WATERGATE v JANUARY 6

 

Richard Nixon must be looking down from above or up from below,   whatever the case may be, and has to be wondering how on earth is Trump still standing. Nixon in a scandal named Watergate was hounded out of the Presidency by his own party for a fraction for what Trump did in a scandal labelled January 6. Both had been found by bipartisan Legislative committees to have violated their constitutional oaths. So why did Watergate cause such a national and even Republican Party revulsion that Nixon was forced to resign in 1974? And why has the Republican Party embraced, to put it at its lowest, a flawed standard bearer of their party in 2024?

Watergate was a merely a cover up by a President of a break into Democratic Party offices in order to get dirt on the opponents for the forthcoming election. Juxtapose that latter fact that the same Republican Party fifty years later in 2024 have as its Presidential candidate, a twice impeached, a judicially adjudged rapist, a convicted felon and an individual after losing an election and where a Legislative Committee found that he had  perpetrated an elaborate scheme to remain in power culminating in instigating an insurrection where he sicced the mob to kill his Vice President. The scandal collectively is referred to as January 6. 

 A central factor in this sordid degradation of a political party, which has boasted such icons as Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan, was how the American citizenry received and processed information in the 1970's versus the manner in which they do in the second decade of the twenty - first century.  Another cardinal feature in Trump's survival was the differing interpretations by the Nixon and Trump Supreme Courts of whether or not the President has the divine rights of  kings. 

NEWS DISSEMINATION AND RECEPTION - CIRCA THE 1970'S AND THE INVESTIGATIVE HEARINGS OF WATERGATE

In the 1970's television had come into its own as a communication medium. There were three national networks with news channels that were available to all - NBC, CBC and ABC. News was confined to the distinctive slots in the day and everyone saw and heard more or less the same objective factual comment. CBS was the dominant network and their famed newscaster Walter Cronkite's view of the world was accepted as gospel. The famed Watergate Bipartisan Senate hearings took nearly three months and were broadcast live on all three channels. Ninety percent of Americans tuned in at one stage or another. It is important to note that in this era of broadcasting the segment of "The News" was not considered a "cost center", that is on its own it did not have to cover the costs of the news coverage. .  

The Watergate hearings were dramatic. John Dean, Nixon's WhiteHouse Counsel, who went along with the cover up till he didn't, evidenced that he had finally confronted Nixon warning him that, "there was a cancer on the Presidency". There was a procession of co conspirators in the WhiteHouse from Nixon's Chief of Staff to aides, to members of his cabinet and his re election committee members, all of whom subsequently resigned and/or ended up in jail. The smoking gun was produced by Alexander Butterfield, a Special Assistant, who gave the explosive evidence that there was a tape system in the President's Office. 

The upshot was the unanimous bipartisan decision of the Senate Hearing to recommend to the House to conduct an Impeachment Enquiry.

The Watergate scandal really broke as a result of relentless investigative reporting, primarily, by "The Washington Post" investigator journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. They subsequently wrote the first two books  that were considered the definitive works on the affair. "All The President's Men", subsequently made into a blockbuster movie staring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, was a best seller for eons and was followed up by "The Final Days", another gripping non fictional narrative of how the saga all came to an end.

To sum up: The story of the Watergate scandal was told in an era where there was a singular version of news. Facts were facts and where the interpretation of them was obvious it was accepted by the overwhelming majority of the population and the legislature that represented them.

NEWS DISSEMINATION AND RECEPTION CIRCA THE TWENTY - FIRST CENTURY. 

The decade preceding the twentieth first century saw the breakneck evolution of the expansion of the internet more or less contemporaneously with the formation of the Cable News Networks. By the first decades of the 21st Century the internet expanded exponentially providing omultiple social and chat platforms, podcasts.visual networks and endless blogs. There was 24 hour news coverage and opinion and news programs became cost centers. In other words they needed high ratings in order to obtain the money to pay for their production, unlike in the 1970's. 

