In the weeks following U.S. President Donald Trump's second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, users on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube shared a quote about the purported dangers of existing as an enemy or friend of the U.S., attributing the remark to the German-born American political scientist and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The full quote was, "The word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
Users promoted the quote after developments including Trump's announcements — and delays — of tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and a contentious late-February Oval Office meeting in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine was at war with Russia, as of this writing.
(Bluesky)
The attribution to Kissinger originated with the conservative editor, author and United Nations delegate William F. Buckley Jr., who said Kissinger made the comment during a November 1968 phone call between the pair.
No audio recording of the phone call existed. Despite there being no way to definitively confirm that Kissinger expressed the thought using that exact phrasing during the phone call, all available historical evidence pointed to him as likely the person who originated the words. Decades-old newspaper articles — including a 1974 piece that Buckley, who died at the age of 82 in 2008, authored — attributed the quote to Kissinger. Kissinger, who died in 2023, never refuted the attribution.
A representative for Kissinger's official website did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Until then, Snopes is withholding a definitive truth rating.
The context of the quote
On Oct. 13, 1974, the New Jersey newspaper Daily Record published a Buckley-authored article titled "Henry Kissinger Comes To Town." The story excerpted material from Buckley's 1974 book, "United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey."
In the story, Buckley recalled meeting Kissinger in the mid-1950s, writing, "We have been friends for many years." The in-question quote appeared later in the article, after Buckley detailed some developments that occurred before and after Richard Nixon accepted the Republican Party's nomination for U.S. president at the 1968 Republican National Convention.
Buckley mentioned the quote in the context of references to two former South Vietnamese presidents, including Ngo Dinh Diem, who served from 1955 until his assassination in a 1963 coup, and Nguyen Van Thieu, who held office from 1967 to 1975.
Describing the situation in late 1968 during the Vietnam War— a decades-long conflict between the U.S. and communist-backed North Vietnam that lasted from 1955 to 1975 —Buckley wrote:
In late November, I was lecturing in Los Angeles. Kissinger reached me by phone. That day Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford had blasted Thieu for taking so adamant a stand on the requisite shape of the bargaining table in Paris. I still have the notes I took.
"Nixon should be told," Kissinger said, "that it is probably an objective of Clifford to depose Thieu before Nixon is inaugurated. Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
I telephoned New York, a personal meeting was set up between Kissinger and the President-elect, and a week or so later my phone rang. "You will never be able to say again that you have no contact inside the White House."
A syndicated article from The Associated Press mentioning the U.S. Secretary of Defense Clark M. Clifford's disagreement with Thieu regarding a peace-talks arrangement in Paris suggested the Kissinger quote likely may have dated to Nov. 12, 1968.
Kissinger went on to serve as national security adviser under Nixon and then secretary of state under both Nixon and former President Gerald Ford, after Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, following the Watergate scandal.
Internet users have associated Kissinger's name with a number of questionable quotes. For example, one false rumor said the former U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser once called Trump "the one true leader."