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The declining quality of politicians - Nixon vs Trump

It's hard to believe Nixon and Trump are from the same party.

Nixon is considered inherently shifty and low-rent, but when you watch his farewell speech he comes across as quite reflective and wise. There's no question to my mind that Nixon is massively underrated as a president (opened up Red China to diplomatic relations with the US, detente with the Soviet Union, signed the first real strategic arms limitation treaty w/ the Soviets, ended the draft, reduced US troops in Vietnam by 90% by the end of his first term, created the Environmental Protection Agency, enforced racial integration in southern public schools, etc etc).

I think Nixon would be spinning in his grave if he knew a charlatan like Trump was a Republican president

[video="youtube;crE0a7T4Q4s"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crE0a7T4Q4s[/video]
(edited 7 years ago)

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Let's not go nuts. This is also the guy who had to be talked out of starting a nuclear war by Henry 'anything that flies on anything that moves' Kissinger, of all people, and committed what is possibly the most vile act of treason in US history by sabotaging the Paris peace talks, leading to the deaths of thousands of US soldiers.
Original post by Captain Haddock
Let's not go nuts. This is also the guy who had to be talked out of starting a nuclear war by Henry 'anything that flies on anything that moves' Kissinger, of all people.


Evidence, please.
Trump is Republican president in name only.

The Republican establishment hate him as much as the Democrats.

He's just what the US needed and Europe needs its own version of Trump soon,before its too late.
Original post by AlexanderHam
Evidence, please.


Well there's this conversation:

Nixon: I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?… I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake! The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/25/nixon-and-the-bomb/


And some more stuff here:

At Key Biscayne, according to a Secret Service source, Nixon once lost his temper during a conversation about Cambodia. "He just got pissed," the agent quoted eyewitnesses as saying. "They were half in the tank, sitting around the pool drinking. And Nixon got on the phone and said: 'Bomb the **** out of them!'"

"If the president had his way," Kissinger growled to aides more than once, "there would be a nuclear war each week!" This may not have been an idle jest. The CIA's top Vietnam specialist, George Carver, reportedly said that in 1969, when the North Koreans shot down a US spy plane, "Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike... The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning."

The allegation of flirting with nuclear weaponry is not an isolated one. Nixon had been open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam as early as 1954 and as president-elect in 1968 had talked of striking "a blow that would both end the war and win it". A Kissinger aide who moved over to the White House, David Young, told a colleague "of the time he was on the phone [listening] when Nixon and Kissinger were talking. Nixon was drunk, and he said, 'Henry, we've got to nuke them.' "
https://www.theguardian.com/weekend/story/0,3605,362958,00.html
Original post by Captain Haddock
X


In other words, no serious plans were ever made. No plans were drawn up for consideration. All that amounts to a whole lot of nothing.
Original post by joe cooley

He's just what the US needed


The US needed a functionally illiterate pathological liar as president?
Original post by AlexanderHam
In other words, no serious plans were ever made. No plans were drawn up for consideration. All that amounts to a whole lot of nothing.


In other words, he 'had to be talked out of starting a nuclear war by Henry 'anything that flies on anything that moves' Kissinger, of all people'.
Original post by Captain Haddock
In other words, he 'had to be talked out of starting a nuclear war by Henry 'anything that flies on anything that moves' Kissinger, of all people'.


You haven't demonstrated he actually intended it in the first place. What you've posted is a whole lot of tittle tattle, not actual government documents showing a proposal was made. Who knows if any of those conversations actually happened? Kissinger was a known pathological liar
Original post by AlexanderHam
You haven't demonstrated he actually intended it in the first place. What you've posted is a whole lot of tittle tattle, not actual government documents showing a proposal was made. Who knows if any of those conversations actually happened? Kissinger was a known pathological liar


That conversation with Kissinger was on tape, actually, and the story about him drunkenly ordering a tactical strike on North Korea came from the CIA's top Vietnam expert, not Kissinger. I don't know why you're so hung up on apologising for this guy. The fact that Nixon's personal views on the bomb didn't lead to any official plans being drawn up doesn't really matter (well, there's this, but anyway) - that would be down to the administration as a whole. But we're talking about the man himself, and from both his own words and those of the people he kept close to him, he comes across as somebody with an unhealthy obsession with nuclear bombs, and no qualms about using them. How you choose to interpret this information is entirely up to you.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by AlexanderHam
The US needed a functionally illiterate pathological liar as president?


