Reporters Bob Woodward, right, and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting of the Watergate case won a Pulitzer Prize, sitting in the newsroom of the Washington Post in 1973.
(AP File Photo)
President Trump is correct.
If an FBI — or any “Deep State” — informant was embedded within his campaign for the express purpose of spying on it, that would be a scandal “Bigger than Watergate.”
Bigger and much more chilling.
Over the course of the last two years, I have communicated with current and former government employees who told me that a number of operatives at various three-letter agencies have been actively working to undermine first the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and then his presidency. Most of them are Obama appointees. All of them doing so for political reasons.
To be clear, if there was evidence indicating that political or career appointees from the administration of President George W. Bush were actively and unethically working to damage the campaign of then Senator Barack Obama or the administration of President Obama, I would want them exposed and then prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
There is nothing more dangerous to the welfare of our republic than operatives from our three-letter agencies taking sides for ideological or personal reasons and then using the vast resources at their disposal to damage and delegitimize those they oppose.
Nothing.
That is the very definition of a “Police State.”
President Trump knows that and expressed that rightful fear in a recent tweet.
As the president said: “Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI “SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.” Andrew McCarthy says, “There’s probably no doubt that they had at least one confidential informant in the campaign.” If so, this is bigger than Watergate!”
There is nothing more dangerous to the welfare of our republic than operatives from our three-letter agencies taking sides for ideological or personal reasons and then using the vast resources at their disposal to damage and delegitimize those they oppose.
Because the president dared to compare this scandal with Watergate, many in the liberal media proceeded to attack, mock, or belittle the tweet with a vengeance.
That’s because for them, “Watergate” is a political Holy Grail which can never be equaled. It represents the toppling of a reviled and “corrupt” Republican president. Whether they were alive then or not, the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 remains their most joy-filled political memory.
No one — most especially an equally reviled and “corrupt” president — should ever be allowed to equate or minimalize such a liberal touchstone.
Was the “Watergate scandal” bad? Absolutely.
Prior to the beginning of his second term – which he won in a landslide victory over Senator George McGovern in 1972 – President Nixon came to believe that many in the mainstream media opposed him for partisan and elitist reasons and were out to get him.
For those reasons and more, Nixon’s paranoia and eccentric behavior grew to dangerous levels. Coupled with that, was the fact that there were a collection of political morons within the Nixon White House and associated with his reelection campaign willing to do almost anything to protect him, including trying to bug the office of the Democrat National Committee located at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.
To no one’s surprise, some of these idiots were caught trying to re-break in to DNC headquarters on the night of June 17, 1972, to replace a defective listening device they had installed earlier.
Among those assigned to cover the story were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post.
Years later, I had the chance to talk with Woodward a few times and believe him to be the most dogged, serious, and respected investigative reporter of our time.
By the time Woodward and Bernstein were done with their stories, had published their book “All The President’s Men” and then had the book transformed into a hit movie by Robert Redford, Watergate was forever more the “greatest detective story of all time,” and must never be likened to any other political crime or transgression.
Except … President Trump is right to do so in this case.
“If so,” as he stressed in his tweet – if someone associated with the FBI or another government agency, spied on his campaign for political and partisan reasons, that would indeed be “Bigger than Watergate.”
There is no question that Richard Nixon had to resign. He was not only wrong, but increasingly delusional as the summer of 1974 approached. Even worse were some of the unethical and criminal actions taken by some of his loyalists.
That said, the wrongful measures taken by a paranoid – but truly gifted, in so many ways – president in the attempted cover-up of a bungled break-in by some partisan clowns pales in comparison to political and professional operatives from the “Deep State” trying to sabotage a presidential campaign or willfully smear or incapacitate a sitting president.
Instead of fashioning themselves as Watergate-like heroes while actively aiding, abetting, and promoting knowingly false Russia “collusion” stories, the liberal media should attempt to ethically do their jobs for a change and investigate whether the Deep State is trying to take down a constitutionally elected president.
Then maybe they’d have a new — and well-deserved — journalistic Holy Grail to celebrate.