“Good morning, gentlemen,” he began. “Now that all the members of the press are delighted that I have lost, I’d like to make a statement of my own.” He could see reporters “exchanging glances,” he recalled, and yet—or so—he plunged on. His voice was not abject, but his rambling sarcasm would become permanently enshrined by Nixon’s foes in the annals of what reporters were by now calling “Nixonland.”*2 He famously ended, “Just think of how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”26
