EPISODE NUMBER: 10138 (August 4, 2014)
GUESTS: Pat Buchanan | John W. Dean
SEGMENTS: 40th Anniversary of Nixon’s Resignation | A Nation Betrayed – A Fond Look Back ’74 | Pat Buchanan | John Dean | Sign Off – Retrospectacular
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended Interview – Pat Buchanan
SUIT REPORT: Gray Suit | Pale Blue Shirt | Purple Tie | Beige Sport Coat | White Shirt | Brown/Orange Patterned Tie | Oversized Glasses
VIDEOS: Monday, August 4, 2014
tumblr | myregularface
Just when I thought I was tuning in for a ho-hum Monday episode, Stephen and crew knocked it out of the park with a ’70s-rific ep commemorating Nixon’s resignation. This was a cool show, because it really showcased Stephen’s in-depth knowledge of the subject, and the graphics team and set design were engaged to set a great mood for the episode. We all know Stephen is a Nixon fanboy and has the poster in his office and all, but I’ll be gosh-darned, he really knows his Nixon. Both guests seemed energized and surprised by Stephen’s interest. Admittedly, I was more captivated by his sideburns.
What did you think of the set design and ’70s graphics, Hubsters? As a child of the ’80s, I totally had a television like that growing up. That was the TV you played your Atari on!! I’ll admit that as I skulk back to my internet lair, for I have dated myself.
Let us know your groovy thoughts in the comments and I hope to have some great analog screenshots to come!
A little taste of the Nixon goodness to come.
- Whether you know it or not, I have big news for you now. You have joined us on an historic night. This week marks the 40th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Milhouse Jowlsworth Nixon. We were going to have a balloon drop in his honor, but, instead, we just decided to secretly drop them over Cambodia.
- This is a solemn day for me, because Nixon is my all-time favorite non-Reagan president, non-Cheney vice president, and non-oats Quaker.
- To this day, Nixon’s 1972 campaign poster hangs in my office. It reminds me of a simpler time in America, when my parents seemed very tall, and you’d get a gold star just for using the toilet.
- Richard Nixon was born in 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. Even at an early age, he refused to wear makeup, which is why even his mother preferred Kennedy’s baby pictures.
“Nixon was elected to Congress, and rose to political prominence as a member of the House in the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he accused state department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy. It was a dark time in our nation’s history, when it was considered wrong for government workers to spy on Americans.”
“This speech was the most skillful political deflection since Stalin’s infamous ‘Yes, I have work camps, but they’re filled with kittens.’”
“Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy, in part due to a poor performance in the first televised presidential debate. Kennedy chose to wear makeup, while Nixon chose to be in black and white.”
- But eight years later, Nixon pulled off the greatest political comeback in history when he swept into the Oval Office. As President, his achievements were many. He founded the E.P.A., ended school segregation, lowered the voting age to 18, and endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment.
“But [Nixon’s] greatest achievement was restoring diplomatic relations with China. For which we owe Nixon a lasting debt — and China $1.3 trillion. (laughter) Yes. Mao money, more problems.”
- But this good man was forced from office by his bloodthirsty enemies who, according to a partial list prepared by Nixon, were everyone.
- On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Even worse, they ate a tobelerone from the minibar, sticking the Democrats with a $22 service charge.
- An FBI investigation connected the Watergate break-into an elite white house dirty tricks group known as “the plumbers,” because they were tasked with plugging leaks. And because of their ample asscracks.
“The ‘plumbers’ were part of Nixon’s political operation, the ‘Committee to Re-elect the President,’ or ‘CREEP,’ a name that somehow escaped the scrutiny of ‘Nixon’s Undercommittee for Terminating Self-indicting Acronym Choices,’or ‘NUTSAC.’”
- On May 17, 1973, the Senate launched the Watergate Hearings, in which the president’s former Appointments Secretary Alexander Butterfield revealed that Nixon had recorded every conversation in his office since 1971, creating a vital historical record. Just listen to this actual conversation:
Nixon: The problem however, with pandas is that they don’t know how to mate. The only way they learn how is to watch other pandas mate. You see?
- Yes, for pandas to mate, they have to watch other pandas doing it. Although, for male pandas, it’s just as effective to watch two female pandas mating.
- But the most famous passage from the recordings wasn’t on them. It was the missing “18 1/2 minutes.” Nixon’s secretary Rose Marywoods claimed she accidentally pressed “erase” with her foot on the tape recorder’s pedal while reaching for the phone, a position now known in yoga as “downward facing ass cover.”
- So what was on those 18 1/2 minutes? Did those two pandas ever do it? We may never know.
Pat: Nixon had some flaws, and when the President of the United States’ flaws are magnified as in many cases, it’s a tragedy. And he was indecisive in Watergate, too loyal to his friends, and he didn’t act. If he did, he would have gone down as one of the greatest presidents. Arms control, opened up China, saved Israel in the war, brought the troops home from Vietnam, brought POWs home, an extraordinary success. But Watergate erased it all.
