privately pushed his wife to the brink of a marriage crisis by shamefully dragging their sheltered 17-year-old son, Barron, into the middle of his troubled campaign.

Behind the scenes, the former first lady has threatened her husband, RadarOnline.com has learned.

“That would be devastating to Donald,” a source spilled. “With all the negative press swirling around him, the last thing he needs for his public image is another broken marriage.”

Melania also made a public stand to protect her son in 2019 when she blasted Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, who’d made a belittling joke 13-year-old Barron wasn’t “a real baron.”

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” the then-first lady tweeted. “Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering and using a child to do it.”

Sources predicted that Melania’s fury with Donald won’t ease until he swears never to use Barron for political purposes again — and if she’s not convinced, she’ll walk.

An insider told RadarOnline.com, “For the moment, Donald is protected by the reality Melania doesn’t want herself or Barron exposed to the public’s attention and scrutiny a divorce would bring right now.”

As RadarOnline.com first reported, Melania has been left “seething with fury” after her husband used a photo of Barron to attack Joe Biden — which she took as him breaking his promise to keep their son out of the spotlight.

Trump posted a photo of a photoshopped image of Barron at a podium captioned, “In an effort to level the playing field, Barron Trump will debate Joe Biden!”

“Melania has been incredibly protective of Barron and has told Donald she would not stand for him to be exploited by anyone, even his father!” a source revealed.

“He made a promise to protect their son — and he broke it. There’s a good chance she won’t forgive him, and the next time we see them together may be in divorce court.”

For his part, sources claim Trump feels it’s time his son starts helping him out of the campaign trail despite Melania’s wishes.

Original Article

Tucker Carlson Says ‘Being Racist is Not a Crime’ 

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson denies being racist – but says if he was, he would “just say so”.

“Being racist is not a crime,” Carlson says in a new biography, Tucker, by Chadwick Moore. “Maybe [it is] a moral crime, but not a statutory crime – so if I was racist, I would just say so.”

Carlson has long been accused of pushing racist invective and conspiracy theories during six years as the dominant Fox News primetime host.

He has stirred up numerous controversies including pushing the racist “great replacement theory”, saying immigrants had made America “poorer and dirtier” and once suggested a Black Democrat politician spoke like a “sharecropper”.

In an investigation published last year, the New York Times said Carlson “constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and also, by some measures, the most successful”.

Carlson’s new comments on the subject come in a biography that will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Carlson was interviewed extensively for the book, which will hit stores as he continues to broadcast from Twitter, amid a standoff with Fox, which took him off the air in April. Far-right host Tucker Carlson leaves Fox News in surprise announcement – video report

Carlson’s discussion of racism and whether he is racist comes during a section of Moore’s book about how Carlson believes Fox sought to tilt the media narrative against him, “releas[ing] a slew of behind-the-scenes emails, blogposts, and off-the-record transcripts featuring Carlson at his most free-spoken”.

In May, Fox News demanded that Media Matters stop publishing such material. The progressive watchdog refused.

On the page, Moore details the “most notable” such story, reported by the New York Times and about a text message containing allegedly racist language.

Describing watching footage of three Trump supporters attacking one leftwing protester, Carlson was revealed to have written: “It’s not how white men fight.”

The Times said Fox leaders were “alarmed”.

Carlson now tells Moore: “Fox told the New York Times they pulled me off because I was racist. But I’m not racist, actually. I’m not insecure about that. If I was racist, I’d just say so. But I’m not.

“Being racist is not a crime – maybe a moral crime, but not a statutory crime – so if I was racist, I would just say so.

“What I said is that’s not how white men fight, which as far as I’m concerned is true. I am a white man. I’m the son of a white man. I’m the grandson of a white man. So, if anyone’s qualified to speak on the subject, it would be me.”

Carlson continued: “And that’s not how white men fight is what I was raised to believe. In the culture I grew up in, you’re not allowed to fight that way. I believe that, and I’m not embarrassed of that at all. But that was somehow translated to, I’m evil or I’m a racist or something.”

