JD Vance says Nixon’s Watergate scandal would be ‘12-hour news story’ today

JD Vance does not think the era-defining Watergate scandal would have lasted more than a single news cycle in today’s fragmented, hyper-partisan political environment – and certainly would not have led to a president’s downfall.Speaking at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday to promote his new book, Communion, Vance discussed his spiritual journey from atheist to Catholic convert before declaring his admiration for the 37th president.“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story,” the vice-president said during the discussion. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”Watergate, the biggest US political scandal of the 20th century and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, began in 1972 with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington by operatives connected to Nixon’s re-election campaign.Vance continued: “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 in the first administration. There is a parallel.”Trump was impeached twice during his first term: once for allegedly abusing his power to pressure Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his then rival Joe Biden under the threat of withholding military aid, and a second time for inflaming the mob of supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 after an unsuccessful campaign to overturn his election defeat.Despite the longstanding view that Watergate was a triumph of the American system of government accountability for abuse of power at the highest level, Trump and his allies have sought to rewrite the public understanding of the scandal. Trump, the 45th and 47th president, has previously claimed that Nixon “may” have been guilty.Nixon resigned in his second term to avoid almost certain impeachment and removal from office.In his remarks on Thursday, Vance said Nixon’s legacy was rightfully “enjoying a bit of a renaissance”, with more attention being paid to his diplomatic achievements in ending the Vietnam war and opening relations with China. Nixon was, Vance argued, a “political genius” with whom he shared many traits.“Young senator. Vice-president. Writes some bestselling books. Is hated by the media,” Vance said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance.”Vance, widely viewed as a 2028 White House hopeful, omitted, of course, the role Nixon is most famous for: president.