I had dinner with some teens and 20-somethings last night. Our phones were blowing up with news alerts about the raid on Michael Cohen’s office and residences and Trump’s reaction to those events, so the conversation turned to politics.
As the grizzled warhorse of the group, I was asked if this quickening investigation and presidential freak-out reminded me of Watergate. I indignantly reminded the assembled foals that I was too young at the time to really remember Watergate.
That’s true in one sense. My sister and I used to stomp off in a huff when we realized that the televised hearings would preempt our cartoons yet again. In those days, we only had four or five TV channels and one TV because dinosaurs.
But I do remember my mother’s excitement as she settled in front of the TV with an ashtray, fresh pack of smokes and cup of coffee. She hated Nixon’s guts and watched the Watergate hearings like they were the world’s juiciest soap opera.
Mom would try to explain what was going on in the hearings to us. I found her accounts of it fascinating — she was a good storyteller. But though I tried a time or two, I could not hold still to watch boring old white men droning endlessly on TV, and I often wondered how Mom harvested such startling examples of depravity and hubris from such fallow soil.
I don’t have to wonder what Mom would make of the current political situation. She died in 2014, but like all decent, conscientious, hardworking people who aren’t brainless dupes, Mom loathed the braggadocious conman Trump long before he ran for president.
Anyhoo, now I understand why Mom anticipated those hearings with such glee: It was the prospect of seeing lawless thugs who thought they were above the law brought low and held accountable.
We may not get a similar catharsis in our present age. The Republican Party is an order of magnitude more venal and amoral in 2018 than it was in Nixon’s day, and there is a large, well-funded media ecosystem devoted to obfuscation.
But think of Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s dismay as agents in blue FBI jackets swarmed his residences and office yesterday. A goon who has intimidated countless “escorts” and disgruntled employees and investors, Cohen likely imagined weaponizing federal law enforcement against Trump’s enemies, not staring down the business end himself.
As others have noted, it’s like Watergate, only dumber. I intend to enjoy the show this time.
Chris
Well, I’ll enjoy it if it ends well…ish.
Yarrow
Tick tock, motherfuckers!
magurakurin
@Chris: this shit ain’t endin’ well. The chance for everything being “okay in the end,” died on November 9, 2016. His followers are a cult now. Bad, bad things will happen before this “ends.”
Aardvark Cheeselog
You really have a gift with words BC. This is well-written.
Josie
@magurakurin: I agree. It’s one reason why I am not particularly in favor of impeachment. I think a conflagration is much less likely if he is voted out of office in a national election. Not out of the question, but less likely.
dr. bloor
I’ll enjoy reading about it after the fact. Donald Trump’s instability makes Dick Nixon look as steady on his feet as Mueller. This mofo won’t think twice about burning down everything and everyone else along with him.
Crashman
Betty, get Mistermix and Doug on the phone. We need an emergency podcast!
magurakurin
@Josie: I know it’s bad karma and all that, but I’m sort of hoping the son of a bitch just strokes out. I’d send him BigMacs if I could.
germy
I was in high school for the watergate hearings. I remember watching Sam Ervin’s eyebrows bobbing up and down, and one of the pundits saying you could tell which testimony was most important or incriminating by watching his brows.
And when Carter was elected, I remember thinking the bad guys had lost, and we wouldn’t be seeing them around anymore.
I didn’t know about Cheney, Stone and all the other thugs who hopped from Nixon onto Reagan and then on to the Bushes.
magurakurin
@dr. bloor:
that is the worry, now, isn’t it? damn. This Cohen stuff is huge, though. Cohen is basically Trump’s Ray Donovan. If he flips…holy hell.
donnah
I remember Watergate in part, but I was not a politically-minded teen and it didn’t make much of an impression at the time. I do remember the endless drone of the Iran Contra Hearings, though. And I remember the frustration I felt during Bill Clinton’s trials and testimonies, and how sick I felt when he was found guilty of lying under oath.
I liked Bill and Hillary from the start, having loathed Ronal Reagan. I was unprepared for the onslaught of attacks against them from Day One, and was exhausted by the Republican’s relentless badgering and accusations. So I was prepared for that same treatment with Obama, but still sickened nonetheless when they pounded him constantly for anything and everything he did.
Now we have a stupid moron and his pile of crap administration, so the judgments and investigations do provide a sense of fair play in history. I hope the investigators do go hammer and to go against every damned rat in this administration. Get rid of every one of them. They deserve to be run out on a rail.
Robyn
I love your writing, Betty. I wish I had the ability to honor my memories of my mother with such wit and style.
MattF
One wonders whether Cohen kept detailed notes on the various errands he ran for Trump. One can hope.
Nicole
These days I’m hoping for him out in 2020, and then plenty o’state level and federal charges. And prosecutors who hold grudges at least half as much as he does. Although, unfortunately, NYC’s DA, Cyrus Vance Jr. has already demonstrated that the Trumps can buy him off.
MJS
@magurakurin: His followers are a cult of fat, lazy trash who will bitch and moan if he’s booted from office and do nothing else.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Josie: If a President can’t be impeached for what Trump has done, might as well amend the Constitution to get rid of impeachment.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@magurakurin: I know it’s really evil but I hope Trump strokes out and ends up a captive in his own body but he’s with it enough to know that everyone is mocking him.
MattF
@MJS: Cowards, too. That, I think, is the main hope for the future of this country.
germy
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Wait… so you’re saying the stroke would make him smarter?
SFAW
@Yarrow:
To paraphrase Roy Scheider: we’re going to need a bigger jail
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
@magurakurin:
No, that is the one thing I do not want, and we can’t afford it. The last thing we need is for this shitstain to become a martyr, and he will be one unless he walks out of there on his own two feet. I’m more worried about his health than almost anything else.
Josie
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, there are grounds for impeachment, good ones. I am just afraid of the blowback from his supporters and what it will mean for our country.
magurakurin
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: lol. yeah, you’re right that is really evil. That’s like Rod Serling’s Night Gallery evil. you should seek help…;)
OzarkHillbilly
I was 16 when Nixon resi…… GIRL!
ETA age corection
Waldo
@magurakurin:
It was never going to.
But I’ll take messy justice over flagrant corruption every time.
magurakurin
@MattF: I hope you two are right. And I hope we actually make it to that point…without the sky melting and the oceans boiling. It’s looking like a really bad idea to give a cheap, mobbed-up, insecure, carnival huckster the nuclear codes…Thanks, Obama…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Since this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking, I need a ruling on “evil”. Nah, I’m quite comfortable with it.
TS
My memory of Watergate was that the President wasn’t running the country via a series of completely insane statements.
I don’t think I’ll ever recover from a President running the USA via a series of insane twitter posts. Richard Nixon could speak in sentences and he did sometimes listen to his advisers Then again, I can’t believe that this president* is making me see Nixon in a kinder light. I feel I have run through Alice’s tunnel to the other side.
magurakurin
@Waldo:
true dat.
SFAW
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.):
As much of a martyr as Harding?
JPL
There is not comparison. The republicans will not have open hearings, and they will not allow Trumps crimes and misdemeanors to be aired in public. The rule of law doesn’t exist for the representatives that have taken over the house.
The Trump Organization threatened the President of Panama, and it didn’t even make the news. geez
Tom
@magurakurin: No doubt we’ll have random acts of violence, just like we do now, but I don’t think there’s much chance of widespread, sustained insurrection. The vast majority of AR-15 humpers are vast around the waist, and their fantasies of Civil War Part Deux will evaporate about the time they run out of hamburgers and gasoline. And I love the way that right wing screechers are committing own goals all over the place (looking at you, Laura Ingraham and Jamie Allman). The hopeful part of me dares to believe that the Fox “News” tide may finally be cresting.
magurakurin
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.):
interesting take. You could be right. I’m still gonna send him BigMacs, though.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I want it to be like the end of Very Bad Things but with Ivanka in the Cameron Diaz role.
MattF
@JPL: It made the front page of the WaPo. And the general reaction has been “And your point is?”
magurakurin
@SFAW: Warren Harding is in the afterlife now going, “what a sap I was. I coulda stolen so-o-o-o much more than I did!”
magurakurin
@TS: the whole “government by Twitter” thing spins me out, too. How in the Hell is that acceptable to anyone? baffling.
The Dangerman
@magurakurin:
Can’t we order up several buckets of KFC for Trump and tell him to invite Sean Hannity over for dinner? Hannity looked like he was about to have the big one on his TV show last night (I like to watch while rooting for injuries).
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
I am interested in listening to people who lived through it, though.
Jeanne
I was ten that summer. My mom also spent it in front of the television. That was the most freedom my siblings and I ever had, she never moved all day. I have wished and hoped all along – please let us get to summer hearings this time also. My parents are still alive and hate Trump as much as they hated Nixon. We can’t wait!
Olivia
I didn’t spend a lot of time with the TV on in the daytime back then; the other half of news coverage was body counts in Viet Nam and that was depressing and enraging. So I read a lot of news. Newspapers were a lot better then. I hated Nixon from when he was Vice President. At age 7, I was all for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, not because I didn’t like Ike, but because Nixon looked like a crook. We didn’t have a TV until I was 9, but I believe you can often count on a child to be able to recognize an asshole, even from newspaper photographs, right from the start. I always knew he would go down in flames, given the opportunity.
