为何J·D·万斯淡化理查德·尼克松的腐败行为

Why JD Vance is downplaying Richard Nixon’s corruption

2026-06-26T16:51:04.732Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/26/politics/jd-vance-richard-nixon-corruption

It’s not every day that you see the would-be frontrunner for a major party’s presidential nomination extolling the virtues of Richard Nixon and downplaying his corruption.

But there was Vice President JD Vance on Thursday doing precisely that.

During an appearance at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, Vance likened Nixon’s ouster to efforts to hold President Donald Trump accountable in his first term, blaming the “deep state.” Vance also claimed Watergate wouldn’t be much of a story today.

There are some grains of truth in what he said, as well as some potential strategic benefit.

But there is also some danger. The vice president’s comments point to how perceptions of corruption are a sleeping giant for the Trump administration — and, by extension, for Vance in 2028.

“I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance — but I think deservedly so,” Vance said of Nixon. “As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

Vance added: “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.”

Vance even compared his profile to Nixon’s — having been vice president and “hated by the media” — adding with a smile in perhaps a light-hearted way: “I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”

For starters, Vance’s contention that Nixon’s legacy is enjoying a “bit of a renaissance” is unproven. If anything, that comment might point to a longstanding criticism of Vance, which is that he’s a bit too online.

There has been an effort by some prominent conservatives to rehabilitate Nixon’s image in recent years. Witness this Politico story from 2023, as well as these Time magazine and NBC News stories from last year.

Then-GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy used his own appearance at the Nixon Library in August 2023 to call Nixon “the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country, probably in all of American history.”

But there is scant evidence that these efforts have truly penetrated with the broader public. The most recent quality poll — from Gallup in December 2024 — showed 54% of Americans rated Nixon “below average” or “poor,” to just 12% who rated him “above average” or “outstanding.” Those were the worst numbers among 10 presidents tested.

Even among Republicans, about twice as many rated Nixon negatively (39%) as positively (19%).

Is it possible that has changed in the last year and a half? Perhaps modestly. But it’s likely Vance was praising a man who is still quite unpopular.

Of course, the real point of Vance’s comments probably wasn’t to make Nixon seem good; it was to make Trump seem not so bad.

As some of those Nixon stories linked above noted, much of this effort to rehab Nixon’s image appears to be about downplaying Trump’s problems.

Watergate is the archetype of the modern political scandal, and if people suddenly regard it as no big deal or even a “deep state” operation, maybe they’ll view Trump’s corruption allegations accordingly.

And to be clear, suggestions of corruption could ultimately matter a lot more than it might seem right now.

Trump has flooded the zone with controversy and made it so that any corruption-related stories don’t last very long. He’s also commandeered the Justice Department, and his party controls Congress. So there’s not really an investigative entity at the ready to hold him accountable.

But there is a real chance that after the November midterm elections, Democrats will control one or both legislative chambers next Congress. That would give them subpoena power and the ability to launch investigations.

And at this point, there are so many potentially fruitful probes that the dilemma is really about which one — or ones — to focus on.

Tangle’s Isaac Saul last month assembled a great compendium of the biggest potential corruption issues in the Trump administration.

Some of the big ones:

• The extensive self-enrichment, which the New Yorker has pegged at $4 billion.
• The regular intermingling of official and personal business.
• The many pardons of allies.
• The rather transparent effort to train the Justice Department on Trump’s political foes based on flimsy evidence.
• The administration’s often bizarre handling of the Epstein files in which, as The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recently reported, the chief goal seemed to be protecting Trump. (He has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the late sex offender.)

Just think about potential House Oversight Committee hearings, for example, on the still-unexplained decision to move Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower-security prison right after she said things that could help Trump.

The perception of corruption is not generally regarded as a main reason why Trump’s political fortunes have declined so much. (Those would be inflation, the economy and the Iran war.) But it shouldn’t be dismissed as a factor.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll last month showed Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of corruption issues 61%-27%. And history shows many a would-be strongman leader has been felled by supporters turning on them over corruption. Corruption was a big reason Trump ally Viktor Orbán was ousted in Hungary this spring after 16 years in office.

There’s a reason why Vance, ahead of a potential 2028 bid, would fear perceptions of the administration’s self-dealing resonating with the public.

For many apparent conflicts of interest, there isn’t a great explanation. Trump has fed these perceptions rather unapologetically, out in the open.

When The New York Times asked Trump in January why he reversed his first-term policy of his family avoiding overseas business, Trump replied: “Because I found out that nobody cared.” (Meanwhile, the White House has repeatedly argued that Trump is “restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch” by being “the most transparent” president.)

But one way for a potential Trump successor to try to manage those optics is to muddy the waters. If Watergate’s not actually a scandal, after all, what is?

Vance surely exaggerates. Watergate, after all, involved bona fide crimes including ones committed by high-profile Nixon administration officials, as well as secret tapes. But there is some truth to the claim that it’d probably be somewhat less shocking today.

That’s because Trump has absolutely blitzed the country with actions that would be scandalous in any other era.

And while Trump has proven adept at getting past these issues and keeping his base intact, it’s not so clear Vance will be so adept.