Historian Mark Updegrove said Tuesday that it isn’t fair to Richard Nixon to compare him President Trump.
Updegrove told Hill.TV that Nixon had considerable political experience before taking office and “knew how the government worked.”
Hill.TV co-host Krystal Ball asked in an interview on “Rising” whether it’s fair to compare Trump to the 37th president.
“One president he does get compared to a lot is Nixon — is that fair?” Ball asked.
“I don’t think it is — Nixon is a complicated character,” said Updegrove, CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas. “But you have to remember Nixon was incredibly experienced before he came into office.”
“He knew the way the government worked and he had an incredible intellectual curiosity,” Updegrove added. “Nixon was a congressman, he was a senator, he was vice president for Eisenhower for eight years, he was the Republican nominee in 1960, failed, then lost to John F. Kennedy before becoming president himself in 1968.”
The LBJ Foundation aims to “provide an ongoing legacy for President Johnson’s accomplishments and his vision for our nation.”
Trump’s White House scandals have been compared to the Watergate case during the Nixon administration. But Updegrove said unless there’s a “smoking gun piece of evidence” that shows that Trump was indisputably involved in collusion with Russia, he will not face the same fate as Nixon.
In 1974, Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office after facing the prospect of impeachment.
— Tess Bonn
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