I agree with magurakurin that bad things are going to happen before this ends.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
Never gets old.
rikyrah
Legal woes deepen for Trump team as FBI raids Cohen work, home
Tom Winter, NBC News investigative reporter, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is known so far about FBI raids on personal and business locations of Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen.
SFAW
@TS:
Nixon was somewhat paranoid, and had all sorts of get-back-at-those-who-(he believed)-mistreated-him-when-he-was-younger shit sriving him. But he was also a shit-ton smarter than Shitgibbon, and did not appear to be unaware of what truth is/was. I hated that motherfucker, but Shitgibbon’s evil (significantly aided-and-abetted by McConnell and Ryan) has surpassed Nixon’s.
magurakurin
@The Dangerman: a capital idea, old boy. Perhaps we could get the Heart Attack Cafe in Vegas to airmail some of their beef lard fries and thick shakes to them at the same time.
TS
@MattF:
Somewhere underneath an Indiana farming family being caught in trump’s trade war.
Everything that trump and his administrators are doing (or not doing) and center front of the online Washington Post are Indiana farmers.
rikyrah
16. So as you can see, a nice picture is forming of ILLEGAL RUSSIAN CONTRIBUTIONS (duh) to the Trump campaign AND possibly the RNC, too, for which Mueller has been gathering evidence SINCE JULY LAST YEAR. Be focused, determined & FIGHT, bc it’s showtime. #MuellerIsComing /END
— Ale (@aliasvaughn) April 10, 2018
rikyrah
MEDIA: Get on this already. “I’ve wanted to keep it down” is another Lester Holt moment for Trump, and I can’t find any media coverage of it. The man just admitted to trying to “keep down” the Mueller investigation, which no jury in America would much distinguish from “obstruct.” pic.twitter.com/fZn8GsgbpW
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) April 10, 2018
rikyrah
David Hogg is taking a gap year to work on registering voters. That might just cause some of these so called conservatives to lose it completely.
— CC (@Cinmabar) April 10, 2018
manyakitty
@magurakurin: He could just get debilitated. Maybe that’s less bad karma?
JMG
I was in a country and western band in Oakland, Cal. in 1973. We had a big posterboard of the Nixon gang organization chart with their pictures cut from newspapers, like the ones you see on TV cop shows. With each new revelation we’d draw another arrow, or when indictments came, we’d X out the photo. Good times.
rikyrah
Vice President Pence will fundraise in Boston tomorrow. The commonwealth’s Republican Governor Charlie Baker is too busy to greet him. “My calendar has other stuff on it.” https://t.co/SEthItsogb
— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 10, 2018
TS
@magurakurin:
Given the current situation in Syria – President Obama would have met with his advisors – without the fanfare and b.s. press talk – made a decision, got with the speech writers and then made an announcement to the country (and the world) about what the US response would be. He would have talked to the US allies (Russia NOT being in the group) before making the statement.
I’m expecting the moron to tweet as to what he will do – and then do the opposite, while advising no-one. .
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@rikyrah: We bought our first house while Watergate was going on. I remember sitting and watching Sam Ervin on a sofa still in the hallway because we were moving in. It was riveting.
I thought the recent movie “The Post” caught the feeling of the era well. A series of events happened with each one catching my attention to a greater or lesser degree, but it wasn’t until the hearings that the gravity of it all came home to me.
YellowDog
During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I was transfixed by the televised hearings. Two things are definitely different. First, Congress, then controlled by Democrats, took its responsibilities seriously. Republicans weren’t obstructing the investigation at every turn. Second, we were not bombarded 24/7 by endless rehashing of the same scraps of information; cable news did not exist. In fact, like Olympic coverage of that era, we watched the proceedings, without fatuous background commentary or human interest stories that took time away from the action. Imagine C-Span on all three major networks. Similarly, when nominating conventions still mattered, we got real-time coverage. The 1968 conventions were fascinating, with the bonus of Vidal and Buckley.
Waldo
@rikyrah:
That makes it a twofer.
The Pale Scot
Word.
I’m so gonna use that
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Watergate was on TV because the hearings were in Congress. On the one hand, it was nice to be able to hear all the evidence being accumulated. On the other hand, though things under Mueller are mostly away from public view so Twitter feeds are all the peeks we get into what’s going on, they do seem to be moving rather quickly.
On the gripping hand [1], Mueller is a pro going through the criminal justice procedures. Watergate was being investigated by amateurs in a political procedure. There really is only one way this can end.
[1] Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle reference. Yeah, I know Niven’s a wingnut loon, but he writes damn good sci-fi. That old problem with liking problematic people.
Amir Khalid
I was surprised that I recognised the man taking an oath in that photo — H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff.during Watergate. Haldeman did 18 months for his role in the cover-up. As a kid I read All The President’s Men, in a paperback copy that featured a rogue’s gallery of conspirators’ mug shots.
danielx
Haven’t the faintest why this came to mind.
Commentary on current events by Mr. Boz Scaggs and Ms. Bonnie Raitt…
Hell to Pay
Ben Cisco
Mom made us watch the hearings – she said it was important to know that if you did wrong, you would get found out no matter who you were.
I’m all for impeaching him and do not give one flying fuck what his debased base thinks about it. They’re already mad, and people have already been hurt.
May as well start believing in the concept of a war because we’re already in one.
Rex
Check out the podcast Slow Burn by Slate for a good Watergate overview. 9 or so episodes; more if you’re a member.
Honus
@donnah: I was in my first year of law school in 1992 and I had an eight o’clock criminal law class on Monday and Wednesday mornings. When I pulled into the parking lot at 7:30 the day after Clinton was elected there was a car there with a “don’t blame me I voted for Bush” bumper sticker.
Any body remember the conciliatory “54 to 46” videos in 2008 and how they were received by the republicans?
bcw
During Watergate, there were still a modest number of Republicans who thought the country and the constitution were more important than the party. His attorney general and assistant attorney general resigned rather than fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox. The infamous Robert Bork, as next in line, then did so. Had congress not pick up the slack with the congressional hearings Nixon might have gotten away with it. What’s going to happen now?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This cracked me up
tobie
My memories of Watergate are very hazy, though I will say that then like now there seemed to be a snowball effect as evidence mounted and the investigation accelerated. In my childhood memory, the turning point seemed to be the discovery of the erased tape, the improbability that Rose Mary Wood actually erased it, etc. But two big differences are that 35-40% of the population didn’t seem unreachable like they do now and while no one liked Nixon, no one thought he was dumb. Even my right-wing neighbors admit Trump isn’t the brightest bulb in the mix.
Last night the always loathsome Ruth Marcus was comparing Trump to Bill Clinton and saying Trump might attack Syria to distract from the criminal investigation as Bill Clinton attacked al-Quaeda in Afghanistan to distract from the Lewinsky scandal. I forget the name of the guest who had to remind her that Clinton could “compartmentalize.” Donnie completely lacks that skill.
rikyrah
Seized material from Trump attorney suggests broad investigation
Tom Hamburger, investigative reporter for The Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about what the range of material taken from Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s home, hotel, and office suggest about the scope of the investigation.
Apr.09.2018
Geoduck
@magurakurin:
Harding wasn’t so much personally corrupt. He was lazy, not terribly bright, and a very bad judge of character.
The Dark Avenger
My father was attending graduate school in 1973, so he’d have mom use a cassette recorder to tape the nightly tv news so he could keep up with Watergate.
Barbara
My mother set up her ironing board in the living room and watched all day. I remember watching some hearings but not like she did. She hated Nixon with the heat of a thousand suns, but by the time Trump was elected a lot of her ardor had been depleted by ill health and loneliness. She died a couple of months ago and I doubt she would have followed any of this as religiously as she did Watergate. After Trump was elected, she told tell me to stop worrying about old people and let them take care of themselves. She also commented more than once about how fearful Americans have become, compared to what she remembered when she was growing up during and after WWII. At any rate, in my view, the key difference is that for all his paranoia and moral depredation, Nixon was the product of a much more moderate Republican Party than most people born after he left the scene can possibly imagine. That’s going to make whatever happens over the next six months a lot uglier and a lot more chaotic than what happened 45 years ago.
pluky
@rikyrah: Shade!!!
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
BWA HA HA HA HA HA AH HA AH HA HA
Procopius
@magurakurin: Dunno if this Cohen thing is huge or not. Just suppose he doesn’t know anything because all the really important stuff was done by competent lawyers hired by the other party? In every case. So Cohen goes, “Well, I know in May, 2003, yada yada yada.” Then Mueller’s guy goes, “Oh, that’s interesting. Did he …?” And Cohen goes, “Well, I don’t really know, I wasn’t there for that, I was …” I think Cohen is in deep doo-doo, because I’ll bet he’s guilty of all kinds of fraud, misfeasance, fiduciary failures, tax evasion, securities and wire frauds, money laundering, etc., and maybe some of that will rub off in Trump, In fact, I’ll bet dozens of high-level grifters around Trump are going to get nailed on fraud, money laundering, and tax charges, but it’s not going to be enough for impeachment and it’s not going to harm Trump at the polls. I’m afraid unless we have a recession (really not a good thing) Trump will barely be beaten in 2020. At best.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Hillz won here, even among the sainted WWC except for some towns in the outer ring surrounding Boston. So I am not surprised at Baker’s unavailability.
vhh
@germy: Like fleas jumping from one carcass to the next live victim . .
