Geraldo Rivera: I Helped Win the Cold War. And You're Welcome, By the Way.

If you look up the word “humble” in the dictionary, you will not, under any circumstances, see a picture of Geraldo Rivera there. Ever.

This is from Gerry’s radio show, April 12, 2013.

RIVERA: I am firmly convinced, I mentioned this to you earlier this morning, that when my talk show went on the air in 1988 in the Soviet Union, before the fall of the Wall, that helped accelerate the process, it was first my talk show and then Joan Rivers joined me on the air in the Soviet Union. Can you imagine …

WABC RADIO ANNOUNCER NOAM LADEN: How did you even get on there?

RIVERA: Because they were reaching out. They were taking tentative steps and my syndicator, the Tribune Company, reached out to them, they bought the show which was, you know, seen throughout Latin America, it was dubbed in Spanish, it was dubbed in all sorts of different languages, and they dubbed it in Russian. It was shown on Moscow TV and in other places. So here you had it with the advertisements for washing machines and, you know, for new cars and, you know, all of the things that you advertise in a daytime talk show. And I’m sure that the audiences looking at this stuff saying, hmm, I wish I had a washing machine like that. Hmm, I wish I had a color TV like that …

And that, kids, is what brought about Glasnost and the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Not SDI, not deploying missiles in Europe, not Reagan challenging Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” not Lech Walesa’s Solidarity or the alliance between the US, the Vatican and the UK. Not any of that at all.

‘Twas Al Capone’s vault and “men who fear the bicycle bar” that killed the beast.