On May 6, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Charles W. Colson, Ronald L. Ziegler, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 5:05 pm to 5:22 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 493-020 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Most of these have gone.
Most of these don't have gone.
Most of them don't play, too.
You don't have that paperweight.
They're not going to be 60 congressmen there, in my opinion.
We don't have to give them the staff.
We don't have to give them the staff.
All right.
All right.
All right.
I don't even have the entitlement with your signature on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, I, uh, I think that the, uh...
on the White House, anyone, any one of the candidates.
The problem is that once it's done, then he's got to sort of comment on the muskie, the governor.
He will, he's going to undertake strong support of our, of the position that I take.
So that leaves, it leaves with somebody else, but it seems to me, Chuck, that the place here that he's going to be taken on is by his colleagues in the Senate.
That's a hell of a goddamn statement from the man Trump.
And it says, well, they didn't speak up, or they're all so afraid of your law.
Well, as you know, there's certainly a need to attack the Senate.
And we're right to leave it in.
Why, they do.
They do hate you.
How does it matter?
The crash taxes are a dole away.
You can't do a dole away.
Do you think I do?
No, I think I do.
You should not do it.
He doesn't use that, right?
Sure.
That's what he's playing to.
He's panicking.
Normally, he would.
Normally.
What in the name of God would he do this for?
I think he...
I personally believe that he didn't intend to do it.
He gave this speech at our own college last night.
Yeah.
I called Pete Brown this morning.
That's a man.
Yes, sir.
I have a response about Jack Pompeo.
Yes.
And I said, well, he's pretty far off.
And he said, it was terrible.
I think what happened is he gave the speech, he gave it off the cuff, and a couple of lawyers started smiling, very smiling.
He did not issue a press release, which he normally does.
And I think that when he got on the wires, then he decided to put out the speech.
After it had been partnered in dramatically.
He's on the wrong side of the question.
I don't know.
It's not free movement yet.
Are they all starting to squeal about this?
Not that I have speculation or rights.
Let me get out there.
I think the American people are, I don't know, I may be wrong.
I do not believe that the people disagree.
Hell, they supported David.
Do you know that?
We all thought the statement that everybody was going to think David was a horrible person.
I thought we pulled it quickly out of the convention.
Thank God, before too many people popped off.
We found a pair of six-foot people down above.
They were riding the bus, those people.
I remember because you were going to...
I didn't take them on.
I didn't take them on.
And you got a great welcome from the police, which was helpful because they were glad to have us back.
Now, one thing that I do think, I do think, Chuck, that you've got to get a column or a statement or something very simple, just chapter and verse the communist support of this thing.
Hand-to-hand support, man-to-man support.
In other words, if somebody can write it out, maybe if you get the candidate to just go over it, they're bound to have statements.
What you really got to do is to hand that on.
It's what it is, you know.
Look, most of the little batches couldn't be done unless somebody was paying.
Now, we don't pay sometimes.
It's hard to find people like that, but also the companies in it.
Yes, it was into very difficult situations, a lot of other things.
And could you get something done on that score or somebody would be doing something?
Where is your person?
The economy supported this.
Right.
Not only, the economy supports it.
Did you get our statements?
The admin supports it.
You know, Juan, we supported it.
But we haven't carried the Vietcong flag.
Thank God they've only got one picture of the Vietcong flag.
God, that network should have been saying that, you know.
And we always refer to it as the commune's Viet Cong flag.
Never the Viet Cong flag.
The commune's flag.
That's murder.
I've gone back over the news the last few days.
The Viet Cong flag is portrayed right in time in that fantastic picture.
But do people know what's right under it in time is the Viet Cong flag flies over the Capitol.
It was a damaged picture.
And it was on television last night.
I think that's coming through.
We've had two different comments, Mr. President.
One was, of course, that Muskie and McCruskey at this time, we asked them to go up there.
We've got about 40,000 of those judiciously distributed.
Lassie is doing one for us right on this line.
Goldsmith, John Goldsmith, Goldsmith, that one, John, has done one.
We've got a few of them going, and every time we do, we mail them.
I know this is the only senator that I know that seems to speak out this account of Alabama.
See, he spoke up and said he'd chip them all to Anaheim.
There have been some fairly good statements by our side of the Senate Republicans.
Yes, sir.
There were some good ones yesterday.
Nobody picked them up.
The press didn't pick them up.
God damn the press.
Isn't it awful?
Isn't it awful?
Well, God damn them anyway.
The only way you get at it is you just...
When Scott spoke
We weren't going to get any network.
No network was going to pick it up.
I had John Scali call ABC.
And they ran it.
But only because Scali told them.
They never would have done it.
You just have to fight away at these guys.
They read you the way.
Well, nevertheless, the network's not intending to do so.
Well, by reason of their playing this damn game,
I think have gotten a picture of the country.
I think there's a bit of a, now you've made your calls around, with a little polling on it, but your calls indicate, what Brandon said, Brandon pissed off.
And if he really thinks he can get through to him, does he think he's a horrible people?
Do you think we're too rough on him now?
Let's start something like, let's give Wilson a medal or some damn thing.
Something like that.
Absolutely.
cotton anymore, so we can wrap around and put Wilson on and place around.