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: One thing I admire about the MSDHS kids is that they’ve been emphasizing the importance of voting from day one. They get that nothing changes as long as the corrupt NRA stooges are in office.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
David Hogg is already a formidable person. He will be a year older when he gets to university, and a hell of a lot wiser than the politicos and pundits who look down on his youth.
schrodingers_cat
And on cue, minimizer of T’s actions is here. Reporting from his night shift in Novosibirsk, Russia?
rikyrah
Letter reportedly exposes Pruitt lie; travel to be examined
Rachel Maddow relays a new report in The Atlantic that an internal EPA letter suggests that Scott Pruitt, contrary to his previous claims, was aware of the giant pay raise given to his aide, and the EPA IG will take a look at Pruitt’s travel.
danielx
@schrodingers_cat:
Who dat?
Patricia Kayden
I was only around 4 when Nixon went down. I clearly remember the Iran-Contra hearings under Reagan. I was a teenager and babysitting some kids at the time and used to watch those hearings religiously. I couldn’t stand Reagan. Can’t believe we have a much worse President than him (and Bush the 43rd). Sigh.
Tom Levenson
Can I just say that I love the suit in that photo? Puts the s.q.u.a.r.e. in “square.”
LAO
@Barbara: Good morning. Were you as shocked by the Cohen office search warrant as I was?
I spent the first 10 years of my career as a “mob lawyer” and never have I ever, (Although I certainly knew of lawyers that got in some serious trouble).
rikyrah
Use of search warrant sends message on Michael Cohen probe
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about the legal particulars of the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen and what it means that a warrant was used instead of a less obtrusive means of gathering evidence.
dexwood
I’ve told this story before… For five days during the Watergate hearings, five hippies from Baltimore car pooled to St Elizabeth’s Hospital in D.C. where we were paid 50 bucks a day to smoke marijuana grown at the U. of Mississippi. The joints came in plain white packaging and look exactly like unfiltered cigarettes.They got us stoned once in the morning and once in the early afternoon before conducting a series of tests related to cognitive functions and pain thresholds (which were pretty mild and not at all very painful). In between, we’d occupy the break room watching the hearings on a small black and white TV while eating burgers and fries from the MacDonald’s across the street. So much giggling, so much snark, but we were all political junkies looking forward to the end of Nixon.
tobie
@Procopius: I understand the need for caution, the hesitation for getting your hopes up to high after the trauma of the 2016 election. But you really can’t discount some of the astonishing electoral successes Dems have had this year. Alabama sent a Democrat to the Senate. Just let that sink in. I thought hell would freeze over before that would happen. No one here is preaching confidence. It’s more like we’re trying to rile ourselves up to do whatever we can to have a wave election.
kindness
I’m older than you Betty. I vividly remember Watergate. The difference with Trump and Nixon is Congress. In Nixon’s time Republicans in Congress initially tried to downplay the Watergate break in but as evidence mounted Republicans were kinda horrified just like the Democrats. So when the hearings came up, Republicans were looking to protect their citizens, rather than their donors or their party. With our current Congress, not so much. Republicans today will protect (in order of importance) 1) their own asses, 2) their donors asses 3) the Republican Party…..89) their citizens.
That’s the difference. Also too, there wasn’t a 24/7 news cycle then. There was no internet. There was no Fox News. Big difference.
danielx
Sweet.
schrodingers_cat
@danielx:
—Procopius at #73
Betty Cracker
@dexwood: That sounds like the ideal hearing viewer experience!
germy
Old tweets age like fine wine.
But her emails!!!
@schrodingers_cat:
Hillary actually won white males in MA based on exit polls. The wingnut tears in the comments on the Herald article Rikyrah linked to are delicious.Unfortunately, the DERPlorables in those comments aren’t Baker’s base of support, so their frustration won’t have much of an impact on his reelection chances.
rikyrah
schrodingers_cat
@But her emails!!!: Yes she did, some old mill towns around Boston being the exception to the rule.
Tenar Arha
I was too young to really be paying attention, but I believe I’ve mentioned before how I remember all the adults around me arguing about it. The effects of the Watergate hearings are really my first solid political memories. Sarah Jeong commented that this iteration of dumber Watergate is a “nixon speedrun.” Which really does help explain how this feels. Faster, even less dignified, and more dangerous.
schrodingers_cat
BTW who is the dude in the photo, for those of us too young to have followed Watergate coverage live.
dexwood
@Betty Cracker:
It was a hell of a lot of fun and they bought our food, too.
low-tech cyclist
I was 20 when Nixon resigned, so I remember Watergate quite well. As Betty says, “the Republican Party is an order of magnitude more venal and amoral in 2018 than it was in Nixon’s day,” and they’re clearly willing to ignore any manner of corruption and even quite possibly treason if it’s committed by one of their own. That, at least, was not nearly so true back in 1973-74.
Here’s a fun link to a Doonesbury from the summer of 1973: http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/06/13 . Garry Trudeau had no idea how much worse or more stupid it could get, but to be fair, neither did the rest of us. For decades, I assumed that I’d never see a worse President than Nixon, but both Trump and Dubya easily limbo under that bar.
Aimai
@rikyrah: fuck charlie baker. If he were a dem governor it would be an act of courage, as a republican governor its an act of desperation and cowardice.
ThresherK
@rikyrah: It’s snowing here. I don’t remember a Ben & Jerry’s free cone day with snow before.
Chyron HR
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Why would the stroke improve his cognitive functions?
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff.
ETA: As Amir noted at #59.
Yarrow
I actually don’t like this description. The participants are dumber for sure, but the crimes are much worse. This is treason and has been from the beginning.
I also don’t like the “Russiagate” description of it. It’s not a “gate.” The “gate” minimizes it. “See, it’s like this other bigger scandal, Watergate, but not as bad.” Watergate was called that because that was the name of the hotel. This whole massive treasonous enterprise deserves its own name.
Bruuuuce
@Nicole: Cy Vance may be a wuss, but NYS AG Eric Schneiderman is not, and he has been after Donnie for many years now. He had him on Trump U, but the remainder of the AGs involved decided to deal. Mueller has been coordinating with Schneiderman, and you can bet the biggest and baddest charges are being held for the state to level, because the Fake President can’t pardon convictions in state courts. Also, too, with a new Democratic administration in New Jersey (where DT had more of his money laundering operations that he called casinos in Atlantic City), bet that there will be charges there, too. The states are letting the federal game play out, but they’re the second team, and that does NOT mean they’re any less good than the first.
Cermet
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: No; first I hope tRump shoots the inferior court judge that was illegally give the supreme court seat, thus proving that he can and still the thugs in congress refuse to impeach his lard ass. Then he shoots Pence for good measure and then dies of a stoke (after being a semi-vegetative state for a month or two. And the the stoke occurs just after the dem’s take congress and the new dem speaker is seated.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks.@Yarrow: Agreed. I suggest Russia’s attack on our democracy. Its not pithy, though.
SiubhanDuinne
WaPo alert just now:
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: David Hogg has turned out to be a wonderful young man. Hope he runs for political office someday. That’s one tough dude.
d58826
@BillinGlendaleCA: Impeachment is a political act not a legal one. Obviously a president could be impeached because he broke the law (such as
bribery as mentioned in the Constitution) but he could also be impeached because 218 house members do not like the fact that he wears a tan suit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: I think he’s one of the ones Beltway types point to as a “serious” member of the administration
d58826
@SiubhanDuinne: Some Twitter reports that Bolton forced him out.
Frankensteinbeck
@TS:
I’m expecting the moron to irritably ignore his advisers, tweet whatever Fox news says would show he’s strong, then do absolutely nothing.
@dexwood:
Yeah, the ‘threshold’ in a ‘pain threshold test’ is actually the minimum amount where you can feel the pain at all, not the maximum amount you can bear!
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
I mentioned #59 that it was Haldeman.
Off topic, but I have a sudden gear emergency. My amp, a Fender Champion 20, has begun emitting a loud buzzing/roaring sound. When I plug in my headphones, I can only hear the buzzing on the left, which is odd because it’s not a stereo amp. The amp doesn’t feel any hotter than usual and I don’t smell any burning components. Can anyone help?
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I like that, but you’re right that it’s not pithy. Maybe if we repeat it enough it’ll stick. I’ve seen it called TrumpRussia, but it’s not just Trump–it’s the entire Republican party.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
Ticktockgate.
Motherfuckersgate.
efgoldman
@Josie:
This will get repeated so much it will become a mantra: Impeachment is a political act, not a legal one.
Yeah, they’ll talk radio and twit us to death
Bunch of armchair six pack militias, will whine and bitch and threaten and do nothing in the end.
MomSense
My grandmas both watched the hearings obsessively but one grandma was a big Nixon supporter and the other hated him with gusto. My parents also hated him.
rikyrah
I always love watching Barbara Jordan in her opening statement during the Watergate hearings. I was too young, but my parents would talk about her. That’s one of the positive things about Youtube – you can find stuff like that.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
TRAITORS!
ALL OF THEM.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: LOL! But again, no “gate” suffixes.
Edit:
@rikyrah: Yep! I call it treason because that’s what it is. Get people used to hearing it. It’s not a “gate.” It’s treason.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: The R-Matroshka scandal
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
YES….
it is the TREASON.
Cannot get past the TREASON.
