You can manipulate the record, but you cannot change the truth of what happened—or the lives it changed. That is why authoritarian governments so often try to control history: because a population that remembers is harder to deceive.
History belongs to the people who lived it, suffered it, fought it, and survived it. No politician, administration, or government gets to retroactively decide what is true.
Erasing history does not make the past disappear. It makes the attempt to erase it part of history, too.
What in the hell is wrong with these people? There is something really rotten in the Republican core. So really sad to see what has happen to "The Grand Ole Party".
Given: Federal Election Commission. It made public officials disclose their finances. It passed the Presidential Records Act, so the records of a presidency would belong to the American people instead of the man who made them.
Why can’t Trump be forced to turn over his financial records , and all records of expenditures- his use of political funds, Trips to golf for his own pleasure not State Business, Paid for insider stock enfluence information ???Not smoking guns. Pure unadulterated fraud!
Because his own party will not join Democrats to enforce this or penalize him for disobedience. What a racket is when our "lawmakers" won't enforce the laws they created.
Representative Riley Moore....Stand aside, ladies and germs! We have a new entrant in that much-coveted Darwin Award -- Special Category: The Complete Clueless. Because nothing spells success like trying to bring a 52-year-old dead horse back to life....
This kind of revisionism by republicans is exactly why Gerald Ford was so devastatingly wrong to pardon Nixon rather than let him go to trial. Imagine how much different our political system would be today if Richard Nixon, removed from office, had faced trail and punishment for his crimes. It might not have prevented the rise of someone so incompetent and ill-suited for the presidency as Trump, but the precedent would have been set for dealing with criminals in the Oval.
Ford said he believed the nation needed healing, and that such healing would be hastened with a pardon. I've never agreed with that because it denied the nation justice for the crimes perpetrated by our commander in chief. Nixon was a full-on whacko who never admitted his crimes, and people who don't take responsibility should never get a pardon.
As we all know, closing up a wound before cleaning it out is a recipe for disaster. We're living with that disaster right now. FTR, Lincoln used the same well-intentioned by deeply misguided logic for not prosecuting the confederate leadership. We're living those consequences as well.
I think Lincoln's rationale made some sense -- not to beat people down and humiliate a large portion of the population. But Ford really made a mistake, as your very apt metaphor illuminates. We're seeing the results of that today.
Thank you Adam. I was old enough to understand about the crimes that Nixon committed and his departure. This is just more smoke and mirrors about the Epstein files.
Remember, Sen Barry Goldwater saw the truth and forced Nixon’s hand! Wish there were more in the Republican Party today who would address the blatant problems with our current administration instead of labeling any and all criticism as fake. That’s child’s play ! Let’s see…Barry Goldwater was part of the ‘deep state?’ What ridiculousness!!!
I think the enormous amounts of money that wash through our political system have corrupted our system to the core. Everyone is beholden to someone with big $$$ and that's who they represent, not their voters.
We need to get the money our of politics MOP! What other country wastes billions of dollars on elections? And who benefits...political operatives, media, PR firms. And what do we get for it? Ads which are all about image not reality. How is it that a candidate is flailing so the powers that be dump millions of dollars into their lap to alter the race. It's insanity. Money Out of Politics Get the MOP
SO the repeated claim of "Russi@ is a hoax" doesn't bode well when we watch the Orange One bow giddily, ingratiate himself and praise mightily the very one who embodies Russi@n authoritarian while he claims that Dems are c0mmunists. Whatever happened with Nix0n, REAL leaders take responsibility when their staff or Party fail, emphasis on REAL.
I was 18, in between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and remember August 1974 like it was yesterday. When Sens Barry Goldwater (GOP conservative), Hugh Scott (GOP moderate of PA) and Cong John Rhodes (GOP conservative, like Goldwater, from AZ) went to the White House to tell Nixon "the jug was up" and he had no support in Congress, it was. Two (or was it three?) days before Nixon resigned. There was NO "coup". Nixon had done it to himself and had lost the support of the majority of his party. Who in today's GOP would dare tell Trump he had committed criminal, unconstitutional acts? Sadly, NO ONE.
I agree: comparing Nixon to Trump is unfair, to Nixon. Nixon's best-known payoff, Howard Hughes's $100,000, is pocket change next to a single reported $500 million UAE investment in a Trump family crypto venture. Nixon expanded a war he promised to end; Trump launched one of his own, with Israel, that has pushed oil past $100 a barrel. Nixon's cover-up was caught on tape; Trump does his in public. Nixon lied; Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims in his first term alone. No comparison.
