Like a cloister garden in a church. "Nix ," on of the meanings of nix is, of course, nothing, which I prefer to ignore. Mr. Nothing. Hi, Garth Nothing here.
Yep. Right. Uh so how does how do we go from the CIA 1979 the Shaw Ayatollah Mhm. Nixon. What is the thread that now starts inching towards the '9s and right towards 911 in Iraq? I know there's so much, but we're going to do it, man. Um, so here's what happens. America goes
And so he was talking. Nixon was dealing with Thieu through intermediaries, President Thieu, not to go to Paris, to abort the negotiations, the prospect of which was leading Humphrey higher, higher every day and ready to overtake Nixon.
And it's not going to work. Nixon and Kissinger, I don't shy away from.
I was born in 1969, which is just in the dim, dim past. Nixon was the President when I was born-- maybe for some of you as well. He was one of the first public figures I was aware of.
I had never met Nixon when he asked me to be his security advisor. Nixon was personally so insecure in his personal relationships that when he asked me to be his security adviser, I didn't know what he wanted.
Lincoln wasn't even an abolitionist that was Frederick Douglass and John Brown and a bunch of other people. Nixon, you thought I was just making a funny. But Nixon famously didn't lead the environmental movement but he signed into law the EPA, Clean
you know they are what's what's unique about them go ahead and make it right so is it nixed yes is it naked yes and so that leads one to believe that the Germans care deeply about the privacy of everything except of course their private parts it's a cheap joke I admit it
you've got more of an Apollo style of vehicle uh and so forth needless to say Nixon wasn't buying and in fact um Nixon cut the space budget so drastically compared to what it had been during Apollo um that when his space budget was released in the spring of 1970 a few
uh indeed the names associated with Pinochet are so important to current history. Nixon Kissinger, Milton Friedman uh Jesse Helms, the first CIA director ever to be indicted in the history of the United States was Jesse was was uh uh Richard Helms.
been uh brought into being by that great radical Richard Nixon um and instead uh walk away from any treaty uh limiting anti-missile systems uh I'm glad to see the Obama Administration seems to be moving in the opposite direction
Doesn't work so well in this era of online selling and so on. But Nix , roughly in the middle. People assume it must be a pseudonym.
"They were his fellows: a Capuchin monkey, a young kangaroo, a magpie, which saved itself on one occasion from being worried by a dog by whistling the first three or four parts of 'Nix my Dolly, pals;' a nilgai, which is something of a horse creature, which he tried to ride, and which nearly killed him; a couple of mongooses, two young tigers, a couple of monkeys, an otter, and a small black bear. Most of these animals came to a violent end." I tried to find the actual paper, "An Old Soldier's Pets," and I could not find it on
Right. And it still didn't make their top 35 or 40. Was Nixon right when the French started showing up and asking for, with $35,
and made the president, facing conviction and impeachment, resign. Without Nixon resigning in 1974, the war would have continued until he left office, at least through 1976. With him out, it became endable.
That prospect stopped immediately flat when Thieu announced, I will not go to Paris, where he had agreed to go earlier with President Johnson. And Nixon won. Thieu said to aides later, I elected Nixon. He was right. Without him, Nixon would not have come into office.
It did happen. I do know that. And Nixon could not afford to let that go. So another 20,000 Americans had to die and probably a million or more Vietnamese.
the war was still going on and getting larger. And Nixon is saying, oh, I'd rather use a nuclear weapon, Henry. You got that? Oh, I think that would be just too much, on the tape, says Kissinger.
You got that? Oh, I think that would be just too much, on the tape, says Kissinger. And Nixon says, nuclear bomb? That's too big for you, Henry?
And he's like, eh-- the food was good. And Nixon was saying that there's a moral majority
years I remember one of the opinion leaders as you put it who brought down Richard Nixon was Walter kronite and those of you who are old enough might remember he was a news anchor that everybody watched every night and in the 1950s one of the people who brought down
I mean, these guys were getting in anyway. But Nixon was the one who shook hands and welcomed them. He gave us the space shuttle.
because he had a good memory. So Nixon is in the center of all of this. And with his .
And so the second section is from-- I think I set it in '83. And Nixon drinks until 4:00 am.
And so the second section is from-- I think I set it in '83. So Nixon was supposed to be briefed on what a sorcerer president does.
And the belief was that with all the friendship between Nixon and me, I knew he wanted to be the first American to meet Mao. And I knew it was a risk to my relationship with him.
Think about the most liberal President ever right? Not Nixon. Though he did pass a lot of cool stuff that I'm gonna talk about. But LBJ right? I think we all have to agree that LBJ is probably the most liberal President.
Nixon, you thought I was just making a funny. But Nixon famously didn't lead the environmental movement but he signed into law the EPA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act right?
Richard Nixon signed into law in the 70s um after creating the Environmental
Richard Nixon purportedly said, "We're all Keynesians now." And that was because the fundamental problem with the economy in those three decades was
that Nixon wanted financial information about the Democrats and I explained why
believe Nixon won in 1972 I don't know anybody who voted for him people love
I thought Garth Nix , to my eye, or to my ear, at least, did a nice job with it.
Admittedly, self-published book, because here it is. "Stories" by Garth Nix . And I made this little book when I was seven or eight years old.
So this was when Nixon was looking for something after the Apollo Moon Project, and was like, I need something really big.
busy advising Richard Nixon about how the United States might balance their rivalry with the Soviet Union with potential rapprochement with China.
which is what Richard Nixon will do.
six years. And that explains something that you just won't get from history books. Why did Nixon so doggedly demand in negotiations that whatever happened, Thieu must remain in office? And if you've seen the Burns and Novick series, I think you'll gather that the Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, always said, we will negotiate a coalition government,
and came upon Richard Nixon's 1968 convention speech in Miami, which is an interesting speech.
from the Nixon administration.
You have Richard Nixon's law and order campaign using code language to justify racist policies, something that Lee Atwater, who until Karl Rove,
And to set the scene, this is the night of the Watergate break-in. This is Nixon sitting around in the Oval Office, waiting to hear what's happening over at the Watergate Hotel. "The Oval Office always smelled of cigarette smoke, of medical disinfectant, and a faint undercurrent of sage.
Well, it is. This is my Lovecraft-Nixon mashup. "I lit a cigarette.
And I thought I would say a few words, because the first interview question I ever encounter on this book is why I would choose to write about Richard Nixon, our uncanniest president. And there are several answers.
For one thing, he was our funniest President, I have to say. I liked writing about Nixon. He's one of those people where if you put him in any context, he's still funny-- in the grocery store, at the laundromat.
What would be the hardest trick with a President? It would probably be Nixon-- not our worst President, but very, very close. I'm not going to go into Andrew Jackson.
He's actually standing in the hotel at Walt Disney World. And the Nixon-Disney World connection is, I have to say, by itself incredibly fascinating and gets some play in the book. So if we can try to play this from about 20 seconds, this is where we get the money quote.
The Constitution isn't what you think it is. And then there's Nixon in the middle, pretending that everything is fucking normal. He's pretending it to the American public.
And it's my attempt to explain the darkness of Nixon and what it would be like if you were actually a normal person to be in Nixon's position, and then to go through the horror and then actually to live on through the humiliation.
And so the second section is from-- I think I set it in '83. They had Richard Nixon himself here, and they were going to make the most of it.