Lyndon Johnson sure had a INTERESTING WAY of being the first person to announce that JFK was coming to Dallas, TX on April 23, 1963. Notice how LBJ did not say, "At least wait until next November before you shoot both of us down."
Lyndon Johnson on April 23, 1963 was the FIRST person to announce that John Kennedy was coming, not merely to Texas, but to DALLAS and LBJ was also urging that JFK be in a open motorcade in Dallas
LBJ Sees Kennedy Dallas Visit - One-Day Texas Tour~ Eyed ."
Dallas Times Herald
Page One
April 24, 1963
LBJ:
"President Kennedy's schedule would permit him to attend a breakfast in Ft.
Worth, a luncheon in Dallas, and an afternoon tea in San Antonio..."
He's the only pilot you have, and if the plane
goes down, you go down with it. At least wait until next November before you shoot
him down."
LBJ to editors of Dallas Times Herald who were hyper critical of JFK on
Tuesday April 23, 1963 - also present were execs from KRCE: AM, FM and TV
station.
The Dallas Times Herald – April 24, 1963:
Before shaking
hands for nearly an hour, the vice president said he had not come to “say
anything ugly” about anyone. “My heart is not filled with fear or hate or
hypocrisy” he said.
SCORES DETRACTORS
“I sympathize with
those few who are in the minority. If they think this country is in as bad
shape as they say it is, if they think our government is stupid and disloyal,
well, I wonder why they agree to stay here anyway?” he said.
He said the President
of the United States is like a pilot and the election is when the nation picks
an airplane and a pilot for the next four years.
“At least wait until next November
before you shoot him down.”
The vice president
said he had supported President Eisenhower …
COMMON DANGER "Once you pick him, and you're flying across the water in bad weather, don't go up and open the door and try to knock him in the head. He's the only pilot you have and if the plane goes down, you go with it. "At least wait until next November before you shoot him down."
Jack Bell: “It was a wonderful day, beautiful weather. He came down Dallas’s Main Street in a motorcade. Kennedy had overruled the Secret Service, which wanted to take him directly from the airport to the Trade Mart where he was supposed to make a speech. Johnson had not wanted that. He wanted Kennedy to go through Dallas and demonstrate to these people – and to the world – that Dallas loved Kennedy. The people did. Out in the streets they gave him a terrific hand. Jackie was beautiful, and the people were rushing out to lay a hand on the car if they couldn’t get to the president. We turned a corner, and there was the Texas Schoolbook Depository.”
Robert Morrow translation: Lyndon
Johnson, who hated Sen. Ralph Yarborough’s liberal guts, was trying to put Ralph
Yarborough into JFK’s car, while at the same time putting his longtime pal Gov.
John Connally in his car in the Dallas motorcade the next day. That is
because LBJ knew that bullets were going to be flying into JFK’s car the next
day in an assassination attempt, which LBJ was, of course, orchestrating.
Lyndon
Johnson was "insisting that Jackie ride" in his car in the Texas motorcades. Source: George Smathers
who conversed with JFK on Air Force One on the flight back from Florida on Monday,
Nov. 18, 1963
QUOTE
“They are all prima
donnas of the biggest order, and they’re all insisting that they either ride
with me or Jackie. The law says the Vice President can’t ride with the President.
I’ve got to start off my speech saying what a fine guy Johnson is, what a fine
guy Connally is, and then Yarborough, and they all don’t like each other. I just
wish to hell I didn’t have to go. Can’t you think of some emergency we could
have?”
Lyndon
Johnson told journalist Robert Novak in summer 1962 that the Kennedys were losing the cold
war against the Soviet Union, losing to conservatives in Congress and that Robert Kennedy was planning to
dump him off the 1964 Democratic ticket.
Robert Novak
later married Geraldine, a secretary to LBJ
Notice how Johnson is telling Novak in the summer of 1962 how the Kennedy Administration was "losing" the cold war to the Russians. This is before the fall, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I imagine Johnson was using these same arguments with the generals, the Texas oil men and the military intelligence in the lead up to the JFK assassination.
Robert Novak:
QUOTE
"After a Texas-style cookout, LBJ reclined, nearly prone, by the swimming pool. It was just the two of us drinking Scotch, and he spoke with a candor he never bestowed on me before or after. He felt the Kennedy administration was in serious trouble, losing the cold war to the Soviet Union and losing the legislative war to conservatives in Congress. He said that he had done everything the Kennedys had wanted, including foreign missions that only guaranteed him bad publicity.
He was repaid with insults and
humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him
in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack
it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have
been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.
As for going back to
Texas, the political environment there was hardly more congenial for LBJ than
it was in Washington. Johnson's protege, John B. Connally, had just won the
Democratic nomination for governor of Texas, which still all but guaranteed
election in Texas. As secretary of the Navy, Connally had been the highest
Kennedy administration official bearing the LBJ brand.
