RUSSIAGATE WAS WORSE THAN WATERGATE:
Even if the main actors in Russiagate do not face legal consequences, the disclosures from Gabbard and others provide valuable public and political accountability. They help to set the historical record straight – and, hopefully, will begin to rebuild some trust in government.
Russiagate was a dark episode in American history. The US security services, which ought to be neutral, joined with Democrats to try to bring down a Republican president. There was no evidence pointing to Trump’s collusion with Russia – it truly was a hoax. Yet the schemers achieved their anti-democratic objective: to make Trump appear illegitimate in the eyes of many Americans.
The ‘-gate’ suffix in ‘Russiagate’ derives from Watergate. But of the two scandals, I believe Russiagate will, over time, be seen as the more damaging. For their shameful role in undermining the people’s trust, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s names should be as disgraced as Richard Nixon’s.
Read the whole thing.
Although regarding that last quoted sentence, to be fair, Nixon isn’t all that badly disgraced these days, considering the successful full-on blitzkrieg Democrats and their operatives with bylines waged against him back in the mid-‘70s. On the right, Christopher Rufo wrote in 2023 that, “With a presidential election looming, conservatives need to develop a national counterrevolutionary agenda. For some ideas for what that might look like, they can turn to a surprising guide: Richard Nixon.” And he’s become increasingly praised by the left in recent decades – but then every Republican president candidate, once seen as Hitler on this campaign trail (and if he wins, during his time in office), gets strange new respect to bash the newest potential Hitler.
As Glenn asked in May of 2017, “Was Obama administration illegal spying worse than Watergate?” “In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. But if a single bugging of the political opposition is enough to bring down a presidency — and maybe lead to an unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president — then what are we to make of the recently unveiled Obama administration program of massively spying on political opponents in violation of clearly established law? Because that’s what was unveiled last week.”
