The Gig Is (Almost) Up

Yesterday morning, August 8, the FBI sent dozens of agents and investigators to the home of Donald Trump looking for documents pertaining to the National Archives and Presidential Records in accordance with a Federal Judge’s approval.

Whatever this is about, it doesn’t look or sound good for the former president,* or those closest to him. At his ‘summer’ place in New Jersey and his ‘other’ home in New York City yesterday, Secret Service Agents were seen in droves, protecting buildings and a man whom they might be relieved from protecting soon. Mar-A-Lago being ‘raided’ in pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, is the least of Trumps mounting legal troubles.

Which, of course, leads us back to 48 years ago. Seemingly, it always does come back to Old Tanned, Rested & Ready. History rhymes and sometimes it even collides. On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first and only President to resign, the night before giving a televised announcement of his intent to do so “at Noon tomorrow. Vice-President Ford will be sworn-in, in this office, at that time.”

Michael Beschloss, presidential historian, noted last night, on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, that a month earlier, in July of ’74, Nixon and Bebe Rebozo flew up from Key Biscayne to Mar-A-Lago to ponder the use of the estate, willed to the government for use by the cereal heiress, Marjorie Merriweather Post. It never amounted to anything.

It is not lost on those of us who were alive back then and today of the parallels between Nixon and…