For those who support the integrity of the historical record, especially as it relates to Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, it has been an unfortunate week. In fact, it was earlier this week when Ed Martin, Donald Trump’s highly controversial U.S. pardon attorney, published a bizarre item to social media, arguing that the scandal was a “hoax” orchestrated in part by the CIA.

Martin added, “The only thing worse than the lying CIA is the two-faced liar John Dean [who served as Nixon’s White House counsel] and the fiction-writer [Bob] Woodward. May they suffer in eternity.”

The Republican activist’s claims were ridiculous, but hours later they were nevertheless endorsed by Monica Crowley, a former Fox News personality who currently serves as the Trump administration’s chief of protocol. “President Nixon was the target of a Deep State hoax,” Crowley wrote online while referencing Martin’s tweet. “He will be vindicated.”

Days later, JD Vance appeared at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, where the vice president kept the rhetorical campaign going.

After arguing that Nixon’s legacy is “enjoying a bit of a renaissance,” the Ohio Republican said, “As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be, like, a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

As part of the same comments, Vance argued in apparent seriousness, “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 are a few ways to look at comments like these.

First, the idea that Watergate wouldn’t have endured as a major political scandal may very well be true. In 1973 and 1974, there were still a significant number of congressional Republicans willing to turn against a corrupt Republican president in the face of overwhelming evidence; major media outlets aligned with the White House didn’t really exist; and it was an era in which there was greater accountability for political wrongdoing.

But what the vice president described was more an indictment of our twisted political culture and less a credible effort to downplay the seriousness of Watergate.

Second, the idea that Nixon was brought down by nefarious government insiders who plotted against him is plainly bonkers. We have, after all, heard the tapes. Nixon chose to engage in systemic abuses. His crimes were his own, not the fault of “the deep state,” whether Vance chooses to acknowledge reality or not.

Historian and journalist Garrett Graff, who wrote one of the defining books about Watergate, described Vance’s comments as “shockingly a-historical” and an “immature understanding of what Watergate was and wasn’t.”

Third, the idea that Trump was also targeted by nefarious government insiders who plotted against him is equally bonkers. Like Nixon, the incumbent Republican president is responsible for his own wrongdoing. We have, after all, read the criminal indictments filed against him in multiple jurisdictions.

Trump has chosen to engage in systemic abuses. His alleged crimes — some of which have led to convictions — were his own, not the fault of “the deep state,” whether Vance chooses to acknowledge reality or not.

Finally, let’s also not lose sight of what the incumbent vice president indicated to the public about his perspective on leadership and public service.

Timothy Naftali, the former director of the Nixon Library, told The Washington Post that Vance “should know better as a well-educated lawyer.”

Naftali, a Columbia University presidential historian, went on to refer to recordings that contained thousands of hours of Nixon’s Oval Office conversations.

“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” the historian explained. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”

“It’s not as if it’s a matter of partisan interpretation. The evidence is overwhelming,” Naftali concluded during his interview with the Post while offering additional examples of Nixon’s efforts to subvert legal protections. “If he [Vance] does know all of this, he’s telegraphing the kind of president he hopes to be.”

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