Benedict Arnold appears in The Bob Zadek Show chiefly as a reference point rather than as the subject of a dedicated episode. Across three episodes the host and his guests invoke Arnold to discuss betrayal, the contingency of the American Revolution, and the difficulty of recovering the feelings of historical figures. The excerpts do not present a sustained biographical treatment; they show Arnold functioning as a byword for treason and as the pivot of a counterfactual question about George Washington.
The West Point plot
In the September 24, 2017 episode, Bob Zadek opened the program with an “on this day in history” segment, noting that on September 21, 1780, Benedict Arnold met with British General John André “to plot the turnover, the deceitful turnover of West Point to the British.” Zadek stated that had the plot succeeded, the British would have controlled the Hudson River and perhaps the revolution would have been lost. He added that the plot failed, that John André was hung, and that Benedict Arnold escaped to England, where he lived in disgrace and died poor Federalism and the Flat Tax: The Austin Petersen Plan (2017).
The same segment placed the Arnold plot in a broader historical week: Zadek noted that 78 years later, on September 17, 1787, the Constitution was finished, that 55 more or less men drafted it, and that it then went out to the colonies for ratification. This framing presented the Arnold affair as one event in a week of national significance, alongside the completion of the Constitution.
Washington and the question of betrayal
Arnold figures centrally in a question Bob Zadek said he wished he had asked a George Washington reenactor at Colonial Williamsburg. In the December 23, 2013 episode, Zadek described visiting Colonial Williamsburg, a functioning pre-revolutionary war village, and attending a theater where men who had devoted their lives to understanding the founders performed as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, and George Washington. Zadek recounted that he had two questions lined up for General Washington but asked them in the wrong order because he was called on only once. The question he wanted to ask was: “General Washington, tell us how you felt the moment you learned that Benedict Arnold had betrayed you. What went through your mind?” Zadek said he thought the question would have elicited an answer the reenactor was unprepared for, because Washington was reserved and did not wear his feelings on his sleeve George Washington’s Providence (2013).
The same episode described the format of the Colonial Williamsburg theater: the founder speaks in period dress for 40 minutes and then takes questions from the audience, and because the performers have spent their lives understanding the men they impersonate, Zadek described it as the closest one can come to asking Thomas Jefferson a question. He noted that the first speaker he heard was Patrick Henry, whom he described as the voice of thunder and a colorful character who vehemently opposed the Constitution, and that the other speaker was George Washington.
Thomas Fleming on Washington’s reaction
In the June 4, 2011 episode, historian Thomas Fleming was asked by Bob Zadek to answer the question Zadek had wanted to put to the Washington reenactor. Zadek framed it as the question he did not get to ask George Washington the reenactor: how Washington felt at West Point the moment he found out that Benedict Arnold had betrayed him, and what his first feeling was George Washington Was Our Guest (2011).
Fleming answered that he could easily tell Zadek, saying with tears in his voice, “Oh, if we can’t trust Arnold, who can we trust?” He described himself as tremendously shocked. Fleming then commented as a historian, speaking as George Washington from Elysium, that Washington would say the betrayal was really not as surprising as one might think. Fleming said more and more historians are beginning to catch on to the fact that they might have known already that Arnold was a traitor, and that the whole elaborate thing of catching him and letting him get away was part of a plot cooked up to conceal spies inside New York who had told them about Arnold. Zadek responded, “Oh, how interesting.” Fleming said there is an argument that can be made along that line, but that Washington did, in the literal drama, believe it was a shocking thing.
Fleming also recounted an anecdote he said very few people know: Arnold had his men row him down to a British ship, and once aboard he turned to the oarsmen and said, “Now I want all you guys to join me, I’m joining the British Army. Come on, we’ll make a lot of money.” According to Fleming, they all said no and rowed back to West Point.
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Benedict Arnold across episodes. The 2011 episode presents Thomas Fleming’s account of Washington’s shock and his speculation that Washington may have known of the treason in advance; the 2013 episode presents Bob Zadek’s account of the question he wished he had asked a Washington reenactor at Colonial Williamsburg; and the 2017 episode presents Zadek’s “on this day in history” summary of the West Point plot. Each episode treats Arnold as an illustration — of betrayal, of historical contingency, or of the difficulty of recovering a founder’s feelings — rather than as a subject examined in its own right, and no episode responds to or revises the treatment in another.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not provide Arnold’s birth or death dates, his early life, his military career before the West Point plot, or the details of his later life in England beyond Zadek’s statement that he lived in disgrace and died poor. They do not name the specific charges against Arnold, the terms of his arrangement with the British, or the fate of his co-conspirators beyond John André. The excerpts also do not state what West Point was, where it is located, or why its control mattered beyond Zadek’s statement about the Hudson River. Where the 2013 excerpt breaks off after Zadek’s question, no answer from the reenactor is recorded.