We here at AP were very intrigued to read this morning that after Richard Nixon resigned his presidency on August 9, 1974, Donald Trump and Tricky Dick partied together in 1989 and Trump gave him a ride on his private jet (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/us/politics/when-donald-trump-partied-with-richard-nixon.html?referringSource=articleShare).
It’s as though Trump already knew that he wanted to stand outside our Capitol on January 20, 2017, and rant and rave about carnage that in his view came only from the progressives, and other people who realize what he’s up to, and then have his spokespeople lie about the size of the crowd watching from the grounds of the Capitol; and he knew he would soon have the power than Nixon had before August 9, 1974.
So how does Trump’s worldview compare to Nixon’s?
Enter John Dean, who, as Counsel to Nixon, played a major rule in Nixon’s eventual resignation when he testified truthfully before Congressman Peter Rodino’s Judiciary Committee that there was “a cancer growing on the Presidency” — just compare that to the blatant obstructionism practiced by Trump’s White House, when Trump was appropriately impeached. The Nixon White House responded to most subpoenas, Trump’s, never.
Last time we looked, Trump’s still here there and everywhere, fueling the culture wars as never before, as we well know from his more than raucous rant on July 3 in South Dakota. Nobody in recent memory who has had an Oval Office to sit in has done as much to promote hate, division, and alarm as Trump.
Next, we come to Trump’s amazing statement that 99% of coronavirus cases “are totally harmless.” Only Trump’s FDA Commissioner says otherwise: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/05/hahn-coronavirus-trump-infection-348954.
We can only comfort ourselves with Faulkner’s statement in acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1949, amid intense anxiety about the possibility of nuclear annihilation, that we will not only survive, we will prevail.