The former host of a primetime show which aimed harsh invective at Democrats, progressives and other critics of conservatism also claims to have made his now infamous comment while “counseling one of my producers to not let politics define other people.

“Because it’s unhealthy. It’s un-Christian. It’s wrong.”

Original Article

Famous Podcaster in Trouble After ‘Super Creepy’ Behavior is Exposed by Staff

Influential conservative commentator Steven Crowder’s shamelessness knew no bounds, claimed former staffers who accused the right-wing podcast star of sending unsolicited photos of his genitals and exchanging drugs in the workplace.

RadarOnline.com has learned that five former employees and one source close to Crowder came forward with the explosive claims, opting to keep their identities under wraps due to fear of retaliation.

Crowder has long proven to be a controversial figure who speaks his mind with adoring supporters and stern critics — either way, he’s been bringing in the views.

Following repeated suspensions on YouTube, Louder With Crowder switched gears to Rumble, where the show’s audience has dwindled in comparison to the numbers brought in by the global online video-sharing platform.

The sources told Mediaite that amid a shrinking viewership, there are also some tensions behind-the-scenes, as first reported by The New York Post. Some said Crowder’s inappropriate conduct made them uncomfortable.

In addition to receiving unwanted sexual text messages, one alleged that Crowder made a habit of exposing himself to other male staffers, a shocking allegation two other sources doubled down on.

“In the moment we dismissed it as sort of frat boy humor. In hindsight, it’s super creepy and felt groomer-ish,” one ex-staffer alleged.

“It always felt like childish behavior in the moment that then felt predatory in hindsight,” he explained. “[Crowder] was always testing people’s comfort levels with that kind of behavior. Because he was the boss though and he had no accountability, it just continued to happen. There was no one trusted to complain to.”

Crowder would only expose himself in front of other men, alleged the staffer, who said the podcaster would brush it off as no big deal.​​”It usually happened when he was in a really good, sort of manic mood,” they explained. “It would just happen, and everyone would either throw out a fake uncomfortable laugh or show clear disgust which Steven interpreted as his reward for what he did.”

A former staffer also shockingly claimed the right-wing firebrand would “offer and ask for” prescription drugs like Klonopin as well as cannabis gummies and opiates like Percocet, another claim the outlet substantiated following the review of alleged text messages.

The bombshell allegations come months after a shocking Ring video was released showing Crowder berating his wife, Hilary, who was pregnant with their twins at the time. The exes, meanwhile, have been locked in a contentious divorce since 2021.

“We’ve often debated this. It’s like any abusive relationship. When it’s good it can be really fun,” the source who allegedly received NSFW photos from Crowder said. “Most people enjoy the work itself. When it’s bad it’s really bad, but over time most become so numb to it they don’t see how messed up the place is until they get out.”

These days, it’s still “like walking on eggshells most of the time” for one insider, who claimed employees are overworked and underpaid.RadarOnline.com has reached out to Rumble for comment.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson Shocks Fans with Political Rant

Samuel L. Jackson has had it with these ‘motherfucking billionaires not paying their motherfucking taxes.’

The Academy Honorary Award-winning and notoriously profanity-prone actor shared his grievance in a recent interview with Vulture after being asked about his political activism. “I pay an enormous amount of taxes, and it’s fine because I know I should. But why can’t we get billionaires to pay their fucking taxes?” the actor said.

“If those motherfuckers paid their taxes we’d solve a whole bunch of shit. And they would still be richer than every motherfucker walking around them.”

The “Avengers” actor is not alone in his frustrations. A Pew Research Center survey of 5,000 US adults found that about 60% of Americans feel wealthy people “don’t pay their fair share” in taxes. About 61% of people feel the same way about corporations.

It’s also arguable that a wealth tax on billionaires could “solve a whole bunch of shit.” A joint report from the Institute for Policy Studies, Patriotic Millionaires, Fight Inequality Alliance, and Oxfam found that instituting a wealth tax could subsidize several government programs, including a child tax credit extension and the US defense budget.

