What If Nixon Got Away With It?

Or: The Dull Whataboutism of Jan. 6 Minimizers

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“Sure, Nixon wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institution but at least he’s not woke." (Bettmann / Getty Images)

Performative earnestness, reflexive anti-earnestness, or “above it all” apathy. Those are the choices, apparently, when it comes to how you feel about the Jan. 6 hearings. You’re either an MSNBC wine mom, a Newsmax mouth breather, or a nuanced-to-the-point-of-obsessing-over-minutiae mushy-centrist. 

But it is possible to view Jan. 6 as something short of a fascist insurrection portending the end of the Republic, but a whole lot more concerning than a mere “short riot” by a bunch of harmless idiots, and certainly of greater consequence than a low-rated liberal cable news host saying dumb stuff about Elon Musk. 

It is, in fact, even possible to view Jan. 6 as a particularly dramatic chapter in a long book about a literal attempt to steal the presidency—a coup attempt, a high crime, treason—while not succumbing to thumb-sucking panic. 

That’s why (as I wrote in The Daily Beast), the Jan. 6 hearings are low-key remarkable:

Put simply: Trump said long before the election that he wouldn’t accept a losing result as legitimate. Then he lost, refused to accept the results, propagated outrageous lies about voter fraud, tried to strongarm Republican state election officials into falsifying election results, incited a mob that sacked the Capitol to try to stop the Senate’s certification of the election, left office without conceding defeat, and continues to attack American democracy by demanding any Republican opposed to his coup attempt be purged from the party.

It is well worth the effort to make that case to the public. Even if people are largely indifferent to the Jan. 6 hearings today, should this country’s democracy survive into future generations, they’ll care about the rock-solid evidence that was laid bare during the hearings.

Unlike typical high-profile congressional hearings or Trump’s first impeachment trial—the Jan. 6 hearings have thus far featured very little Oscar-chasing.

Each hearing barely stretched past two hours, had an easy-to-understand main subject that was addressed through subtitled video footage, and featured remarkable first-person witness testimony—mostly from Trump administration officials, Trump-supporting Republican state-level officials, and regular people who did nothing wrong but whose lives are tormented by the MAGA vigilantes sicced on them by former President Donald Trump. (These are all people who Trump and Big Lie proponents falsely accuse of being complicit in a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election.)

No Jan. 6 witness has been more valuable (or entertaining) than Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr.

I had completely forgotten that Barr has a thick, growling, exasperated New York accent. And it’s that accent that made listening to his Jan. 6 testimony a tragicomic experience. Sounding like a second-tier character in a late 1970s Martin Scorsese movie, Barr laid out in lawyerly detail why every single one of Trump’s election fraud claims—and the entire Big Lie documentary 2000 Mules, specifically—were “bullshit.”

Remember, this is Bill fucking Barr. The guy who loyally defended Trump right up until he attempted a coup—and who says he’d still support him if he’s the GOP nominee in 2024!

I don’t even have time to get into how remarkable it is that Ivanka Trump—the only of his children to whom the former president has ever shown any public affection or admiration—testified that her father is full of shit. 

So, yeah, Jan. 6 was (and is, and always will be) a big fucking deal. But it’s a mere shorthand for the coup attempt which began before the election and which continues to this day. That’s what these hearings are about. 

YEAH BUT WHATABOUT

Ben Shapiro is an absolute rarity among MAGA commentators—he doesn’t think Trump has proved the case that the election was stolen. That’s not to say he’s gone as far as Bill Barr in being willing to say it’s all “bullshit”—but to the extent Shapiro is willing to briefly piss off his audience, this is as brave as Ben’s likely to get. 

Of course, as the Jan. 6 hearings commenced, he brought the whatabout heat (something about gas prices and baby formula, I think?).

Ben Shapiro @benshapiro

They want you to talk about January 6, 2021 so you won't talk about June 10, 2022.

