good evening, welcome i'm anderson cooper. if you have been watching our fascinating series tricky dick along with us, you just relived the final hours of richard nixon's presidency as the white house corruption scandal was exposed to public view and struck the nation and the world. what have we learned about watergate and the nixon presidency and how does it inform the moment we're living through now? former nixon white house council john dean and former watergate special prosecutor.

i just find this documentary so fascinating. the story of richard nixon it is shakespearean in scope and scale. for a lot of people watergate is like a flashpoint but in reality it played out over a very long period of time. >> two years from the time of the break in. two years and a couple of months until nixon's resignation in august of 1974 and it was a packed two years with a tremendous amount of information that at the time seems incomprehensibly difficult for a lot of people because of the huge cast of characters involved. i'm not sure that today's cast of characters might be even more difficult to follow. >> as a reporter of the washington post and with woodward, did you know he was going to go down ultimately? when was the moment that you realized oh, wait a minute, this leads to this? >> i'm going to have to tell a

story. there was a moment. it was early. it was about ten weeks after the break in and we learned that there was a secret fund that had been controlled by those closest to richard nixon including his former law partner, the manager of the campaign and attorney general of the united states john mitchell and that that fund paid for the undercover operations against the democrats and we were about to write that story, put it in the paper. woodward and i would have coffee every morning, a little vending machine room off the newsroom floor. and i put a dime in that morning which is what coffee cost in those days and i literally felt a chill go down the back of my neck and i said to woodward, oh my god this president is going to be impeached and woodward looked at me and he said you're right and we can never use that word anywhere around the washington post lest the people in the newsroom have the idea that we have some kind of an agenda which of course we did

not. >> but that was ten weeks from the break in. >> ten weeks and then of course we both came to disbelieve it because as the process went on it seems very doubtful that nixon was going to be held accountable. certainly until the watergate hearings and then we found the necessity of having a smoking gun for nixon to be held accountable and that might be and i'm sure we'll talk about it in this session, the necessity of a smoking gun might be one of the most important legacies of watergate because i think bob woodward and myself for a long time believed there should have been no necessity because the mountain of evidence was so strong without the smoking gun tape that he had committed numerous criminal acts. >> the moment of truth came when i listened to john dean and richard nixon in the march 21

cancer on the presidency conversation where john comes into the president, lays out everything has been done as if the president didn't know giving him the benefit of the doubt saying you need to save the presidency. i will plead guilty. others need to plead guilty. we have committed crimes and nixon rejects that proposal and said we need to keep this going a little bit further. we need to get the money. i can get the money. i know where it can be gotten. when i first listened to that and brought leon in to listen to it personally, that was the moment for me when i said richard nixon cannot survive as president. he has associated himself with the conspiracy to obstruct justice. encouraged it to be continued.

how can he possibly survive this? >> i want to pause for a second and say how cool it is just to have three of you here and the other guests we're going to have and just how weird life is. could you ever have imagined back then that one day you'd be sitting with john dean and carl bernstein discussing this? >> well, actually i kind of predicted that? >> you did? really. w wow. >> in my book written shortly after i left the office i said for the future, the lessons of washington gate are wonderful in that the system worked in this circumstance but it almost didn't work and for the future, does it take something more than what we have experienced in watergate with the kind of evidence, demonstrative, incredibly powerful evidence of criminal wrong doing for the president of the united states

to be put in a position of either re-signing or certainly impeached and convicted. >> that is certainly a question which is as important today if not more important today than ever. in this last episode we saw you testifying before congress. can you bring us into that moment what was going through your mind? >> we saw a little bit of the first day and some of the later parts -- >> five days. >> five days. i was on the stand during the trial for ten days. but the first day, first of all, i had no idea i was going to have to read my statement and it was 60,000 words. had they told me i was going to read it, it would have been about 6,000 words at most. so it took a whole day to read it and i made the deliberate decision to read it in a

