considering running for president in 2020. you can watch the entire program tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. the conservative political action conference tomorrow, wite president pence white house counsel don mcgann, senator ted cruz, education secretary betsy devos, live coverage begins on c-span at 10 a.m.. on friday president donald trump speaks at cpac along with kellyanne conway. mcmahon, woulda live coverage just after 10 a.m.. authors and journalists to cover the watergate scandal in the 1970's gathered recently to talk about the era and how it compares to today's political climate regarding the russian investigation, the role of the view ofia, and the

government. slate magazine hosted the event. leon: hey everybody. [applause] leon: hi everybody, thank you for being here. can everybody hear me? great. here, a week and a half after the show ended. season one ended. , or it could slate

have even guessed that we would be talking about season one, and that we are now planning season two of "slow burn. " thank you again to the slate plus members who are here. it is really a dream to be here in the watergate hotel. we have a great show tonight, it is our first live show. we have this fantastic lineup of guests. introduce them without clearing my throat anymore. elizabeth drew to my left. [applause] elizabeth covered the water gate scandal for the new yorker. her coverage was collected in the book "washington journal." --dickight is did cap it

cavett . [applause] etthosted the "dick cav show." he introduced -- interviewed a number of key figures in the watergate scandal. here we have susan glasser. [applause] susan is the chief international affairs columnist for the andtico, she has a podcast was previously the editor of politico magazine. on the right we have evan thomas. [applause] evan has been an editor and reporter at newsweek and time,

he authored the book, being nixon, a man divided. you didn't mention the podcast. mentionh: you didn't that i didn't cover watergate. leon: that's true. we wanted a mix of people, people who covered watergate, people like me who were not alive during watergate. know, from elizabeth and dick, how did it feel to be in the watergate after all of these years? did you ever do any reporting in here? elizabeth: for a while i lived in the watergate. , ihout going into it encountered difficulty in the car up. i cannot go into it. it's for my next book. [laughter]

it felt weird. leon: to what? elizabeth: i do not want to rain on the raid -- rain on the parade right away, but the watergate break-ins lead out the more important break-ins. the one before that, the break-in of the offices of the psychiatrist of the man who released the watergate -- excuse me the vietnam war papers. really more serious. it was a violation of the right to privacy, to be securing your home with your belongings. , the problemht in is they were really stupid. the reason they were caught here , it was their fourth attempt to

get into the democratic national committee offices. they decided to host a banquet on the ground floor. then they were going to go upstairs into the offices, and be locked in the closet somehow. got to theme they dnc offices, they could not break the lock. it's a process. elizabeth: it's an unfolding process. fromof them were alumni the bay of pigs. from the failed invasion of cuba, so they were real angry with kennedy, the democrats, and so on. that they werem helping them fight communism. and they bought that. -- martinez got the right for breaking the lock.

they put the tap on the wrong phone, and they took blurry pictures. the twoaid that one of leaders, gordon liddy, went to the committee to re-elect the president. creep. they did not call themselves that right? they did not get the joke. the attorney general who was a , said toer of nixon liddy, this is junk. i do not think he said junk. i cannot prove it, but i do not think he did. in, -- they went back in, and that is when they were caught.

similarly, they were invading the offices of the psychiatrist. imagine that, somebody getting into your regulars doctor's office. but getting into your psychiatrist -- we should all see one. [laughter] elizabeth: there were no files, they messed up everything they did and that's kind of why we are still here today. [laughter] leon: i'm glad you brought that up, because one of my regrets about the show is that i never mentioned the break-in at the psychiatrists office. in many ways it was more serious. they were more scared about people finding out about. elizabeth: it was in one of the articles of impeachment, but not the same one as watergate. the term watergate stuck. actually, there are a lot of brave people, and i will shut

up, but when nixon was in florida and the break-in was caught -- how dumb do you have to be to put a piece of tape in the door and the cop comes along and removes it and they put it back on? when they met, three days after the break-in, that's when the cover-up was hatched. what nixon said, what he was really worried about, he said these plumbers, they did that other stuff, they know about that other thing. that's what he was afraid was going to be found out. and so that began the cover-up to shut them up. leon: i had no idea who lived here. you know who else lifted her? martha mitchell. elizabeth: i knew that. leon: i wanted to include that, but i thought it would be confusing, because how do you explain that?

dick: i'm glad that elizabeth mentioned creep because when it came out, nixon was saying to them, what is this crp thing? the committee to reelect the creeps -- the president. [laughter] leon: one of the things of the things i thought about when i was planning tonight's event, one of those itches i didn't get to scratch on the show, a major one is that i don't still get richard nixon very well. he wasn't really on the show, he was sort of the dark center of it. but the show was about what it was like to live through it, but i never really asked or answered what it was like for nixon to live through it. evan, if you could tell us a little bit about what kind of experience it was for him,

starting with the first couple of weeks when the cloud was starting to gather. evan: nixon had obviously many flaws. one was that he hated confrontation. he liked to pose as being a blustering tough guy that would swear a lot, that he was actually a very shy person. one of his failings was that he, from the very beginning, did not confront his own staff. john mitchell, a guy directly running it, nixon does not talk to him, have a real conversation with him for nine months. nixon was just unwilling to confront his own people. had he confronted -- had he in june 1972 said, what is going on -- he did not know about the break-in. it happened on his watch, he had a lot of responsibility for it but he did not know about it. leon: is that the fact?

evan: 99.9% fact. overwhelming that he did not know about it. not to excuse him, he created the conditions by which it happened, but he could've cut this off. he was ahead of mcgovern in the polls by 34 points. there was no way he was going to lose. he could have fired everybody in his cabinet and still won, and he should have. [laughter] evan: that was one turning point that he blew partly out of his own shyness. leon: because he could not face it? evan: he couldn't face it and did not want to face it. nixon was a devious guy, he also thought he could get away with it. he believed in executive privilege and he thought, and people scoff at this, but he is hardly the first president to use dirty tricks.

