Comparing Watergate to Covid scandals
By all measures, Watergate remains the most stunning crime in government history.
(Author’s note: Sometimes I write satire and make up interviews.)
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Fifty years later Watergate remains the Mother of all Government Scandals.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein - and their employer, The Washington Post - are largely credited with breaking the jaw-dropping scandal. Both reporters would still be considered the most famous and celebrated journalists of our times.
Some people compare the proven scandal of Watergate to the unproven Covid scandals, which a few skeptics persist in saying might be even more egregious than Watergate.
“By my count, there are at least 100 direct and sub-scandals associated with Covid,” said one citizen journalist, who prefers to remain anonymous because of concerns he might be audited, cancelled or murdered.
Watergate 101 …
I’m no expert on this historic event, but I think I know the Cliffs Notes’ version of Watergate.
Apparently, a team of “dirty tricksters” in the Nixon White House performed some unclean hi-jinks to embarrass political rivals. A few contract members of this crew broke into the Watergate apartment complex, which apparently features a few office suites as well.
The goal was to find some dirt on a Democrat, but the burglary went sideways and eventually Woodward and Bernstein found out about this and started doing some digging. This digging eventually led to a massive cover-up of the truth (a conspiracy!) which led all the way to the White House and the president of the United States.
(Perhaps Watergate’s greatest lesson is that the so-called “cover-up instinct” always gets criminals in the end … or this was the case 50 years ago. It’s possible today’s cover-ups are simply much much more sophisticated. Another possibility is they’re not even needed … as MSM investigative journalists no longer exist?)
Several top government and White House officials were implicated in Watergate, with a handful, including Attorney General John Mitchell, being prosecuted and even serving time in prison. President Nixon, of course, resigned in disgrace, and Gerald Ford, a former outstanding lineman for the Michigan Wolverines, became president.
This, in a nutshell, is Watergate (although I’m sure the official story is probably missing important elements).
The key points to me would include these facts:
It’s strange, but no “confirmed” deaths have been traced back to Watergate.
For the most part, the country kept humming along even as shocking new stories were developed on a weekly basis.
No businesses shut down and no regular citizen lost his job. As I can confirm, children kept going to school during Watergate.
Woodward and Bernstein wrote a best-selling book that was turned into a movie that won several Academy Awards.
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Skip forward almost 50 years and a novel respiratory virus began to infect people in a large city in China, which caused, arguably, even more trials and tribulations and a bigger cover-up than Watergate.
However, none of these scandals have been proven (or even investigated) yet. Still, a few people have argued that possible “Covid scandals” might include the following elements …
* The government - via its health, intelligence and defense agencies - working closely with America’s close friend and ally, China - created a super-contagious and uber-deadly virus that somehow escaped (or was, perhaps, intentionally released) and ended up killing more than five million people (give or take a million).
* An alternative theory, promoted by the world’s top official scientists, theorizes that some Chinese bats bit an animal that’s a cousin to a dog and this canine-like animal was later purchased and slaughtered at a Wuhan Wet Market and somebody ate this poor dog and became Covid’s “case zero.”
(I’m not sure why this market is called a “Wet Market.” Perhaps this dog got wet and perhaps some Chinese enjoy wet dog as a delicacy?)
* Per skeptics, the creation of this virus was covered up … just like “all the president’s men” tried to cover-up the botched Watergate burglary.
* With Covid, it’s hypothetically possible that EVERY agency of government - working with many of the world’s biggest and richest corporations and all the world’s other governments, Non-Governmental Organizations, foundations and public health agencies - devised a strategy to deal with what was now being dubbed “the Greatest Pandemic since the Spanish Flu.”
* This strategy involved telling half of citizens (but only half) they could no longer go to work with 100 percent told they’d have to forgo going to church, a movie, a sporting event or restaurant until further notice (which, in some states, was less than a year).
* Citizens also couldn’t visit their elderly relatives in nursing homes (although they could wave at them through windows). Loved ones could call hospitalized relatives (if they weren’t on a vent.)
* Except for in Sweden, students could no longer go to school, which means at least one parent was given the opportunity to home school and bond with their children for many months and years.
* The so-called “lockdowns” are a misnomer as people could still go to grocery stores, CVS or Wall-Mart as long as they wore a mask and if they didn’t get closer than six feet to fellow shoppers.
