Today, Explained - The future of MAGA is... Nixon?

Episode Date: October 28, 2026

MAGA-aligned conservatives, including Vice President JD Vance, are trying to rehabilitate Richard Nixon's image. That's evidence of where they want to take their party. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Noel King. Richard Nixon gives his well-known two-armed victory salute during a campaign stop in El Paso. Photo by Bettmann Archive via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump campaigned in Texas last night. I love the meat. I love it. Look. Maga needs to figure out its future, and Mr. Trump does not seem like it. So where to turn? Some young conservatives, with both young and conservative, being wildly relative terms here, have seized on disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon. J.D. Vance, almost certainly a contender for the presidency in 2008,

and activist Chris Rufo have praised Nixon suggesting his legacy should be reconsidered. But why? Largely because he's a cultural symbol, a symbol of hostility towards a liberal establishment that they believe has run amok that needs to be replaced by a so-called new establishment. Coming up on today, explain from Fox,

Tricky Dick returns to Trick again. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got. Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I am talking with the hilarious Josh Johnson. We dig into all the twists and turns of his career that landed him on the Daily Show as a rotating host.

He tells me why he releases a new comedy set each week and if he's more mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. Hey, everybody, Sue Bird here. Back with another brand new episode of Bird's View this week. Joining me on the pod is Kara Lawson, head coach of Duke University women's basketball and Team USA.

Kara and I break down how the 26 WMBA finals are unfolding. We revisit Team USA's path to World Cup gold and discuss how far the women's game has come. Plus, Kara reveals her favorite player that she ever coached. Check out Birdseye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. I give you the next president of today explained. Back. I'm Michael Conswicks. I'm a historian, a political historian who studies 1960s and 70s, culture and politics of that era. I am also the associate director at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. Because we live in a fallen world, we are here today to talk about something

they're calling Nixon maxing. Let's simplify it. Young conservatives are very interested in former president Richard Milhouse Nixon. Why? Nixon's ultimately known for Watergate. And Watergate for decades was the ultimate scandal in American politics. And younger conservatives are starting to revisit this history. And they've starting to compare the Watergate scandal to numerous attempts to bring down the Trump presidency. So Nixon is a martyr for the cause. Nixon is the guy who was successfully brought down by the liberal establishment. And so if younger conservatives can rescue Nixon from, you know, liberal historians and liberal journalists, they think that they can protect the current president for decades to come. And so in the last decade or so, and more and more media figures, and this has seeped down into conservative activists, have questioned a story that most Americans accept, which is that Watergate was a moment where the system worked.

It's a moment where Congress, the media, and the American public helped bring down a corrupt president. Well, conservative actors want you to believe that that's not true. And the main reason is that if they can make you believe that that's a lie, then they can make you question any future scandal that could affect any one of their guys. I was trying, as a little experiment with myself this morning, Mike, to describe what Watergate was. And to be honest, I am a learned person, but I was not doing a very good job of it. There's a lot of holes in my memory. What was the Watergate scandal? What did Richard Nixon actually do?

Watergate can best be understood as a story that begins at least in the summer of 1971. After the release of the Pentagon Papers, which was a secret history of the Vietnam War, compiled by figures in the Johnson administration, Richard Nixon is enraged. You need to prosecute the time? Right. Hell, I wouldn't prosecute the Times. My view is to prosecute the goddamn pricks that gave it to it. Yeah, if you can find out who that is. Yeah, I know. I mean, could the Times be prosecuted?

Apparently so. This is a treasonable action on the part of the bastard you put it out. Doesn't it involve secure information, a lot of other things? What kind of people would do such things? So in the summer of 1971, the reason that this matters and why it's linked to Watergate is that in the wake of the Pentagon papers coming out, Nixon authorizes the creation of the Plumbers unit. So the group of shady guys with CIA and FBI on their resume, people who have experienced doing black bag jobs. And the first operation that they pull off is breaking into Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers, they break into his psychiatrist's office.

