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Friday, June 26, 2026
ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon (Dan Diamond, WaPo, June 26, 2026)
From The Washington Post:
Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon
The vice president said he admired Nixon and drew parallels between the past president, who resigned amid pressure in 1974, and Trump today.
Vice President JD Vance said he admires former president Richard M. Nixon and suggested that the Watergate scandal was overblown. (Nathan Howard/Pool/Reuters/AP)
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.
The Watergate scandal, which began in 1972 with a botched attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, mushroomed into a wide-ranging investigation by reporters and lawmakers that revealed Nixon was aware of the break-in and directed secret White House payments in an effort to cover it up. He resigned as president two years after the scandal broke, with Nixon blaming The Washington Post for its central role in exposing his involvement in the break-in and other abuses.
The scandal also prompted a series of reforms intended to rein in presidential authority, including more independence for government watchdogs such as inspectors general, which Trump has steadily rolled back.
Historians said Thursday that the full scope of the Watergate scandal, ranging from the president’s efforts to apply pressure to his “enemies list” to asking for a census of Jewish Americans serving in government because he believed they were unpatriotic, revealed Nixon’s abuses of presidential power.
Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer,” said Timothy Naftali, a previous director of the Nixon library, referring to Vance’s law degree from Yale University.
Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”
“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”
Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon
The vice president said he admired Nixon and drew parallels between the past president, who resigned amid pressure in 1974, and Trump today.
Vice President JD Vance said he admires former president Richard M. Nixon and suggested that the Watergate scandal was overblown. (Nathan Howard/Pool/Reuters/AP)
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
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“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
A spokesperson for Vance did not immediately respond to questions about whether the vice president was being facetious and how he was defining Watergate.
The Watergate scandal, which began in 1972 with a botched attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, mushroomed into a wide-ranging investigation by reporters and lawmakers that revealed Nixon was aware of the break-in and directed secret White House payments in an effort to cover it up. He resigned as president two years after the scandal broke, with Nixon blaming The Washington Post for its central role in exposing his involvement in the break-in and other abuses.
The scandal also prompted a series of reforms intended to rein in presidential authority, including more independence for government watchdogs such as inspectors general, which Trump has steadily rolled back.
Historians said Thursday that the full scope of the Watergate scandal, ranging from the president’s efforts to apply pressure to his “enemies list” to asking for a census of Jewish Americans serving in government because he believed they were unpatriotic, revealed Nixon’s abuses of presidential power.
Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer,” said Timothy Naftali, a previous director of the Nixon library, referring to Vance’s law degree from Yale University.
Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, referenced tapes that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.
“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”
“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali said, offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”
es to be.”
Some conservatives in recent years have reframed the scandals that ended Nixon’s presidency, arguing that government bureaucrats and the media unfairly sought to push him out.
In his remarks, Vance also repeatedly compared Nixon to Trump, pointing out the similarities in their political coalitions as well as their experiences with overseas wars.
One of the other lessons of Richard Nixon is it’s not just that he got out of Vietnam, but that he got out of Vietnam from a position of strength. Okay?” Vance said, making a comparison with Trump’s war against Iran. “It’s one thing to tuck tail and run. It’s another thing to clearly define an objective, to accomplish that objective and then to ensure that you don’t allow mission creep to transform a victory into a defeat.”
Vance also alluded to lawmakers’ efforts to investigate both presidents. Trump was twice impeached in his first term, after first pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate his rival Joe Biden, and then after lawmakers said he helped incite a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2001, as he attempted to have the results of the election overturned.
Nixon resigned as president while an impeachment process into his Watergate-related conduct was underway. Lawmakers ultimately decided to end the process given Nixon’s resignation. His former vice president, Gerald Ford, later issued a controversial pardon.
“If you look at the story of how the ‘deep state’ took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump and the first Trump administration,” Vance said to applause. “There is a parallel.”
The 41-year-old Vance also mused on his own similarities to Nixon, who served as a California senator in his late 30s and became vice president when he was 40.
“Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. … I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”
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