* Many people were told they had to get something called a PCR test - a swab inserted four inches up their naval cavity - one to four times a week.
Woodward compares the two scandals …
Not long ago, Bob Woodward, who is still alive, was interviewed by NPR and confirmed that similar events did not happen in 1972-1974 during the darkest days of Watergate.
Also, the federal government spent an estimated $16 trillion battling the novel coronavirus compared to about $400,000 the government spent exposing Watergate.
“Covid was more expensive,” admitted Woodward.
Inflation did become much worse in the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and the early years of Ronald Reagan, but few economists tie the increase in the CPI to the Watergate cover-up.
Interestingly, Woodward would later write a best-seller on Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who never had to print $1 trillion over night to fund an emergency pandemic response.
“It’s good that we have that option though,” opined Woodward.
Research is still being conducted, but, so far, there seems to be little evidence Watergate led to a spike of suicides, depression, drug and alcohol abuse nor to an increase in obesity and Type I diabetes.
“We’ve looked into that, but the data is not convincing one way or another,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was a young NIAID executive during Watergate.
Some discredited conspiracy theorists believe that the response to Covid led to a massive spike in iatrogenic deaths from flawed, unnecessary and deadly “public health guidance,” which might qualify as a minor scandal or cover-up … if believable.
“We haven’t looked into that, but I don’t think we really need to,” said Woodward. Woodward did agree there was “probably” not an “iatrogenic death count” associated with Watergate.
More differences …
During Watergate, the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” had yet to be coined and there was no Bill Gates-funded fact checkers, Stanford Virality Project or “Trusted News Initiative.”
In fact, there was no Internet, which means extremists or science deniers had no where to spread harmful disinformation.
“Back then, we just had a couple of newspapers in all the big cities - and three TV networks … plus PBS and NPR,” Woodward pointed out. “These were all trusted news sources and, really, the only option for citizens to comment was through writing letters to the editor.”
According to Woodward, a few employees of the Nixon White House tried to intimidate newspaper publishers into not covering Watergate’s emerging scandals, but these publishers told these aides to “Go stuff it.”
“Of course, back then we didn’t realize how dangerous the First Amendment could be. Thank goodness, we now realize this.”
Finally, Watergate did not require the development of a new type of vaccine.
This, however, does not mean that vaccines weren’t popular in the mid-1970s. In 1976, an alleged outbreak of Swine Flu (which supposedly caused one death when the virus escaped from a military bio-lab) led to 40 million Americans getting vaccinated, although the program was quickly cancelled when three vaccinated people later died of heart attacks (the official investigation said the vaccines didn’t cause these deaths).
“You want to be safe and protect people, but that was simply too big a risk,” said Woodward, who added he’s gotten eight Covid shots and only had Covid two times.
The important point is that all the failed non-governmental interventions at least gave the world a couple of new vaccines, which 70 percent of citizens received.
As Bill Gates added in another NPR interview: “We also got Paxlovid and Remdesivir and we’re much further along on a really cool digital passport ap. With our next pandemic, it shouldn’t take nine months to develop a new vaccine.”
Of course, Covid can’t qualify as a legitimate scandal as, four years later, it’s not resulted in a single prosecution or prison sentence.
Anthony Fauci, pegged by some conspiracy theorists as a villain, remains one of America’s most admired public servants.
“Tony’s got a book coming out soon,” said Woodward, adding, “I know I’m going to buy it … You really can’t compare a heroic public servant like Dr. Fauci to a troubled and dark character like Richard Nixon.”
All things considered, Watergate still remains the country’s most shocking political scandal.
“The abuse of the pubic trust - and the dozen people involved in the cover-up - still shock me to this day,” said Woodward. “Carl and I are honored to have played a part in exposing these crimes and proving that no government official can get away with such heinous crimes.”
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(Also, Watergate probably generated more paid subscriptions for the Washington Post than my Substack newsletter has generated for me … but, then again, I’m no Bob Woodward.)
Ko-Fi tips didn’t exist in 1974 either.
Watergate had absolutely no effect on my life, and probably little effect on the lives of others, except politicians. Covid affected everyone except the politicians. Go figure.
JFK assassination and the Covid con are the most damning events against we the people! Tricky Dick was tricked into the Watergate scandal to march him out of office. He wanted the JFK crime reopened! FBI/CIA orchestrated how it would be done! My view! Trump wanted vaccine companies investigated and what price is he paying?