An analysis from the left-leaning Americans for Tax Fairness found that 26 of the wealthiest people in the country, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, paid an average federal income tax rate of 4.8% from 2013 to 2018 as they saw their fortunes grow. (This is partly because most of their wealth comes from assets, not paychecks.)

Jackson, 74, has never been one to shy away from politics. The actor told Vulture that his political activism began around the time he was a freshman in college in 1966, toward the tail end of the civil-rights movement.

He went on to say how, decades later, hearing the phrase “Make America Great Again” — Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan —makes his “blood boil” and that the “economic gap is crazy.”

“Being a certain age and looking at the world and identifying it for what it is and what it becomes, which is why as soon as I hear ‘Make America Great Again,’ I go, ‘When are we talking about again?

Are we talking about back when we had apartheid?’ I grew up in segregation in Tennessee. I went to school with Black kids cause we couldn’t go to school with white kids. I saw Klan marches and Klan rallies. So I know what America used to be,” he said.

Jackson has also been open about his feelings on the current state of the Republican Party. In 2019, three years into the Trump Administration, the actor bluntly told Esquire how he felt about the then-president.

“This motherfucker is like ruining the planet and all kinds of other crazy shit. And the people think that’s okay,” he said.

When asked by the magazine if he was worried about angering some fans, Jackson brushed off the concern: “I know how many motherfuckers hate me. ‘I’m never going to see a Sam Jackson movie again.’ Fuck I care? If you never went to another movie I did in my life, I’m not going to lose any money. I already cashed that check. Fuck you. Burn up my videotapes. I don’t give a fuck.”

Original Article

New Book Reveals the Kennedy’s Paid Jackie Millions to Create the Picture-Perfect Family

The nondescript white cardboard box sat in a darkened corner of the attic, forgotten for years. It was only when the box was opened that its gruesome contents were revealed. Neatly folded inside, still stained with the blood of President John F Kennedy, rested the pink suit worn by First Lady Jackie Kennedy on November 22, 1963, when her husband was shot dead in Dallas.

The astonishing revelation that the Chanel outfit, one of the most symbolic items of clothing in history, sat unattended for two decades in the attic of the Washington DC home of Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss, is one of a series of bombshells in a new book about America’s most famous First Lady.

Janet – who died in 1989 aged 81 – was handed the outfit by Jackie’s White House maid Providencia Paredes after an exhausted Jackie returned to the White House on the night of her husband’s assassination.

The First Lady had refused to take off the bloodstained suit, even as Kennedy’s successor Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One, saying: ‘Let them see what they have done.’

According to author J Randy Taraborrelli, whose new book Jackie: Public, Private, Secret is published this week, Jackie was horrified when her mother discovered the suit in her attic the mid-1980s. She believed it had been destroyed.

The pink pillbox hat, splattered with pieces of JFK’s brain matter, had vanished. ‘One of Jackie’s family members says Mary Gallagher (Jackie’s secretary) retrieved the hat at Parkland Memorial Hospital. She gave it to Janet a week after JFK’s funeral. Janet decided to keep it for herself. It is not known what happened to it,’ Taraborrelli writes.


Jackie donated her suit to the US National Archives. It remains in a temperature-controlled room with strict orders from her for it to not go on display until 2103 – 140 years after the assassination.

While thousands of words have been written about Jackie Kennedy over the years, critics have described Taraborrelli’s new 500-page tome as the ‘definitive’ account of the enigmatic woman who captivated the world with her grace and poise after JFK’s death, but who was fiercely protective of her privacy.

During her lifetime she gave only a handful of interviews and refused to write a memoir.So private was she that, when diagnosed with cancer in January 1994 and knew she had months to live, she invited friends and family members over to her Fifth Avenue apartment in New York and systematically burned all her private letters and photographs.

Former lover Jack Warnecke, an architect who designed JFK’s ‘Eternal Flame’ monument at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC, where Jackie now rests, told Taraborrelli how ‘she handed me a stack of envelopes neatly tied together with yarn’.

