During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump charged that Hillary Clinton’s alleged email scandal was worse than Watergate.
But, as we’ve seen many times, Trump tends to project his own guilt onto others, and this may be no exception. What may really be as bad as, if not potentially worse, than Watergate is the alleged collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russian government in efforts to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
I was re-reading Keith Olson’s incisive book, Watergate, The Presidential Scandal the Shook America, and couldn’t help noticing a number of parallels between the then Nixon White House involvement in dirty tricks leading up to the 1972 election and the presidential election scandal of 2016.
Both cases, of course, involved admitted or alleged efforts to change the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.
Both cases involved either a break-in or hacking of the Democratic National Committee. In both cases, there were admitted (in the case of Watergate) or alleged attempts to block FBI investigations of the underhanded tactics.
To me, Chapter 9 of Olson’s book provides an insight into why the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russians, if true, is potentially worse than Watergate. The difference between the two scandals lies in the apparent intent of the wrongdoers or alleged wrongdoers in each case.
In the case of Watergate, Nixon and his top aides appear to have sincerely, but of course mistakenly, believed that the Democrats were supporting the Communist government of North Vietnam in its effort to take over South Vietnam. Nixon believed his re-election was necessary to prevent an effective Communist takeover of the U.S.
As Nixon’s special counsel, Charles Colson, later noted, White House officials believed illegal actions were needed to ensure Nixon’s re-election, and they “covered their own misdeeds while rationalizing it all as being in the interests of the country.”
The sincerity of Colson’s rationalization, which was also used by Nixon himself, can be debated; and, in fact, most Americans at the time didn’t accept it, believing instead that Watergate was part of an attempt, as Olson put it, “to promote and protect Nixon’s career.”
But at least there was no alleged collusion with a foreign power in Watergate, and no one ever alleged that Nixon secretly wanted to serve the interest of a foreign power.
In the case of the 2016 election, however, the scandal involves the alleged collusion with a foreign power, and it includes allegations that Trump is seeking to serve the interests of a foreign government.
Thus far, the only argument that has been put forward by Trump’s defenders in support of Russian interference in the U.S. election is that it uncovered information about Clinton’s emails.
It’s a pretty pathetic argument to make that a foreign government’s break-in of U.S. political institutions was warranted because it proved that an American political candidate was misusing an email server. But that’s the position that Trump and his Republican supporters are in as they struggle to minimize the impact of a real, emerging scandal.
As you allude to both involve break-ins. In the 20th century you had to physically burglarize a party HQ to install bugs on the phones. In the 21st century emails rather than calls are the target and you can violate them electronically.
but it’s early. Trump said a few years ago he’d run for the White House “I think I’d win,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you what: I wouldn’t go in to lose.”
My thought are that once he saw how easy it was for him to gain popularity and support with the birther crap, that was once piece of the puzzle.
Perhaps, after a few exchanges with Putin, he had another piece.
Nixon as a candidate did collude with a foreign government directly against the interests of the United States when he worked with Chennault to convince the Republic of Vietnam that he would cut a better deal than LBJ so they’d hold out in the peace talks. That said-this is worse than that. Nixon could argue he believed he would get a better deal for our allies when he had the power to end the war-Trump is being elevated in a chess game he isn’t even aware is being played. It’s really frightening.
Note how Trump’s apparent projections, e.g. references to Hillary’s lying or corruptness, or to the possible illegitimacy of a Trump loss, or to claims that Clinton profited from being Secretary of State, also provide Trump himself space to lie, be corrupt, benefit from interventions in the election, and profit from being President.
We need to abandon Watergate comparisons. Whether it’s appending -gate to every scandal name, or using it for comparison, I think people just stop listening.
I’m as disturbed by Trump’s election as anyone is, but I’ve yet to see any serious evidence that the Russians hacked the stuff that was released, let alone that Trump colluded in it.
I wish that “it is our assessment that” was good enough, but given the WMD-in-Iraq “assessments” – and given that General Clapper “assessed”, at that time that WMD existed in Iraq and were “unquestionably” being moved out of the country, I’ll have to take a pass unless there is serious and public evidence.
And blaming the intelligence agencies for the strategic stupidity of the Bush administration is a fallacy. As is holding one bad call against many good ones. The evidence here is strong, the Russians did hack into the DNC and they only released DNC emails proving that they wanted Trump to win.
Why did they want this? Since his administration is unpredictable and unstable and it injects division into the West. The same reason they are bankrolling far right parties throughout Europe-it is to use our open system against us by manipulating our democracies to reject the liberal international order. So
Far it’s not a Manchuria candidate-Trump is more likely a useful idiot that Putin lucked into helping than an active agent.
because I’d hate people to be wrong about it.
Please provide said overwhelming evidence. If you cannot… then you might want to adjust your post to say we’re being told it’s overwhelming.
…and you don’t really think intelligence agencies are going to show all their evidence publicly, do you? The WMD “evidence” was driven and manipulated from the top. I think your anti-Hillary bias is showing:(
The Director has of National Intelligence, General Clapper, has concluded that Russia hacked the ClintonDNC apparatus. But I don’t think that 17 agencies did individual asssessments. IIRC, it was three, and their report was prefaced by an extremely unusual disclaimer that they’re not responsible for anyone actually using the information to make decisions or some such thing.
