SLATE: What John Dean Has to Say About the NYT's Blockbuster Don McGahn Story

[OxQQme]

2. Final question of interview:

"When you read stories like this that display aspects of the president’s relationship to the investigation swirling around him, what similarities and differences do you see between Trump and Nixon?"

"We wouldn’t know the full degree of Nixon’s similarities to Trump but for the taping system, because Nixon is a very different person behind closed doors than he is in public or on stage. For Trump, there may be some differences, but he is pretty much: What you see is what you get, I’m told. He can be charming if he wants to be charming; he can be nasty if he wants to be nasty. You see the same things publicly with him. Nixon had a clear public persona that was much more pleasant than he could be behind closed doors. [Laughs]

The similarities I see, and this is a little bit counterintuitive, because everybody thinks Nixon was extremely competent. There is no question he was. He understood the presidency very well. He had been a member of the House, the Senate, he had been vice president, he had actually been acting president, he was trained as a lawyer and argued cases before the Supreme Court. Unlike Trump, he knew that justices don’t sign bills; they write opinions. So there is no question there is a different level of sophistication. But, having said that, I see a lot of similarity in the bungling. Watergate was not a carefully planned crime and cover-up. It was one bungled event after another. I see the same thing happening with Trump."