JD Vance compares Trump to Nixon, says Watergate would last just 12 hours today
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "JD Vance compares Trump to Nixon, says Watergate would last just 12 hours today")
US Vice President JD Vance looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photograph: (AFP)
JD Vance compared Donald Trump to Richard Nixon, claimed the "deep state" targeted both, and argued the Watergate scandal would last only 12 hours today.
US Vice President JD Vance on Thursday said that the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon administration would not survive more than 12 hours in today's news cycle. He compared US President Donald Trump with Richard Nixon, suggesting that both of them were targeted by the “deep state” apparatus. Vance was discussing his new book “Communion” at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California. He suggested that the legacy of Nixon was going through a period of renaissance.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” said Vance."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."
He went on and compared himself to Nixon. “Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media,” he said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”
Richard Nixon, in his re-election campaign, wiretapped the Democratic headquarters, and the following US Senate hearings, which were televised nationally. The Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation profoundly shattered public trust and permanently altered how Americans viewed their government. Along with the leaked Pentagon Papers in 1971, it proved that the highest levels of the US government would deliberately lie to the public to protect political interests.
41-year-old Vance was not born during the investigation into Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. Vance's ambition of being associated with Nixon invites the dark legacy of abuse of executive power and facing rebellion by his own Republican party, and the only US President to resign, Vance is probably ignoring the scandals and trying to replicate his landslide electoral victory.
