Richard Nixon Met With Protesters. Will Trump?

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

It was one of the worst moments of the Vietnam War era in America. U.S. troops had just invaded Cambodia and the nation’s campuses erupted in a spasm of angry and frustrated protest. At Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen had killed four students. In Washington that day in May 1970, the first of what would be vast crowds of protesters were beginning to gather in the pre-dawn hours when a restless President Richard Nixon with his valet Manolo Sanchez in tow had himself driven to the Lincoln Memorial.  There, at 4:40 a.m., he met, shook some hands, and engaged in “a rambling dialogue” with some startled young demonstrators. (“I said, ‘I know you, probably most of you think I’m an SOB, but, ah, I want you to know that I understand just how you feel.’”)