what really happened, nixon's timing was bad. that's what it was. [laughter] dick: i mean, like, the 20th century. [laughter] evan: that's what i mean by that. why did he have these incompetent people doing this? why were those guys doing it? the reason they were doing it is because the fbi had taken themselves out of the business of doing this. j edgar hoover, that the ahead been illegally wiretapping and stealing and spying for earlier presidents, including frank and roosevelt, harry truman, lbj. j edgar hoover by 1970 was a savvy politician and realized the winds are changing. and the warren court is beginning to enforce the fourth

amendment, cutting down on wiretapping, and hoover knows this. he is getting the fbi out of the business of doing black bag jobs. so nixon has to go in-house. leon: he didn't have to. [laughter] evan: but if he is going to do it, he has to hire liddy to do it because the fbi will not do it for him. his minions hire these incompetents. leon: hearing you say that he was so allergic to confrontation, one thinks of the reports of how our current president never can fire someone directly to their face despite his catchphrase. [laughter] leon: i think a lot of people who listen to this show had fun picking out parallels.

there are subplots and personality traits i think nixon and trump seem to share. but when i read your book, and i read it later in the process of recording the show, he felt totally different to me than the way i imagine donald trump. i wonder if you could talk to me about how they are different and similar. evan: for starters, nixon read. [laughter] [applause] evan: a lot. i've been through his personal library, he was an unbelievable -- because he did not like talking to people. he read a lot. most presidents don't read anything, certainly trump. but most presidents are busy. nixon read a lot and deeply, and he read deeply into political philosophy, everything churchill ever wrote. he pretended to hate intellectuals but he actually

was one himself. he would say, those harvard people, but then he would hire them to work for him. he was confusing that way. he postured as an anti-intellectual but he actually was quite intellectual. so that is one major difference. dick: a big difference. evan: nixon was deeply strategic. trump was in the moment, by the tweet, by impulse. nixon thought deeply about the shape of the world, coalition of forces, china, russian. always thinking strategically, rightly or wrongly. that is another big difference. where they are alike is they are both arguably crazy. [laughter] evan: a lot of people have opined about this, that trump has a narcissistic disorder if you believe the psychiatric community. nixon, i don't know what you would call it, but he was paranoid. he did not like this about

himself and he tried to control it but he could not control it. you can hear it on the tapes, we spent hours listening to these tapes, and he can sound quite rational, talking about world events. you can make fun of his accent but he is a deep thinker. then he will go on these crazy tears, anti-semitic, profane tears, and you wonder what the hell is he doing? then he will swing back into being coherent and interesting again. he could not control his emotions. dick: you reminded me of a tweet very much the same. imagine trump's library. [laughter] dick: you'd have to. [applause] dick: you can use that. [laughter]

leon: susan, how can you explain, given the differences that were just enumerated, to my mind quite striking similarities in how the white house's seem to be run, the sort of chaos that determines decision-making. again, the alignment of the various subplots are uncanny. how do two men so far apart create so many echoes? susan: if i knew the answer to that, i should just go home. probably 16 other subplots have developed. i don't know if anybody is checking twitter, but please let us know if there is a white house shakeup happening while we are sitting here. do you know who was on trump's public schedule today for a meeting? henry kissinger.

to me, that was sort of a perfect setup for this conversation tonight. washington is something that both nixon and donald trump loved to bash. nixon as you said, loved to set himself up in opposition to the georgetown set, he hated the elitists in washington, they just did not get him, donald trump ran against the swamp, but in many ways you are saying one year into trump's experiment on all of us -- [laughter] susan: that washington, it is like a casino. historically the house always finds a way to win. henry kissinger will adapt to any power in the white house. he is still getting active meetings at the age of 93 or whatever it is. they are not the same, and

we do seem to be engaged in this incredible moment of history echoing or rhyming or maybe just laughing at us. i will admit, one of the first things i did after january 20, 2017 was i picked up a copy of elizabeth's book that was sitting on our shelf. reading that in parallel to the first -- remember the 24 day tenure of michael flynn? shortest tenure. leon: i barely remember it. longer than the 11 day tenure of anthony scaramucci, it is often referred to as the scaramucci era. [laughter] susan: this is the sort of comic opera version of it. donald trump is the sort of comic opera version. he is not like nixon, he doesn't seem to be an extreme introvert, for example, which clearly nixon was.

but to me that tells us that a certain part of it is about power and abuse of power. when you say the white houses are similar, that might be because you are looking at people's responses to the institution and to what happens when you are in the court of the czar or the president and something is wrong in the middle of it. elizabeth: i have the greatest of respect -- their white houses are similar. nixon's two top assistants were known as the berlin wall. there was a strict discipline in nixon's white house. it wasn't the zoo this one has been. evan is right, nixon was deeply

shy man, he grew up lying in the grass and reading. the word dork did not exist then, but he was one. he ran for and won student offices all the time. he was student body president. he didn't have any friends. he was a charmer, but he worked so hard at it. he wanted it so badly. this kept happening. he took a liking to these positions he was unfit for. i would argue he was unfit for politics. he did not like people and people do not like him. it did not work. the other thing is, yes he was shy, but if he had to fire his closest aides, he did it. leon: he cried when he did it. elizabeth: oh he cried.