It's referred to by Nixon historians as Watergate West. But when they pull this off, they are not caught. And it's dismissed as just a weird moment. No one knows that at the time, these are guys being paid by the White House to break into buildings and spy on political opponents. There's a lot of other activities that happen between the summer of 71 and June of 72. But they are the Watergate burglars. the plumbers are caught at the Watergate Hotel. What is at the Watergate Hotel? It is the then offices of the Democratic National Committee. The Democratic National Committee is trying to solve a spy

mystery. The burglars broke through a fire escape door that led to the committee's offices. Some campaign memoranda was found on one of the suspects, but party officials say no security files were touched. They're caught in June of 72, and even then it's dismissed as a so-called third-rate burglary, because this just seems like some over-eager campaign staff members who have nothing to do with the Nixon White House. Huh. But on the tapes, we know that Richard Nixon, even if he didn't have any link to the Watergate break-in,

he knows that he created this team. I think you need a team. That's just a big job. But you need a commander of the team. He knows that his advisors are aware of different parts of their activities over the previous year. He knows so much. He knows so much, Roy. That is not uncovered until 1973, which is when most of the American people and most people in Congress start to take this scandal seriously. When the president stepped before reporters late today, the Watergate scandal became a whole new ballgame.

The Senate tonight voted 77 to nothing to establish a select committee to investigate alleged political espionage in last year's election campaign. That includes the Watergate bugging case. Watergate ends Nixon's presidency when it becomes. comes clear to the American people that he has something to hide. Huh. The famous phrase attached to Watergate is that it was not the crime, it's the cover-up. That's true to an extent in terms of what was on the tapes that made it very clear that Nixon was obstructing justice. Well, he was covering up pretty serious crimes.

He was also covering up a lot of improper uses of presidential powers. And so in the summer and fall of 1973, that is when Richard Nixon's approve rating starts to decline. 25% approval rating. Only a few other presidents in the history of modern polling since 1940s have reached that level. And Nixon is that unpopular throughout much of 1974. And when people ask, why did Richard Nixon step down? That's the number one reason. When his approval rating is that low, members of Congress feel the pressure to take on an unprecedented action, which is impeachment.

the House was going to impeach Richard Nixon and the Senate was going to convict Richard Nixon. And so in subsequent years and decades, there's this understanding that Watergate was a bad thing. Watergate was a serious constitutional crisis and that it was good that Richard Nixon stepped down, that our democracy was strengthened as a result of Watergate. And today's conservatives are increasingly questioning that narrative. wonder why they're questioning it. Because it is one thing to have done some bad things and the majority of the American people 50 years ago to have agreed, look, what you did was bad, you got to go. But Richard Nixon wouldn't be in the position he is in currently if he hadn't done some things

that a certain type of conservative today thinks is noble or laudable or important. What was he doing at the time that makes a guy like Chris Rufo or the vice president say, Hey, you know what? We need to reconsider Nixon. Well, figures like Christopher Rufo are drawn to Richard Nixon because the historical record shows that behind the scenes, he was a fierce culture warrior. And so, yes, other presidents in the post-World War II era were certainly guilty of improper uses of presidential power. Nixon's key difference was he wanted to bring that into the White House and micromanage the hell out of it. And Christopher Rufo loves that about Richard Nixon. He believes that presidents should use their powers to go after groups that he thinks are hurting the country.

It's time to break the loop of 1968. It's time for counter-revolution. And there's one man reviled in his time who can serve as our guide. The 37th president of the United States, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon had conceived of his most important task, leading a counter-revolution against the state bureaucracy. We now know that Nixon was a far more aggressive culture warrior behind the scenes. He was someone who wanted to create a new establishment, one that would weaken liberals in the media. We've got to build a new standard.

It's going to come out of the eye, he leaves. The press is the end of it. The price is the end of it. Richard Nixon said on the Nixon tapes in a meeting with his closest advisors. Both Christopher Rufo and our current vice president, J.D. Vance, love the quote. J.D. Vance, when he was running as a Senate candidate in late 2021, gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference. And he used that quote. There was a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40, 50 years ago.

He said, and I quote, the professors are the enemy. This was just five years ago, and it would have been unthinkable for any conservative politician to favorably quote Richard Nixon, especially if they had aspirations to be president of the United States someday. But our current vice president, J.D. Vance, someone who will likely run for president in 2028, has publicly embraced Richard Nixon's legacy. President Trump is apparently in decline and his hold on the Republican Party over the next couple years, five years, ten years, well, we can, right? With so many of these stories, you wonder whether it's like a handful of coconuts being nutty or whether this kind of effort means something for the future of the Republican Party. Do you think that this is notable, important, signifies anything?

