Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 797-006
Date: Friday, October 13, 1972 at 11:19 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Waggonner, Joe D., Jr.; Cook, Richard K.; Sonnenfeldt, Helmut ("Hal"); White House photographer
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/797-006

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 Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:04] All right, let's spread it out.
[0:05] Joe, I understand you're going to take a trip.
[0:07] Well, great.
[0:09] I heard we've been in this yesterday.
[0:12] Let's have a great good day today.
[0:14] Yes, sir.
[0:15] What are you going to throw around?
[0:19] Huh?
[0:19] Is there going to be a press picture?
[0:24] Well, we better sit over there.
[0:27] All right.
[0:28] All right.
[0:30] That's not my dress.
[0:32] You look nice.
[0:53] They are basically very proud of the fact that we meet you on the 14th of July.
[1:04] And they are proud of the fact that they are not Islamic, but basically a country of people.
[1:08] They are warm-hearted.
[2:02] Well, okay.
[3:03] What I want to say is, I want you to be very
[3:33] I think you could say that I told you that I am committed to it.
[3:47] However, how it is to be accomplished is a legislative matter in terms of cooperation.
[4:09] We have a lead musician in the committee to consider it.
[4:14] But tell them not to get excited about the debate, not to get excited
[4:41] They have a very rigid economic system.
[4:46] And yet in their foreign policy, they have a more independent foreign policy.
[4:52] They are perhaps the most independent foreign policy of all the communist countries except Yugoslavia.
[4:58] But their system economically is perhaps the least flexible, interestingly enough.
[5:05] But they're trying to move in that direction.
[5:07] It's just hard work.
[5:29] Show them I would like to make sure some chicken and onions.
[5:33] I wish we could see some of the people moving boats.
[5:37] They're a big market.
[5:37] They've got a big market.
[5:39] Walk them on the boat.
[5:40] Every time you go, you say the president asked,
[6:09] Yeah, very good.
[6:10] Very well put.
[6:11] You ought to say that.
[6:15] He is good.
[6:39] Most of them have known to just all the students.
[6:44] You'll find some of them that you get around who are very, very, very flexible.
[6:52] I mean, I promise I will speak rather freely.
[6:56] He's just a jerk.
[6:57] He just disavows some of us.
[6:58] But a hell of a lot of people like him.
[7:01] I mean, you'll like him as a man.
[7:03] You can see the steel there.
[7:06] My man's being tough.
[7:07] But you know how to deal.
[7:09] Right.
[7:09] How to deal.
[7:11] And Mr. Chesky was just one of those guys.
[7:13] Nobody's going to push him.
[7:16] I just don't like weasels.
[7:18] There's no weasel.
[7:19] It's the reason because of Greenhole.
[7:21] It's Carl Perkins and John Dent.
[7:23] If they ever give us anything, they say it's fine.
[7:27] We'll do so and so.
[7:29] I said, hell, that's not a good time.
[7:31] You're going to have to tell the Congress.
[7:32] I'm going to be following that.
[7:34] You've already told the Congress.
[7:36] I think they'll give you some.
[7:39] Well, they haven't counted them.
[7:40] You just don't protocol people.
[7:42] If you just don't protocol people, I'd get some, sir.
[7:45] I'd get, you know, a hundred dollars.
[7:48] Because I just haven't.
[7:50] Because I'm just almost certain that I'm going to give you some.
[7:54] So this is the government.
[7:56] They'll give it to you as you do.
[8:00] President, on the NFM, it's been an interesting sort of trio.
[8:05] I hope not.
[8:06] The ambassador here is very sharp.
[8:09] He's been lobbying the White House Committee, particularly Wilbur.
[8:14] And every time he visits Mills, Mills says, well, I'm waiting for the bill.
[8:20] I'm waiting for the president to send it out.
[8:22] And I go in and see Wilbur right after and say, no, Chairman, you know you don't want that bill.
[8:26] He was a big catch-all for all the trades done.
[8:29] So then I would get back to the remaining ambassador and tell him that I think he's satisfied.
[8:59] I'll tell them the perils of getting caught up.
[9:03] We want to mix them in with weed and a bunch of other things.
[9:07] One thing that the man's are worried about is that we're demanding because we're so dense.
[9:13] Another thing that we can reassure them about this is that we're not considering this
[9:29] And this is so because of their independence.
[9:33] We know that they want to be treated as their own private and separate individual energy.
[9:38] That's what the president expects us to do.
[9:41] We need them in that fight.
[9:42] Exactly.
[9:44] Exactly.
[9:45] We don't think that any other country should speak for them.
[9:48] I don't have any trouble with them.
[9:52] I think we might help encourage some others
[10:00] the way that I think, too, you might ask him not to.
[10:03] I know the progress that he makes.
[10:08] But, you see, Tito, in a very backward country, has done rather well on the economic side, on the law side.
[10:29] Shall we say joint ventures?
[10:31] Hotels?
[10:33] It's all right.
[10:34] These people, they have to run out of room.
[10:38] They have to run out of room.
[10:39] We've got no hotel.
[10:40] But you can say it.
[10:41] I can say it.
[10:43] I can say it.
[10:57] If our people can work out some joint agreement, do you have any objections to that?
[11:14] No, sir.
[11:15] We're for it all the way.
[11:17] We would be very encouraged.
[11:25] major raw materials, really.
[11:28] For us to import raw materials is considered different than some of these cheap, finished items.
[11:33] But they want to market that so they can manufacture it.
[11:37] They want to export it to other countries.
[11:39] That may suggest something, but I think it's very important in terms of how you particularly pay attention to our shop around here.
[11:51] And it's something else for you to consider.
