A final batch of audio recordings from the Richard Nixon White House include a brief and friendly 1973 phone chat with then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
The two-minute call was placed on May 11 that year during the height of the Watergate scandal that eventually doomed the Nixon presidency.
Trudeau said he wanted to let Nixon know how “distressed” he was by “all of this noise that is going on around the Watergate thing.”
Trudeau added that he had “great confidence and respect” for Nixon and how politicians realize how an issue like this can be “seized upon and distorted.”
Nixon replied to Trudeau that it was kind of him to call and referred to the Watergate controversy as a “deplorable incident.”
The friendly tone of the conversation is in contrast to what has long been widely regarded as a prickly relationship between the two leaders. Previously released White House recordings include Nixon occasionally using crude language to describe the former prime minister.
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