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0:00
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the
0:02
Big Flop early and ad-free.
0:05
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery
0:07
app or on Apple Podcasts. When
0:20
the phone rings at 2 a.m.,
0:22
most people groan and
0:24
roll over. But
0:27
not Helen Thomas, the White
0:29
House reporter with an all-access
0:31
pass to the juiciest gossip
0:33
in town. The
0:35
year is 1972 and she
0:38
knows this late night call
0:40
can only mean one
0:42
thing. Her favorite source
0:44
has had one too many and
0:46
is ready to spill the tea.
0:49
On the other end of the
0:52
line is Martha Mitchell, the Mouth
0:54
of the South, aka the wife
0:56
of President Nixon's attorney general. She's
0:59
known for two things, eavesdropping
1:02
on her husband's hush-hush conversations
1:04
and having no problem blabbing
1:07
about them all over town.
1:12
But this time, Martha's got
1:14
a real doozy. In
1:16
the dead of night, five men
1:19
were caught red-handed breaking into
1:21
the Democratic National Committee offices
1:24
at the Watergate Hotel. They
1:26
had enough surveillance gear to
1:28
make the NSA jealous, tear
1:30
gas guns straight out of a
1:33
spy movie and even wads of cash.
1:36
Who brings money to a robbery?
1:39
But here's the kicker. Martha
1:41
recognizes one of the burglars.
1:44
He works with her husband. Just
1:46
as she's about to dish the dirt to
1:49
Helen, the line goes dead. This
1:53
phone call will lead to Richard
1:55
Nixon resigning from the presidency years
1:58
later. He would personally... We're going
2:00
to finally blame Martha and her big
2:02
mouth for toppling his presidency. But
2:05
we're about to learn that he's the
2:07
one who should have kept his tricky
2:09
trap shut. The
2:17
biggest White House scandal in a
2:19
century. The Watergate scandal broke wide
2:21
open today. And so there
2:24
is tonight a real persistent and substantial
2:26
question of whether the president can in
2:28
fact carry out his responsibilities. Well, I
2:30
voted for Nixon and unfortunately I think
2:33
the whole thing has come up
2:35
and his political credibility is just
2:38
completely gone. What did the
2:40
president know and when did he know it? I
2:43
welcome this kind of examination because people have
2:45
got to know whether or not their president
2:47
is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. From
2:57
Wundery and At Will Media,
2:59
this is The Big Flop
3:01
where we chronicle the greatest
3:03
flubs, fails and blunders of
3:05
all time. I'm your
3:07
host Misha Brown, social media
3:09
superstar, also known as the throat
3:12
goat at Don't Cross a Gay Man.
3:14
And today we're talking about the
3:17
scandal gate that started the whole
3:19
gate thing. We
3:33
get support from Dove. Hey y'all, it's
3:35
your girl Kiki Palmer, host of the
3:37
Wundery podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer.
3:39
Let me cut to the chase. Did
3:41
you know that in many states across
3:43
the US, it's still not illegal to
3:45
discriminate against people based on the way
3:47
their hair grows out of their head?
3:49
To deny black folks from jobs and
3:51
opportunities because they have braids, locks, twists
3:53
or bantu knots? That's messed up. And
3:55
today's sponsor, Dove, agrees. That's why Dove
3:58
co-founded the Crown Coalition in 20 years.
4:00
to advocate for the passage of
4:02
the CROWN Act. CROWN stands for
4:04
Creating a Respectful and Open World
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for Natural Hair, and the CROWN
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Act is legislation which prohibits race-based
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hair discrimination in workplaces and schools
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in the US. Dove is driving
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awareness by advocating for petition signatures
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and supporting the CROWN movement to
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create a society where black hair
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is not only accepted, but respected
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and celebrated in all of its
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beauty. Join Dove in taking action
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to help end race-based hair discrimination
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by signing the CROWN Act
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petition at dove.com/crown. That's dove.com/crown.
