President Donald Trump’s corruption is so pervasive that the types of scandals that once would have toppled — or at least threatened — the stability of a presidency barely register as a blip in the news cycle. J.D. Vance likes it this way, and is now trying to retroactively apply the low standard across history.
While promoting his new book on Thursday, the vice president claimed that Richard Nixon, the only American president ever to resign from office in the face of a scandal, was experiencing a “renaissance.”
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance mused during a talk at the Richard Nixon Foundation in Yorba Linda, California. He went on to claim that the way the “deep state” had taken down Nixon was “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.”
Watergate was the series of scandals and investigations tied to the 1972 burglarizing and attempted wiretapping of the DNC headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration’s attempts to cover up the president’s alleged involvement in a widespread political espionage program.
Now, Vance is partially right, but not for the reasons he thinks he is. If Waterate happened today, it would likely not become the administration-ending quagmire it was for Nixon. This isn’t because it wasn’t an arguably criminal and definitely unethical abuse of presidential powers (had Nixon not resigned, he would likely have been impeached and forcibly removed), but because the modern Republican Party has baked criminality and corruption into its very identity.
Consider the current president. Just in the last two years, he used his reelection to secure a truly mind boggling amount of personal profit. Through shady business contacts, donations, “gifts” from parties with interests before the government, lawsuits, and investments, Trump has managed to pull in billions in cash for himself and his family while occupying the White House. This is on top of things like the Epstein scandal and alleged cover-up, Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, being found liable for sexual assault, his use of federal law enforcement and justice agencies to target his political opponents, his use of the pardon power to reward his supporters, and his funneling of federal funds to his business allies. The list of Trump’s scandals is, seemingly, endless.
Vance may be trying to minimize the gravity of Watergate, but what he’s actually doing is providing a clear indictment of the administration and the current Republican Party, which finds itself incapable of checking the president.
“Vance recognizes that the Watergate break-in is like a cub scout prank compared to the massive, all-encompassing corruption and criminality of the Trump presidency,” Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-Md.) wrote on X in response to the comments.
Some conservatives quickly moved to defend the sentiment, which didn’t entirely come out of the blue. Roger Stone, one of the most consequential political operatives of the 21st century, has Nixon tattooed on his back. Tricky Dick has been an idol to a contingent of the right for some time now.
“Now we live in an age of information,” Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.), told CNN in response to questions about Nixon’s criminality. “We are moving so rapidly that a story like Watergate I don’t think would last as long as it did back in the 1970s when I was a young child”
“I said Nixon would be vindicated by 2030 on Bill Maher’s show and the audience hissed and laughed,” wrote Chris Rufo, one of the main architects of the far-right push against diversity programs. “But, by God, the Nixon Renaissance has begun and [Vance] is one of the greatest champions of the Cause.”
This supposed renaissance is not actually a reexamination of Nixon’s presidency or the scandals that surrounded it, but a lowering of the ethical standards expected of presidents by the Republican Party, with two of the most slimy presidents in American history serving as their poster boys.
