This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency. Oh for those halcyon days when America’s hair was longer, its pants were bigger, and its president was still capable of feeling a modicum of shame over all the goddamn crimes he had committed.
What this also means is that we expect to see an uptick in wingnut media stories trying to convince the world that Nixon was not run out of office because he was a degenerate criminal so crooked that a carpenter’s level would spontaneously combust if it touched him, but because he was an early victim of — duh-duh-duh — the Deep State.
Yep, that’s the line Newsmax anchor and guy who looks like Paul Sorvino mated with a shar-pei Greg Kelly was running with on Thursday. Nixon, Deep State, Donald Trump — those are all words found somewhere in Kelly’s bullshit cyclone:
“Sure, the Deep State, they can stop some men, some presidents. They stopped Richard Nixon 50 years ago this summer, 1974, August, that’s when Richard Nixon resigned. And, contrary to a lot of people, well, what they think they know about that, it wasn’t really Nixon. He didn’t do anything wrong. It was a Deep State plot to get him. Absolutely.”
Yes yes, it was the Deep State that made Nixon conspire with John Haldeman to use the CIA to tell the FBI to back off the Watergate investigation and discuss million-dollar payoffs to the burglars with White House Counsel John Dean and then deny all of this publicly even though there were tapes of these conversations that the Supreme Court had to eventually order the president to release.
We were under the impression from Donald Trump that the CIA and the FBI were part of the Deep State that worked against him? Yes? No? It’s all very confusing.
We wonder what Kelly would say if anyone pointed out to him that conservative hero William F. Buckley pressured his brother, Sen. James Buckley, to push for Nixon to resign. And that James Buckley did that in a very public split from a president he had strongly supported. Wouldn’t that be a great example of the swamp conspiring against Nixon?
Actually we don’t wonder what Kelly would say, because his brain is basically a rotted banana. That there aren’t flies buzzing around his head at all times should be considered a minor miracle.
But the point of Kelly’s segment isn’t to retcon Richard Nixon as a victim of dark forces in Washington. The purpose of the whole thing is to give his god-king Donald Trump a verbal handy:
“Richard Nixon on his way out the door, a totally broken man leaving office before they could impeach him. Meanwhile, Donald Trump the night of his impeachment, he didn’t run from office. In fact, getting impeached, he kind of liked it.”
This rant is overlaid with pictures of Trump posing with a bunch of firemen he had brought pizza to at a New York City firehouse on Thursday night after his criminal trial adjourned for the day. You know, because Donald Trump isn’t a pansy like Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than fight the Deep State and then needed his successor to pardon him.
Donald Trump will pardon himself, thank you very much, like the manly hunk of machismo he is.
Other cool factoids we learned from this ahistorical nonsense:
· J. Edgar Hoover was “a very flawed individual in some respects, but basically a patriot.” What respects would those be, one wonders, the use of the FBI to hound anyone he deemed un-American or the whole “being a secretly gay cross-dresser” thing?
· Bob Woodward? CIA stooge who was used as an instrument of revenge because the Deep State was mad that Nixon went to China.
· The CIA hounded Donald Trump for four years because their feelings were hurt because Trump told it like it is.
· Islamophobia is a myth, like white supremacy or the female orgasm. (Kelly didn’t mention the female orgasm, we just think it’s a safe bet he’s never witnessed one.)
Also Joe Biden spoke for three minutes on Thursday about the campus protests currently raging at colleges across the country, and he didn’t mention the Jews one single time. Which, being Jewish, we’re actually grateful for. Greg Kelly isn’t, but we didn’t ask for his help.
[Media Matters / YouTube]
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