[laughter] elizabeth: he had a habit of calling aides at 1:00 in the morning or 3:00 the morning and ask how it went after a speech. he said, how do you think my speech went? the speech in which he fired him. [laughter] leon: i believe he said, i cannot do this for you anymore. i have been fired. did you ever meet him? elizabeth: i interviewed him. we were not close. [laughter] leon: were you close? dick: you were not enchanted? i met him way back when i was still persona grata at the white house, that did not last very long.

i eventually made the enemies list. this was a formal event, nickel williamson was brought over because nixon had seen him in london. so you were invited to an evening of shakespeare at a room 1/6 the size of this. so i met the great indicted co-conspirator. but he recognized me clearly and said, "who is doing your show tonight?" i said, "joe namath." [impersonating richard nixon] "yes. how are his knees?" [laughter]

leon: wasn't there another interaction you had with him? dick: that is only one. that night we waited and saw the shakespeare, and about 10 minutes after it was over, for some reason the room filled with a smoke smell. the alarming kind, like somebody was burning the newspaper or something. there was no source of it, the smell went away. up the aisle came kenneth timon, the great british critic, and i said to him, "ken" -- i knew him. [laughter] dick: "what do you think that smell was?" he said, "they let spiro agnew into the library." [laughter]

dick: i love it. [laughter] leon: that sounds like he was quite polite to you. from listening to the tapes, that was not always his attitude toward you. dick: from nixon? leon: yeah. dick: the damnedest thing happened in montauk one day, i went to a seafood restaurant and it was one hour early and nobody was at the tables. there was this dark figure, it looked like an old seabird peering out to sea. it was mr. nixon and his lovely daughter julie. to amuse the waiter -- i was not drunk. [laughter] dick: i went up behind him and said, "for dessert we have the yorba linda cream pie and the whittier college souffle." i got so he could see me then. he said, "oh yes.

i thought that was you." [laughter] dick: he always knew who was behind him. [laughter] dick: so what did dumbo do, but we suddenly had nothing to say to each other. we stood there. the gulls fell silent. [laughter] dick: i said, "oh, the last time i saw you was at that wonderful night of shakespeare at the white house, and you might remember that the room started filling with" -- i should not be telling him the story. but anyway, i finished the story somehow. julie said, "i hope your nightclub act was funnier than that." [laughter] dick: i remembered something i had to do at home. [laughter]

elizabeth: i want to go back to evan's point about nixon not knowing about the watergate break-in. we don't know. but evan made the key point, he created the conditions for it. how did this stuff happen? my point is, it doesn't matter. it did not matter whether nixon knew about the break-in ahead of time. as evan said, he created the conditions. he would say things like -- he always wanted to get the goods on somebody. we haven't said this, i think it's terribly important. nixon's downfall stemmed a lot from the fact that he could not distinguish between opponents and enemies. anyone who ran against him was an enemy. one of the first things, they tailed ted kennedy around, taking pictures of him with

various women, because nixon worried that kennedy would run against him. the inability to distinguish not just in his presidential career, he would say i want to get the goods on lawrence o'brien, a kennedy man. leon: the chairman of the democratic national committee. elizabeth: why he wanted the goods on larry o'brien, there are various theories about that, having to do with howard hughes and blah blah. leon: that's my favorite one. elizabeth: but. where was i? [laughter] elizabeth: my point was, because he couldn't make the distinction he kept getting into trouble. why were they so obsessed with ellsberg? the pentagon papers were really about the vietnam war under johnson, but he questioned the foundation of the vietnam war. it was kissinger who was very

worked up about this and ellsberg was an enemy and we have to get him. this was the atmosphere of that white house, who are we going to get? that's what led him down this trail. one of the articles of impeachment that i think is important, i know you have a question about that. there were three articles of impeachment that the house judiciary committee approved. one of them held at the -- held the president accountable for the acts of his aides. it had to be a pattern or practice of a certain kind of activity, just as in the obstruction of justice, it won't be one thing or another, it will be 10 things if that comes up, that is what is building, and what was building under nixon. the first article was obstruction of justice.

but the second was the use of government agencies for his own political purposes to get his self designed enemies, and the other was that he was responsible, he was accountable for that. if you fast forward to now, we don't know if there was collusion, collusion means conspiracy if it is an impeachable offense. it doesn't matter what really what trump knew at a certain point or if nixon knew ahead of time they were going into the watergate, he created the atmosphere and encourage them i -- by saying, i want to get the goods on larry o'brien. he did this about various people. they broke into ed muskie's office because he thought he was going to run against him.

these are the important things to keep in mind. the president can be held accountable for the acts of the people who work for him. the other is, this playing with federal agencies -- now trout. trout? trump. i don't know where that came from. [laughter] elizabeth: now trump, he does not know enough about government. [laughter] elizabeth: seriously, to know that you could use the irs or try wire tapping. in his ignorance he has stayed innocent of a lot of it until he started messing with the justice department. and now we are looking at serious impeachable offenses. leon: you were maybe the first or second person i interviewed and your book was one of the first i read. i wanted to interview you for the first episode.

i wanted to talk about 1972, the first five months leading up to the election. i said, "why did anyone care?" "are we talking about impeachment? i don't care." and we talked about impeachment. and i have to thank you because by the time i got to episode eight and i did not have time to talk to anybody else, i said i have this great interview on impeachment. so you really saved my neck. [laughter] elizabeth: you have to remember, this is serious history, it has only been tried three times in all of american history. article two in the constitution -- article one is about the congress, because the founders thought the congress would be at least equally as important as the presidency. this is part of what has gone wrong. they did not anticipate what we have now. where was i again? leon: impeachment.

elizabeth: the first one was against -- the idea was that the -- they were obsessed with establishing a king. they had fled from that, and there would be a presidency accountable to the people. my last article in the new republic was about this. do we have a presidency accountable to the people? i think the jury is out and i am not sure we do anymore. the first article under the presidency was how to impeach one, because they thought that was so important. that it has been so little used is a good thing. it should be extremely hard to overturn an election. i don't care how badly someone has behaved, or what if we made a mistake? in whose eyes? leon: especially in a landslide election like 1972. elizabeth: no, i'm talking about

