Thread by @KevinMKruse

When you write an essay for a print publication, a lot of material winds up on the cutting room floor.

So I thought I'd do a thread with some of the odds and ends that didn't make it into this @vanityfair piece. vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/t…

There were countless events held by Nixon loyalists in the summer of 1974 that I wish I'd been able to get into more.

This one was just two weeks before he resigned.

Those two columns I quoted by liberal Marquis Childs and conservative James J. Kilpatrick, in which they reprinted letters from diehard Nixon supporters, are really worth reading in full.

Some things never change.

Early on, I realized that the word count limit meant I'd need to focus on one slice of the congressional GOP (the HJC members) and wouldn't be able to address some of the other loyalists.

That meant leaving out Sen. Carl Curtis of Nebraska, who called Watergate a lynching:

The final deliberations of the House Judiciary Committee were interrupted -- twice -- by bomb threats.

I noted how the HJC Republicans who voted against impeachment later regretted it, but couldn't get this one last quote from Rep. Charlie Sandman in.

And I closed with a bit on Rep. Earl Landgrebe, who had distinguished himself as Nixon's biggest bootlicker.

I didn't get to cover his background, which included an episode in which he was detained in the USSR for smuggling Bibles.

Also, Rep. Landgrebe humiliated himself so completely that two weeks after Nixon's resignation, someone placed into the Congressional Record a (fake) speech from Landgreb.

In it, the congressman dramatically called for Nixon's return. The Irish setter line is perfect.