Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) seized on Vice President JD Vance’s recent comments downplaying Watergate this week, warning that the remarks reveal something fundamental about how the vice president views presidential power.
Murphy was responding to reporting from journalist Aaron Rupar, who flagged Vance’s comments at an event tied to the Richard Nixon Foundation. According to that account, Vance said Nixon’s “historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so,” and joked that if Watergate “happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story.” Vance reportedly added that “the idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.”
For Murphy, the remarks were not a throwaway line but a window into the administration’s governing philosophy.
“I actually think this statement is a big deal,” the senator wrote. “Because it tells you all you need to know.”
He then spelled out what he believed Vance had revealed.
“They believe, in their bones, in an imperial presidency where the executive rules absolutely and uses his power to destroy enemies and enrich himself,” Murphy wrote.
The exchange adds to a growing back-and-forth over Vance’s Nixon comments, which have drawn criticism from Democrats who see in them an attempt to rehabilitate a president forced from office over abuses of power. Hillary Clinton earlier took her own shot at Vance over the same remarks.
Watergate, which unfolded after a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972, led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974 amid mounting evidence of a cover-up and bipartisan pressure to step down.
Murphy, a frequent critic of the administration who has positioned himself as a vocal warning voice about democratic backsliding, framed Vance’s apparent dismissiveness toward that history as a tell — a signal of how the current White House understands the limits, or lack thereof, on executive power.
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