S3 Ep 4 - Searchlight on the Lawn

Nixon at War

PRX

History

4.8 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the spring of 1970, the war in Vietnam comes home with a vengeance. A year of secret bombing having produced no movement from the North Vietnamese, Nixon and Kissinger raise the stakes, dramatically. In late April, US and South Vietnamese ground forces invade Cambodia. The “incursion,” as the White House calls it, galvanizes the antiwar movement, which has been largely dormant since Nixon’s Silent Majority speech. Reaction is immediate and intense. On May 4th, a week of snowballing protest and campus unrest culminates in the shootings at Kent State. Four days later, a counterprotest – dubbed the Hard Hat Riot – turns violent in the streets of New York City. On May 8th, following a tense press conference, President Nixon returns to the White House, where he works the telephone late into the night, trying to manage the escalating crisis. Past midnight, he summons his valet, Manolo Sanchez to accompany him on an extraordinary encounter with unsuspecting protesters at the Lincoln Memorial.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I just start right at the top and fire some people.
0:04.3	The best politician of all is Nixon.
0:07.0	But boy, when you get in tight and close and he's under attack.
0:10.5	President Nixon heard today, the voice of the campus in a massive appeal.
0:14.6	He was known as the Madman theory.
0:16.3	Make those North Vietnamese think that he was just crazy.
0:18.9	Here was a fellow who seven years before was the biggest loser in American politics.
0:22.6	Astonishing.
0:24.6	It was a textbook or how to damage our democracy.
0:28.6	I have Dr. Kissinger calling you.
0:29.6	He thinks it was a paranoid.
0:31.6	Everybody was told a different story.
0:32.6	The president, you are saving this country.
0:34.6	I thought this is really what he means, and he's the president.
0:38.4	It was a very intense time.
0:42.0	From PRX, this is Nixon at War.
0:47.1	From Lycai, Pue, and Danang in Vietnam, Chrysler presents... January 1970, NBC Prime Time.
1:00.0	The Bob Pope Christmas special.
1:02.2	Amazingly, almost two-thirds of the Americans
1:04.8	watching TV that Thursday night were watching this.
1:08.1	And here's Vice President of Vietnam, Marshall Key,
1:10.9	who came backstage to thank the cast for coming to now.
	...

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