Worse Than Watergate? Don't Get Me Started
Trump has managed to top virtually every previous White House scandal. Most of them in the last four months.
Apparently, Jake Tapper claimed recently that Joe Biden’s attempts to spin his declining capacity – attempts, remember, that included insisting on an early debate with Donald Trump – might have been “worse than Watergate.”
This is, as many have pointed out, silly. But I was pleased to see that “Is it worse than Watergate?” is still a thing. It shouldn’t be, really, since as bad as Watergate was – and it was probably worse than you think – it was easily outdone by Donald Trump’s collected first term scandals. However, as something of an internet Watergate maven, I’m always happy to see that Richard Nixon’s scandal still gets people’s attention.
Anyway, I’m not so interested in Tapper/Biden, but I am interested in the current president. And it occurred to me that what Trump is up to and what he’s done isn’t just worse than Watergate. He’s come close to surpassing all the major presidential scandals on their own terms. Check it out:
Watergate I For shorthand we can break this one down into two parts: The original crimes and the cover-up. The original crimes, broadly speaking, involved improperly using the government for personal and especially political advantage. Things such as trying to get the IRS to audit Nixon’s enemies, or using White House staff to spy on his enemies, and eventually having campaign staff under White House supervision spy on and attempt to manipulate Democratic campaigns. Trump has done most of this publicly, which makes it worse, not better. Think his attempt to bully law firms, universities, and media organizations, or his frequent public requests for his enemies to be audited or jailed. Watergate was bad; this is worse.. And while Trump hasn’t (as far as we know) illegally spied on Democrats, he doesn’t really have to – he simply makes up stuff about them and any other opponents and uses his office to spread those lies, with the cooperation of Republican-aligned media.
Watergate II Watergate took months to really break into a major story. What really did it were the revelations that the White House (including Nixon himself) interfered with the FBI investigation and the Justice Department prosecution of the Watergate break-in. Trump at least matched that in his first term by obstructing justice in the Russia scandal, and now in his second term Trump has made it clear that the Justice Department, including the FBI, work directly for him with no separation at all, making it impossible to imagine even a compromised investigation of anything Trump has done, no matter how much it might look like a crime. And not just Trump; no one right now could possibly expect federal criminal action against any Trump ally.1
Iran-Contra The Ronald Reagan scandal is I think mostly forgotten today, but it was a big deal at the time, with multiple cabinet-level indictments, an end to Reagan’s popularity for over a year, and massive media attention. It’s also not easy to explain. Reagan agreed to sell arms to Iran (at that point even more of a major US enemy than it is now) in exchange for US hostages being held by Iranian allies in Lebanon, and then the administration used the profits from those sales to fund anticommunist rebels in Nicaragua (the “contras”) despite US law prohibiting aid to that group. Is Trump worse? Easily. At its core, Iran-Contra was an attempt to evade congressionally-passed spending directives; in fact, some administration folks envisioned a long-term plan to evade congressional involvement entirely through similar sales. That’s really bad! And yet it’s nothing compared to the Trump administration’s embrace of across-the-board attempts to spend and not spend money regardless of the law.2
Teapot Dome This Warren Harding administration scandal, which came to light after Harding had died, was generally considered the biggest in US history until Watergate. It involved a cabinet official caught taking bribes from oil companies, but it didn’t directly involve the president. Trump’s various attempts to personally profit from his office during his first term almost certainly exceeded anything Interior Secretary Albert Fall did in the 1920s, and he’s ramped that up on a massive scale in his second term. (fn The linked New York Times story notes that there are no “official investigations” but that’s mainly because Trump allies at Justice won’t allow those investigations. It also claims there’s no outrage. I’m outraged! I think others are as well; some of these stories may help to explain why Trump is once again unpopular).
Pardons A number of presidents have used the pardon power in ways that drew heavy criticism: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon; George H.W. Bush’s pardon of several officials caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich; Joe Biden’s pardon of his own son. Trump’s pardons have been off-the-scale worse, Even if you take the worst possible interpretation of all those other controversial pardons (which I think is way to harsh in each of those cases). Note that the clemency power in the Constitution is unlimited, so this is all legal for presidents to do. However, it can be (and is) both legal and violation of his oath of office.
Clinton/Lewinsky The president had an affair with a White House intern, lied about it, and was accused of trying to buy her off by getting her a job, although the last part convinced very few other than partisans.3 I think it’s fair to say that Trump — who has been sued successfully for sexual assault, accused of multiple other cases of sexual harassment, and was convicted in a case involving pay-offs to keep an affair quiet — has topped this one as well. Although to be fair all of that preceded his current term of office, unlike each of the cases above. As far as we know.4
Drinking Trump has been a sober president, and many of his predecessors were not. That said, Trump’s cable news habit (especially considering that he refuses to be briefed by experts) is probably a lot more damaging than a drug or alcohol addition would be. So…I’m not going to give him this one.
Trump’s First Term Scandals Finally, we get to some things that Trump does not appear to have topped yet in his second term! As far as we know, he has not tried to bully any foreign nations into manufacturing dirt on his political opponents, and while he pardoned the January 6 criminals and continues to lie about what he did to attempt to overturn the 2020 election, he hasn’t actually topped that yet in this term.
Look: Trump’s real current “scandal” adds up to a sustained attack on the Constitution and democracy, and that’s the worst thing any president has every done. But just for the record: He’s also managed to top pretty much every previous scandal on its own terms. Amazing.
Remember that presidential attempts to (for example) subvert the law are just as bad even if Congress or the courts or others in the system ultimately defeat what the president is trying to do. It’s also true that to some extent efforts to increase the influence of the office are perfectly normal in a system in which separate institutions share powers. There’s no hard-and-fast line where we can say: Ah, this attempt to grab power is an abuse, not just the regular push and pull of politics. But whereever that line might be, Trump is far, far over it.
Before Iran-Contra, “impoundment” — refusing to spend money appropriated by law — was part of Watergate. So it goes with Nixon and Reagan. And, now, with Trump.
At the time, more people were upset about Clinton’s infidelity per se, perhaps tempered by the fact that it was consensual, than they were about how inappropriate it was for the president to do anything “consensual” with someone working for him. Clinton also had a long history of of infidelity, which he had more-or-less acknowledged (with the understanding that it was in the past) during his 1992 campaign.
That “as far as we know” applies across-the-board; it’s surely possible there are important things that haven’t yet been reported. For irresponsible sexual escapades as president, it’s likely no one tops John F. Kennedy. But that’s never really been a scandal, and certainly wasn’t during his presidency. If you want to count it, however, I’ll concede that one.
Also his addiction to sharing his — I don’t know, is “thoughts” too kind? — on social media is arguably as bad as drinking since it shows the primal mind in a way no sober person would want revealed. Can you imagine Nixon tweeting his drunken self pity at night from the Lincoln Sitting Room?
Trump is worse. Way worse. The whole world knows how his mind works and how to manipulate him.
While not the president (but it almost was), people tend to have forgotten the Spiro Agnew scandal, where the VP was taking cash from contractors. Since this was happening during watergate where it was almost certain Nixon would resign or be impeached, there was a real fear that Agnew would become president and still be taking bribes.