monotone. to let the words speak for themselves and not my dra dramatizing. >> you felt the words were powerful enough, you didn't need that. >> these were the facts i knew. the only thing i speculated about was i thought that i had been taped. i had gotten word that nixon claimed he taped me on one occasion and i claimed i had immunity. >> how long did it take you to write all of that out? >> over the period of a couple of weeks i made notes and then sat down and pulled it all together. >> emotionally, was it difficult to write it all out? >> i had already broken rank and i had already warned them not to try to make me the scapegoat and if they did it would be a mistake. so i was at war with the white house at that point. and my lawyer said john remember the old saying when you kick the king you have to kill him and

so, in fact, it's ironic that nixon in his memoirs writes he thought he could really deal with my knowledge of watergate. it was everything else i put in that explained the atmosphere in which this had happened where a lot of it i had second hand or that is what it was that really killed me. >> what about that atmosphere that contributed to it? >> he sees it nothing short of a mafia family coperating. criminal enterprise. it wasn't that bad. >> i don't see it quite that way, but go ahead. >> one of the things that surprised me is when we look back on it, it looks like all we focused on was watergate. it actually took very little time did the cover up. if an hour was devoted to it, it

was a lot so it wasn't all consuming. >> i'm obsessed with the tapes. i find these tapes fascinating to listen to them. i want to play nixon having the taping system explained to him. >> it's incredible to listen to when we know what's going to result from this. let's listen.

>> it's a fascinating element of that when nixon says we may need it some day to correct the record. almost pressing it because his thought once watergate happened and once john dean was going to testify, was that they could use the tapes selectively to undermine john dean's testimony. >> but of course that blew up. >> that's right. >> everything that john said in his remarks not knowing and answers to questions, not knowing for sure that there was a taping system was corroborated. he was the most corroborated witness i've ever had in 50 years of practicing law anderson. it was astonishing.

>> i want to play the moment that alexander butterfield reveals the existence of the tapes. it's a shock. you can hear some of the congressmen gasp. >> state your name. >> my name is alexander porter butterfield. >> what were you duties at the white house mr. butterfield? >> i was responsible for the management and ultimate supervision of the office of special files. >> all right. mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any devices, listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> also how he pauses so dramatically before answering.

>> i asked him why he did that. he says he has no idea. no memory. i knew it was an important moment. i wanted to think and collect myself before i said it. >> learned three days earlier -- >> they gave it to fred because he's a republican and they wanted bipartisanship. >> which gets to an important point. how long did republicans in congress stand by nixon. you point out in the end the fact that republicans -- >> courageous republicans. >> courageous republicans changed and said look, you got to go, that turned the tide. >> that's right. it started in the house judiciary committee, impeachment committee hearings where a huge courageous republicans joined democrats in the impeachment -- the articles of impeachment. there were several.

but when the evidence became incon ti incontrovetable and nixon was not going to re-sign and the tape had been revealed, barry goldwater. the nominee of his party in 1964 with a group of republican leaders went to the white house and met with nixon and nixon said barry, how many votes would i have in the senate to acquit me if we went to trial. and nixon fully expected that goldwater would tell him he had sufficient votes and goldwater looked him in the eye and he said mr. president you might have four votes and you don't have mine. and that was the final act. >> the story is that without important corroborating tape recorded conversations, nixons

admissions from his own mouth, he would have survived in my view as president. >> back to that smoking gun which is -- >> he would have been able to survive any trials where john and others who had been cooperating with the special prosecutors office had testified to the facts truthfully and they would have dirtied them up and con firefighte it's highly unlikely that without two things that happened, the tapes being revealed and us being able to get them where congress could not get them as special prosecutor was able to get them and then the act of firing archibald cox. that was a moment in history that turned the tables. >> coming up, nixon and trump,

the time they spent together outside of the oval office and the prediction nixon made about trump's political career. ♪ ♪ applebee's bigger, bolder grill combos. now that's eatin good

