Nixon biographer details parallels with Trump presidency
John Aloysius Farrell said there are some similarities.
— -- As Donald Trump's presidency begins to take shape, comparisons between the president and the architect of the greatest political scandal in American history -- Richard Nixon -- have been made numerous times.
Nixon biographer John Aloysius Farrell says it may be too soon to say if the comparisons are accurate. “We don’t know if anybody’s ever going to have to resign or go to jail” for Russian interference in the election last fall, he said.
There are at least two Congressional probes as well as an FBI investigation into Russia meddling as well as potential Trump associate contacts with Russian officials. Trump has called the Russia story line "fake news" and a "ruse."
“But I will say this with 100 percent conviction,” Farrell told Jonathan Karl and Rick Klein on the Powerhouse Politics podcast. “Trump's aides and White House staff are acting like Nixon's aides and White House staff, as if they have something they have to cover up.”
His most recent biography, “Richard Nixon: The Life,” details the life of a president Farrell says was protected by friends and staff that treated him “like he was this ugly, awkward duckling that had been treated so unfairly by the world.”
Farrell unearthed new information on the controversial former president: Nixon directed his campaign staff to sabotage Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 peace talks and encouraged South Vietnam not to come to the negotiating table, according to newly-discovered notes from H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s closest aide.
“Haldeman used to sit there with Nixon with a yellow legal pad and Nixon would bark orders and Haldeman would take them down,” Farrell said. “And Nixon told him… any way we can monkey wrench this, go ahead and do it.”
Nixon, like Trump, also had a fraught relationship with the press corps. Nixon famously told his aides, “The press is the enemy. Write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it.” But Farrell said the Trump administration has taken it one step further with the media.
“He never went out and actually said the press is the enemy of the American people like Trump did,” Farrell said. “The press should be the enemy of politicians in some regards, but the press should never by the enemy of the American people."
Nixon also skipped the White House Correspondents Dinner whenever possible, “it was just a pain in the neck thing that he had to do,” Farrell said.
In December of 1987, Richard Nixon wrote young Donald Trump a letter predicting Trump would be a “winner” should he choose to run for political office, and Trump has not made an effort to distance himself from the endorsement.
In fact, Farrell said Trump has borrowed quotations directly from Nixon, including “silent majority” and invocations of “law and order” during his presidential campaign.
Trump’s spontaneous tweets also have a striking parallel to Nixon’s White House tapes, Farrell said.
“It's a glimpse of the presidential id… There are many many comparisons between the two administrations.”
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