tonight on c-span, "q&a" with author john farrell. then a look at the impact government policies have on poverty. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," longtime journalist and author john farrell discusses his book "richard nixon, a life." farrell, better known as jack, author of the book "richard nixon, a life." at the very end of your book come in the footnotes, you say this. "he hoped that billy graham or norman vincent peele would , and 'doesn'tyers

want a catholic or jew to participate.'" what was that all about? john: this is that his funeral. some -- nixon grew up in orange groves and hills and small towns in between. he grew up with a certain provincial bigotry. i think he got some of that from his father, an unlearned man. .ver the years, nixon learned to deal with it because he had to he could do -- nixon to do with it because he had to. he could do anything if he had to. he could be very ugly. i think this was sort of a blanket statement.

-- holdeman had his own biases, but nixon wanted a protestant, mainstream, white american. brian: i found the last 120 pages where there were source notes, not a part of the narrative in your book, some of the most interesting stuff. , usually people that are older, they are going to know who richard nixon wasn't all that. that's why i am focusing on this. with that in mind, i want you to hear something that you know about from one of the tapes. holdeman knowdid that nick's and had a taping system? john: he and some others were the only ones. brian: this is key and mix and talking in the oval office. we've got it on the screen, so

listen carefully. >> [indiscernible]

john: both of them knew they were on tape. both of theman: knew they were on tape. what were they talking about that for? too muchwould take far intellectual concentration and effort to talk all the time for the tape recorder. he was confident that he could maintain control on it. he had been eisenhower's vice president, and hence even eisenhower and truman make the vast claims of executive privilege. he thought he would be up to safeguard his tapes and papers forever, nobody else would ever hear about them. the bad part about the tapes is that they are ramblings.

they are spewing's. and talking off the top of the nixon talking of the top of the head. they don't show any of the nice things about nixon. anytime anyone tries to say he was a decent president, he did things for the environment, presented a health care plan, one of these tapes is going to drop them back down on the list of presidents. is very revealing. it is fantastic for a historian. we have two or three presidencies in a row where we have kennedy, johnson, and nixon caught on tape talking to their aides. we never had anything like this. but they will forever be a hinge or the rehabilitation of richard nixon. brian: how long did you work on

this book? john: six years from start to publication. brian: why do you do it? john: because i had a very smart editor at doubleday who looked five years into the future and that five years from now, people are going to be ready with all the new stuff coming out and this whole new audience of millennials and gen xers, they are going to be interesting to find out who nixon is in one volume. yes me whether i would like to do it, it isn't me about five seconds to say yes. brian: in your acknowledgments in this book, which is a large book. it's got over 700 pages. john: of the text is only 500. only 500. text is it is aimed at people who want to read the story in a readable way. i had to do 200 pages of footnotes as i knew -- footnotes because i knew historians would

insist to know where this comes from, but there's also a lot of interesting questions and subtleties that the average are not going to want to , a five or six page debate on what the role of cia was in watergate, so i put that in footnotes. brian: in your announcements, ambrose tooken three volumes to tell a story of the 37th president. that you list all that is new, which i will cover in a second. themany books like this on whole life of richard nixon have been written? john: since the turn-of-the-century, i think there is only one person who has tried to do a well-rounded biography. everyone else rode in the 1990's. they were good books. it was amazing how much they were able to get to the essence of the man and find revealing stuff.

they managed to have a very good perspective on it. brian: this list, and you have a long list of things that have come since stephen ambrose, you say he did not have access to any but a few of the 3700 hours of white house tape recordings. how much of those did you listen to or read about? john: fortunately, there are three or four massive books of transcripts and several places where there is lots of transcripts. you don't have to listen to everything. there's two ways to listen. what ways is greatest hits, and the others to pick a day and listen through. there were points where i picked a day and listen through. spring of 1973, i think january 1 and listen through april. the pentagon papers days, i did

that and the december of 1971. other than that i jumped around, because they are very hard to listen to. on the telephone are crystal clear, but the ones in ,he executive office building clattering cups, he murmurs and turns away from the microphone. is just a bad technological setup, so it is much more frustrating. brian: again on the list, the 400 oral history interviews of nixon's colleagues and family. when did that become public? john: within the last two or three years. brian: what was unique about the oral histories? john: it was great because they went out and talked to all of his old relatives, all the old neighbors where he grew up on the farm, all the people who use the store in whittier that his father ran on the highway