The initial Cable News outlets as did the internet splintered the body politic into separate camps, presenting news that bolstered their viewpoints. However this was only the beginning more significantly the focus was less and less on the news per se but rather on "opinion makers" who presented their interpretation of events. Today the latter dominate the information being received by the body politic. 

These burgeoning outlets assumed more and more sinister proportions by creating a dystopian environment appealing to specific identities. If anymore evidence is needed to illustrate the importance of these entities, Kamala Harris the Democratic nominee, who came into the race late and needs to present herself to the electorate, in one week had interviews with five different news sources within the space of a few days, all of which had audiences of differing identities. 

Thus the third millennium heralded a method of delivering and perceiving facts in total contrast to the "Watergate" era. The new paradigm laid the door wide open for distortion of reality and the presentation of fiction as fact - a "Post Truth" world. 

" THE POST TRUTH WORLD - THE ERA OF DONALD J. TRUMP".

The whole era of what was to become characterized by the word of the Year in 2016 as "Post Truth" was dominated by Donald J. Trump. The domain of "Post Truth" allows the exponent to create his or her own reality, regardless of the objective facts. 

It is in the milieu of multiple news sources that Donald J. Trump, objectively a fabulist, thrived. As a skillful communicator and a salesman par excellence, he could and did create a cult like following. Trump manufactured his own world whether it was that he was the most successful businessman ever, and that he was the defender of America to maintain its white Christian national identify - a man you could trust to act in your interests and manage anything and everything. He summed it all up. "I alone can fix it as I am very stable genius". 

Trump will go down in history as Plato's original "Post Truth" exponent. In fact he developed fictional reality into art form fifty years earlier than the Oxford Dictionary named "Post Truth" the word of the year. From claiming from the word go that he was the most eligible "man about town and the smartest business man alive" he lived up to the maxim that any publicity was good publicity especially as news sources began to propagate his worldview without questioning it.  

Six bankruptcies later and married to his third wife he emerged as a national figure through his role in a TV series "The Apprentice". There he strutted and preened and convinced America that he was the greatest businessman the world had ever seen. There is also a movie on "The Apprentice" which does not agree with Trump's assessment of himself.  

Trump gained more and more prominence over "The Apprentice" years, his major construction over that period was a "Trump Tower" in Chicago. The latter venture has been so financially calamitous that it has been declared a permanent loss. He is also being investigated by the IRS for double dipping on claiming that financial loss. Prior to the 2016 election he settled a claim for having estanlished a fraudulent University for $25 million dollars . He claimed it was a "great deal" because the attorney general demanded  $40 million for the defrauded students. His political credentials were established by a serial disinformation campaign that President Obama was born in Africa.

Notwithstanding his evil buffoonery Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, partly as a reaction to the arrogance and hubris of decades of the Dole, Reagan and Bush dynasty but more as a result of the splitting of the news sources including the internet and the cynical yet dominant Murdoch/Ailes Fox News Empire. Then in a Black Swan sequence of events including an opponent who as a female was considered a siren not just a "glass breaking" ambitious politician, an arrogant FBI investigator and with more than a little help from his friend Vladimir, he became President.

Trump's mendacious Presidency can be summarized in a footnote, namely, that in four years The Washington Post documented over 30,000 lies. Then came the biggest of them all, The Big Lie, that he never lost the 2020 election. He therefore felt entitled to concoct a multi layered conspiracy to overturn the result so as to remain in power. This months long effort culminated in him inciting an insurrection on January 6, the day designated to formerly count the electoral votes and announce the name of the newly elected President. The attack on the Capitol produced such a sense of shock that the whole Trump episode of trying to subvert the will of the people was labeled January 6 - much like Nixon's criminality was referred to as Watergate.

THE HOUSE COMMITTEE'S INVESTIGATION OF JANUARY 6

As the news sources that provided the information were now multiple aiming at different identities and groups the House of Representatives' January 6 investigation could not engender viewers that unified the revulsion seen in Watergate. The House of Representative Republicans refused  to participate in the investigation because they broadly agreed with Trump that this was a "partisan witch hunt". Two breakaway Republicans joined the Democrats in a months long journey which produced new and breathtaking revelations as to the scope of the conspiracy. 

