Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 314-002
Date: Thursday, January 13, 1972 at 3:41 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Ehrlichman, John D.
Recording device: Old Executive Office Building
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/314-002

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 Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Well, after that rather interesting experience with Agnew and your friend Marion, I just wondered, shall I strike out with the EAP thing or this way?
[0:24] Yeah.
[0:24] What in the hell is Agnew up to?
[0:28] I thought he'd been briefed on the whole thing.
[0:38] He's been here and raises all these questions.
[0:42] What, is he trying to prove some goddamn thing to somebody?
[0:44] That was almost, you know, I timed it.
[0:48] Twenty-five minutes he took.
[0:50] Well, stuff about when he was county commissioner.
[0:58] Well, my point is, I got the state of the human problem.
[1:17] OK.
[1:17] So, OK. OK, now look here, Bob.
[1:19] The card says come on and came off.
[1:22] Get off your ass and do this.
[1:22] If you had a chance to read Ray's last effort, what do you think of it?
[1:26] Well, yes, there hasn't had to live in it, and I just told him to write 500 words more.
[1:33] He's supposed to have my five o'clock tonight.
[1:35] He didn't take a lot of the stuff that he had.
[1:43] He left it all out.
[1:43] But you don't want it so close, eh?
[1:50] Well, did you read Ellie Richardson's memoir?
[1:53] Well, I think that's goddamn good.
[1:58] Or don't you think so?
[2:02] Well, I just told Ray, why don't you take that, take a little of that, your old principles and new realities, and give me a conclusion.
[2:07] How's that sound to you?
[2:08] And put the other traffic.
[2:10] Or at least the new draft has a race, up to this time, it's not even, it has organization in it, I noticed.
[2:20] Wow.
[2:20] Well, I sent him an outline.
[2:24] Listen some to the outline.
[2:34] I didn't want to deadline 5 o'clock to give you 500 words for basically, I don't know, the lift, the conclusion, the spirit, and so forth.
[2:45] But I would also like to see what the hell you cut out of this before I start cutting this out of the pitch.
[2:47] Would you tell me a bit of this?
[2:49] Say, all right, do you have a copy?
[2:54] See if we can get a clean copy.
[2:57] And again, well.
[3:02] Can't he, what type is he now?
[3:09] I'll talk to you later.
[3:10] Fine, okay, because I have to leave here at 4.34.
[3:16] But insofar as you're concerned, I'm asking for judgment.
[3:18] Do you think we're on the right track or not?
[3:24] Yes.
[3:25] things in it that have a quality in terms of the approach and in terms of the per se from it.
[3:37] And that is taking and putting in the beginning the fact that 25 years ago I sat in the Republican Congress and we did great things.
[3:41] We've done a great credit.
[3:42] And then going on to say that
[3:44] in terms of where we are now, that we have a situation where, I think this, I also wrote the paragraph, which is almost verbatim, where I said that we have to realize that there are many people in this country, particularly young people,
[4:03] who have lost confidence in the government.
[4:10] They read that the president is fighting, the administration is fighting, the Congress is fighting, the House is fighting, the Senate, the Democrats are fighting, the Republicans.
[4:27] We've got to demonstrate that we can do something.
[4:28] Do you like that theme or not?
[4:29] I'm going to refer to Trump as a gallant warrior.
[4:30] I'm going to do it for a reason.
[4:33] Even though I disagree with him.
[4:44] I agree, you've got to get something like him started working on that machine.
[4:47] All right.