May 3, 2026 · 33 min · 20 segments
During the 1972 Presidential election, Washington Post reporters expose the Watergate scandal; shining a light on the corruption and covert operations inside the Nixon administration.
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So what is the major theme of this movie, or why is it so important? For starters, let me say just one simple word, clarity.
Many of us have a limited or maybe even sanitized version of Richard Nixon's presidency and subsequent resignation.
Here we are 50 years later, and we're lucky enough to have the ability to seek information for ourselves, to research details, and have a more comprehensive understanding of what is happening around us.
But when the information was only made available through the daily newspaper and nightly news on television, I mean, that is if you were lucky enough to even own a television, people often found themselves at the mercy of the storytellers.
Other people decided what story should be told and what facts should be shared with the American public.
And when pressure is applied by the people in power, people who may not want the full story told, we end up getting a slimmed down, easy to digest, unified story that we're all expected to just go along with.
If you're like me, your vision of this period in history goes something like this.
Like everyone who's held the office, there were some significant achievements, but also a number of failures.
When it came time for his re-election, he, along with a handful of his trusted advisors, became obsessive about defeating the Democrats.
The simplest theory is that Watergate was an incompetent break-in intended to bug the Democratic National Committee.
Hunt, Liddy, and McCord were overzealous and acted without proper authorization.
And I'm sure if I stopped 10 people on the street right now and asked them to discuss Watergate, their version would probably be similar to mine because that's the story we were taught.
Watergate isn't the first time where the American public was fed a line of complete bullshit from our government.
It was just a few years before that, and when a huge portion of the population was convinced Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
Because we, as a people, can't fathom the alternative, the idea that the people we selected for the highest levels of elected office or the FBI, CIA, DOJ, or any part of our security apparatus would participate in illegal activities that could threaten the fabric of our democracy.
So what is the major theme of this movie, or why is it so important? For starters, let me say just one simple word, clarity.
Many of us have a limited or maybe even sanitized version of Richard Nixon's presidency and subsequent resignation.
Here we are 50 years later, and we're lucky enough to have the ability to seek information for ourselves, to research details, and have a more comprehensive understanding of what is happening around us.
But when the information was only made available through the daily newspaper and nightly news on television, I mean, that is if you were lucky enough to even own a television, people often found themselves at the mercy of the storytellers.
Other people decided what story should be told and what facts should be shared with the American public.
And when pressure is applied by the people in power, people who may not want the full story told, we end up getting a slimmed down, easy to digest, unified story that we're all expected to just go along with.
If you're like me, your vision of this period in history goes something like this.
Like everyone who's held the office, there were some significant achievements, but also a number of failures.
When it came time for his re-election, he, along with a handful of his trusted advisors, became obsessive about defeating the Democrats.
The simplest theory is that Watergate was an incompetent break-in intended to bug the Democratic National Committee.
Hunt, Liddy, and McCord were overzealous and acted without proper authorization.
And I'm sure if I stopped 10 people on the street right now and asked them to discuss Watergate, their version would probably be similar to mine because that's the story we were taught.
Watergate isn't the first time where the American public was fed a line of complete bullshit from our government.
It was just a few years before that, and when a huge portion of the population was convinced Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
Because we, as a people, can't fathom the alternative, the idea that the people we selected for the highest levels of elected office or the FBI, CIA, DOJ, or any part of our security apparatus would participate in illegal activities that could threaten the fabric of our democracy.
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