outside of town. , the hope i think that the opening chapters capture the formation of his character. they are made far richer because of these oral histories. is a huge treasure trove. brian: nixon's grand jury testimony for the watergate case, how did that become public and when? john: i think both were the result of court cases. one is fantastic because it is a very contentious debate over whether he was a spy and what nixon's motives were, and what happened in the progression. here you have sent and whitaker nixoers -- here you have and whitaker chambersn, the person who accused alger hiss, and hiss saying exactly what

they did over the previous six months. it was to me, contemporary testimony given under oath, about the best you are going to get as a historian. far better than memoirs are reminiscences 20 years later. i think absolutely he was a spy. going into it, i had to keep an open mind. i haven't to have a neighbor in kensington who wrote some of the the secret american eavesdropping case where they broke the russian code and found traces that showed that -- no, no. we can look it up. brian: another thing on the list, hr holman's -- hr of henrys transcripts kissinger's white house telephone conversations, all of which have been since opened up to scholars. john: nixon is so wonderful to do as a biographer because there

is nothing more revealing than haldeman's diary, which he kept safely every night and wrote down almost everything of what nixon says and what his moves were during the day. then henry kissinger, who has this brilliant analytical mind and is a wonderful writer, put together three volumes of memoirs almost immediately after he left government service. they are just magical sources. you could go back to them time and time again. brian: what book is this for you? john: the third. i did a bouncy -- a biography of toubro neil -- i went to university of virginia. i grew up and huntington. i worked for the denver post twice, each time five years since -- five-year stents.

4 brian: -- brian: how long have you not worked for a newspaper? john: since about two dozen three. the industry -- since 2003. i do this full-time. brian: you make a particular point of the importance of the following comment that richard nixon made in the david frost-nixon interviews in 1977. >> i don't go with the idea that what brought me down was a conspiracy, etc. i brought myself down. , and theym a sword stuck it in and twisted it with relish. if i had been in their position, i'd have done the same thing. brian: how long did it take

david frost to get to that point? john: that was almost to the end of the interviews. next and open up the interviews -- nixon opened up the interviews almost like a filibuster. on, andd on and on and there was great frustration on the frost side that they weren't pinning him down. i think they do they're going to get to watergate. they didn't want to be filibustered the way he is done on vietnam. frost is this wonderfully dramatic thing where he takes his clipboard and present on the says, mr. president, i'm going to put this aside and just let you have a chance to say something that you're going to be very sorry if you don't say this and come to grips with what you've done to the american people. is a great moment. not as great as the final goodbye at the white house. that i think is one of the greatest moments of american

political history, bar none. brian: did you ever meet him? john: no i did not. , he issest i ever got driving down pennsylvania avenue with an open top limiting -- open top limousine waiting to the crowd, and all the sudden there are antiwar protesters. they had to button him back up inside the limo musso's presidency got off to a rocky start because of vietnam. i was there as a spectator in the crowd. that was the lead time i ever saw him in person. have a lot in your book about frank nixon, his father. where did you learn it? john: mostly from the oral histories from whittier. it is amazing how many times you come across the word belligerent, stubborn, rude. just sounded to be a very unpleasant man.

and richard nixon was a very sensitive guy and sensitive child. had two brothers die as a youth. i think he, in some ways, was bruised by that dad. a fellow wrote a book called d," and it talks about the very sturdy political trick that all -- political trope that all politicians are trying to prove that they are as good as their mother thinks they are in the face of the skepticism of a father from whom they can never win approval. brian: how you go about doing this? where were you? john: is a nightmare. if i had gotten the contract three years earlier, i could research 30l the minutes from my house. everything was at the national archives in maryland. in those three years before i got the contract, everything was

packed up and moved to california to the nixon private library. now it has become a national archives library. i spent lots of time and the extended-stay motel. brian: of all the things you got what either changed your mind or maybe biggest impact on you? john: the biggest news nugget was finding -- you had robert carroll on here, he does a great series of books on lyndon johnson -- he gave me some great advice, which is turn every page. when you get what you think could be a good vein, keep going even though you are finding nothing great. several years ago, i think about 2007, something that they sent fought for years to keep private had foughtg nixon

