United States Vice President JD Vance said the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of former president Richard Nixon, would last just “12 hours” today.
Vance termed it “crazy” that the scandal toppled a US president, while saying that he had “always liked” Nixon. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance said while promoting his book at the Nixon presidential library in California, Bloomberg reported.
The US Vice President further drew parallels between President Donald Trump and Nixon, claiming both had been targeted by “deep state” forces.
“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,” Vance said. Trump had been impeached twice during his first term.
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Vance, who stepped into politics with a contest for the Senate in Ohio, and is widely expected to be a presidential candidate for the next US elections in 2028, said he had commonalities with Nixon “at a personal level”, according to Bloomberg. “Young senator, vice president, write some best-selling books, is hated by the media. It kind of sounds like JD Vance,” the Vice President said. He added that the legacy of Nixon was “enjoying a bit of a renaissance”, the Associated Press reported.
What was the Watergate scandal?
Seen as one of the biggest political scandals in America, the Watergate led to the downfall of Nixon’s presidency. It began with the arrest of five men caught attempting to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to surveil the office. This was when sitting president Nixon was running for re-election.
The burglars later turned out to be members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, and it was found that they had tried to enter the Democrat headquarters to o steal documents and tap their office phones. The accused were caught by the building’s security guard.
Nixon, meanwhile, said he had nothing to do with the incident and the campaigning and later elections proceeded. The Republican was re-elected in a landslide victory. However, an investigation into the break-in by Washington Post reporters s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought out Nixon’s direct connection with the wire-tapping and burglary. The reporters were helped by an anonymous whisteblower they referred to as ‘Deep Throat, later revealed to be then FBI associate director W Mark Felt.