As the hearings continued this week, Shapiro tweeted about former Democratic Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who since losing to Ron DeSantis in 2018 has had a personal and professional meltdown. Gillum was indicted this week on 21 charges including wire fraud and lying to the feds, and in 2020 he was found unconscious in a hotel room, allegedly with crystal meth and a gay escort. The guy is a mess, and it’s a good thing he’s nowhere near the levels of power.

In case you didn’t know any of that, Shapiro’s here to help:

Ben Shapiro @benshapiro

Andrew Gillum has spent the years since his gubernatorial defeat getting caught in a hotel room with a gay escort and meth, and being charged federally for fraud. The media promoted him as possible presidential material. Take from that what you will.

We get it, Ben. The librul media sometimes gets crushes on questionable political figures, scam artists, and activists-for-profit that it really ought not to. 

Of course, the conservative media would never run interference for a serial adulterer known for bragging about sexually assaulting women, openly profiting off his public service, and otherwise acting like a depraved lunatic while holding the most powerful office in human history.

Shapiro’s brand of whataboutism got me thinking about Nixon.

The only reason Nixon resigned, rather than continue to fight to the death, is because he knew he’d be impeached and convicted, having lost Republican support in the Senate. What made him lose that support was the “smoking gun tape,” in which he is heard participating in the early stages of the Watergate coverup. 

There are more Trump “smoking gun” tapes than we know what to do with—but none more relevant than the one in which he tried to strongarm Georgia state election officials into “finding” enough votes for him to overcome his deficit to Joe Biden. 

But none of these tapes move the needle with Republican voters, the majority of whom believe in at least some part of the universally-false Big Lie.

Nor will it keep the Republican officials who Trump tried to destroy from supporting him in the future. And it certainly won’t embarrass the 147 Republicans who voted against certifying Biden as the rightful winner of the 2020 election—even after Trump incited the Capitol riot (as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell passionately insisted Trump did, after voting to acquit at Trump’s second impeachment trial).

Such is the depravity of the MAGA cult that even though Trump attempted a coup in plain sight, it still seems unlikely that anyone in Trump’s inner circle will go to jail or even pay an electoral price for attempting the crime of the century. (Forty Watergate government figures were indicted or served prison time, including Nixon’s attorney general and White House counsel.)

And then there’s the craven whataboutism of conservatives and oh-so-blasé centrists who wave off the Jan. 6 hearings as oh-so-precious Aaron Sorkin-written melodrama. 

Sonny Bunch nailed the type here:

Sonny Bunch @SonnyBunch

The thing that continues to drive me crazy about 1/6 is that we literally watched it happen in real time, everyone who wasn’t a brain dead goon was like “this is terrible,” and now half of those people are like “eh, was it THAT bad, really.” I dunno, seems pretty bad! Still!

Sonny Bunch @SonnyBunch

“Ah, but other things happened that were also bad in recent American history!” “Yeah, fine, agreed.” “So, you know, I can’t possibly be expected to condemn this.” “See, this is where we disagree, friendo.”

Think about what would have become of the United States, and the world, if Nixon went unpunished and stayed in office, simply because Republicans were so in thrall of the party’s leader that they denied a body of evidence that makes an overwhelming case of guilt. Try to consider how American society—already frayed by social upheaval, several civil rights struggles, and the trauma of the immoral, failed Vietnam War—would have proceeded if Nixon had just gotten away with it all. 

Fifty years later, “worse than Watergate” has actually happened, right before our eyes. And the Jan. 6 hearings may very well be the closest we ever get to making the case for history that Trump is a traitor, and his Big Lie has poisoned the body politic.

Is it really over-dramatic or (God forbid) “earnest” to call what Trump did (and is doing) a “coup attempt”? Is it possible to have enough mental bandwidth to be concerned about inflation and high gas prices—and also pay attention to the documentation of history? And is it really so backward-looking to think that—in the interests of the survival of the country as we know it—that the person most responsible for this unprecedented crime be held at least somewhat accountable?

Whatabout that? 

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