Amid a historic wave of firings and other attacks on federal employees, Trump recently declared that the president of the Richard Nixon Foundation, Jim Byron, would oversee the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) on “a day-to-day basis.” Trump touted the experience of the 31-year-old Byron, who “has worked with the National Archives for many years.” He neglected to mention that this experience began with the Nixon Foundation, where he started as an intern.
Since 2007, the Nixon Foundation has had a contentious relationship with the National Archives. That year, the Nixon Library was absorbed into the federal presidential library system. Instead of controlling every facet of the library as a private facility, the Foundation now operates alongside a new federal office that oversees nonpartisan exhibits and events. The most public dispute between the two sides focused on NARA’s exhibit on Watergate, curated by the library’s first federal director, Timothy Naftali.
Under Byron’s leadership, the National Archives has already fired 27 employees across the federal presidential library system, including the Deputy Director of the Nixon Library who was reportedly at odds with the leadership of the Nixon Foundation because of a disagreement over its plan to expand its campus. The announcement followed Trump’s decision to fire Colleen Shogan as Head of the National Archives, a move that came after the Archives alerted the Justice Department about his mishandling of classified materials.
But the story at NARA is also alarming, given the decades-long campaign led by some conservatives to rewrite our cultural understanding of the Watergate Scandal. Byron’s appointment reflects how Trump and an increasing number of Republicans have embraced new lessons about Nixon. In their view, Nixon cared too much about presidential norms, should have never resigned, and that he was the victim of a liberal-left conspiracy to destroy his presidency. Rather than seeing him as someone who abused presidential power, to these conservatives, Nixon has become a useful symbol in their war on the administrative state, revealing the fragility of norms after Watergate that shaped how presidents responded to scandals.
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For decades, the fear of a second Watergate has cast a pall over U.S. politics. Presidents Ford and Carter kept their distance from Nixon, as did almost anyone with presidential ambitions. Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.), a longtime defender of Nixon, opposed Ford’s controversial pardon of the disgraced president in the middle of a close reelection bid in 1974. “The pardon of Nixon was premature…The damaging part is the feeling that people have that this is the same old ball game,” said Dole, who barely won his race that year. George H.W. Bush, who served as chair of the Republican National Convention, during the final days of Watergate, made it known that he told Nixon to resign on August 7, 1974.
Ronald Reagan adopted a different stance. Unlike most mainstream politicians, he never criticized Nixon during his presidency. Nearing the end of his two terms as governor of California, the longtime defender of Nixon told reporters on the day of resignation, “I think it is important to recognize that Mr. Nixon has suffered as much as any man should.” While he rarely commented on Nixon or Watergate during his presidency, the Watergate consensus was powerful enough in the 1980s to ensure that Reagan avoided appearing publicly with Nixon.
Nixon supporters found opportunities within Republican administrations, however, and they leveraged their roles to rewrite the history of Watergate. Nixon’s former speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan argued as early as 1975 that Nixon’s resignation “looms as less a victory for morality in government than a triumph by one set of politicians over another.” He added, “When Mr. Nixon said his Administration was being judged by a double standard, he was indulging in uncharacteristic understatement.” Buchanan wore his Nixon loyalty as a badge of honor throughout his career as a conservative firebrand. During his tenure as White House Communications Director under Reagan, he acquired a mahogany desk bookcase that belonged to Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Halderman, for his office. When a guest asked why he had a Watergate symbol in his office, he replied, “The statute of limitations has run out.”
Buchanan wasn’t alone. One of the organizers of the Watergate burglary, G. Gordon Liddy, regularly backed Watergate conspiracy theories in public. When he became a conservative talk radio host, Liddy defended Nixon at a time when few did the same. Hugh Hewitt, who also became a talk radio host, briefly served as the first director of the Nixon Library in the president’s birthplace of Yorba Linda, Calif., in 1990. He made national news for a screening process that would deny anti-Nixon researchers access to his records, and even named Bob Woodward as someone who would not be welcome in their reading room. Hewitt returned to Yorba Linda in 2019 as President of the Richard Nixon Foundation. He stepped down in 2021 but still serves on the Foundation’s board and has mentored his successor, Jim Byron.
Nixon’s most vocal supporters who were part of a persistent strain of American conservatism believed Watergate was proof that the liberal establishment would do anything to destroy their leaders. Despite that, they did not come close to overturning the public’s perception of Nixon. As historian David Greenberg concluded in Nixon’s Shadow in 2003, “dark Nixon—whether seen as crook or conspirator, liar or Machiavellian, or some combination of the above—remained his most enduring identity.”
President Trump’s numerous scandals, including his two impeachments, inspired a wave of Nixon-Trump comparisons and different forms of Watergate nostalgia. Liberals who wanted to find a precedent for Trump’s abuses of power looked to Watergate as a moment that could be replicated in the late 2010s. Initially, even Trump showed signs of fearing a legacy similar to Nixon’s. In 2019, when Trump was asked why he did not fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he replied, “Firings didn’t work out too well for Nixon.” While Trump hasn’t suffered the same fate as Nixon, his defeat in 2020 suggests that the public rejected Trump’s willingness to use the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge.
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And yet, despite Trump’s unwillingness to accept the results of that election, his role in the January 6th insurrection, and numerous criminal indictments and convictions, he won the popular vote in 2024. Buoyed by a Supreme Court that has given presidents complete immunity from criminal prosecution, a new generation of prominent conservatives praise the 37th president as a model for attacking enemies, reshaping the federal bureaucracy and the nation’s history.
For decades, conservative media figures barely acknowledged Watergate—Liddy and Hewitt were outliers. Now, their narratives about Nixon’s legacy legacy have become more common. Conservative media activist Christopher Rufo posted a video on his website stating, “Nixon’s call for a new American revolution is more urgent than ever.” Arguing that the nation was under attack from radical left social movements that resembled the Vietnam era, Rufo insisted that Nixon, in his efforts to clamp down on his political enemies, “left behind a blueprint for counter-revolution—the last hope for restoring the American republic.” Others, like Tucker Carlson, have suggested that Watergate was a deep-state coup designed to take down a popular president. He even convinced Joe Rogan to change his mind about Watergate following a recent appearance on his show. The airwaves, whether it’s on television or online, have empowered Watergate revisionism. Conservative platforms and other likeminded outlets may reshape the lessons of Nixon’s resignation.
The effort to rescue Nixon’s legacy has now merged with a broader rejection of the liberal establishment, democratic institutions, and the historical record itself. Now that the former president of the Nixon Foundation is serving as the leader of the National Archives, this war on the history of Watergate has meaningful institutional power. That’s why it is so important to understand that reinterpreting Watergate as an attack on the president rather than as the consequences of his abuse of power is about politics, not historical accuracy. With Trump back in the White House, and a new generation of pro-Nixon figures in the government and in media , the battle over Watergate’s memory is now firmly a part of the conservative campaign to sanitize U.S. history.
Michael Koncewicz is the author of They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power. He is the Associate Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University and previously worked for the National Archives at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
