Arnold died 15 Jan 1950, so wasn't around at the time.
LeMay told the President that the resolution of the Cuban crisis was the "greatest defeat in our history"; his was a minority position. He had pressed for an immediate invasion of Cuba as soon as the crisis began and still favoured invading Cuba even after the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles. Twenty-five years later, LeMay still believed that "We could have gotten not only the missiles out of Cuba, we could have gotten the Communists out of Cuba at that time." Wiki re Vice presidential candidacy, 1968,
Early political life and developments - Because of his unrelenting opposition to the Johnson administration's Vietnam policy and what was widely perceived as his hostility to Robert McNamara, LeMay was essentially forced into retirement in February 1965. Moving to California, he was approached by conservatives to challenge moderate Republican Thomas Kuche
l for his seat in the United States Senate in 1968, but he declined
For the 1968 presidential election, LeMay originally supported former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon; he turned down two requests by former Alabama Governor George Wallace to join his newly formed American Independent Party, that year, on the grounds that a third-party candidacy might hurt Nixon's chances at the polls. (By coincidence, Wallace had served as a sergeant in a unit commanded by LeMay during World War II before LeMay had Wallace transferred to the 477th Bombardment Group.)Subsequently LeMay, while being fully aware of Wallace's segregationist platform, decided to throw his support to Wallace and eventually became Wallace's running mate.
Wallace's staff began to consider LeMay to be "politically tone-deaf" and the former Air Force General did nothing to diminish the perception of extremism that some American voters had of the Wallace-LeMay ticket.
The "bomb them back to the stone age" comment received significant publicity but LeMay disclaimed the comment, saying in a later interview: "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age. I said we had the capability to do it".
The Wallace-LeMay AIP ticket received 13.5% of the popular vote, higher than most third party candidacies in the US, and carried five states for a total of 46 electoral votes