was it criminal? trump talked about and sent people out to let s get rid of bob mueller, the special counsel and his investigation, but it never happened. in the case of nixon, he did. let me pause you on the word you just used. to a criminal degree, you say the mueller report does show an effort to strangle the probe [yes, clearly. what should americans make of that? people are going to look at it very, very differently, and that s the beauty of this report. this is the beauty of having somebody like mueller testify. and people are focused on it, and they re going to learn from it. and where it goes i don t know. in the case of nixon, when all the evidence or the evidence up to the month nixon resigned in
and then thousands of hours. and if you listen to these, and carl and i do this somewhat obsessively for the historical lesson, it is appalling what nixon used the president as personal. the criminality was staggering. we don t know with this investigation goes and in the final days, we wrote about the firing of archibald cox who was a special prosecutor. quick break in and we will have more from bob woodward and carl bernstein. whoop, whoop! [crowd 1] hey, you re on fire! [mascot] you bet i am! [crowd 2] dude, you re on fire! [mascot] oh, yeah! [crowd 3] no, you re on fire! look behind you. [mascot] i m cool. i m cool. [burke] that s one way to fire up the crowd.
together, we re building a better california. back now with bob woodward and carl bernstein. you wrote in a piece in the washington post a couple weeks ago about the conflict, the growing conflict between president trump and the department of justice. you said your article began with, we re here again, and it s interesting because president nixon thought that his attorney general, elliott richardson, who was sort of from the eastern waspy establishment, which nixon didn t necessarily like, but he needed richardson, but he sort of thought richard southern was going to be an ally of his. we tried to make him one, and also this is an interesting contrast. nixon wanted to bring richardson in, kind of mr. straight arrow, because he could redeem the justice department as attorney general, and of course that was
children, his past business dealings, is this more complex for this president and perhaps closer to home? very emotional events for president of the united states. nixon reacted, he was presiding over a criminal coverup. nixon wasn t that is what most of his efforts went into. whereas trump, we see trump s reactions every day. and yes, he is under siege and he thinks and feels and believes he is unfairly under siege. do you wish nixon had twitter back then. in terms of a real time ror shaq s test. he had the tapes.
i want to put up one of your headlines from july 1973, nixon sees witch hunt insiders say. how did you find that? hardworking producers. clearly that push back was not effective for nixon. i also want to play a clip of nixon talking to his press secretary on the phone. let s play that. i want it clearly understood that from now on ever, no reporter from the washington post is ever to be in the white house, is that clear? absolutely. unless it is press conference. never in the white house. no church service. you tell connie don t tell mrs. nixon, because she ll approve