Let’s say that something like Watergate happened, exactly down to details, in the Trump presidency - a break-in, a cover-up, etc. Something bad enough to topple Nixon.
Out of all the countless Trump misdeeds, where would it rank in terms of badness? Somewhere in the top 1/4 of bad things, or even just only in the middle?
It would make the news, but be forgotten within a week. The media would move on to the next Trump scandal that’s probably equally bad or worse, and then under-cover that one, too. They would almost certainly sane-wash or evil-wash what happened because they are firmly on the side of doing PR work for republicans, unlike the adversarial media that actually did their jobs during the watergate days.
Ignoring the media coverage and focusing on the actual level of evil? It’d be somewhere in the middle of everything Trump has done. It would be one of dozens or hundreds of things. There are a lot of things we don’t know about simply because the media is not investigating them nor is the captured department of justice and the democratic party is weak.
For example, there was probably fishy stuff with the 2024 election that was worse than watergate. After Trump telling people at multiple campaign rallies not to vote, that they already had all the votes they needed, and that Elon knows more than anyone in the world about voting computers, and Elon and other republicans saying shit like “if we didn’t win the election we’d be in jail” – what they’re referring to is probably much worse than watergate but a compliant and subservient media didn’t bother to investigate or even ask what the fuck any of that means.
Fake news. Democrats did the break in themselves just to make Dear Leader Nixon look bad. Nixon instructs DOJ to investigate everyone on his enemies list.
Washington Post fires Woodward and Bernstein.
Watergate HOAX is a Democrat PLOT! WITCH HUNT!
“Those Fake Democrats are trying to say I’m guilty of a crime I didn’t even COMMIT! Someone else, I don’t even know who, breaks into the failing Watergate Hotel (Never would have happened if it had been a TRUMP PROPERTY!), and somehow Trump is to blame? And they say they have TAPES, which are fake news hoaxes, but they can’t release them, because I’m ordering an IMMEDIATE investigation into who faked this hoax break-in which will conclude RAPIDLY and with FULL EXONERATION. In other, unrelated news, I’ve issued pardons for Great Patriots Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James McCord, and Frank Sturgis. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
MAGA would spend two days telling everyone that Trump didn’t even break in, and then forget it entirely.
Midweek morning “scandal de jour” forgotten by 2pm EST when the next scandal breaks
The security guard who caught the burglars would be facing at least some IRS charges.
Yes, that’s another component – Trump would actually be using the government to go after the whistleblowers who leaked the story, which is actually probably bigger news than the scandal itself, that he can get away with using the government to do his dirty work and harass and punish American citizens – but the news media would also not cover that or put it into a context that would alarm the public.
I would say it ranks right around his conversation with Zelenskiyy (sp?) in his first term, trying to extort information about the Bidens in exchange for weapons.
It’s similar in that it was digging for dirt in order to tamper with an election.
I agree, but I’d also say the bar has raised significantly since then. Neither the quid pro quo nor Watergate would get much attention now and be forgotten in a week or two.
Actually I’m not even sure it could make it to “a week or two”. I was just reading about the pardoning of changpeng zhao; it’s corruption in plain sight. And got very little play. And there’s lots more like this.
Not even close. That was extorting a foreign leader and ally, using withholding support in a war against an invading foreign power (and an enemy of the United states, whose dictator the POTUS had, being charitable, major links to)
That makes Watergate look trivial in comparison.
I think the scandal, taken as a whole, would rank high, maybe but not definitely, in the top 10 on the “erosion of democracy” front, but there are soooo many other ways in which 4547 is egregiously horrible that it would not rank toward the top in all the merely “bad” things he’s done, some of which are just horrible in other ways. Like his financial and personal crimes for instance.
It’s the closest analog I can think of, though. It’s hard to compare Watergate with the straight up bribery that he’s accepting, the revenge, taking over the DoJ, etc., etc.
Agree.
With Nixon, the issue was the coverup.
Trump doesn’t bother with the coverup, or if he does, as with suppressing the Epstein files, it is just to provide temporary drama.
It would barely be noticed. Fox News wouldn’t mention it at all, so MAGAts wouldn’t even know about it. For all of Nixon’s faults – and he had many – Trump makes him look like a saint and a progressive intellectual in comparison.
Also, just to add, one of the things that made Watergate such a big deal was the televised hearings of the Watergate Congressional Committee. Today, this spineless Republican-dominated bunch of Trump sycophants wouldn’t have any hearings, so the whole thing would evaporate in a day or two, its demise accelerated by Trump’s threats against anyone who dared even mention it.
Nixon sues the Post for 100 billion dollars.