But campaigning for governor, Connally removed the brand. With JFK and LBJ both unpopular in Texas, Connally ran against the administration he had just left, and won. Talking about Big John in that summer evening in 1962 led Johnson into self-pity. "John has turned my picture to the wall," LBJ told me. "You know I would never turn his picture to the wall."
QUOTE
[Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness, pp. 90-91]
David Lifton analysis of what Lyndon Johnson was telling Robert Novak about his major bad blood with the Kennedys in summer, 1963.
David Lifton email to Robert Morrow on 2/18/2020
2/18/2020 - 8:20 AM CST
Robert,
I think you missed an important “data-point.”
Note the following quote:
" He was repaid with insults and humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.
Forget about what Novak thinks; and focus on what LBJ said.
By stating this to Novak, LBJ was creating a public record of his having no future political ambition(s). Rather, his intent is to “go home to Texas.” IMHO: This statement is his (somewhat weak) attempt to create the appearance that he has no future political ambition; thus, removing him as having a “personal motive” in the upcoming assassination of JFK. Think about it. . : The bank robber is outside the bank; a key person says, “I don’t know what you guys think you’re up to, but I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Is there a bathroom nearby? Oh well, I’m going down the street to that Texaco station. I think they have a toilet.” etc etc. So. . . He’s no longer at the scene of the crime; he’s not “in charge.” He was just there, but that’s of no consequence, because he left when he suddenly needed to go to the nearest bathroom, down the street.”
IMHO: That’s what LBJ was doing with Novak. Creating a “political alibi.” I disagree with Novak. Johnson was not “blowing off steam.” He knew about—and was probably up to his neck—the upcoming plan to “get rid of JFK” . (And remember: it was LBJ who—as Manchester reported, based on extensive interviews with Jackie and with Kenneth O’Donnell’—pleaded with JFK to make the Texas trip ; and who (according to Jackie)“lured” him to go to Texas.
And that’s the word that she used: “lured” — and that’s after all the editing of what Manchester originally wrote. The word “lured” remained. G-D only knows what the original draft stated, before the editing by Sorensen (remember that?).
So, the central notion that LBJ (according to the evidence was deeply involved in getting Kennedy to “make the trip”; but, simultaneously was planning to “go home to Texas”—is absurd. That’s just plain nonsense. As I’ve heard they would say, down there in Texas: “That dog won’t hunt!”.
DSL
P.S. Also. .
Lyndon Johnson told Robert Novak in summer,1962 that the
Kennedys were losing the cold war against the Soviet Union,
For Johnson to be saying this is
significant because (a) That would echo the sort of thing coming from a Curtis
Lemay, (and others of that ilk); and second: since when does a Vice President
take up a political position that is so completely different than his boss, the
President, who is pursuing reasonable compromise, so that the world is
peaceful, and things don’t escalate into a nuclear exchange? IMHO.
DSL
Political Journalist and author Alfred Steinberg: LBJ was so concerned about being dropped from the 1964 Democratic ticket that he developed severe stomach pains in the fall of 1963
QUOTE
By the fall of 1963 talk was common in Washington that Johnson would be dropped from the 1964 ticket because he had turned into a negative factor. A Midwestern senator, who traveled to Connecticut with the Vice President for a fund-raising affair for the Vice President’s pal Senator Tom Dodd, reported to his Senate colleagues afterward that Johnson had lugubriously remarked during their New England visit, “I’m going to be out of it for a second term. Jack has another man in mind for Vice President.” So concerned was Johnson over what he believed would be his political doom that he developed severe stomach pains. But in this instance, the doctor’s diagnosis found it a coincidence of timing, that he was suffering from an oversupply of calcium and should eliminated milk from his diet.
UNQUOTE
[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, p. 589]
Lyndon Johnson told Liz and Leslie Carpenter in the fall of 1963 that he was get off the 1964 Democratic ticket before the Kennedys could kick him off of it. Liz Carpenter was a longtime LBJ partisan who became Lady Bird’s press secretary in the White House
(LBJ’s “right
hand man” Bobby Baker had resigned as Secretary of the Senate on 10/7/63)
QUOTE
But denying any intent to dump Johnson was good politics. There is no doubt that if scandal sank the vice president, not a tear would have been shed in the White House. More important, Johnson believed the Kennedys wanted him off the ticket. Shortly after the Baker scandal broke, Johnson had dinner with friends, including Liz and Leslie Carpenter. Johnson's car took the couple home and Johnson rode with them. "Park in the driveway and let's talk a few minutes," Johnson said. "I think I'm going to announce that I'm not going to run again for vice president so that I can get off that ticket before they try to knock me off. What I would like to do is go back to Texas and be president of Southwest Texas State Teachers College."
UNQUOTE
[Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 414, Leslie Carpenter oral history]
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