GOP Rep. Says Trump, Like Nixon, Is A Victim Of The Deep State
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Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) compared former President Richard Nixon to President Donald Trump, claiming they both were victims of the deep state and arguing Nixon was "framed" in the Watergate scandal.
"Richard Nixon was absolutely couped out of office and was framed. All of this was fake, and we now know more about the deep state and its power and its ability to literally change things at the top," Moore said at the Grand Strategy Summit, an event hosted by the Richard Nixon Foundation, on Thursday. The deep state conspiracy refers to an underground network of individuals who influence politics.
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"President Trump faced this in his first term with the fake Russia collusion hoax and all that. But an interesting aspect of this, as it relates to Richard Nixon: he knew all of this. He knew it, and he stayed quiet about it because he didn't want to erode the confidence of the American people in our system of governance and our institutions," Moore continued.
Nixon, who implemented the so-called war on drugs, resigned from office in 1974 after the Watergate scandal — which stemmed from a failed break-in attempt at the Democratic National Committee complex in Washington, D.C., in 1972 — exposed political corruption.
Moore's comments arrived after a former Nixon aide, Geoff Shepard, gave a two-hour presentation to the Justice Department detailing his conspiracy theory that Nixon's downfall was a result of a concerted effort by the deep state, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Shepard also argued that Nixon, who was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1974, was not treated fairly.
As NBC News reported last year, remarks like Moore's are part of a broader, revisionist GOP effort to downplay the scandal, absolve Nixon of blame by turning him into a victim of the deep state, and somehow affix Nixon's legacy and downfall to Trump's scandal-plagued presidencies, thereby releasing Trump from accountability for his convictions and controversies.
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"As I joked… backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy," Vice President JD Vance said at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California in June.
"If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people — the same institutions — tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration," Vance added. "There is a parallel."
Trump — who has been impeached twice , convicted on 34 felony counts and the subject of numerous investigations — has repeatedly claimed that he is the target of a "political witch hunt" and "fake news." He, ironically, has also been accused of weaponizing the Justice Department against his political opponents.
