NPR

Remembrance of Scandals Past: Trump Cues Up Memories of John Dean, Joseph McCarthy

Dean gave investigators vital information from within the inner circle of President Richard Nixon. Has the current White House counsel done something similar for those investigating President Trump?
Sen. Joseph McCarthy listens to his attorney, Roy Cohn, during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. The series of hearings badly damaged the senator's image and led to a vote of censure by the Senate.

The median age in America is roughly 37. So most of the people in this country today have no memory of events in the 1970s, much less the 1950s.

But President Trump does. He has not only memories but also direct personal connections to some of the actors in those eras. And the drama of those times remains vivid to him, or at least worthy of mentioning on Twitter.

The latest barrage of presidential tweets attacking independent counsel Robert Mueller has made mention of two historical figures who were household names in America a generation or two ago — names that can still raise eyebrows — and blood pressure.

One is John Dean, a key figure in the exposure of President Richard Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. That

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