for years to keep private, his paper from his campaign, or made public. if you go through them, is page after page of haldeman saying this is how we are going to deal with the bumper stickers, this is what the polls show in alabama, this is where we are going to go next week. but if you keep turning the pages, as bob told me, i came across this section of notes that haldeman kept. what he used to do was sit down pad,nixon with a yellow and everything he would tell him to do, haldeman would write down. then he would make the phone calls to put the machinery in operation, and it would put a big checkmark next to it when it was done. so here was a yellow pad where haldeman writes down, in the midst of the october 1968 "we are going to much he wrench -- monkeywrench lyndon johnson's

peace initiative." time tonied it at the lyndon johnson and david frost and his biographers. they said he never played any role in doing this. in fact, he had used a , andtween, a campaign aide had her communicate to the south vietnamese they would get a better deal if they held back from the peace process, and he got elected. the war went on. there toly went to far leave the impression the war would not have gone on if he had done this. we don't know that. but certainly lbj thought there was a decent chance that a peace deal was possible. whatever nixon did to disrupt it, i make the argument that this was far worse than watergate given the great loss of life that followed. sayn: in your sources, you

that ashland wanted the job and didn't get it. john: there is a whole section of not just haldeman's scrawled shows the also it degree of self-consciousness because haldeman had collected all that stuff together. there were memos and timeslips showing the number of phone calls that went back and forth between the nixon campaign and anna, and is at all but nicely aside and nixon's lawyers make sure we didn't see it. brian: this is a lot of personal stuff, and i found it new. but this is one from historian erwin gillman. you say positive things about professor gelman is one of the most foremost authorities on richard nixon. who is he? john: he is this wonderful man who has taken it upon himself to

write richard nixon's history in government and politics starting with a book called "the contender." he just did a book called "the apprentice and the president," about nixon's vice president years. you'd asked me how many pages he's gone through, -- how many pages i've gone through, he's probably gone through more than i did. he knows the nixon years backward and forward. he is a great help to me and other nixon authors who are invariably told, why don't you ask him where that stuff is? we do, and he helps us. brian: would you put him on the list of people who have done books on richard nixon? fulfills his goal, which is to chronicle all the way through the end of the presidency. i think this would be something comparable. book: this is from his

"the presidency and the apprentice." this goes back to the 1950's. lxon was taking 31 tranquilizers -- was taking three tranquilizers during the day, and also a stimulant that could elevate mood and lead to psychic dependence. during the evening he had two or three drinks. before going to sleep he had a potentially protective -- potentially addictive drug for people who had trouble sleeping. he was also prescribed the econal fore s depression, sleeplessness, and fatigue. that is heavy stuff. john: he was a very tightly wound guy. in the neck and 50's, he was treated rather badly by eisenhower. he was always worried. his rise was so quick. he went from nobody to a vice presidency in the six -- in six years. he was overwhelmed by it and

threw them -- and thrown into this huge battle between eisenhower and joe mccarthy. is not a surprising took to self medicate himself are going to doctors when he had the symptoms of tension and being prescribed these medicines. on the other hand, if you are member -- if you remember the famous jackson suzanne novel "valley of the dolls," this is what americans did. the pop pills. all the presidents -- they popped pills. all the president before nixon were proud of their ability to pour a drink. i'm reading from the source notes, i will point in the process did he write all the source notes? in the processt did you write all these source

notes? john: i keep making the same mistake that i don't write them as i am writing the book, and i have to go back finally i didn't get the exact date right and have to go back and do it again. each time i get a little bit better at it. the next book, i swear i'm going to have them all done when the text is done. brian: it seems to me that this was unusual, that they were more narrative than normal and longer than normal. for you aware of that when you were writing? john: i like that, and i have a direct editor who encourages me to do that. she likes that. --is for people who like the -- the extrarase? taste after you that if the book, you can go back in there and find more about the cia and watergate and nixon's father. is fills more out without blocking the narrative. mixon wasthe reports

