Was Richard Nixon gay?

Let’s look at the 37th president’s sexuality

At a Washington D.C. dinner party, a journalist dropped a fork on the floor. Picking it up, she noticed that President Nixon and his close friend Bebe Rebozo were holding hands under the table.

The scene is found in all the biographies—with a lot of other talk about the two men. They came across, as an aide to Lyndon Johnson notes, “close like lovers.” But still it seems incredible to think that Richard Nixon was gay.

Richard Nixon (edited)

The Washington press monitored the situation quietly.

For the book Nixon’s Darkest Secrets (2012), longtime White House press reporter Don Fulsom gathers the clues into a chapter called “Nixon’s Sexuality.” The president’s secretary is quoted. “He had a way of ignoring her,” she says of his wife, Pat Nixon.

“I never saw him touch Pat’s hand,” a Nixon aide says. “I have never seen quite so cold an arrangement.”

Nixon is recalled, when drinking, to be at public events “with his arm around Bebe the way you’d cuddle your senior prom date.”