Nope.

The US needed a president who has the interests of the ordinary American people as his priority.

A president willing to halt the flow of cheap labour across the Southern border.

A president willing to put the American worker ahead of the corporate interests who finance the standard politician, of both parties.

A president willing to face the reality of Islamic terrorism,unlike the politically correct cripple he replaced.

A president proud to be an American.

A president willing to put the interests of America first.

President Donald J Trump is that president.
It's funny if America voted for Romney in 2012 (I preferred him to Obama) than Trump would never of happened. Obama was a class act but his policies was a big reason why Trump won the presidency.
Original post by AlexanderHam
It's hard to believe Nixon and Trump are from the same party.

Nixon is considered inherently shifty and low-rent, but when you watch his farewell speech he comes across as quite reflective and wise. There's no question to my mind that Nixon is massively underrated as a president (opened up Red China to diplomatic relations with the US, detente with the Soviet Union, signed the first real strategic arms limitation treaty w/ the Soviets, ended the draft, reduced US troops in Vietnam by 90% by the end of his first term, created the Environmental Protection Agency, enforced racial integration in southern public schools, etc etc).

I think Nixon would be spinning in his grave if he knew a charlatan like Trump was a Republican president

[video="youtube;crE0a7T4Q4s"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crE0a7T4Q4s[/video]


Have you not heard of Watergate? Nixon was perhaps the greatest charlatan to ever grace American politics. This was the man under which the Kent state massacre happened. After the Kent state shootings, Nixon asserted that those who protested against the Vietnam war were the pawns of the communists. When Trump behaves in way which is that evil, come back to me.
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white, or a rape.” - Nixon

"I have the greatest affection for them [blacks] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like." - Nixon

You are glorifying this man as some kind of saint compared to Trump. You are either ignorant or delusional for doing so.
Original post by לזייןהאיסלאם
Have you not heard of Watergate? Nixon was perhaps the greatest charlatan to ever grace American politics.


I suspect you've never read a Nixon biography, or are in any way appreciably familiar with postwar American political history. You wouldn't be in a position to judge his successes and failures, so your opinion is kind-of worthless really.

This was the man under which the Kent state massacre happened


Nixon ordered the Kent State massacre? This really is a remarkable historical discovery you've made.
Original post by לזייןהאיסלאם
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white, or a rape.” - Nixon


Hilarious for a Trumpian to suddenly be offended by bad language and racism.

You are glorifying this man as some kind of saint compared to Trump. You are either ignorant or delusional for doing so.


The difference between you and me is that I actually have a grasp of American political history and I can weigh up Nixon's pros and cons. You're just a Trumpian hack who probably didn't realise American politics existed before last Monday morning
Original post by AlexanderHam
I suspect you've never read a Nixon biography, or are in any way appreciably familiar with postwar American political history. You wouldn't be in a position to judge his successes and failures, so your opinion is kind-of worthless really.


Wow, you sound insufferable.


Original post by AlexanderHam

Nixon ordered the Kent State massacre? This really is a remarkable historical discovery you've made.


Nope, I didn't say that. Apparently you lack the ability to read.
Original post by לזייןהאיסלאם
X


Anyway, I've seen enough Trumpian nonsense from you to realise that it's a waste of my time to engage with someone who is of such clearly inferior intellect. Adding you to my block list. Bye
Original post by AlexanderHam
Anyway, I've seen enough Trumpian nonsense from you to realise that it's a waste of my time to engage with someone who is of such clearly inferior intellect. Adding you to my block list. Bye


What Trumpian nonsense? Failing to ignore the awfulness of one of the most horrendously right-wing, traditionalist American politicians of the 20th century makes me Trumpian? I think you are desperately confused.
Original post by Mathemagicien
But Nixon was surely a hell of a lot more competent than Trump


During Nixon's term there was someone employed to mediate between him and "the button" because he was an alcoholic and the American political establishment was worried that he might attempt to start a nuclear war during one of his drunken rages, so they needed someone who had the power to say no to him just in case this happened. Nixon was a very troubled, unstable man, and glorifying him in any way is really rather desperate. He was almost certainly more intelligent than Trump, he was really quite a knowledgeable man, but he was also a monster, and no, I wouldn't consider him "competent". The man resigned only because otherwise he would have been impeached.
(edited 7 years ago)

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