JD Vance says Nixon’s Watergate scandal would be ‘12-hour news story’ today

JD Vance does not think the era-defining Watergate scandal would have lasted more than a single news cycle in today’s fragmented, hyper-partisan political environment – and certainly would not have led to a president’s downfall. Speaking at the Richard Nixon presidential library in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday to promote his new book, Communion, Vance discussed his spiritual journey from atheist to Catholic convert before declaring his admiration for 37th president. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story,” the vice-president said during the discussion. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” Watergate, the biggest US political scandal of the 20th century and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, began in 1972 with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington by operatives connected to Nixon’s re-election campaign. Vance continued: “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first administration. …