was hague s role similar to the role kelly is playing? well, we are seeing. i remember the month nixon resigned, we went to hague s house. his son let us in. i am sure he was thrilled. he was a happy guy. his son lost the four weeks of allowance or something. then hague told us, it was astonishing interview. he was so worried about nixon that nixon might take his life, that he took away nixon s pills. at one point nixon said, in your business,al, they would leave a revolver in a drawer. now, i don t think we would suggest at all.
that might be dangerous in their eyes. it s an extraordinary and you go to the final days where in the last year of the nixon presidency, there were concerns along those lines. but it s awful early in the game in a new administration for this to be happening now. one forgets, he had a chief of staff who was a general who was relatively new. general hague. relatively new in the administration. was hague s role similar to the role that kelly s been playing? well, we re seeing that. i remember the month after nixon resigned, carl and i went to hague s house, and the old knocking on the door at night trick. we just showed up, and his son let us in. his son let us in. then hague came back from the british embassy in his tuxedo. i m sure he was thrilled that his son he was a happy guy. his son lost four weeks of allowance or something. but then hague told us it was astonishing. he said he was so worried about
been made against president trump is that essentially there s been reporting, i think from the washington post and the new york times that briefers are loathe to bring up russia to him because he takes it personally as an attempted to delegitimize his election. to your point, it takes a toll. particularly when you ve got emotional people like nixon was, like trump is, and the idea that you can kind of shut your shut it down and then say, oh, yeah, now let s talk about the budget, let s do this. i mean some of that s going on. you know, you really wonder, and it s something that everyone needs to think about. what is the governing impact? are we being governed amid all this discussion? oh, we ll do this legislation. oh, we can t do that. i mean maybe they re going to do none. well, i also want to put up a headline, one of your headlines from july 1973.
tone that s reportial rather than adversarial. it s interesting, though. you talk about the emotional toll it takes on a president and the isolation. in some ways well, let me ask. comparing the stress that nixon was under and the complexity of the watergate investigation with this investigation, which actually potentially involves his children, you know, his closest friends, his finances, his past business deals, is this almost more complex for this president and perhaps even closer to home? well, they re both very emotional events for each president of the united states. and one reacts one way, and the other nixon reacted, he was presiding over a criminal cover-up. but trish nixon was involved in front of that s what most of his efforts, i think, went into whereas trump, we see trump s reactions every day. and, yes, he is under siege, and he thinks and feels and believes he is unfairly under siege.
republican to say maybe the president should go. that was november of 73. it was not until the following spring, the spring of 74, by which point nixon s campaign staffers began to pled guilty. his permanent lawyer pled guilty. it wasn t until the white house officials up and including the chief of staff had been indicted and the president had been named as an unindicted coconspirator, it wasn t until then that other republicans reluctantly dragged themselves on board to start criticizing the president and to call for him to step down. there is one way and one way only by which the crisis can be resolved and the country pulled out of the watergate squalor. i appropriatpro-pose an stored f statesmanship and courage, an act once noble and heartbreaking at once serving the greater interests of the nation, the institution of the presidency and the stated goals for which he so successfully campaigned. that act is richard nixon s own