Speaker 1: Toxi. This is the seventy seven w ABC Mini Cast.
Speaker 1: So you know, I like to promote authors, historical authors
Speaker 1: on this program, and one of my favorites for many
Speaker 1: years has been Steven Ambrose. And Steven Ambrose is very
Speaker 1: famous for his his biographies of President Eisenhower, his incredible
Speaker 1: depiction of D Day and the incredible stories of World
Speaker 1: War Two, and his book D Day is highly, highly recommended.
Speaker 1: But he also wrote three books about Richard Nixon. Why
Speaker 1: did you write three books about Richard Nixon? Because in
Speaker 1: his very extensive work on the Eisenhower presidency, he just
Speaker 1: ended up having a lot of material on Nixon too.
Speaker 1: He was his vice president for the full eight years
Speaker 1: of his term. So it only makes sense, and so
Speaker 1: I would again recommend a book. The second book in
Speaker 1: the three books he wrote about Richard Nixon talks about
Speaker 1: the Checkers speech, talks about eisenhow response to it, and
Speaker 1: Steve from Beverly Hills is exactly right. It saved him
Speaker 1: as the nominee as his as a running mate. Eisenhower
Speaker 1: was very much prepared to dump Richard Nixon as his
Speaker 1: vice president. This was fifty two. By the way, that
Speaker 1: this happened. So he was not elected president yet, and
Speaker 1: he was very ready to get rid of Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: and wash his hands of him. He had already seen
Speaker 1: some good advanced polling that showed that I know, he
Speaker 1: was pretty company. He was going to win either way.
Speaker 1: So he knew that whatever hit he would take in
Speaker 1: the polls for dumping Nixon and appearing to be a
Speaker 1: little disloyal to him would not last. But he was
Speaker 1: so won over, like so much of the country was
Speaker 1: now to give a few more details about Steve's story,
Speaker 1: and I think I'll make this one of the decisions
Speaker 1: for Freedom to fifty in a future show. The fact
Speaker 1: is that Nixon was being accused of taking cash payments,
Speaker 1: illegal cash payments from people and that were supporting his
Speaker 1: campaign in the past and in the president at that time,
Speaker 1: and so he decided to not only deny it, but
Speaker 1: say like, well, there may be one thing that we
Speaker 1: took that we shouldn't have taken it. So the nation
Speaker 1: is on the edge of our seats. He's on live
Speaker 1: television and it sounds like he's going to admit, oh,
Speaker 1: did he take a couple hundred bucks, did he take
Speaker 1: a fur coat for his wife, what did he do?
Speaker 1: And he says, well, we got a box that had
Speaker 1: no markings on it and we opened it and this
Speaker 1: cute little dog came out checkers. And if we have
Speaker 1: to give back checkers, then I don't think I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just an incredible I mean, the guy should have
Speaker 1: been he was a senator from California at the time.
Speaker 1: He should have been a screenwriter in Beverly Hills, because
Speaker 1: that was a great moment in campaign manipulation, public speaking manipulation. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't ever remember anyone ever saying that tears came
Speaker 1: to his eyes, but he definitely got choked up. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to be I'm gonna do the little bit
Speaker 1: of a weasely thing here and say that again, I
Speaker 1: did say tears and crying. Had there been tear into
Speaker 1: tears in his eyes, maybe things that would have gone
Speaker 1: a little bit different. But that's that's possible.