Woodward and
Bernstein thought Nixon defined corruption. Then came Trump.
Perspective by Bob Woodward
and
June 5, 2022 at 12:00 a.m. EDT
President George
Washington, in his celebrated 1796 Farewell Address, cautioned that American
democracy was fragile. “Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be
enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government,” he warned.
Two of his
successors — Richard Nixon and Donald Trump — demonstrate the shocking genius
of our first president’s foresight.
As reporters, we
had studied Nixon and written about him for nearly half a century, during which
we believed with great conviction that never again would America have a
president who would trample the national interest and undermine democracy
through the audacious pursuit of personal and political self-interest.
And then along came
Trump.
The heart of
Nixon’s criminality was his successful subversion of the electoral process —
the most fundamental element of American democracy. He accomplished it through
a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and disinformation that
enabled him to literally determine who his opponent would be in the
presidential election of 1972.
With a covert
budget of just $250,000, a team of undercover Nixon operatives derailed the
presidential campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, the Democrats’ most
electable candidate.
Nixon then ran
against Sen. George McGovern, a South Dakota Democrat widely viewed as the much
weaker candidate, and won in a historic landslide with 61 percent of the vote
and carrying 49 states.
Over the next two
years, Nixon’s illegal conduct was gradually exposed by the news media, the
Senate Watergate Committee, special prosecutors, a House impeachment
investigation and finally by the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the
court ordered Nixon to turn over his secret tape recordings, which doomed his
presidency.
These instruments
of American democracy finally stopped Nixon dead in his tracks, forcing the
only resignation of a president in American history.
Donald Trump not
only sought to destroy the electoral system through false claims of voter fraud
and unprecedented public intimidation of state election officials, but he also
then attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his duly elected
successor, for the first time in American history.
Trump’s diabolical
instincts exploited a weakness in the law. In a highly unusual and specific
manner, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 says that at 1 p.m. on Jan.
6 following a presidential election, the House and Senate will meet in a joint
session. The president of the Senate, in this case Vice President Mike Pence,
will preside. The electoral votes from the 50 states and the District of
Columbia will then be opened and counted.
This singular
moment in American democracy is the only official declaration and certification
of who won the presidential election.
In a deception that
exceeded even Nixon’s imagination, Trump and a group of lawyers, loyalists and
White House aides devised a strategy to bombard the country with false
assertions that the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump had really won.
They zeroed in on the Jan. 6 session as the opportunity to overturn the
election’s result.
Leading up to that
crucial date, Trump’s lawyers circulated memos with manufactured claims of
voter fraud that had counted the dead, underage citizens, prisoners and
out-of-state residents.
We watched in utter
dismay as Trump persistently claimed that he was really the winner. “We won,”
he said in a speech on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse. “We won in a landslide. This was
a landslide.” He publicly and relentlessly pressured Pence to make him the
victor on Jan. 6.
On that day, driven
by Trump’s rhetoric and his obvious approval, a mob descended on the Capitol and, in a stunning act of
collective violence, broke through doors and windows and ransacked the House
chamber, where the electoral votes were to be counted. The mob then went in
search of Pence — all to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump did nothing to restrain them.
By legal definition
this is clearly sedition — conduct, speech or organizing that incites people to
rebel against the governing authority of the state. Thus, Trump became the
first seditious president in our history.
Fifty years
earlier, Nixon was intent on undermining and subverting the American system of
free elections, the keystone that holds our democracy together.
In 1971, Howard
Hunt, a former CIA operative, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, were
hired to work for the White House in a “Special Investigations Unit” — known
there as the “Plumbers.” Their initial mission: to plug leaks from Nixon
administration officials to the news media.
One of the most
notorious undertakings of the Nixon Plumbers was the burglary of the
psychiatrist for Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New
York Times and Washington Post. Hunt and Liddy ran the burglary. The hope,
unfulfilled, was to find dirt on Ellsberg or show that he had communist ties.
