Worse than Watergate? Hell, yes.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

Nixon tried to subvert the FBI by appointing Patrick Gray to head the agency after J. Edgar Hoover died.

Gray was fifty-five years old, and he had never held an authority greater than the command of a submarine. He still had his navy crew cut. He was a bull-headed man with a jutting jaw, a straight-arrow Nixon acolyte. He had known the president for a quarter of a century, and he revered him. He had one qualification: he would do anything Nixon asked.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/fbi-watergate_n_1279478.html

After the Watergate break-in Ehrlichmann called supervisory special agent Daniel Bledsoe, who was running the major crimes desk at the FBI, and told him to terminate the FBI's investigation of the break-in. When Bledsoe refused, Ehrlichmann told him his career was "doomed."

Gray instructed his men that the president’s counsel, John Dean, would sit in on all the FBI’s interviews. Gray secretly planned to keep Dean posted about the Bureau’s every move by feeding him daily summaries of the FBI’s investigations and interrogations. “The FBI is not under control, because Gray doesn’t exactly know how to control them,” Haldeman told the president. They agreed that the newly appointed deputy director of Central Intelligence, Lieutenant General Vernon Walters, a Nixon crony of long standing, would tell Gray to back off. He would raise the flag of national security and secrecy. Gray and Felt would do as they were told, Haldeman predicted confidently.

(much more at the linked article)

Eventually the Supreme Court and Congress put the brakes on Nixon's corrupted FBI, and since then the FBI has restored its credibility and impartiality. Now Trump is trying to do the same thing that Nixon tried, only worse. There will always be stooges and tools who are willing to follow a corrupt authoritarian leader, and here we go again. Except that this time the tools and stooges aren't in the FBI but among the GOPers in Congress, who have given no indication that they will do anything to prevent Trump from subverting the FBI's efforts to investigate what the Russians did and how Trump and his cronies might have been involved.

What I find particularly mind-boggling is that so many writers, talking heads, essayists, former and current officials and others, liberals and conservatives, are screaming their heads off for something to be done and it's like they are all just farting in a whirlwind. Even during Watergate I don't recall such widespread and intense insistence from so many quarters that Nixon was an existential threat to democracy (although there was some). The consensus, as the evidence came out, was that Nixon was a bad guy and a bad president and he had to go. I do not remember that he was ever as reviled by so many outside the GOP bubble as Trump is now.

I have to wonder whether any Congressional GOPers ever read the editorials in the WaPo or NYT; if they do, do they just blow them off as fake news or the ravings of The Liberal Media? Are they so encased in their bubble (or covering up their own corruption) that they don't think politicizing the FBI is a bad idea? Have they forgotten Watergate altogether?

I'm old. I've been watching politics since the '60s, and there was some crazy shit going on then. Watergate was crazy shit. The Bush II administration was crazy shit. But this is something else altogether and I don't know where it will go. The rot has gone far deeper than I ever imagined was possible.

[panader0]

1. I was around for Watergate--I was draft age at the time.

What Nixon and the R's did was very bad, but no Russians were involved.
Just good old American crooks. Now we're dealing with the Russian mob.
This is worse by far.

[lagomorph777]

13. This is a widespread conspiracy with a foreign enemy to end American democracy.

So yeah, a whole bunch worse than Watergate.

[NightWatcher]

2. Plus, republicans went to nixon to tell him it was time to go. I doubt we'll see any statesmen now.

They will instead burn the country to the ground to protect their Party and a man that none of them ever agreed with until he was installed in office. I just don't get it.

[erronis]

16. Kompromat. At least on many and the rest have already made damning decisions

Even if there are a few straight-ish arrows in the quill, most have voted/echoed the "party" line. Party could now be the russo-fascist repuglicans.

Sorry, Lincoln. Decency has been stomped by the jackboots of your party and their enablers, the rUSSRians and the US corporatists.

[smirkymonkey]

3. K&R

[Stuart G]

4. k and r... Well Said...Thanks for posting...

[triron]

5. Agree, this is far worse.

And the implications for possible future scenarios far worse.

[marylandblue]

7. I suspect we will make it through Trump

But he has many lessons for a future would be dictator, and that is scary.

[marylandblue]

6. GOP Congress knows exactly what is going

They are just willing to back Trump for their own gain, unlike the Republicans in Nixon's day. Also the fact that Democrats controlled Congress back then made a huge difference.

[meow2u3]

8. I was also around for Watergate; I was 11 and in the 6th grade at the time of the reported break-in

I was a bit too young to understand fully Nixon's crimes against the Constitution, but my 6th gradeteacher had smoke coming out of her ears! She arranged the curriculum to include the Watergate scandal as part of social studies for the next month. She had us read articles from the papers as part of our lesson plan.

I had the same teacher in 8th grade (special ed.). She continued to have us study Watergate as part of our current events class as a lesson in what's supposed to happen when the President uses the office to cover up crimes.

I was also relieved when Congress actually put the country before their parties and act to bring Nixon to justice, only to be thwarted by Ford's blanket pardon of him--and that pissed me off!

[get the red out]

9. Agree

It is like GOPers are in a world of their own and can't hear most of the country and the world screaming at them. Do they really think that they can make the fact that their President conspired with Russia to be elected go away? Poof! Move along nothing to see........

[Hermit-The-Prog]

10. GOPers are just public face

The oligarchs, foreign and domestic, are the puppet masters. That tax scam wasn't enough to satiate them.

[procon]

11. Republicans won't even take up a vote on legislation to protect Mueller.

There will be no help coming from that quarter. Republicans are about amassing personal power and wealth, and as long as they can keep a braying ignoramus like Trump on the throne, they will succeed in that goal... America be damned!

[erronis]

17. Do you think they see the coming of the end? Escaping the sinking ship

and moving to well-guarded gated communities?

Roman villas in the decline of the Empire.
Versailles as the streets of Paris were seething.
Maralago as the tides rise.
Rotting trump towers with no money left to pay for electricity/water.
Fun picnics in the countryside with an army of blackwater guards to keep away the hungry, the angry.

But watch out when those blackwater types don't get paid.

You'll soon be no more than the lowest of us.

[procon]

18. Republicans live in a bubble, they are fed wonderful news about how wonderful they are.

There is no negative stories allowed, that's all 'fake news'. Everything is great. That why they have their own information network, that's why they have to lie and cheat to win elections.

[erronis]

19. I'm sure some miracle drugs have made their way in to the water supply (or ice cubes)

I hear that russian chemists are quite clever concocting cocktails. Some fatal, some debilitating, and some just accentuating a lack of rational thinking.

[Liberalagogo]

12. Don't forget Reagan and Bush I with their crazy shit

Iran-Contra anyone?

[lagomorph777]

14. Iran-Contra was also worse than watergate,

and it was a conspiracy with a foreign enemy. But the goal in that case was to make money. In this case the goal is to overthrow American democracy forever. So it's far worse again. Unless the plotters suffer severe consequences this time, even if we do survive this crisis, they will come back even worse yet again.

[TwistOneUp]

15. I watched Kill The Messenger last night. nt