Who Framed Richard Nixon?

Lovett or Leave It

The episode opens with a critique of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's anti-trans military address and his false claims that critical press coverage constitutes treason, followed by Trump's White House AI summit where tech leaders signed a non-binding safety pact while the president rebranded artificial intelligence as

Key takeaways

• Pete Hegseth labeled trans people 'trannies' and called press criticism 'treason,' which Lovett debunks as legally incorrect and militarily counterproductive given the armed forces' current readiness.
• Trump renamed AI to 'super intelligence' at a White House summit, dismissing safety concerns as a hoax while tech executives signed a morally binding but unenforceable agreement.

Main topics

• Pete Hegseth's military address and treason claims
• Trump's AI rebranding and tech summit safety pact

Notable quotes

"A free press is, of course, important. But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops... is fundamentally anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually."

Conclusion

The episode uses current political absurdities and historical revisionism to highlight

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:01) you Speaker 6 (0:04) It's a bit funny, man. Speaker 6 (0:09) Shoot. Speaker 6 (0:17) So love it or leave it, live from Hollywood, hello to our viewers on MSNOW and to our podcast listeners at the gym or hospital. I'm John Lovett, former Obama speechwriter and Hillary Clinton speechwriter and current host of this program, Don't Change the Channel. I have the secret formula to defeat Trump, which I'll reveal at the end of this episode. But first, let's get into it. What a week. Speaker 6 (0:41) On Wednesday, President Trump somehow stood perpendicular to himself. Speaker 2 (0:46) He looks Speaker 6 (0:50) like the front half of a centaur. He looks like a marionette that God got tired of holding up. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsath delivered this state-of-the-force address at Quantico on Wednesday. Let's take a look. Speaker 4 (1:03) We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that. No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Speaker 6 (1:18) Or as Speaker 4 (1:19) he Speaker 6 (1:19) would write it on Grindr, mask for mask. Again, they don't want trans people in sports because they're too good. If you don't want Leah Thomas in the NCAA, it seems like you should want her in the fucking Marines. And I'd also point out, we've only fought one war since you banned the trannies and the fatties, and we're 0-1. Speaker 6 (1:39) Continued Speaker 4 (1:40) Hegsav. A free press is, of course, important. But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they're undertaking is fundamentally anti-American. It's sick It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually. Speaker 6 (2:00) It actually isn't. Leaving aside that the coverage Hegseth is complaining about isn't smearing the troops, but reporting on the failures of leaders who recklessly put those troops into harm's way, even if reporters were for some reason writing, fuck the troops, boo the troops, that's not treason either. Also, you just know this is how he argued with his soon-to-be ex-wives during his divorces. Oh, I drink too much treason. Speaker 6 (2:25) Also this week, President Trump hosted nearly 20 tech leaders for an AI summit at the White House where they signed an AI safety agreement. It's effectively a peace accord in that AI will soon tear every one of us to pieces. Here's Trump selling the deal. Speaker 4 (2:39) Is this accord that everybody signed, is it binding in any way? I Speaker 6 (2:42) think it's morally binding, yeah. Which is troubling. A morally binding agreement to Trump is like a no dogs allowed sign at a Los Angeles farmer's market. On Tuesday, Trump did in fact sign an executive order renaming artificial intelligence to super intelligence. And when a reporter asked Trump about the safety concerns raised by AI, Trump once again pivoted to the rebrand. The Speaker 1 (3:04) leaders standing behind you have had some very serious concerns about AI. Even after meeting with them today, you are still calling this a hoax. So why should the American people take your word over this? Speaker 2 (3:14) It's a very serious, that's why I changed the name. Speaker 1 (3:16) Okay. A Speaker 2 (3:16) hoax sounds like, you know, when you're using the former name. But this name is now super intelligence. That's not a hoax. Speaker 6 (3:23) That's some deft political sleight of hand, which is impressive considering his hand looks like shepherd's pie filling. Speaker 6 (3:31) Too much? I'll say this for Trump. The guy's staying on message. Who Speaker 4 (3:36) should be held accountable when the AI agents commit a crime? It's not AI. It's Speaker 2 (3:41) SSI. Speaker 4 (3:41) That's the other thing. We've changed the name officially Speaker 2 (3:44) today. Speaker 6 (3:45) For example, one would say, oh shit, a super intelligence drained all the water from Lake America. Meanwhile, at a Maha summit on Tuesday, Health Secretary RFK Jr. said that AI can free us from medical Speaker 3 (3:57) tyranny. