Nixon phone call with Haldeman on John Connally and White House News Summary

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Yeah.

Mr. Hall, I've been asking for you, Mr. President.

Okay.

Here you are.

Hello?

Hello.

I talked to John, and he couldn't be in better spirits.

He said he had put in a call to you yesterday to wish you a Happy New Year.

I was apparently on the plane or something.

You probably were, yeah.

I told him that.

He said, I didn't raise this thing at all.

I just kind of talked to him.

He was delighted to get together with you Wednesday evening.

Thought that would be a good idea.

And then I asked if he had any thoughts on this thing tonight and how he thought things looked and all, you know.

He said the general outlook is just very, very good, that you should be very confident

on both the domestic and international front you shouldn't sound over optimistic but he said there's a tie to confidence building in the country there's less anger less frustration in people and there has been in years and he said and there ought to be because we've made progress on the international front domestic situation looks good the stock market's going up all that and i

I said, do you think we had any, any suffered any from this bombing last week?

And he said, no, that last a couple of days.

And he said, 10 days from now, nobody will remember you did it.

That's a Texas attitude, isn't it?

And he said on the international front, he said the one bit of advice I give him on the TV tonight is that he shouldn't say that we've solved all our problems with our trading partners and anything he can do to make the point that we're looking after American interests will be to his advantage.

He said that's what everybody in this country wants, whether they're the barber in Flores, Texas or the guy out on a golf course at El Dorado.

They all want us to look after our interest in this, and they think that's what the president's doing.

I get it.

That's good advice.

And he said you don't have to hit it hard, but just underlie that.

But other than that, he's in great spirits, very upbeat, pleased to talk.

He says the weather's great out there and he's having a good time.

Good.

And so I didn't even mention the other thing.

Where would you put him, or do you think I should just happen to spend the night at our place?

No, I wouldn't.

I can, you know.

Yeah, but I wouldn't.

I think you've got a problem where you've got Rogers out there.

Rogers in the house.

He's planning to stay at the Newporter in Connolly.

Yeah.

Well, he'll like it there.

Sure.

There'll be a lot of people, and we can helicopter him around.

Oh, yeah.

And I told him we'd send a chopper over for him Wednesday to bring him over from Palm Springs.

That's good.

Yeah.

in time for dinner, and I said we'd give him a call.

Set up a time when we get out there.

I had asked Jerry Warren to talk to Brumley about this thing, and Brumley can't figure the thing at all.

The Fortune thing is an interview he had in early November.

Yeah.

He was completely misquoted on that point.

He has denied it unequivocally.

Right.

And his view is that Shore is just piecing together bits and pieces of misinformation.

Yeah.

Well, I hadn't the same feeling, you know.

I mean, I talked to Connolly on Christmas to wish him a Merry Christmas and he was in good shape and the rest.

He's been great all along.

And he should.

God damn it, he looks good.

Well, Jerry reminded me there was a piece in the Newsweek Periscope a couple weeks ago that said that Conley had said something about he was going off to Texas to ride a horse and think about his future.

And I'm sure that was a misquote, but that's apparently the line that Shore picked up on that thing.

Jerry also said he's had no press inquiries on the basis of the Shore thing at all.

I mean, nobody else gives it any credence.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad you called him.

And having that dinner is a good idea, too, because it gives me a chance to see him.

Yeah, it's a good idea anyway.

And also, if you want to put to rest one of these damn things, you can put him to rest awful fast.

Yeah.

So he's over there.

Okay.

Interesting.

He has the same reaction to the bombing that, you know, any of the Southerners feel that way.

George Mayon, Eddie A. Barron talked to him.

He said, hell no, if you should have.

They're doing the right thing.

People are squealing in there.

You've got to keep them off balance.

I agree that in terms of just a short-range thing, it's over with now.

I don't want to scream about it.

And, too, it's the old story.

It's a

might be just, well, I'm screaming about this rather than about something else because they've got to be negative, you know, after.

That's right.

We've had too good a ride.

Yeah, and so India-Pakistan was a chance to be negative, and this is.

Yep.

So now they're going to ride it for a while.

And they, it's right, they have to.

That's right.

Well, they look and see the whites of the eyes, you know.

Now, this year, that's the way it's going to be all year long.

That's why hard people like...

Every time they get a little naive to think, gee whiz, the press has now finally turned around.

You remember, we always do that.

I've always said, now don't ever believe it.

I mean, they turn around for a while and they think you're doing well because they can't run totally against the tide of public opinion.

But then they go back to their hammering away.

There is a basic thing there.

Although, as I say, I'm inclined to think, and I think it's necessary for the news thing to do it, but I'm inclined to think that the

The new summary people do tend to, you know, to sort of hypo the basically almost anything that is critical.

They do.

And therefore that we get a somewhat more unbalanced than it really is.

I think that's true.

Bill Rogers was talking to me about that.

Does he see the new summary?

Down in Florida, yeah.

Oh, I didn't know he did.

Not on a regular basis, I guess, but apparently he has seen it some.

I would send them to him.

i think he ought to be saying i'd like to get his judgment he raised the point that that uh two points one that they tend to overplay sometimes or the negative things and the other that they report wire service stories of comments by senators and congressmen and that sort of thing that don't get any play

yeah in other words frank church attacked something one day and and we asked him to answer it and he checked out and found that it had been carried on the wire but nobody had printed it yeah yeah well you got to watch colson on that and that you got to be careful on the wire yeah yeah you've got to watch colson on that bob because he he sits and reads wires you know yeah that's right and then says well we got to get an answer to that god damn it nobody should read the wires well the news summary is based a lot of it is based heavily on the water yeah because they have to get it out in such a hurry

And the thing to do is to look at the balanced report.

I'm utterly convinced that the best reports we get from the news summary, and I'm going to start almost doing this so I don't have them day by day, I'd like to have maybe every day the one story that we really ought to respond to, if any.

And then I'd like to have about once a week, well, here's the news of the week, boys.

You see what I mean?

I think you really need balance in the thing.

You could just say, here's the main television story or something like that.

That's just a way to think about it.

I think that's right.

Otherwise, you get just meshed down in and mired down.

That's right, and you get buried down in there.

You see stuff that nobody else sees.

Incidentally, at that Peterson meeting tomorrow, I want Rogers there, too.

Okay.

Rogers, so that he can talk about that strategy.

And it may be that we ought to have stands there, since it's trade policy.

All right.

And if Eberle's in town, he should be there.

In other words, it's sort of a half meeting of the Council on Economic Policy.

Not a full one.

And Volcker.

Better have Volcker.

And we'll just have a good meeting.

That's worthwhile doing anyway.

Okay, good.

And it gives Peterson a chance to shine a bit.

But one thing I'd like for you to do with Bill on the plane since he's going out.

You have, you sit down with him and

get his oral advice about what we ought to be doing, showing what we have in mind in the way of the press conference and the speeches and all that bullshit.

And then after you've done that for an hour or so, then you can come in, you and he, and we can have a little talk about it.

Because his judgment, Bob, is on the PR side is, as you're quite aware,

I mean, he has many failings as compared with Henry and others, but his judgment is about 10 to 1 over Henry's on the PR side.

I mean, Bill knows what's happening, even though he may be wrong sometimes as to the issue, but he knows damn well how it's playing PR-wise.

Don't you agree?

Oh, yeah.

And he never fools himself, and he's pretty tough that way.

And I think he will be very good on not just this, but the courts and all the other things and personalities.

All right, fine.

I'm glad you called, Connolly.

Thank you.

Okay.

Nixon phone call with Haldeman on John Connally and White House News Summary

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Also recorded on January 2, 1972

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