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welcome back. did richard nixon predict the election of donald trump? we'll take a look at this letter he wrote in 1987. dear donald, i did not see the program but mrs. nixon told me you are great on the show. she is an expert on politics and predicts whenever you decide to

run for office you'll be a winner. he told people he planned to hang it in the oval office. do you think this letter is the only vestigae of nixon that lea lives on in the trump white house. >> no, i think the message of nixon is dividing the country and the social issues that he learned from roger ales and began to exploit in the southern strategy of dividing this country. >> that lingers on? >> that lingers on with great force. to our dismay as a country. >> i also want to read you something that trump wrote about or somebody wrote about for trump in a book that trump published about nixon saying eve seen real killers in my line of work but he makes them look like babies. when you think about how far he's come and the things he's endured he's even more amazing. >> who is that from?

>> donald trump. >> donald trump. >> do you think trump admires nixon? obviously when of trumps -- he surrounds himself with -- >> he's been clear about his admiration and once again he goes to the idea of a strong man. what he seems to admire is that nixon wouldn't back down as opposed to taking a look and seeing what nixon's crimes were and how nixon damaged the presidency and damaged the united states of america. >> trump also thinks nixon got a bad wrap. he gets a lot of that from roger stone, his one time political adviser that has every conspiracy related to watergate that he buys. >> do any of you have any tattoos? >> no. i try to even get the shadow off

my back. >> trump once compared you to his own white house council in a tweet saying don was not a john dean-type rat. how would you compare trump and nixon when it comes to the value they place on loyalty to them? loyalty and secrecy. >> i think it's much more one way with trump than nixon. i don't think he ended up pardoning them although they were asking for it because he realized they had done him in. a lot of things he didn't know. not that he wouldn't have bought into them but didn't know when they were told. i think the men are very similar. nixon behind closed doors.

trump in the rose garden. where ever he is, he shows that but they're very similar in that nature. we wouldn't know about nixon's authoritarian authoritarianism without the tapes. >> it is extraordinary when you think of the humble beginnings of richard nixon, what he overcame to get where he was. a dramatic loss first time he ran against john f. kennedy. losing them for a race many people thought he was going to win in california and then this come back and historic. >> there are elements of real tragedy and if you go to nixon's boyhood home in california it's impossible not to be moved by what the course of his life was in some ways.

here is this man that all his wife had aspired, his adult life to the presidency. he finally gets it and he is destroyed by his own demons and comes to recognize it in probably the most personal speech. >> it's a projection of his own shortcomings where he allows his personal hatred, his demons to overcome any sense of euqinimity in the job. he surrounded himself with those that bring the dead mouse to his feet and that's what he rewards instead of people that would say no to him as john dean did on march 21. others were totally lacking, the kissengers of the world.

>> that's the speech that trump ought to listen to. most are surrounded by layers to protect their own opinions from the rest of the country so they show people what they want to show and in that speech you do see this naked nixon. you see all of this coming out and with president trump because of twitter you really do get a sense, whether you think he should be tweeting or not, that discussion, it's fascinating. you don't have to wait for the trump tapes. it's all happening on real time on twitter. >> what he did in secret, in private, clemency and hush money, it's all out there in the open with donald trump. it's a stick up in broad daylight. >> got to get another break in.

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welcome back. one of the really remarkable things about watching this series which i loved is seeing the figures that were players in the nixon presidency that also factored into the trump presidency. one of them of course is roger ailes the creator of fox news that was nixon's media adviser that taught him how to manipulate the medium of television. thanks for joining the panel. you were there on this series and films tricky dick, and director of the nixon library and other things. talk about nixon's understanding of television and how it worked for him a lot but also worked against him. >> it's hard to remember that richard nixon was a pioneer in using television for political purposes. television saved his career in 1952. there were allegations that there was a secret fund from which he was benefitting. he had been selected to be the vice presidential nominee with dwight eisenhower. nixon didn't have the support of

