Will Trump go the way of Nixon?

Barely four months after his assumption, US President Donald Trump is facing mounting calls for his impeachment, with a petition launched by a Massachusetts lawyer asking the US Congress to start impeachment proceedings already breaching one million signatures.

The political firestorm that has surrounded Trump almost since Day 1 escalated after the unceremonious firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey who, at the time, was heading the investigation regarding former national Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his dealings with Russian officials, among them Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and their alleged interference during the recent US presidential elections.

Comey later came out with a memo claiming that Trump had asked him to “let go” of the Flynn investigation – which Trump flat out denied during a joint press conference with Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, saying: “No. No. Next question.”

The situation has drawn comparisons between Trump and Richard Nixon’s firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox – the main prosecutor tasked to investigate the Watergate scandal. Prior to his firing, Cox had obtained a subpoena compelling the Nixon administration to hand over secretly taped conversations at the White House regarding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, a few months before the US elections that saw Nixon winning a second term.

To many, the discharge of Cox – although technically not illegal – was seen as an attempt on the part of Nixon to douse the investigation that was getting too close to home, so to speak. In the same manner, the sacking of Comey is seen as an attempt to tamp down the alleged complicity of the Trump camp with the Russians to derail the chances of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton to become president. (Interestingly, Nixon may have been prescient when he wrote Trump in 1987 that after seeing him in the Phil Donahue Show, Mrs. Pat Nixon had predicted that Trump would be a winner whenever he decided to run for office.)

But according to “Nixonland” author Rick Perlstein, the Nixon-Trump comparisons are not exactly apt. For one thing, Nixon was “very shrewd, so strategic: It’s simply inconceivable he would get caught with his pants down implicating himself on the record, like Trump now does almost daily,” Perlstein contends, referring to the tweets and seemingly inconsistent statements coming from Trump regarding Comey and “the Russia thing.”

Obviously, Trump is a kindergartener when it comes to politics, allowing his impulse and his temper to get the better of him especially when it comes to his dealings with the media – threatening to cancel future White House briefings and just handing out written responses. In contrast, Nixon believed that one should “Never get mad unless it’s on purpose.”

According to Perlstein, the late president “buffered” almost everything “through intermediaries and cutouts,” recalling an incident when Nixon, realizing he may have said too much during a meeting with White House Counsel John Dean, maneuvered to make the latter say something along the lines of “… that would be wrong.”

In 1988, I accompanied then-vice president Doy Laurel on a visit to Richard Nixon at  his home in Saddle River, New Jersey. He was already 75 at the time, but I was amazed at his grasp of politics and current world events. He was evidently such a strong individual and very much a survivor. Nixon was undoubtedly very astute, so that when he knew he was reaching the end of the line, and that he could go to jail on possible charges of obstruction of justice – he gave up the presidency to make way for Gerald Ford who immediately gave him full and absolute pardon.  

Like Nixon, Trump is also facing the same enemies: the media and a political elite trying to bring him down. Nixon did not particularly like the media. He once told the press when he announced he was retiring from politics after losing the governorship of California, “You don’t have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore!”

Donald Trump who very early on declared war against the media – calling their reports “false news,” is pretty much in the same hole Nixon dug himself in.  Mainstream media will keep digging and examining every single move Trump makes.

In the United States, media is extremely powerful. They will pound on Trump every step of the way, looking for something to hammer him with everyday, just like what the New York Times and Washington Post – the newspaper whose young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were largely credited for exposing the Nixon Watergate scandal – are doing.

The fact is, journalists can be vicious and will hit back when they feel that news credibility is being undercut, which seems to be happening with Trump virtually waging a “suicidal war” (in the words of John Dean) with the press, calling them liars, enemies of the American people and worse, peddlers of “fake news.” Certainly, it does not help that Trump supposedly told Comey to prosecute and jail any journalist that would publish “classified material.” 

While Trump can somehow count on the fact that the Republicans control Congress (unlike Nixon then), some of his party mates are already beginning to ponder the possibility of an impeachment due to pressure from their constituents.

Trump may want to listen to Richard Nixon’s tearful farewell speech to the White House staff, when he said, “Never be petty, never be angry... always remember those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them... then you destroy yourself. Only when you have been to the deepest valley, will you ever know the magnificence of being on the highest mountain.”

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