In what Warnecke described as a ‘nightly ritual’ until her death in May 1994, aged just 64, ‘Jackie untied the yarn and took a letter from the stack. She read it before placing it in the fire.

‘There were letters from Jackie’s children, John and Caroline… there were also letters from Jack Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis (her second husband), her father, Jack Bouvier, and even a few from me,’ he said. Taraborrelli spent more than a decade speaking to family members, former lovers, staff members and friends of the icon.

He portrays her as a woman obsessed with money who took multiple lovers but ruthlessly discarded men who were not rich enough for her jet-set lifestyle. ‘Money is power and I want both,’ she told Warnecke.

She was so tight-fisted she kept a daily ledger all her life in which she recorded every penny of expenditure, from a loaf of bread to her children’s pocket money. But Jackie is also revealed as a vulnerable woman who never got over her husband’s murder and became tormented as it emerged he cheated on her throughout their marriage. ‘She knew he cheated on her, but it was the scale of it that became public after his death that devastated her,’ a friend said.

She told friends and her psychologist that she was haunted by a phone call one of those lovers, Marilyn Monroe, made to the White House. The call came in on Jackie’s line in the Kennedys’ private quarters.

Weeks before, Jackie had refused to attend the birthday concert where Monroe, dressed in a sheer nude gown, breathlessly sang: ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President. ‘I’m not going to be humiliated,’ Jackie said when asked why she refused to go to her husband’s birthday celebration.

So when Marilyn rang asking for JFK, a curt Jackie snapped: ‘What is this about?’ to which the screen siren replied: ‘Oh, nothing in particular, I just wanted to say ‘hello’. ‘That tormented her for decades,’ a friend said. ‘She never knew if the call was real until years later when she was in therapy and her psychologist confided she had treated Marilyn who confessed to making the call. Jackie was furious and fired the shrink on the spot.’

She considered leaving her husband in the early years of their marriage – when he was still a Massachusetts Senator – after he repeatedly gave her multiple sexually transmitted diseases, one of which she blamed for the fact their daughter, Arabella, was delivered stillborn in 1956.

‘Jack happened to be on a cruise off the coast of Italy having fun with his friends, among them a few women. When he decided not to return after Jackie’s miscarriage everyone was appalled,’ Taraborrelli writes.

Jackie told Kennedy family patriarch Joe Kennedy that she wasn’t prepared to put up with her husband’s cheating.

She considered leaving her husband in the early years of their marriage ¿ when he was still a Massachusetts Senator ¿ after he repeatedly gave her multiple sexually transmitted diseases

It was then that Joe, desperate for Jackie to present a ‘perfect union’ to the world to boost his son’s presidential ambitions, proposed a deal. Over lunch at Le Pavilion, a French restaurant in New York, he offered her $100,000 – the equivalent of $1 million today (£760,000) – for any child ‘carried to term’.

In November 1957, Jackie gave birth to daughter Caroline and Joe, the book claims, made good on his promise and deposited $100,000 into her bank account that day. Son John Jr followed three years later, two weeks after his father was elected President in 1960.Young, beautiful and glamorous, Jackie mesmerized the world as America’s First Lady but, behind the scenes, all was not well.

Kennedy’s womanizing continued under his wife’s nose. She kicked him out of the marital bed but, according to a new revelation in the book, on the night before they left to go to Dallas ‘she sneaked into his White House bedroom in the middle of the night and they made love’.

She later told her sister she ‘had a bad feeling’. The following day, while still at the hospital in Dallas, Jackie was asked how she wanted to tell John Jr and Caroline that their father was dead.’ Maud should do it,’ she replied, referring to Maud Shaw, the children’s nanny.

Jackie’s mother, Janet, broke the news to Maud. ‘Permission to overstep?’ the loyal nanny asked. When Janet nodded, Maud replied: ‘I can’t take a child’s last happiness from them,’ to which Janet said: ‘This is Jackie’s wish and you must do it without question.’

In the years following JFK’s assassination, Jackie plunged into a deep depression. She drank heavily and started popping pills to try to beat her demons. Her sister Lee said: ‘How can a woman who takes so many uppers be such a downer?’ Jackie was left on the brink of bankruptcy when she left the White House. Her wealthy Kennedy in-laws refused to support her.

