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  • 2017-05-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Richard Nixon Write a Letter Predicting Donald Trump's Success in Politics? (en)
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  • Within a day of Donald Trump's election to the presidency on 8 November 2016, a number of news outlets reported the existence of a letter allegedly written by former President Richard M. Nixon in 1987 that seemed to predict Trump's political ascendancy. Charley Lanyon of New York magazine couched it thus: Lanyon said Nixon's letter, addressed Dear Donald and dated 21 November 1987, credited Pat Nixon for predicting that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner! It was signed With warm regards, sincerely, RMN. A scan of the original letter was tweeted on 9 November 2016 by the National Archive Foundation, attributing the image to the Richard Nixon Foundation in Yorba Linda, California (with whom snopes.com has confirmed its authenticity): The letter was first made public in Michael D'Antonio's 2015 biography of Trump, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, published by Macmillan. D'Antonio wrote that Trump had been making a round of national media appearances to promote his just-released book, The Art of the Deal, when Pat Nixon saw him on Phil Donahue's afternoon talk show and remarked on his performance to the former president. Trump recalled receiving Nixon's letter in a post-election appearance on the Fox News Channel: The Fox News segment included a clip of Trump's 1987 Donahue appearance, during which he made remarks about U.S. policy that prefigured stands he would take 29 years later during his presidential campaign: Pundits have argued back and forth about whether or not Richard Nixon would have supported Trump's actual candidacy had he been alive to see it, but Nixon's grandson, Christopher Nixon Cox (himself a Trump supporter), said in an interview on CNN that he was pretty sure Nixon would have gotten behind Trump: In any case, the Nixon-Trump connection took on additional (and considerably darker) shades of meaning three months into Trump's presidency, as the administration became mired in scandal due to allegations of links between the Trump campaign and Russia and Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. For many, the latter conjured up images of the Watergate scandal and Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which led to the resignations of the attorney general and deputy attorney general, impeachment proceedings against Nixon, and ultimately to his resignation. The ironies did not go unnoticed on social media: (en)
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