Barbara
@LAO: Trying to be very understated about this, when someone (court, prosecutor) sees evidence that a lawyer involved in the process is doing something or being used by a client to do something that is illegal or unethical (in a civil case), all bets are off. It’s unusual because most lawyers will not place themselves in jeopardy for the sake of a client, even a really large and influential client. But I have certainly seen lawyers get prosecuted or sanctioned when they breached that line. IIRC, Ken Starr went after attorneys for the Rose Law Firm as part of Whitewater (not that it made it the right thing to do).
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: You did, indeed. I should has read all the comments.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Nesting Dolls of Treason.
Jeffro
@Yarrow: @rikyrah: thirded here!
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I just googled him. He has that pinched R look.
tobie
@Yarrow: Of late I’ve been thinking we should rename the GOP the Guardians of Putin.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
While true, there is a constitutional standard (exploitably open to interpretation as it is) for impeachment that is specifically about lawbreaking. So, there are good and bad grounds for impeachment. Alas, since Republicans give not a flying fuck about good faith, it makes hardly any practical difference.
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
I don’t think a week goes by without Trump doing something for which he deserves to be removed from the Presidency. Others might disagree, of course, and reckon that he actually does such a thing every day.
Barbara
@rikyrah: I would agree. It’s not dumber. You can’t get dumber than Watergate, a totally unforced error that proceeded directly from the paranoia of Nixon. What’s going on here is far, far darker.
randy khan
@TS:
I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said “I can’t believe I miss Nixon” a couple of days ago. I have the same feeling.
mapaghimagsik
@magurakurin: I think there is a place for twitter and other social media platforms for government. Its just a shame that the most aggressive and direct user is using it in a blatant attempt to gaslight the American people. However, it has shown a wider audience who they are. So we got that going for us.
I’d like to think social media could mean a more efficient, more effective level of civic engagement. Oh look, a unicorn!
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s Bob “HR” Haldeman of Haldeman and Erlichman fame.
I’ve talked about this before, but I became a total political junkie through the Watergate hearings. I’d been a bit interested before, but after that whole thing, I was hooked for life and knew my college major would be political science, which it was.
I was 14-15 during the whole thing and watched every minute I possibly could. My mom was just at the beginning of her journalistic career and she always encouraged us to be aware of current events. And she absolutely despised Tricky Dick, going back decades to his smearing of Helen Gahagan Douglas. I remember the electricity in the air when Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the White House tapes. I remember being riveted by John Dean’s testimony. I remember how crazy what they did to Martha Mitchell was and how they tried to paint her as completely nuts. I will never forget the joy in our household the day that bastard resigned, complete with literal cheering.
In hindsight and taking into account current events, it was a sober, serious and patriotic process. Even Republicans we hated, like Goldwater, had principles and put country before party. TV coverage was also serious and non-intrusive. Those days are long gone. Today, the entire Republican party and everyone associated with it is an accessory to the crime and television is nearly worthless as a serious medium for covering such an event. It’s similar in that it really is still quite shocking to have a criminal as president. But it’s quite different in ways we don’t even understand yet.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: @schrodingers_cat: Like both of these. But it’s not pithy or completely easy to understand.
Iran-Contra was pithy and explained the issue.
Teapot Dome, pithy and named the location.
Watergate was the hotel where the break in happened so every time someone said it people knew what it was.
The current enormous attack on our democracy by a foreign enemy state and the eager complicity by many elected officials in our government and their cronies needs its own name.
randy khan
@rikyrah:
They’re just going to say that Hogg is taking a gap year because he couldn’t get into a good college.
Yarrow
@tobie:
Love this!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@randy khan: my favorite political bumper sticker was in the late Bush II years, an old guy in an old Cadillac with a fresh-looking “I MISS IKE” in bold type and underneath in smaller letters, “Hell, I miss Harry”
Percysowner
I was 21 when Nixon resigned. I was working 40 hours a week and going to school nights, so I didn’t watch the hearing live, or even on the news. but I did follow the newspaper coverage. One of the big differences was that the revelations of the truly criminal actions were spaced out. We knew about some of the shenanigans before the election, and it didn’t affect the result. Then things just kept getting revealed every few months. We didn’t get scandal every single week.
The Republicans were also different. At least some of them CARED about our country and the constitution, so they were willing to kick Nixon to the curb. We also didn’t have the type of gerrymandering that meant that they could keep their seats no matter how badly they behaved, so throwing out a corrupt President was to their advantage. It made them look brave.
The corruption here is far, far worse than under Nixon. Nixon used criminal means to become President, but he didn’t embed corrupt officials, who only care about the money, into his administration. Plus Nixon was competent, and wasn’t likely to lead us into a war as a distraction from his crimes and I honestly don’t think he would have sold the country to Russia or any other foreign nation just to win. He was and awful, awful human being and should never have gotten away with his crimes, but given a choice, I’d take Nixon over Trump. I’m sure he’s somewhere looking up and feeling grateful that he is losing the title of “Worst and most criminal President ever”.
trollhattan
@SFAW:
Have a hunch Trump has a list of enemies lists.
Fifty Quatloos to the reporter who finally asks, “Sir, are you in fact a witch?”
Barbara
@LAO: I was going to add, that my instinct tells me that Cohen might have been used to shield documents from disclosure pursuant to subpoena by asserting privilege after or outside of any legal representation. If it was a clear, coordinated effort on his part and the part of whoever was sending him the documents, then that would practically be an invitation for a search warrant. His public comments on whether he was or was not acting as Trump’s lawyer regarding Stormy Daniels have shown him to be a complete idiot as far as I am concerned.
Yarrow
@Barbara: Exactly, which is why I don’t like John Oliver’s “Stupid Watergate” name. Maybe he thought that a year ago, but at this point it’s just wrong. And as much as I admire Betty’s prose, calling it “like Watergate, only dumber,” and she’s certainly not the only one, is also wrong. It’s not stupid, dumb or Watergate. It’s treason. Don’t minimize it.
Edited
Karen Potter
@randy khan: He was accepted to a number of good colleges, but the haters only are focusing on where he didn’t get accepted.
bemused
@tobie:
Good one.
Amir Khalid
@randy khan:
Unless he’s making very mediocre grades, I can’t imagine a university not wanting in its student body a young man with his kind of potential.
vhh
@TS: I was at university during Watergate. The back story was that in latter months of Watergate, Nixon was soused, sitting in front of the fireplace (with the A/C cranked), talking to pictures on the wall, and asking Kissinger to pray with him. The country was being run by competent aides coordinated by Gen. Alexander Haig.
SFAW
@schrodingers_cat:
Ooooh — Scandal name? Or name for a garage band?
As Steeplejack wouldn’t say: Porque no los dos?
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
Possible bad ground. I’d ask if it sounds like 60 cycles but have no idea what your electricity standard is. Does it occur with the guitar unplugged?
Barbara
@Amir Khalid: The schools that he didn’t get into are public universities in the state of California, where the state, like many others, imposes a quota on out of state student admissions for first year students. What I would tell him is to do well wherever he goes and try again as a transfer student, when the quotas no longer apply.
Karen Potter
I was in front of tv enough during Watergate that I should have an opinion, but I was also a new mother with nursing baby, piles of diapers and lacking sleep; so the whole thing is rather a blur. I didn’t like Reagan as “my” governor and wasn’t all that surprised by the mess of Iran-Contra; just more dirty diapers.
This time? there is so much corruption that feel like we need to clean out every nearly everyone working in DC and start over.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Yeah, his “getting back at Person X” mania goes far beyond anything Nixon did, I think. (Disclaimer: was not politically aware enough in his heyday, so I may be undercounting on Nixon. Yes, he had his Enemies List, but I think that list was mostly populated by people giving him a hard time after he won in ’68. Trump’s list seems to be more all-encompassing.)
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow:The Russian Doll Mystery.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Sounds like a Nancy Drew title. LOL.
PAM Dirac
The Watergate mess happen while I last year of high school/first years of college. My high school is less than 10 blocks from the Capitol, so everything was taking place right next to us. As others have mentioned, I think the biggest difference compared to today is that the politicians and press almost universally recognized a responsibility to something other than their own personal goals. There were plenty of ardent Nixon defenders, but there were few that would blatantly deny reality, which is why as the evidence mounted, there were fewer and fewer Nixon defenders. It is also why the hearings were so interesting, there was a sense that it was important to get to the reality of what happened.
Side note: One weekend in 1972 my good friend and I went to a party in Georgetown. My friend was trying to get the attention of a woman and was failing badly, so he was not in a good mood. We left a little bit early and our way home took us down Pennsylvania Ave right past CREEP (Committee to Reelect the President). My friend leaned out the window and yelled “Nixon is a dick!”. We later figured out that that was the night of the Watergate break-in and decided that my friend’s shout was clearly the start of Nixon’s downfall.
GregB
@SFAW:
Matroyshka-Gate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
if he worked for this junta odds are he is a schmuck, but even so, “Bolton causing chaos at the NSC” can only make a bad situation worse. IMHO
PaulWartenberg
For myself, I was four by the time Nixon resigned so everything I knew was looking backward. I read what I did in school, and some history books outside of that. All I can say is my dad is a die-hard Republican and he insisted every time Watergate came up in discussion that Nixon didn’t do anything wrong (holding to the belief that the DEMOCRATS were hiding something that couldn’t get uncovered through legal means). So I kinda know where the pro-trump denialists are coming from.
