Throw out the history books—even established modern American history is open to MAGA revisionism.
Even though he has since won the 2024 presidential election and appears to have a bigger problem (see any revolving question: government shutdown, rise in political violence, faltering economyor escalation domesticated And international tension), Donald Trump took to social media again on Sunday to rant about his impeachment. But this time he decided to rebrand the story a little more than usual, suggesting that Watergate was another alleged “hoax.”
“The Ukraine (mine!) impeachment scam was a far bigger illegal hoax than Watergate,” Trump wrote on his Facebook page. Truth Social. “I sincerely hope that the appropriate authorities, including CONGRESS, will look into this! Adam “Schiffty” Schiff was sooooo dishonest and corrupt.
“So many laws and protocols were broken, simply broken!!!” he wrote.
It will take more than one social media post to rewrite the national memory of Watergate. Nearly 50 years later, the involvement of President Richard Nixon's aides in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters remains one of the biggest scandals to rock the office of the president—so much so that simply adding the word “gate” to the end of the event could spell yet another political disaster.
Watergate and Nixon's forced resignation in the face of possible impeachment led to the end of his political career. But over the past few months, Trump has taken several concrete steps to rewrite his own impeachment narrative.
Trump is the only US president to be impeached twice, in 2019 and 2021. In August, the Smithsonian Institution remote Trump came under direct pressure from the White House from his impeachment exhibit after the art director's speech repression. As a result, the exhibit focused on Presidents Nixon, Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton, effectively returning the exhibit to how it appeared in 2008. The American Presidency wing's updated sign explained that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal” in American history. The change was the result of a content review initiated by the White House.
The Smithsonian has since put Trump back on the impeachment list, but with some changes about how the proceedings against him are being described, particularly regarding his actions during the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
