When Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, Nixon promised not to 'embarrass' LBJ
Late on the night of the military invasion of a small Eastern European country, the U.S. president phoned a leading political rival to give him the news and suggest how he should comment. You might “say this concerns you, that it dismays you,” he said, but that “you’re not trying to second-guess” the president.
The response: “I won’t say a d--- word that’s going to embarrass you, you can be sure of that.”
The president was Lyndon B. Johnson, and Soviet Union tanks had just rolled into Czechoslovakia on Aug. 20, 1968. Johnson’s call was to Richard M. Nixon, the Republican nominee for president, on the eve of the Democratic convention in Chicago, where Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey was the leading candidate for the presidential nomination.
It was crisis politics in a different time. Nixon blasted the invasion as an “outrage” but made no personal criticism of LBJ, in contrast to former president Donald Trump’s comments about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Speaking at a meeting of conservatives in Orlando on Saturday night, Trump charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin had played President Biden “like a drum” and called the attack “an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.” Trump has come under fire for also praising Putin’s actions as “genius” and “smart.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/03/01/nixon-lbj-russia-czechoslovakia/
Conclusion: Trump is worse than Nixon and not very smart.
= new reply since forum marked as read