With the onset of
the campaign, Hunt and Liddy were moved to the Nixon reelection committee to
quarterback spying and sabotage operations.
Memos discovered
during the Watergate investigations identified Muskie as “Target A,” with the
goal “to visit upon him some political wounds that will not only reduce his
chances for nomination — but damage him as a candidate, should he be
nominated.”
In one of the
strongest and most effective espionage efforts, Elmer Wyatt, a Nixon campaign
operative, was planted in Muskie’s campaign, where he became the senator’s
chauffeur. Wyatt was paid $1,000 a month to deliver copies of sensitive
documents he transported between Muskie’s Senate office and his presidential
campaign headquarters. It was a spectacular yield. The volume was so great that
Wyatt, code-named “Ruby I,” rented an apartment midway between the two offices,
equipped with a photocopying machine.
Copies of Muskie’s
documents were ferried to the Nixon reelection headquarters, where campaign
manager John Mitchell, the former attorney general, took advantage of the
almost total visibility the documents provided into the Muskie campaign:
“itineraries, internal memoranda, drafts of speeches and position papers,”
according to the Senate Watergate Committee’s final report in 1974. The Nixon
campaign also received papers on campaign strategy debates, fundraising,
personnel, media operations and internal disputes.
Meanwhile Gordon
Strachan, the top political aide to White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob”
Haldeman, and Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary, who was like a son
to the president, hired Donald Segretti, an old college friend and former Army
lawyer, to implement sabotage efforts.
Segretti in turn
hired 22 individuals to inflict these “political wounds” and was paid $77,000
in checks and cash. Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon’s personal lawyer, secretly made
the payments from leftover campaign funds.
In March 1972 one
Segretti operative circulated a counterfeit letter on Muskie stationery with
allegations of sexual improprieties involving rival Democratic candidates Henry
“Scoop” Jackson and Hubert Humphrey. The letterhead cost only $20 to reproduce,
but Chapin told Segretti that the $20 was a sensational investment and had
obtained “$10,000 to $20,000 worth of benefit for the President’s reelection
campaign,” according to the Senate Watergate Committee report.
Over the months of
the Democratic primary race, heckling, pickets and “M-U-S-K-I-E spells Loser”
signs trailed Muskie. Segretti and his operatives stole shoes left by the
candidate and his staff outside hotel room doors for polishing before campaign
events. Keys were surreptitiously snatched from campaign motorcades while the
drivers stepped away for a smoke. Shoes and keys were then deposited in
dumpsters outside town, making it impossible for the campaign to stay on
schedule and function smoothly. Segretti’s operatives reported, “We did grandly
piss off his staff and rattled him considerably.”
Muskie and his
staffers were spooked. At a rally in New Hampshire, standing on the back of a
truck, the candidate expressed how upset he was by published slurs on his wife,
Jane. A gossipy editorial published by conservative William Loebin the
Manchester Union Leader, headlined “Big Daddy’s Jane,” had suggested that the
senator’s wife drank, smoked and liked to tell dirty jokes. The story was also
published in Newsweek. Around the same time, Muskie had appeared to
condone the use of the word “Canuck,” a derogatory term for Canadians, in a
forged letter drafted by a Nixon White House aide.
Under assault,
Muskie openly cried at the New Hampshire campaign stop. David Broder, The
Washington Post’s senior political reporter, wrote in a front-page story that
Muskie broke down three times, “with tears streaming down his face.”
Drip by drip, all
this added to the implosion of the Muskie candidacy. Later, Muskie said, “Our
campaign was constantly plagued by leaks and disruptions and fabrications, but
we could never pinpoint who was doing it.”
“There were many
players in the Watergate drama,” Nixon’s chief of staff, Haldeman, wrote in his
1978 book, “The Ends of Power,” “and behind them all lurks the
ever-present shadow of the President of the United States.”
Haldeman added,
“This tendency to strike too hard … reflected a belief in, and too great a
willingness to accept, the concept that the end justifies the means.” In other
words, Nixon believed that his political survival was a “greater good,” worth
subverting the will of the people.
