Because I prefer history, to revisionist history—
Tom Brokaw: What Trump and Nixon Share
[March 7, 2019] There are notable differences between the two presidents, but there are also striking similarities.
There are their top aides lost to scandal. For Mr. Nixon: H.R.
Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Egil Krogh, Dwight Chapin, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Charles Colson and other[s]... For Mr. Trump: Michael Flynn, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke... not to mention...people who have resigned in shame or out of disgust.
There are the odd bedfellow celebrity allies... Elvis...[vs] Kanye...
Tax issues plague Mr. Trump as they did Mr. Nixon….
And like Mr. Trump, Mr. Nixon hated the press… ww.nytimes.com/...
Important differences—
Nixon
- globalist
- opening of relations with China
- détente with Russia
- ended the draft
- pushed Congress to approve a $100 million war on cancer
- created the Environmental Protection Agency
TRUMP
- white
supremacist nationalist
- foreign policy changes day-by-day
- attacks our European allies
- loves dictators in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea
- failing with China tariffs & infrastructure
In their own words:
Nixon on Watergate, Trump on the Russia investigation
[March 17, 2019]
Denying knowledge of potential crimes
Nixon— Nov 1973— “I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
Trump— Nov 2018— “When you talk about innocent, I am truly not involved (in) any form of collusion with Russia. Believe me, that’s the last thing I can think of to be involved in.”
Denying that there was obstruction
Nixon- Nov ‘73— “I made my mistakes. But ... in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.”
Trump— Sept ‘18— “There was no obstruction. I mean, unless you call obstruction the fact that I fight back. I fight back. I really fight back.”
Distancing from associates under scrutiny
Lamenting the departure of senior aides
Touting cooperation with investigators
Calling for an end to the investigation
Nixon— Jan ‘74— “One year of Watergate is enough.”
Saying the probe distracts from real issues
Musing about influencing the FBI and DOJ
Talking about firing the investigators
Nixon— July— “On Cox, we just may have to fire the son of a bitch. You know?”
Trump— Apr ‘18— “Why don’t I just fire Mueller? Well, I think it’s a disgrace, what’s going on.”
www.cnn.com/...
Historian: Trump comparisons aren't fair to Nixon
“One president he does get compared to a lot is Nixon — is that fair?” [Hill.TV co-host] Ball asked.
"I don't think it is — Nixon is a complicated character," said [Historian Mark] Updegrove, CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas. "But you have to remember Nixon was incredibly experienced before he came into office."
"He knew the way the government worked and he had an incredible intellectual curiosity,” Updegrove added. thehill.com/...
Nixon Almost Survived Watergate.
[Mar 24, 2019]
...But Nixon was driven from office, you say. Well, consider how arduous a task it was, how many miscalculations he made and how long it took. And even then, at the end, when he resigned the office in August 1974, 4 out of 10 Americans didn’t want him to go...
The voters responded to the pocketbook issues, with 42 percent telling Republican pollsters that inflation was the leading issue facing the country. But, amid the hearings, only 9 percent listed Watergate. Two-thirds of the public thought it was time to move on, and just 17 percent favored impeachment….
But even after the Saturday Night Massacre, only a third of respondents in a Gallup Poll thought the president should be forced from office. “Despite the increasingly negative views of Nixon at that time, most Americans continued to reject the notion that Nixon should leave,” wrote the late Pew pollster Andrew Kohut in a 2014 analysis. The number of Americans who thought impeachment was warranted didn’t approach 50 percent until Nixon’s next self-imposed crisis the following spring… www.politico.com/...
Stay tuned.
We are approaching the tipping point, but must stay poised and in control.
There is no redemption coming for Trump— History’s Fat Nixon.