2016. [laughter] elizabeth: yes, a landslide election is that, too. the first was andrew johnson, who had been abraham lincoln's vice president. leon: we're not going to talk about andrew johnson. elizabeth: no, but he was undoing reconstruction and so on, it was a political thing. it was supposedly about a cabinet firing, but it was so political that he was impeached in the house, which is indictment, he was not convicted in the senate. when you are convicted, you are out of office. it failed by one vote. fast forward, it did not happen again until nixon. it worked in the sense that the country largely accepted it, and that was critical.

we did not have a civil war over it. then there was a very reckless and very partisan, i think, impeachment of bill clinton. leon: he was three. elizabeth: in any event, they said it was not about sex, it was about sex. newt gingrich led it and he wanted to get clinton out of there. i was told by two people close to gingrich but not each other that he had some swell ideas, this was that he would get clinton impeached and that he would get gore impeached for supporting the president, and then guess who gets to be president? the speaker of the house. but he was having an affair on the side, so he did not get to be president.

we used it rarely, we should use it rarely. there have been proposals to make it easier, i am against that. we would be a latin american country. no offense, but with the change in the political mood, we don't want to do that. dick: looking at the agencies -- sorry, it is your show. [laughter] leon: i was going to say, we brought the landslide 1972 election. in the first couple of months, your favorite topic i know, the period when reporters were writing stories, the washington post was publishing them, time, the new york times. people voted for nixon anyway. susan, you can go first, what lessons do you think the event has for contemporary journalists and consumers of news?

how could that have happened? susan: i have to say, listening to your fantastic podcast, that is a part that certainly resonated the most, even more than any direct comparisons between nixon and trump. this slow-motion car crash nature of it as it was experienced in washington here. leon: slowburn. susan: that's a good title. [laughter] we are hearing so much in the political atmosphere that surrounds the story, is not in in the story itself. to me that is why it is fundamentally a story about washington. in many ways the book is about the political institutions in washington and what they do when confronted with this unthinkable mess of a problem. it is in the constitution but

there is so much left to the interpretation of each generation that confronts it. these institutions, congress, the media, the white house itself, come under this enormous stress and i think behave in some similar ways. to me, when you look at what is happening over the last few weeks on capitol hill, you see a lot of echoes of what congress and even though it was a congress that was a democratic congress and a republican president. but again, that to me is where the parallels are even more striking. almost for beta, you play these fantastic clips on the podcast. from right-wing talk radio, defenders of the president, talking about collaboration even up to the point some would argue of collusion between republican members of the watergate committee and white house

staffers who were receiving talking points. this stuff resonates very much. and i think the critique that was aired to the washington post coverage during watergate was very similar to what we heard over the last year when it comes to coverage of the russia gate story for example. leon: we knew so much by november of 1972. susan: we know a lot now. what we don't have is a political process that can tell us what happened. we don't even know when it comes to the robert mueller investigation, while impeachment itself is laid out and described is the constitution, there is no set formula. it is governed by regulations set forth. there is no straightforward procedure by which for example robert mueller could transmit his report to capitol hill. that has been done in the past

-- ken star was authorized under a law that does not exist right now. he was an independent counsel and robert mueller is the special counselor of the -- there are processes not even set in motion you. the political climate now is similar in the sense that people are saying we don't have the evidence, the public doesn't care, the public cares about the economy and the stock market. that part echoes with most washington scandals, frankly. one risk we have looking at the watergate parallel that i think is a danger for all of us is thinking well, because the political arguments being used a similar that somehow means the outcome will be similar. we can talk about it later, but i think the biggest change is in the media environment between now and what happened in watergate.

and, you know, can anyone break through the noise? tell us what's been happening in the last half-hour? leon: evan, what do you think? what can we take from the fact these stories were being written, these people were going onto his show, lying through their teeth, and people didn't seem to absorb it? i assume there are journalists in the audience, but mostly not. what does it say for consumers of news, how we should engage with this information at this stage in the process? evan: i know the answer to that. but first you just got to hear this. it popped into my head. when you go home, assuming you all have homes, on youtube only you can now get a replay of a

wonderful documentary i did about a year ago called dick cavett's, watergate. i see most of you saw it. it's really good. [applause] [laughter] but today looking back at it to come here, i saw something i've never seen and i've seen it now four times. there's a card ornamented with little phrases that nixon is famous for, others he's now. -- not. and i'm reading ask i come down to right-hand corner and i see, is cavett is jew? i'm not going to tell him. [laughter] leon: that's not even the worst thing he said about you. dick: his anti-semitism is one of his well-used or frequently used traits. that and his foul language, if you heard any of the tapes. but if i were ever a little

down, i'd go to my computer and i'd go to youtube, cavett, nixon and see the great unindicted coconspirator in the oval office, and it's still -- but the language, the dialogue appears on the screen even as you hear it from the tapes. and the line that i like best is, well, it begins with what is it with cavett anyway? oh, he's the worst. that's h.r.halderman. and it ends with a line that will live forever. cavett, how can we screw him? [laughter] leon: did they try? did they have any ideas? dick: actually, they didn't -- here's what happened, and i'm so glad you asked. about a year ago -- i mean, about a year later, way back

then, a lady on my staff ran into another lady on my staff and she said i've got problems. i'm really suffering from having been audited. and the other lady said when were you audited? and she told her, and she said i was, too. i realized the son of a b -- the president had decided to use, in one of his hobbies, was using the irs illegally, punish my staff. and what the late joan crawford would call the little people, would suffer quite a bit from the audit. so he got his way, in a way. leon: but he still did. [laughter]

