How to Nixonmaxx the right way

Richard Nixon is back — this time as a source of viral memes. “Nixonmaxxing” is the latest fad roiling the young, very-online Right. Yet Nixon is being revived for the wrong reasons by those who wish to whitewash the crimes that led to the 37th president’s resignation 52 years ago this week. This Nixonian revivalism aims at justifying claims that President Trump, like Nixon, is the victim of a nefarious “deep state.” But Nixon was no victim. While other presidents have engaged in dirty tricks against their opponents, Nixon is the only one to have had his own private criminal gang engaged in burglaries like the break-in of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. On a tape recording from a June 17, 1971, meeting with his aides Henry Kissinger and Bob Haldeman, Nixon can be heard talk