Trump Vs Nixon
What’s the difference?
Richard Nixon
Former President Donald Trump is the second president in our history to leave office with legal issues hanging over his head. Richard Nixon left office in 1974 with the Watergate scandal looming. Trump left office almost a month ago facing the legal ramifications of inciting a mob.
After Nixon left office, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him, releasing him from any and all charges resulting from the scandal. In the decades since that pardon, many historians opine that the pardon, although extremely controversial at the time, helped the nation heal.
Bob Woodward
I went to a speech in 2017 delivered by Bob Woodward, one of the reporters who helped break open the Watergate scandal. He related the story of his meeting with former President Gerald Ford in the late 1990s. Up to that point, Ford had not stated why he pardoned Nixon.
So, 25 years after the fact, he asked Ford about the pardon, Ford said he knew that in order for the nation to heal from the debacle of Watergate, he would need to pardon Nixon. The nation did not need a long, drawn-out court battle. The nation needed to heal from Viet Nam. The nation needed to heal from the distrust and hatred of Watergate. Woodward said of Ford,