Comparatively, Nixon was a saint. He didn’t drag the country through his swamp, he stepped aside. DJT sues, denies, lies, profits…dragging morality deep into his swamp.
Thank you Adam for this quick review of Nixon’s Watergate. Stating as you did that “ D Trump was the biggest political mistake of the modern era” says it all. Having 30% of the country unwilling to admit that fact is precisely why we can’t move on from our current debacle.
Read "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. History is written by the "winners" to suit their narative. This book is written by the "losers." The PEOPLE like us. Not the powerful in D.C. It seems that we never learn especially from our mistakes. We now are living with the greatest mistake of all time. Donald J. Trump.
Now that all the main players in Watergate, he wants to talk about a coup. Now that's courageous! Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia clearly thinks it's easier to question history--and rock solid firm history at that--to deflect attention away from the myriad and troubling issues facing his troubled party. 69 government officials were charged with involvement in the coverup, and 48 were convicted. That's pretty strong evidence that Nixon et al were crooks.
Crazy how this guy thinks he can change the present by changing the past.
My parents were life-long Republicans. Even they admitted that he did the wrong thing. It was a big deal. It was all over the news. But today’s crimes are happening at such a pace, it’s not a “one off.” It’s like drinking from a firehose.
Nixon had at least a modicum of moral compass which was displayed when he left office. That character trait is totally non-existent in MAGA/GOP regime of today. This is most likely due to Nixon's respect of our laws and the U.S. Constitution along with his acknowledgment of his guilt.
Agree, Nixon’s own party knew he was guilty! They are the ones that had the guts to go to him and said, “Enough, resign”!
Nixon’s wrongs are on the tapes over 50 years ago. Trump’s wrongs are on Truth Social. Many, many, MANY clips from TV interviews, clips of Trumps campaigns, the evidence is overwhelming! What about all his stock trades, crypto coins, Bibles, the list is never ending of what he has sold from the office of the President.
We need that same honesty and guts from the Republicans in Congress today. ENOUGH, resign President Trump!
You can manipulate the record, but you cannot change the truth of what happened—or the lives it changed. That is why authoritarian governments so often try to control history: because a population that remembers is harder to deceive.
History belongs to the people who lived it, suffered it, fought it, and survived it. No politician, administration, or government gets to retroactively decide what is true.
Erasing history does not make the past disappear. It makes the attempt to erase it part of history, too.
What in the hell is wrong with these people? There is something really rotten in the Republican core. So really sad to see what has happen to "The Grand Ole Party".
Given: Federal Election Commission. It made public officials disclose their finances. It passed the Presidential Records Act, so the records of a presidency would belong to the American people instead of the man who made them.
Why can’t Trump be forced to turn over his financial records , and all records of expenditures- his use of political funds, Trips to golf for his own pleasure not State Business, Paid for insider stock enfluence information ???Not smoking guns. Pure unadulterated fraud!
Because his own party will not join Democrats to enforce this or penalize him for disobedience. What a racket is when our "lawmakers" won't enforce the laws they created.
Because Trump owns the enforcers of the laws.
Representative Riley Moore....Stand aside, ladies and germs! We have a new entrant in that much-coveted Darwin Award -- Special Category: The Complete Clueless. Because nothing spells success like trying to bring a 52-year-old dead horse back to life....
This kind of revisionism by republicans is exactly why Gerald Ford was so devastatingly wrong to pardon Nixon rather than let him go to trial. Imagine how much different our political system would be today if Richard Nixon, removed from office, had faced trail and punishment for his crimes. It might not have prevented the rise of someone so incompetent and ill-suited for the presidency as Trump, but the precedent would have been set for dealing with criminals in the Oval.
Ford said he believed the nation needed healing, and that such healing would be hastened with a pardon. I've never agreed with that because it denied the nation justice for the crimes perpetrated by our commander in chief. Nixon was a full-on whacko who never admitted his crimes, and people who don't take responsibility should never get a pardon.
As we all know, closing up a wound before cleaning it out is a recipe for disaster. We're living with that disaster right now. FTR, Lincoln used the same well-intentioned by deeply misguided logic for not prosecuting the confederate leadership. We're living those consequences as well.
I think Lincoln's rationale made some sense -- not to beat people down and humiliate a large portion of the population. But Ford really made a mistake, as your very apt metaphor illuminates. We're seeing the results of that today.