leon: evan, how old were you when all this was happening? evan: watergate, so i was 22, 23, 24? leon: so were you already a reporter then? evan: no. well, i was briefly. i was a reporter for the borgen record. and i got arrested for covering a gang fight. they didn't want to arrest the kids, and they arrested me, the reporter instead. and when i free from jail i went back to had newsroom and i thought i was in trouble because i had just been arrested. i was a hero because it was a watergate summer and all reporters were heroes. and it was such a different, a different time. we were all kind of martyrs and heroes, even if it was something trivial like being arrested for the little ferry new jersey

police. leon: did watergate change your sense of government? obviously, it did. but did it change how you reported on the government after that? do you think it informed your coverage of washington, just having seen what is possible in the years that came after? evan: i wish it was so high-minded. we saw all the president's men, and that made heroes of woodward and bernstein. leon: i don't even mean that, but you saw what the government could do, you saw what the president could do. you can say no. [laughter] evan: you know, this didn't start with -- the disbelief in government really starts with johnson, from my generation, vietnam, the credibility gap, the late 1960s.

i soured on the idea of government watching linden johnson, not richard nixon. it was a continuum. so i was part of a generation that had already been turned off to what washington would do by the time nixon got there. leon: right. >> and i think that's an important point when we think about what's going on today. part of what we're all responding to, in a way, is just how unique donald trump is. there are echoes in history, but what we are responding to is the fact we've never had a president like donald trump. and we're still looking for a frame and a narrative to place him. and i think the exceptional events that are happening every day, there's no continuity. there might be reaction or barack obama zigging and zagging of history, but we didn't -- we weren't in the middle of vietnam and now we're going to

watergate. there's no linear progression here. donald trump is more like an asteroid in that sense that's descended on the oval office. dick: what sort of ass? >> asteroid. dick: i decided something. [laughter] i forgot it. you ever do that? i think it's going to come -- leon: it'll come back. for independents -- dick: oh, yes, last week i had a sentimental reunion with one of my great heroes, mort sohl, who's still with us, by the way. he came across the sky like a

meteor back in that -- woody allen and i used to go see him every night at the basin street east along with ella fitzgerald. i remember this joke, nixon, he said, is the sort of man who if you fell overboard 20 feet from shore, he would throw you a 15- foot rope. [laughter] and kissinger would announce the president met you more than halfway. leon: wasn't it mort sahl you told me was also the person who said to you two days after the burglary, i hope this is the thing that brings him down? dick: i don't recall that, but i'm willing to pretend i did if it makes you comfortable. [laughter] leon: i was going to say a second ago, is that it's very in a funny way cathartic for me to be making all of these comparisons to trump and nixon because in the show, we tried so hard to restrain ourselves and sort of just, like, say what happened

and not run too, you know, aggressively towards the parallels. so it feels quite good to be finally speaking openly about it. but i do wonder, and elizabeth, i wonder what you think since you covered it then and you're covering it now, is there any point in finding those connections? is there anything -- is it misleading as susan was saying to try to feel reassured by -- by the story that -- that ended the way it did? elizabeth: no. leon: all right. [laughter] elizabeth: i don't think so. i think we can, you know, it's interesting because that was about a president who had committed some problematic deeds, and the question then, with all due respect to the movie, in which i have a small role. remember the lady with big hair

was interviewing the attorney general? that was me. i was very chic at the time. anyway, it's very different. the thread that runs through it, and although watergate is often played as the cops and robbers, and it's a great story, and woodward and bernstein did great journalism, so did a lot of other people. and it ended up the way it ended up. this is really very different from that. it's a different kind of -- the question behind both of them as i said earlier was can we hold a president accountable? and i always felt that while watergate was still a -- can you catch him? where is the smoking gun? you were referring to this earlier. they had to have the proof. the room was full of smoke. all sorts of things had gone on. but a very big change -- i thought then and i think now the big thing is we had and we have a constitutional crisis.

this one has not come to a head yet, but it's building towards that. something is going to collide one of these days if mr. mueller does find things that he feels that trump should be held accountable for. with nixon it was a constitutional crisis in the sense that could the president be held accountable for the acts that were going on? he was defying the courts for awhile. he was defying the congress. and this wasn't the way it was supposed to work. we're kind of back at that now, and that's the thing to watch, is can this man -- i just wrote a piece -- i don't know that he can be held accountable. the big difference, susan said it was the press and she's absolutely right about that, but i think the big difference, the enormous difference, is the nature of the republican party is totally different than it was then. then, you had moderates, republican moderates, you hear

about them every once in awhile, but they're very scarce. whereas there was a great many of them in that era. the republican party has done a huge turn since that period. so whereas the founders kind of counted on congress to act as a check on the president, and they did during nixon's period, they're not -- obviously not doing it now. and this is what i don't think any of us expected. at first i thought impeachment was more likely than i now do because i didn't expect, i don't know that anybody did, for the republican party to actually, not en masse but largely be the president's defender. they're afraid of the base. they're afraid of this. they're afraid of that. so it's a totally different kind of situation. that's why i don't think -- i don't know that impeachment will happen because of that, and this amendment, the 25th amendment, where some people were looking to that because the theory is if

trump is crazy, and there is a lot of evidence of that, he has some very serious mental challenges, let's say. but that's not what the 25th amendment was about. it was about what happens if the president becomes disabled? eisenhower had a couple of heart attacks or strokes. and so it was about that. it wasn't about saying he can't govern because he's nuts. it wasn't -- it wasn't meant for that. you can argue that he's doing what he told the public he was going to do, including building this stupid wall. so i don't know that what worked then can work again because of the political change and because -- nixon was no pussycat, but he had come out of the political system. he had been in the house. he had been in the senate. he had been vice president for eight years. and though, sure he fought the independent council and he tried to withhold the tapes, he didn't