Stephen: 40 years ago today, the smoking gun tape was released. The tape said there was a coverup and he knew about it.
Pat: The problem was he had not spoken the truth.
Stephen: Should he have destroyed the tapes?
Pat: He never should have made the tapes.
Stephen: But that’s different. That’s like saying, okay, should you have destroyed the murder weapon? Well, better not to murder someone.
Stephen: Did you advise him to destroy the tapes?
Pat: Yes, I did.
Stephen: I agree with you. If you’re going to obstruct justice, go all the way.
Stephen: There’s an image of Nixon as a paranoid, unhappy person. What was happy Nixon like?
Pat: What he loved was the battle, bringing the Republican party back from that horrendous defea tin ’64, his own ruined career, and marching up the hill to where he won the presidency with the greatest landslide in American political history.
Stephen: What I love about The Greatest Comeback – this is between ’62 and ’68, when he’s in the wilderness from California, and becomes the President of the United States – not only did he rehabilitate himself after Watergate, but he rehabilitated himself before he became President. This man resurrected his career twice. Even Jesus only did it once.
Pat: Three times. You mentioned the Checkers Speech.
Stephen: So he’s the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost!
****
Stephen: Did Nixon bomb Cambodia secretly?
Pat: When Nixon took office, there were tens of thousands of American soldiers in Vietnam, put there by JFK and Johnson. By the end of his first term, everyone was home. To do it, he had to bomb the communist sanctuaries in Cambodia, and he did the rightand moral thing and saved American lives by so doing. It was not Nixon’s war, it was liberalism’s war, and he ended it. And the only reason Cambodia fell to the communists is because Richard Nixon was broken by his enemies and couldn’t stop what was coming.
****
Stephen: You actually served four months in prison, and what was the charge?
John: I pleaded to obstruction of — conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Stephen: In return for pleading your guilt, you testified against the President. When did you make the calculus to turn on this good man?
John: (laughter) I informed my colleagues early exactly what I was doing. First, I was going to hire a lawyer. When I break rank, I make it no secret. I said, “I’m not going to lie for anybody, I’m going to the prosecutors.” They thought it was a good idea, go to the grand jury. They didn’t believe I would either remember or testify in an incriminating fashion about myself, but that was the only way I felt to really resolve the matter – was to be very truthful about it, explain what happened and lay it out.
Stephen: You famously said to the President that there was “a cancer on the presidency.” What did you mean at the time?
John: Well, what I was trying to do? I was trying to get his attention.
Stephen: That would do it. That is a fatal diagnosis. What did you mean by that?
Dean: I meant Watergate was metastasizing. It was consuming his time and the people who were part of the Administration.
****
Stephen: There is no evidence that he ordered the break-in. Did he order any break-in?
John: Oh, yes, he did. He ordered a break-in at the Brookings Institute during the Pentagon papers. He thought they should not have a copy of that 1970 study that showed the origins of the war in Vietnam, so he gave instructions on three different taped conversations to break in and get those out.
Stephen: So he couldn’t have known about the Watergate break-in because he was too busy planning other break-ins.
(laughter) What was on the 18 missing Minutes?
John: It’s very clear when you put the sequence together — in fact I put an appendix in the book for that reason so people could follow it, and what it was is he’s discussing the coverup very early in the first days. He discusses it that evening, the next day, two days later. The smoking gun tape that really causes his presidency to end is because he has set up a defense. He knew nothing about Watergate till I had told him in March of’73.
Stephen: That proves he already knew.
John: Yes.
August 4, 2014 — Pat Buchanan & John W. Dean
EPISODE NUMBER: 10138 (August 4, 2014)
GUESTS: Pat Buchanan | John W. Dean
SEGMENTS: 40th Anniversary of Nixon’s Resignation | A Nation Betrayed – A Fond Look Back ’74 | Pat Buchanan | John Dean | Sign Off – Retrospectacular
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended Interview – Pat Buchanan
SUIT REPORT: Gray Suit | Pale Blue Shirt | Purple Tie | Beige Sport Coat | White Shirt | Brown/Orange Patterned Tie | Oversized Glasses
VIDEOS: Monday, August 4, 2014
tumblr | myregularface
Just when I thought I was tuning in for a ho-hum Monday episode, Stephen and crew knocked it out of the park with a ’70s-rific ep commemorating Nixon’s resignation. This was a cool show, because it really showcased Stephen’s in-depth knowledge of the subject, and the graphics team and set design were engaged to set a great mood for the episode. We all know Stephen is a Nixon fanboy and has the poster in his office and all, but I’ll be gosh-darned, he really knows his Nixon. Both guests seemed energized and surprised by Stephen’s interest. Admittedly, I was more captivated by his sideburns.
What did you think of the set design and ’70s graphics, Hubsters? As a child of the ’80s, I totally had a television like that growing up. That was the TV you played your Atari on!! I’ll admit that as I skulk back to my internet lair, for I have dated myself.