Thank you Adam. I was old enough to understand about the crimes that Nixon committed and his departure. This is just more smoke and mirrors about the Epstein files.
Remember, Sen Barry Goldwater saw the truth and forced Nixon’s hand! Wish there were more in the Republican Party today who would address the blatant problems with our current administration instead of labeling any and all criticism as fake. That’s child’s play ! Let’s see…Barry Goldwater was part of the ‘deep state?’ What ridiculousness!!!
I think the enormous amounts of money that wash through our political system have corrupted our system to the core. Everyone is beholden to someone with big $$$ and that's who they represent, not their voters.
We need to get the money our of politics MOP! What other country wastes billions of dollars on elections? And who benefits...political operatives, media, PR firms. And what do we get for it? Ads which are all about image not reality. How is it that a candidate is flailing so the powers that be dump millions of dollars into their lap to alter the race. It's insanity. Money Out of Politics Get the MOP
Totally agree! But the Republican Congress has gutted the guardrails.
There was a reason Nixon resigned, and it was more than he'd be removed from office. He still had a flicker of a conscience.
SO the repeated claim of "Russi@ is a hoax" doesn't bode well when we watch the Orange One bow giddily, ingratiate himself and praise mightily the very one who embodies Russi@n authoritarian while he claims that Dems are c0mmunists. Whatever happened with Nix0n, REAL leaders take responsibility when their staff or Party fail, emphasis on REAL.
I was 18, in between my freshman and sophomore years in college, and remember August 1974 like it was yesterday. When Sens Barry Goldwater (GOP conservative), Hugh Scott (GOP moderate of PA) and Cong John Rhodes (GOP conservative, like Goldwater, from AZ) went to the White House to tell Nixon "the jug was up" and he had no support in Congress, it was. Two (or was it three?) days before Nixon resigned. There was NO "coup". Nixon had done it to himself and had lost the support of the majority of his party. Who in today's GOP would dare tell Trump he had committed criminal, unconstitutional acts? Sadly, NO ONE.
I agree: comparing Nixon to Trump is unfair, to Nixon. Nixon's best-known payoff, Howard Hughes's $100,000, is pocket change next to a single reported $500 million UAE investment in a Trump family crypto venture. Nixon expanded a war he promised to end; Trump launched one of his own, with Israel, that has pushed oil past $100 a barrel. Nixon's cover-up was caught on tape; Trump does his in public. Nixon lied; Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims in his first term alone. No comparison.
Comparatively, Nixon was a saint. He didn’t drag the country through his swamp, he stepped aside. DJT sues, denies, lies, profits…dragging morality deep into his swamp.
Thank you Adam for this quick review of Nixon’s Watergate. Stating as you did that “ D Trump was the biggest political mistake of the modern era” says it all. Having 30% of the country unwilling to admit that fact is precisely why we can’t move on from our current debacle.
Read "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. History is written by the "winners" to suit their narative. This book is written by the "losers." The PEOPLE like us. Not the powerful in D.C. It seems that we never learn especially from our mistakes. We now are living with the greatest mistake of all time. Donald J. Trump.
Now that all the main players in Watergate, he wants to talk about a coup. Now that's courageous! Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia clearly thinks it's easier to question history--and rock solid firm history at that--to deflect attention away from the myriad and troubling issues facing his troubled party. 69 government officials were charged with involvement in the coverup, and 48 were convicted. That's pretty strong evidence that Nixon et al were crooks.
Crazy how this guy thinks he can change the present by changing the past.
My parents were life-long Republicans. Even they admitted that he did the wrong thing. It was a big deal. It was all over the news. But today’s crimes are happening at such a pace, it’s not a “one off.” It’s like drinking from a firehose.
Nixon had at least a modicum of moral compass which was displayed when he left office. That character trait is totally non-existent in MAGA/GOP regime of today. This is most likely due to Nixon's respect of our laws and the U.S. Constitution along with his acknowledgment of his guilt.
Agree, Nixon’s own party knew he was guilty! They are the ones that had the guts to go to him and said, “Enough, resign”!
Nixon’s wrongs are on the tapes over 50 years ago. Trump’s wrongs are on Truth Social. Many, many, MANY clips from TV interviews, clips of Trumps campaigns, the evidence is overwhelming! What about all his stock trades, crypto coins, Bibles, the list is never ending of what he has sold from the office of the President.
We need that same honesty and guts from the Republicans in Congress today. ENOUGH, resign President Trump!
Very well said, Kari 1!