[12:01] say no because they don't want to be your favorite nation most favorite nation treatment they don't want to treat communist nations as most favorite nations they're a master now we ought to get a different opinion for it because this is not really most favored nation what this really means is that we're going to treat
[12:30] like we treat other nations, right?
[12:32] Now what the hell is the most favorite nation?
[12:36] All the nations of Europe and Finland.
[12:39] Right?
[12:40] Japan has it, right?
[12:42] Right?
[12:43] Most of it.
[12:43] How about Latin America?
[12:45] It's a 19th century term.
[12:49] At the present time, my point is, Joe, my point is, we're not giving the Romanians and Russians something
[13:05] I'm not going to continue to put them at a disadvantage.
[13:10] At any nation that we have good relations with, we're going to be free.
[13:14] We're not going to ever refuse any other nations.
[13:16] And I think that is what we have to do to sell this to the Congress.
[13:20] Because otherwise the Congress is not going to go to those goddamn Congresses.
[13:22] Why don't you give them no favoritism?
[13:25] But when you say who, in my case, who isn't going to get it today?
[13:28] You tell me.
[13:30] Who isn't?
[13:31] I don't know.
[13:31] Who isn't?
[13:35] Every nation is going to find it.
[13:37] And also, what I mean is, the way we ought to sell this next year is to say, the Russians are going to find it.
[13:43] They're going to say, I'm going to give Russia and these countries the same truth that we give other nations with whom we have good relations.
[13:57] Right?
[13:58] That will sell.
[13:59] The most favored nation, if you were in the debate, would have one hell of a problem.
[14:03] Sounds like you're going to have an advantage.
[14:06] You know, I was talking to somebody the other day here, and I exclaimed, I said, well, we're not doing that to our people.
[14:14] We aren't doing it for Japan and all of Western Europe, all of Latin America, most of Africa.
[14:19] I said, well, I don't mind that.
[14:20] I thought you were going to give them something special.
[14:23] See, the only thing you really do is give them the lowest average.
[14:29] Your brother or mother is for some other trade items.
[14:32] Isn't that it?
[14:33] It also doesn't allow us
[14:39] Washington on itself has a separate patent.
[14:42] Well, they will pass it over here.
[14:43] We give them the same treatment that we give any other country.
[14:49] Right.
[14:50] We treat them the same as other countries.
[14:52] Right.
[14:52] Let's get that into the limbo now.
[14:55] If you can talk that way, we can come back to it.
[14:58] What we feel is that nations should, we have a good relationship, should be treated, get the same treatment, but get other nations, and that economic cooperation, not more, but the same.
[15:08] That's all we're going to do.
[15:10] I can't live with that.
[15:11] You should.
[15:11] You can't sell shit to your colleagues because they don't think you're a radical.
[15:17] Show's one of the best salesmen out there, Mr. President.
[15:20] I spoke to her.
[15:46] No, it's going to be a nice gift.
[15:49] A nice gift.
[15:50] Not so much for Paris, but not in Hawaii.
[15:54] Now, you have to say if it's something that has history behind it.
[15:59] No, it's not likely to be.
[16:00] It's probably going to be some glass or some silver piece.
[16:04] It's hard to find a story.
[16:23] If you like naked, you could get a few of those little bow, I mean, not bow, but a few of those bow pins.
[16:35] Yes, sir, that's a good idea.
[16:37] It's not relevant because you'll have people, waiters, others, and the people who are called arrest for scourging.
[16:58] Jack Anderson said I had a golden eye.
[17:01] He also said I was one of them.
[17:06] I call him worse than that.
[17:07] He works back in the country.
[17:08] He's a fellow journalist.
[17:10] He also said I was one of them.
[17:12] He said I was a home-runner here.
[17:13] I was effective.
[17:16] Congress wouldn't forbid it.
[17:26] I won't let you down.
[17:27] There's your two cupcakes.
[17:29] They don't get out of here.
[17:31] They're going to get Wagner back.
[17:33] They don't deal with that.
[17:36] That's a piece of rhetoric, though.
[17:58] It's tremendous.
[17:58] It's a burden.
[18:00] It's very tremendous.
[18:01] He's going to compare after the election.
[18:05] Well, I give us a prayer.
[18:06] God bless you.
[18:07] We say peace.
[18:08] We get it.
[18:10] And I have one more prayer.
[18:12] You know, I think, though, I heard this from your candidate.
[18:15] He said, I can't believe it.
[18:17] I was
[18:28] where we have been for Christ sakes, there are 70,000 North Indian Demisians.
[18:32] Oh, and then say that I think the North Indian Demisians are talking.
[18:37] These are just peasant guerrillas and we're bombing the hell out of them.
[18:41] You know, they believe this sort of crime.
[18:44] That's right.
[18:45] The problem with that, President, is to keep you alive.
[18:48] I ain't going over the cell.
[18:50] It's only these damn coots and I'm not going out.
[18:53] That's what Jim said.
[18:54] You know, I hate tactics.
[18:56] Jim said, don't listen.
[19:00] I'm afraid for you too.
[19:02] I'm serious.
[19:05] I'm serious.
[19:05] Your Republican candidate, you were nice enough to ask me to run for Senate.
[19:10] I think I'll report to you right now.
[19:13] Other places about your candidate.
[19:16] Well, some of your other candidates.
[19:32] Your people won't get to help pay the money.
[19:34] Well, I'll write a letter if you don't make that decision yourself.
[19:38] Well, I cannot go into the state.
[19:40] Well, I don't know what you know what I mean.
[19:47] Fair enough.
[19:48] Thank you, Mr. President.
[19:49] Thank you.
[19:50] We wish you the best.
[19:51] Thank you.
[19:52] If you don't make a stop, just 289-1-U-S-I-E. Good.
[19:56] Good.
[19:56] Thank you, Mr. President.