The parallels between President Donald Trump’s Administration and President Richard Nixon should frighten us. However, for those who didn’t live through the nationally televised Senate Watergate Committee testimonies in June 1973, the incredible similarities are staggering and worth reviewing.
Both administrations participated in, condoned, and covered up ongoing criminal behavior against their respective leading political opponents and their campaigns to influence their respective Presidential elections in their favor. Both Trump and Nixon administrations perpetrated coverups of their involvement, directly and indirectly approving misinformation and disinformation campaigns to hide their involvement.
Both Presidents in the bid for re-election demonstrated incredible paranoia, which largely drove their clandestine, illegal efforts to “rig the race.” Both Trump and Nixon were directly and vociferously involved in the misinformation campaigns. In Trump’s case, that includes his Twitter account, as where Nixon relied on more professional press channels, sometimes involving his White House Press Secretary and White House press briefings.
Both Nixon and then Trump hired senior staff, who then employed more staff, who directly and willingly helped, participated, or even acted as agents of the White House to directly carry out the efforts to undermine their main political rivals. Both Nixon and Trump used agents not formally hired and definitely not federal employees, instead paying them privately, or in exchange for better White House influence, or in Nixon’s case through the famous “campaign slush fund.”
For Mr. Trump, Roger Stone worked feverishly to connect with the Wikileaks hacked email treasure chest all through the summer of 2016 campaign. Stone was recently indicted and convicted [2]of obstruction and witness tampering in the Mueller investigation of Russian criminal meddling in the 2016 Presidential election. Stone desperately sought information on when and how their Democratic opponent’s hacked emails would be used or leaked, presumably to coordinate and make these releases most effective for the Trump campaign he was working for at the time, during the Summer of 2016.
Perhaps we no longer need to guess as to why Roger Stone’s greatest hero is President Richard Nixon, so much so that he has a rather large tattoo of Nixon in the middle of his back. He is proud to show it off to the press [1],[2],[3].
Some big differences between Trump and Nixon? Look first to the unraveling of the network of co-conspirators. Testimony from the House Impeachment Hearings this week featured few-to-none scared, openly reluctant, or even Trump-Always-Faithful (and duplicitous) witnesses. Most were forthright and seemingly pleased to finally get the nation to listen. US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, before this time, a “Trump-Always” supporter, even appeared openly gleeful to throw Donald under the bus. These witnesses, by and large, relished their opportunity to bring Americans into the loop of co-conspirators doing Trump’s dirty work.
Of course, it does help that the Democrats control the House and its Judiciary Committee, but Gordon Sondland’s “an early Christmas” moment remains remarkable.
The most astounding difference between the investigations and impeachment proceedings, now and then? For Trump’s case, most witness testimony this week openly named the President as in-the-loop, discussing the topic of withheld aid to Ukraine on numerous unencrypted, sometimes public phone calls. Trump set off red flags and alarms in every office involved in US Diplomacy with Ukraine. Richard Nixon looks like a mastermind by comparison, and his coverup appeared broad and well-coordinated, and no one turned in the Boss until late in the game.
Nixon’s staffing provided a great advantage in criminal operations. They hand-picked key senior staff in the White House to do the dirty work, and from the beginning. Nixon hired henchmen to run his covert operations, including the 2 famous “German shepherds” HR Haldeman as Chief-of-Staff, and John Ehrlichman in Domestic Policy.
Nixon’s White House Chief-of-Staff H.R. Haldeman ran the White House as well as all covert operations with an iron fist, and with widely feared authority. Ehrlichman, in turn, ran the “plumbers” operation (initiated for Pentagon Papers coverup) and hired career henchmen and covert operators, including Howard Hunt, Gordon Liddy, and Charles Colson.
I mean, if you’re going to run a mafia operation, you should hire, you know, Goodfellas like these.
President Trump’s strategy for hiring top-level staff? Hire people who spend most of their time praising Trump, a truly a “stable genius,” and never disagree with anything he says or tweets, especially when he contradicts himself in earlier statements. I guess that does require some deft skills in changing direction in an instant, and often. Finally for Trump, make sure to fire them the moment they ever publicly disagree with the President. This puts everyone in the White House in difficult situations, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who must perjure himself to keep his post if he ever gets deposed.
What comes next in the impeachment? The fun is mostly over now, as the House wraps up and votes whether to move to the trial in the Senate. Then, I am guessing the remaining Trump loyalists, with a majority in the Senate, will have their say.