Another more current analogy would be the Iran-Contra scandal, a complex mess of White House Intel agencies Vs. Congress that still exposed a lot of questionably bad and criminal behavior, a lot of which never saw the light of day due to effective stonewalling by people – Bush the Elder’s crowd – who knew what they were doing and weren’t as cravenly corrupt as the current generation of asshole Republicans. I’m amazed more people – a lot of major pundits for example should have been rookies in the media when it was a major Beltway scandal – don’t remember THAT mess because there were legitimate law-breaking, people going to jail and getting convicted, but all swept under the rug because Bush the Elder pardoned most of the main suspects before they were in courtrooms to answer for their shit. I think people forgot it because 1) for Republicans it ruins the Narrative of St. Ronnie, and 2) for Democrats it’s not a fight they decided to rehash again and again.
randy khan
I was 13 the summer of the Watergate hearings, and 14 the summer of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings. Since the hearings pre-empted my mom’s soap operas, they were what we watched those summers. (Also, she hated Nixon, so it was at least as entertaining for her as the shows she planned to watch.)
This is like Watergate but different. Then, there were the parallel paths of the prosecutor and Congress; now, Congress is shirking its duties. Then, Nixon himself was pretty quiet; it was largely his supporters and surrogates who talked about how there wasn’t much there or that it was a witch hunt, but what they were saying was in the same ballpark as what Trump and his supporters say. No social media, no Internet, no 24-hour news cycle, which obviously makes a difference, too.
But the biggest difference is that Watergate was more or less the big thing. There weren’t any serious side scandals. (Sure, breaking into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office or Dita Beard and the ITT campaign contributions, but those were little things in comparison.) Now, it feels like it’s something new every day, and so many of them aren’t connected to each other, except of course through the guy sitting in the Oval Office (unless he’s having some executive time right now).
WV Blondie
I had a summer job on the House side of Capitol Hill during the summer of 1973, while the Senate Watergate hearings were going on. (I was 17, just graduated from HS.) Our office had a TV on all day, every day, to follow the hearings, but what I remember most vividly is that when I was sent on an errand – going to the House stationer’s office, for instance – walking down all these corridors and being able to listen to the hearings every step of the way because every office had a TV on!
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
I know. It was really more about seizing every opportunity to type “Tick tock, motherfuckers.” Because, as many others have noted, that just never gets old.
bemused
Rick Wilson has commented a couple of times that trump isn’t worth $10 billion. A hedge fund friend and actual billionaire told Wilson that, “Trump is a clown living on credit”. So is his family.
MattF
@Barbara: Trump’s got an awful lot of secrets, starting with his tax return. If his only strategy to protect those secrets is “Give it to Mike”, there’s bound to be a point at which prosecutors will say “Wait a sec”.
MCA1
@TS: To be fair, every other president in the history of the republic before Obama, from any party, would have done exactly that, too. It’s only the current occupant who literally does not understand or care how you’re supposed to do the actual job of being POTUS, or is just wholly uninterested in doing it.
Chris
@Percysowner:
I had to write a paper in undergrad pointing out that things had gotten steadily worse with every era of Republican control of the White House in recent years (though not phrased exactly in those terms). Nixon’s crimes were exposed, he was forced to resign, and at least some people were jailed. Reagan’s crimes were eventually exposed, but nobody was held accountable, and he certainly didn’t have to resign. Bush’s crimes were mostly out in the open, and the idea of anyone ever being held accountable for them was a bad joke.
Trump… So far, his crimes are out in the open too, and accountability is a questionable idea at best. The crimes are just (from the point of view of the nation-state at least) an order of magnitude worse. It’s actual treason now.
randy khan
@Amir Khalid:
I’m with you. And, actually, taking the gap year may be a good strategy from the college perspective – he applied before the shooting, so the schools didn’t have any way to see what kind of leader he is. Obviously, he’d rather none of that had happened, but I can see some schools that didn’t take him before giving him a second look if he reapplies next year.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Amir Khalid: His GPA is something like 4.1. That’s above an A average.
MattF
@bemused: Net worth is a big Trump secret. One wonders whether Cohen is smart enough and careful enough to separate the big secrets from the little secrets. Or to note when the line between ‘big’ and ‘little’ moves.
JPL
@PAM Dirac: Any chance you can try that again?
low-tech cyclist
@geg6:
When I first saw Pink Lady apples in the grocery store several years back, I thought, “they’ve named an apple after Helen Gahagan Douglas!” because of course that’s the label Nixon stuck on her.
PaulWartenberg
@Yarrow:
Names for the current nightmare:
Shitgibbon Con Job
Putin On the Ditz
The “WHAT THE EFFING HELL WERE YOU THINKING 62 MILLION VOTERS WHAT THE EFFING HELL” Shamefest.
ByRookorbyCrook
The Republicans are not just more venal and amoral; they are complicit. The TrumpTreason is exposing an election funding pipeline and foreign influence that penetrated down to at least the state level in the GOP. The defense of the Cheeto in Residence is self preservation as much as defending their brand. It is imperative for a blue wave to wash out the sewage clogging our government.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
You’re the gate!
MCA1
@GregB: I’ve always preferred Onion Dome Scandal because, though derivative, it doesn’t have “gate” in it. I’m tired of everything being a gate of some sort.
Washburn
Nothing is over until January 2021
Even if 67 Senators vote to remove Trump (ha, ha, ha, ha), that gets us Pence.
Work to register and GOTV in 2018 and 2020. That is the only hope.
Kay
This is good on Cohen:
low-tech cyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
And another one’s gone, and another one’s gone, another one bites the dust
MattF
@PaulWartenberg: The Big Con.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeanne:
I was 11 in the summer of ’73. It was some riveting stuff.
By the time Nixon resigned, it was almost like an anticlimax.
I always understood the reason for the pardon, even when that young, but can also see the argument that he should have been prosecuted. It was a tough balancing act – the country was still in the midst of the Cold War, had just emerged from a really fucking stupid and destructive war of choice, and the economy was already suffering the hammer blow of the chickens coming home to roost along with an energy crisis. It was an ugly country at that point (both physically and psychologically), with a lot of people on edge.
A couple of funny notes – first, I reacquainted myself with the history of Robert Vesco today, and had forgotten what a thorough piece of shit that guy was. Really stupid, too – he tried to defraud Raul Castro (along with Nixon’s con artist brother, Don) while living in Cuba. It went as well for him as could be expected.
The other funny note was the reaction of the Soviets to Watergate. They didn’t understand what the big deal was, and were puzzled over what Arbatov’s ISKRAN (USA-Canada Institute) was telling them. They actually were supporting Nixon.
PAM Dirac
@JPL: Good point. Maybe some profanities directed toward the idiot’s hotel. I’ll tell my friend it’s time for a road trip.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused: in one of the depositions that gets passed around the nets, the Beast itself said it counts its name as a $3 billion asset. I’m sure the Organization is massively leveraged, illegally set up*, and the lifestyle was funded by cash from the TV show.
*IANAn accountant, but I remember a case a few years back (the way my memory is these days that could mean anything after 1984) of a mega-car dealer who listed his jet and yacht as “used vehicles” in one of his dealerships. I don’t know how the scam works, but I’m sure that the trump org is that kind of house of cards, with a lot of those cards being shady loans underwritten by the Russian mob
raven
We put his ass on the run with Operation Dewey Canyon 3, fucker didn’t know what to do with us.
low-tech cyclist
@Washburn:
I’m pretty sure I can trust Pence to not start a nuclear war. I can’t say that about Trump. I’ll take what I can get.
danielx
@MattF:
A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working.[1] SPOFs are undesirable in any system with a goal of high availability or reliability, be it a business practice, software application, or other industrial system.
Engineering terminology is useful.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: Bwahahahaha! Maybe we just call the whole thing “Gate” and stop right there.
@MCA1: The Onion Dome scandal does make me chuckle but what we’re dealing with now is not derivative. It’s treason. That’s why I keep saying it needs its own name and certainly not a “gate” suffix. It’s way bigger than that. It’s an attempt to overthrow our democracy, as s_cat said. It’s treason.
Kay
I don’t know of course but could that be part of it? They knew Trump changed Cohen’s role after the communications so Trump could rely on A/C and keep Trump Org crimes secret?
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’d bet that the money laundered by all those Trump condos gets leveraged in some way, although the exact mechanism is something for the experts to argue about.
JPL
@ByRookorbyCrook: This season of Homeland is fascinating, because it speaks to the use of social media by a foreign government to disrupt our government. The latest episode was called Useful Idiot to identify a Senator and a pawn. I’m not sure that it parallels what is happening because I’m not sure the republicans are useful idiots. I think they are willing traitors.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@low-tech cyclist: also, too, and pretending to take Washrag/ArglebargleRBG/Steve seriously for a moment, Pence doesn’t have the toxic charisma that holds the mouth-breathers in thrall. And since Pence is already trump’s chief advisor on judicial appointments, he’s doing the worst he can do already.
geg6
@ByRookorbyCrook:
I’m beginning to agree with this. It sure looks to me like we’re eventually going to find that all GOPers took Russian money in some shape or form, knowingly or unknowingly. I know we all have our fantasies of various Trump World figures going down and being perp walked in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. One I anticipate with pleasure and who no one ever mentions is Ronna Romney McDaniel, RNC Chair. She’s on the Trump grift train and I will be happy to see her taken down.
