Is This Finally The End of Trump’s Story?
Yesterday’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago is a turning point, but like the people who lived through Watergate, we’re transfixed and filled with foreboding.
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The first episode of Slow Burn, Leon Neyfakh’s brilliant podcast series reconstructing many of the biggest political scandals of modern American history, delivered an absolutely critical insight about the Watergate years: Once the break-in to Democratic National Committee headquarters was public and the ties of the burglars back to the Nixon re-election campaign exposed, no one quite knew where the scandal was going. Looking back at Watergate, it seems obvious now that Nixon was going down. But that wasn’t at all clear to people who lived through it. And so they obsessively followed the twists and turns of the unfolding investigation. Dick Cavett, the popular talk-show host, even told Neyfakh he found living through those years terribly exciting, like spending a year in Paris. Cavett brought up something the novelist Gore Vidal said back then on his show: “I have to have my Watergate fix every single morning in the paper. I get like this if I haven’t …”
With that in mind, Neyfakh then says, “If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I feel that way about the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. Watching the Comey hearings and reading about who special prosecutor Robert Mueller has subpoenaed, watching Trump blast the reporting as ‘fake news’ — for people who follow politics, it’s been gripping and exciting, even as it fills us with dread. It was the same during the Nixon administration: People felt this giddy mixture of excitement, and obsession, and anxiety all at once. It was thrilling, and it was also very serious.” (You can read a transcript of this episode here.)
“We are living at a time right now when it feels like anything could happen,” Neyfach adds.
This is what it feels like right now, waking up to the absorb the news that the FBI just searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and even “broke into” his personal safe. Even in an age of instant information, when we don’t have to wait until the morning paper arrives to know what just happened, the news is unsettling. The Justice Department has never before…