go on this crusade of smearing and trying to wreck the reputation of the investigators. nixon looks like a pussycat compared to what trump is now doing. so you have a totally different reaction on the part of the executive branch, which is very serious. leon: yeah. trump -- i said that trump was not strategic, but nixon was strategic and trump was not. that may be wrong. nixon -- trump does -- seems to have one strategy, and that is to delegitimize anybody who attacks him. that's a -- it's a gamble. i don't think it's going to work. but he's trying to delegitimize the fbi, the justice department, anybody who gets in his way. and democracies depend on some faith in the legitimacy of the institutions. we have all these rules but they don't really work unless there is some trust in them and some belief in them and some credence. and in 1972, most americans had faith in their institutions by

and large. that's less true today if you look at the polling numbers. if you ask the question do you believe in the congress, the press? the military is still up there but everything else is down. so there is already some shakiness baked into our faith in our own institution. and trump is making this headlong attack on these institutions. it's so outrageous, i don't think it's going to work. but i am anxious it will. leon: seems like it's working. elizabeth: our capacity for shock has also really diminished. i think, again, listening to some of those voices that, you know, the moments that you highlighted in watergate, the john dean testimony, the discovery of the taping system, these were moments of collective both national experience, because the media was a different beast than it is now and it wasn't the fragmented thing. so it was a national collective experience, those hearings, number one. number two, people could experience the shock of it, and

now we're overwhelmed by sort of the amorphous chaos. defense trump is playing. i think that mutes the ability of even a determined committee chairman, where there to be one -- were there to be one on capitol hill to convene and tell a powerful, coherent narrative story in a way that would build to the conclusion. which is why i say we should just be wary to a certain extent of feeling because there are some political parallels in how we're talking about trump versus how watergate was talked about, that means that the conclusion or how it will play out will be the same. but i want to flip sides quickly and actually be the optimist for one second. to elizabeth's point about, is this congress basically unable to impose accountability? is the republican party today so fundamentally changed that it will stick with trump forever?

on this, i think the jury is really still out. and i took heart from actually reading her account and realizing that literally up until days and even hours before the house judiciary committee voted on the articles of impeachment against richard nixon, there were republicans on the committee who were talking with elizabeth and saying, well, i'm not sure, you know? i mean, i know it's bad, but, this was a good, substantial percentage of the republicans on the judiciary committee who remained not only uncommitted, but gave at least a very decent semblance of being uncommitted until hours before they did, in fact, go ahead and vote en masse for nixon's impeachment. so, you know, the politics don't change and trump doesn't face an accountability moment within his own party until he does. and we just don't know what that

trigger might be. but i don't think that it's preordained one way or the other at this point. and i also -- i think it is important to say, like, it's rhyming, but it's definitely not going to be the same thing. i mean, you know, whatever this accountability moment is that we're building towards, the facts of the story are very different, and, by the way, we did a great interview, elizabeth and i, for my podcast, and she made the argument in that conversation that this could turn out to be worse than watergate in some significant way. we don't know what the answer to it is yet, but the allegation of systemic russian interference in our election in 2016, possible hacking that we're still not aware of into our state electoral systems, as well as obtaining the internal e-mails of the democratic national

committee and releasing them, allegedly, in collusion in some way, shape or form with the trump campaign, these are very serious facts out that actually go to the heart of the electoral process in a way that you can argue, you know, nixon might not have even known about the burglary at the watergate. so, again, i don't know the answer to it yet, but i don't rule it out. >> yeah. so we're going to open it up to questions in a second. so if you have questions, we have a mic here. do we have a mic there? no, just over there. so while you guys think of your questions, i want to ask dick one last thing. dick, i think you gave me one of my favorite moments in the show in the first episode when you said, you know, i look back on watergate as almost like you would your summer in paris when you were a student. because it was just so fun. [laughter] it was this strange mix of dread and anxiety and fun. >> yeah.

>> are we ever going to look back on this period with nostalgia? [laughter] >> well, it's so bursting with fun right now that we can't be sure. one of the best moments on "dick cavett's watergate," youtube, is gore vidal. what a shame he hasn't been around for this. he said on my show, when i get up in the morning, i can't wait for my watergate fix. >> people identify with that now, i think. but it's -- >> it was such fun to wake up back then. the next chapter in this. >> it was really a mix of nervous laughter and fear and we'd laugh at -- we'd laugh at the latest absurdity, you know? these brilliant guys who were running the plumbers, how did they find out they were there? well, they had pictures taken of

themselves in front of dr. fielding's doors. and here we are using cia equipment. so these were not long-term thinkers. [laughter] but we would be on the phone and sort of hear a funny noise and, oh, i wonder if i was being wiretapped. it was a nervous fear, laughter at the absurdity, but it was a very uneasy, uneasy time. we didn't know what they would do next. dick mentioned being on the enemies list. this is considered an honor, kind of, but it was -- if you were on the enemies list, you were ripe for being wiretapped and getting audited by the irs. it wasn't funny. the president picking out enemies to go after. >> it's true. >> what did you stay?

>> i stead 'tis true, 'tis pity. shakespeare. you know, the englishman? [laughter] >> thank you. i've been a big fan and grateful for your writing for decades since i was a teenager. i wanted to ask you guys about the pardon of ford -- by ford of nixon. and specifically -- like, i remember it at eight being furious about it. [laughter] >> at eight? >> at eight, yeah. i was -- my mother had me very politically animated. but i remember reading later, i didn't know this at the time, that ford would carry around with him a line from early 20th century court case saying if you accepted a pardon it was an admittance of guilt. just wondering what you guys know about that. in if you can illuminate whether it was healing for the country as he often said was his intention. was there any sort of teal

