46 political scandals that were ‘worse than Watergate’

Political Comparison 101 includes a few basics everybody knows. Want to accuse the current administration of budding authoritarianism? Allude to Nazi Germany. Imply your opponent is leading a witch hunt? Invoke Senator Joe McCarthy.

Recently, one clichéd comparison has risen above the rest: “worse than Watergate.”

For decades, the legacy of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., has formed a sort of yardstick against which to measure the scandals of the day — hence the lazy tendency to abbreviate every controversy with a moniker ending in “-gate” (see: Bridgegate, Gamergate, Deflategate, Celebgate, and so on).

But over the past year in particular, politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle have grown particularly fond of describing their opponents’ actions as “worse than Watergate” — especially in the context of the Russia investigation. In January alone, conservatives like Sean Hannity, Republican Representative Steve King and radio show host Howie Carr have accused Democrats or the FBI of corruption that is “bigger” or “worse” or “more serious” than Watergate. Meanwhile, critics of President Donald Trump — ranging from former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean (who literally wrote a book titled “Worse Than Watergate”) to former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum to Obama White House ethics czar Norm Eisen — allege wrongdoing on the part of the president and his aides that rivals only Tricky Dick in its flagrant disregard of the rule of law. 

We compiled a list of almost every “worse than Watergate” comparison we could find, from Barry Goldwater’s description of Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal to the Trump-Russia musings of journalist Carl Bernstein, who helped break the original Watergate story. Taken as a whole, it’s hard to see that the overused phrase does anyone any good — other than the Watergate Hotel’s publicity team, of course. As a matter of style, perhaps the only thing worse than Watergate is the phrase “worse than Watergate.”

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April 30, 1973: Senator Barry Goldwater on Chappaquiddick
“I think the country sure as hell forgot about Chappaquiddick in a hurry, and I think that’s worse than Watergate.”

May 6, 1973: Norman Cousins on rigged public polling by the Nixon administration
“Even more serious than Watergate, it seems to me, is the deception of the American voters by the rigged public opinion polls, the counterfeit political advertisements and the phony telegrams — all of which, it develops, were carried out by some of the same characters who staged Watergate.”

May 9, 1973: The Baltimore Sun editorial board on the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office
“There are connections between Watergate and the Pentagon Papers case now on trial in Los Angeles, notably in the participation in both of the former White House thug-in-residence, E. Howard Hunt. … But for all such interlockings, these are two separate matters, and … the White House role in the second is worse than in the first.”

December 24, 1973: Ronald Reagan on Republicans as the victims of scandals
“The Republican Party has traditionally been the victim of shenanigans worse than Watergate. There is documentary proof.”

Winter, 1980: Ronald Reagan on Supreme Court rulings upholding abortion rights
“… an abuse of power worse than Watergate.”

January 5, 1987: Sanford Ungar on Iran-Contra
“This scandal is substantively far more serious than Watergate — potentially much more damaging to the country — and growing worse all the time. When it is done, even if no one goes to jail, this may actually make Watergate look like the mere ‘third-rate burglary’ that Richard Nixon once said it was.”

May 27, 1987: Felix Rodriguez on Iran-Contra
Rodriguez, a former CIA operative, told Congress that he had warned Lt. Col. Oliver North that problems with the secret effort to supply the Nicaraguan Contra rebels “could be worse than Watergate and … could destroy the president.”

July 13, 1987: John Dean on Iran-Contra
“The Iran-Contra inquiries involve matters of national security. Watergate, on the other hand, involved the political security of Richard Nixon. These are major league matters vs. little league.”

April 1, 1991: Jonathan Rowe on The Keating Five scandal
The Keating hearings presented a spectacle “worse than Watergate,” since if Watergate “was about a few bad apples, the Keating Five is about the whole barrel.”