4:34
This episode is brought to
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5:02
We got you, baby. On
5:05
our show today, we have a comedian,
5:07
actor, and writer. He's
5:12
a co-creator, writer, and
5:14
star of Bust Down on
5:16
Peacock, and you can
5:19
stream his comedy album, Light Skinned
5:21
Feelings. Now it's Langston Kerman. Welcome
5:23
to the show. Yay, thank you.
5:26
And congratulations on the throat goat
5:28
title. I had no idea. What
5:31
an honor. What an honor, yeah.
5:33
Self-appointed. Congratulations, I'm proud of you.
5:35
Thank you. Well, I'm so
5:37
excited. Also on the show today is an
5:39
absolutely fantastic returning guest. You
5:42
last heard him on our episode
5:44
covering Howard Dean. Ah! You
5:47
know him from his podcast, The Dollop,
5:49
and we're here to help. Welcome
5:51
back to Gareth Reynolds. Thank
5:53
you, Misha. Hi, Langston. I actually
5:55
had been calling myself the throat
5:57
goat, so this is awkward. It's
6:00
hard news for you. You're
6:02
finding out that
6:04
the title has moved and you didn't realize.
6:07
Brutal. It's brutal. We'll figure it out off
6:09
air. It's
6:11
history month at Wondery, so we're going
6:13
to look at some flops of yesteryear.
6:16
And today we're about to get into our
6:18
time machine and head back to 1972. Think
6:22
polyester. Grease is on Broadway.
6:25
Abba, Ziggy, Stardust, the video
6:27
game Pong, and of course
6:29
the godfather. So are we there?
6:31
Are we feeling it? Yeah, of course.
6:33
Yes. Well, before we
6:36
dive into Watergate, let's just see how
6:38
well you know your scandals and let's
6:40
play a game. ["The
6:44
Star-Spangled Banner"] So
6:46
here are the rules. I'm going to
6:48
name a gate scandal and you tell
6:50
me what it was. Okay. Okay.
6:54
The first one, Deflate Gate.
6:57
Oh, that's easy. The
6:59
Patriots were accused of taking the
7:01
air out of footballs for Tom
7:03
Brady's convenience so that he could
7:05
throw them better and more efficiently.
7:08
Yes. It was the New England
7:10
Patriots allegedly deflating footballs, making them
7:12
easier to grip and catch during
7:14
the 2015 AFC Championship
7:17
game against the Indianapolis
7:19
Colts. Yeah. All right,
7:21
second one, Envelope Gate. Ooh,
7:25
Envelope Gate. That sounds like Gareth's problem
7:27
to me. Come on, Wanks. I really
7:29
nailed the first one, so
7:32
I think that's really... You really did. I
7:36
would maybe guess that it's when they
7:38
started mailing the anthrax? I don't know.
7:40
Oh, good guess. I
7:42
can tell by your reaction that I'm right. No,
7:47
during the presentation of the best
7:49
picture category at the 2017 Academy
7:51
Awards, La La Land was announced
7:54
as the winner. However, the announcement
7:56
was a mistake and the actual
7:58
winner was Moonlight. Of course, of
8:00
course. All right, one more. Donut
8:03
Gate. Donut Gate. Oh, this is
8:06
good. Come on, Langston, take it and run. Donut
8:10
Gate, we all remember, is
8:14
when Ben Affleck found
8:16
himself sprawled out after
8:18
his fifth Dunkin' Donuts
8:20
run of the day. And
8:22
everybody was horrified about whether or not
8:24
we needed to intervene and help this
8:26
poor man with his addiction. I
8:29
got it right. No need to fact check it. Good.
8:32
You are an actor. Yeah. Unfortunately,
8:35
as great as that improv
8:38
was, this is when singer
8:40
Ariana Grande was observed on
8:43
video licking un-purchased donuts and
8:45
stating, I hate Americans, I
8:47
hate America, that's disgusting. Whoa.
8:50
What? You've never heard of that? No. What?
