Nixon and Trump.
Both presidents faced major FBI investigations,
were accused of obstructing justice.
called their investigations "witch hunts,"
and oozed raw sexual charisma.
It's not a perfect analogy,
but the similarities have led some to argue
that,
like Nixon, Trump's time is running out.
What's going on here is very Nixonian.
Having prosecuted the Watergate case,
we’re well on our way to impeachment.
I was in the Nixon administration, as you
know.
I think we're in impeachment territory now.
But the truth is
these two are living in totally different
worlds.
And that has less to do with
what's happening at the FBI
and more to do with what's happening
on Fox News.
The media and the Democrats have lied to you.
Trying to create a Watergate out of this.
Desperate to get back to the days of Watergate.
The elite media is part of the “deep state.”
You, the American people, should never trust
this “destroy Trump” corrupt media.
I know we're all trapped
in a flaming media hellscape right now.
But during Watergate, things were way different.
At the time,
there were three national nightly broadcast
news shows,
30 minutes each.
Big cities typically had one or two major
papers.
There were a couple of radio stations.
And that was about it.
No 24-hour cable news, no push notifications,
no Twitter, no blogs, no internet.
God, that sounds peaceful.
And that meant that, Democrat or Republican,
Americans were basically getting the same
news.
This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
People are basically reading and hearing
and watching the same things.
And they by and large believe the news that
they hear.
This is Nicole Hemmer,
political historian and author of
Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media
and the Transformation of American Politics.
We'll get to that "transformation" in a second.
Hemmer says there is conservative media in
1970;
it just looks really different.
There is conservative talk radio.
There are conservative publications
like National Review and Human Events,
but they're so much smaller than they are
today.
Like, when I talk about Human Events and National
Review,
that's just about it when it comes to
weekly conservative publications.
And while that might seem like a supply problem,
it's actually a demand problem.
In the 1970s, Americans had incredible trust
in the news they were getting.
69 percent—
Nice.
Are you serious?
69 percent of Americans expressed
a great or fair amount of trust in the media.
And that trust meant there wasn't really an
appetite
for right-wing news.
Most Americans have faith in the objectivity
of mainstream media.
They trust it.
If Walter Cronkite says something,
it's not seen as liberal propaganda.
It's seen as, here's this guy who knows something,
who's telling us something objective and true
about the world.
And that's the way it is.
That's the way it is.
That's the way it is.
That became a big deal during Watergate.
As the investigation turned into a national
story,
Nixon lashed out, calling it a witch hunt
and attacking the media for covering it.
I have never heard or seen such outrageous
reporting
in 27 years of public life.
And conservative outlets came to Nixon's defense.
One conservative radio personality said the
press
had turned a prosecution into a persecution.
An article in National Review even suggested
that Watergate was a trap set up by the CIA.
They definitely didn't use the language of
the “deep state,”
but that was kind of lurking there.
But despite their efforts,
conservative media just couldn't change people's
minds
about what was going on.
They don't have the power to drive
or to shape the conversation about Watergate.
There's not really an alternative story
Republicans can credibly spin,
because they're not just going up against
Democrats;
they're going up against all the networks,
all the newspapers.
And so having that uniting narrative,
that really matters.
To be under a constant barrage
on each of the three major networks
tends to raise some questions in the people's
mind.
That's really too much for Republicans to
resist.
My phone calls were 100 to 1 in favor of pursuing
the path of impeachment, which was rather
shocking to me.
By 1974, Republicans in Congress begin
moving to impeach Nixon.
And by August, Nixon resigns.
Events have been rushing toward one seemingly
inevitable conclusion: removal from office.
There was kind of a cohesive message about
what Watergate was, what it meant.
It would have been nearly impossible for
the Nixon administration to muddy the waters.
That's not the case today.
Right.
Today.
The flaming hellscape.
Or as Hemmer might call it: the transformation.
In the past 50 years,
trust in traditional media has plummeted,
with all Americans but especially with Republicans.
And the demand for conservative media has
exploded.
What started off as a few rinky-dink conservative
magazines
has become an entire ecosystem
of right-wing TV, talk radio, and websites.
You can now exist within a comprehensive,
closed conservative media ecosystem.
Whether it's having Fox News on all the day
or talk radio on all day,
you don't need to really ever step out of
that bubble,
which is something you couldn't have done
before.
Republicans aren't getting their news from
Cronkite anymore.
They're getting it from Fox.
And that's a huge deal when it comes
to the Mueller investigation.
Republicans during Watergate were
turning on their TV and seeing this:
The country tonight is in the midst of what
may be
the most serious constitutional crisis in
its history.
Now they're seeing this:
Biggest non-story ever being hyped by the
liberal media.
Greatest political hoax.
Farce and a witch hunt.
It's a sham.
It is a house of cards.
The American people will put up with a great
deal,
but they will not put up with anyone
who claims to be above the law.
The president says it's fake news.
Do you even care?
How can anyone trust the Mueller office?
Bunch of Trump-hating, Hillary-loving partisan
hacks.
A grave and profound crisis
in which the president has set himself against
his own attorney general and the Department
of Justice.
It's one giant, huge web of corruption.
The FBI has become America's secret police.
The FBI needs a complete cleansing.
Mueller is, frankly, a disgrace to the American
justice system.
These people need to be taken out in cuffs.
That uniting narrative we had during Watergate
—
it's gone.
And without it, Republicans in Congress
have a strong incentive to turn their backs
on the Mueller investigation.
They know that the Republican base is tuned
in
to conservative media and hearing these messages
that the Mueller investigation is a sham,
that this is a project of the “deep state”
to bring down the president.
Mueller is out to get the president, it appears,
at any cost.
And so if a Republican politician breaks with
that,
then all of a sudden, it looks like he's siding
with the enemy.
And siding with the enemy could be a political
death sentence.
A 2017 study found that watching Fox News
had a significant effect on elections,
shifting 6 percent of voters
toward the Republican presidential candidate
in 2008.
In that environment, politicians have to choose
sides.
And if you're a Republican,
do you choose to side with the media that
all your base listens to,
or do you choose to side with the ones they
all oppose?
House Republicans have already released a
report
attempting to undermine the Mueller investigation.
There's no reason to continue this.
We've turned up nothing.
And some have begun echoing Fox News's talking
points.
Mueller is desperate.
He doesn’t have a case he can make.
This Mueller investigation is built on a false
premise
and rotten to the core, Tucker.
Is the integrity of the agency in question
then, now?
Of course it is.
We know there's bias; we know there's a conflict.
I agree with you, Sean.
They're trying to manufacture a process crime.
This is increasingly becoming scary stuff.
Do you agree?
Yes, I do agree with that.
Of course, we don't know if Trump will fire
Mueller
or if Mueller will actually dig up any dirt
on Trump.
But if either of those things do happen,
it'll be up to Republicans in Congress to
do something about it.
And right now, Hemmer isn't confident they
will.
It's very hard to imagine a future in which
all of a sudden
they're going to say, "Oh, wait, we now need
to listen
to this independent counsel who
most of the conservative media have been
undermining and delegitimizing for months
now."
And before you call me dramatic,
listen to how actual Fox News hosts
are talking about this stuff.
Nixon never would have been forced to resign
if you existed back in 1972, ’73, ’74.
I was literally 11 years old.
It's too bad for Nixon because nobody like
you existed then.
Our prime responsibility now
is to unshackle the 45th president of the
United States.
These investigations might be really similar,
but on TV, they could not look more different.
And for Republicans in Congress,
that might be all that matters.
That's the way it is.
