Nixon, Ziegler & Haldeman on Press relations and Economic policy

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Yeah, is there anything new I'm playing that's ever gone?

I just want to try to see what's going on.

Oh, yeah.

All right, Ron, why don't you come over, I'll go over to the last one.

I think I'm pretty well aware of what they're doing.

I think there's a possibility.

I don't mind.

The recent report that was on the front page of the paper, the statistics for the moral

and I see a paper that says something on the front page.

Howie did a good job this morning.

The person who took over the Today Show, and I know he will, and it was a good one to be punched.

You see, we all deserve that, and we're going to come still on Sunday.

And that's today's show, so I hope you don't leave me alone on the wire, because I know you said, right, oh, come on, right, let me say it.

That's kind of a matter of who you want me to say it with.

I don't think you should be soft.

Well, I think there are questions that we could run right over.

Connelly and Mewtwo never let them feel, never let Connelly's masters let them feel that they're getting two yards in any way.

Oh, I don't know.

And I think a posture of firmness and directness

But not to the degree that in any way they can draw the impression that you're angry with them or that you're upset with them.

Right.

Never, never.

Put them down.

One question came and you smiled and said you were smiling.

Take that for me.

And then a couple times you were very purposeful.

They get the message back.

What will be the, I think, attempting to sense

I'm concerned on your part about the attack on the economy.

All the guys are out today calling for the economic program, disaster, and the pay board, the pro-scandalous, and there should be an congressional investigation for this typical charge.

That's a good thing.

They'll be looking to detect any presidential concern about these things.

And what did Stein do?

Stein?

Yes, he did.

Well, I think he did all right.

A weak statement.

I think he's done a weak statement.

That's true, but not a very believable statement is.

take aside, if you put aside food prices, and everything is going good, that's good from a standard perspective.

Technically, I've argued about food prices.

That's right.

And the paid price commission is looking into them in April.

That's right.

And we're going to see if they come down.

As Conley said today, you know, we're watching right now.

But the rest of the private industry are doing very well.

That's right.

Instead of saying, as he did, which played fairly high, and I'm not being critical of it,

If you put, if the spokesman says, if you put food prices aside, then what comes out is they, what would the economic advisors say?

Put food prices aside, things that are not investable.

When that gets out into the news, a lot of people say, what do you mean put food prices aside?

How do you do that?

I don't understand this.

There's a negative school about it this month.

It was right to start coming down to $14,000.

I'll say that's the reason we need to monitor it.

Even though justice is in it.

You can order it on the phone.

Thanks.

You can order it on the phone.

It might come, the question might come on the Vice President today, because he said in, I think he said in the morning, I'm not sure, but he made it in 1972.

So he hasn't told you in July, but he made the decision.

He said the President had consulted with the market in 1972.

It was not a negative story on his part, it was a mistake.

I'm going to comment on Wallace.

I'm going to comment on Bell.

Well, that's the Senate passed, I know.

Your position has been all along equity draw down below the Presidency level.

Right.

About equal time for senators.

That was taken.

That was the Baker Equity Amendment.

What's that?

The Baker Equity Amendment would apply to anything.

Yeah, but what I had is, suppose they say one about...

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

I don't think they'll press on the debate today, but if they do, the thing raising seems to be the position.

You were elected 40 years ago.

Now there are a lot of people who want your job, who would like to be president, and you haven't seen them in any problems.

At their point, now they're expressing themselves.

Now let's get back to the debate.

Well, I don't think we can talk about that.

That has to do with elections, gentlemen.

That has to do with the Senate election.

I can say I'm not making any political speeches, partisan speeches.

I'm not answering any partisan political questions in any press conference until after the election.

That's my position.

I'm going to ask Corey Walton another one.

I think it's going to be a little bit difficult.

Because if you say anything you would say on the debate question,

I think the whole thing is building that wall and that thing protects us from all the wild stuff.

Also, you see, that's a good answer.

That's a good answer about a whole lot of the strategy part of it.

This is not in relation to the substance.

The press had a point on me, and the press, and some of the Soviet Union, as many as we can go.

Logan, I want you to have the Soviet question.

Did you visit any other countries when you got landed?

We don't know yet.

Other countries in all cities?

Other cities.

Assault agreement, other trade initiatives.

Any kind of everyone cool?

It's a lot of hard negotiating that has happened.

What does, now can I say on the Flanagan that you've covered that question?

The Flanagan, I've expressed your confidence when the Eagleton attack, I did not talk about the idea

But I also do, and I don't believe in opening it up one damn bit.