8:53
That legitimately is the worst
8:56
of these gates. I
8:58
think it's worst of Watergate. Lick
9:00
un-purchased donuts. And
9:03
put them back. Didn't you like keep them? Just lick
9:05
them and put it right back on the shelf. Oh
9:07
my Lord. All right.
9:14
So to talk Watergate, we need
9:16
to talk about the man behind
9:18
it, Richard Nixon. And now you
9:20
may be thinking, Nixon, this is
9:22
a comedy podcast. That guy's not
9:24
funny. Well, before you
9:26
make that call, let's listen to an appearance
9:28
on 1968's version of SNL called
9:32
Laugh In. In this
9:34
clip, his only job is
9:36
to deliver the show's signature line, Sock
9:39
It To Me. Let's watch. MBC,
9:44
beautiful downtown Burbank. Oh,
9:48
hello, Governor Rockefeller. Oh
9:51
no. I don't think we could get
9:53
Mr. Nixon to stand still for a Sock It To Me.
9:57
Sock It To Me? Wow.
10:02
That's pretty good. Oh, my
10:04
God. Yeah. A
10:08
lot of added punctuation. Sock
10:10
to me? Sock
10:12
to me? Now, the question
10:14
I guess I have is, do you think that he
10:16
had never seen the show and thus had no idea
10:19
how to say it? Or was
10:21
he putting a fun Nixon
10:23
spin on that catchphrase?
10:26
Well, funny you asked that question
10:28
because, fun fact, according to producers,
10:30
it took six takes for Nixon
10:33
to say the line without sounding angry.
10:37
So that's like the heavily directed one.
10:41
And they were like, we got
10:43
it, I guess? I don't know. That's
10:46
his version of Gleeful and Charming. Look,
10:48
we got to go to lunch. Yeah,
10:50
I think we got it. We got it.
10:54
Well, that socket to me must have worked
10:56
on some level with voters because Nixon comes
10:58
out of the 1968 presidential
11:00
election with a decisive victory.
11:03
And that, in theory, should leave
11:05
him feeling confident that he has
11:07
the country's support. But
11:10
Nixon is a strange man
11:12
at a strange time. By
11:15
the time Nixon is elected, there are 500,000 American
11:18
troops in Vietnam and the
11:21
country is restless. So
11:23
he's paranoid and believes all sorts of people
11:25
are out to get him. He
11:27
makes an actual enemies list. Nice. Just
11:30
in case there really are some people
11:32
after him. Do you have an enemies
11:34
list? Oh, yeah. Yeah, not
11:36
that I've written down, but certainly there's
11:39
like a flow chart in my
11:41
head that's constantly working and unworking.
11:44
Come on, share a name what they do. I
11:47
mean, I'll start alphabetical if you'd like, but...
11:50
I would say most of my career is fueled
11:52
by full on spite. Oh, yeah. Fuelled
11:55
by rejection that I'm
11:57
trying to turn into fuel to shove
11:59
down people. people's throats. So there's a
12:02
long list. That's a separate podcast. Well,
12:04
Nixon's list is pretty extensive.
12:06
It includes obvious political enemies
12:08
like Democrat Ted Kennedy, but
12:10
also some puzzling ones like
12:13
quarterback Joe Namath, actor Paul
12:15
Newman, and even Barbra Streisand.
12:17
Not Babs. Well, Babs. I
12:19
mean, she's on everybody's list.
12:21
She's a huge threat, obviously.
12:23
Burned a lot of bridges that Barbra Streisand.
12:25
Imagine writing that list down for him. Like,
12:27
when you get it, you're like, I think
12:30
we should probably take a break. We should
12:32
also Barbra Streisand. She's
12:34
wronged me. Who else? Checkers,
12:36
the dog. What
12:40
really makes Nixon go off the deep
12:42
end in paranoia is the Pentagon Papers
12:44
fiasco. I mean, now that could be
12:47
a whole other episode of the Big
12:49
Flop, but the long and short of
12:51
it is a series of documents exposing
12:53
government lies about Vietnam that are released
12:55
to the New York Times by a
12:57
whistleblower. And Nixon goes
12:59
ballistic. He never wants an embarrassment
13:02
like this to happen again, so
13:04
he decides to create a secret
13:06
team to do his dirty work.
