Nixon & Haldeman on Media relations and Press conferences

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 7 minutes of this recording (about 28% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).

Well, I didn't realize that the house had gone over with you.

She had then talked to these people about, you know, what they kind of can cover up.

You're blowing the hole.

You can't cut it now, Bob.

You tell old Lieutenant it was a fight.

He doesn't want to hear it now.

I think he can't.

I think he didn't use to do it.

What I've had him do is in fairness, everybody before him, both John and Bob, Christ's sake, he hasn't done anything to tell us.

You know, he really doesn't.

It's kind of a problem.

This is the way Rogers, this is what happened to me, and he wanted to know what everybody reported.

Well, yeah, but it was not structured this way.

Not in a different way.

Not telling so-and-so he had so much.

It's let them fight for themselves.

What we want to talk about is tripling and getting going, but let someone else interrupt him and say, you know, that's enough of the trip.

Let's talk about the point you raised here, the discussion.

It started flat at 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock at 3.

She said, it can't be great.

We have to leave somebody at all, believe it or not.

And then I say, Sam, I would really agree that we need to have the therapy.

The therapy, exactly.

So what do you do?

Frankly, though, my view is that a warrior is lucky, not just me.

Don't you think so?

I think it's a very good idea.

The trouble is, you see, otherwise, you need to get down here.

As long as things are important to me, there's nothing else there.

Good morning, sir.

Let's sit down.

I'm still trying to get it all...

As of now, the plan is to leave here around 9.30.

But we may be late.

What we're going to do is hold up the departure here.

We've got some checkpoints set up on there, motorcade operation and all that.

So if you don't leave here until they've arrived at a certain point, you know where the thing's going and they can set it up.

minus an hour and a half or whatever, two hours.

Hopefully get in there and minimize the

The whole of the plane.

I didn't think Landon would just sit up.

You can't, once you get up, you're stuck.

That would be kind of bad if you got stuck on that tour.

Well, the worst thing would be to get up, do the gravesite, you know, wait, and then have to wait another hour or something.

— 1 min 34 s with no transcribed speech —

seem to be like that, I don't know.

I don't know.

Cross the street.

There you go.

Good promotion, Jimmy.

Come in first.

Good.

I don't think we'll be out in that long, should we?

Yeah.

He could be right.

Courtney Johnson could have been on the line.

I wonder if he's doing more drugs.

I wonder if he is.

I don't know if he is or not.

You'd think it would be harder.

In other words, you'd think you'd have less discipline there.

Not having to be up.

And then all of a sudden, parade.

You just might lose it out at night.

Dream to eat too much.

And you start out too late.

You know, he did take a great view of the city.

I was thrilled to be in one of those areas.

Getting enough great satisfaction now.

And there's still...

I had to think about the counselors.

He became so terribly personal.

He was a very specific person.

At almost the same time, 1965, Bill went off the road and started the 36th.

He began to get the personal base, particularly by his own party, and by members of the party.

Probably the members of the party that we took on any policies with their person.

Mr. Christy, we thought about that today.

Of course, he let himself off the guard, which is even, I think, a lot of people thought they were better.

Like it was just because of what he was doing when they were, you know, they were, whatever.

We don't give him, it's actually, they are not, not nearly as personal.

They try to get personal, but they don't quite pull it off.

We haven't given them the chance.

They're not quite, you know what I mean?

They don't, uh,

about all that, you know, they try that.

For example, that's why I don't like rather than we say, you know, well, even he was a small man, so is he nervous or is he, you know, or something like that?

Well, I'll tell you about television and television, and I'll tell you what they do.

Yeah.

Just on the basis that you...

You pick up what you're going to get on the bell.

They're going to answer.

One or two answers, maybe three.

Or parts of them.

And it gets in the way of the, you know, it gets to where you've got to be answering.

You've got to assume that all of it's on.

You know, in any of it.

It doesn't matter.

If it doesn't make any difference to you, then obviously there's some benefit to getting the film, because you'll get, of course, you'll get it on TV anyway, so you don't use some of the radio on TV.

Yeah, I think, but it's not the same thing.

Maybe, that's the one thing that worries me.

If you think of how they put something on the smear, or a menu item or something like that, they cut the damn film, they cut the damn snake.

That's about keeping them honest too.

If they've got the film, we've got the film.

You know, it's a...

All the stir they made at the process of that hearing up there, not one of them, to my knowledge, has mentioned that they have that thing showing that film at the Senate.

Is that right?

They haven't mentioned that they were going to make a big fuss out of it, you know.

At CBS, they have camera crews up there, took all kinds of footage.

I haven't used one.

They may be saving it for, you know, use as a counter-attack kind of thing in some other way.

The presence of the camera in here makes it clear to the guys that are writing that this whole thing is, and the presence of the microphone does it too.