October 15, 1992: Senator Al Gore on Bush’s refusal to release documentsabout the run-up to the Gulf War
“What we are seeing now is President Bush presiding over a cover-up significantly larger than the Watergate cover-up.”

March 1, 1994: Senator Al D’Amato on Whitewater
“This is worse than Watergate.”

October 13, 1996: Newt Gingrich on Bill Clinton’s association with an Indonesian real estate conglomerate
“It makes Watergate look trivial. We have never in American history had an American president selling pieces of this country to foreigners.”

July 1, 1997: Newt Gingrich on the Clinton-era FBI files controversy
“I believe in the long run this is going to be a bigger scandal than Watergate was.”

June 3, 2003: Paul Krugman on claims that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat in order to sell the war in Iraq
“The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-Contra.”

April 6, 2004: John Dean on the George W. Bush presidency
Dean authors a book titled, “Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.”

July 14, 2004: Stephen Spruiell in National Review on the press’ ‘anti-Bush feeding frenzy’
“The press hated Richard Nixon — but he gave them a lot to work with. Today, there is a Watergate-like press feeding frenzy, and it is against the entire presidency of George W. Bush. The present media environment may even be worse than Watergate.”

July 10, 2005: Frank Rich on the Valerie Plame scandal
“My colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.”

October 25, 2005: Arianna Huffington on the Valerie Plame scandal
“Let me make myself perfectly clear: I’m not saying that Plamegate is the same as Watergate. I’m saying it’s worse. Much, much worse.”

June 7, 2007: Representative Jerry Nadler on Bush-era warrantless wiretapping
“I think the one issue that hasn’t gotten enough attention is the overwhelming obviousness of the fact that this entire warrantless wiretapping is illegal and the president and attorney general are engaged in a criminal conspiracy. I mean, to me, this is worse than Watergate.”

September 5, 2011: Ben Shapiro on Obama-era wiretapping of Israeli Embassy
“Let me get this straight: We can’t wiretap terrorists, but we wiretap allies. Worse than Watergate.”

October 15, 2011: Sheriff Paul Babeu on the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” program
“This is a much larger scandal than Watergate.”

November 18, 2011: Michele Bachmann on Solyndra
“This is more than just a simply Washington scandal. This is a historical scandal … This makes Watergate look like child’s play.”

March 12, 2012: Joe Arpaio on Obama’s birth certificate
“I think this situation is probably 10 times worse than Watergate, if we ever get to the bottom of it.”

September 21, 2012: Elizabeth Drew on the assault on voting rights
“Having covered Watergate and the impeachment of Richard Nixon … I believe that the wrongdoing we are seeing in this election is more menacing even than what went on then. Watergate was a struggle over the constitutional powers and accountability of a president, and, alarmingly, the president and his aides attempted to interfere with the nominating process of the opposition party. But the current voting rights issue is even more serious.”

December 12, 2012: Steve King on Benghazi
“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is.”

May 16, 2013: Michele Bachmann on the IRS-Tea Party scandal
“This is far worse than Watergate … These are direct actions taken against American citizens who sought to exercise their free speech rights under the First Amendment.”

June 4, 2013: POLITICO Magazine editor Blake Hounshell on living at the Watergate
“The Watergate always has apartments for sale & absurd condo fees. Someone should do a story on how living there is worse than Watergate.”

November 1, 2013: Bill Kristol on Obamacare
“Obamacare, honestly, will do more damage to the country than Watergate ever could’ve done.”

June 13, 2014: Grover Norquist on alleged cover-up of IRS abuses during the Obama administration
“This is the worst attempt to blame technology in service of a cover-up since the infamous ‘18-minute gap’ during the Nixon Watergate crisis. Only in this case, the gap is not 18 minutes, but two years. This cover-up is far worse.”

September 7, 2016: Andrew Napolitano on Hillary’s email scandal
“If you’re talking about the seriousness of the information destroyed and the amount of information destroyed, what happened at the hands of people working for or at the direction of Mrs. Clinton was far worse than an 18½-minute gap on President Nixon’s internal office recording equipment.”

