Trump is far worse than Nixonian
By Ruth Marcus Deputy editorial page editor February 2 at 8:00 PM
“Nixonian” is not the right word to use to describe the behavior of President Trump. In important ways, that characterization smears Richard Nixon.
It is hard to believe I am writing this. But it is also hard to believe it has come to this: The president is in open warfare with his Justice Department and the FBI — asserting flatly that its “top Leadership and Investigators .?.?. have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago.”
This was a breathtaking gut punch to the constitutional system. The release of the House Intelligence Committee memo purporting to discredit the Russia probe was predictably followed by a White House statement bemoaning “serious concerns about the integrity of decisions” by senior law enforcement officials. Brace yourself for more, folks. Asked whether he had confidence in Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, Trump replied: “You figure that one out.”
“The sacred investigative process.” “Unthinkable just a short time ago.” Oh please. Nothing is sacred to Trump except protecting himself. And what is unthinkable — except that Trump has made it all too thinkable — is that a president would impugn the integrity of his own Justice Department. That a president, confronted with evidence that a hostile foreign power had tried to influence the election, would repeatedly reject those findings and fail to take action to shore up the nation’s defenses against a repetition.
And, most unthinkable, that a president, confronted with evidence that his own top officials found probable cause to surveil a former campaign aide, Carter Page, for acting as the agent of a foreign power, would react with indignation — not at the aide but at the accusation.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/calling-trump-nixonian-thats-not-fair-to-nixon/2018/02/02/f889ea18-0865-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html
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