LAO
Best Thread EVER by a prosecutor (AG Schneiderman)
Yarrow
@Kay: Cohen isn’t going to take the fall for Trump and Trump knows it. Cohen best be watching his front door handle, his drinks, his showers and so forth lest he accidentally poison himself or knife himself in the back while in the shower.
kd bart
I just assume that during the eventual Congressional hearings that Fox News will be airing Panda Sex videos instead.
trollhattan
@bemused:
Would love to see this hammered over and over. Trump is no billionaire and claims to be because he thinks that it gains him entry into high society his Bronx upbringing precludes. This drives him nuts.
Amir Khalid
@trollhattan:
I just turned her on again and she’s all better now. Curious. I guess she was just teasing me. Anyway, in Malaysia we have 230/240V at 50Hz electricity, and I bought the amp online from a local retailer so a power mismatch would not be the reason for whatever was ailing her.
(I seem to think of my guitar gear as female. I wonder why.)
MattF
@Yarrow: With his hands tied behind his back. Classic evidence of suicide.
Karen Potter
@low-tech cyclist: I don’t know, Pence believes in second coming; if he thought it would happen if he started a nuclear war am sure he would do it.
MattF
@trollhattan: Please. Queens.
sherparick
@bcw: There are several major differences. First, Nixon, whatever his flows, was a middle class grinder who worked his way up the greasy pole (with all the resentment of a nouveau riche outsider) who was intelligent, read books, and at least at times felt a loyalty to the country at large. Trump is mobbed up billionaire who is ignorant as hell and who has used wealth and connections to ride roughshod over his many mistakes and never has been held accountable for anything. Trump, unlike Nixon has the backing of a rotten Republican leadership, white male business class, whose motto is that despite being firehosed with money the last 40 years, is always “more,” and white male Christianist oligarchs who see Trump as “God’s” flawed instrument to establish a Christianist Theocratic state. Hence all his crimes, and destructive social policies of this administration have the support of the majority of the Republican Party, the business community, and a right wing media complex that did not exist in 1973-74. So it is going to be different and not likely to end well. Trump’s statement, that the raid on his lawyer’s office was an “attack on the nation” is revealing, in that he now conceives the “Nation” to be “Trump” and “Trump” the “Nation.”
trollhattan
@low-tech cyclist:
We will have to pay close attention to who Mother is angry with. Nuclear war on abortion seems likely.
Yarrow
@geg6: There’s a reason Paul Ryan shut down McCarthy when he (McCarthy) started talking about Rohrabacher and Trump taking money from Russia and it isn’t because Ryan is thinks of the GOP as “family.” Guilty traitor was trying to protect himself. Yes, a significant percentage of the GOP are involved. Traitors, all.
Kay
@Yarrow:
I haven’t followed him and he’s such a clown I never dreamed he was the main go-between in Trump Org. That he was the Holder of the Crime Family Secrets.
I thought of him like Trump’s doctor. I guess I thought they had some real lawyer toiling away in a garret somewhere and this person was just the loudmouth tv character.
Washburn
@low-tech cyclist: True. But Pence is going to devote his days to making sure teh womens dont do thing with their ladybits that angers up Jeebus.
I was thrilled by the news yesterday but, big picture, nothing really changes until the election. All the more reason to GOTV.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MattF:
He’s Archie Bunker with pretensions of grandeur.
SiubhanDuinne
@low-tech cyclist:
Yeah. All these sudden departures carry a strong whiff of Dropping Like Flies, or that hardy perennial Rats Deserting a Sinking Ship. (I’m not too fussy about the exact metaphor.)
Yarrow
@Kay: Think of Trump org like a crime family and it all makes more sense. But overall a reality TV version of a crime family–a lot of it is smoke and mirrors–and in general you can’t believe what they show you. Plus, they’re dumb.
But her emails!!!
@LAO:
He has to have his eyes on higher office. Any ideas as to what that office is?
Gelfling 545
@magurakurin: McDonald’s gift cards?
LAO
@But her emails!!!: As a general rule, AG’s always want to become governors.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
Your local Fender dealer?
JimV
As I recall Watergate, the big differences were 1) the national media did a better job then they do now; and 2) there were a fair number of Republicans, maybe even a small majority, who were willing to listen to the evidence and not just try to obstruct the investigation. I’m not saying there weren’t plenty of flaws in both, but overall there was more of sense of national purpose – putting the nation above selfish concerns.
My half-baked hypothesis for why that was: World War II was still within living memory – many of those involved served in it. In that war we were a nation. GM and GE were working for the nation, not for profit (or not so much). People sent in their doorknobs and gate hinges because the country needed them to make war materials. Again, I don’t mean everything we did in WWII was good, but it did foster a sense of national community.
My first managers at GE fought in WWII. They tended to have strong moral compasses, which gradually disappeared as they were replaced (in many cases driven out) under Jack Welch. I remember my boss, Frank Ryan (who entered WWII as a private in the army and left it as a captain) saving the job of a factory foreman (i’ll skip the details since this is too long already) and telling me, “If a guy has worked hard for the company for 20 years, has a mortgage to pay, and kids in school, I believe he deserves better from GE than to be laid off.” I believe the army instilled in him the concept that loyalty up requires loyalty down.
LAO
Rosentein signed off on the Warrant. NYT link.
ETA: from the article
The involvement of Mr. Rosenstein and top prosecutors in New York in the raid of Mr. Cohen’s office makes it harder for Mr. Trump to argue that his legal problems are the result of a witch hunt led by Mr. Mueller. In addition to Mr. Rosenstein, all of the top law enforcement officials involved in the raid are Republicans: Mr. Mueller, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. Director, and Geoffrey Berman, the interim United States attorney in New York.
Nicole
@Bruuuuce: That makes me feel better. I was initially really against the settlement for Trump U, but in the end, I think it was better for the dumb sops who lost their money to get at least some of it back than drag it out and them perhaps get nothing. This stuff, much more serious than Trump bilking people dumber than he is.
I wonder where the $$ for the settlement came from and if they had to convert it from rubles first.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
60hz is distinctive and can give a clue as to the source of a hum, 50hz may be similar. Used to do TV production and chasing down ungrounded instruments, mics and amps was a constant struggle. Tube amps raised the issue of tube replacement, but are now rare.
ETA bad cables were the most common culprits.
Aleta
Seriously beautiful piece.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Interesting.
low-tech cyclist
@Washburn:
What would a Pence Administration do with respect to this that the Trump Administration isn’t already doing? IIRC, pretty much all of Trump’s non-defense hires passed muster with the evangelical yahoos.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump is one kind of very bad. Pence is a religious zealot who will make the evangelicals wet themselves with joy if he is elevated to the presidency.
Sign of Pence times: have you been keeping up with the stories about the White House prayer group? Ten Cabinet members, including Pence.
Kleptocracy or Theocracy. What a choice.
Chris
@JimV:
I think in general, partisan loyalty wasn’t what it was. Largely because both parties were diverse coalitions of progressives, moderates, and conservatives, and a lot of demographics were changing sides, up for grabs, or had recently changed sides. That probably helped a lot.
Shana
@bcw: My congressman at the time, Tom Railsback (R) of Illinois, was one of those. We visited DC that summer and went to his office. I remember seeing all the white books of evidence and testimony piled up on the floor of his office. I asked if I could look through them (age 13) and being disappointed but not surprised he said no.
LAO
Another recusal! Trumps’ head is going to explode.
ETA: LOL
rikyrah
@geg6:
TRAITORS, ALL.
Gelfling 545
@donnah: I was vastly a used yesterday when I read Jennifer Rubin’s description of his administration as “resembling the cantina scene in Star Wars.”
Fair Economist
I don’t remember anything from Watergate. My first memory of anything political was Nixon resigning and flying off in Marine One. That event got me interested in politics, though, and at age 11 I remember staying up late to see if the NY state absentee ballots would give the election to Ford.
trollhattan
@low-tech cyclist:
When Trump goes the whole rotten family goes with him. Good enough start for me.
Washburn
@low-tech cyclist:
With respect, you’re missing the point
It isn’t that Pence is so much worse than Trump.
It’s that they are both horrible in different ways and removing Trump will just result in another horrible president
So while schadenfreude is fun, the prize is the elections and nothing really gets better til then.
Chris
@Chris:
IS! Partisan loyalty wasn’t what it IS! LGM has made me lazy with its “you can go back and edit what you want when you want.”
Nicole
@LAO: Oh my goodness, that’s such good news! Glad that most have been adopted.
Say what one will about the Michael Vick case, but without a rich athlete, who had the money to pay a big fine, having done that, dogs taken from fighting rings might still be put down, without any sort of attempt to rescue them. It was Vick’s money that enabled dog rescue groups to take the dogs from his ring, work with them and discover that, in fact, they’re victims, not contraband. I think the only one of Vick’s that had to be put down for aggression was a female that wasn’t even used for fighting; she’d been driven nuts by having too many litters of puppies. I’m glad that rescuing the dogs and attempting to rehome as many as possible is now standard procedure. Doesn’t excuse the crime, but a lot of dogs are alive and placid housepets today because of it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
You are hilarious.
But, Cohen is the best that Dolt45 can get.