And I think at the right time, we should have them.
I think that Wilson is a, he's a folk hero type.
He's got the, he's got the, what the Jewish people call chutzpah.
He's got the, chutzpah, chutzpah, chutzpah.
Yeah, good.
But it's a little pizzazz.
He's got a little bit of the,
It is a cross in the country, I assure you.
You call around, and I get this hall in this morning, and there are people who believe that this comes from liberals and from moderates and from conservatives.
You just see what has come across television.
We don't realize it because we're very close to it.
The last time ABC News, they had the picture that demonstrated something in the Capitol.
They had it demonstrated standing stark naked, which I've never seen on television.
Was it on television?
On television.
Good.
And they had everybody singing the God Bless America to the protesters with their fingers like this.
It was a ferocious thing to see.
I thought, who carried it?
Why the hell didn't CBS carry it?
They just carried it in the scene.
But it's still getting across.
People are seeing this.
And everybody I talked to has seen it and has said, this is good for you guys.
Keep going with it.
From unusual sources, a couple of, well, Upholster, the one that I've dealt with for 20 years.
Upholster?
Well, he takes full responsibility.
Well, Upholster, I know him.
I know him better.
And he's very good.
And he said that he's a liberal Republican, but he said, yeah, you up yourself five minutes across the room over this.
Because that's what people are talking about.
They're saying that they're going to get radicals in Washington.
I don't want the impression just to be that I'm concerned about it.
I don't want that.
impression that this big couple of these people was just the idea of Wilson and the Attorney General.
It was my idea, you know.
I gave the signal to everybody.
I said, now, bust these bastards.
Is that getting across, or is that crossing your... Well, you said it, and you pressed it.
I know I said it, but is it across?
No, I don't know the fact that you gave the order yourself, of course, but does that know I can confirm everybody knows you're saying it?
I don't care about the order.
Are they very sure that we've, you see, do they know that if we hadn't, I didn't back it, that they wouldn't be standing?
I've got a group of press in my office right now where we're moving this suddenly through, the wires and the networks.
That's what we're doing.
The President is responsible, basically, for Washington, D.C.
I said that on the day I took office.
I said it in the campaign.
I'm going to meet the responsibility to keep this government going.
I'm going to meet the responsibility to protect the right of citizens to go to and from their homes and their places of work without being molested.
And we shall meet it with firmness and restraint.
We have the right combination of firmness and restraint.
This is an example of other cities in the country.
Period.
Well, of course, the thing about Kennedy's charge, which will be, I think he'll describe himself with it, although we've got to help him along.
What he's really saying, which is different than a political attack, but it was different than anything else he said.
He said the Attorney General suspended the Constitution.
And the Attorney General, of course, was acting on your orders.
Now that, for any senator, is a pretty wild charge.
Well, you know, he said we're exercising our constitutional rights.
Sure.
He said what they would be like was just expressing the frustrations which all of us can understand that young people have, he said.
Yeah, except I don't approve, he said.
Well, he said we can't condemn what others have said.
I think the president has postured, Chuck, at least the way I understand it.
Well, I'm going to go back in and work with John on this, but I think the president has postured from the very outset on this of setting the tone, setting the guidelines,
Delegating your responsibility all the way through.
And staying in touch and following it.
And, you know, although he was not there making this... Government kept working.
No serious...
That's correct.
Okay.
Let's do it.
And definitely on the remarks tomorrow morning, I'm just going to be aware of the difference, but in these deep mutants, we're carrying on a wide range of .
That's nice.
They don't expect to be in any forms of .
That's what I'm saying.
Okay.
Right.
They don't worry .
for whether or not they need to be gunned down.
So their problem there is that the agriculture department should have done that.
Why shouldn't they have had that meeting?
They're an important group, you know.
It's leaving it up to the Farm Bureau to try to play it out against us.
Of course, the Farm Bureau is difficult, too.
I mean, he doesn't have his way.
We're doing, we're certainly doing agriculture up around now.
I don't know if it's in terms of the farm.
Oh, it's one of them.
It definitely helps.
They all have articles in the farm magazines.
They have pictures and a little bit of agriculture.
It's good timing, Mr. President, because farm prices are up in this month, which, of course, it's pricing.
You know, that's the other one.
That is a problem.
The wholesale price is next month.
The monthly figures shouldn't bother any of us.
So it's what we've done.
It's the current.
The current is over there.
The CBI is over there.
The unemployment is a win.
It won't come down much this year.
Just to go back to Brandon, he's going to try to get his people organized.
It's a long time.
Yeah, well, there's more of us.
March of the Oregon Flags and then Burnaby at Concord, which is marvelous.
It could be a little bit of a twist.
And you see that this evening, get a few mobilized.
He's going to try.
He said he would try this evening.
He was going to call his executive council.
He said he could get them to do it.
He said they'd all feel very, very strongly, although last year was different because last year they personally confronted them.
They were bothering him and everything.
And they said, well, get out of here, you scum.
I think if they went back to Wall Street, that would have a hell of an effect.
It would have a hell of an effect.
I'd reach them hard to do it.
I'd support him all the way.
If our support means anything.
He ought to be the guy.
He's the legend, though.
He's a strong man.
He's a strong man.