trailed events, before the televised water gate hearings began in may 1973, fewer than one-third of americans thought the break-in was a scandal, after the hearings, 53%, and 71% thought nixon culpable. even then, it wasn t until the month nixon resigned that a majority of the public supported his removal from office. jim, if that s the case, people say why are democrats skittish about impeachment hearings. sometimes you need to lead rather than follow what the polls say. what s your interpretation of that? i read the mueller report, the starr report and tapes. unlike some members of congress. i m one of seven people. the mueller report is a much more serious transgression, and it s a much more polarized
it could be a 400 pound person in his basement in the community. if you re taking your cues from the president in trump country, you think it s made up and fake news and done to detract from the president s agenda. i think that s a huge problem we re not paying attention to. what you hear also is, and it makes loot of sense. you hear that during water gate, most americans weren t focussed on water gate even through the summer of 1974. in our house, i was pretty young, but we were really angry because the water gate hearings, we didn t have 800 channels. you had abc, cbs, nbc, and pbs. i was missing cartoons, but every day water gate would be on. and you would hear people grumbling saying when are those hearings going to be off tv. it wasn t until june or july
president will resign. he thinks this will protect him and he will claim he knew nothing about a cover up until i told him on march 21. he is sorting this up when he decides he has to let everybody go. then he fires me. on may 17 the senate held its first public hearing. one by one the president s men were summoned to the chamber. under cross examination each was asked chad the president of the united states broken the law. i don t think there has been a moment in american history as riveting at the water gate hearings. i did not grow up with the memory of having seen it. it was this thing in the way that my mom talked about my childhood.
something, going forward that the investigators are going to look at. shimon thanks for your reporting. trump is not the first president to be saddled by fbi investigations. let s talk it over with john dean who testified in the water gate hearings and spent four months in prison for his role in the water gate cover up. also adviser to nixon for ray gone and clinton, david guerrero began. john i want to speak to you. the former fbi of james comey memo alleging that president trump asked him to drop the investigation to michael flynn. number if president trump asked him to drop the investigation is that a form of obstruction of justice and is it an impeachable offense? it may or may not be. obstruction of justice plays at
and what we ve already seen from trump is that even if spectacular exposes emerge, even ifhere are damaging revelations, the most likely result of that is going to be shouting down the press, defying the facts. make your own reality. and a culture war strategy against the people who are bringing this news. we are so far from the water gate hearings where bipartisan group of congress people got to the bottom of that scandal. it s most likely that successful acts of journalism, rather than raising public awareness and leading to reform will actually lead to more culture war and rage and attacks on the press and demonizing of journalists. jay rosen, thank you very