In the 2020's there were not daily broadcasts of the "January 6" Committee's proceedings. When the Committee did hold a TV hearing it was an hour long and garnered less than ten percent of the population's viewership. Of that number the news was being influenced by the political slant of the Cable Channels and social media anchors.

 In this milieu Trump in the years thereafter was able to claim that the convicted insurrectionists were patriots whom he would pardon, the brutality was from the Capitol's police, it was the Speaker Nancy Pelosi's responsibility to obtain security and she had refused to call for help and that the charges against him for inciting this sedition were an attack on a political opponent and election interference for 2024. The multipolar news landscape comfortably allowed the Republican Legislative Members to go along with this tissue of lies. 

So how does the Supreme Court fit into all of this?

THE SUPREME COURT ON WATERGATE AND JANUARY 6

Both President Nixon and President Trump had appointed three judges to the Supreme Court. Both Presidents claimed absolute power for their offices. Nixon maintained he had rights similar to that of  King Louis XIV. Trump maintained that he could order the Navy Seals to eliminate a political opponent. The power of the Presidency ultimately had to be decided by the Judiciary, the final arbiter being the Supreme Court.

Within two months of the Federal District Court ruling against Nixon, the Supreme Court speedily heard arguments and issued a unanimous decision against Nixon. Nixon was persuaded by his own party to avoid being axed by as President to resign.

The Federal District Court rejected Trump's aargumrnts on December 1, 2023, maintaining that the Presidency didn't confer on him the divine right of kings. Trump appealed the ruling and the Special Counsel asked the Supreme Court to hear arguments urgently as the Court had done in the Nixon litigation. The Robert's court demurred and sent the matter to the Federal Appeal Court. Trump having once again lost in that court the 45th President  appealed to the Supreme Court. The latter deferred their opinion on the matter till July 1, 2024, 7 months after the District's ruling, making it impossible for Trump's criminal trial to be heard before the November election.

With regard to Presidential immunity the Robert's Supreme Court ruled that any "official" action could not be prosecuted. As an example of an "official;" action they referred to the section of the criminal case against Trump where he offered to make a lowly Justice Department Attorney General if he agreed to send a letter to the States stating that the Justice Department was investigating possible election corruption. They opined that the trial Judge should adjudicate which other of Trump's actions were "private" and which were "official". The majority of the Court gave Trump even more leeway, ruling that if the President was charged with a criminal "private" act any corroboratory evidence arising from his actions in his "official" capacity could not be used against him. 

In effect the Supreme Court majority have abandoned the unanimous Nixon precedent. They willfully ignored the urgency of the situation declining to adjudicate the merits of the allegations against a candidate running for the Presidency who had been indicted of an insurrection. Surely it was in the country's interest to have the matter adjudicated prior to the election? 

WHERE DOES THE LEAVE THE MATTER NOW?

In this bizarre transformative historical period Donald J Trump has, if the polls are right, an even chance of becoming President again. He has formed a transactional alliance with the richest businessman on earth who has poured five hundred million dollars into Trump's campaign. This billionaire, Elon Musk, who has been offered a job in Trump's administration also happens to own the largest social media platform in the world where he spreads misinformation, largely to benefit Trump.  Elon Musk has 200,000 million followers on his platform "x" and has generated message after message with misinformation so as to favor Trump's candidacy. 

AT THE END OF THE DAY

If the current Supreme Court had been sitting in 1974 Richard Nixon would not have had to obey the Subpoena and there would have been not been a Watergate. Despite the overwhelming evidence already out in the open there may not be a January 6 either. 

Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has written books on Trump and has little doubt which President is the worse. He has a new book "War" which has more block buster revelations as to Trump's malevolence.

On the bright side the other major candidate for the Presidency is a woman, a first generation immigrant of Jamaican and Asian parentage. So maybe all is not lost but at the end of the day it is pretty scary.