This is the same General Clapper, BTW, who was certain that Iraq had WMD and was hiding them somewhere. Alas, apparently being utterly wrong and instigating murderous wars has no consequence whatsoever in the US these days. Incredible, ain’t it? We never learn.
Because that, if it exists, will be what makes this a worse-than-Watergate situation. The key issue here isn’t whether the Russians hacked the DNC and/or Podesta’s email account. It’s whether they did it in coordination with Trump.
What’s critical here, that is, is whether or not the President-Elect of the United States is a crook. If he intentionally caused someone to violate U.S. law and steal information to aid in his election campaign, we’re in Watergate territory. Only even more so, because now he’s conspiring with a foreign power. But if he didn’t?
Now it’s a murkier question. Let’s say we know for certain both that the Russian intelligence services did it in order to help Trump win the election. We’re still in a world where Trump is merely the beneficiary of the theft and release of accurate, relevant information about his opponent, in much the same way that Clinton was the beneficiary of the improper release of a few pages of Trump’s tax return. Which most of us, I suspect, believed to be a public service by whoever mailed those pages to the NY Times, and not improper interference in our electoral process at all.
Does it make a difference that one unauthorized information release was the work of a not-terribly-friendly foreign power, while one probably came from a U.S. citizen? Sure, on some level. And yet.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I suspect that if the Russians had given us Trump’s tax returns, while a disgruntled staffer had leaked the Podesta emails, and Hillary had won the election, a majority of Democrats would dismiss any arguments from Republicans about improper electoral interference from Vladimir Putin. Unless it could be shown that Clinton or someone in her inner circle was actively involved in the illicit access to and release of those returns, I think we’d mostly be making the same arguments Trump supporters are making now.
… “What did he know, and when did he know it?” ?
I mean it’s not like Trump is going attempt a distraction with attack against a gold star family, who happen to be Muslim, without something from which to distract.
— “Paul Manafort has ties to Russians in Ukraine…”
— “Look, over there! Muslims! ”
Previous to last week, the prior press conference that Trump gave was in July of 2016.. when Paul Manafort was still his campaign manager. At that press conference he said two specific things:
— “It might not have been Russian. I was probably China.”
— “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The first is a deflection and the second, in counterpoint, a sort of admission.
So… again.. what did he know and when did he know it…?
You don’t think Trump would attack a Gold Star family without there being something to distract from? From what we’ve seen so far, I think Trump would attack a Gold Star family because they drew his attention for five seconds, like a butterfly happening to flutter past. And then he’d double and triple down, because he’s Donald Trump and he doesn’t admit errors and disengage.
But here’s the thing: If Manafort did collude with the Russians on this, we need something more substantial by way of proof than the fact that there was opportunity. The charges are too serious for it’s-possible-that to be conflated with we-know-that. And as for the “Russia, if you’re listening,” it is obviously an inappropriate line for a Presidential candidate, in a way that it isn’t an inappropriate line for a late-night comedian. Nevertheless, it was and is a line for a late-night comedian, and people had been making pretty much that joke for months before Trump said it out loud, about both candidates. Taking it as actual knowing collusion with Russian intelligence is, without more, a huge stretch.
I hope it goes without saying that I don’t want Donald Trump sworn in this week any more than anyone else here does. But I do want to see something substantial by way of evidence of criminal collusion before we start taking the fact of that collusion as established truth — if only because as a practical matter, that’s what it’ll take, at minimum, to convince the general public that this is a big deal, and not just a bunch of leftie partisans whining about how the election went.
actively colluded with the Russians. That’s why I said the collusion charges, if true, would make the Russian hacking scandal worse than Watergate.
But there’s so much smoke here, there’s a good chance of fire. We do know that Trump has many questionable ties to Russia and Putin. He won’t release his tax returns that would indicate the extent of those ties.
The Russians wouldn’t disrupt a U.S. election for no reason. They probably want something in return from the man they helped, and there’s a fair amount of evidence that Trump has given them things in return.
There’s the Trump campaign’s insistence last summer on a change in the Republican platform regarding Ukraine, which benefited Russia. There are the five calls last week that a senior Trump advisor had with the Russian ambassador after President Obama announced sanctions in the wake of the hacking intelligence reports.
Trump does not appear to be just a passive beneficiary of the theft of information about his opponent in the election.
Whether they or Trump are actively trying to help Putin due to direct ties or if they are just useful idiots is an open question. This foreign policy is deliberately designed to provoke a fight with China we neither need nor want and surrender all the conflicts we have with Russia.
We do need proof that can be made public, is all. If it can be shown that Trump himself did this, or caused it to be done, then he conspired with a foreign power to break U.S. law in pursuit of his own electoral success, and that’s the ball game. Or should be.
I do think it’s worth being clear about that being the central issue, though. Otherwise the message gets tangled up with questions of how much it did disrupt the election, and whether any real harm was done, and why or how it is different from that blind drop of the Trump tax-return pages. People can argue about all those things, in ways that they can’t about actual, provable criminal conspiracy, which is unacceptable no matter how you evaluate the impact of the disclosures that resulted.
But we know for a fact that he actively colluded with Ron Dermer, against the policy of the Russians, and against the US government.