13:09
They're known as the Plumbers.
13:12
Okay. And he guess why they're called
13:14
the Plumbers? Arm deep and
13:16
shit. I think
13:18
that's better. They're called the
13:20
Plumbers because they fix leaks. Okay. Every
13:23
diplomatic way of handling the wrong answer,
13:25
by the way, Misha, let's not sleep
13:27
on that. We
13:30
both feel good and wrong, which is
13:32
nice. It's very flat.
13:34
It sort of feels like unimaginative in a
13:36
way that like, come on, man, you're president.
13:38
You could do whatever you want. Dream
13:41
bigger. Dream bigger. It
13:44
also shows you that they never thought they would get
13:46
caught. Oh,
13:49
just wait. The audacity of the Plumbers
13:51
and the delusion that they live in.
13:54
So the Plumbers operate out of a basement
13:56
in a building next to the White House,
13:59
I'm sure. in a house that said, no
14:01
plumbers here. These
14:03
members include really bad dudes like
14:05
Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.
14:08
Hunt, for example, was a former
14:10
CIA officer involved in the disastrous
14:12
Bay of Pigs invasion. And
14:14
Gordon Liddy liked to brag to White
14:17
House secretaries how he could kill someone
14:19
with a pencil. Maybe
14:22
I'm wrong, but I feel like killing someone
14:24
with a pencil, very
14:26
difficult. Oh, I disagree. Not
14:28
to- You think possible? No, go
14:30
ahead. I actually think most of us
14:33
could kill someone with a pencil and
14:35
that's more why it's unimpressive. Okay.
14:38
You mean that sharpened object?
14:41
Spike. I bet I could
14:43
find some soft parts in you that
14:45
could make this problem go away. Either
14:48
way, it's a cool brag. It's
14:50
a normal man brag. Yeah. While
14:53
the plumbers are brought together by
14:55
a guy named Charles Colson, he
14:58
claims he'd, quote, walk over his own
15:00
grandmother to get Nixon reelected. Boy, these
15:03
guys have some quotes, huh? They're really,
15:05
it's like a locker room. It is
15:07
the locker room talk. For
15:09
sure. Colson's also known
15:11
as the White House hatchet man
15:14
and Nixon's personal dirty tricks artist.
15:17
Now the plumbers first task is
15:19
to break into the psychiatrist office
15:21
of the guy who leaked the
15:23
Pentagon papers so they can discredit
15:25
him. Oh God. I
15:28
didn't know it started this silly. That's funny.
15:30
Yeah. That's a, just
15:32
your weight. Just your weight, Langston.
15:35
The plumbers are known for
15:37
being idiotic and very sloppy.
15:40
They break into the office and crowbar
15:42
open the drawers. They do find
15:44
the guy's file, but unfortunately for
15:46
Nixon, they don't find any good
15:48
dirt. Wait,
15:51
so they broke in not
15:53
knowing if there was gonna be anything
15:56
in this psychiatrist's office, but just knew
15:58
that he was seeing a psychiatrist. and
16:00
thus presumed that they were gonna be able
16:02
to find some nasty dirt on him. I
16:04
mean, this is 1968. They're
16:06
like, there's a man going and talking about
16:08
his feelings? He must be broken. He's sick.
16:11
We've gotta do something. I also, anytime I've
16:13
been in therapy, I've always wondered what they're
16:15
writing down, and I always kind of assumed
16:17
it wasn't much. Like, you're not
16:19
gonna open that up and be like, we got
16:21
him. His dad didn't love
16:23
him. Boo. No. carlo.com.
17:31
Letting someone else pick out the
17:33
perfect avocado for your perfect impress
17:35
them on the third date guacamole?