eisenhower. eisenhower wanted to fight for the job and what nixon decided to do was to go on television and give what we know now as the checkers speech because he talked about his dog that his kids received, and he uses television magnificently and it drives real people to send real telegrams to say keep him on. what happens to richard nixon and that's what is so extraordinary about this film, which is a film without talking heads, it's a film just of nixon talking and you see nixon change on screen. it stops -- the tv stops being his best friend. he not only ages visibly but his control begins to fall apart. he's no longer projecting the image of the presidency that he had in his own mind and by the end of the fourth episode, by the end of his administration, the tv makes him look guilty in

a way that was not true in the beginning. >> what was nixon's relationship with the press like and how did that change overtime? >> he's right. he started seeing himself as a victim of the press and go back to what he said when he lost, you won't have nixon to kick around anymore and that was indicative of his attitude and then he got to the white house. and when watergate occurred he decided he would make it an issue of the press. attack us at the washington post. >> sounds so familiar. >> yes. >> the editors of the washington post. he would make us the issue in watergate. not the conduct of the president. and it worked for awhile. the first few months. even most of our senior colleagues in the washington

press core didn't believe. >> really? >> yeah. we were these young metropolitan reporters. we never covered the presidency. what did we know about the white house? we covered it the way we covered a police story. which it was in some ways. it was a burglary and we went from there. >> i want to play some sound. it's nixon but it is language that we also heard obviously a lot from this president. >> we're up against an enemy. a conspiracy. >> so you were the one that introduced the idea of an enemies list, is that true? >> i was the one they asked to assemble and act on it. >> so they already had the idea. >> in fact, anderson, i wrote a memo that i thought that they would find offensive about how to screw your enemies and used very graphic terms, a document that i later turned over to the senate and it wasn't until years

later i realized that i never got it but holloman wrote a big approval okay go on it. that wasn't sent back to me. >> that was a list of what to call your enemy? >> i did some of that with the irs. trump is publishing his enemies list. nixon kept it secret. >> can we stop for a minute and listen to that quote there? we are up against a conspiracy. here is the real conspirator saying we're up against a conspiracy and the conspiracy is the press and by implication, those who are his political opponents, it is so haunting to look at that and look at where

we are today and say he said that then and here we are today. >> he says it in 1971 and not just talking about the press, he's talking about jews too. this is when he -- this is sort of the -- this is all a dark side. he believes he's up against a jewish conspiracy and this is when he orders that a list be made of every jewish american in a sensitive position of the u.s. government. >> are you -- >> yes. >> yeah he certainly did. >> he wanted as he said a gentile and non-jewish person to be over them because he said on tape you know, bob, his chief of staff, jews are disloyal and they both say yes, they're disloyal. so there was a sense that -- this is 1971 that lays the foundation for watergate because one of those that gets involved in doing the president's bidding

is a man named e. howard hunt and he would later be involved obviously in the burglary and that's the human link between these two. well, anyway, the point here is that you have -- when you have a president that has a c conspiratorial mind set. that's dangerous for the country. there's a lot of tools at their disposal where they can do a lot of damage and richard nixon tried hard but fortunately not everybody he ordered to do bad things did them. things could have been worse but there were good government republicans that said no mr. president, i can't do that. >> when we come back, nixon, trump and the silent majority. >> but the silent majority is back and we're going to take the country back. verizon got us vip tickets three feet away from justin timberlake. my wife, me, jt. (laughing) (vo) get vip tickets to the best

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. welcome back. we cannot help but draw parallels to our modern political atmosphere. she is a professor at harvard that's written about race and the republican party. thanks for being part of the conversation. where do you see the comparisons between nixon and trump in terms of how they speak or spoke to white voters?