-- deal between the two of them? anything you know from your time in reporting or journalism then. thank you. >> i'm the fossil who was there then. i was unfashionable. i thought it was the right thing to do. there is no evidence that the fix was in. nobody ever found it. ford even as president had to go up and testify before the congress. i thought it was the right thing to do because i thought ford was right. if we went on with another year of being totally distracted by a trial of richard nixon, it just would have been, you know, it was enough. and it wasn't that he didn't suffer. this man had spent his life wanting to be president. he finally got there and then, look. he's thrown out. he's the first president, the only president thus far, to have been thrown out of the office. he was sick. he was out of money. he had big legal bills stack up. being nixon, he made the greatest resurrection since you

know what. and he made a lot of money off his books and went around making speeches. and he moved to new york and became the toast of new york, but that's new york's problem. [laughter] so there were five presidents at his funeral. endured his funeral. it was wonderful. all these presidents turned out. bob dole had a phony tear coming down his cheek. [laughter] henry kissinger managed to make his voice crack and all that. but as far as the -- i don't know, you've done a lot of journalism about this, too, but i don't know if anybody found anything. and i think -- i thought ford did the right thing. it was time to calm down, put it behind us and get on with attending to the country's other business. >> i think ford definitely did the right thing. it was politically brave. he dropped the largest one-day drop in gallup history. he dropped 26 points in the polls when he pardoned.

politically courageous. there is an argument it cost him the election. there is actually a tiny bit of evidence that the fix was in. that al hague went to ford. it's all inference and signals and winking and nodding. i don't know what to believe about it, but there is a little -- there is a suggestion that ford signalled to al hague, to the president's chief of staff that if nixon went, hague would pardon them. >> wasn't there something where al hague said if you don't promise him a pardon, he's just going to off himself? >> i don't remember that. >> if he doesn't remember, it's not true. >> there is a winking and nodding scene between them. you can interpret it different ways. the real point is for did the right thing, and it was

politically brave and he deserves credit for it. >> should we take one more? you so much podcast, and to all of you. i was wondering, because this was such rich material and only in episodes -- i didn't live through this, but i have reading about it since i was 10. considering if you would revisit this -- i would love to hear more on this because i do -- is it trueout you are the first person to realize that the name was an anagram? >> bless your heart. [laughter] whatever that means. thank you for letting me get the last. people would say dumb things like, " who is your favorite

guest? " [laughter] what i realized last time someone asked me who was my that can be answered. iro agnew. the white house put him on the show and said he would be fine. they had put up a cartoon of him because he was always being caricatured by herb block and all the great caricatures. and they said he would have to music things to say. so i said, the first one that aired -- that cartoonish makes your eye a narrow line, and he said yes. [laughter] >> he didn't elaborate.

>> what was the anagram? >> will come to that. think shorter than it was supposed to be, thanked him very much for being there, and just as he was pulling away in a limousine, i realized with my o agnew get that spirit agn penis."lls "grow a [laughter] check it out. uld alsoal said it col be grow a spine, but yours is better. [laughter] >> all right. [laughter] >> ok.

[laughter] >> how do you like that introduction? >> i think one of the things that scares me personally about this administration that i think is different from any other business idea of an enemies list and who is american and not american, and we are starting to see little whispers about mccarthyism. are these members of the fbi and conspiring -- it reminded me of what i learned in school. many communists in the state department, i would like to get your thoughts on that, and are we getting towards

that line where someone is going to have to go up to capitol hill and say, have you no decency? well, day are not going to go to capitol hill and go to the senate hearings unless there is a political change in the country. politics is a tribal business, and donald trump has succeeded in becoming a very unlikely president by being very good at defining tribes and getting people to believe that he was leading one of them. -- four in persons, the enemies list, cataloging all the nasty nicknames that donald trump called people he doesn't like -- they are not different things. i don't think in that sense there's a difference between richard nixon and donald trump. -- negativeng what

campaigning works. defining your tribe against another is what works and politics and works in other countries politics. think with elizabeth, who earlier this evening pointed out that richard nixon couldn't tell the difference between opponents and enemies. i think it is a good line, and it is a fair question to ask about donald trump as well. question? think one of the key differences i have noticed between trump and nixon is in terms of the water they are mediang in is a different landscape. msu for the wisdom of the panel -- my perception is acting a day of next and the media was more monolithic, meaning you have

walter cronkite and people -- you don't have that that movementven whereas now the media seems to be broken up into clearly -- -- vying forcess access. and thespeak to that difference between the time periods. one big difference, as you say, back then there were three networks and they reached everybody. percentat 6:30 p.m., 90 of tv sets would be on the three networks, and a tenant to be -- because they had mass audience -- pretty middle-of-the-road. there is an argument that they were last, but if they were left there were still close to the center.

fox in those, and now it is more tribal. fox and the right-wing media is much more powerful, obviously, then it was then. divided and more more split than it was. that is more of a media carries trumps water, so to speak. but, the new york times and washington post are still pretty powerful. people listen to them. maybe not the whole country but a lot of people listen to them, and they have a legitimacy still that is important. withhe media will work agencies of government in this way that it always has, a sickly investigators and congressional people leaking to them.

powerful, and trump is a fool of making an enemy of the fbi. have the poweres of investigating, and intelligence community -- same thing, delicate to the york times and washington post and wall street journal. that hasn't changed, that is still a powerful force, even though trump can count on my part and fox and all that minimizing it -- i one count on mainstream media as having real power still. [applause] i agree, but i think it is important to say that the problem is -- this issue of being overwhelmed in the chaos the deluge ofand information that we are living in makes it much harder to

follow that story line that is being reported so very well right now by the washington post, new york times. i figure absolutely right that the convenient power remains of in the powertions of journalism is significant, but our ability to process it as citizens -- you talk to me as an audience -- i think the process it is a daily compromise of information flood that didn't exist, even if arguably, our politics weren't all that different. althoughisan, tribal, since before, so i worry about that a lot when it comes down to the evidence been presented. are we even capable of processing it anymore? do you wish -- with watergate we had various applets, and i said, god, no.