He stayed above that.

Truman got in with his.

He would have defended his.

Jerry Herring would have said no.

And others, the 5% of cases went to jail.

That's it.

charges, none of it was approved.

In this case, charges have been made, none of it approved.

That's your next question, gentlemen.

See my point?

Don't you think that's a good little way to make it?

The other difference is the personal gain.

It wasn't worth much, but nobody's taking it.

I'll listen to you, though.

In this time of the, uh, period, quite a, well, frankly, I don't understand.

I've gotten a little bit of an intellectual understanding.

I've tried to find three or four of all of them, and they, you know, write you some boards for you.

But I've taken in people like, uh, like Nick Tankish, and Andrew Lincoln, and, uh,

I don't care about the ones that are bad.

I just want to know those.

You just want the most ones.

Yeah.

For example, I put mom on for me.

Basically, personally, I'm a better considerate.

personally, not unfriendly, let's put it that way.

You could say, personally, friendly, maybe they're five, and then you could say, personally, not unfriendly, and there you could even include a wire service guy like Claire Mayer.

I don't consider him unfriendly.

I always do.

I don't consider him unfriendly.

I don't wire service people.

I don't tell them they're not unfriendly.

They have to be very, very objective.

Next week.

Take a week.

I want to start right after 3.

So if you...

Or they will not expect you before they go.

They expect you right after.

They come in most about that time.

So I start making two cuts after about five.

You can go in three.

I'll go in at three and say, gentlemen, the president had a regard of five after three.

And then we just cut it.

You don't have to go over there and tell me.

I'll have it cut.

They're hitting and squealing around.

I don't think you gain much by having a 45-minute contract.

Of course you'll cut it off.

30 minutes is long.

But as long as you've had 34 minutes, you cut it off.

And if it doesn't, for some reason, your eye can say, gentlemen, we have time for one more question, or you can say, I have one more question about a law firm.

You say it.

I'll say it.

I'll say, gentlemen, the president's going to go to the meeting.

We've started five after.

We should be making 30 to 35 minutes.

Let Carmere say 30 minutes after he's gone.

A full 30 minutes after he starts.

He's a tough guy.

A full 30 minutes, though, I don't need to turn the time up.

Because I will not fill up a 30 minute.

I'm going to do this.

All over the line.

Does he have the respect to impress people as an individual?

I know they like him, but do they respect him at all times?

I've been talking to him.

I've turned around.

I know they're on buses.

No, I don't.

No, they don't give a shit.

They're just like people in their homes.

Howard?

His name, or how do you know he was there?

Well, I don't know.

What did he pay, about $6,000?

No, no, no.

He's talking about that day.

He said, all of the Democratic candidates have been in the Senate for five or nine years.

Huh?

He said, all of the Democratic senators running for office have been in the United States Senate for nine years.

The question is, why haven't they done something?

They've been on it nine years, but it's been four or five years.

Well, economy must be something.

The Constitutional will have passed the Congress.

Is it fair to the South to separate them?

I hit a bus with kids on it and cut it right in two and killed about three high school kids.

In fact, how old was the bus going on over there?

It was a 12.

It was going to the school.

It was going across the bus.

I'm trying to say, buses are supposed to stop over there.

I don't know.

It was across the bus.

I mean, it was across the bus, but it didn't hit any bus.

It was going to the school.

Yeah, I think it was pretty slow, but I guess one of the guards wanted to track it.

But it cut it in two when the kids were all throwing it out all over the place.

It wasn't as slow as it was.

It was?

It was.

Oh my God.

I was asked whether or not the President developed a separate education for people who are going to go to education.

I said, no, we don't have a separate education for people who are going to go to education.

but you cannot say that a black school is inferior.

That's the other thing.

That's right.

But that's one thing we're driving at.

See, they'll ask that question to attempt to make their charge and substantiate their charge with your efforts to go back and remake it.

See, they're not asking you to get into whether or not

They don't know what they want to do.

They'll talk to them about busing or to achieve a better education.

What you're suggesting is that you close down every school in the central city and bus all the children out to suburban schools.

How do you accomplish that?

You can't do it.

They will all be in a minority, will they?

where the schools will be run by whites, where the whites will be in the majority of the country.

Plus the system couldn't happen.

In other words, that's the point it shows, basically.

Bussing cannot achieve that.

In other words, bussing cannot achieve that.

There's no way to develop the transportation system.

The last time I will give them one in the office, and I think we've just about done that.

I think it's a good one to do now.

