Posted on 07/14/2024 10:39:19 AM PDT by DFG
Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
The man was not one for brevity, was he? :-P
Maybe he had large writing, and it was a five minute speech.
Amazing how the leftist media has maligned Teddy Roosevelt for decades. In many ways, he is one of them, but because he was also “manly” and embraced certain beliefs and virtues, they made him a caricature of himself.
Lol, that was my reaction, 50 pages?
It does say something for the quality of the voters though.
One of the two best presidents.
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