Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on Economic policy and Media coverage

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 5 minutes of this recording (about 36% 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 Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.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

The cost of living council will have veto authority over the wage board and he doesn't believe that there should be any authority over the wage board.

And it's essentially a misunderstanding because it doesn't have veto authority.

And across the council, at least the way it's understood by our people, is we'll have no, we'll not conduct any review of individual cases.

It will only review and enforce decisions that require government sanctions.

Phillips and the crew who were working meeting apparently called George twice last night, just furious and said, you know, you double crossed me and the hell with you and all this stuff.

And they think they can, on the merit straight, now what we need to agree to do now is he's gonna wait to hear content at one o'clock today and then based on what content he's gonna go on.

Yes, sir.

If we wanted to be prepared for it, at one o'clock, we could have done it any time.

And that, incidentally, the networks carried, you said noon tomorrow, which works out fine, because it's one o'clock, you know, basically noon, and then it's noon in the Midwest, and, you know, what time you'd say is correct.

And the networks all, after you went off the air last night, said CBS News will carry live Treasury Secretary Carney's press conference at one o'clock Eastern, day one, kind of tomorrow.

So they covered that.

On the West Coast coverage last night, the networks in their newscasts that were fed to the West Coast, we checked L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle, and it was the same in all three cities.

ABC's 35 minutes of view, plus a minute 20 of commentary for a total of seven minutes.

NBC carried three minutes of you, plus 50 of commentary.

CBS carried seven minutes of you, plus 30 seconds of commentary for seven and a half minutes.

The local news affiliates out there carried one or two minutes of you, plus very brief commentary.

I'm surprised they carried anything, because, see, they generally do the fill-in around the network news.

But...

What you got is a third, a fifth to a third to a half of the page on the network.

CPS, which had quite far the biggest audience.

I flipped them into something quickly.

It seemed to me that they needed a big client, which of course is not very relevant.

But it seemed to me the plague was quite balanced, I'm sure.

The plague was better than balanced.

I think it was positive.

You think it was positive?

Yeah.

And it was very hard to predict.

Harder than I thought it was positive.

CBS gave an enormous ride for some reason to Pierre Renfray, who was going on having an orgasm.

He'd think he would announce the second coming of Christ.

Yeah, Renfray got an interesting...

Well, Christy, he was just perfectly undone.

He was so enthusiastic.

Well, he came through that.

He said that the millennium is upon us.

The overall news coverage, I think, will never be better than that.

I think it's good.

I think we had a pretty big audience.

I find it hard to...

The next thing I want to get, and we won't have that for a couple of days, is the audience rating.

See what kind of audience we did have.

I would guess we had a damn big audience.

You asked me on 430 and announced businessmen who wanted to see it good by seeing it at their offices.

I'm just, it's just, well, I've got another one here.

I've told him to come on this one.

I don't want to send it in.

It's what it is.

It's easy.

It's a report that Tony Jurek says that your bureaucracy is self-destructive.

I said the president knows that.

What he wanted to do about it.

Jurek is, of course, basically, you know, I'm all aware of that.

He's like, Jurek's a fucking can.

You're both the same.

There's another thing here.

Alex Johnson championed him by telling the Koreans that, uh,

You know, we get to meet, and he gets to know every damn thing about everything.

I don't even know what he's saying.

He's saying very simple.

Well, I don't know.

I hope Kissinger's an instructor.

He is.

And Kiss, I got Kissinger with him this morning.

And I told Pete that I didn't see any point in putting a second memorandum in.

He said, okay.

Well, I agreed to wait until I do my best.

I said, you know.

And I said, so you're entering the bad guys.

Now, what do you want me to do?

That's just the handshake.

How long does that take?

It gives me time to write.

You don't have a plan?

It's a given hour.

Nope.

45 minutes.

I don't have to talk to you about it.

No surgery.

Nope.

Nobody.

There are a lot of people on the floor.

Nope.

13 other guys on the blackboard.

On the blackboard.

The plane.

All there is is Albert Tassie and...

I can go on that.

There's somebody.

The other people, the accomplishment center and all are there.

The birth chart is not going to be there.

FDR visited all cities in his first term.

Apparently he did, as far as we can determine.

It's hard to get...

I don't know how many cities he visited.

There's only 48 now.

And he didn't do it in his first term.

FDR went to this festival in West Virginia.

Thank you, sir.

No, she was it last year.

It's a different girl this year.

It's a partner.

There's a pretty good section including a good letter from this woman from West Virginia.

She was on the church there.

I don't know.

So I think that the women, jurors, and the combatants also have a nice dinner together.

So they'll be given a tour of Camp David and take a look around and see the whole set up, the cabins, the tennis courts, and all that stuff.

We'll have, what's his name, Denmark.

Then they'll bring them over to your house.

at 6 30 and you have a green cocktail like dinner and they get on the helicopter and come back that's all about me whenever he's delivered when he's screwed he's trying to screw this up

Well, let's just see if we can re-isolate him and take him home.

Well, he's a hell of an enemy.

Hell of a good one to have as a PR.

The argument that some of us made this morning is that we sure should go on the assumption that we have to get meaning on our side.

Also, that it may be desirable to have him.

Right now, you're riding pretty high.

I think so.

And it's a pretty good time for me to be dragging his feet for you to say, fine, if you're going to drag your feet, we'll go ahead without you.

All right.

We can't let the interests of the American people be, uh, second to the vanity of one old man.

One labor.

You selfish, vain old man.

The problem is that there's a, a pure, apparently, and I think, undoubtedly, an agreement that all of the key labor people have agreed to take their signal from, from me.

They've all said nothing.

Fitz, Fitzsimmons said it looked, called privately and said it looked okay to him that he will not make a public statement.

Yeah.

Normal label or Woodcock or something.

So, well, they're going to see that the human has to put it as a tripartite board, which is exactly what they wanted.

And it was reported that he accepted it.

And it was reported that he wanted to know who Greg is speaking to.

I don't see how he ever had a business.

I don't either.

I do, because he's a hell of a guy, and he had a button down in around him, and he had a child of his own.

I don't do it.

Thank you.

Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on Economic policy and Media coverage

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 8, 1971

Cite this conversation