But now, as we get closer to the campaign, I think we are going to follow the rules.

We will now go on a monthly basis, and we'll follow that.

We're going to do seven a month.

We're going to rush it.

We're going to do one about April 4th.

We're going to do one about May 4th.

We're going to do eight months.

My general feeling

Stand for me.

You see, I, well, yes, I could, I could have, I could have one.

I've got to do something about it.

You can't forget even the option, the option of the other option, which is in the prison office.

Why?

It's a long question.

Yeah, but the difficulty with that, though, that it's quite huge in the whole prison office world.

They then can select whether they want to distribute.

No, no, I'm never going to do that because they're going to be televised or they're going to be in the office.

And I do not agree with that.

In the office?

In the office, is there any code in there?

No, I think...

I think there's a lot of description.

There's an outline.

It makes sense.

What's your mother's mother's name?

Uh...

as you have done, as you did yesterday.

Oh, that's right.

And then I think the other is, you know, the opportunities for shorter sessions.

You have one point tonight.

Just to break the announcement.

That's what I mean.

It's just four times.

But in a month of August, we're going to be able to see one.

We did have a credit infection in our convention.

We're going to have to do some things.

We're going to be able to go through it now.

See, the press conference from the White House during that period certainly is a contrast

In contrast, we could also, even then at that rate, we might consider having one.

The White House is better.

The White House is better, but still saying that many of the Western White Houses have good locations.

As a matter of fact, I mentioned to Bob that if we go out next month or two, it would be a good location to do one.

Well, we don't plan to go out.

We can't now.

I won't go out to San Clemente now to, uh, to, uh, to the Democratic Convention, but that's a time that I'm going to ask everybody to take a good damn good vacation.

There's no reason to try to, try to fight that for this country.

I believe that you know, that you have to go back to your home and go back to your home.

They'll have quite a gang of people, young people who are black and red and green and brown.

Just so we can get into our subject of having this international press conference.

We can do that.

Yes, we've discussed that.

I wonder if that's going to do anything.

That's going to be very good.

But on the other hand, it puts me in this position of answering for the policy, but it's a little weird, which is what we want, you know, rather than being a bully.

After the trip, it's always moving around.

I've stayed off of them.

Does he have a specific target?

Well, there you are.

That's the first one on the list.

You know, you might do that now.

Put that down.

Discuss it with Bob.

That might be a very good way to handle that rather than doing a post-conference fear.

I would like to be

Now look, as aggressive as he is, I'm very much tempted to at times.

But I don't think Ron, even though he does it nicely, I don't think I can go run over him quite as hard.

Do you agree or not?

Absolutely.

His personality is...

I'm talking very hard.

...manner is very hard.

For example, he's one... Just as he cannot... His personality cannot lend itself to pulling...

as soon as he approached Mark.

He's one of the few people I know of who could have picked up those charts as well.

He's phenomenal.

I used to kind of ask him one question and within two minutes he had every line out, including the last visit to Maine he had.

Before going any further, all of a sudden he had on the screen these charts.

He was holding them up.

He was pointing to the decline and so forth.

He went on to another question and said, I have another chart on that.

Well, he just was a long time in charge, so we were walking, going down.

And he got to the point where he told us he was in a way, which he got around by saying, how about we keep my name too short?

And then he talked to us.

Very, very adamant, adamant.

He's not getting as much...

I know.

How does he do it in person?

I think, you know, rather than... Well, I don't dislike it, actually.

Vice President comes off more on the defensive than he does on the offensive.

And I think that, you know, an officer, part of your power should be on the offensive.

And I don't know if it's a matter of technique as much as it is the combination of technique here in the back.

But I'd like to see more on the bonds.

You realize that one question, part of the economy that is controlled, those prices are all going down, right?

I'll say that, and then I'll go on to say that we're very disappointed.

I mean, after all, people were an advantage as a major part of their bill.

I know that, and that's why I'm very happy, very glad that the price commission was invested in this.

The profit margins are too great.

The middle men are making too much.

You can't make far with a scapegoat if you don't want to put it.

Make sure to look into that concern.

Is that hard?

I'm sorry, yes.

Close on it.

Come down.

You'll have to find a stronger way to handle the problem.

What's that?

Nothing.

It's easy for a critic to pick out one figure out of a full series and out of ten and claim failure.

Nixon, Ziegler & Haldeman on Press relations and Economic policy

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Also recorded on March 24, 1972

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Nixon, Ziegler & Haldeman on Press relations and Economic policy

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on March 24, 1972

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