The following LBJ defecation or enema incidents are from NYT reporter Tom Wicker, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Dan Rather, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Hubert Humphrey, Jake Pickle, newsman Neal Spelce, LBJ aide Hayes Redmond, and female reporter Helen Thomas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/03/business/media/seymour-hersh-reporter-memoir.html
[“I, Sy: Seymour Hersh’s Memoir of a Life Making the Mighty Sweat,” Michael M. Grynbaum, NYT, June 3, 2018]
Michael Grynbaum, writing in the NYT
QUOTE
He describes Lyndon Johnson expressing his displeasure over an article by meeting a reporter at his Texas ranch and — there is no pleasant way to put this — defecating on the ground in front of him.
UNQUOTE
Texas Monthly, “Bringing up Lyndon,” January 1976 by Larry L. King
Douglas Dillion, Treasury Secretary from 1/21/61 to 4/1/65
QUOTE
David Halberstam has written of LBJ’s compulsion to attend the call of nature while instructing his advisors, grunting and splashing as they shuffled uncertainly in the bathroom door, and of how C. Douglas Dillon—a breathing personification of the elite Eastern Establishment—“was virtually driven out of the Cabinet by this maneuver alone.” Often, in the presence of national newsmen or powerful Establishment people, he seemed to delight in scatological jokes and barnyard expressions. When someone suggested the retirement of J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ said, “I’d rather have him inside the tent pissin’ out than outside the tent pissin’ in.” He whooped a cowboy yell inside the Taj Mahal, more, I suspect, to appall or confound his critics than to hear the echo.
UNQUOTE
3)
Dan Rather’s Bathroom Chat with LBJ – as told to Conan O’Brien in 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDhbWXRD81g
Dan Rather admits to Conan Obrien that LBJ would use the bathroom in front of him. Also, LBJ told Rather “What in the hell is wrong with you, boy!” as LBJ complained about press coverage of him. Lyndon Johnson also told Rather that he expected favorable press coverage because they were both from Texas.
4) Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin describes talking with LBJ while he sat on the toilet
December 20, 2008, C-SPAN
Web link to Doris Kearns:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4617681/user-clip-toilet-time-lbj
5) Hubert Humphrey - https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2018/12/did-lbj-want-nixon-to-beat-humphrey/
QUOTE
Offner relays one hideous incident in which LBJ commanded Humphrey to recite aloud for him his recent speech in favor of the Johnson’s Vietnam policy, then walked into the bathroom to defecate and, while sitting on the toilet, hollered through the open door: “Keep talking Hubert, I’m listening.”
UNQUOTE
6) Jake Pickle
The first time Jake Pickle met Lyndon Johnson he was taking a dump on the toilet and insisting his aides converse and interact with him
[Jake Pickle, Jake, pp. 38-39]
The time was early 1941 and in Washington, D.C. A young Jake Pickle, later a Texas congressman himself from 1963-1995, was been summoned to meet with Congressman Lyndon Johnson at his apartment.
QUOTE
“You should watch him, Pickle!” Luther said. “He’s amazing. He’ll have you do things you never thought possible. Big things! Important things!”
Luther went on like this long enough to get me really nervous. Then we took the elevator upstairs, to Johnson’s apartment.
We knew that Lady Bird was out of town. We knocked on the door, which was ajar. At first there was no answer, then a voice - the Congressman’s - called out, “C’mon in! You fellows come in here!”
We walked through the apartment, and Johnson called again. “I’m in here. Luther! Jake! Come on here!”
We turned the corner. Johnson was on the throne! He was wearing striped pajamas, or at least the tops. The bottoms were on the floor, around his feet. I ducked behind the door, but poor Luther was being summoned by name. He stuck his head around the bathroom door and spoke to the Congressman. Occasionally, I joined in. We conversed like this for a while, Luther and I standing in the bedroom, Johnson attending to his business in the bathroom. I stood around the corner, out of sight, grinning like hell. Luther, trying to carry on a normal conversation with his boss, couldn’t afford to let laughter creep into his voice. He kept his eyes on the carpet instead of me.
They went on like this for a few minutes; then Johnson called, “Luther, hand me some more paper!” And Luther did.
Finally, there was the sound of rushing water, and Johnson appeared in the bedroom in his pajamas. He unrolled a map of the proposed highway, and we discussed the road for an hour. Nothing was settled, but the meeting gave Johnson the chance to observe me, and vice versa. Of course, I had already observed more of Johnson that day than I had anticipated!
Years later, I heard of similar incidents, where Johnson conducted business from the bathroom. It was a habit that embarrassed people and threw them off balance. Some, especially in the Kennedy camp, found this habit particularly disgusting, and even frightening. They believe Johnson used it to intimidate and humiliate subordinates.
That was probably true in some cases. But I knew Lyndon Johnson for thirty years, and I believe that although he was aware of the effect this habit had on people, he didn’t care.