When she had some work done on her new home she begged builders to accept a signed photograph in lieu of payment ‘because it will be worth more money one day’. The builders insisted on being paid by cheque. Jackie consoled herself by sleeping with a succession of men, including architect Warnecke who was designing her husband’s memorial.

He tells how they ‘made love in the car and on the beach’ and described her as ‘sexual… alive… exciting to be with’. She told him she would never get over JFK’s death saying: ‘My life is over.’ He once watched as she took her late husband’s flannel bathrobe out of a wooden chest and breathed in his scent, describing the moment as ‘overwhelmingly sad’.

But she dumped a heartbroken Warnecke when he told her his business was going bankrupt. Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, a lover of her sister Lee, was spotted by White House staff slipping into her bedroom the night before her husband’s funeral.

When asked how actor Warren Beatty, a notorious Lothario, was in bed, Jackie replied she had been ‘underwhelmed’ adding: ‘There is only so much men can do.’ She admitted snogging Robert Redford, even though he was married: ‘He told me he wanted to be able to say he made out with Jackie O so now I get to say I made out with Robert Redford. We’re even.’

Morally, she had no qualms about sharing lovers with her younger sister, Lee.It was she who first fell in love with JFK after seeing him at a dance, but their ambitious mother, Janet, decided Kennedy would be a better match for Jackie.

The sisters shared the bed of society photographer Peter Beard and Jackie pursued Onassis, despite knowing Lee was in love with him. When her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, as he ran for President, Jackie went into emotional freefall. ‘They are killing Kennedys,’ she exclaimed before deciding only Onassis – by today’s standards worth over $4 billion (£3 billion) – could afford the protection her children needed.

Jackie proposed to Onassis and demanded a pre-nuptial agreement before their 1968 wedding which paid her the equivalent of $150 million (£115 million). ‘Finally she was financially secure for life,’ Taraborrelli writes.

Onassis’s son Alexander, who later died in a plane crash, was said to be so furious at the ‘gold-digger’ his father married he arranged for the paparazzi to secretly snap his stepmother as she showered naked outside on Skorpios, the family’s private Greek island.

Jackie, whose weight never fluctuated more than 5lbs and who had a secret facelift at 59, laughed it off.Her only physical ailment was nerve damage in one shoulder, an injury she suffered from clutching Kennedy’s body so hard in the back of the limousine in Dallas after he was shot. A chain-smoker, she kept in shape with yoga and her sexuality gave her ‘currency’ over men. Yet her two most important relationships after Kennedy were loveless.

The book claims Onassis came to bitterly regret his marriage to Kennedy which, despite giving him the prestige of being married to the world’s most famous widow, was never loving. Jackie said she ‘loathed’ Onassis in bed and was content for him to continue a sexual affair with opera singer Maria Callas throughout their marriage.

After Onassis died in 1975, Jackie flew to Paris and sat outside Callas’s apartment on Avenue Georges Mandel for hours, waiting for her to emerge.

When the singer finally did, Jackie said: ‘I saw her walking out of her building, this lonely-looking woman in a drab raincoat wearing a babushka and big sunglasses. And I thought, ‘My God, look at her. She’s so fragile and sad, how can I intrude on her privacy?’

‘I realized she was probably like me. Who knew of her suffering?’ A devoted mother, she believed no one was good enough for her son John Jr, who would died in a plane crash in 1999. She disapproved of Madonna, who John Jr dated for six months when she was separated from her then-husband Sean Penn.

Jackie said: ‘There are millions of intelligent women on this planet, why must you go out with the only one who calls herself a ‘Material Girl’?’ To which John replied: ‘Oh really, Mummy, who in the world is more materialistic than you?’

On her deathbed, Jackie told ex-lover Warnecke she regretted letting JFK’s assassination ‘poison my life,’ saying: ‘What a shame to spend so much time tormented by the thing I could never change.’

Original Article

Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