17:37
Well, good thing Instacart shoppers are
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milk expiration date detectives. They bag
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eggs like the 12 precious pieces
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of cargo they are. So let
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Instacart shoppers overthink your groceries so
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that you can overthink what
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on your first three orders, while supplies
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last, minimum $10 per order. Additional
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terms apply. Well,
18:11
back to Watergate, specifically
18:13
what everyone refers to as
18:15
the Watergate Hotel. It's
18:18
a really big complex right on
18:20
the Potomac River in Washington, DC,
18:22
that's always buzzing with activity. There
18:25
are apartments, shops, restaurants, a hotel,
18:27
offices, including at the time, the
18:29
headquarters of the Democratic National Committee,
18:32
AKA Nixon's rival party.
18:35
On the night of June 17th, 1972, Watergate
18:40
security guard Frank Willis is
18:42
working his normal midnight shift.
18:45
He does his rounds through the
18:47
parking garage when almost immediately something
18:50
strange catches his eye. There's
18:52
a piece of masking tape covering the
18:54
latch of a stairwell door, allowing it
18:57
to close, but not to lock. Clever.
19:01
What would you do in that moment? As the guard?
19:04
I wouldn't be too worried because it's so bush-leak.
19:07
It feels so amateur that
19:09
it feels like some rascals,
19:11
maybe some teens had broken in more
19:13
than adult men working for
19:15
the most powerful men in the world. Probably
19:18
take it off. I'd probably just take it
19:20
off. I'd be like, okay, we're good. This
19:22
is what I'm supposed to, this is my
19:24
level of security in this job. How much
19:26
is my paycheck? I can take
19:28
the tape off the door. Yes. Well,
19:31
he thinks weird and
19:33
he does exactly that. He pulls the tape off
19:35
and goes about his rounds. But
19:37
when he circles back around to the
19:40
same spot later, the tape is back.
19:42
That's a weird move from the plumbers.
19:44
That's bad. At
19:46
that point, you gotta be like, all right, look, the tape thing, we
19:50
can't do the tape thing twice. We're
19:53
elite, we're an elite force. I
19:55
do like the idea that one of them probably said,
19:58
we can't do the tape thing twice. Blow
28:00
my cover. Blow my cover. Blow my cover.
28:03
Deepthroat, the person, is
28:06
extremely secretive. Woodward
28:08
and Deepthroat have dramatic late-night meetings
28:10
in a parking garage and use
28:12
little flags and flower pots to
28:15
signal when to meet. The
28:17
theatrics pay off because
28:19
Deepthroat points the reporters in the
28:21
right direction. And with
28:24
his help, they uncover more and
28:26
more people involved in the break-in
28:28
that are definitely in Nixon's orbit.
28:32
Sidebar, his true identity remained a secret for
28:34
30 years. So
28:36
he was a really good undercover source. What
28:39
was his whole thing? Was he just a
28:41
dude who knew stuff? How did
28:44
he come to be Deepthroat? Well,
28:46
he ends up being a guy
28:48
named Mark Felt, an FBI official
28:50
involved in the investigation to begin
28:53
with. Much better
28:55
name. Yes. I'm
28:57
Mark Felt. What
29:00
everyone calls me Deepthroat. I'm Mark Felt.
29:02
Mark Deepthroat Felt. Yeah,
29:04
when they called him Deepthroat, he was
29:06
like, yes, finally. Can I
29:08
wear a cape? All right, Mark, relax. Mark,
29:10
stop. Stop it, Mark. Stop it, Mark. So
29:14
as the stories break, Nixon and
29:16
the White House, of course, deny
29:18
everything, but more evidence pops up
29:20
every day. For instance, Congress uncovers
29:22
the source of the plumber's money.
29:25
Oh, no. The office
29:27
of Nixon's commerce secretary. There's
29:30
a literal safe stuffed with $350,000. Oh,
29:33
my God. It's
29:36
so sloppy. So
29:39
we're getting to November of 1972, and Nixon is up
29:41
for reelection. All
29:45
of this news must be pretty bad for him, right? Yes.