Someone on another blog makes this point:
‘A’ list law firms won’t touch Dolt45, because they don’t want to hurt their reputations.
‘B’ list law firms won’t touch Dolt45, because they want to become ‘ A’ list, and can’t have him hurt their reputation.
‘C’ list law firms WILL touch him, because, they’re ‘C’ list, but they are hesitant, because they don’t have the financial reserves to take on a high profile client that has a history of NOT PAYING HIS LAWYERS.
LAO
This can’t be good:
bemused
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Someone here I don’t recall made a comment that trump thinks and operates exactly like an old-fashioned mafia boss/modern Russian oligarch. True but mafia bosses and Russian oligarchs are smarter and cover their tracks better.
Patricia Kayden
@LAO: Happy to hear that those poor dogs were rescued from such horrible lives. People can be such monsters.
Fair Economist
@Chris:
It says something about how strong tribalism is when you consider that the midcentury parties could even exist given that they both spanned the political spectrum. I still can’t quite grasp it. That helps explain how the Republican party can turn on a dime on policies like deficit reduction without their voters even blinking.
LAO
@Nicole: Champions on Netflix the documentary of what became of the dogs and how the federal court dealt with the dogs was the best thing! I would love to be appointed a guardian for pups.
rikyrah
@LAO:
BWA HA HA HA HAH AH A HA
Kay
@rikyrah:
Right, but he isn’t really their lawyer. He doesn’t act in the capacity of a lawyer. He travels around making their sleazy deals because the Trump’s don’t want to meet with the actors directly- then they could be questioned about it.
I thought they would have a higher-quality “fixer”, honestly. It’s like letting the insane Trump doctor perform heart surgery. Sure, he’s okay for a phony physical, but you don’t actually let him do anything important.
LAO
@rikyrah: I don’t think Rosenstein survives the day.
rikyrah
@Washburn:
Pence is up to his eyeballs in the Flynn mess. And, if Flynn has been singing, then he’s been singing about Pence in his arias.
Pence was MANAFORT’S CHOICE. There’s a reason for that.
The scenario where Race Bannon doesn’t get caught up all in this – I don’t see it.
MattF
@LAO: I’d expect that both the Senate and House leadership will prevent that from happening. They’re completely shameless.
bemused
@trollhattan:
Look how much he envies and admires oligarchs and thugs. His main goal in life is to be oligarch and have his brand name plastered over everything. That’ll show those snooty NY rich bitches.
Brachiator
It’s not quite Watergate level for me, yet. We don’t have the president’s men and women appearing before Congress. And the Republicans have wised up. They are still denying that anything is wrong. And some in the GOP leadership may be complicit in the wrongdoing. The rot in the government goes deeper.
rp
@Washburn: If Pence takes over after Trump has been impeached or resigns, he’d be an incredibly weak president with little support in the media or with the public. He would just be a caretaker. He could still do a lot of bad stuff, but the risk to the country would be greatly reduced.
LAO
@MattF: agreed.
Fair Economist
I have to agree with Washburn that removing Trump from office via impeachment won’t help (unless we can impeach Pence too, and that would be even more impossible to get through the Republicans in the Senate). A failed impeachment *might* help by exposing the Republican Senators, but I doubt it. Most likely the best recourse is to pile up indictments and evidence of corruption and use that to win elections, with prosecutions after 2021.
Amir Khalid
@LAO:
Being not American, not a lawyer, and certainly not a political expert, I would think that for Trump, sacking Rosenstein as a transparent prelude to sacking Mueller would be as unwise as sacking Mueller directly. The last POTUS who tried it was eventually hounded out of office.
afanasia
@PaulWartenberg: The Lawfare blog calls it l’affaire Russe. I prefer to subsume our current disaster under “white nationalist attacks on the rule of law”.
Fair Economist
@efgoldman:
That gets a lot of press because it was true for the Clinton impeachment; but it was *not* true for the Johnson impeachment or the Nixon almost-impeachment. Although the legal rules were ill-defined, those were about actual legal issues. The lost-causers have pushed the idea that Johnson was being impeached “just” for policy issues (meaning allowing neo-slavery) but that had been going on for years. He was impeached when he broke a number of laws passed over his veto – some of questionable constitutionality, but still he was not impeached until *legal* issues came up.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: You mean Putin’s men right?
SRW1
I like the guy with the sun glasses to the left of Haldeman, Was he an observer sent by the mafia?
laura
@Cermet: your theories intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter :)
raven
@SRW1: Looks like Kevin Spacey!
LAO
@Amir Khalid: I don’t see reason as a driving force for Trump. He’s surrounded by yes men (and women) who tell him that he’s right. I really believe that this news will push him over the edge and he fires Rosenstein as a prelude to firing Mueller. I hope that I am wrong and you’re right, but only time will tell.
Just One More Canuck
@rikyrah: Does it say why he recused himself? Twitter wont let me look at it.
Nicole
@LAO: Oh cool; I’m totally going to check that out. I loved the book about them. Thanks for the recommendation!
Gelfling 545
I was just out of college during Watergate. I was working for the Canadian government so I had to keep a low profile politically as the “registered agent of a foreign government “. That kind of makes me chuckle now when I see Flynn, Manafort, et all. I answered their damn telephones! My late ex husband was active in the local branch of the committee for impeachment whose goal was to bring pressure on Congress to get with it. Read tons of mewspapers & magazines to try to get the full scoop. It seems to me that people at the time were less willing to disregard plain evidence or overlook criminal activity. Some were against impeachment as “bad for the counrty” but most saw the need. Big difference was televised hearings. I developed a fondness for Sam Ervin.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Ha! You’ve got a point.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@afanasia:
I like Russian Watersports.
Annie
@rikyrah:
I was 17 and a senior in high school in the spring of 1973. Our history teacher hauled his TV into school and set it up in an empty classroom so that anyone who wanted could watch the hearings. But my perspective is a bit skewed since at age 12 I was stuffing envelopes for Clean Gene McCarthy so I hated Nixon.
My strongest memory of Watergate is of the Saturday Night Massacre. I was in college and a substitute DJ on the college radio station that night. I still remember how shocked I was when I pulled the bulletins off the teletype to prepare a late evening news bulletin and saw that Richardson, then Ruckelshaus had resigned and someone had fired Cox. It felt like a coup d’état. But of course the result was fury, demonstrations, and a new special prosecutor.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SRW1:
I’m not sure but that it might be Roy Cohn.
Mike in DC
It does feel like there’s a shift in the media narrative now, towards more of a “slow downfall” storyline. Good. Because it’s accurate, and we need a bigger public shift against Trump for impeachment to have a real shot next year.
Tenar Arha
@Washburn:
1. Hopefully his actions during the transition will doom him. ?
2. We already have him, because I firmly believe a lot of policy & federal judges picking is being directed by him (since 45 couldn’t possibly sustain the interest).
3. At least, if 45 doesn’t take him down with him (bc that man is definitely mean enough to do it), Pence’s actions will maybe finally get actively scrutinized by the press & voters if he does become President
Barbara
@rikyrah: There really are a lot of good lawyers who could help Trump, but to really get good representation, Trump needs a firm — a team of attorneys — that can handle the review and disclosure of a lot of records and information, along with giving him good advice on dealing with prosecutors, and just dealing with the prosecutors themselves. I am a little surprised he hasn’t done better.
raven
@SRW1: Look at the dude with the mutton chops with his head turned to the right. Now look at the dude against the White House Fence here. There are a couple off other pictures of this march where you can se him better but he’s obviously a FED.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Flies Deserting a Sinking Rat?
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Archie, although a bigot, had some redeeming features, and he was definitely not a mean prick. Shitgibbon has none, and is.
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I don’t know who it actually is, but it isn’t Roy Cohn.
raven
@SFAW: He wasn’t a draft dodger.
arrieve
@sherparick: Yep. I was a teenager when the Watergate hearings were going on and I couldn’t have cared less. I remember some days my mother was still in her bathrobe at 5 o’clock because she’d been glued to the TV all day. I didn’t learn to hate Nixon until much later when I started to pay attention to politics and read up. But however evil he was — and he did some vile things — he was at least qualified to be president. He was a lawyer. He read books. He understood how government worked.
SFAW
@raven:
Good point.
dww44
@MJS: The Trump supporters that I know are not lazy, fat, nor uneducated, and definitely NOT poor. Around these parts they are still supportive of him, but in a mostly quiet manner except when communicating among themselves. Then they let it all hang out. Our politics are almost exclusively tribal these days. That’s what’s different from the Watergate era. Then we were a far more homogeneous society in part because we all watched the same TV networks and listened to the same journalists.
I was a young adult and new Mom during the Watergate hearings as well as employed outside the home. I had no time to be overly consumed with Watergate, but remember it well. The hearings were always on the TV and were, in retrospect, a great civic experience played out in front of all of our eyes. I well remember the TV bulletins and program interruptions on the night of October 20, 1973. It was all very exciting and nowhere near scary. We viewed Republicans on the Watergate committees with unbiased eyes and believed they would act in the best interests of us all. As they largely did.
sdhays
@TS:
I’ve taken to calling them Preznit Spanky’s “basket of expendables”.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
I am not.
1, He DOESN’T PAY.
He has routinely stiffed law firms so that they had to sue him to get their money.
2. He DOESN’T LISTEN.
Your client doesn’t listen to you AND doesn’t pay?