hoarding himself with liquor, his daughter julie said this. perhapsking rumors were the most consistent because it seemed he was drinking a little more than ever before, but at dinner time, when he was trying to help unwind, he still adhered to his self-imposed code on no alcohol when he was attending receptions or dinners, nor during the day. on october 11, he said the switchboard just got a call from 10 downing street to inquire whether the president would be available for a call within 30 minutes from the prime minister. the subject was to be the middle east. can we tell them no? when i talked to the president, he was loaded. where did that come from? how you get access to that telephone conversation? john: that was the result of a court case filed to get

kissinger telcons. i think it was filed by the national security archive, or maybe a public citizen. they got access to thousands of pages. when kissinger's national security advisor what have a conversation with a foreign leader, he would have a secretary on the phone taking note. this was a common practice that went back as long as there have been telephones. ,ut kissinger fought very hard he wanted and kept under his control throughout his lifetime. these government organizations went to court with a suit and cess.ccess -- and won ac the trekking was a problem. -- the drinking was a problem.

people, when they spoke to me, it was either that i agree with them exactly where they spoke such sense that i was overwhelmed by listening to them. had a marvelously long oral history he gave said it was a problem. we shouldn't over exaggerated, but it was a problem. brian: how may people were you able to talk to them are close to richard nixon? john: i talked to probably a dozen. one of the problems -- i will tell you a story. talked to his secretary of defense. as i'm talking to him, i say, you were a close friend of jerry ford, who succeeded nixon and pardon him, and a close friend of nixon. did you play any role and nixon's resignation quest mark -- resignation? he said, oh yeah. i told nixon he would be

pardoned. everyone has said they were -- there was no deal were nixon would be pardoned. here he was in his mid-90's telling me this. i asked him to tell me again. finally i said, you are telling me something that is going to be very controversial because there has always been both presidents insisting that there was no deal, and you are saying that you did convey word that he would get a pardon if he resigned. he said, i predicted. i wasn't conveying word. this was my conclusion that i predicted. so what do you do with that? do you put that in the book and make it a selling point, that you've got proof of a deal? or do you realize that at 95, he's an old man doing his best are member the things. having written a memoir which doesn't say this at all may have been mistaken. brian: let me begin with another source note on another page. pardoned by ford on the same

advised for more than a week before the resignation that the president accepted -- president expected to step down. at the same meeting, haig presented for the option of bargaining nixon. ford seemed amenable. exists -- heord and ford insists there was no explicit quid pro quo struck. what do you make of this? john: think everybody had a good idea of what was going to happen. there is a big congressional investigation after the pardon. then andrd's aides since have all testified to this meeting between ford and haig and exactly what happened. they all went to him and said, you can't say that. you got to say you were not dangling a part.

is a big, long, convoluted history. the simplicity of what mel told me was, i was a go between and ck hethe assurance to di would be pardoned. enthusiastice as or diligent and going out and talking to these old guys because i question their memory. i have a great skepticism about testimony from memory. o'neill,ing tip clarence darrow, and richard nixon, which was the most interesting or fun? i'm always going to like tip o'neill. clarence darrow, i adored the personality of demand.

and richard nixon was by far the most fascinating. an intellectual challenge. have much more sympathy for them, because he did have a tough life, and he was trying to be a good guy. yet he had part of his character , this great shakespearean fatal flaw that brought him down. brian: from your source notes, "politicians have been known to nixon was aand veteran liar." john: definitely. nixon was a great high school debater. debate or college debate, you have take both sides of an argument and be able to stand up one day or one round and argue the positive, and later be able to argue the negative. it gives you such a flexibility of mind and such a willingness

to see that facts can be turned in your advantage. throughout his political career, he was one of the best at that. guy. >> he said convict the smb in the press, that's the way it was done. that for ay about was it was about the johnson years and the kennedy years.

