I've just been watching a 1990s series about Watergate.
Really astonishing. I simply hadn't understood the sheer depth and brazenness of Nixon's dishonesty before. Like Trump but without the PT Barnum schtick. It's a cliché to say that if a politician's lips are moving, they're lying, but seems spot on with Nixon. He actually seems to have continued believing he was untouchable till the moment his allies told him they were ditching him and just about frogmarched him out of the building.
Particular things that stuck: just how angry and resentful his senior aides (eg Alexander Haig) were – still! in the 1990s! – at the press and the Democrats for having the temerity to investigate the allegations. Not shame-faced at being caught out, but righteously indignant at the unfairness that anyone dare catch them!
Another was that, when John Mitchell's wife started being indiscreet to a reporter who'd phoned her, Mitchell pulled the phone from the socket and had her drugged and kept forcibly away from the world "to rest from her breakdown."
Then there was the problem of how to spring the Watergate break-in crowd before any trial. Too obvious just to release them... So the White House team instructed (?)FBI to arrest people associated with the Dems, just on any pretext... and then announce an amnesty.
Oh and there was a "Lordy, I hope there are tapes!" moment from John Dean.
I really am very shocked at the depths of the cupidity of the whole team. This isn't borderline, grey-area stuff. They were abusive, self-serving crooks who couldn't spell the word democracy.