internet, there was no twitter, nothing like that. susan is right, what we have now is overload of all this stuff coming in that i think, we do sort of process it. a conspiracy in the next room because your journalist and people gathered in the republic cooking up a plot, but someone will say, no, you misread it. -- what are the questions, the main questions cang, is our president obstruct justice? again, it is a pattern. you can name five or six things already that he has done.

by taking on the fbi, it is stupid, it doesn't make any sense to me. there is also the possibility coming elected him by out with the hysteria putting out the clinton investigation 10 days before the election. [applause] meanwhile they were also investigating trump but nobody knew it. they should be taking the plaque as one of the zone. ir own. [laughter] >> some members of congress can come up with a crazy theory, and there's critical evidence -- there are people who are serious about it and trying to get this straight story. >> i've heard some good rumors. there are know if good rumors, but they're probably too good to check. [laughter] >> i am quite serious about

this, there aren't people in the congress know something went terribly wrong that russia did interfere with our last election, i know that everybody -- we don't know that. we don't know what happens when you listen to 100 -- podcasts or wherever it was. you don't know. it poses a deadly serious question, and the next question is, why are we doing anything about it? and the next layer of question is, that this presidential group russians?ith the did they play with each other to get this done? there is a lot of smoke that suggest they did but we don't know yet.

there is a lack of the smoking gun, but it is a silly point, but still a point, but it is still more confusing. stuff, johnson's fate conspiracy went down the drain, and after a while it gets airy and nobody is want to listen to it anymore. it is confusing, but i think we can still get to the point. >> we have time for one more, sorry. episode was the one you talked about people who stayed loyal tonight's and and stuck with them despite all this evidence, and i know you talked about how they ultimately fell and why -- i am wondering if ,here were legitimate figures politically or in the country estate loyal even after mixing step down and what their reasoning was and why they

didn't get with the rest of the country? >> episode eight deals of the resignation. >> there were a couple of on the judiciary committee who did not vote for the articles of impeachment. i can't get into anybody's head and say exactly why they didn't, but they thought the punishment was too severe and may have thought he was getting a bum rap and may have liked them. there's always a possibility. is,on't know, but the point i sometimes -- nick's a base had ahe didn't -- nixon base until he didn't. there wasn't a fox then, there wasn't an organized backing, and thatdidn't have to outlets

the far right has. wasn't this kind of noise on the hill, there was nobody up there doing this defending. >> who are the people in new york who posted him in town? it is in the afterwards after his book, after he left office. how did he get from the bottom to being listed as one of the eight most influential people in the country in the world? had various co-ops -- there was insecurity, and i could also be true, but he brought a brownstone in the upper east side, his great triumph was the opening. no one can take that away from , so hed he did it well chinesed his house in

-- i guess manolo sanchez was no anger with them, and he had dinner of chinese food, and he would invite much of new york and they got to the point, a woman, i think barbara walters was invited once, but it was all men. and he had a routine. he thought he was the greatest and he dider ever, this whole thing with chinese food, and nexen thought he was quite the card. [laughter] at a quarter of 11, he would return and continue the whoussion, and figure out was the most famous person in the room and you would look at

the clock over the mental peace and say, it is a quarter of 11, i promise to get to henry kissinger's house of prostitution at 11, and it was very funny. [laughter] maybe you have an answer, who are the people who stuck with them and continued standing by him? wonder,now what i would i wonder how many of the young people versed in all of this realized that he was pardoned? >> what do you mean? of his crime,oned gerald ford pardoned him. -- well remembered for the older folks, i did a show with dying,all stop as he was and he was beautifully spoken

and charming man. i said, how do you feel about mix in as a man? that was one of nixon's favorite words, he is a real man. [laughter] he was here late one night, and i said, bick, is there -- ady in the world friend, that you can relax with? and he said, no. anybody?here isn't and he said no. and he felt sorry for him. goal tonight.y had one friend, bb rebozo,

and what he liked about bb as they could go hours fishing, and yet other sort of f who invented the aerosol spray, and it would go out for hours and what he loved is that he never talked. they just didn't talk. and he was wonderful company as far as nixon goes. i had to cut it in the last second and them so glad -- thanks everyone on the panel, thank you so much. [applause] >> milling around?

you more questions, thank you for organizing this lovely event. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> for the aftermath of the school shooting, president meets with my school in parkland, florida, newtown, connecticut, and he will talk about will be done to call schools safe. we'll have live coverage on c-span at 4:15 p.m. eastern. tonight at 8:00 on c-span, former housing and urban develop it secretary julian castro heads an event organized by young democrats in new hampshire, and talks about the party agenda. that when itear is comes to ensuring that you and your family's camp roster, this administration and this congress do not have a clue, but we get it. democrats do get it.

we have always known what we stand for. number one is expanding opportunity to everybody. that was the idea behind fdr and the g.i. bill. it was what motivated my fellow president-- texan, lyndon b. johnson, with medicare and medicaid. and it was the reason that barack obama had the affordable care act passed into law so that more americans could get health care coverage. [cheers and applause] former mayor is a of san antonio, texas, and is considering running for president in 2020. you can watch the entire program tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. conservative political action conference starts its

three-day meeting tomorrow with vice president pence, white house counsel don mcgann, senator ted cruz, the education the labor and secretary. live coverage begins on c-span at 10:35 a.m. eastern. on friday, president donald trump speaks at cpac, on with kellyanne conway, the sba administrator, and the fcc chair. live coverage just after 10:00 a.m. commissionction member ellen weintraub and an attorney in the supreme court's citizens united case joined a recent forum on russian interference in u.s. elections. this is from the inaugural unrig the system summit held in new orleans. >> hello, everyone. excited that you are here. thank you for joining us today. we are about to start ou