nixon, because it was the time, because it was a threat to his -- because kissinger just a too long, he launched himself into this fight. in the process he had this big anti-leaking drive that brought this memcpy plumbers into his white house and it was the same plumbers who were the guys caught at watergate. >> it was not supposed to be an area from start to finish. thing that ither have not heard. nixon was offered a chairmanship of the dreyfus corporation and a chance to serve as commissioner of major league baseball. ec nixon again in the interviews, he got 60,000

ofance for "six crises" which 20,000 paid to one of the several aides that has helped him. dreyfus corporation? >> the dreyfus corporation, he was friends with mr. dreyfuss and his first name escapes me. more interesting thing to that one is i am preparing a speech i have to give in boston at fenway park and it is supposed to be about nixon. nick them was at this huge sports fan. there was at this instance in the midst of the watergate crisis were a reporter asks him who he thinks the greatest players of all time are and nixon pulls out all the books with all the batting averages and he makes not one list but to lists.

what is before integration and the other is after integration. after baseball was integrated by his one-time good friend jackie robinson. him,r thompson, who hated the gonzo writer who hated nixon once it did a car ride in his limousine with an and they talked football the whole time and that afternoon and in the next dispatch thompson wrote he is not a bad guy. he really knows what linebackers do and what versus a good linebacker and a good safety. he seems to have mellowed. nixon and sports is fascinating. he would have been far overqualified to be commissioner of baseball which is why he turned it down. >> you also said he got $600,000 in the interviews that he did. that was a long time ago indie 1970's.

-- in the 1970's. nixon told him that writing a book was agony but that corporate law was integrating. and you have a former president excepting honorariums for going on television is abhorrent to me. it is ironic that he is known for that wonderful let -- that wonderful clip that says i'm not a crook. >> he had high standards when he left office. he had a reverend for the office because he had watched eisenhower the president -- be president but they were things he was not going to do because they would tarnish the office. they never took money for paid beaches. >> walker apparently trying to

secure the among the vietnam veterans that had been it out -- spit at coming home. >> he went to williamsburg, virginia for a conference and while he was there a younger all came up to him and spat at him in the face. that was his regulation in the arena. i went looking for it, i could not find it in all of the news coverage of that trip so i figured maybe it happened in private but maybe it didn't happen at all. i found a memo from at hand in and is described a young man shouting the crowd how does it feel to be a war criminal in williamsburg, at this conference. when we talk about nixon and lying and badger trading, that

is a great evil of how would actually happen planted a little need in his brain that over time became bigger and grander and conveniently put him with the returning pows and the veterans of vietnam as being a victim of being spat on. >> has anyone else from your research and the last 50 years or so lied in the presidency besides richard? >> we had three presidencies in a row. 100 years from now they will be grouped together as the cold war president and they will be ranked and how good they did. since we're sitting here and are not incinerated, radioactive ash, they did a good job. they protected us. did horribly aberrational ,hings like hiring the mafia

jack kennedy hiring the mafia to try to assassinate fidel castro. the full report of the committee that went into the his three of administration after administration. spied on americans, than their male, but to their telephones. mail, buggedir their telephones, and not just dangerous people but he's peace activists. people back and say they were on that lincoln did haiti's poor visit during the corpusar -- habeas during the civil war. distance in the case of ferocity

and morality, when you will get treatment, eisenhower, 10 the, johnson and, there is a huge bit of difference as to what they would do to advance their own political future and protected the country. ago ands here 25 years i had a question about the media and his attitude and you have an interesting source i'm going to ask you about on the list and we will delve into this more. did you ever ask yourself why so many in the media are against you? >> they did not agree with what i stood for. this case was hard for the media. they all thought he was innocent. they did not want him exposed because as an individual said it would be a reflection on the foreign policy of the roosevelt administration.

that it was difficult. not that i didn't have very many friends in the media but media people while they try to be objective they also have strong theyctions and frankly generally are not particularly enamored with conservatives as i am even though i am probably more reasonable than some of the conservatives they go after. >> i cannot argue with any word that he said except he doesn't tell the whole story. it is a fascinating relationship and i several times doing the narratives, i do a couple of pages about where he stands at that moment because it really did twists his perception and feed his paranoia over the years. what is really interesting is that he first ran in southern california as a conservative and at that time the los angeles