29:49
No, because he wins
29:51
by a ridiculous landslide. He
29:53
wins every state besides Massachusetts.
29:56
That's the thing that is so shocking is
29:59
that he won. how
32:00
this could never happen today. No.
32:04
Like, this figure would not exist
32:06
today. And it's amazing that it's
32:08
just brutal honesty, because
32:11
they were trying so hard to keep
32:13
everything under wraps and there's just a
32:15
gossiper who is just old-fashioned,
32:18
just like, my husband's a moron. They
32:20
had a plumber. They taped the door. Well,
32:23
the Justice Department assigns a
32:26
special prosecutor for the investigation.
32:28
The man assigned to the job is
32:31
Archibald Cox, a
32:33
six-foot-tall law professor known for
32:35
a personality that is, quote,
32:38
Ramrod Strait. Okay.
32:40
Let's go. This is a very strange episode, everybody.
32:43
Yeah, we're going. Yeah. Not to mention the fact
32:45
his name has Bald Cox in it. Ha ha
32:47
ha ha. Then,
32:50
the Senate hearings reveal a
32:52
bombshell. Alexander Butterfield.
32:55
He has the worst name, I would say. Alexander
32:58
Butterfield. So,
33:01
he's Nixon's appointments secretary, and
33:03
he says that Nixon had installed
33:05
secret recording devices in the
33:07
Oval Office. As it
33:09
turns out, Nixon secretly tapes almost every
33:12
conversation that takes place in the Oval
33:14
Office. This is it. Leaving
33:16
aside how bizarre it is to tape
33:19
all of your conversations, especially when you're
33:21
committing crimes, the tapes will
33:23
settle this once and for all. I've
33:26
never taped a conversation before,
33:30
but I'd like to believe that if
33:32
I did, it would be, like, extremely
33:34
necessary. I'm not taping every
33:36
single one and listening to those back.
33:38
That's nuts. Yeah. Misha, you're not taping
33:41
this, are you? This is just a
33:43
hang, right? Oh, did we not tell
33:45
you? Oh. I actually see a microphone if I
33:47
look closely. Ha ha ha ha. Well,
33:52
special prosecutor Archibald Cox
33:55
asks for them, just in case. Nixon
33:58
is not into this. at
34:00
all. Nixon says no.
34:03
He claims executive privilege, where
34:05
a president can withhold information
34:07
in the name of national
34:09
security and offers to write
34:12
up a summary. But
34:14
Cox insists, as they
34:16
do. And when
34:18
Nixon suggests a hard-of-hearing senator
34:21
can listen, the prosecutor is
34:23
fed up and demands to
34:25
hear the tapes. So
34:28
what do you think Nixon does? I
34:30
think he's going to burn those tapes. There's
34:32
no way he's handing those bad boys over
34:34
politely. He fires
34:36
Cox. Nice. That's
34:41
the move. Yeah, you're making
34:43
me nervous, my man. I'm going to
34:45
go ahead and eliminate you from your
34:48
position. Can I fire you? Yeah. Get
34:50
out of here. You're done. This will
34:52
come to be known as the Saturday
34:54
Night Massacre. Over
34:56
the course of a few hours on October 20, 1973,
34:59
a lot goes down at the White House. First, Nixon
35:05
wants to fire Archibald Cox,
35:08
but because of a twisty-turny
35:10
government structure, he technically can't.
35:13
He needs to tell the attorney general to do
35:15
it. That guy
35:17
refuses. So Nixon
35:20
fires him. The best. So
35:22
then the next guy comes
35:24
in and Nixon is like, okay,
35:26
now fire the special counsel.
35:28
But that guy refuses. So
35:30
then he also gets fired.
35:32
That's cool. Finally, in
35:35
comes this guy named Robert Bork,
35:38
who's like, I'll do it.
35:40
And Nixon's like, finally, and gets
35:42
rid of Archibald Cox. Whoa.
