Trump and Nixon impeachments
While Richard Nixon decided to resign in 1974 after losing Republican support, Trump seems to enjoy congressional support for him; here the differences between both political trials
On August 7, 1974, three Republican leaders went to the White House and told President Richard Nixon that support for his party was fading and that impeachment was inevitable. Nixon resigned the next day.
Forty-five years later, another US president, Donald Trump, faces impeachment in the House of Representatives, and potential trial in the Senate.
However, unlike Nixon, Trump appears to enjoy, at least for the moment, the support of Republican congressmen and has shown no indication that he is willing to give in to what he has called a "witch hunt."
"Part of the Watergate story and the investigation is seeing how Republicans walk away, start to question their support for Nixon," says Kevin Mattson, a professor of contemporary history at Ohio University.
"Now it seems like (Republicans) are getting tougher," says Mattson, author of "Rebels All !: A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America." ("All Rebels !: A Brief History of America's Postwar Conservative Mind").
"The partisanship is much stronger today than it was in the days of Watergate."
Watergate and aid to Ukraine
Trump is accused of withholding vital military aid to Ukraine, a country at war with Russia, in an attempt to obtain compromised political information from Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate most likely to challenge him in the 2020 presidential election.
Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and leader of the impeachment inquiry, said Trump's conduct "goes beyond anything Nixon has done."
"What we are seeing here is much more serious than a third-class robbery of the Democratic Party headquarters," Schiff said of the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.
Like Nixon, Trump is being accused of "using the powers of the presidency for personal political reasons," says Jon Marshall, an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
But the accusations against Trump are more serious than those facing Nixon, explains Louis Caldera, who served as Secretary of the Army in the government of Democratic President Bill Clinton and is now an academic at American University.
National politics and political rival
The Nixon issue is a matter of "national politics," says Caldera, while Trump "withheld military aid to an ally at war."
Trump "is not acting for legitimate US foreign or local policy purposes," he adds. "He's basically trying to stir the well to create trouble for a political rival."
Alan Baron, an attorney who served as special impeachment counsel on the cases of four federal judges, says Trump's actions "make Watergate look like child's play."
Loss of bipartisanship in the United States
What has changed since Nixon faced impeachment is the "media environment and the nature of our politics."
"There was a lot more bipartisanship in Congress in the 1970s than there is now," says Marshall, author of "Watergate's Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Impulse." ("The Watergate Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Push").
"There were conservative Democrats and there were liberal Republicans and they were used to working together."
"The state of the media and how much people trust the media is radically different now than it was in the 1970s," says Mattson.
The three television stations in the 1970s and some major newspapers and news magazines "really determined the coverage," recalls Marshall.
"Now it is much easier for people to choose a partisan milieu that they are comfortable with," he says. "And of course we now have an infinite number of media outlets and websites that people can turn to for their own partisan spin."
In addition, according to Marshall, Trump can speak about his case to the American people directly through Twitter, while Nixon only resorted to occasional press conferences.
In their impeachment investigation, Democrats have held five days of public hearings with 12 witnesses, but the White House has so far refused to release documents or allow Trump's top aides to testify.
