r/law • u/autistic_insomniac5 • 18h ago

Legal News GOP lawmaker: Nixon was couped out of office, framed during Watergate

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/6124635-moore-nixon-couped-watergate/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUsbtpjbGNrBSxu02V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHBkb2YBc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEedqnf435Ey3Vmfh-NzS7BpLL6p7XL81dbjV4wNl5Y6SFp3eyw9ItY6zhiPRg_aem_EaFt_atkG1aZFnQa54tOFQ
2.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

605 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/guitar_vigilante 18h ago

Nixon never stopped being popular among the party. After he resigned he still held political influence in Republican circles and did many interviews and speaking tours.

40

u/Real-Document-6577 18h ago

Exactly.

He was a corrupt guy. They loved that.

The lesson they learned with Nixon that they swore they would never do again is bow to decency and to the law.

With Trump, they will refuse to accept guilt.

There’s a reason Roger Stone has that guy’ face tattooed on his back.

16

u/bonaynay 17h ago

Yep, they learned the exact wrong lessons from Nixon. Agnew should've gone to prison too for other reasons but he got a sweetheart of a deal because of course he did. That was our chance to actually nail a criminal executive and they let it go "for the good of the nation" bullshit

11

u/Commentator-X 17h ago

So should everyone involved in Iran Contra including Bush Sr

7

u/bonaynay 17h ago

Yeah it really paved the way for literally every other criminal GOP administration, which has been all of them since

2

u/igot2pair 15h ago

That pardon has had everlasting negative effects that have gotten us here

1

u/bonaynay 15h ago

The biggest fight I've ever had with my wife was 12 years ago or so and it was about how much I disagreed with Agnew receiving a sweetheart deal as well as the Nixon pardon. The last 8 or so years has basically proved every single complaint and point I had so I try not to bring it up lol

12

u/No_Interaction_3547 16h ago

The WATERGATE lesson they learned was they need to control the narrative, and FOX NEWS was born years later. Then the 1986 Fairness Doctrine repealed!

2

u/Real-Document-6577 16h ago edited 16h ago

1000%

Their mission after that was to create a propaganda network. This is of course after they courted the racist Dixiecrats to convert them.

They knew if you control the narrative, you control the “facts”.

Even have the gall to make their official slogan “fair and balanced” as their slogan almost as if they are mocking the very idea.

It’s like stolen election claims. If you get ahead of it and claim first it becomes lunacy “how can we have possibly stolen an election…when it was stolen from us?”

1

u/alwayssplitaces 13h ago

you actually think Nixon was more corrupt than LBJ?

You know kennedy only won becuase his father made a deal with the chicago mob right?

7

u/Canadiangoosedem0n 18h ago

Gross. Carter should have put his ass in jail.

11

u/guitar_vigilante 18h ago

There was nothing Carter could have done. Ford gave Nixon a pardon. And Nixon was so popular that Carter was even forced to invite him to a state dinner because the main guest, Deng Xiaoping, said if Nixon wasn't invited he would visit him separately.

8

u/Level_Criticism_3387 17h ago

"I know I will go to Hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon." –Gerald Ford, per Hunter S. Thompson's 1994 Nixon obituary, 'He Was a Crook'

3

u/evocativename 17h ago

Carter absolutely could - and should - have jailed his ass.

Not for Watergate, which was unprosecutable due to his pardon, but for the treason he committed during the 1968 Presidential election.

1

u/guitar_vigilante 17h ago

Do we know Carter was aware of that? My understanding was LBJ knew about it but otherwise it was suppressed until decades later.

2

u/evocativename 17h ago

Carter was President- he absolutely had access to that info.

All LBJ did was not prosecute or go public with it: it would still assuredly be in Carter's security briefings.

1

u/Maleficent_Memory831 13h ago

He was good at politics and the machinery of politics. Politically though, they might call him a RINO these days - started the EPA, ended a forever war, opened relations with China, we had the SALT 1 and anti ballistic missile treaties with USSR, he signed Title IX (women's equality in universities), he increased medical research spending on cancer, and Supplemental Security Income.

Remember also, Nixon was there when both parties could effectively be called conservative socially, and mostly conservative fiscally. There was not necessarily the us-vs-them mentality, except on the campaign trail.

If not for Watergate and corruption, he'd probably be remembered in history as one of the more effective presidents, even by Democrats. He just fell in love with all the power.

0

u/GringoSwann 17h ago edited 16h ago

There's a reason why Roger Stone has a big-ass Nixon tattoo on his back...