It remains to be seen how influential Nixon maxing is as a political phenomenon. Richard Nixon is still seen as one of the worst, most corrupt presidents in American history. I used to lead school tours at the Richard Nixon Library 10, 15 years ago. And, you know, I would regularly talk to high school students, sometimes even middle school students. And they came in with a little bit of knowledge about Richard Nixon. and that knowledge was usually centered around the fact that Nixon got in trouble and Nixon was bad. And I am slightly encouraged by that fact because it shows you that Watergate is still viewed as an exceptional period of time. However, as I told people during Trump's first administration, Watergate should be seen as a product of a very different political culture.

It wasn't just that the system worked. It did, but it worked because our democratic culture was far stronger than it is today. Our civic institutions were far stronger than they are today. And you had a broader culture of dissent and a broader culture of questioning our president that contributed to Nixon's downfall. Unfortunately, our political culture today is far more divided and far less willing to rally around a single narrative that would lead to another Watergate happening. And what I mean, another resignation happening in the same way

that what we saw in the summer of 1974. Michael Consulix, historian NYU, author of They Said No to Nixon, a book about Republicans who stood up to Nixon. Coming up, why the future of Maga is not standing up to Nixon. Are you tired of hearing about business, tech, and finance from the bros? We are the Tiger Sisters, a top business podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tiger Sisters releases every Monday and we decode money, power, and love. And who doesn't love all those things?

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Jonah Goldberg is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Dispatch. In the first half of the show, Jonah, we heard that some young conservatives are embracing Richard Nixon. They are rethinking his legacy. You are a conservative yourself. You've written critically about this movement, which is horrifically called Nixon maxing. What do you think these people are getting wrong? You call them conservatives like them? I'd call them right-wingers because one of the things they like about,

Nixon is he wasn't actually very conservative. We have a tendency in American politics to think that if the left hates you, that must mean you're extremely right wing. And if the right hates you, that must mean you're extremely left wing. Bill Clinton wasn't extremely left wing. Richard Nixon wasn't extremely right wing. In fact, Richard Nixon created or extended a lot of the great society. One of his top aides wrote a book about how he was the last liberal Republican. I think Noam Chomsky called him the last liberal president. You know, wages and price controls, expanding affirmative action. He wanted universal health care, right?

So there are all these things that he wanted, industrial policy, all these things that he wanted to do with the state that are sort of the opposite of the Reagan approach to things. And so there are a bunch of these guys on the right who are now into industrial policy, now into protectionism, into picking winners and losers in the economy. have Donald Trump has already taken equity stakes in, what, 34 businesses now? You know, this is not your father's free market, you know, libertarian-leaning, limited government, Republican Party that these people are pursuing. And so Nixon, in a lot of ways, is a better avatar, a better role model than Reagan is, because these guys have been spending the last 10 years talking about zombie Reaganism and all this stuff. And Nixon being kind of curmudgeoning and a great hater, right?

He loved to hate his enemies. Yeah. Nixon as martyr aspect of it has a lot of utility for these guys, too. Something that you wrote that I found very interesting is that the revival is about, not just lionizing Nixon. That's interesting enough. But more interesting, it's about potentially keeping MAGA or Trumpism alive after Trump is gone. Now, for those of us who have lived through the last decade,

is hard to imagine life without Donald Trump, but at some point this will be a reality. What do you mean exactly? How is how is Nixon useful at cementing Maga or helping Maga keep going when Trump is no longer with us? Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, it is amazing to me. There are all of these, you know, MAGA orbit organizations, coalitions, movements, outfits, whatever you want to call them, National Conservative Conference people, Turning Point USA, right, which basically is a creature of the last 10 years, even though I think it was launched in 2012.

They've all insisted that J.D. Vance must be the nominee. Have you said thank you once? They're going around all over the place saying this at the National Conservative Conference in Jerusalem. The new right guys that they brought to lecture the Israelis about, you know, America said, you just have to accept that it's going to be Vance. J.D. Vance is the successor to Donald Trump.

J.D. Vance. So here's the thing. If you're someone who likes the institutional revolution of the last 10 years under Trump, if you like all the doge kind of things, if you like the imperial presidency stuff, if you like the ability to speak freely with your bigotry about immigrants, about Jews, about blacks, If you think the worst things about the Trump presidency are the best things about the Trump presidency, then you start looking at the potential Republican field for 2028.

And of people who have a chance of actually getting the nomination and allegedly winning the presidency, Vance is your guy. I mean, it's amazing. All of these MAGA people, they don't want Rubio, they don't want Christie Nome, they don't want Head Seth. Right. They just want Vance. Now, I think that's what we're talking about is a small group of elites here. I think there are a lot of, quote unquote, mag of voters who might prefer Hegsef or Rubio or somebody else to Vance. But the stakeholders, the people invested, you know, the Heritage Foundation in its orbit, those people are invested in Vance as the only viable vehicle to further their various projects.

