THE CORRUPTIONS OF TALKING LIKE TRUMP

“THIS COMMITTEE IS not a court, nor is it a jury,” Sen. Howard Baker (R–Tenn.) informed millions of television viewers on May 17, 1973.

It was opening day of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the latter three words of which would soon be condensed to just “Watergate”), and Baker, the ranking committee member from President Richard Nixon’s Republican Party, was there both to reassure Americans about the sobriety of the investigation and to suggest that the exercise of bipartisan congressional oversight might even reinvigorate the country’s political and constitutional norms.

“I intend to pursue, as I know each member of this committee intends to pursue,