president should go. that was november of 73. it was not until the following spring, the spring of 74, by which point nixon s campaign staffers began to pled guilty. it wasn t until the white house chief of staff had been indicted and the president had been named as an unindicted coconspirator, it wasn t until then that other republicans reluctantly dragged themselves on board to start criticizing the president and to call for him to step down. there is one way and one way only by which the crisis can be resolved and the country pulled out of the watergate squalor. i prosed an extraordinary act of statesmanship and courage, an act once noble and heartbreaking at once serving the greater interests of the nation, the institution of the presidency and the stated goals for which he so successfully campaigned. that act is richard nixon s own
indicted. there had been the famous two months of live televised watergate senate hearings led by sam irvin that most of the country watched, 71% of the country watched. woodward and burnstein reported that the watergate break-in was just a tiny fraction of an enormous criminal operation by the white house. as people went away that summer, this time in 1973, 22% of the country thought that nixon should be removed from office. wow. and constituents were saying they were tired of watergate. his approval rating was in the upper 30s, sort of where trump is now. nixon employed the same tactics, going to the well of white working class voters, but also his take on the media, i want to play a sound bite from october of 1973, at the height of watergate. this is richard nixon talking about the press. i have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting in 27 years
era. he appeals to the common man, white conservative who s afraid that the country is falling into law and order and the brown people are coming for them. donald trump appeals to the same people. but why does he see donald trump who is very different from nixon, very much more flamboyant but sort of sees him as nixon 2.0, review itight? there are some other commonalties. they were both anti-establishment. trump comes from queens. nixon felt like an outsider even in washington and there was a lot of resentment against the people that they felt were keeping them down from realizing their full potential. but roger to his credit, 29 years before trump s election saw the elements that he felt could translate into the presidency. what s interesting about roger s relationship with nixon is, though he was the youngest person called before the watergate grand jury when he was all of 19. roger stone was. roger stone was. when he really develops this
relationship with nixon is after nixon has been thrown out of the presidency. what type of person gravitates to the post-disgraced nixon? that s really an amazing thing. nixon and roy cohn, two of the most infamous people in american politics are roger s mentors. talk about roy cohn. he s in many ways what roger stone has been aprioring to be. he was responsible in many ways for the red scare in the mccarthy hearings back in the day. one thing we learned from roger, like roy cohn and roger has done, there s actually a great history and series of protege/master relationships going all the way back. you mentioned kninix on, they w pulling things that worked before. it was a matter of modernizing it which we ve seen what modernizing means which is twitter. one of them was demonstrated during the election where roger stone seemed to have this
democratic base that voted for him maybe once or twice before. maybe. but he didn t answer very very simple questions because as both of you know i m a simple man. why didn t you fire sebelius? didn t d. panetta tell you it was a terrorist attack on the day that the ambassador was murdered? those are simple yes or no questions. he didn t answer them. i think the audience picked up right away that he didn t answer them, doctor. you say? basically they were the same canned dancers we have heard from some time. you elicited one of the oddest spawpses i have heard from obama. you asked him whether i was the most liberal president ever and he said richard nixon. i don t know too many people who would evaluate richard nixon as being more liberal than he obama. he had a good point nixon did start a lot of federal programs to do certain things that nixon thought would help the country. that wasn t a bad point at all. i was surprised. that was the strength of the interview he did say some t