RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE The Epilogue, The Re-Rise (Part 2) The Fall of Saigon, Frost - Nixon, and the Welcome at Hyden

The Richard Nixon Experience

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Finally the end of the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon had negotiated an honorable peace with the assurances that we would continue to help the South Vietnamese to be able to defend themselves from any aggression from the North. When that aggression came President Gerald Ford did all he could to honor that pledge but the Congress cut off all funding and disallowed our President to even provide arial support for the South Vietnamese.
On April, 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese Communist troops rolled into Saigon and the American Embassy was evacuated. The military did all they could to get our friends out of the country, for 14 hours it airlifted thousands of Vietnamese to safety out of the country before our Ambassador flew out on a helicopter. The Marines then locked the place up and left the American Embassy to the communist forces that from the air could be seen in the streets of Saigon. It was finally over, and the peace Richard Nixon had worked so hard to attain, that Lyndon Johnson had sacrificed his career to attain, and more importantly, over 58,000 Americans had died for, was lost.
It was a shameful hour in American history. Though I believe that we bought the time for the rest of Southeast Asia to gather the strength to fend off Communism's high tide. A belief shared with former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson.
Then the episode move on to the next chapter in the life of Richard Nixon. He re-emerges in 1978 with a 28 hour interview with TV Host David Frost. It would be the one and only time Richard Nixon would be cross examined about his time in office and his role in Watergate. It was an extraordinary set of interviews in which the President held his own. He was asked tough questions and explained himself just fine. He also gave the American People his own apology for the way he dealt with the scandal. It is an amazing set of interviews and I invite you all to tune in for yourselves, many are available on YOUTUBE for viewing, or you can buy the DVD box set here:
https://www.amazon.com/Frost-Nixon-Watergate-Interviews-Remastered/dp/B001GZ6Q1K
Finally we take you to the tiny town of Hyden, Kentucky, where a community from the heartland of America decided to honor the President that was "One of Us" , not an elitist, not a Washington Insider, but a man who as a national leader had championed the forgotten Americans, the non shouters, the non demonstrators, the great silent majority of Americans that , as President, Richard Nixon had never forgotten and always looked out to protect, and now it was they who were opening the door for him to return to the national stage again.