35:44
Bork also goes on to become quite
35:47
a figure in Roe v.
35:49
Wade and all that stuff as well.
35:52
He's known for a lot of stuff
35:54
eventually. I bet he was
35:56
on the right side of history in Roe v.
35:58
Wade. Absolutely. Without question. corrupt
46:00
bargain. Can't imagine. Three
46:04
years later, Nixon still
46:06
has not given a significant interview
46:08
until British journalist David Frost gets
46:10
him to agree to a series
46:13
of talks on camera. Nixon
46:16
gets $600,000 for the interviews, which
46:20
is the equivalent of like $3 million into
46:23
day one. I didn't know he was
46:25
getting like big paid off of those.
46:27
I didn't either. During the 28 hours
46:29
of interviews, Nixon
46:32
dropped some nice tidbits like quote, I didn't
46:34
think of it as a cover up. I
46:36
didn't intend it to cover up. Let me
46:38
say if I intended to cover up, believe
46:41
me, I'd have done it. Mm, mm. You
46:43
call that a cover up? I could have
46:45
covered that up way better. Yeah. Yeah. In
46:49
a time honored patriarchal tradition, Nixon
46:51
blames a woman for all his
46:53
problems. Nixon says, quote, if
46:56
it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell,
46:58
there would be no Watergate. Listen,
47:01
I'm not a fan of blaming women
47:03
for our problems. I think that there
47:05
are a lot of other explanations for
47:08
what happened here. You're not
47:10
wrong. Martha did
47:12
fuck him pretty bad. Oh
47:14
yeah. Well,
47:18
the strange thing is, Nixon is
47:20
never actually implicated in the burglary
47:22
at the Watergate. If
47:25
he had told the truth about what he knew, he
47:27
would never have had to resign. This
47:29
is where the phrase, it's not the crime, it's
47:31
the cover up comes from. Yeah,
47:34
right. Even today, there are many unanswered questions
47:37
about the scandal. What exactly was the purpose of the break
47:39
in? Why didn't Nixon
47:41
just destroy the tapes? What
47:44
was on that 18 minutes of tape that was deleted? Crazy.
47:48
We'll never know. That's so crazy. What
47:50
do you think was on the tape? It had to be horrible.
47:53
It had to be just
47:55
very clear criminal confessions. It
47:58
just has to be that. Recording
52:00
every conversation as the president
52:02
is inane. Recording
52:05
every conversation and then hanging out
52:07
with Martha afterwards. The
52:09
two, the combination ruined
52:12
his life. Well
52:15
thank you so much to our unimpeachable
52:17
guests, Gareth Reynolds and Langston Kerman for
52:19
joining us here on The Big Flop
52:21
and thanks to all of you for
52:23
listening. We'll be back next
52:25
week to take a deep dive into
52:27
one of the wilder post-exoneration career changes,
52:30
O.J. Simpson's short stint as an author,
52:33
and his book, If I Did It.
52:35
Bye! Bye. Bye.
52:39
If you like The Big Flop,
52:42
you can listen early and
52:44
ad-free on Wondery+.
52:58
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app
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or on Apple Podcasts. Prime
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short survey at wondery.com/survey. The
53:20
Big Flop is a production of Wondery and
53:22
Atwill Media, hosted by me,
53:24
Misha Brown, produced by Sequoia
53:26
Thomas, Harry Huggins, and Tina
53:28
Turner. Written by Anna Rubinova.
53:31
Engineered by Andrew Holtzberger, with
53:33
support from Zac Grappone. Our story
53:35
editor is Drew Beebe. Our
53:38
managing producer is Molly Getman. Our
53:40
executive producers are Kate Walsh and
53:42
Will Malnati for Atwill Media. Legal
53:44
support by Carolyn Levin of Miller,
53:47
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53:49
for Wondery are Matt Beagle and Grant Rudder.
53:52
Story editing by Brian Taylor White.
53:55
Coordinating producer is Mariah Gossett. Music
53:57
supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesound.
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