>> so you know, donald trumps attempts at the southern strategy represent the worst excesses of richard nixon's version of the southern strategy. >> how so? >> when we see something like with donald trump and we see him calling out, you know, not using dog whistles, in fact, speaking with a mega phone really, making overt gestures to race, to bigotry and racism, we don't necessarily see that in the same way with richard nixon even though the moment of the southern strategy is really popularized during the era. richard nixon is all over the place when it comes to the southern strategy. we see a racialized racial resentment campaign in the 1970 midterm elections but by 1972 we're seeing something different. we're seeing a suburban strategy. >> one of the most striking side by sides are from two memorable

speeches that nixon and trump gave. i want to play those. >> for a few moments, let us look at america. let us listen to america as we look at america we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. we hear sirens in the night. >> the attacks on our police and the terrorism of our cities threaten our very way of life. americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets. >> not a consequence there. >> carnage speeches. this is basically the law and order president. richard nixon brought the georggeorge wallace voters to the republican party. these are voters that many of them were white supremacists and in addition, they also believed the federal government was

trying to alter their way of living in the south. but not just in the south, also in the northeast and parts of the midwest. those voters came to the republican party in part because of the southern strategy. those voters are now the base in large measure. not the same people. there's a few still around i'm hopeful. but that concept and that view of life is the base of donald trump's coalition and it comes from decisions that richard nixon made. richard nixon had a very racialized view of america. on tape he shares the fact that he believes that african americans are genetically inferior to white people. he has this horrible genetic sense of hierarchy of races. his policies on welfare are the product as we know from documents and on tape of his racial view of america. so he had a sense that he could

speak to white people because he understood why they felt agrieved by affirmative action. the dog whistles and the rhetoric that donald trump uses is the same rhetoric that richard nixon used to make the republican party the majority party in the 1970s and 80s. >> how do you see nixon on race? we hear the things on the tapes that tim was just talking about. obviously crude, awful racial stereotypes. he also did help desegregate southern schools and tried to champion native americans. how do you see overall his legacy on this? >> there's no question that richard nixon is a racist. the nixon tapes, his private

corresponden correspondence, his conversation and certain policies make it very clear that he holds racist views privately and publicly holds bigoted views and things of that nature but when we look at the policies we see this mixed bag. this is part of the really fascinating part about richard nixon. even as he holds these racist views they go in all different directions. so some policies we see things like the start of the philadelphia plan, several federal affirmative action programs, historically black colleges and universities funding do well under the nixon administration. why does he choose to support them? why does he work progressively on these things? that's a complicated answer. at the same time, you know, the civil rights advances that he does make he also undercuts. he also down plays them and does other things that are

disastrous. >> that's one of the other things that makes the tapes so invaluable and fascinating to listen to. to hear the president trafficking in stereotypes. >> i had a couple of conversations on this subject with nixon. he belittled the one black member, supreme court at the time, thurgood marshall. he had one black person on the white house staff. that was it. >> one of the challenges was that he had a democratic senate and democratic house of representatives and he wanted to be reelected so a lot of his so-called progressive legislation comes in the first two years of his first term because he thinks he's going to be running against somebody and set himself up for re-election. i don't believe he believed in that legislation and what the tapes show us is that in 1973 he wanted to dismantle most of what we now associate him with. most of the liberal programs. he wanted to dismantle them.

he did them because he needed to be reelected. once he was reelected in a landslide he wanted vengeance and he wanted to remove a lot of his first term legacy on the first time. >> he didn't care much about the domestic policy. >> we'll take a break. do the similarities between nixon and trump end at the special counsel's doorstep? and how can history predict what will happen is next? after the break. ♪ applebee's bigger, bolder grill combos. now that's eatin good in the neighborhood.

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we think sometimes when things happen. >> reporter: we think sometimes when things happen that don't go the right way. we think that when we lose an election. we think that when we suffer a defeat that all has ended. not true. it's only a beginning. always. and so i say to you on this occasion, never get discouraged, never be petty, always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself. >> that's from president nixon's

farewell speech. the final episode of "tricky dick" reminded us, by the time nixon resigned, the country was deeply fractured and faith in its institutions eroded. as we wrap up, carl, for those who didn't live through this, how would you describe the few months before nixon was impeached and resigned? >> well, one, he became increasingly isolated and unstable to the point where al hague, his chief of staff, was concerned that nixon might be suicidal. at one point nixon said to hague, you know, al who was a military guy in your business you have a gun in the desk for dealing with the kind of situation i'm in. he saw the walls closing in. what i get so much from watching this extraordinary series that is different than donald trump is nixon is a genuinely complex man. he had knowledge of a sweep of

