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It was two men in Manhattan, New York, USA, who craved the same thing: validation. One was a cheeky young real estate developer looking to put his stamp on New York, the other a disgraced elderly statesman hell-bent on repairing his reputation.
Here’s how a 30-something-year-old Donald Trump and a 70-something Richard Nixon struck up a full decade-long correspondence in the 1980s that snaked from soccer and real estate to Vietnam and media strategy.
The letters between past and future presidents, first revealed in an exhibit opening Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, show the two men engaged in a kind of mutual affirmation exercise. The museum shared the letters exclusively with The Associated Press before the opening of the exhibition.
“I believe that you are one of the great men of this country, and it was an honor to spend an evening with you,” Trump wrote to Nixon in June 1982, less than eight years after Nixon resigned the presidency during the US scandal. Watergate The two had been seen together at nightclub “21” and Trump was writing to Nixon to thank him for sending him a photo.
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Next fall, it’s Nixon walking in.
“Let me be so presumptuous as to offer a little free advice (which is worth, incidentally, exactly what it costs!”), Nixon writes to Trump. Nixon, who played soccer in college and never lost his love for the game, then reveals detailed thoughts on how Trump should handle the New Jersey Generals soccer team that he had recently purchased and would retire in 1986. (Nixon included many accolades for the underrated linemen, his former position.)
Anonymous / AP
In this 1973 file photo, United States President Richard Nixon speaks at the Associated Press annual meeting of CEOs. Nixon told the APME “I am not a scammer.”
Trump, for his part, is not ashamed of one of his goals for the relationship: “One of my great ambitions is to have the Nixons as residents in Trump Tower,” he wrote in October.
But after the Nixons toured Trump’s flagship development on Fifth Avenue, the former president wrote that his wife “was as impressed as I am, but feels that at this point she should not undertake the ordeal of a move.” She had suffered a mild stroke that August.
So it was, the pattern of “Dear Donald” and “Dear Mr. President.”
Trump, putting his usual stamp of complacency on exchanges, said shortly after the 2016 election that he did not know Nixon “but that he would write me letters. It was very interesting. He always wanted me to run for office. “
What prompted the correspondence between a young man seeking a bright future and a former president with a dark past? Nixon expert Luke Nichter, a professor at Texas A & M-Central Texas, says the two men “saw something similar in each other: that toughness, that guts, even getting hit and coming back.”
UNTV / AP
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, corresponded with Nixon when he was young in New York, United States.
At Trump’s age, says Nichter, “I can’t imagine trying to befriend a former president. … In a way, I think they both made it and I think they both fulfilled a need for each other. “
His letters didn’t have to travel far as they crossed Manhattan: Trump wrote from his office in Trump Tower; Nixon from his in Federal Plaza, about four miles away.
The two men bonded over themes that resonate today: a shared mistrust of the media, the desire to maximize television ratings, the idea of using people as “props” and more.
Writing about the broadcast potential of the Generals, Nixon tells Trump: “The people in the stands, in addition to what they pay for their tickets, are indispensable accessories for the television broadcast that in the future is where the money is. real”.
It was a powerful lesson from a previous president for a future one that would blatantly inflate his reputation as a mogul for 14 seasons in The newbie and then turn his presidency into his own reality show.
The two men sympathized with their shared mistrust of the press. In 1990, Nixon approached Trump when the developer’s business deals were falling apart and he couldn’t pay his bills, writing: “Dear Donald, I don’t know anything about the complexities of your business ventures, but the massive media attack on you put me in your corner! “
Trump, even now, never lets a grievance against the press go unnoticed, his strained relations with the media have not been surpassed by Nixon or other presidents.
Regardless of what ties the two men together as friends, their letters serve as a kind of inkblot test for readers.
John Dean, knowledgeable about Nixon’s personality after being his attorney in the White House during the Watergate years, sees his former boss and Trump picking up “the ripples of each other’s personalities” in their letters.
“These are two authoritarian personalities that would have a natural affinity for each other,” said Dean, who helped expose the Watergate scandal and is a harsh critic of Trump.
Republican Newt Gingrich, familiar with both men, says Trump may have learned a bit of foreign policy by listening to Nixon, but he suspects the young developer also liked the idea of meeting a historical figure.
“It was more of a personal validation for Trump that he was becoming somebody, that a Nixon would pay attention to him,” Gingrich said.
Jim Byron, executive vice president of the Richard Nixon Foundation, said the letters were located during two years of research in library archives that include 46 million pages of material, 300,000 photographs and 2 million feet of film. They are the centerpiece of an exhibition, The Presidents Club: From Adams and Jefferson to Nixon and Trump, which also includes correspondence between five other groups of presidents.
Only one of the Trump-Nixon letters was previously widely known: a two-sentence note from December 1987 that Nixon wrote after his wife saw Trump on Phil Donahue’s talk show. Pat Nixon thought Trump did “very well,” Nixon writes.
“As you can imagine, she is an expert in politics and predicts that whenever you decide to run, you will be a winner!” Nixon adds.
Trump, always an open door to flattery, had the letter framed and displayed in his office in Trump Tower. The White House did not respond to questions about whether Trump had the letter on display anywhere now.
The last letter in the Trump-Nixon series is dated January 26, 1993. Trump writes to Nixon shortly after his 80th birthday to thank him for a birthday photo and says, “You are a great man, and I have always had and I will always be I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. I’m proud to meet you. “Nixon died in April 1994; Trump did not attend the funeral.
As for Trump’s public thoughts on Nixon, over the years he has gone insane.
He echoed some of Nixon’s dark themes during his 2016 campaign, and is currently adapting Nixon’s “silent majority” strategy for his own reelection campaign. Before the 2016 Republican convention, Trump spoke enthusiastically of Nixon’s harsh rhetoric and tactics.
Yet during his own impeachment saga last year, Trump made a distinction between himself and Nixon, who resigned instead of being indicted.
“It came out. I’m not leaving. A big difference,” Trump said.
The White House declined to provide Trump comment on the newly released letters.
Nichter, the historian, says the letters reveal a surprisingly rich personal dimension to the Trump-Nixon relationship and add “one more piece to the puzzle” to solve them both.
Byron calls them “an invaluable contribution to the ever-evolving group we know as the presidents club.” And with Trump’s disinterest in following the advice of his predecessors, Byron says, the letters provide “perhaps the best-documented relationship our current president has.” with any of its predecessors. “
As for what the American people should take back and forth, Byron doesn’t bite: “We’ll leave that up to the historians, the academics, and the social media masses, which I’m sure will have something.” or two to say. “
