What Watergate Teaches Us About Trump's America

TRUMP'S AMERICA: WHAT WATERGATE AND NIXON'S DOWNFALL CAN TEACH US 45 YEARS LATER

BY TIM MARCIN ON 6/17/17 AT 9:00 AM

Every so-called scandal these days is a "-gate."

Some footballs lost air? Boom: Deflategate. Some wholly unproven, made-up theory about child-trafficking in a pizza shop? Boom: Pizzagate. Some British spy's explosive dossier details a purported incident involving a man who would become president of the United States and Russian prostitutes urinating on a hotel bed? Boom: GoldenShowergate.

Of course, the original -gate from which all these titles stem is Watergate, the political scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon. A very quick and dirty refresher: Exactly 45 years ago this Saturday, Nixon aides broke into the Democratic National Committee offices (in the Watergate Hotel), aiming to get information. A cover-up ensued, and secret tapes eventually revealed that the president, at a minimum, knew about that effort to keep it under wraps. It all began in June 1972, and Nixon resigned in August 1974.

The point is: A lot of things have been compared to Watergate, but few things are really comparable to Watergate. That is, until Donald Trump became president, experts told Newsweek. There's quite a bit that the ground-shaking scandal from 45 years ago Saturday can teach us about how things stand in 2017—chiefly centered on the slowly unfurling investigation into the president and his campaign's potential ties with Russia, the country that worked to subvert the 2016 election in favor of Trump.

"I think there are a lot of parallels, and I'm one who kind of dismisses parallels to Watergate," said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University history professor who has written often on Watergate. "You start with the facts of the wrongdoing: There were illegal crimes committed…in order to subvert the election. In both cases, there were suspicions it implicated the president."

A few other similarities pointed out to Newsweek by experts:

The presidents themselves were similar: both cursed with a paranoid streak, an inflated belief in their authority and a penchant for dressing down subordinates.

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http://www.newsweek.com/trump-america-what-watergate-nixons-downfall-teach-45-years-later-626382