Uh huh.
Tenar Arha
@Barbara: In my non-lawyer & IMHO ?:
Firms could solve the obvious non-payment (& potential nonsense malpractice suits) danger by requiring 45 to post a very large bond & some kind of “hold-harmless if the client ignores our advice” contract, while also recording or doubling up on witnesses for every client communication.
But he’s such a loose cannon, so prone to ignoring advice, so likely to shoot his mouth off in a moment of self-soothing ranting, and so likely to constantly push his lawyers into compromising & illegal directions that I don’t see why any of them would want to go near him.
Plus, these firms must have seen within 6 months that he has the ultimate reputational reverse Midas touch. Any pleasure in the challenge or reputational advantages these firms could gain from potentially winning or just defending a President, has got no chance against that reverse Midas. Even the fact that he’s got Harder’s firm (of Gawker & Thiel & Jesse Ventura fame) helping on the Stormy Daniels suit showcases the limits of what top-level firms must be willing to deal with when it comes to defending the Agent Orange.
ETA LOL Or what @rikyrah: said.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Washburn:
No, you’re missing the point Washburn, or should I say ArgleBargle ABC? Pence wouldn’t probably get us all killed. This isn’t quantum mechanics, bud
TenguPhule
@Josie:
Not dealing with Nixon through the courts led to the current dystopia we find ourselves in today.
J R in WV
@YellowDog:
Watergate was a formative time in my life. I grew up in a local newspaper’s news room, or course as an 8 or 10 year old it was boring.
But then I worked there between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college, went away to the Navy after getting my Draft notice, and came back just in time for NIxon’s second inauguration. Worked more at the newspaper, this time in the composing room where hot (molten) typesetting metal was poured to make the headlines and news stories.
Wife had a J school degree and was City Editor upstairs. The reporters were a pretty tight group and had Saturday night get togethers regularly, that was the only night everyone had off, it was a morning paper, so reporters worked until 10 or 11 the night before, and editors even later, I worked til midnight most nights.
I’ve told the story of the Watergate Saturday Night massacre here before. This was before the Internet, by 15 years or so. There were newswires, though, dedicated phone lines from The Associate Press, the NYT, Wa Po, UPI, Wall Street Journal, the Racing Times to radio stations, TV, and of course back then to every newspaper. Teletypes actually typed the news on long fanfold paper, automatically, 24/7, and the link is to a single operational teletypewriter running, actually typing information. Here’s a more general link about Teletypes.
The small town paper we worked for had a dedicated teletype room, with 10 or 12 machines running, some around the clock, others when their subject matter was happening, like the finance wire or the racing wire, which was also leased by several bars and clubs around town for some strange reason.
Saturday Night Massacre Wife and I were at the monthly party, which was really just get together and eat pizza and drink beer and shoot the breeze… what else was there? The hosts had the radio playing Top 40, but at the top of each hour the DJ read the newswire, which that night was full of hot news. We left the party really early, around midnight, and went to the newspaper building, specifically to the teletype room, where we watched the news happening in DC over night.
As I remember that night:
The President first fired Attorney General Elliot Richardson for refusing to fire the Special Prosecutor. This was a five-bell story!*
Then after some few minutes, Nixon fired Deputy AG William G Ruckelshaus for the same reason.
Tricky Dick was working his way down the tree of power at the DoJ, looking for someone low enough to do what he wanted. Around 2 am he hit the jackpot, Robert Bork, Solicitor General and Acting AG after the top two officials were fired, was willing to do the dirty deed, hung up after Nixon went off the line, and wrote a letter firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Bork was appointed a Supreme Court Justice later on by Reagan (IIRC), but was refused confirmation by the Senate. It was widely viewed as payoff for being willing to try to protect Dick Nixon.
We finally left the TT room, and the whole newspaper plant was dark and silent at 2 or 3 am. Saturday night was when the Sunday Paper was run, by the staff who normally produced the afternoon paper, coming in normally at 5 or 6 am to get started on that task. They normally went to press at around noon to deliver papers by the time people were getting home from work.
When I looked these events up I found that Wikipedia’s account was plain old wrong, so wrong I would call it intentionally false. They tell it that Nixon fired Cox and abolished the office of the special prosecutor, but Nixon was not authorized to hire or fire a prosecutor investigating the President. The AG had to do it, and eventually I found more detailed and correct information at the LA Times and the WaPo that verified my memories of that amazing news night.
*Teletypes could sound an alert to let people know that in the judgement of the people sending a story down the phone lines a particular story was more important. On a pretty day the weather got no bells, if a tornado warning is posted, the weather story got 3 or 4 bells. D-Day during WW II got 5 bells, as did the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The teletype bells rang all night long the night of the Saturday Night Massacre~!
No Drought No More
“Where’s my Roy Cohn”? Donald Trump has reportedly asked aides and the caddies at Mar-A-GoGo (and quite likely, has repeatedly asked himself every day now for months). Well, yesterday he got his answer:
“The FBI just raided his office and residence, sir”.
Richard Nixon was, of course, his own Roy Cohn.. Hell, The Trickster was his own Joe McCarthy, too.
Uncle Cosmo
@Olivia: Just FTR, my father hated Nixon starting with the 1946 election when he was elected to the House. And he was 3,000 miles away, living on the Least Coast at the time. (Future-Dad fell in love with California when he was posted to San Luis Obispo en route to duty in the Pacific [Leyte & Okinawa]; he kept up with all things California after returning home during the next few years as he unsuccessfully tried to convince future-Mom to relocate there.)
Nixon brought our family together – every night on the evening news, when Tricky Dick’s face popped up, we’d jump out of our chairs, shake our fists & shout out, They’re gonna get you, you sonofabitch!
raven
@dww44: Except for us hippies.
Uncle Cosmo
@Geoduck: Which is part of the reason why I sometimes refer to Mike Pence-rhymes-with-Dense as Warren Harding 2.0. (The rest has to do with their eerie separated-at-birth resemblance – google a few pix & you’ll see what I mean.)
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Actually, most of the firings were in the afternoon, not late at night! It was the news about the firings that trickled out over night. That Sunday’s papers were the most important to the nation in many years. It was the general public, reacting to the firings, that caused the House to tip in favor of impeachment.
Barbara
@Tenar Arha: I realize all that. But what still amazes me is that they would not see the need to have people reviewing documents to isolate those things that are going to provide the biggest problems or the reverse, might be exculpatory. Jared Kushner managed to hire a firm to do this. You can’t deal with a team of prosecutors who are going to be pushing documents in front of you or a court and not have had someone doing the same thing. It’s really shocking.
JR
“The Flight to Varennes” is pretty catchy. We just need the destination where Trump is intercepted. Zurich?
Olivia
@Uncle Cosmo: My kind of family! Great visual!
The Other Chuck
@Kay:
If there’s anything consistent about Trump, it’s what a shoddy operation he runs. Always.
Skepticat
I was working in television production at a small local station during Watergate, but little work got done much of the day, as we were glued to the monitors, for we saw a bit more than went on the air, and we were pretty much transfixed. I remember vividly the reactions in the hearing room and the control room when Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the tapes. I also remember John Dean’s testimony about a cancer on the presidency, which would be a wart in comparison to today’s depredations. As would the whole episode, truth be known.
Sam Ervin was an amazing leader, and it seemed to me the entire committee acted judiciously, seriously, and with great professionalism. Being in Congress still was quite honorable.
Interestingly, I got–and relied on–my in-depth information from Newsweek and newspapers. The internet lets me make a living in a faraway place now, but it has a lot to answer for because of what it’s done to public discourse.
The contrast between then and now is painful, however, as those politicians acted mostly as true public servants and placed country above party. I’m old enough to remember when that was not only commonplace but expected, and I don’t think that’s only nostalgia.
We’ve fallen through the rabbit hole. I fear for our country.
Skepticat
@J R in WV: I wasn’t around that particular Saturday night, but I do remember the teletype clattering away and how everyone would run when the bells started!
J R in WV
@Fair Economist:
Pence isn’t the President. I believe they can indict and prosecute Pence right now, today; or at least once the Grand Jury and prosecution is ready to do so. That needs to happen first, along with the other B list felonious traitors. Then we can do Trump, and the Speaker of the House will become the next president.
Ruckus
@Ben Cisco:
This. A thousand times this.
We will never be able to appease the rabid right, they have been filled with hate and bullshit for far too long. We might be able to marginalize them, but win them over? NGH.
SDniece
danielx: thank you
Tenar Arha
@Barbara: Yeah. Agreed.
I talked to a former lawyer friend of mine. They’re like “everybody deserves a defense,” but also they were like “some clients aren’t worth it, and it depends on how much the lawyer(s) want to put up with.” So you’re right, it’s shocking that 45 has such a bad reputation as a client that there are no DC firms who want to work for/with him.
SgrAstar
@randy khan: Guess what! He did get into one a them good colleges. UC Irvine ftw! As a UC alum I’m very glad that one of our excellent campuses accepted him. He’ll be a credit to UCI for decades to come.
Aleta
@Olivia: Thanks for that view, insight.
I remember a relative saying he watched Nixon’s manipulations during the McCarthy era, and he had never stopped loathing him as Nixon climbed to power over the years. Oddly but I even remember his face when he said that, even though I was young and it was a passing remark. His face changed, actually contorted in disgust.