Richard Nixon

But that's the early 70s.

Nixon's in office.

Watergate hasn't kind of broken yet.

But the 60s are over and the backlash is going on.

His foreign policy is the most rational rail politic one we've had in half a century.

In this sense, the best analog to his foreign policy might be a figure like Richard Nixon.

Many are saying...

Check this out regarding gas prices.

That wasn't true in Watergate, by the way.

I think Richard Nixon knew that when his conversations were revealed, the gig was up.

He bought into the basic moral framework.

Here, the president has always denied it.

It led to President Johnson not seeking another term.

In many ways, it led to Nixon winning the 1968 election.

But it really led to a lot of protests and a lot of questioning of the United States government.

Imagine for a moment if the Pentagon back then or if the United States government just said to the press, hey, we're only going to work with only certain outlets because we don't like the way you guys talk about us.

While the club's motto is weaving spiders come not here, it is a known fact that plenty of official businesses or official business is conducted as a bohemian grove and especially at the lodges and camps.

To get a sense of just how important in public affairs this occult confab is to the deep state behind the deep state, Consider that former President Richard Nixon boasted of how crucial a speech he gave at the event was on his journey to the White House.

Quote, He explained in his autobiography, Quote, because the speech traditionally was offered off the record, it received no publicity at the time, but in many important ways, it marked the first milestone on my road to the presidency.

It was an emotional assignment for me and also an unparalleled opportunity to reach some of the most important and influential men.

The speaker says, the press glossed over what Kennedy did and what Johnson did.

But when Nixon came in, reporters focused on him with an appalling intensity.

The crowd cheers.

The man speaking is Pat Buchanan.

He's a former Nixon aide, and he's come to debate bias in the media.

The anchor Sam Donaldson sits next to him.

95% of the national press, Pat Buchanan says, is biased.

Is that fair? But the Watergate allegations were proven right, Pat.

So it demonstrates the importance of resilience and persistence in American politics.

I could also point out the example of Richard Nixon, who went in a brief six years from being unemployed after he was released from the Navy and unable to find a job as an attorney to two terms in the U.S. Senate, elected in 1946, reelected in 1948. then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1950, and then chosen to be vice president in 1952.

That's a six-year rise from being nobody, being a nationally unknown, to being vice president of the United States, and of course then to being the Republican nominee for president.

Losing the 1960 election or having it stolen from him, as I've argued in two books I wrote, to then running and getting ignominiously defeated in the 1962 campaign for Governor of California.

And then thanks to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the tragic assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and, of course, the Vietnam War.

I don't mean thanks to, but because of.

The siege parted in such a way that allowed Nixon... to make the greatest comeback in American political history.

The point of this is, recently I was on the street and I ran into a young citizen journalist and he asked me what was the most important successful quality that I had in a short video I agreed to do.

This is just a blatant viewpoint-based, uh, discrimination, and I'm not aware of any president in the history of the United States that's taken that sort of measure.

Surely, there were presidents who wanted to, Richard Nixon comes to mind, but he was constrained in ways that Trump isn't, both internally by his own White House counsel, and of course externally by members of Congress who didn't support everything he wanted to do.

So he had his enemies list and clearly was engaged in, you know, some surveillance of the press and harassment of the press.

But as with other things, Trump just takes it, you know, four steps further, uh, and there really isn't, I think, a historical analog in this country, I should note.

And for many years now, I believe the Republican Party was the best vehicle to move those ideas forward.

I mean, really going back in the free trade era to, in large respects, Richard Nixon, but then really put into high speed with President Reagan and then the Bushes, of course, moving forward free trade, which had such enormous benefit to our country, but also the world writ large as the world invades liberalized trade.

So I'm concerned that in some ways the Republican Party might be losing that part of its core, that commitment to economic liberty.

And I guess beyond that is that because it's the Republican Party right now under the current leadership, That is the one pushing forward these restrictions that economic freedom because the Republican Party for many years, for decades now, has been associated with the party that defends capitalism.