history. if you listen to part of that farewell address, he talks about his aspirations for the united states and its place in the world as the leading power of democratic aspiration. we would never hear that from donald trump. donald trump i don't think is a particularly complex figure, and so nixon -- one of the reasons we study him the way we do is the fascination, both with the ugliness and the criminality that starts on day one -- he's a criminal president from day one if you look at the articles of impeachment until the day he leaves office, and yet there is all -- all of these other aspects of him. his knowledge of history. his being a supremely able politician. his views of humanity, which as arthur burns, his counselor, talking about it the way he talks about jews and black

people. said he has epithets for whole sections of humanity. >> lea, i'm wondering just in your opinion, what is the importance of, you know, learning about nixon, about, you know, listening to the tapes, about the lessons -- learning the lessons from his administration? >> one of the things that emerges from this is just a complete breakdown in the american public's trust with government and the federal government. and i'd like to point, you know, to the example of african-americans who see this and who see richard nixon resigning and see his presidency for good or for bad as an example of the ways in which privilege and power continue to be corrupted and abused, and i think that's something important to look for in the present. >> it's also -- liz, it's fascinating, the breakdown in the institutions, the breakdown in trust in institutions. i don't know if there is a hopeful aspect to it, that that

came back somewhat, i guess, after nixon, and obviously it's being broken down again or did it never come back? >> the trust in government really never came back. a couple of moments after 9/11, there was a lot of trust in government, but, in fact, what happens after nixon is the trust in government drops dramatically and it also bifurcates. there was a time where americans, democrat or republican, would respect and trust the president, regardless of the party. after nixon, after vietnam and nixon, people will trust government only if their party is in the white house. that's a major shift that had occurred. >> well, the media changed its attitude towards the presidency also. >> right. >> pre-watergate presidents were given the benefit of the doubt. post-watergate, they're virtually assumed guilty. you mentioned roger ailes. but for nixon, we probably wouldn't have a fox news.

the embryonic form of that happens right in the oval office. ales and nixon are talking about starting a right-wing channel. obviously this is what fox would become. this goes right back to richard nixon. >> i would add that watergate was a necessary corrective for the imperial presidency. richard nixon's complaint was i'm just doing what my predecessors have done, i just got caught. that was the problem. will there be a check on the imperial presidency now? >> the system worked in watergate, but it worked ultimately because there was a smoking gun tape. it's very questionable whether the system would have worked without that smoking gun tape. >> john, your final thoughts on -- >> it's hard to believe that we didn't learn lasting lessons. i think the lessons of watergate lasted about a decade. >> you think they've been forgotten? >> i think they've been forgotten. except in two areas, in the

media and the practice of law. >> and those lessons are? >> with law, the fact that ethics is important. they have not given up and they hammer that right today. you have to take a statewide -- nationwide ethics test. teach it in law school. you can't get a credit without it. so the law, that profession really changed as a result of watergate. as did the media. newsrooms are different today because of that event. >> it's been a fascinating discussion. i want to thank all of you for joining us. thank you so much. if you missed any of "tricky dick," it starts again right now or you can watch it any time ondemand. an is i don't want to retire? then let's not create a retirement plan. let's create a plan for what's next. i like that. get a plan that's right for you. td ameritrade. ♪

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or download the xfinity stream app. xfinity watchathon week, free. now through april 14. down the stretch and pull out some of my best shots. >> another one for the history books. tiger woods has completed an epic and once unthinkable comeback. cnn sat down with the golf champ to talk about his fifth masters title. a battle is brewing over robert mueller's russia investigation report. it's expected to release any day now and democrats say they want the full unredacted version. and later, spoiler alert, the stage is said for a wild ride for the -- to the "game of thrones" finale. we will talk about the winners and losers from the season eight premier.