Story highlights
President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday
The announcement of Comey's firing caused shock and surprise across Washington
Many people on Tuesday began likening President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director Jim Comey to President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” during which the former president ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
But the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum – located in Yorba Linda, California – doesn’t agree with that comparison.
The library’s social media account weighed in on the chatter.
FBI Director Comey fired: Related coverage
“FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian,” the Richard Nixon Library account said in a tweet.
Still, the comparisons continue.
Nixon, by the way, ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. But Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than comply with the order. Cox was eventually fired by the US solicitor general.
CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was among the chorus of voices who after Comney’s firing said he has not “seen anything like this” since 1973.
“This is not normal,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. “This is not politics as usual. This is something that is completely outside how the American law is supposed to work.”
The full story of Nixon and the “Saturday Night Massacre” is more complicated than the library makes out. Read about it here.
