Both presidents faced major FBI investigations,

were accused of obstructing justice.

called their investigations "witch hunts,"

and oozed raw sexual charisma.

It's not a perfect analogy,

but the similarities have led some to argue that,

like Nixon, Trump's time is running out.

What's going on here is very Nixonian.

Having prosecuted the Watergate case,

we're well on our way to impeachment.

I was in the Nixon administration, as you know.

I think we're in impeachment territory now.

But the truth is

these two are living in totally different worlds.

And that has less to do with

what's happening at the FBI

and more to do with what's happening

on Fox News.

The media and the Democrats have lied to you.

Trying to create a Watergate out of this.

Desperate to get back to the days of Watergate.

The elite media is part of the “deep state.”

You, the American people, should never trust

this “destroy Trump” corrupt media.

I know we're all trapped

in a flaming media hellscape right now.

But during Watergate, things were way different.

At the time,

there were three national nightly broadcast news shows,

30 minutes each.

Big cities typically had one or two major papers.

There were a couple of radio stations.

And that was about it.

No 24-hour cable news, no push notifications,

no Twitter, no blogs, no internet.

God, that sounds peaceful.

And that meant that, Democrat or Republican,

Americans were basically getting the same news.

This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

People are basically reading and hearing

and watching the same things.

And they by and large believe the news that they hear.

This is Nicole Hemmer,

political historian and author of

Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media

and the Transformation of American Politics.

We'll get to that "transformation" in a second.

Hemmer says there is conservative media in 1970;

it just looks really different.

There is conservative talk radio.

There are conservative publications

like National Review and Human Events,

but they're so much smaller than they are today.

Like, when I talk about Human Events and National Review,

that's just about it when it comes to

weekly conservative publications.

And while that might seem like a supply problem,

it's actually a demand problem.

In the 1970s, Americans had incredible trust

in the news they were getting.

69 percent—

Nice.

Are you serious?

69 percent of Americans expressed

a great or fair amount of trust in the media.

And that trust meant there wasn't really an appetite

for right-wing news.

Most Americans have faith in the objectivity

of mainstream media.

They trust it.

If Walter Cronkite says something,

it's not seen as liberal propaganda.

It's seen as, here's this guy who knows something,

who's telling us something objective and true

about the world.

And that's the way it is.

That's the way it is.

That's the way it is.

That became a big deal during Watergate.

As the investigation turned into a national story,

Nixon lashed out, calling it a witch hunt

and attacking the media for covering it.

I have never heard or seen such outrageous reporting

in 27 years of public life.

And conservative outlets came to Nixon's defense.

One conservative radio personality said the press

had turned a prosecution into a persecution.

An article in National Review even suggested

that Watergate was a trap set up by the CIA.

They definitely didn't use the language of the “deep state,”

but that was kind of lurking there.

But despite their efforts,

conservative media just couldn't change people's minds

about what was going on.

They don't have the power to drive

or to shape the conversation about Watergate.

There's not really an alternative story

Republicans can credibly spin,

because they're not just going up against Democrats;

they're going up against all the networks,

all the newspapers.

And so having that uniting narrative,

that really matters.

To be under a constant barrage

on each of the three major networks

tends to raise some questions in the people's mind.

That's really too much for Republicans to resist.

My phone calls were 100 to 1 in favor of pursuing

the path of impeachment, which was rather shocking to me.

By 1974, Republicans in Congress begin

moving to impeach Nixon.

And by August, Nixon resigns.

Events have been rushing toward one seemingly

inevitable conclusion: removal from office.

There was kind of a cohesive message about

what Watergate was, what it meant.

It would have been nearly impossible for

the Nixon administration to muddy the waters.

That's not the case today.

Right.

Today.

The flaming hellscape.

Or as Hemmer might call it: the transformation.

In the past 50 years,

trust in traditional media has plummeted,

with all Americans but especially with Republicans.

And the demand for conservative media has exploded.

What started off as a few rinky-dink conservative magazines

has become an entire ecosystem

of right-wing TV, talk radio, and websites.

You can now exist within a comprehensive,

closed conservative media ecosystem.

Whether it's having Fox News on all the day or talk radio on all day,

you don't need to really ever step out of that bubble,

which is something you couldn't have done before.

Republicans aren't getting their news from Cronkite anymore.

They're getting it from Fox.

And that's a huge deal when it comes

to the Mueller investigation.

Republicans during Watergate were

turning on their TV and seeing this:

The country tonight is in the midst of what may be

the most serious constitutional crisis in its history.

Now they're seeing this:

Biggest non-story ever being hyped by the liberal media.

Greatest political hoax.

Farce and a witch hunt.

It's a sham.

It is a house of cards.

The American people will put up with a great deal,

but they will not put up with anyone

who claims to be above the law.

The president says it's fake news.

Do you even care?

How can anyone trust the Mueller office?

Bunch of Trump-hating, Hillary-loving partisan hacks.

A grave and profound crisis

in which the president has set himself against

his own attorney general and the Department of Justice.

It's one giant, huge web of corruption.

The FBI has become America's secret police.

The FBI needs a complete cleansing.

Mueller is, frankly, a disgrace to the American justice system.

These people need to be taken out in cuffs.

That uniting narrative we had during Watergate —

it's gone.

And without it, Republicans in Congress

have a strong incentive to turn their backs

on the Mueller investigation.

They know that the Republican base is tuned in

to conservative media and hearing these messages

that the Mueller investigation is a sham,

that this is a project of the “deep state” to bring down the president.

Mueller is out to get the president, it appears, at any cost.

And so if a Republican politician breaks with that,

then all of a sudden, it looks like he's siding with the enemy.

And siding with the enemy could be a political death sentence.

A 2017 study found that watching Fox News

had a significant effect on elections,

shifting 6 percent of voters

toward the Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

In that environment, politicians have to choose sides.

And if you're a Republican,

do you choose to side with the media that

all your base listens to,

or do you choose to side with the ones they all oppose?

House Republicans have already released a report

attempting to undermine the Mueller investigation.

There's no reason to continue this.

We've turned up nothing.

And some have begun echoing Fox News's talking points.

Mueller is desperate.

He doesn't have a case he can make.

This Mueller investigation is built on a false premise

and rotten to the core, Tucker.

Is the integrity of the agency in question then, now?

Of course it is.

We know there's bias; we know there's a conflict.

I agree with you, Sean.

They're trying to manufacture a process crime.

This is increasingly becoming scary stuff.

Do you agree?

Yes, I do agree with that.

Of course, we don't know if Trump will fire Mueller

or if Mueller will actually dig up any dirt on Trump.

But if either of those things do happen,

it'll be up to Republicans in Congress to do something about it.

And right now, Hemmer isn't confident they will.

It's very hard to imagine a future in which all of a sudden

they're going to say, "Oh, wait, we now need to listen

to this independent counsel who

most of the conservative media have been

undermining and delegitimizing for months now."

And before you call me dramatic,

listen to how actual Fox News hosts

are talking about this stuff.

Nixon never would have been forced to resign

if you existed back in 1972, '73, '74.

I was literally 11 years old.

It's too bad for Nixon because nobody like you existed then.

Our prime responsibility now

is to unshackle the 45th president of the United States.

These investigations might be really similar,

but on TV, they could not look more different.

And for Republicans in Congress,

that might be all that matters.

That's the way it is.