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, oh, you need to take it to protect your grandmother. Hey, I may say it actually doesn't do that. Speaker 6 (4:09) Hey, man, just because all your relatives died doesn't mean ours have to. The health secretary also said this. Speaker 3 (4:15) Sam Altman was over in our office a couple of days ago. He said, but today it would be malpractice for a doctor. to make a diagnosis or to make a prescription without at least checking AI. And Speaker 6 (4:30) he's right. If my doctor hadn't double-checked with AI, I would have never found out I was pregnant. Meanwhile, polling has consistently shown that Americans across the political divide are opposed to data centers and do not want them built in their communities. That, of course, didn't stop Trump from offering this. Speaker 2 (4:45) The data centers are incredible. And by the way, I'm very good at real estate. Some of those buildings are absolutely beautiful. They're big and they're, you know, big, strong, powerful buildings, but they're beautiful. And they add greatly to a community. Speaker 6 (4:58) Some say data centers are like nature's ballrooms. Let's take a moment to look at a few of these. Data centers. Gorgeous. Move over, Florence Cathedral. Speaker 6 (5:11) Fuck, I should have had my wedding at this one. In a new Variety interview, Pete Davidson said that he is lasering off most of his 200 tattoos, but not his portrait of Hillary Clinton. Responded an exasperated Hillary Clinton, fine, but it's still over between us. Speaker 6 (5:27) And that's the only one you're keeping, asked a crestfallen Kamala Harris. The Department of Interior officially announced Bear 89, affectionately known as Backpack, is the winner of the annual Fat Bear Week. Finally, a federal department that embraces fatties. When reached for comment, Backpack the bear killed and ate the reporter. Fatter than ever. The Girl Scouts announced this week that its first cookies for dogs will go on sale in January. The dog cookies, called Patch Pals, will be blueberry muffin flavored, with a second flavor, your new girlfriend's tampon fresh from the... Speaker 6 (6:02) With a second flavor, your new girlfriend's tampon, fresh from the trash, available next fall. And now, a story from the week that got me a bit too mad. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump DOJ is now reviewing whether the special counsel in charge of Nixon's Watergate prosecution committed misconduct. Finally, said the innocent Richard Nixon in heaven to his best friends up there, Harriet Tubman and Anne Frank. Congressman Riley Moore is on board, telling a summit at the Richard Nixon Foundation this week that the deep state was behind it all. Speaker 4 (6:35) Richard Nixon was absolutely cooed out of office and was framed. All of this was fake. Speaker 6 (6:42) All right, let's do this. In 1973, when Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox learned that there was a secret recording system in the White House in which Richard Nixon had discussed the Watergate scandal, he subpoenaed those tapes. Nixon then ordered the Attorney General to fire Cox. The Attorney General refused and resigned. Then Nixon ordered the Deputy Attorney General to fire Cox. He refused and resigned. This became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Then Nixon ordered the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, Bork, to fire Cox, who finally did it. We learned after Bork's death from Bork's own memoir that in exchange for firing Cox, Nixon promised to fire promised that he would nominate Bork to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy, but Nixon never had the chance because the second special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, took over for Cox and subpoenaed the tapes anyway. Are you with me? Of course you are. This is interesting. Speaker 4 (7:11) Cox. Speaker 6 (7:24) On those tapes, you hear Nixon actively participating in the cover-up and committing, encouraging, and having knowledge of many crimes, including obstruction of justice, perjury, and directing the IRS to target political opponents mixed in with diatribes, where he calls Jews abrasive, aggressive, obnoxious, and insecure, which is unacceptable unless we're saying it about ourselves. And while there is no evidence on the tapes that Nixon was aware in advance of the Watergate break-ins, there are 18.5 minutes that were erased from the recordings, 18.5 minutes of a meeting with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, which took place three days after Nixon's so-called plumber snuck into the Democratic National Committee as part of an ongoing wiretapping operation, one of many schemes that Nixon's shambolic goons were conducting or planning, which also included breaking into the Brookings Institution, which Nixon expressly ordered on tape and which metastasized into an actual real plan proposed by Nixon advisor Chuck Colson to firebomb the Brookings Institution, which thankfully was called off for being crazy even for us. And you don't have to take my word for it. You can learn about all of this at the Nixon Library. Haldeman was convicted of obstruction, perjury, and conspiracy among roughly 69 people charged for their participation in the criminal enterprise