On May 17, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 2:46 pm to 3:01 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 189-023 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
So, just for purposes of the columnists and the others who try to write this morbid stuff, has it occurred to you to have Clawson, Zephyr, and a bunch of mine?
I don't know how it happened.
You know, you talk about this whole business of the left wing talking about this time of violence and so forth.
Yeah.
Well, did anybody remember that Truman got shot?
You remember?
You remember the Truman shooting at Blair House?
Yeah.
Does anybody remember when Franklin Roosevelt caught a pump on him, killed the mayor of Chicago in Miami?
Cermak, you remember him?
All right.
All right, fine.
Okay.
You've got the Cermak shooting.
You've got the Truman shooting.
You've got the Cermak shooting.
They were both
Nuts, of course, one was Puerto Rican, so the term act was just crazy.
And then the shooting in the House of Representatives.
Uh-huh.
That particularly affected the Truman Roosevelt, the R one, you see.
And then, of course, there was the D R one and so forth.
But my point is these things happen.
temporary presence Truman and Truman and Frank and FDR I mean so uh let's get that uh take a good columnist like a White or somebody uh just ought to point out now look here let's not take a Bill White take Wilson three of them ought to get sick you know some of you fellows are just missing something don't let these libs get away with as much crap
Well, also, we tend to beat our own breasts about our own problems.
I think that nothing like this has ever happened before in the world.
Something we did caused it.
You see, these goddamn liberals are just horrible that way.
They cause it themselves.
They're the ones who creates the division in this country.
Who creates the hatred about the war?
Who the hell's doing this?
That's right.
Sure.
Truman was kind of a hero to them at that time while he was living at the firehouse before the Korean War.
That's when they popped him.
See?
Everything else going according to, I guess, they're all Democrats worrying about Michiganite for writing it off as big because he got shot.
It's too big.
It's too big.
Huber, right into his I.T., he's going to have to do something on the busing issues.
Well, I know, but Christ is on both sides of it.
You can't put it that way.
I mean, we've conquered it, if anything, too much, but we've had to from a responsible standpoint.
He didn't have any responsibility.
He just ought to come out against it, if I were you, I would.
I made an interesting observation 30 days ago.
He said that Donald Hubert would be the one we want.
I said, why, John?
He said, because John Connolly just despises Hartke.
And he says anybody that would pick Hartke for his co-chairman has got to be out of his mind.
But he says, but he puts it on a very interesting ground.
He said, well, Gilbert just doesn't turn anybody on anymore.
And he said, he's not going to be able to anymore.
He said, whatever goes, turn them on.
What's your argument on that?
What do you have to say?
come in and pick it all up.
Do you think the lead, do you really think it worries him, you think, or what?
Because the idea that someone said that Teddy running as his vice president is possible.
No, Governor.
Three of the candidates.
I think the way to do that is really through very extensive, effective mailers to every opinion maker, another to a list of 10,000.
Just hit them.
One, two, three, four.
In other words, keep rolling it in.
Don't you think so?
Every editor, every, you know.
Keep it scared.
Forest housing, all right?
All right.
If we could hit the bussing thing the same way.
All right, all right.
All right, good.