October 4, 2016: Donald Trump on Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails
“Hillary Clinton put her emails on an illegal secret server open to foreign hacking. Then she bleached and destroyed 33,000 emails — after a congressional subpoena. She lied to Congress, under oath, and her staffers took the Fifth Amendment and got immunity deals. It’s worse than Watergate.”

October 17, 2016: Donald Trump on alleged “quid pro quo” in Hillary Clinton’s State Department
“FBI documents show that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy made the request for altering classification as part of a ‘quid pro quo.’ This is felony corruption … This is magnitudes worse than Watergate.”

January 10, 2017: Robby Mook on the hacking of the DNC
“Imagine the headlines if, in 2015, Russian agents had leapt out of a van at 2 a.m. in southeast Washington and broken into the Democratic National Committee offices … The world would have been aghast. It would have been, people would say, worse than Watergate. Something similar did, in fact, happen at the DNC two years ago, and it was worse than Watergate.”

March 9, 2017: Roger Stone on the Russia investigation
“A congressional inquiry will be highly politicized, with Democrats seeking to disrupt the inexorable exposure of violations and abuse of power, which make the Watergate scandal pale in comparison.”

May 10, 2017: Richard Painter on Russia’s election meddling and the firing of James Comey
“This is as if you took Watergate, rolled it into the Alger Hiss scandal and put it all in one. This is a very dangerous situation.”

May 12, 2017: James Fallows on the Comey affair
“Based simply on what is known so far, this scandal looks worse than Watergate. Worse for and about the president. Worse for the overall national interest. Worse in what it suggests about the American democratic system’s ability to defend itself.”

June 7, 2017: James Clapper on the Russia scandal
“I lived through Watergate … Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now.”

July 21, 2017: Norm Eisen on Trump pardoning himself or dismissing Mueller
“Trump pardoning others, much less himself, or firing Mueller, would set off a firestorm the likes of which would exceed Watergate.”

November 2, 2017: Carl Bernstein on Trump’s lies and potential collusion with Russia
“We’re dealing with a situation that appears to be a real feeling that is worse than Watergate in many, many ways, in the sense that we have a president of the United States who lies about almost anything.”

December 6, 2017: Elizabeth Drew on Trump presidency
“The question of timing [of the end of the Robert Mueller investigation] has become increasingly urgent, given the heightened danger that the U.S. will deliberately or accidentally end up in a war with North Korea. That risk, coupled with Trump’s increasingly peculiar behavior, has made Washington more tense than I’ve ever known it to be, and that includes the dark days of Watergate.”

December 21, 2017: Senator Rand Paul on the unsubstantiated possibilitythat Obama admin officials “might have colluded to prevent the election” of Donald Trump
“Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!”

January 12, 2018: Howie Carr on Democrats behind the Steele dossier
“This Fusion GPS hoax is going to be a bigger political scandal than Watergate.”

January 18, 2018: Steve King on the allegations contained in the Nunes memo
“I have read the memo. The sickening reality has set in. I no longer hold out hope there is an innocent explanation for the information the public has seen. I have long said it is worse than Watergate. It was #neverTrump & #alwaysHillary.”

January 19, 2018: Sean Hannity on FISA memo
“Our sources are telling us that the abuse of power is far bigger than Watergate. Remember, Watergate was a third-rate break-in. What we’re talking about tonight is the systematic abuse of power, the weaponizing of those powerful tools of intelligence and the shredding of our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”

January 23, 2018: Richard Manning on missing FBI text messages
“Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, erased 18 minutes of tape recording of the president and became infamous in 1972. The FBI failed to preserve five months of text messages and expects the American public to believe it was a random mistake. This is worse than Watergate.”

January 24, 2018: David Frum on Trump scandals
“I think what we face now is much more serious than Watergate.”