I wouldn’t trust Nixon from here to that phone.

Attributed to Senator Barry Goldwater, the remark is a blunt, colloquial way of expressing profound distrust of Richard Nixon’s honesty and motives. By measuring distrust over a comically short distance (“from here to that phone”), Goldwater turns skepticism into a vivid physical metaphor: Nixon is portrayed as untrustworthy even in the most immediate, low-stakes circumstances. The line also reflects intraparty tensions among Republicans in the mid-to-late 20th century, where ideological allies could still view one another as personally unreliable. As a quotation, it endures because it compresses a complex political judgment—about character, credibility, and power—into a memorable, quotable image.