Tucker Carlson wonders why “no one can explain” the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon, a former “popular president.”
The Fox News host told his audience Tuesday that Nixon, who won 49 Electoral College states in the 1972 election, won by the “largest margin ever.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, had a larger Electoral College margin of victory in the 1936 election.
Carlson’s initial falseness in the segment, however, gave way to his skepticism about the Watergate scandal.
“And after a year he was disgraced, and six months later he was gone because of Watergate, which nobody can still explain even to this day,” Carlson said.
“This was clearly pushed by government agencies, including the FBI.”
You can watch a clip of Carlson’s comments about Nixon and Watergate below.
Carlson’s claim that “no one can explain” a scandal “driven by government agencies” may use answers given by Nixon himself.
Transcripts of White House meetings revealed that Nixon “repeatedly” discussed ways to pay off the Watergate burglars in a meeting, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post reported in 1972.
Nixon told White House Counsel John W. Dean III to come up with $210,000 to pay off one of the thieves tasked with taking documents from the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building, according to the transcripts.
The transcripts revealed that Nixon wanted to pay the thieves to “keep the cork on the bottle,” to “buy time” and “get it done,” the newspaper reported.
The “Smoking Gun” tape of a conversation between Nixon and then-White House Chief of Staff HR Haldeman also revealed the former president’s cover-up in the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation.
