Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said there are big differences between Watergate and President Trump’s impeachment.
Brokaw, who covered the Watergate scandal as a White House correspondent in 1973, said Tuesday that Democrats don’t have “the goods” on Trump “with the same kind of clarity” the party did when Richard Nixon was president.
“The big difference is … they still don’t have what you call ‘the goods’ on this president in terms of breaking the law and being an impeachable target for them,” Brokaw said during an appearance on MSNBC.
“They’re going to start the process but they don’t have the same kind of clarity that the people who were opposed to Richard Nixon had because it was so clear that these were criminal acts that he was involved in,” he said.
“The smoking gun tape, the Oval Office tapes, that kind of hard evidence of criminality to bring down a president who was successful in the Middle East, who was successful with the breakthrough to China, Vietnam is another whole other issue,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said.
Brokaw also noted that Nixon didn’t have the means of defending himself through Twitter as Trump does, and Oval Office conversations aren’t being taped “that we know of.”
House Democrats introduced a resolution Tuesday to provide a “pathway forward” for Trump’s impeachment. Democrats began their inquiry after a whistleblower filed a complaint about the president’s July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump suggested Ukraine investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump has denied there was any quid pro quo.
