Follow The Film Quotes

Reeling off the eerie similarities between Trump scandals and All the President’s Men.

- John Walters

COVERT OPS and cover-ups, sources and subterfuge, lies and litigation, the White House versus The Washington Post. The first six weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency yielded a harrowing harvest of headlines. The pace of today’s political news is too frenetic, but is it not also familiar? Do you sometimes watch your preferred cable news outlet and wonder, Haven’t I seen this movie before? The answer is you may have: All the President’s Men, released in 1976 and based on the Watergate investigation that resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, is a template for how a free press investigates chicanery associated with the Oval Office.

The film, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, respectively, was nominated for best picture (it lost to Rocky) and won four Academy Awards. Although All the President’s Men was released more than four decades ago, it remains timely as a tale of political intrigue and the seduction of power (then again, so does Macbeth). If you haven’t seen it, or last saw it before birther was a political designation, it’s worth watching as a study guide for our current concatenation of crises.

“I am convinced that no one else at the White House had any knowledge of or participation in this deplorable incident.” 

—White House spokesperson to Woodward (Robert Redford)

Less than three weeks into Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post cited unnamed “current and former U.S. officials” alleging that recently confirmed National Security Adviser Mike Flynn had “privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, during the month before President Trump took office.” The story ran on February 9.