Let us know your groovy thoughts in the comments and I hope to have some great analog screenshots to come!
A little taste of the Nixon goodness to come.
“Nixon was elected to Congress, and rose to political prominence as a member of the House in the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he accused state department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy. It was a dark time in our nation’s history, when it was considered wrong for government workers to spy on Americans.”
“This speech was the most skillful political deflection since Stalin’s infamous ‘Yes, I have work camps, but they’re filled with kittens.’”
“Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy, in part due to a poor performance in the first televised presidential debate. Kennedy chose to wear makeup, while Nixon chose to be in black and white.”
“But [Nixon’s] greatest achievement was restoring diplomatic relations with China. For which we owe Nixon a lasting debt — and China $1.3 trillion. (laughter) Yes. Mao money, more problems.”
“The ‘plumbers’ were part of Nixon’s political operation, the ‘Committee to Re-elect the President,’ or ‘CREEP,’ a name that somehow escaped the scrutiny of ‘Nixon’s Undercommittee for Terminating Self-indicting Acronym Choices,’or ‘NUTSAC.’”
Pat: Nixon had some flaws, and when the President of the United States’ flaws are magnified as in many cases, it’s a tragedy. And he was indecisive in Watergate, too loyal to his friends, and he didn’t act. If he did, he would have gone down as one of the greatest presidents. Arms control, opened up China, saved Israel in the war, brought the troops home from Vietnam, brought POWs home, an extraordinary success. But Watergate erased it all.
Stephen: 40 years ago today, the smoking gun tape was released. The tape said there was a coverup and he knew about it.
Pat: The problem was he had not spoken the truth.
Stephen: Should he have destroyed the tapes?
Pat: He never should have made the tapes.
Stephen: But that’s different. That’s like saying, okay, should you have destroyed the murder weapon? Well, better not to murder someone.
Stephen: Did you advise him to destroy the tapes?
Pat: Yes, I did.
Stephen: I agree with you. If you’re going to obstruct justice, go all the way.
Stephen: There’s an image of Nixon as a paranoid, unhappy person. What was happy Nixon like?
Pat: What he loved was the battle, bringing the Republican party back from that horrendous defea tin ’64, his own ruined career, and marching up the hill to where he won the presidency with the greatest landslide in American political history.
Stephen: What I love about The Greatest Comeback – this is between ’62 and ’68, when he’s in the wilderness from California, and becomes the President of the United States – not only did he rehabilitate himself after Watergate, but he rehabilitated himself before he became President. This man resurrected his career twice. Even Jesus only did it once.
Pat: Three times. You mentioned the Checkers Speech.
Stephen: So he’s the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost!
****
Stephen: Did Nixon bomb Cambodia secretly?
Pat: When Nixon took office, there were tens of thousands of American soldiers in Vietnam, put there by JFK and Johnson. By the end of his first term, everyone was home. To do it, he had to bomb the communist sanctuaries in Cambodia, and he did the rightand moral thing and saved American lives by so doing. It was not Nixon’s war, it was liberalism’s war, and he ended it. And the only reason Cambodia fell to the communists is because Richard Nixon was broken by his enemies and couldn’t stop what was coming.
****
Stephen: You actually served four months in prison, and what was the charge?
John: I pleaded to obstruction of — conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Stephen: In return for pleading your guilt, you testified against the President. When did you make the calculus to turn on this good man?
John: (laughter) I informed my colleagues early exactly what I was doing. First, I was going to hire a lawyer. When I break rank, I make it no secret. I said, “I’m not going to lie for anybody, I’m going to the prosecutors.” They thought it was a good idea, go to the grand jury. They didn’t believe I would either remember or testify in an incriminating fashion about myself, but that was the only way I felt to really resolve the matter – was to be very truthful about it, explain what happened and lay it out.
Stephen: You famously said to the President that there was “a cancer on the presidency.” What did you mean at the time?
John: Well, what I was trying to do? I was trying to get his attention.
Stephen: That would do it. That is a fatal diagnosis. What did you mean by that?
Dean: I meant Watergate was metastasizing. It was consuming his time and the people who were part of the Administration.
****
Stephen: There is no evidence that he ordered the break-in. Did he order any break-in?
John: Oh, yes, he did. He ordered a break-in at the Brookings Institute during the Pentagon papers. He thought they should not have a copy of that 1970 study that showed the origins of the war in Vietnam, so he gave instructions on three different taped conversations to break in and get those out.
Stephen: So he couldn’t have known about the Watergate break-in because he was too busy planning other break-ins.
(laughter) What was on the 18 missing Minutes?
John: It’s very clear when you put the sequence together — in fact I put an appendix in the book for that reason so people could follow it, and what it was is he’s discussing the coverup very early in the first days. He discusses it that evening, the next day, two days later. The smoking gun tape that really causes his presidency to end is because he has set up a defense. He knew nothing about Watergate till I had told him in March of’73.
Stephen: That proves he already knew.
John: Yes.