Sunday, February 02, 2025

In The Year 2025

It is easy to write "do something" on the internet. It is much harder for electeds who are out of power and have low influence or ability to affect change to do stuff that will make people happy (catharsis) and help solve the problem (effective). Consider those 2 terms as separate forms of response- 
Catharsis- - You go to OPM and yell at the top of your lungs, it's on TV 
- You do a podcast, a video, a TV hit, a viral post 
- You call for impeachment, investigations, lawsuits, etc 
Do these actions make people happy? Some people. 
Do they directly help solve a problem like an FBI purge? No. 
https://bsky.app/profile/fritschner.bsky.social/post/3lh53h3o6ls2c
May 28, 1972–the Watergate break-in occurs. Phones are wire-tapped (the pre-digital age made things more complicated).

June 17, 1972–Five burglars are arrested in the Watergate complex (because somebody taped a door latch open and when a night watchman found and removed it, they replaced it. They really don’t catch the smart ones.)

June 1972–Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, knows James McCord, one of the burglars. Mitchell is on the phone with a reporter, discussing the break in, when the call suddenly ends. She disappears for several days, and reappears with bruises and a story of being kidnapped and held in a hotel room in California. The phone call had ended because the security guard assigned to her by her husband (to keep her away from reporters), had pulled the phone out of the wall (simpler times). 

McCord corroborates her story in 1975.

August 1, 1972–a cashier’s check for $25,000 given to the Nixon campaign goes to a Watergate burglar.

September 15, 1972–grand jury indictments of the burglars, Hunt and Liddy. the five office burglars, as well as Hunt and Liddy,

September 29, 1972–reports that Mitchell, as AG, set up a GOP fund for intel gathering on the Democrats.

October 10, 1972–Woodstein reports the FBI has determined the break-in was on behalf of the Nixon re-election campaign.

January 30, 1973.—the burglars are convicted.

February 7, 1973–The Senate establishes a committee to investigate Watergate 

July 16, 1973–the existence of the White House recording system is revealed in a televised committee hearing.

August 29, 1973–The cover up publicly begins. Nixon says at a press conference:  "I can say categorically that ... no one in the White House staff, no one in this Administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident."

October 20, 1973–the Saturday Night Massacre 

March 1, 1974–a grand jury indicts the Watergate 7 for obstructing the Watergate Investigation.

April 29, 1974–Nixon releases transcripts of the tapes.

July 24, 1974–Supreme Court rules the tapes are not protected by executive privilege, and must be released to the special prosecutor.

August  5, 1974–the “smoking gun” tape is released.

August 9, 1974–Nixon resigns.

One could argue Projects 2025 (not Trump, he’s far too stupid) learned from Watergate. But more accurately, they learned from the Trump criminal cases. And they got a boost from the Supreme Court (not Garland, who started investigating Trump as soon as he was appointed). The greater truth is: if you strike at a king, you’d better kill him. 

The Supreme Court made sure that couldn’t happen to Trump. The voters took care of the rest. 

The irony, then, of the criminal prosecutions.

Nixon, as a sitting President, never faced criminal investigation. He resigned rather than be impeached and almost certainly removed from office. Trump was impeached twice, and McConnell insisted he not be removed, that the justice system should have him. Trump doesn’t fear impeachment. Not does he fear prosecution. But those aren’t the answers.

Removing Trump would just put Vance behind the Resolute Desk. And if you can indict Vance on state charges, a la Agnew, Trump picks someone approved by Congress (a result of Nixon). Will that person be any better? 

You can’t miss the lesson that the FBI investigated Nixon. Trump is making sure they won’t do that again. Congress needs to more to protect civil servants, and extend that protection to FBI agents and DOJ lawyers and staff.

But the lesson I started with is that it took two years from break in to resignation. And:
During this early period [roughly June 1972 to June 1973] most of the media failed to understand the full implications of the scandal, and concentrated reporting on other topics related to the 1972 presidential election.  Most outlets ignored or downplayed Woodward and Bernstein's scoops; the crosstown Washington Star-News and the Los Angeles Times even ran stories incorrectly discrediting the Post's articles. After the Post revealed that H.R. Haldeman had made payments from the secret fund, newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer failed to publish the information, but did publish the White House's denial of the story the following day.  The White House also sought to isolate the Post's coverage by tirelessly attacking that newspaper while declining to criticize other damaging stories about the scandal from the New York Times and Time magazine.

There is no cavalry coming over the hill, no white knight or Gandalf riding to the rescue at Helm’s Deep. We aren’t screwed, but no one is going to save us.

We have to learn the lessons of history, and save ourselves. Yes, a lot of people turned against Nixon,; but it wasn’t early on. He won re-election by carrying 49 states. He only lost the public fully after the transcripts came out (I had a paperback copy for years). And Nixon didn’t abuse his power nearly like Trump has in just two weeks. He didn’t piss off Canada:

And Mexico:
TRANSLATION: 
We categorically reject the White House's slander against the Mexican government of having alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any intention of intervention in our territory. 
If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the United States armories that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups, as demonstrated by the United States Department of Justice itself in January of this year. 
In four months, our government has seized more than 40 tons of drugs, including 20 million doses of fentanyl. It has also arrested more than ten thousand people linked to these groups. 
If the United States government and its agencies wanted to address the serious consumption of fentanyl in their country, they could, for example, combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their main cities, which they do not do, and the money laundering generated by this illegal activity that has done so much harm to their population. 
They could also start a massive campaign to prevent the consumption of these drugs and take care of their young people, as we have done in Mexico. Drug consumption and distribution is in their country and that is a public health problem that they have not addressed. In addition, the synthetic opioid epidemic in the United States has its origin in the indiscriminate prescription of drugs of this type, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as demonstrated by the lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company. 
Mexico does not want confrontation. We start from collaboration between neighboring countries. Mexico not only does not want fentanyl to reach the United States, but anywhere. Therefore, if the United States wants to combat criminal groups that traffic drugs and generate violence, we must work together in an integrated manner, but always under the principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust, collaboration and, above all, respect for sovereignty, which is not negotiable. Coordination, yes; subordination, no. 
To this end, I propose to President Trump that we establish a working group with our best public health and security teams. 
Problems are not resolved by imposing tariffs, but by talking and dialoguing, as we did in recent weeks with your State Department to address the phenomenon of migration; in our case, with respect for human rights. 
The graph that President Trump has been posting on social media about the decline in migration was created by my team, which has been in constant communication with his. 
I instruct the Secretary of Economy to implement Plan B that we have been working on, which includes tariff and non-tariff measures in defens of Mexico's interests. 
Nothing by force; everything by reason and right. 
 And they both shame us.

We got ourselves into this mess. We have to get ourselves out. It won’t be soon, and it won’t be by a magic bullet. Don’t waste energy complaining that nobody else is fixing this. Write letters and send emails don’t expect social media to be anything but ignored. Maybe even be completely un(modern)-rAmerican, and find people to organize with. 

Project 2025 certainly did.
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