Former Richard Nixon White House counsel John Dean, a critical whistleblower in the Watergate scandal, reiterated on the "Court of History" podcast this week with Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz that the behavior he is seeing from President Donald Trump, like the arrest and prosecution of opposition politicians, is far beyond what Nixon ever could have dared do.
It's the latest warning from the former White House insider, who has also stated he fears for America under Trump in a way he never did during the Watergate affair.
"What's your sense on the question of Trump's, I guess, audacity, is a euphemism for — people say breaking norms, it's more than norms, it's laws, it's the Constitution — compared to Nixon?" asked Wilentz, a historian.
"Well, you know, there are a few comparisons there, parallels in personalities, between Nixon and Trump, [but] there are very few similarities in presidencies," said Dean. "Trump has pushed the envelope way beyond anything Richard Nixon ever dreamed of."
Both of these presidents, he continued, have "authoritarian" impulses — but when it comes to what they've actually done, "Trump has made Nixon look like a choirboy."
"Trump seems to act on every impulse he has, and he has all the wrong impulses," said Dean. "He is a clear poster boy for the authoritarian personality. He has high incompetence, where he doesn't really know how to do these things. He has, in his second term, hired people who know much more about it and know where the levers of power are. Richard Nixon kind of dreamed on these things and did one shots and then backed down."
Ultimately, he concluded, "I think the big difference between the two men is that Richard Nixon actually had a conscience. He experienced shame. He was not proud of what he ended up getting revealed. For Donald Trump could care less. He doesn't — no shame. There's nothing that can trouble him. You can't, you can't embarrass the man because he thinks everything he does is fine. So that's that's the big difference between the personalities."
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