Donald Trump has made no secret that he isn’t happy with the decision to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election. But in light of everything that has emerged in the last few months, this tweet he fired off on Thursday looks incredibly tone-deaf and childish, even by his standards.
This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 18, 2017
To truly appreciate how childish this tweet was, here’s how it looks with the “Make Trump Tweets Eight Again” Chrome/Firefox extension created by the folks at “The Daily Show.” It makes the tweets from Trump’s personal Twitter feed, as well as the official @POTUS account, look like an eight-year-old’s scribble.
As any student of American history knows, there are quite a few people who might disagree with Trump. However, the social media team at The Washington Post couldn’t help but notice a parallel between Trump and the last president who was under fire for nearly as much potentially unethical and criminal conduct, Richard Nixon.
If you have The Post’s mobile app, you probably scrolled across this story on Saturday morning.
It links to a story from The Post’s July 21, 1973 edition by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two reporters who were largely responsible for exposing the dark matter surrounding the Watergate scandal. According to several White House sources, Nixon saw the Senate’s hearings into the scandal as a “political witchhunt.” Reportedly, Nixon believed that the hearings, led by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, were “an attempt to get Richard Nixon and do it just damn unfairly.”
Nixon wasn’t the only one who took a dim view of the hearings. Several White House staffers also cursed the hearings. The feeling was especially hostile among aides to former White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman and domestic affairs advisor John Ehrlichman, who had already been pushed out since the scandal broke. One aide bluntly stated that he believed the hearings were intended to “destroy the president.” Another put on a cheesy Southern accent to mock Ervin as a “little old country bumpkin,” before accusing Ervin of being “out to slice the president.”
A number of other aides felt particular hostility to two of the Republicans on the committee, Howard Baker of Tennessee–the committee’s ranking Republican–and Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. They believed Baker and Weicker were traitors. Weicker was the target of particular scorn in the White House for his angry denunciations of Watergate subterfuge. Nixon himself used an obscenity to slam Weicker.
Reportedly, the White House was considering a number of ways to push back against the investigation. Among other things, they wanted to claim that Watergate was being blown out of proportion and that the press was biased against Nixon. Where have we heard this before?
Some context is needed for this story. Five days earlier, White House assistant Alexander Butterfield testified that there was a recording system in the Oval Office. Both the Senate committee and special prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed the tapes, but Nixon refused to hand them over, claiming executive privilege. When Cox refused to drop the subpoena, Nixon had Cox fired, but was ultimately forced to appoint Leon Jaworski in his place.
As we now know, those tapes proved to be Nixon’s undoing. Cox had learned that Nixon had been caught on tape discussing the cover-up of the Watergate burglary on several occasions. On July 26, 1974; the Supreme Court found that partial transcripts Nixon had released were not sufficient, and ordered him to give up the unedited tapes. Those tapes were released in stages starting on July 30. Among the tapes that were released was the now-infamous “smoking gun tape,” in which Nixon personally approved plans to throw the investigation into the burglary sideways.
That tape was released on August 5. Within 48 hours, Nixon’s support in Congress vanished. On August 7, Senators Hugh Scott and Barry Goldwater and Congressman John Jacob Rhodes met with Nixon and told him that Congress was likely to vote overwhelmingly for both impeachment and removal. On August 9–more than a year after he whined about the investigation being a “witchhunt”–Nixon resigned.
Fast forward to today. We now have a myriad of potential smoking guns–former FBI director James Comey’s memo of Trump’s attempt to stop the investigation of Michael Flynn, Comey’s potential Senate testimony, and many more. Could Trump’s rage-tweet about this investigation being a witch hunt be as prophetic as The Post reporting that Nixon felt the same about Watergate? We’ll have to wait and see.
