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Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reminisced about the scandal that brought down the Nixon administration on the 50th anniversary of the break-in that launched it — and continued taking shots at former President Donald Trump along the way.
The pair spoke Friday at the Washington Post’s headquarters about their work for the paper, beginning with the burglary and continuing through Richard Nixon’s resignation more than two years later. But they also compared Trump to Nixon and wondered aloud why the Jan. 6 Capitol riot isn’t being treated the same way as Watergate.
CARL BERNSTEIN CLAIMS NO DENIALS AMONG 21 GOP SENATORS HE LISTED AS TRUMP HATERS — BUT THERE WERE
“I want to go to today,” Bernstein said unprompted by moderator Dan Balz. “This is the most important story perhaps since Watergate, about a seditious criminal president of the United States, who almost won reelection, who continues to attempt a cover-up, who staged an attempted coup as you would see in a junta in a banana republic or somewhere in the Middle East.”
Woodward then added, “In case there’s any mystery, Carl’s talking about Trump.”
The pair of Pulitzer Prize winners have made several media appearances in recent weeks to talk about their groundbreaking reporting and how it compares to today. They have called Trump the “first seditious president,” while Bernstein claimed, falsely, that there were no denials among the 21 Republican senators he claimed in 2020 had privately expressed “extreme contempt” for the former president.
Friday’s event included clips from the movie All the President’s Men and recollections from each man about their working relationship and what makes for good journalism. Bernstein at first thought Woodward a prima donna, while Woodward found Bernstein to be too countercultural. Each said that knocking on doors at night was a better way to reach sources than trying them in their office.
They lamented that with both Trump and Nixon, the public largely tuned out. Trump remains popular with many Republicans, while Nixon won reelection in a landslide even amid the Watergate scandal, which began with a burglary on June 17, 1972.
In Nixon’s case, the existence of a “smoking gun” in the form of the White House tapes finally brought him to resign on Aug. 9, 1974. Bernstein lamented that such slam-dunk evidence is needed, both then and now.
“One of the awful legacies of Watergate is the notion of the smoking gun,” he said. “The idea that it was necessary to have a smoking gun when, in fact, there was so much evidence. … You didn’t need the smoking gun, and that also goes to today. I think this idea that you raised about how he might have escaped, he might well have escaped [without the tapes].”
Woodward, who spoke frequently with Trump during his presidency and has written three books about it, was somewhat more subdued in his criticisms.
“The real marker here is what are they going to be able to show? They’ve demonstrated a lot,” he said of the Jan. 6 committee hearings, referring to 18 U.S.C. 371 — conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States. “This is a clear case of obstructing a necessary function of government. What’s more necessary than certifying who is going to become the next president?”
Many conservatives have dismissed the Jan. 6 commission as being overtly political, and there was a sharp drop in television ratings between the first and second installment of this month’s hearings.
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Bernstein separately raised concerns over Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whose actions leading up to Jan. 6 have attracted the committee’s attention.
“The wife of a Supreme Court justice is now part of the story, and it looks very much like, and certainly it is the opinion of a number of people on that committee, that she is caught up in the conspiracy and very likely is a co-conspirator,” he said. “So, it has raised all kinds of questions about the justice himself.”
At the end of the hourlong talk, the pair finished by saying that today’s news reporters need to become better listeners, and that the best relationships involve each party doing more than their fair share.
“It’s like a good marriage,” Woodward said. “You both have to do 60%.”
