As someone who is about to teach about Nixon and Watergate in my history of the sixties class, it is frankly absurd that Republicans are trying to rehabilitate him. He wasn’t a “victim of the liberal establishment”; he was the most crooked and criminal president in history!
We know exactly what happened because there is overflowing proof — recorded by Nixon himself. He made the mistake of recording extensive conversations in the White House that catalogued his involvement in a plethora of crimes and his key role in their coverup.
Watergate (breaking into the DNC headquarters and planting listening devices) was just the tip of the iceberg. Nixon was a big believer in “ratfucking” his enemies, funneling bribes through shell companies, breaking all kinds of laws (and ethics) and then lying about it.
I really recommend Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008) to understand Nixon’s political biography and his deep commitment to crookery while rallying the “silent majority” against the liberal elites.
The parallels between Nixon and Trump are really hard to miss. And of course, that is why the GOP is trying to rehabilitate Nixon and pretend that Watergate was no big deal, claiming that Nixon was just the victim of the liberal establishment.
Because it seems clear that Trump (and his family, and much of the GOP) have indeed been committing crimes as bad or worse than Nixon. Like Nixon, Trump is not the victim of the liberal establishment. He is, despite his protestations, a crook and a fraudster.
When Trump eventually leaves office in disgrace, I hope that we don’t have a Gerald Ford 2.0 to pardon him and halt investigations. That is one of the main lessons from Watergate: pardoning Nixon for the purpose of national unity and reconciliation made it all so much worse.
