Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 253-004
Date: Friday, May 7, 1971 at 2:08 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Colson, Charles W.
Recording device: Old Executive Office Building
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/253-004

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:02] Hello.
[0:04] Yeah, what is your, uh, feeling about that Victor Roussel report on the media potential of that?
[0:14] Sure.
[0:15] In our case, the only thing that he, uh, has anything to write about is the, uh, is the W trade thing, which we, uh, you know, that's the only decision he's made that we've been getting into.
[0:31] I don't like that.
[0:36] Thoughts, which is part of that.
[0:40] You can tell Romney about it.
[0:45] Burns is always taking his views on the business.
[0:49] But you, the meeting is worthwhile, so you don't have to talk about the other things.
[0:55] Because I'm going to ask for support from SSP.
[1:02] How about our old friend, the lobster?
[1:04] He still has his part in there.
[1:06] He's all right on Irish.
[1:09] Yeah.
[1:10] Yeah.
[1:13] Yeah.
[1:13] Kirkland will probably be a successor.
[1:14] I don't know what to say.
[1:18] He really is here.
[1:19] It's the weather and the political strength.
[1:21] Remember, Walker's done a little.
[1:23] Maybe we ought to just take him off.
[1:25] You know what I mean?
[1:27] There's some people that approach us as a hell of a lot of a membership.
[1:33] Even with me, regardless of what it means, there's a lot of the membership that will stick with us.
[1:41] Fran will stick with us.
[1:42] With a lot of these union guys who have jobs, and most of the union guys who've got clients, they will let the board policy override the interview.
[1:56] It's basically like Eamon's mistake, which is only a mistake in recent times.
[2:23] for his contribution to the term media, rather than in terms of simply not CBS, or something like that.
[2:30] That's the way you ought to do it.
[2:31] You ought to say, now CBS did this or that, or the other crime guy did this, or Howard Smith did that.
[2:37] He'd get away with that.
[2:38] He wouldn't get away with it, but at least it could help him.
[2:41] The moment you say media, the media does this, you're in real trouble with everybody.
[2:46] That's it.
[2:52] Yeah, there's a lot to do with it.
[2:55] First, the building trades need, need some modification.
[2:57] They are, they've grown and so forth, but they all might fight that battle.
[3:02] That's somebody else's fault.
[3:03] And there are no, there are no goals in it for us.
[3:06] There's not any examples, of course.
[3:07] They all have done their own thing.
[3:13] That's what we came from, and I mean it.
[3:17] They couldn't pick up any deeper rules than just an ordinary brushy talk.
[3:20] You know, not one damn vote.
[3:25] In fact, George Schultz struggled at, I don't know, I don't know if somebody else was there, maybe in the last couple of weeks, and he was very disrespectfully of Humphrey as well as Teddy.
[3:39] He said Jackson's the best man in the world.
[3:48] Well, I'll give him a little laugh.
[3:55] How's everything else going?
[3:57] I guess everybody's gone home today.
[4:03] I think they helped.
[4:04] I mean, they, uh, they, uh, they just are, are there.
[4:09] I think that's the best broke they've needed to read so far.
[4:12] Yeah.
[4:16] The House came through.
[4:18] Today, a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans, huh?
[4:23] How about the Senate?
[4:24] Is that a very good one, or anybody else?
[4:35] I'm already stuck with that.
[4:38] Why, of course.
[4:39] But the point is, we already have a constitutional change, so why not?
[4:46] let people know that they didn't.
[4:51] The main point is that it's the right thing to do, and it's going to be done in the end.
[4:57] In case these people come back, we're going to get the same thing.
[5:05] So I have a lot of hope.
[5:06] Well, like we said behind the Hoover Cruise, we're going to lose the chief right now.
[5:17] There's a right to demonstrate and there's a right not to demonstrate.
[5:22] Neither can either her or the other.
[5:26] You know it's an interesting thing how the media didn't give it much play.
[5:36] I think they focused on her and she.
[5:37] The media focused on asking to protect her too.
[5:46] Anyhow, you've got to live with it now.
[5:51] That's why.
[5:51] I get that problem certainly with the $40,000, $40,000, you know, paid by the group that supports the city.
[6:02] They say, this city has what it's all based on.
[6:08] The demonstrations across the country are far less than I know them.
[6:13] It blew.
[6:14] It blew up this weekend.
[6:16] It was less than a year ago.
[6:18] Back then, everyone was all approaching.
[6:25] Things were going down.
[6:27] It was nothing less.
[6:30] Even though people are, of course, they're at war.
[6:37] They're at war.
[6:39] They're at war.
[6:40] They're at war.
[6:45] somebody's got to burn that place.
[6:47] But that should be a project, of course, that has to burn to be a complex.
[6:54] We'll see where it goes.
[6:57] Okay.