Conversation 019-108

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Yes, sir.

You have a call for me?

Yes, I have Mr. Carlson waiting for you.

Here you are.

Yes, sir.

Chuck, I had an idea that I talked to Al Haig about, and he's supposed to implement it.

Ron said that Henry gave a brilliant thing to the press.

Now, the thing about it is that, probably you hadn't heard this, but that

That, however, should not be put out to our troops in that form.

I have asked the Hague, and you follow up, and I want this done this afternoon and tonight if they have to work all night.

to have either Buchanan, Buchanan may be the best, or Sapphire, Sapphire might be, to take it on a Q&A basis and to say, what about POWs?

I mean, take the questions that we really want.

The gut questions, right.

And then the gut questions and say, here are some answers to questions that you may have with regard to our peace plan.

Whack, whack, whack, whack, whack.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that would be very helpful.

And also send one among us to Agnew, who seems to be the guy I don't understand at the least.

Well, that's right.

We had a bit of a problem yesterday, but I think we're all right on it.

By the way, I think he will agree to do a major speech on this Sunday, Saturday in Florida.

He was planning to go after Muskie, but I'd kind of like to use him to...

to build a good second wave of... Yeah, everybody should support the president.

This is the only chance to have peace.

Call for national unity, and that's a good line.

Yeah, and the national unity is the only chance for negotiation.

It'll help our POWs.

Help our POWs.

To get negotiation, we must be united.

If we are disunited, we won't get negotiation, and negotiation is the only way to get our POWs.

Well, that Q&A taken from the briefing, Mr. President, would be very helpful.

Our fellows can use that, and I will.

Well, you can follow up.

I told Hague, just call Hague and say, how's it coming?

And Sapphire could do it very fast, or Buchanan could, or the two could do it together, whatever they want.

Actually, Sapphire, because he's been working on this.

Fine.

Well, you can call Bill.

I'll get him into it.

Well, call Hague first.

Hague hasn't called him.

Then say, get Sapphire, and then you get going.

Okay.

Fine.

But the reactions today, have you continued to be able to heat the boys up now?

Oh, yes, sir.

And we're just going to, all of our people are just going to work on it right around the clock.

We will stay on this and keep it going.

How's their spirit?

Marvelous.

You know, the wires were, I mean, what we had were extremely emotional, which is an interesting thing there, saying God bless you and all that sort of stuff.

So maybe we caught an emotional wave here.

Well, everybody that I've talked to, Mr. President, I've talked to a lot of people today, two things come through very, very strong, credibility of the President and sympathy for him, that he suffered this alone and took all of the outrageous abuse of the critics and never once...

whence he stuck to his guns.

Now, that was a thing Harris told you last night.

Yes, and I bet I've been getting it from everybody else.

Why don't you give Sinlinger a call, see what his poll shows.

He should poll.

Well, he's polling now for us.

And Ed Brook, for example, a day said he'd heard from people who just were the most ardent anti-Nixon people, saying that, my God, we have to hand it to him.

And really, Ed said quite an extraordinary reaction from people who...

So good.

He's never heard good things about Nixon before, and... Well...

it's it's i think it's there mr president our job is to sustain it not just for a day but for three weeks or yeah that's right and to keep keep it on because the the second way will be the north vietnamese turning it down then we've got to just take our rage out on them rather than on ourselves that's exactly and stick to this line this line is sound it's right oh i think you're i think you're in a marvelous pasture i think our job is to

is to use our best spokesman.

I'm going to use Elliot, who was yesterday in that 4 o'clock meeting was just spectacular.

Elliot probably feels good about this.

Oh, he's very up, and he's extremely articulate.

And I want to use him for a major speech, the vice president.

uh george bush is gorgeous great he's a good guy rogers is going to have a press conference tomorrow as you probably will is great and uh he's very up he's sure no problem he should have a press conference that's very good well we've got that laid on for tomorrow send henry's q a over to uh don't send henry's whole text but the q a thing the high spots of our briefing here and ask him to follow up that it's it's and and also be sure he's televised

point out to Rogers that we did not have Henry televised because we wanted to keep it at the proper level.

Oh, that's a good point.

He'll appreciate that.

But that I talked to you and I said, be sure he goes on television, if possible, even live.

I think I could arrange that.

I think he'd be receptive.

I'll talk to Bill about that.

Whatever he wants.

But we will keep it going, Mr. President.

We've been working a lot today on some of the

The left, we had Clark Kerr.

I've got him, and he's agreed to make a statement.

And Stanton called me this morning and said, if there are any of these fellows you want us to put on, we'll put them on.

So I gave Stanton Kerr's name.

We may get him on the networks.

But he represents a whole group of doves, as you know.

We're finding some converts in the house.

We're doing some recruiting and finding some of the former doves who were...

Swing over which will have an impact right any swingers that come over that will knock out that Times post line that that that this was a that it was a mixed reaction crap, you know Oh, yeah, well any swingers you can get get a list out, you know Get get get get that disagree.

Have you got to Zeigler the great reaction?

Yes, sir Yes, sir, and I sent him over push that out.

Yes, sir I sent him this morning some telegrams that we got from POW families that were just beautiful you were there you saw they're just three of them that were great and

People said they've never lost their faith.

By the way, did you get the ratings on last night?

No, what were they?

Just spectacular.

The ratings?

Yes, sir.

I think we... Bob just walked in.

He may have... Yeah, well, one rating service gave us a 56.1.

The other gave us 66.4.

But if you average that... 58?

Well, you'd say 62% of the... Well, one of them gave 66.

Another gave 56.

So the combination is over 60.

And that's 60% of all television sets in America, so...

All right.

That's a hell of a rating.

Good.

Okay.

We'll keep at it.

Thank you, Mr. President.