“A man is not
finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits,” Nixon wrote in a
note to himself in 1969. It was a classically Nixonian adage — embraced by
Trump, who had been defeated in the 2020 election but, armed with falsehoods
and a scheme to hold on to power, refused to quit.
Even before the
election, Trump relentlessly tried to maneuver and claim that the electoral
process was rigged against him, laying the groundwork for an assault on the
legitimacy of its outcome, which he continues to this day.
On June 22, 2020,
for example, nearly five months before Election Day, he tweeted:
“MILLIONS OF
MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE
THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”
At 2:30 a.m. on Nov.
4, as the presidential vote count solidified Biden’s path to victory in the
electoral college, Trump told the nation and the world: “This is a fraud on the
American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready
to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Three days later
the Associated Press and the rest of the media declared Biden the victor.
Trump, however, said: “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as
the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t
want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from
over. …
“Our campaign will
start prosecuting our case in court. …
“I will not rest
until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that
Democracy demands.”
Unlike Nixon, Trump
accomplished his subversion largely in public. He pursued attacks on the
legitimacy of the 2020 election process from campaign rally podiums, the White
House and his popular Twitter feed. Nonetheless, he lost 61 of his court
challenges, even from judges he had appointed.
After Election Day,
Trump began another, more deadly assault on the electoral process.
“JANUARY SIXTH, SEE
YOU IN DC!” he tweeted on Dec. 30, 2020, from Mar-a-Lago, where he was spending
the holidays.
Longtime chief
strategist Steve Bannon, who had been in and out of Trump’s favor, picked up
the thread in a phone conversation with Trump that same day.
“You’ve got to
return to Washington and make a dramatic return today,” Bannon told him,
according to reporting in Woodward and Robert Costa’s book, “Peril.”
“You’ve got to call
Pence off the f---ing ski slopes and get him back here today. This is a
crisis,” Bannon said, referring to the vice president, who was vacationing in
Vail, Colo.
“We’re going to
bury Biden on January 6th,” Bannon said.
If Republicans
could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, Bannon said, it
would be hard for him to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him
illegitimate.
“We are going to
kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib,” Bannon said.
Trump’s attack on
Biden’s legitimacy included a stream of public statements, legal deceptions and
a constant focus on disruption of the Jan. 6 certification in Congress.
In a two-page
“privileged and confidential” memo, dated Jan. 2, ultraconservative lawyer John
Eastman set out in six points how Trump would be declared the winner. It was a
blueprint for a coup. The memo said, “7 states have transmitted dual slates of
electors.”
If even a single
state had dual slates of electors, that could cause havoc in the congressional
certification.
Republican Sen.
Mike Lee of Utah, one of Trump’s strongest supporters, was shocked when he read
the memo that the White House had sent to him. Alternative electors would be
major national news if it were true. He had heard of none. Lee had launched his
own investigation, and spent two months talking to Trump and White House
officials and calling representatives in Republican-controlled legislatures.
There were zero alternate slates. Lee was surprised that the deceptive memo had
come from Eastman, a law school professor and former clerk to Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas.
Lee eventually went
to the Senate floor and, holding up a copy of the Constitution, said he had
spent an enormous amount of time looking into the matter and found “not even
one” example of an alternate elector.
Rudy Giuliani, the
former New York mayor, Trump lawyer and confidant, made similar allegations of
a rigged election and massive voter fraud. Giuliani wrote his claims in long
memos that he sent to Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump insider. When Graham
investigated the claims, he found nothing. “Count me out,” Graham said
dramatically on the Senate floor.
The evening of Jan.
5, the day before the formal certification process, Trump met with Pence. He
urged Pence as the presiding officer at the certification session to throw
Biden’s electors out.
Pence said he
didn’t have the power.
“What if these
people say you do?” Trump asked. He gestured outside, where a massive crowd of
his supporters had gathered. Their cheering and bullhorns could be heard
through the Oval Office windows.