times was the conservative voice in the country and dominated southern california politics. they promoted him all the way up into the united states senate. he had a very jaundiced view of the free pass -- free press. he said they are either for me and will advance my career because they are conservative or their liberals and walter me down because of that. this is a little complicated but years later admitted the watergate scandal, republicans chairman george h.w. bush produced an affidavit that the democrats sought to eavesdrop on nixon's hotel room before the second presidential debate. the evidence was inconclusive but it would not have been terribly unusual. between the 1950's and 60's, electronic eavesdropping was viewed as somewhat underhanded

but a trifling offense. cbs had bugged the closed-door sessions of the credentials committee of the republican convention. buggingerson was caught during the sherman adams case and nbc newsman admitted they bugged a private session of the democratic platform committee in 1968. the chief investigator for the watergate committee resigned from that role after some remembered that he is been in 1968. of bugging >> nexus defenders over the years have attempted from -- nixon's defenders over the years have tried to assemble examples of past misdeeds to show that nixon was the victim of a double standard. he carried everything a step too far and frankly he was not as

good at it. andthese people got caught they were not very good at it either. the way that the watergate burglars were found out -- they were former fbi agent that were surveyed -- supervised by nixon's staff. they were all eager for advancement, on trying to the .bject than the next guy was a specific kind of bugging. j edgar hoover saw that times were changing and him these practices -- and these practices were not going to be seen in the

1960's and 70's. hoover pulled back and said we're not going to do the black bag jobs anymore. did talk to either one of his daughters? >> i did not talk to either one of his daughters. julie was very nice and every once in a while i had an answer to something only she would know. i would write her. there is a famous photograph of the ice and hair -- at the eisenhower inaugural, it is interesting david is looking at her. it is funny because of they fell in love and married. she said he was looking at me because i was in a sledding accident and i had this big, black eye.

if you look carefully in the photo you can see she had a shiner. julie was very gracious to doing that . the three -- theif you look at the women, i can understand their paranoia having seen how their father has been treated with they could do much better to follow the example of the truman family. the truman family opened up the vault of harry truman's letters to his wife. david mccullough with in there and wrote a book that instantly elevated harry truman 10 steps of the presidential latter -- ladder and will be this great valentine to harry truman area

one day someone will write a book that we will have from nixon's diary. right now they are still pretty burnt and they have no interview , no health. >> why in your opinion does the julie talk more than tricia? >> that is a case of personality. where theysituation analyze of the two personalities and they agree that julie and her weight is so bubbly and such a nice person that the country loved her whereas tricia is more of a pristine beauty and nixon says tricia is more like me, more contained, more loan -- more alone and julie has a million-dollar personality. i don't think that is entirely true, but that is the perception. >> my understanding is nixon's

oldest brother -- youngest brother is still alive. having what i said about the other 90-year-old guys, nothing was more important to me than the day i spent with the nixon. and he walks dick ick and you get a sense of what the nixon and were like -- of the nixon men were like. he is a geologist and does not have the most sophisticated view of politics but has this really keen, nick said he and -- nixon ian, rye sense of humor. julie woulda and sit down and do world histories

for the library. >> what you think of the frank gannett interviews? 9, something 6, like that. frank was the ghostwriter. the writing assistant along with diane sawyer and help them write their memoirs and they decided to have nixon sit down and frank got him to open up on many subjects. i remember nixon calling himself about the press. >> here's a short clip about the resignation. speech, he was very thoughtful. he said he would like to walk to the residence with me.

door of the the residence he said, mr. president, history is going to record that you were a great president. i said henry, that will depend on who writes the history. we went down to the lincoln room and made a few calls it to people, heard the chanting outside, reminded me of the but this time it was jail to the chief. there is a footnote in their --he loved the fact that he will always be famous even as of the only president to resign. delighted by the idea that this is nobody kid so dominated the world stage and so

dominated history in the 20th century. even though it ended badly for him and caused him such grief and ominous killed. him.d almost killed there is a part of nixon that is like i showed them. a footnote in the back it says kissinger did not like him. kissinger is a great example of nixon being able to either extensively -- instinctively or brilliantly plucked somebody and make him his tool. kissinger was very good at what i have a basic argument with the two of them over vietnam than i carry out over chapters but there's