around Richard Nixon, what former White House counsel John Dean called a cancer on the presidency. And Haldeman himself said in his memoir that Nixon initiated the Watergate break-in and was part of the cover-up from the start. And look, maybe Nixon and Haldeman were fucking in those missing 18.5 minutes. I don't know, but I don't think so because that's at least 13 minutes too long. But why? Are people trying to rehabilitate Richard Nixon? Why is J.D. Vance saying things like this? Speaker 4 (8:54) I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so. As I joked with Robert backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. Speaker 6 (9:11) And that's true, but the fact that Watergate wouldn't be a big deal now is a testament to how bad now is, not how not bad then was. Nixon appointees at the Justice Department resigned rather than follow Nixon's orders. The so-called smoking gun tape was released as ordered unanimously by the Supreme Court on August 5th, 1974. Two days later, Barry Goldwater, a Republican senator and former presidential nominee, told Nixon in the Oval Office, there's not more than 15 senators for you. Two days later. Nixon resigned. Republicans want to rehabilitate Nixon for the same reason they want to attack Jack Smith and the prosecution of Trump after January 6th. All of reality and history must bend to excuse their corruption and cowardice and embrace of a low-life crime boss who makes Richard Nixon look like Jimmy Carter. Can you believe this? Trump guy asked Jimmy Carter to Richard Nixon, Harriet Tubman, and Anne Frank, hoping they'll ask him to join, but they never do. Speaker 6 (10:02) And finally, a Texas man intentionally crashed his car into a Kroger's early on Sunday and told police that he did so because the store was closed and he had to go to the bathroom. Police say they'd never seen such a mess. Also, there was some damage from the car crash. All right, we have got a great show for you tonight. We'll be right back with Hollywood legend Barry Diller. Speaker 8 (10:23) Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. Speaker 6 (10:27) Love it or leave it is brought to you by Quince. When it comes to clothing and accessories, we're always on the hunt for those hero pieces that you can pull on without a second thought. The sweater that goes with everything, the perfect pair of pants or the T-shirt that always seems to make its way to the top of the pile. Those are the staples that make getting dressed easy. And that's what Quince does best. 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That's code L-O-L-I at drinkwillys.com or use the store locator to find Willys on shelves near you, like at your local Total Wine, Specs, ABC, or local liquor store. Speaker 4 (13:19) you Speaker 6 (13:25) We'll be joined by Barry Diller in just a moment. But first, on Friday, November 6th, I am hosting a very special episode of Love It or Leave It at Crooked Con. I will be joined by writer and scholar Tressie McMillan Cottom, along with New York City Councilmember Chi Osei. He's famous for coining the phrase, woke one is crazy, by the way. Then on November 7th, you can hang with me at the full all-day Crooked Con event. You can view the lineup and get tickets for both Love It or Leave It and Crooked Con at crookedcon.com. Ticket prices are going up on October 6th, so if you've been waiting, now is the time. And we're back! Speaker 6 (13:57) Please welcome to the show a Hollywood icon, an architect of modern media, a guy who could but won't invite you on his boat. It's Barry Diller. This is true. Welcome to the show. First of all, I loved the memoir. I was really glad to have a chance to read it. I have a question for you. Why are you on this show? I Speaker 7 (14:15) don't know. How did you get here? I'm standing back there and I'm thinking, how did I get here? Yeah, Speaker 6 (14:19) like of all, you could be anywhere on earth. You could be in San Tropez. Well, Speaker 7 (14:23) I was. Speaker 6 (14:24) And you were. Of course you were. By the way, in the book, you have the press release you wrote when you left Fox and parted ways with Rupert Murdoch. And he tried to get you to edit the thing down. That is the craziest fucking press release I have ever seen in my life. It's a press release about you leaving a company and you're like. As a man turning 50, life Speaker 7 (14:51) can be long. A lion in winter. Endlessly florid. Yes. But I, first of all, it was a big thing for me. I was 49 years old and I was changing my life, stopping being a corporatist after 30 years or so. And I thought, I'm not going to just do the thing of X, Y, Z, did Y, O, Q. I thought, I'm going to tell a story. So I wrote a really long thing and published it. Cool. I agree. Speaker 6 (15:20) Now, you talk about in the book relying on data over about the problem when people rely on data over instinct and making creative decisions that that can be a route to failure. Speaker 6 (15:32) Netflix, Amazon, these are data-driven institutions. Not only do they collect more information than was ever collected before, it also guides the way they decide what to make, what not to make, actors to hire. Are they wrong? It seems to be working for them. Speaker 7 (15:48) Well, you know, working, I