How Watergate informs us today

Friday, June 17, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Fifty years ago today, the “arrest heard around the world” kicked off a chapter of American history that is disturbingly similar to where we find ourselves now.

In 1972, a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., led to groundbreaking investigative journalism and a congressional hearing that eventually unseated President Richard Nixon. Today, another president stands accused of engaging in criminal conspiracy. But this time, the stakes are even higher, as it’s not just Donald Trump’s personal political ambitions at stake, but the future of democracy itself.

(A historical note to readers: One of the Watergate burglars’ other crimes was a bungled attempt to break into Hank Greenspun’s safe in the Las Vegas Sun offices. At the time of the Sun break-in, we didn’t know why someone tried to get into the safe. We learned the answer during the Watergate hearings when it was revealed that Watergate “plumbers” tried to break into the safe looking for files from Howard Hughes that Nixon feared revealed his corruption.)

The legacy of the Watergate scandal is often focused on Nixon’s eventual resignation, and the arrest and conviction of 48 top Nixon administration officials. This was certainly the most immediate impact of the scandal and subsequent investigation and hearings. But arguably, the larger legacy of Watergate is in the broken relationship and ongoing lack of trust in elected officials that still pervades American society today.

Watergate proved that institutions could hold up under the weight of corruption, but also demonstrated that reforms were needed to protect the system against similar abuses and hold politicians to higher, albeit sometimes unreachable, standards.

It also had a deep impact on popular culture. The Watergate scandal gave rise to entirely new genres of books, films, television shows and, eventually, video games, whose narratives are driven by government conspiracy, cover-up and criminality in the name of personal political gain.

The most well-known and well-respected film about Watergate, the 1976 film “All the President’s Men,” is based on book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story.

In the film, Woodward met with the informant “Deep Throat” in the early-morning darkness of a parking garage in Virginia. Deep Throat tells Woodward to “follow the money.”

This week, the Jan. 6 hearing demonstrated that Deep Throat’s advice remains true today. Trump’s campaign raised more than $250 million by spreading a lie that it knew was untrue. While being marketed as going to a nonexistent “Election Defense Fund,” the money was actually funneled through the Save America PAC that sent millions of dollars to Trump-owned businesses and pro-Trump political organizations.

If you follow the money, it’s clear that Trump’s charade is nothing more than another gimmick designed to line the pockets of a failed businessman and perpetual snake-oil salesman named Donald Trump. The marks in Trump’s con were the same people he’s been lying to since he announced his candidacy: his followers.

Later in “All the President’s Men,” Deep Throat offers another insight, telling Woodward that “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

During the two years of campaigning leading up to Trump’s 2016 election, the four years of the Trump presidency and 18 months of investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a narrative has formed in some circles that Trump is simply not very bright, and that things just got out of hand.

Thursday’s congressional hearings and recent reporting by The Washington Post show that the reality is much darker.

Trump engaged in an active campaign to ignore the Constitution, overturn the results of the 2020 election and declare himself president — all while scheming to enrich himself and his friends. This is the definition of a dictatorship.

This bears repeating: The current leader of the Republican Party in the United States aspires to be a dictator and actively engaged in a conspiracy to overturn the Constitution, cheat American voters and declare himself the leader of the country.

Fortunately, despite four years of bowing to Trump, more sensible minds eventually prevailed among his inner circle. When Trump attempted to engage the Justice Department in assisting him with his coup, he was rejected. When he attempted to engage the secretaries of state and attorneys general of seven states in his coup, he was rejected. And when he attempted to engage his vice president, Mike Pence, in his coup, he was rejected. Every court he turned to rejected every case brought. Even his own family members and campaign staffers, people who had dedicated thousands of hours to his reelection efforts, told him his plans were illegal, unconstitutional and dangerous.

This led to Trump’s actions that were perhaps the most strikingly similar to Watergate: He turned to known associates, whom he had called upon before to do his dirty work.

For Nixon, it was Cuban dissidents — burglars, locksmiths and special operations experts with a history of doing the bidding of Nixon and the CIA. Those were the five men arrested at the Watergate Hotel 50 years ago.

For Trump, his trusted army was violent white nationalists, Proud Boys who publicly proclaimed, “I’m telling you, if Pence caved, we’re gonna drag mother***ers through the streets.” They stormed the Capitol, led an insurrection that threatened the lives of elected representatives of the U.S. and led to the deaths of at least two police officers.

Nixon was not physically present inside Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and neither was Trump physically leading the assault at the Capitol. But make no mistake, just as Nixon was responsible for the Watergate break-in, Trump was the leader of the insurrection. He is responsible for its violence. The mob was there at Trump’s behest, responding directly to Trump’s call. We know this because dozens of members of the mob told us so, in their own words.

Watergate occurred in a different era of American politics and history. But the lessons of it are clear: political corruption and the undermining of American democracy cannot be allowed to stand without consequence. The Watergate hearings led to Nixon’s resignation, criminal convictions of 48 top Nixon officials and significant reforms.

Trump and his band of violent criminal thugs deserve much worse. American citizens died because of their actions. The hearings are the first steps in holding him accountable, but they are also a sorely lacking tribute to the legacy and lessons of Watergate.

Instead of repeating history, the American people, at every level of society and government, must reject the dictator Trump and all those who offer their support to this enemy of the United States and its constitution. If we fail to do so, we risk a continued escalation of corruption, conspiracy and autocracy.

Fifty years ago, paying a band of petty criminals to break into an office and then covering it up was considered so corrupt that a president was forced to resign or face impeachment and removal from office. Today, despite inciting a violent insurrection at the seat of the government, Trump has thus far escaped serious consequences.

Fortunately, Pence and others came through when it really mattered. But if we continue down this path, we may not be so lucky moving forward.