I wonder if it's enough of a strain.

I suppose one way to do it is to find out if the site is to use the radio this time.

And it isn't going to be a hell of a loss in either way, but just to take a hard look to see how big it is.

It's just a film.

We haven't had that at all.

We get a little glitter here and there.

My mentors have said that no, they don't get it.

They don't run tax returns.

You know, the things they used to run on Johnson.

Drinking, tax returns, all those things.

I think that I have some basis for doing it.

The reason we have it is because you haven't given them anything they can do with it.

For example, Tarleton.

I mean, it just isn't... Yeah, they're having a...

There might be... Now, you get back to college.

I think we...

I think we're...

Sometimes you need to fight.

I guess Colin would agree with that.

I think so, yeah.

and they haven't really got an M.A., you know, on the first day of the meeting.

No, nothing, sorry.

And again, because there's no M.A., they just like, you know, pretty thoroughly on this record, on a personal basis.

But on the other hand, too,

But what I've done is very hard on our policy system.

That's very hard.

And hey, I'm going to do all I can, sir.

I need a policy system.

I think we keep these statements about where you've got them now.

Particularly next year, I have nothing but about one every two months, I guess.

I really can't keep out of the case of everything we do.

One every two months, I just can't be sure if she would just do one email sporadically.

But at any time, everything else would be considered your fault.

It would be madder.

For that Republican fundraising affair, it occurred to me that that was one where something other than just going in and out probably should be done.

I'm not sure.

I don't mean going in like one day.

Great list, that would be great.

Whatever it was.

We went down to the sacrifice, sat down at the table, sat down at the table for that.

But, uh, there's a reception and bands or something of that sort.

What is the situation there?

I don't know whether you, because I'll be the biggest fan of your reception.

All right?

You can't be on all the tables.

If you could, why not?

I think it's bad.

A lot of that, I think, the crowd is not, you know, some of our big donors are there.

They're also the lobbyists and they have the back enders and all that kind of thing.

I think you're right.

You're doing it just basically to let them give my eye hold and say hello.

Yep.

It really is.

And I think you should sit there and do the other problems.

If you do anything beyond that, then you've got to sit through all the other stuff and the other speakers.

And you shouldn't be there for the other speakers if they're going to battle all the way in their partisan tough talk kind of stuff that they just don't do.

Of course, they'll all do better than Raj did.

But it will still be a...

The little color that you add, and that little enormous color that you add, and the person come in.

I don't think we should try to surprise you.

Any surprise thing, any person-to-person thing is almost impossible.

Yeah.

Any surprise thing, you know, trying to make an effort to expand what you give isn't really appropriate to that kind of thing.

You know.

He's also coming up with his own public libraries.

I didn't predict it that much, but he told me.

I think that every two months is about right.

Don't you agree?

Just about enough.

And they don't have anything for us.

Let me see.

She said, I'm going to do that.

Dinner in a frozen basket.

You'll get rid of things.

The only way is I'll take care of a lot of people.

And I'm going to take care of a lot of people.

And I'm going to finish something.

That's really it.

I'm going to have to search out for people.

That's the most important thing.

We don't seem to get another.

We get a little of it, some of it on one.

Any of it that gets on and gets seen, I think, helps.

Because it is good.

It doesn't get a lot of coverage.

It generally doesn't.

Westerners have a tremendous impact on the people it sees.

They're better at seeing things.

So I think they must be.

to the extent that they carried out television in town.

Yeah, they should have done well.

But this one, even though he's not important, but he'll probably get a pretty good play because of the interest in tonight and the whole, it's the only thing they got to show for the lead up to tonight.

Interesting build up, nutritious.

And Jesse.

They always had a problem.

They had to see if they could get rid of loose hurdles and get started.

How do you like it now?

Do you want to do a bird's day?

I'm not sure about that.

I want to see if I can.

You may be right, the radio may be some sort of...

If you just run the radio, just take the radio, which would you do, would you?

What would you do?

I'd run a time, I'd say a time-line radio.

Okay, then of course you take the children at the same time, you should take that in front of it.

I think it ought to be live, because that's the way you ensure the whole thing becoming public.

The whole thing is public.

They know that it's easy to, you know, people have heard everything you said and there's something that you said today.

Well, I came up with the story.

I think it would be better.

except that they're so hard and all this stuff that the microphone may not, and the impact of the microphone being there and being on live radio may not get through, John.

I think it will.

I don't know.

I'm not sure how they, whether it's,

Let me just knock it off, don't you think?

Very good.

Nixon & Haldeman on Media relations and Press conferences

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on March 16, 1971

Cite this conversation

Nixon & Haldeman on Media relations and Press conferences

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on March 16, 1971

Related conversations

Cite this conversation