And so by turning Nixonism, both foreign and domestic, into a thing, it's a way to come up with a superstructure. It's what the sociologist Max Weber called the bureaucratization of charisma, right? So Trump, in the Viberian sense, has charisma. And I don't mean that he's charming. I mean that he has this weird, organic connection. He can get away with things that other people can't get away with. Only Trump can do Trump, right? And as we're seeing, Vance is trying to be a Trump imitator, and it comes off incredibly lame.

I love you, too, sir. In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday, and won today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys. And so because it comes across lame, right? he's got to pick an argument that says we're going to institutionalize Trumpism. We're not going to go back to quote unquote zombie Reaganism.

We need to take these features of the Trump presidency and embed them in law, in practice, in personnel. And Nixonism is the model. It's not a perfect model by any stretch, but it's the one that they, have landed on as a way of talking about what they want to do. And I think that that's what they're trying to trot out here is we took a wrong turdun with Reagan. We got to get back to the old realist foreign policy of Nixon. His unilateralism and his willingness to sort of dole out favors from the federal government to reward friends and punish enemies. That's what they like. And that's sort of Vance's approach. I'm very taken by the idea that there are powerful

stakeholders here who like J.D. Vance, who want J.D. Vance to be the next guy. Now, you've called the Nixon rehabber's right wing rather than conservative point taken. There are still people in this country who don't want to vote Democrat, don't like the J.D. Vance model. People perhaps such as yourself, who's to say, what does this mean, though, Jonah, for the future of conservat? Like, is there a future of conservatism that is not MAGA or J.D. Vance. That's not Nixon. But that allows for the type of conservatism that you're talking about. Reagan, Coolidge, you're not getting a handout from the government. It's going to be an argument, right? I mean, already, like, there are a lot of people in the Republican Party and in the extended sort of network of think tanks and, you know, organizations that very much want to. move back towards Reaganism.

In fact, if you listen to the 2024 presidential debates and the Republican side, with the exception of Vivek Ramoswamy, because he's what social scientists call a ravenous jackass, everybody else, whether it's DeSantis on down, you know, to Nikki Haley, they all basically spoke the language of Reaganism. Now, they might have emphasized different themes of Reaganism,

but that's where their muscle memory is. That's how they know how to talk about things. And I think what a lot of people have come, and I think it doesn't necessarily speak well of them, but a lot of the sort of elites and stakeholders who want that Reaganism stuff, including a lot of politicians, they've learned the lesson that you cannot attack Trump because he has that charismatic relationship with his fan base and it'll just ruin your career. It'll create all sorts of headaches and problems for you. And so a lot of people just keep their head down. And I think there are a lot of those people who are perfectly fine to ride out the Trump era,

but they're not afraid to pick a fight with J.D. Vance. And I think all these people saying the nominee has to be Vance, it's inevitable and all that. It's a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength. Like if it were truly inevitable, you wouldn't need to say it all the time. And the reason why it's not inevitable, at least in part, and this is a sign of, is something I've been writing about for 30 friggin years. It's not just about J.D. Vance. We do not like in this country, typically, to elect vice presidents straight to the presidency. The Vance people are convinced this is 1988 again. Does it feel like 1988? Do you feel like a lot of people are out there screaming four more years? Right? Like Reagan had this incredibly strong economy.

We had, you know, basically won the Cold War. People liked him personally. And, like, people wanted a third Reagan term in 1988. It does not feel to me like we are poised for people to want a third Trump term. This whole idea that MAGA is one unified thing. The only thing that self-identified MAGA people are unified on is Trump himself. They're not unified on the war. They're not unified on economics.

They're not unified on trade. They're not unified on immigration. And so once you have this guy leave, the different aspects of MAGA become different factions within the party. And that's why these guys are so desperate to have Vance unify all the factions because they understand that it's going to be very difficult to unify those factions at all. And I think it's going to be impossible. You are reminding us, if nothing else, that there is a future. And the future is kind of interesting. Well, it can also be worse.

Cheer up for the worst is yet to come. It was actually one of my earbook quotes. Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch. Dustin DeSoto produced today's show and Amina El Sadi edited. Gabriel Donutov checked the facts, and David Tadishore and Bridger Dunnigan are our engineers. I'm Noel King. It's today explained.

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