A quick flashback to 2005 on this blog — and can you believe I've been doing this for longer than that? It had just been revealed that the infamous "Deep Throat" of Watergate was former F.B.I. biggie Mark Felt and I wrote this here…
I dunno about the other cable channels but MSNBC turned into the Bash Deep Throat Channel yesterday afternoon. They had three or four shows in a row on the unmasking of Mark Felt as the fabled secret source and Pat Buchanan was on every one of them to call Felt a "snake" or worse. At times, he was joined or spelled by other former Nixon aides, including David Gergen, G. Gordon Liddy, Monica Crowley and Chuck Colson, all suggesting that Felt had impure motives, that he disgraced his position, etc. One can understand a certain anger at the figurehead of Nixon's bringdown, but it seemed like a strained exercise. Any "whistleblower" is, almost by definition, going to cause his peers to feel betrayed. If nothing else, they have cause to be embarrassed that he did something to uncover wrongdoing while they supported it with their complicity.
For years after he got out of the slammer, Liddy was making the rounds of the talk shows, flogging his book and comparing John Dean to Judas Iscariot…an analogy which, as many interviewers pointed out, worked if you thought Richard Nixon was somehow comparable to Jesus Christ. Liddy kept saying that one of the lowest things one can do in the world is to "rat" on your friends, which struck me as a silly schoolyard comparison. You don't tell the teacher that Jimmy used too many paper towels in the little boys' room but if others are involved in serious crimes and you know about it, that's a different matter. One time, Liddy was advancing his view on Larry King's program and, in a rare instance of Mr. King challenging a guest, he asked how Liddy felt about some of John Gotti's men turning on him and testifying to help get him convicted. Were they "rats?" I remember the moment because it was one of those rare times on an interview show when you could see someone get knocked out. Liddy didn't have an answer.
As Jonathan Chait notes, Donald Trump seems to have the same definition of "loyalty" as Mafia bosses did: You don't tell the Feds that your boss is committing major crimes and having people whacked if they get in his way. One of the reasons Trump is in such trouble is that, first and foremost, he picked his staff largely on the basis of his concept of loyalty as opposed to, say, competence. And the second problem is that he didn't pick very well.
The other day after the double-header of Cohen and Manafort having the word "guilty" appended to their names, I talked with a friend who still backs Trump. Most of the folks I know in that category think Trump's a lying crook but they also think that of anyone else who's in a position to hold that job and they like the policies of the current lying crook more than most of the alternatives.
But this one friend is fantasizing about a day soon when the investigations all come up empty, Robert Mueller folds his hand because all he's got is a pair of deuces, and Trump is viewed as a respectable leader by most. I don't think that day is coming. I think it's going to be like this or worse…certainly for the rest of his stay in office and probably long after.
He thinks Trump is like teflon: The scandals don't stick. A lot of people think that (here's someone else saying it) but that's also what they said about "Teflon John" Gotti. The accusations of wrongdoing didn't stick to him until, one day, they did.