Nixon's Watergate vs. Trump's Coup

Thought for the day

Now that the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection has held its first prime-time public hearing, more and more media pundits are comparing Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal to Donald Trump's attempted coup (or as polite people say, his plan to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election). 

Here's how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who painstakingly traced and eventually broke the story of presidential criminality to the world, recently characterized the two commanders in chief:  Both planned to subvert our electoral process.  Nixon used political espionage as his corruption of choice, while Trump tried to do it through false claims of massive voter fraud. 

I was working on Capitol Hill when the five White House-backed "Plumbers" were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters.  Between that event 50 years ago, and Nixon's resignation in August of 1974, the public finally learned who hatched this illegal plan and why.  Even though I never went to law school, I knew Nixon's willingness to (1) ignore the search and seizure principles of the Fourth Amendment and (2) authorize the deployment of CIA agents to spy on Americans here at home were among his most egregious decisions.  

Nixon's key Oval Office advisors, like H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin, knew both objectives were illegal but they implemented his plan anyway.  They must have believed their boss was not a crook.  Had these "yes-men" stood up to him, I'm guessing they and nearly 40 others, including Attorney General John Mitchell and White House legal counsel John Dean, would not have been found guilty of crimes and imprisoned. 

Until Donald Trump was elected and impeached twice, I never thought America would ever have to experience a nation in crisis again.  But here we are.  Like Nixon's lust to remain in office, Trump also wanted to remain in office.  That's why White House aide Peter Navarro, outside legal counsel John Eastman and former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani backed up Trump's many declarations that, if he lost his bid for reelection, it would be the result of a rigged, illegal vote tally.  Despite as many as 60 courts rejecting claims that the election was stolen, countless GOP voters and more than 100 Republicans in Congress still believe this is exactly what happened.

Trump's "Big Lie" is different from Nixon's Watergate scandal for two significant reasons:  First, tens of millions of his MAGA supporters continue to publicly reject the fact Joe Biden is president; and, second, Nixon never urged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to prevent the Vice President of the United States from certifying the electoral college vote count (which the Constitution requires).  

I never thought I'd say this but looking back on Watergate, it now seems more like a college prank than Trump's attempted coup.

Interestingly, there is one issue that ties Nixon and Trump together at the hip.  This is the missing 18-plus minutes of Nixon tapes and Trump's 3-hour disappearance on Jan. 6.  I have always wondered if those White House tapes still exist?  Since Trump won't say, my guess is it will be up to the House Select Committee to tell the American people what he was doing, or not doing, during the height of the insurrection.  

The missing tapes finally convinced Barry Goldwater and his Republican colleagues in the Senate that Nixon had to resign.  I wonder how Mitch McConnell and his GOP colleagues will react when the veil of secrecy finally is lifted and people learn the truth about where Trump was and what he wanted his staff and followers to do while the rioters were storming the steps of the Capitol.

-DF