The Fall of Richard Nixon

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who was the real Richard Nixon? There are sides to him that get overlooked, like that he had a deeper understanding of foreign affairs than any other US President. But it's hard to see the light for the shade and the tragic fall that overshadows everything.

Don's guest today is Professor Nicole Hemmer whose latest book is "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s".

Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Tim Arstall. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone. I'm Don Wildman. Welcome to American History Hit. And this is part two of our examination of a most psychologically complex man, President Richard M. Nixon.
0:16.3	Let's start off with an unlikely but revealing story.
0:23.9	It's 10 p.m. May 9th, 1970.
0:28.6	Nixon has just finished a grueling press conference about Cambodia.
0:33.5	Days earlier, protesters were shot dead at Kent State University in Ohio.
0:42.9	The country is in shock, angry, raw, grieving. Nixon stays up late making phone calls.
0:50.5	He's tried to sleep but couldn't. At 4 a.m., he's blasting a recording of Rachmaninoff so loud,
0:57.1	he wakes his valet, Manolo Sanchez. Manolo finds the president staring out the window into the darkness,
1:01.3	towards a gathering of protesters on the National Mall.
1:05.3	Nixon turns and asks if Manolo's ever visited the mall at night.
1:10.0	A short time later, the president of the United States, with his valet and Secret Service in tow,
1:15.4	is out there among a small circle of protesters, unplanned, unprogrammed, chatting face-to-face
1:22.7	at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
1:26.2	These protesters were a bit stunned.
1:30.1	Some shook his hand.
1:32.0	Overawed, Nixon would later describe them, remembering the incident.
1:36.4	They reported Nixon telling them to travel, see the world, its architecture.
1:41.0	He talked about football.
1:42.9	He was quiet, murmuring at times in broken sentences.
1:46.7	He mentioned a spiritual hunger inside of us all. Now here's the thing. Nixon, as a rule,
1:53.4	loathed protesters. Yet here he was sharing his soul with him in the hours before dawn.
2:00.0	It's a famous story for its improbability, of course, the most powerful person on the planet,
	...

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