Live from Washington D.C., it's Saturday Night Massacre!
...but it wasn't that funny when it happened. That fateful October night, the public and politicians were left horrified and distrustful of their commander-in-chief. As we know, over the span of just a few hours on October 20, 1973, President Nixon had lost three key members related to his own trial: his Attorney General, the special prosecutor working against him, and his Deputy Attorney General. Things were not looking up for him even as he had optimistically hoped they might.
What exactly had happened, if the video we watched in class went a bit too fast? It was quite simple. Prior to that night, Cox had issued a subpoena requesting that Nixon provided his taped conversations from the Oval Office, to which Nixon refused. However, Nixon would offer the Stennis Compromise, in which he asked one governor with difficulty hearing to summarize those tapes to be instead handed over to Cox. Cox obviously refused, given that Nixon and/or Stennis might remove parts, intentionally or not.
So, Nixon decided he had to get rid of Cox in a way that would make himself look better. So after offering that compromise and being rejected, he decided the American public would probably side with poor Nixon and that it was now time to rid of Cox. He first asked his Attorney General to fire Cox, who refused and resigned. One down. Then he asked his Deputy Attorney General to do the same, but he followed the Attorney General's lead. Two down. But finally, he was able to get the Solicitor General (the acting head of the Justice Dep't) to finish Cox off. Three.
And that was the end of the brutal, life-changing, fateful Saturday Night Massacre. However, that was not the end of Nixon screwing himself over: literally the next day he claimed he had fired the Deputy Attorney General, however, he confessed that the DAG had actually resigned in a letter to the Solicitor General and was caught lying immediately. And blah blah blah, he kept doing that kind of thing, until finally he resigned himself... unless you hold that Nixonian opinion that the public fired him.
Have a great night! Thanks for coming! We'll see you next week, with special guest, Gerald Ford, Jr.!
I liked that you wrote this post in order to clarify a really complicated event and the way you structured it was really unique. Good job. I hope Gerald Ford Jr's a good host next week.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing this up. I did think the video went a bit fast also and this post was really helpful. To me, it's a bit funny that Nixon thought that erasing parts of the tape and withholding the tapes as well wouldn't raise an eyebrow here and there. With the state of the media today, I wonder how a modern watergate scandal with the presidential administration would look like.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good post. I liked how you explained everything in order and very clearly because it was hard to understand from the video that we watched in class. I also think it is kind of funny that the name of this event is "The Saturday Night Massacre."
ReplyDeleteThank you for clearing this up because I was slightly unsure about what was happening in the documentary and this helped. I also think that this shows uncanny parallels to the tump administration and the firing of James Comey. Just like in that investigation the question of obstruction of justice has become a serious question. I also think that we can draw other parallels to Nixon's tapes as well as Trump's tax returns.
ReplyDeleteGreat job explaining the story. It brings a lot of things lightly touched on into light and also explained some things I didn't know.
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