UNQUOTE
[Jake Pickle, Jake, pp. 38-39]
7) Doris Kearns Goodwin
Lyndon Johnson liked to degrade and dominate people as he forced them to watch him defecate. As he told a reputed mistress Doris Kearns Goodwin:
QUOTE
“one of the delicate Kennedyites who came into the bathroom with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet. You’d think he had never seen those parts of the body before. For there he was, standing as far away from me as he possibly could, keeping his back toward me the whole time, trying to carry on a conversation. I could barely hear a word he said. I kept straining my ears and then finally I asked him to come a little closer to me. Then began the most ludicrous scene I had ever witnessed. Instead of turning around and walking over to me, he kept his face away from me and walked backward, one rickety step at a time. For a moment there I thought he was going to run right into me. I certainly made me wonder how that man had made it so far in the world.”
UNQUOTE
[Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, pp. 241-242]
8) Longtime KTBC newsman Neal Spelce, from his book, describes seeing LBJ having an enema:
1960 – KTBC Newsman Neal Spelce has a CBS Fellowship in NYC. Lyndon Johnson orders him to come over to his hotel where LBJ is in the middle of having an ENEMA:
QUOTE
When I walked into the hotel’s presidential suite, where LBJ was staying, there was a battery of campaign staffers at work, typewriters clicking away and people on the phone. I looked around and didn’t see him. An aide rolled his eyes and said, “He’s back there in the bedroom. Go on in.”
I was taken aback to find LBJ lying on the bed, getting an enema while giving orders to the staff members who’d gathered around him. The odor, the sounds! I nearly lost my lunch. But that was LBJ. His attitude was, “I can’t stop because I need an enema. Let’s keep moving and working.” The rumors were true that he sometimes conducted meetings on the toilet, with the bathroom open.
UNQUOTE
[Neal Spelce, With the Bark Off: A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media, pp. 43-45]
9) Hayes Redmond, a staffer for LBJ: use this hypertext link:
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1980/september/books-ol-lyndon/
Lyndon Johnson: having an enema while giving dictation to his secretary Marie Fehmer and yelling at Bill Moyers, with Lynda Bird and Lady Bird in the room. As told by Coates Redmond, the widow of Hayes Redmond, who was a White House staffer under LBJ.
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1980/september/books-ol-lyndon/
QUOTE
Listen to Coates Redmond, widow of the late Hayes Redmond, a White House staffer: “I don’t remember what year it was, but one day Hayes, my husband, came home laughing himself sick, saying ’You wouldn’t believe what I saw.’ He explained that he had said to Bill Moyers, ’Gee, I never get to see the President when he’s doing those outrageous things everyone tells me about. And the next time he does one, 1 want to be in on it. I’m working for the man and I want to see this.’
“So one day Bill telephoned him to come quick to the President’s bedroom. I think Lynda Bird was in there, and Mrs. Johnson, and Marie Fehmer was taking dictation. The President was lying on his side in his bed and facing the group. There was a nurse on the other side, the three television sets were all going, and he was going snap, snap, snap. He’s batting dictation to Marie, he’s switching the channels, he’s yelling at Bill-and I think there were others there, someone from the networks and another from the White House staff-and he’s yelling at them too. And everybody in this fairly large group was acting normal as all get-out. And Hayes said that he started to walk around a little, because he couldn’t figure out what the nurse was doing there. Bill said, ’Can’t you see?’ Hayes said, ’No, I can’t see anything.’ But little by little it was getting apparent, and Bill whispered to him, ’Well, you wanted a good one, you got a good one-he’s having an enema.’ “
UNQUOTE
10)
Wayne Madsen tells the time Helen Thomas told her about President Lyndon Johnson defecating in front of her during an interview in the White House living quarters
Wayne Madsen email to Robert Morrow July 16, 2018
QUOTE
Here is my recollection of what Helen Thomas told me.
Helen Thomas covered the White House for UPI. During LBJ's term, the president asked Helen if she wanted an exclusive interview. He ushered her upstairs into the president's private quarters. He had her take a seat outside the bathroom. With the door wide open, LBJ sat on the toilet to take a crap and he had Thomas asking him questions during what was a long interlude. Helen said an exclusive interview with the president was what every reporter would have died for. In this case, it came with Johnson taking a crap and exposing Helen, to, of course, a view of Jumbo, his name for his penis.
Helen probably told me at the Press Club probably in 2008. There were several events marking the 100th anniversary of the Press Club that she attended.
I'd guess the interview was in 1966 or 67.
UNQUOTE
11)
Richard Goodwin was yet another one of LBJ’s defecation victims
Richard Goodwin was yet another one of LBJ's defecation victims. These incidents were designed by LBJ to humiliate and dominate staffers and reporters.
RICHARD GOODWIN: I had come back
to the White House by then. No, I remember I walked in and I looked around the
bedroom and there was no one there. Then I suddenly hear a voice from the
bathroom saying, “Dick! Dick! Come on in!” So I walked in and there he was,
sitting on the toilet, defecating, and uh, my years in the army had prepared me
for this, but I had never seen a president taking a shit before. Then he said,
“Dick, I want you to work for me. I’m going to pass all those bills. I know
what the man on the street wants -- a little medical care, a rug on the floor,
a place to take Molly and the children.” He says, “I’m going to get a war on
poverty, and I’m going to move on to civil rights. Those Harvards think I’m a
politician from Texas who doesn’t care about the Negroes, and as senator I did
the best that I could, but now I represent the entire country.” I began to fear
he was going to get a severe case of hemorrhoids. And I agreed to work with him
in what turned out to be a historic year.
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