Vice President J.D. Vance sparked a fierce historical debate after remarks he made Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, drawing a swift and sharp counterattack from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough.
Speaking at the library, Vance argued that the Watergate scandal would not have the same political impact in the current political climate, suggesting the media and government institutions would handle it differently today.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance told the audience. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy, and by the way, if you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration. There is a parallel.”
On Friday morning, Scarborough dedicated a segment of his show to addressing the Vice President’s remarks, calling Vance’s interpretation of history inaccurate.
“I know he didn’t go to a Southern State school like me, but what he’s saying is, hey, historic, what he’s saying is stupid,” Scarborough said.
While Scarborough acknowledged that Nixon was “one of the more significant political figures of his time”—pointing to historical achievements like opening relations with China, creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and establishing detente with Russia—he argued that Vance’s comments were “defining deviancy down” by trying to normalize the actions that led to Nixon’s resignation.
“Let’s be really clear here that the Vice President of the United States just said that the deep state went after Nixon,” Scarborough continued. “No, Richard Nixon used the deep state to go after political enemies, just like, well, your administration, Mr. Vice President, the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, it sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?”
Scarborough then detailed the specific historical abuses of power documented during the Watergate investigations, noting that the Nixon administration’s operatives did not just target the Democratic National Committee.
“They not only broke into the DNC, they broke into doctors’ offices, into psychiatrists’ offices, trying to get people’s most private, intimate records,” Scarborough said. “They had an enemies list, they tapped lines. This is what J.D. Vance says is normal.”
Scarborough stated he would have preferred if the Vice President had focused on other elements of Nixon’s career, such as his work as Vice President in the 1950s when he was “a champion of civil rights.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski did offer partial agreement with Vance’s assessment of modern media, noting that a similar scandal might indeed pass quickly today, compared to today, with the fire hose of stuff coming out of this administration.”
However, Brzezinski and Scarborough both criticized Vance’s broader political trajectory, referencing his journey from an Ivy League graduate and author of Hillbilly Elegy to a staunch defender of Donald Trump. Scarborough concluded the segment by highlighting Vance’s political shift, moving “from calling Donald Trump Hitler… to lying for him every day.”
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