The Woodward book for the Trump era isn’t Fear; it’s “Final Days” from 1976. I just finished it and it has a ton of lessons for the present day, especially for WH reporters on the pitfalls of access journalism when covering a criminal conspiracy. THREAD 1/ https://t.co/SFp2FjAiaV https://t.co/nptOo0DSy8
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018
This is b/c WH staff at the end weren’t involved in the Watergate conspiracy so they didn’t actually know what happened. Nor were they interested in knowing. 3/
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018
In the WH staffers defense, they were their to serve the POTUS! Just so happened the POTUS was a crook! But they were all working really hard to protect the POTUS.
The impact of this delayed Nixon’s fall; it kept the GOP on-side, as well as much of the public. 5/
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018
In the case of Watergate, the WH insiders were either:
1. Totally ignorant of what happened.
2. Totally suspected Nixon did it, but didn’t actually “know” or want to know.The only one in the WH that knew what happened was … Nixon. 7/
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018
In turn, they’re working hard to get this go away. Stonewalling the investigation, buying time, running political attacks vs. Mueller/Rosenstein in coord w/ members of the House. They’re just “serving” the POTUS. But really they’re complicit in defacto obstruction of justice. 13/
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018
Lesson here is that few thought Nixon was going down. So everyone stuck w/ him. When the equation changed, the GOP broke vs. him. If Republicans break vs. Trump, it will happen suddenly and abruptly. END
— Max Bergmann (@maxbergmann) October 21, 2018