“I wouldn’t want
any one person to have that authority,” Pence said.
“But wouldn’t it
almost be cool to have that power?” asked the president of the United States.
“No,” Pence said.
“I’m just there to open the envelopes.”
“You don’t
understand, Mike, you can do this. I don’t want to be your
friend anymore if you don’t do this.” Trump’s voice became louder, and he grew
threatening. “You’ve betrayed us. I made you. You were nothing,” he said. “Your
career is over if you do this.”
After Pence
departed that evening, Trump invited a group of his press aides into the Oval
Office. He had opened a door near the Resolute Desk. It was about 31 degrees
outside, and cold air streamed in. Trump was oblivious to his shivering aides
and instead seemed to bask in the cheers of his supporters outside.
“Isn’t that great?”
he said. “Tomorrow is going to be a big day. It’s so cold, and they’re out
there by the thousands. There is a lot of anger out there right now.”
Trump threatened to
encourage primary challenges against those in Congress who supported Biden’s
certification as president.
At 1 a.m. on Jan. 6,
2021, Trump tweeted: “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we
will win the Presidency … Mike can send it back!”
Twitter and social
media posts lit up with threats of violence. I’m going to kill this person.
Shoot this person. Hang this guy.
In a 10 a.m. call
to Pence, Trump gave it one more try. “Mike, you can do this. I’m counting on
you to do it. If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man four years ago.”
At Trump’s “Stop
the Steal” rally that morning, several thousand people gathered on the Ellipse
in the cold. “Let’s have trial by combat,” Giuliani said as the crowd cheered
their approval.
Trump followed. “We
will never give up. We will never concede. … You’ll never take back our country
with weakness,” he yelled to the crowd from the stage.
“I know that
everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully
and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said.
A determined crowd
of more than 1,000 descended on the Capitol. Soon after 2 p.m. the mob became
violent. Glass began to shatter, doors were forced open. An unprecedented assault
and insurrection were in full progress. “Hang Mike Pence,” they chanted, while
roaming the halls of Congress. Some were dressed in garish costumes. Outside, a
makeshift gallows was erected to hang Pence.
In the White House,
Trump watched the riot on television.
A year later, the
House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was far along in its
investigation: It had issued 86 subpoenas, interviewed more than 500 witnesses
and obtained 60,000 pages of records. As of this writing, the committee had an
abundance of evidence that the insurrection was a Trump operation — and
committee members have vowed to push further.
Both Nixon and
Trump created a conspiratorial world in which the U.S. Constitution, laws and
fragile democratic traditions were to be manipulated or ignored, political
opponents and the media were “enemies,” and there were few or no restraints on
the powers entrusted to presidents.
Both Nixon and
Trump had been outsiders, given to paranoia, relentless in their ambition,
carrying chips on their shoulders. Trump from the outer boroughs of New York
City, not Manhattan. Nixon from Yorba Linda, Calif., not San Francisco or Los
Angeles. Even after achieving the most powerful office in the world, these two
men harbored deep insecurities.
Our conclusions come from covering Nixon and Watergate for half a century. And from reporting on Trump for more than six years — Woodward in three books (“Fear” in 2018, “Rage” in 2020 and “Peril” with Robert Costa in 2021); Bernstein as a CNN reporter and commentator, analyzing Trump, his behavior and its meaning from 2016 through this year.
Bernstein reported in
November 2020 that 21 Republican senators were contemptuous and disdainful of
Trump in private, despite regularly voicing their support for the president in
public. After the story ran on CNN — which named the 21 senators — another
senior Republican senator said that the number was closer to 40.
Watergate began for
us when we were called to work with a team of Washington Post reporters the day
after five burglars were arrested during a break-in at the Democratic National
Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972.
Though it took us
months to establish, Nixon, his White House staff and his reelection campaign
immediately began an unprecedented attack on the justice system, launching a
comprehensive coverup involving lies, hush-money payments and offers of
presidential pardons to conceal their crimes.
