@dick_nixon is actually Justin Sherin, a playwright based in New York City.

If I had a nickel for every time the press connected me with Donald Trump this month, I’d be as rich as Ezra Klein—who, incidentally, led the charge, writing that Trump’s invitation to the Russians to spy in America “is what led Nixon to resign.”

Bull. I played by the rules of politics as I found them, but here is Trump, the Republican nominee, throwing the door open to spies.


I’m used to it. It’s the same lazy horseshit from the gang who’s dined out on me for years: Klein, Maddow, all the rest. They never let up. But they’re weak. Take away their Georgetown salons and their 10-cent words and they die of exposure.

Here’s the truth. Yes, Trump promises détente with the Russians. He says he’s the “law and order” candidate—specifically invoking our ’68 campaign—and claims a so-called “secret plan” to beat Islamic State, just as I’m supposed to have done in Vietnam.

But if he’s Dick Nixon, I’m Kate Smith.

I like babies; I’ve never, never, never talked that way toward a woman; and I have devoted my life to building a lasting architecture of peace.

On accepting the nomination in 1968, I said:

And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply:

Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect.

Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.

Think about that. Where Trump hacked the old social bonds to pieces, we stitched them up in a delicate and calculated move to the center. And in ’68 that’s what “law and order” was; Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were shot, the cities burned in race riots. The murder rate was up 47 percent in five years. It’s horrific to see a school or nightclub shot up today, policemen shot in the back by snipers, blacks mowed down for traffic tickets. But ’68 felt like the end was near.

The only people against “law and order” were anarchist kooks. So we promised to deliver. To listen to the “quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting,” the native and foreign born, the young and old. And we did deliver. What more proof do you need than 49 states and 47.1 million votes in 1972?

The ’68 speech was a cool response to real danger. It spoke to whites, sure, but it left the door open. Trump locked up and threw away the key—and for what? Because far right economic policy sold the little guy up the river for 35 years, and now his only hope is an iron fist.

The “secret plan” thing is one of the biggest damn lies told about me. I never had a “secret plan” for Vietnam. I didn’t run on it. Check the record. In fact, I wrote in the Los Angeles Times on March 28, 1968, that I had “no gimmicks or secret plans” for the war. It’s all an invention of the press.

The whole dumb business began in New Hampshire on March 5, 1968, when I said I had “no push-button technique” to end the war, but nevertheless promised to end it. This echoed Ike’s vague pledge to get out of Korea in ’52. But I did elaborate on background to reporters and editorial boards—military and diplomatic pressure, Vietnamization. Everything we did.

But the press loves nothing more than to feel privileged, so that’s where the “secret” talk came from.

Maddow, who graduated from Stanford and Oxford, has gotten plenty of gas off comparing Trump’s secret Islamic State plan to what I’m supposed to have done. Oh, Nixon, he’s no better than the son of a bitch who can’t find Syria on a map.

But there’s a difference between keeping your cards close and not knowing how to play. As usual I’m just a crutch for the press, their whipping post. I don’t mind. I’m used to it. They learn that kind of rigor at the great universities.

Finally, the Russians. We built détente around reducing the nuclear threat and increasing trade. Opening China forced the Russians into our lap, and the result was long-term benefit to both countries and increased stability worldwide.

Trump plans to treat Putin like they’re bartering for girls in the Tenderloin. As I’ve written, Putin wants the Baltics. President Trump would be only too happy to hand them over for Putin’s support on ISIS. After all, why in God’s name should one American kid shed blood for the Baltics, particularly when they don’t pay us a dime in protection?

This would begin the Third World War, and we’d be lucky to survive it. It bears as much relationship to our Russia policy as dogs to cats.

And as for encouraging Russia to break into Mrs. Clinton’s computers, well, who the hell does Klein think he is?

For 68 years, ever since the Alger Hiss case, my public life has stood on fighting spies, hypocrites, every son of a bitch who’d sell this country up the river.

I’ve put a lot of them where they belong. But I’m still here, by God. It takes more than a few candy-ass Georgetown sophisticates to bring me down.