We already knew Richard Nixon had, um, issues with American Jews, but this taped conversation on April 19, 1973, between him and his Jewish national security adviser Henry Kissinger, just released, is astonishing.
Nixon, preparing for a summit meeting with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, was railing against the effort by Senator Henry Jackson to pass a bill denying favorable trade status to countries that restrict the right to emigrate. It was aimed at the Soviet Union, which was preventing Jews from emigrating to the US and Israel. American Jews were among the strongest supporters of Jackson’s effort, which ultimately succeeded.
Nixon was concerned someone would cause problems, and if they did, they would pay for it, he said: “Let me say, Henry, it’s gonna be the worst thing that happened to Jews in American history.”
Nixon continued, “If they torpedo this summit — and it might go down for other reasons — I’m gonna put the blame on them, and I’m going to do it publicly at 9 o’clock at night before 80 million people.” (“I agree completely,” Kissinger, who is Jewish, said. “They brought it on themselves.”) Then Nixon really got going about the Jews. “I won’t mind one goddamn bit to have a little anti-Semitism if it’s on that issue,” the president says. “They put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.”
Listen here.
Update: And I hope no one will be surprised to learn that Nixon didn’t much care for black people either.
