{"id":956,"date":"2026-06-29T23:14:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T23:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=956"},"modified":"2026-06-29T23:14:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T23:14:46","slug":"what-vance-accidentally-got-right-about-watergate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=956","title":{"rendered":"What Vance Accidentally Got Right About Watergate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of <\/i>The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

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Back in 2016, before he converted to the MAGA cause, J. D. Vance was deeply wary of Donald Trump. He wrote to a law-school classmate that he went \u201cback and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn\u2019t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he\u2019s America\u2019s Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most people, \u201ccynical asshole\u201d would seem pejorative, but perhaps Vance meant it as something to aspire to. Late last week, the vice president visited the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, in Yorba Linda, California, and quipped, \u201cYoung senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media. It kind of sounds like J.D. Vance. I\u2019ve always liked Richard Nixon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance went on to suggest that the scandal that toppled Nixon was no big deal, and that the 37th president was a victim of nefarious forces. \u201cIf Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be, like, a 12-hour news story,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance is correct about how Watergate would\u2019ve landed today, but the lesson is not what he claims. Since 1974, Americans have become pessimistic about their leaders, deeply polarized in their partisanship, and distrustful of the media\u2014all of which means that Watergate very well might pass quickly in today\u2019s environment. The best evidence is that the Trump administration weathers scandals on the Watergate level routinely. As Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote of Vance\u2019s remark, \u201c\u2018We do a Watergate twice a day\u2019 is a crazy way to confess your own corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance, who has previously admitted to making up stories for political purposes, also offered a bogus history of what happened in Watergate: \u201cIf you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it\u2019s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions, tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.\u201d (As the journalist Ed Kilgore notes, the same revisionism has been peddled by the Vance-allied propagandist Christopher Rufo.)<\/p>\n

Once again, Vance is right to draw a comparison but takes the wrong lesson. Trump\u2019s first impeachment, for soliciting foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, and Nixon\u2019s downfall share two important things: First, both men did what they were accused of, though both insisted that their actions had been fine. (Trump: \u201ca perfect conversation.\u201d : \u201cWhen the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.\u201d) Second, the most damning evidence against both of them came not from \u201cdeep state\u201d bureaucrats but from their own appointed political aides. The question of accountability is where the stories start to differ: Nixon was forced to resign by Republicans dismayed by his behavior; today, lockstep partisanship means that many GOP members of Congress pulled their punches in Trump\u2019s two impeachment trials. Now Trump, like Nixon before him, is using the muscle of the federal government to bully and persecute his political adversaries.<\/p>\n

More than one year ago, my colleague Anne Applebaum described the Trump administration as the most corrupt in American history, and the headlines routinely provide attestation. Over the weekend, for example, The New York Times <\/i>reported on how Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick struck a deal with the Kazakh government to give an American company access to Kazakh tungsten deposits, and to provide $1.6 billion in financing; the sons of both Trump and Lutnick now stand to profit from business arrangements based on the deal. A week before this, the Times <\/i>reported that the administration killed an investigation into how a convicted fraudster had obtained clemency from the president\u2014only one of many cases of what look like pay-to-play commutations and pardons.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal <\/i>recently delved into how the billionaire Larry Ellison\u2019s roughly $45 million donation to a Trump-supporting nonprofit in the 2024 election helped facilitate his son David\u2019s acquisition of Paramount, the corporate parent of CBS News, which he has moved to make a media ally of the White House, and pending acquisition of CNN. (A Paramount spokesperson told the Journal<\/i> that the companyhad made no commitments to any government body about coverage.) The Washington Post <\/i>reported earlier this month that more than half of the publicly identified donors to Trump\u2019s intended White House ballroom have won new or larger federal contracts in recent months\u2014totaling more than $50 billion. The president is aiming to host a major international conference at his own property\u2014a step scandalous enough that he was forced to back down by Republicans when he tried it during his first term. No wonder the FBI has dissolved its public-corruption unit.<\/p>\n

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This is not an exhaustive list, even for the past few weeks, which is part of the point: Watergate shocked the conscience because it was so rare to have such a fetid scandal break into view. But by following Steve Bannon\u2019s maxim to \u201cflood the zone with shit,\u201d Trump has avoided the monthslong drip-drip of Watergate revelations, overwhelmed the press, and desensitized the public. Hardly anyone can maintain a mental list of all the improprieties.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Watergate paved the way for this. It was not the first instance of awful behavior by a president, but it led to a new era of close scrutiny of politicians, which turned up many scandals. This in turn numbed the public to any individual example, even as it deepened their dim impression of politicians as a whole. If it\u2019s true that Watergate wouldn\u2019t make a dent today, that is a reason to lament the fallen state of politics, not to conclude that Watergate was just fine.<\/p>\n

This would be a powerful argument coming from the vice president, who has worried about what he sees as insufficient morality in American society and has said that his role is \u201cto try to apply moral principles in ways that get the best outcomes.\u201d Instead, Vance has concluded that his best chance at political advancement is to hitch himself to the corrupt and unethical Trump. Such cynicism would do Nixon proud.<\/p>\n

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