Donald Trump’s abuse of power while president transcends the misconduct of Richard Nixon, the only president to resign from office following the revelations of the Watergate scandal, Nixon’s former White House counsel said.
Fifty years after Nixon’s stunning departure, John Dean, whose testimony before a Senate committee served as a prelude to the resignation, urged journalists to hold Trump accountable in the weeks before the 2024 election as “a threat to democracy.”
“I’m here as a Watergate figure and there is just no comparison between Watergate … and what’s happening today,” Dean told the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship class. “They’re just very, very different times. Richard Nixon and Donald Trump are quite dissimilar. I would say that as far as abusing the powers of an office, Trump is Nixon on stilts and steroids.
Trump was impeached twice during his one-term presidency – once for soliciting foreign interference in his 2020 re-election bid and for inciting the 2021 assault on the Capitol following his defeat. He was acquitted both times by the Republican-controlled Senate.
During the 2024 campaign, he has threatened to seek retribution against his political enemies, who he recently as derided as the “enemy within” and suggested unleashing the military on those opponents.
Trump press coverage ‘very disappointing’
Dean called press coverage of Trump’s latest bid for the White House “disappointing,” saying too little attention has been focused on what he described as the former president’s authoritarian bent.
“I must say that it has been very disappointing watching the coverage of Donald Trump, who is clearly, if you don’t think he is a threat to democracy, even if you’re a supporter, you’re not very aware of the way the system works and the problems that we’re facing,” Dean said. “And I think some journalists are in that category. They think this is just another election. They think that this is not a particular test of the system, that Trump will settle in and not do anything untoward, notwithstanding his rhetoric on the campaign trail, notwithstanding the things that people who’ve worked for him say about him, and they just think everything will go along with a little different partisan twist. I think they’re dead wrong.”
“I don’t know how the collective workings of the media have so normalized Donald Trump,” Dean said.”
‘The most important election of my lifetime’
Dean called the 2024 campaign, “the most important election of my lifetime.”
A free press is ‘first to go’ in authoritarian regimes
“One of the targets of authoritarians when they do get power is to indeed eliminate the media and criticism,” Dean said. “So you guys are the first … be the first to go or, very early in the undertaking, to do so. Trump has already shown his disposition towards unfavorable media coverage, and it’s very difficult to survive in that atmosphere.”