no doubt they sell these let between russia and china and exploited the way they did. nixon's goal and china was to give us a couple of decades of and he gave us probably 50 years peace. >> kissinger said he was a phony because all the tapes show him kissing up after speeches. memoirs,ee volumes of kissinger says -- he is a great way of witty, self-deprecating nod towards the obvious and he makes a crime like the worst things about these tapes is there going to show me as a kiss up and in some cases they are just awful. >> did he talk to you? >> no, kissinger did not talk

but again with hillary kissinger -- henry kissinger, he is written probably five or six books on the nixon years. there is a limit as to what i could have asked him. should i invest in wartime are you a war criminal? >> roger stone who works for richard nixon and has a huge tattoo on his back of nixon's face, he was here talking about on book. let's hear what he had to say about richard nixon and donald trump. >> the first person to imagine a trump president was not me but former president richard nixon. i was working for nixon doing political chores in his postpresidential years and he let president trump in george in yankees box stadium. they hit it off.

he said i met your man, i want to tell you he has got it. he could really go all the way. set down -- roger in private sitdown with me and gave me a helpful interview about his experience with the next and. -- with nixon. >> what is the difference between public and private? >> roger and his books is a show man but he can speak to you on nixon with the depth and insight. people over time can convince himself to believe what they want to believe. >> you don't believe roger stone or you don't believe richard nixon said that. toit is a stretch for me believe that roger stone would end up working for donald trump all these years later and

remember that richard nixon met donald trump in a box in yankee stadium and said he is going to be president one day. filled --istory is hundreds of relatives said in their kitchen and said to and bertha that young dick is a bright guy and he is going to be president. presidents are going to be president. >> one of your wittier oral histories has people quoted that after the fact. again you did not answer a question i asked you earlier. it was really about where did you write this. what was your base? >> my face was here. i live right off the beltway near the mormon temple. hadll this material you in-depth? >> it is mostly online.

somebody the other day wrote an entire book only online. they set in the kitchen and all the research they did was online. we're getting there. all of cleared sterile cases government online -- all of this cases got put online after i left the country. the problem is they cannot put everything that is at the nixon library online. it would take 200 years. what you tend to do is if you are too lazy, you only do the online stuff. you only did the oral histories online. c-span archives, you have a lot about nixon. but if you only do that then you do not get into some of the texture they can only be done by turning every page. and the nixon book, a lot is online. >> if you are going to pick a

chapter in this book that everybody should read that is new, different, unusual, which be?would it i think the piece on the cambodian incursion in the spring of 1970, that chapter is relatively short, it has lots of new stuff. great quotes from the tapes i came across. i like that one and i also love 1946 campaign. pharrell, as we say, better known as the jack. the book is called "richard nixon: the life." thanks for joining us. >> thank you. ♪

announcer: he didn't want to

these anytime or search our entire video library at the span.org. anytimean watch these or search our entire video library at c-span.org. announcer: monday morning, share and mcdowell discuss a federal ruling on the other ebt workplace discrimination. then an author will talk about his book " the unholy trinity: blocking the left assault on life, gender and marriage. and we will talk about the complexity of the pack had been sure to watch it washington journal 7 a.m. eastern monday morning. join the discussion. announcer: tomorrow neil gorsuch officially joined the supreme court. we asked justice anthony kennedy about the addition of new members to the court.

>> how much it does of the court change when a new justice arrives? is there a cultural shift and what do you do to get a new member acclimated? >> it is a new court. case, if aa jury juror had to be replaced, because one was ill or something, it was a different dynamic. this will be a different court. becauseressful for us we so admire our colleagues. we know it will never be the same. i have great admiration for the system. announcer: tomorrow neil gorsuch will be sworn in as an associate justice of the supreme court. watch the ceremony at the white house administered by justice anthony kennedy live at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span. discussion on a

the impact that government regulations and policies have on those living in poverty. and 11:00 p.m., another opportunity to see q&a with author john pharrell talking about his biography on richard nixon. and then a discussion on the justice system and african-american. the british parliament is in recess. prime minister's questions will not be seen tonight. now a heritage foundation forum on the impact of government policies and regulations on those living at the poverty level. this is about one hour, 45 minutes. good morning and welcome to the heritage foundation. the am the director of center for free markets and regulatory reform here at the heritage foundation.