Trump’s Abuses of Power Show We Didn’t Learn Much From the Nixon EraThat failure is implicit in nearly every frame of a new documentary about Katharine Graham.
Jill Lawrence
Oct 10, 2025
Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in May 1968. (Photo by Guy DeLort/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)
RAW SEXISM AND MISOGYNY are the first but far from only shocks in Becoming Katharine Graham, a documentary that traces a time when the Washington Post was led by a shy, awkward, female publisher who supported fearless journalism even when she was terrified.
The pictures—Graham the lone woman amid seas of white males in the newsroom and the boardroom—are worth more than tens of thousands of words about centuries of discrimination. But the larger shock of this 92-minute film is realizing that the Nixon years were a vivid preview of the Trump years, and even those of us who lived through it didn’t grasp the risks of counting on good presidential character to sustain the American experiment.
And here we are, with another enemies list and a vindictive president already ticking off names: former FBI director James Comey arraigned Wednesday, sitting New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted Thursday. Who’s next? Sen. Adam Schiff? Former special counsel Jack Smith?
I resisted watching this film about Graham, directed by George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt, because I thought that I already knew Graham’s story. It’s been more than well covered in books (including her own), films (including one starring Meryl Streep), and reviews of them all. But I’m glad I gave it a chance. It’s a compelling story as told by Graham and her family, friends, colleagues, and even enemies.
And now, nearly nine months into Donald Trump’s second term, it has the impact of a gut punch.
It is stunning to hear President Richard Nixon on the famous White House tapes describe Graham to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as “ a terrible old bag”—and to not only reply “That’s right” when Ambassador Walter Annenberg called Graham “a miserable bitch,” but to then add, “And worse.”
It is chilling to hear Attorney General John Mitchell tell Nixon, as Graham weighed whether to publish the Pentagon Papers, that “if we ever convicted the Post or Katie Graham, she’d lose all of her television and radio licenses.” Graham got that message. And though those stations were propping up the Post financially back then, she published the classified documents anyway.
Join the best pro-democracy community on the internet by signing up for Bulwark+:
Share
The broadcast licenses were threatened again when the paper refused to stop investigating the Watergate scandal. “There ain’t going to be no forgetting. And there will be goddamn little forgiving,” Nixon, fresh off his landslide 1972 re-election win, said on the tapes.
Most devastating through the lens of the Trump era are the film’s repeated references to institutions and individuals doing their jobs: A Supreme Court that ruled 6–3 in 1971 to allow publication of the Pentagon Papers, and unanimously in 1974 that the White House must turn over its famous “Watergate tapes.” A Congress that investigates Nixon’s weaponization of the government and senators who urge Nixon—their fellow Republican—to resign before the Senate convicts him in an impeachment trial. A president who knows when the jig is up. And newspapers, notably the Post and the New York Times, whose leaders understand their role is to inform the public, not protect the powerful.
The contrast between those times and ours is painful. PBS stations started showing the Graham documentary less than a month after Jimmy Kimmel mused on-air about the ideology of Charlie Kirk’s assassin, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr warned that “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and ABC responded by suspending Kimmel. It came four months after the administration detained Emmy winner and legal U.S. resident Mario Guevara for immigration reporting it didn’t like. He was deported to El Salvador last Friday in a case the Committee to Protect Journalists calls unprecedented.
Join
The big picture is equally depressing, as media companies, law firms, and universities try to keep their federal funds and pacify Trump with money, free legal work, and other moves overtly designed to appeal to a voracious president. Today’s Supreme Court is either captive to, or amazingly aligned with, whatever Trump wants. So far it has not stopped him, and it’s not clear when or if that will happen. The same is true of the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
Even sexism and misogyny are making a comeback. As of last week, Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth had removed all women from top military jobs, and in August he reposted a video of pastors saying women shouldn’t vote. His boss, meanwhile, keeps trying to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and, in the runup to indicting James, attacked her as corrupt “SCUM.”
Between death threats, prosecution threats, and career threats, the atmosphere for judges and lawmakers of both parties is undeniably grim. But it is still hard to believe that so many elected and appointed Republicans, and so many voters, can ignore the daily gusher of offensive, illegal, and unconstitutional words and conduct.
In his tearful farewell speech, excerpted in the Graham documentary, Nixon seemed to convey the self-knowledge—the shame—that he had blown it. But shame is no longer a factor, much less a defining factor, in public life.
By contrast, hate endures. Nixon was driven by an enemies list and a quest for revenge. In the end, it crushed him. Now we have a president who thrives on hate and vengeance. Whose enemies list extends beyond individuals to entire blue states and cities filled with Democrats, and who is punishing them by withholding money and sending in troops.
The story of Katharine Graham is a story of bravery when it mattered. Our current predicament is clear evidence that memories are short. History fades. And anyone can step into that void with the worst of intentions. |
