All The President's Men Essay

On April 6, 1976, the movie based on the Watergate scandal, All The President’s Men, was released and made a huge impact on the scandal by shining light on what really happened. The movie starred Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Robert Redford as Bob Woodward who played their parts mostly in the office setting of the Washington post as well as in the area of D.C. The movie added every detail of the scandal from the experiences that Bernstein and Woodward had in real life and based most of the screenplay off the book that the two wrote together after the scandal ended.
The event began on June 17, 1972 when five burglars entered the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate offices in Washington D.C. The burglars that were arrested were

all mostly from Miami, Florida and of Cuban origin, but little did the public know at first that these men had CIA connections. In a matter of hours after the break in the newspaper companies began digging for more information on the subject. One newspaper, The Washington Post, had two employes by the name of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who investigated the Watergate scandal and discovered that the White House had something to do with the crime. After more digging, Woodward and Bernstein found out that checks worth 25,000 dollars were given to the men who were arrested by the Nixon campaign. In the end, everyone saw that the White House was in fact covering every detail up about the break in and even burned some very important documents to hide their guilt. Nixon later resigned after he was tried for the crimes from the break in and two men who worked for Nixon by the name of Chuck Colson and Howard Hunt served some time behind bars for their role in the planning of the burglary.
This affair led many Americans and other political officials into concern about the political future for America. Many citizens spoke out onto the government and organizations like the FBI and CIA so that something of this matter would never happen again in the country. While Nixon was in office, he obtained some media tatics in order to keep the press away from learning his and the White House’s secrets. Nixon was extremely smart with how he treated the reports and questions from the media, which overall succeed greatly for him and his campaign during his presidency. While Nixon avoided the press questions and meetings, his staff and supporters answered questions and gave information out with the approval of the president. The press defientley had a hard time digging up secrets about Nixon and his campaign because he intimidated the people who actually worked for him or knew anything about him. The current president, Donald Trump, also can relate to Nixon on the fact that both of them hate the media at times and use ways of avoiding it when necessary. On the other hand though, Trump does speak out more of his own thoughts and opinions way more than Nixon ever did during his presidency.
In July of 1974, the Supreme Court ordered that Nixon surrender the recorded tapes revealing information about the Watergate scandal and the covering up of it. A month later in early August Nixon finally gave up the tapes in which the president’s conversations were revealed and used against him becuase of the undeniable evedince that were on them. These tapes are known for being the final step in charging the president with crimes and eventually impeaching him, however two days later Nixon resigned to avoid the congress impeachment hearing. In my opinion I think that presidents conversations should be taped for certain subject such as, talking about war, bills or any matter of politics and the economy, but I do not think that the president’s personal life should be recorded like family or relative conversations and matters. The public should know what the president has been discussing about because sometimes that is when the truth comes out about their real plans and thoughts on subjects that are taking places or will in the near future. Recently in Trump’s presidency he has fired the FBI director, James Comey, because he does not agree with his way of controlling the FBI. Trump made some remarks on Twitter to approach the matter bewteen him and Comey and Comey responded with there are no tapes between him and the President that are relevant. I think that Trump’s tweets were threats to Comey to not lie about the him and make up false accusations. I’m not sure on who I believe on this matter because both have been caught fabricating the story in dome kind of way; if I had to chose i think I believe the President more because Comey was caught give a false testimony.
Everything about the Presidental canidate is fair game because they are putting themselves and their private lives out into the world. It may be morally wrong to report on the private lives of the preisdents family, but once a canidate runs for president you have to put alot of information about yourself out into the public in order for people to vote for you. I believe that the only time the press should supress a story is if something tragic has happend to the president or within their family or if something is rumored to be true, but would be risky putting out there to the public.
The media in America can either tarnish or uplift a presiedent’s reputation in their term.

The media plays an enormous role in the Presidency because it can ruin a president by either digging up unrevealed information about themselves or creating rumors that would shock the public. I believe there have been some times when the media has been unfair to presidents in the past. George W. Bush was president when the nation suffered the biggest attack ever on it’s very on soil, which eventually affected him forever. Once America was starting to grieve less, the media started reporting rumors and conspiracys about the attack making Bush’s actions questionable and citizens started turning their backs against him. Personally, I think that this was just wrong and unfair because no president would ever let an attack happen on their own soil and risk their presidency like this. However, the role the media played in the Watergate scandal was completely fair because they were uncovering an illegal event that occurred due to the president himself. I also do see the media one of the checks and balances of America’s political system because it challenges the government and the president. The media makes their presence known everyday within the lives of the political officials in America, which scares them into making sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do for the country. The media already has much freedom in the country and their rights are protected by certain ammendments, so I

don’t believe that there should be any more protections or anything of that nature. Years before Donald Trump became president the media has clashed with him over every little thing he does. I don’t believe that Trump is that thin skinned because he takes on an enormous amount of hate and sometimes I don’t know how he can take all of it. Sometimes the media is unfair with the stories they report against him because some are blantley false.
The whistleblower known as “Deep Throat” played a major role in aiding Woodward and Bernstein in the uncovering of the Watergate scandal.

Deep Throat’s actual name is William Mark Felt, he served as an FBI special agent who worked as an associate director for the bureau. Since Felt did not reveal who he was until 2005, the government did not chose to take an actions at all against Felt for revealing the country’s secrets, in fact most applauded him for his courgaesness and honesty. I think that whistleblowers actions are only justified when they are not releasing major American strategies and secrets to other countries and America itself. For example, Edward Snowden released secrets of the FBI, CIA and government to let Americans know the truth of what was happening inside these organizations. Snowden released this information to Wikileaks, which went out to the world making the U.S. vunlerable. I beleive that Wikileaks and websites like it are not good because they hurt the power stance on the U.S. and makes it easier for other nations to hurt the country. However, the Watergate scandal was much different because it involved the wrongdoings of the Commander and Chief as well as his campaign that was just as corrupt. Mark Felt’s actions improved the American government, CIA and FBI from being so corrupt and overall helped a corrupt president get kicked out of

office.
Donald Trump JR. has recently met with a Russian lawyer to discuss information about Hilary Clinton and her actions as a canidiate. The recent event that has been much debated over happens to not be against the law at all. People who support a president or are apart of their campaign can dig up any information that is public or told by someone with the consent of using it for a purpose if it is true. In every election that America has had canidates have secial people that support them to find information on the one running against them so they can use it in their campaign to get elected, which disturbs the democratic process because it changes citizens minds on who they want to become the next president. The potiental for blackmail is greater when canidates recieve documents and information on the opposing canidate because then they have a better chance of winning. The downfall of Hillary Clinton was due to the Trump supporters digging up information on her emails that were corrupt, which did not help her campaign in the election this past year. The recent accusations against Trump about him collaboraitng with the Russians in order to win the election have come about and many Americans believe it is true. I beleive that if it is found to be true that the President can be impeached by the GOP because he has the most power in all of congress. In recent months there has been a debate on wether the president should be able to pardon and I beleive that they should’nt have that right because thn that interfers with the whole checks and balances system. The matter of pardon should be handled within the Supreme Court because they’re the justice system within the country.
I think that political historians and observers do in fact compare Trump with Nixon in their presidency’s because they both had a difficult time with the media and underwent investigations against them and their campaign. I believe that the current investigations on Trump are relevant such as, the Russian one where apparently the Russian government had something to do with Trump’s success in winning the presidency. I never thought that the investigation over Donald Trump Jr. was neccessay or relevant at all because even discussing other canidates isn’t illegal. In all, I really enjoyed the movie because I learned an abundant amount of information about the Watergate scandal and the measures taken to discover what was really going on within the White House.