The Lost Tape

Dispatches from the Nixon White House

CONVERSATION 179-18

DATE: 17 NOVEMBER 1973
TIME: 11:22-11:38
LOCATION: THE OVAL OFFICE

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HALDEMAN: …and the scheduling issue with the Senate delegation can be pushed to Thursday. That’s everything on my end.

NIXON: Right. Right.

[8 SECONDS OF SILENCE]

NIXON: Bob. Has Pat said anything to you? About Tricia?

HALDEMAN: In what- in what sense, sir?

NIXON: Tricia has been listening to something. On a- it’s a recorded programme. Distributed over the internet. Like a radio programme but it isn’t radio. You know what I’m talking about.

HALDEMAN: A podcast, sir.

NIXON: A podcast. Yes. She has been listening to this podcast constantly. At the dinner table. I can hear it through the wall of her room. There are two women.

HALDEMAN: What sort of women, sir?

NIXON: One is blonde. One is brunette. That’s- that’s all the intelligence I have on them physically. But Bob, the giggling. The giggling is incessant. And the way they talk, there’s a- Henry, you’ve heard young women talking today?

KISSINGER: I am… aware of the phenomenon, Mr. President.

NIXON: It’s like they’re being slowly strangled but they’re fine with it. The voice goes down at the end. Like gravel. Like very young gravel. It shouldn’t be possible. You’d think a young woman’s voice would go up.

KISSINGER: The, uh, vocal fry, yes. It is a socioacoustic development that I find-

NIXON: It goes down, Henry. At the end of every sentence…“and I just think that’s so crazyyy.” Like that. But lower. Why would God design a voice to do that?

HALDEMAN: Sir, is there a concern about Tricia specifically, or-

[16 SECONDS OF SILENCE]

NIXON: I may have listened to several episodes.

HALDEMAN: …sir?

NIXON: Rose played me thirty seconds of it by accident and I- it’s compelling, Bob. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t agree with anything. I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time. One of them went on for twenty-two minutes about a little fruit called Nick who apparently…it doesn’t matter. The point is I couldn’t turn it off. There’s something about the giggling. It’s like- it lowers the cortisol.

HALDEMAN: The- your cortisol, sir?

NIXON: Don’t repeat things back to me, Bob, it’s a weak habit. Yes, my cortisol. I’ve been under considerable pressure with the Felt situation and I put it on last Tuesday at eleven and the next thing I knew it was one-thirty in the morning and they were doing an extended segment on whether a particular actor has “golden retriever energy” and I was nodding along, Bob. Physically nodding.

KISSINGER: Mr. President-

NIXON: I’m not proud of it, Henry.

KISSINGER: No, I- I have been invited on the program as a guest.

[12 SECONDS OF SILENCE]

NIXON: [EXPLETIVE]

KISSINGER: They reached out through, uh, through a back channel. An intermediary. Apparently they did an episode about shuttle diplomacy and the, uh…the blonde, I’m told, described me as, quote, “low-key hot in a weird little goblin way.”

HALDEMAN: And you’re… considering it?

KISSINGER: I have accepted.

NIXON: You’ve- Henry. Henry, those women don’t know anything about geopolitics. They’re going to ask you about your personal life. They’re going to ask you what your attachment style is. Do you know what an attachment style is?

KISSINGER: I have been briefed.

NIXON: And?

KISSINGER: Apparently I am “avoidant, but like, in a way that makes sense once you understand the historical context.” That was their preliminary assessment.

[8 SECONDS OF SILENCE]

NIXON: That’s… that’s not wrong.

[4 SECONDS OF SILENCE]

NIXON: Will they… is there a- do guests typically receive episode credit? A title card?

KISSINGER: I believe they describe guests in the episode title. They sometimes indulge on a play on words of some kind related to the guest’s name. When Frank Rizzo appeared on an episode they called it, uh, “Getting Rizzy with it”.

NIXON: Rizzy, huh.

HALDEMAN: Sir, I want to flag that the optics of Dr. Kissinger appearing on-

NIXON: How do they pay for all this? Is CIA money behind it? KGB? General goddamn Electric?

KISSINGER: They have a- they have a tiered subscription service. For a very limited outlay the audience can, uh, enter into- enter into a parasocial dyad with the presenters whereby they become theoretically responsible for their Brandy Melville purchases or Reformer Pilates classes. It’s a classic-

NIXON: What on God’s green earth is Pilates, Henry? One of those Chinese things?

[8 MINUTES 32 SECONDS OF RECORDING DAMAGED]

NIXON: How much grippier?

KISSINGER: [INAUDIBLE]

NIXON: Jesus. Henry, when you go on, if you go on, you will not mention the podcast to Tricia. You will not mention that I- that anyone in this office has any familiarity with the programme. Is that understood?

KISSINGER: Of course, Mr. President.

NIXON: (pause) Ask them about Nick.

KISSINGER: I’m sorry?

NIXON: The man named Nick that the blonde one… there was an unresolved question about whether he- it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Forget I said that.

KISSINGER: Forgotten entirely, sir.

NIXON: That much grippier, huh. Goddamn.

[TRANSCRIPT ENDS]