In a June 23, 1972,
tape recording, six days after the burglars’ arrest at the Watergate, chief of
staff Haldeman told Nixon, “The FBI is not under control … their investigation
is now leading into some productive areas, because they’ve been able to trace
the money.”
Haldeman said he
and Mitchell had a plan for the CIA to claim that national security secrets
would be jeopardized if the FBI did not halt its Watergate investigation.
Nixon approved the
plan and ordered Haldeman to call in the CIA director and his deputy. “Play it
tough,” the president directed. “That’s the way they play it, and that’s the
way we are going to play it.”
This was the tape
that was released on Aug. 5, 1974, and was unfortunately called the “smoking gun.”
It was really no worse than some of the other tapes that had been previously
disclosed. By then Congress and the public had grown weary and disgusted with
Nixon.
John Dean, the
Nixon White House counsel, was initially in charge of the containment and coverup
of Watergate activities. He found a willing participant in Assistant Attorney
General Henry Petersen, the head of the Justice Department criminal division, a
powerful post. Petersen agreed to ensure that Earl Silbert, the U.S. attorney
in charge of investigating Watergate, did not investigate Segretti and others.
According to the
Senate Watergate report, “Petersen directed Silbert not to probe the
relationships between Segretti and Kalmbach, Chapin, and Strachan because he
‘didn’t want him getting into the relationships between the President and his
lawyer or the fact that the President’s lawyer might be involved in somewhat, I
thought, illegitimate campaign activities on behalf of the President.’”
The coverup could
proceed with what — in practical terms — amounted to an official blessing.
In his memoir,
Haldeman, five years after his resignation from the White House, said Nixon was
behind all the subterfuge.
“I realized that
many problems in our administration arose not solely from the outside, but from
inside the Oval Office — and even deeper, from inside the character of Richard
Nixon,” wrote Haldeman.
“I soon realized
that this President had to be protected from himself. Time and
again I would receive petty vindictive orders,” Haldeman wrote about Nixon. One
was, “All the press is barred from Air Force One … Or, after a
Senator made an anti-Vietnam War speech: ‘Put a 24-hour surveillance on the
bastard.’ And on and on and on.”
In one of the
interviews Woodward conducted with Trump for his book “Rage,” he asked, “What
have you learned about yourself?”
Trump sighed
audibly. “I can handle more than other people can handle.”
“People don’t want
me to succeed … Even the RINOs, even the RINOs don’t want me to succeed.”
(RINOs are “Republicans in name only.”)
“I have opposition
like nobody has. And that’s okay. I’ve had that all my life. I’ve always had
it. And this has been — my whole life has been like this.”
Nixon, too, felt
beset by enemies.
“Remember we’re
gonna be around and outlive our enemies,” Nixon said in the Oval Office on Dec.
14, 1972, the month after his reelection. “And also, never forget: The press is
the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is
the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write
that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”
As is so well
known, Trump publicly said the press was the enemy and an enemy of the state.
He even once told Woodward during an interview, “In my opinion you’re the enemy
of the people.” After Bernstein disclosed one of Trump’s secret meetings, Trump
called him “sloppy” and a “degenerate fool.”
The question
hovers: Why would two men who held the highest office in the land engage in
these assaults on democracy?
Fear of losing and
being considered a loser was a common thread for Nixon and Trump.
In an interview with The Washington Post in 2015, Trump
explained that he thought he had always been successful with his real estate,
his books, his TV show and his golf.
Asked if he was
afraid of losing someday, Trump said, “I’m not afraid of it, but I hate the
concept of it.”
“What do you hate
about it?”
“I hate the fact
that it’s a total unknown,” he said, giving a classic Trumpian response of
total confidence, and adding, “If there is a fear at all, it is a fear of the
unknown because I’ve never been there before.”
In a March 31,
2016, interview as Trump was about to secure the Republican nomination for
president, the question of how he would define power arose.
