Remarquable tweet, j'entends Nixon dans ma tête à présent
KISSINGER: Mr. President. Bob.
NIXON: Henry, sit down. Henry, I need you on something and I need it, I need it handled the way you handle the Soviets. Quietly…uh, back channel.
KISSINGER: Of course, Mr. President. Is it the Chinese? Because Zhou has indicated-
NIXON: It’s not the Chinese, Henry, it’s my wife.
[EIGHT SECONDS OF SILENCE]
KISSINGER: Ah.
NIXON: Every night now. Every goddamn night. We get into the bed, the lights go down, and she informs me, she informs me, Bob, like it’s a press release, that we are going to make out for hours, to, to, uh build intimacy. In a healthy way.
HALDEMAN: A healthy way, sir.
NIXON: And that’s it. That’s the whole programme. No advancement. No follow-through. We have been at this…I don’t even know, Bob, what is it, three weeks?
HALDEMAN: Closer to a month, sir, based on the residence logs.
NIXON: A month! A month of necking like I’m taking her to a sock hop. I’m the President of the United States, Henry, I’ve got the Joint Chiefs, I’ve got Hanoi, and I’m up there at eleven o’clock at night like a sophomore at the drive-in.
KISSINGER: Mr. President, if I may: what we are describing is in essence an, ah, containment posture. She has frozen the front, if you will. There is engagement, but no escalation. It is, philosophically, a kind of détente.
NIXON: I don’t WANT détente, Henry, that’s my whole point.
KISSINGER: A regrettable position, but I understand it.
NIXON: I want you to talk to her.
[SIXTEEN SECONDS OF SILENCE]
KISSINGER: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
NIXON: You heard me. You go to her, you open a back channel, you negotiate a, a normalisation…you get me SOMETHING. You’ve gotten Brezhnev to climb down off a wall, Henry, you can get Pat to advance past first base.
KISSINGER: Mr. President, with the greatest respect, the Soviets fear me. Mrs. Nixon, I suspect, regards me as the man who keeps you on the telephone until two in the morning. I would be entering the, the negotiation from a position of considerable weakness.
HALDEMAN: He’s got a point on the optics, sir.
NIXON: Nobody asked you about the optics, Bob.