When I was in junior high and high school I was, believe it or not, quite conservative. I devoured National Review, I was a fan of William F. Buckley, even more of Garry Wills and Jeffrey Hart, and I campaigned for Ronald Reagan in the 1976 primary campaign, before I was eligible to vote. Perhaps even more than conservatism, I was enraptured with political history — and I remember being immersed in Theodore H. White’s series of books about presidential elections from 1960 to 1972.
But, my most prominent political memories from that period are of the Watergate hearings, and the eventual resignation of Richard Nixon. School got in the way, but I watched as much as I could. I was absorbed and tracked everything. And a highlight of my young life was when, while at a summer debate institute in 1974 at Georgetown U in D.C., friends and I visited my Congressman, Guy Vander Jagt, who while we were visiting had to take a call from his friend John Erlichmann (Nixon’s Domestic Affairs Advisor and the creator of “The Plumbers,” who were the operatives at the heart of the scandal). It’s possible that Erlichmann could have been calling about his conviction in the Pentagon Papers case, which came down on July 12 of that year — but I don’t really recall the timing. Let’s just say that as a 16-year-old, I thought I was at the heart of the political universe!
Now I think the fact that a kid with strong ideological leanings could at that time watch Congressional hearings about such a monumental matter and come away nonetheless with a genuine understanding of it and a sense that “things had been done right,” at least mostly — well, that’s not where we are now, to say the least.
So, please pardon this nostalgia, which has turned out longer than I expected, as nostalgia does. I’m leading up to this: in that great film about Watergate, All the President’s Men, there’s a critical scene in which journalist Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) meets informant “Deep Throat” (Hal Holbrook) in a parking garage. Woodward is focused on whether or not certain information had been leaked by the White House. The dialogue (a bit abridged) goes like this:
Woodward: Segretti told me and Bernstein that…
Deep Throat (interrupting): Don’t concentrate on Segretti. You’ll miss the overall.
Woodward: The letter that destroyed the Muskie campaign… did that come from inside the White House?
Deep Throat: You’re missing the overall.
Woodward: What overall?
. . . .
Deep Throat: The people behind all of this were frightened of Muskie, and that’s what got him destroyed. They wanted to run against McGovern. Look who they’re running against. They bugged offices, they followed people, planted false press leaks, passed fake letters… they canceled Democratic campaign rallies, they investigated Democratic private lives, they planted spies, they stole documents… and now don’t tell me that all of this was the work of one Donald Segretti.
The point is that what was unfolding was a comprehensive, White-House-driven attempt to use illegal interference to subvert Americans’ electoral rights. Fortunately, in sharp contrast to today’s Republican Congress and members of the Administration, Nixon confronted a genuinely independent and rigorous press, courageous members of both parties, and members of his own Administration who had real integrity: journalists like Woodward and Bernstein; special prosecutors like Archibald Cox; cabinet secretaries who refused to do the illegal, irresponsible, and dishonest, like Elliott Richardson; staff members like John Dean who testified truthfully before the Congressional committees. So the effort was stopped, not in time to protect the 1972 election — Nixon would indeed have had a much harder time against Muskie — but in time to bring the president and others to justice (or at least some justice) and to bring about new safeguards to protect election integrity and to control presidential power, which have largely held sway . . . until now.
So last night, Trump gave an address about election integrity, repackaging and retreading old lies about foreign election interference, about the problems with mail-in ballots, about issues with voting machines.
It is all laughable stuff, easily debunked, not defensible in court, and so on.
But let’s not miss the overall.
What Trump and Company are doing is playing for the midterms and for the 2028 election. They know that none of what they are saying is defensible (well, maybe Donald thinks it is, if Donald actually thinks). But that’s not the point. The point is to “flood the zone” with ever-increasing noise about voter fraud in order to lay a foundation for drastic action: ICE and FBI at the polls, seizing ballots, attempting to close polling sites, launching investigations and demanding that Congress not certify elections in districts that are under investigation. They want federal control — i.e., their control — of the 2028 election, and if they can warp the midterms, a re-elected Republican Congress will give it to them.
These threats in themselves are designed to scare people away from the polls, and they are designed to inure reasonable people to the draconian measures Trump et al. are planning, while also ensuring Trump’s base that their cause is righteous (read, heinous).
Virtually all of the Trump Administration and its allies are dedicated to this path. Chuck Grassley’s deceitful introduction of Todd Blanche at his confirmation hearing is Exhibit One, supplemented by the fawning of so many Republican committee members. (Fortunately, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn might give us a shot at a just outcome.) Ditto for Exhibit Two, the conformation hearing for Jay Clayton as head of National Security. Exhibit Three: Markwayne Mullin’s letters to four states today, saying, without any details, that DHS has identified hundreds of thousands of non-citizens on voting rolls (apparently this is Plan B, following on the Administration’s losses in court in its efforts to require states to submit voter rolls). Exhibit Four: the neutering of the Washington Post, Musk’s transformation of Twitter/X into a swamp of disinformation and racist manipulation, and the ongoing effort by the Ellisons to take over huge swaths of the nation’s communications channels.
The exhibits just pile up: sending the FBI to Georgia to seize ballots (clearly illegal), the demand for voter rolls (also illegal), the reported threat by Trump to shut down the government if the SAVE act is not passed — all of this is preparation for what would essentially be a coup against the electorate.
And the Trump cabal has learned the lessons of Watergate: control the media; poison the courts; marginalize Congress; fill the Administration ranks with sycophants.
So, expect a lot of this over the next few months and beyond.
There are some hopeful signs. Trump’s numbers are abysmal. Numerous organizations — even the Democratic Party, for once — are organizing for the fight ahead, developing action plans for scores of different stunts that the Administration might pull, such as those listed above and more. And, the slumbering news media seem to be waking up to reality — not just MSNOW and influencers like Robert Reich, Joyce Vance, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, etc. ABC, NBC and CNN refused to broadcast the speech, CBS did comprehensive fact-checking, and the New York Times is finally with some regularity calling things what they really are.
But make no mistake, this is a national emergency, and we must all be alert to the overall reality.
Trump has thin skin and will TACO on lots of issues — but not this. It is for him existential, as it is for the whole Project 2025 pack.
There will be extreme and outrageous action of sorts we haven’t yet seen. And chaos and turmoil is part of the plan. This is an orchestrated effort, and the brief history of Trump 2.0 shows us that we cannot imagine the bottom to which they will go.
So we must be prepared to meet it: protect the election, gain the Congress, and — to paraphrase William F. Buckley’s motto for Natonal Review, “stand athwart Trumpist history yelling ‘Stop!'”
Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance 