Rachel Maddow pointed out on Wednesday that the evidence that sunk the Nixon presidency is almost identical to what Robert Mueller appears to have on Donald Trump.
According to the MSNBC host, it’s hard to tell the difference between the allegations against the two corrupt presidents, particularly when it comes to obstruction of justice.
Maddow ticked off the series of allegations against Nixon and said that each of them “could be captions for a picture book tour for the Nixon or Trump administration.”
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Rachel Maddow draws more key parallels between Trump and Nixon. #ctl #p2 #Maddow pic.twitter.com/HGMwD8qiyy
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) November 29, 2018
Maddow explained:
These allegations against Nixon from 1974 and the evidence that supported these allegations against Nixon, they’ve gotten a lot of attention this year, right? And that’s in part because a whole bunch of this stuff about Nixon has just been unsealed, just made available to the public for the first time, so there’s historical interest, but honestly, what is driving a lot of that historical interest, what’s been driving the effort to get a bunch of this stuff unsealed now, is the almost uncannily parallel experience we are having right now in our lifetimes when it comes to our current president. I mean, even just looking at this one exchange of information between the judiciary committee and the Watergate prosecutor in ’74, just pull a couple of those bullet points for a second, see if any of these things ring a bell, right? Making and facilitating the making of false statements and declarations about the investigation. Offers of clemency to influence the testimony of witnesses. Obtaining information about the ongoing investigation for the purpose of diverting or thwarting that investigation. Yeah, I mean these could be captions for a picture book tour for the Nixon or Trump administration, either way.
Trump’s crimes have happened in plain sight
The key difference between Richard Nixon‘s crimes and those of Donald Trump is that the current president seems comfortable committing them in plain sight.
As Rachel Maddow pointed out on Wednesday, the American people found out what Nixon did after a long investigation. The nefarious behavior took place behind the scenes. To this day, we’re still learning about Watergate.
Trump, on the other hand, has been obstructing justice right before our eyes since he took office – from firing former FBI director James Comey and concocting false statements to cover up contacts with Russia, to dangling pardons and installing a puppet as acting attorney general.
In other words, as the MSNBC host pointed out, Trump is standing at the top of a mountain of obstruction of justice evidence right now, and it could bring his presidency crashing down.
Maddow says Trump is standing on a mountain of evidence that could sink his presidency. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/cyFFZbuVBl
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) November 29, 2018
Maddow said, “If you had been sealed in a vault for the last two years and you came out today and somebody handed you that litany of basically uncontested detailed reporting and evidence about the president’s efforts to obstruct this serious ongoing criminal investigation into himself and his administration and his campaign, you would think you were reading a bombshell indictment that signaled the end of a presidency, or at least the middle of impeachment proceedings, right? But instead, that’s just the public record.”
Ultimately, while Trump’s repeated attempts to obstruct justice may have happened in plain sight, that doesn’t make them any less criminal. It certainly isn’t normal behavior for a president of the United States.
Many Americans may have become numb to Trump’s efforts thwart the special counsel investigation, but there is one person who likely hasn’t: Robert Mueller.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