Trump said, “Real
power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”
After Nixon
resigned and we embarked on our second book, “The Final Days,” on Nixon’s last
year as president, we went to interview Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the
1964 Republican nominee for president. Goldwater was often thought of as the
conscience of the Republican Party.
In his apartment,
he offered us whiskey and pulled out his daily diary that he had dictated for
years to his secretary. He began reading his entry for Aug. 7, 1974. The
so-called smoking gun tape had been released two days before that date, showing
that Nixon had asked the CIA to have the FBI curtail its Watergate
investigation on bogus national security grounds. It was clear that Nixon was
going to be impeached and formally charged by the House of Representatives. The
question was the Senate.
Senate Republican
Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, House Republican Leader John Rhodes of
Arizona and Goldwater were invited to meet at the White House with Nixon.
They would be alone
with the president in the Oval Office. No Nixon aides or lawyers were present
that evening.
Goldwater was
seated directly across from Nixon, who sat at his desk. He later dictated that
Nixon seemed at ease, almost serene. He thought the president looked as though
he had just shot a hole in one. Disappointment was audible, however, in Nixon’s
voice.
“We’ve asked Barry
to be our spokesman,” Scott said.
“Mr. President,
this isn’t pleasant, but you want to know the situation and it isn’t good,”
Goldwater said.
“How many would you
say would be with me — a half-dozen?” Nixon asked.
Goldwater had
dictated that he wondered if there was sarcasm in the president’s voice,
because Nixon would need 34 votes in a Senate trial to stay in office. A
two-thirds majority, or 67, was needed to remove him, according to the
Constitution.
“Sixteen to 18,”
Goldwater said, still well short of the needed 34.
“I’d say maybe 15,”
Scott said. “But it’s grim, and they’re not very firm.”
“Damn grim,” the
president shot back.
In a Senate trial,
Goldwater said, “There aren’t many who would support you if it comes to that.”
Goldwater told us
that he had decided at that moment to be absolutely blunt in his message. “I
took kind of a nose count today, and I couldn’t find more than four very firm
votes, and those would be from older Southerners. Some are very worried about
what’s been going on, and are undecided, and I’m one of them.”
It was over.
The next night
Nixon appeared on national television and announced that he would resign the
following day at noon, Friday, Aug. 9, 1974.
More than a year
earlier, the Senate launched an extraordinary bipartisan investigation of
Watergate, voting 77 to 0 to set up an investigative committee.
Forty-eight years
later, the political climate had changed radically. Only two House Republicans
— Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) — joined all Democrats
in voting 222 to 190 to establish a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6,
2021, attack on the Capitol. The Republican National Committee officially
declared the events that led to the attack “legitimate political discourse” and
voted to censure Cheney and Kinzinger.
Another dominating
personal trait binds Nixon and Trump together: Each viewed the world through
the prism of hate.
Woodward visited
Trump on Dec. 30, 2019, at Mar-a-Lago to interview the president. The
Democratic-controlled House had voted to impeach him for withholding military
aid to Ukraine at the same time he was asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky to investigate the Bidens.
After an hour of
Trump defending his request to Zelensky, Trump’s media director, Dan Scavino,
joined the interview. Trump asked that Scavino open his laptop and show a clip
of the president’s 2019 State of the Union speech. Instead of Trump’s words,
hyped-up elevator music played as the camera panned for extended shots of
members of Congress watching and listening to the president.
The first shot was
of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who looked bored.
Trump was watching
over Woodward’s shoulder and was agitated.
“They hate me,” the
president said. “You’re seeing hate!”
The camera stopped
on Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts liberal. She was listening and had
a bland, unemotional look on her face.
“Hate!” Trump said.
A shot of Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was next. She had no expression on her face.
“Hate! See the
hate!” Trump said.
The camera lingered
a long time on Sen. Kamala Harris. She would be chosen as Biden’s running mate
the next year. She had a bland, polite look on her face.
“Hate!” Trump said
loudly within inches of Woodward’s neck. “See the hate! See the hate!”
It was a remarkable
moment. A psychiatrist might say it was a projection of his own hatred of
Democrats. But it was so intense that it did not resemble the subdued reaction
of the Democrats. His insistence that it was “Hate!” was unsupported by the
images on Scavino’s computer. Many Democrats, of course, did hate him. They
were vocal and angry opponents of his presidency. But this Trump spectacle was
unforgettable and bizarre.
The day Nixon
resigned the presidency, Aug. 9, 1974, he gave his farewell address in the East
Room of the White House. He had no script. His wife, Pat, his two daughters and
their husbands stood behind him. Nixon spoke of how his mother and father were
misunderstood and proceeded to unleash more grievances.
Then suddenly, as if
he had found a larger message, he smiled gently and offered his final counsel
to all. “Always remember, others may hate you — but those who hate you don’t
win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
It seemed a
blinding moment of self-understanding. Hate had been the trademark of his
presidency. But in the end he had come to realize that hate was the poison, the
engine that had destroyed him.
Nixon accepted the
full Watergate pardon from President Gerald Ford 30 days after his resignation.
Whenever anyone asked Ford why he had not insisted on an explicit admission
from Nixon that he had committed crimes, Ford confidently said he had the
answer.
“I’ve got it in my
wallet here,” he would reply, pulling out a folded, dog-eared piece of paper summarizing
the Supreme Court decision Burdick v. United States in 1915.
The justices had ruled that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt;
acceptance a confession of it.”
Nixon confessed by
accepting the pardon, Ford said. “That was always very reassuring to me.”
In 1977, just three
years out of office, Nixon gave a series of televised interviews to the British
journalist David Frost. Nixon was paid $600,000. The first broadcast interview
on Watergate drew 45 million television viewers — a record for a political
interview that stands to this day.
Nixon said he had
“let the American people down” but had not obstructed justice. “I didn’t think
of it as a coverup. I didn’t intend it to cover up. Let me say, if I intended
to cover up, believe me, I’d have done it.”
A year later, in
his memoir “RN,” he continued his war on history. “My actions and omissions,
while regrettable and possibly indefensible, were not impeachable.”
A president, he
added in the Frost interview, has broad authority and cannot break the law.
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon said.
In a later book in
1990, “In the Arena,” Nixon intensified his denials, claiming it was a myth
that he had ordered hush-money payments.
A tape of his March
21, 1973, meeting, however, shows that he ordered John Dean to get the money 12
times.
Sen. Sam Ervin, the
chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, offered a final diagnosis. Nixon
and his aides were driven by “a lust for political power.”
Though Ervin died
32 years before Trump became president, the label “lust for political power”
applies.
Never a coherent
strategist, Trump can be a powerful propagandist. He has woven together a
series of assertions that he won in 2020, though there is no evidence to support
it.
More than a year
after Joe Biden’s inauguration, polling shows that only 21 percent of
Republicans say they believe Biden is the legitimate president of the United
States.
Their reasoning
shows how the Trump rhetoric and playbook have convinced them. Between 74 and
83 percent of the Republicans who denied Biden’s victory were swayed by Trump’s
false claims of massive voter fraud.
Trump’s claims have
always been presented with unwavering, emotional consistency, revealing little
or no self-doubt. As the 2024 election approaches, Trump seems on the verge of
once again seeking the presidency.
Both Nixon and
Trump have been willing prisoners of their compulsions to dominate, and to gain
and hold political power through virtually any means. In leaning so heavily on
these dark impulses, they defined two of the most dangerous and troubling eras
in American history.
As Washington
warned in his Farewell Address more than 225 years ago, unprincipled leaders
could create “permanent despotism,” “the ruins of public liberty,” and “riot
and insurrection.”
Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The
Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer
Prizes, first in 1973 for the coverage of the Watergate scandal with Carl
Bernstein, and second in 2003 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9/11
terrorist attacks.
Carl Bernstein is the co-author of “All the President’s Men” and
“The Final Days.” His latest book is “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.”
He is also a political analyst for CNN.
