"Nixonmaxxing" Takes Over: The Right Rebrands a Disgraced President

Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace back in 1974. The Watergate scandal made him the poster child for American political corruption. More than half a century later, the man who once insisted "I'm not a crook" has become an unlikely idol for a new generation of conservatives. Call it "Nixonmaxxing": internet slang for taking Nixon fandom to the extreme. He is going viral all over again, recast as a pioneer of "America First." The rebranding echoes President Donald Trump's own style, and some are now calling the long-dead Nixon Trump's "newest ally."

Nixon addresses the nation on Watergate, August 15, 1973.

Social media feeds are flooded with archival Nixon footage. Editors chop it into short clips and memes, set to music from popular American rappers, and the results spread fast. Young conservative influencers now wear merchandise printed with slogans like "Pretty Girls for Nixon" and "Nixon Now More Than Ever." Baseball caps, T-shirts and fanny packs bearing the word "Nixonmaxxing" have reportedly sold out within hours of hitting shelves.

"I'm not a crook" is trending again. Gen Z conservatives have made Nixon their idol.

From Disgraced President to Meme Icon

The Wall Street Journal reported on July 17 that young American conservatives are using TikTok and Instagram to recast Nixon as a pioneer who stood up to the establishment and the "deep state." Some American netizens have even joked online: "Is Nixon staging the greatest political comeback in history?"

Five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972 to plant wiretaps, and got caught in the act. The investigation that followed traced the break-in back to Nixon's re-election campaign. Nixon then tried to cover it up and failed, triggering the scandal that bears the building's name to this day.

The Simpsons has mocked Nixon for decades.

Ultimately, Nixon resigned in 1974, the only US president in history to leave office mid-term. Several of his aides went to prison, and Congress passed a wave of reforms curbing presidential power. Nixon and Watergate have served as staple material for American political satire ever since.

Nixon has long been a punching bag on American television. The Simpsons mocked him repeatedly over the years. Futurama went further, portraying him as a disembodied head floating in a jar. The 1999 comedy Dick built its entire plot around Watergate, poking fun at Nixon throughout.

Futurama's take: Nixon, reduced to a head in a jar.

The anonymous administrator behind the Instagram account "Kawaii Richard Nixon" told the US online magazine Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera that they don't fully support Nixon. But they believe Watergate overshadowed some genuine achievements of his presidency. "Watergate was of course wrong," the administrator said, "but compared to some of the things happening today, it's barely anything."

"Nixonmaxxing" caps sold out in hours.

Nixon's politics symbolize a bygone era, they added, one "completely different from today." He pushed through liberal policies such as establishing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and advanced cancer research. The administrator estimated that most of the account's followers are high school and college-age Gen-Zs.

The Trend Takes Hold in US Politics

The "Nixon craze" hasn't stayed on social media. It has taken root inside American political circles. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump has long admired Nixon. During his second term, Trump has repeatedly pushed back against the limits on presidential power that emerged after Watergate, a stance now echoed by senior Republican figures.

Trump wrote to Nixon in 1982, calling him "one of this country’s great men". The two kept up a correspondence for years afterward, bonding over shared grievances. Nixon wrote back in a 1990 letter: "Dear Donald — I know nothing about the intricacies of your business enterprises but the massive media attack on you puts me in your corner!"

Vance made the connection explicit in June. Speaking at an event at the Nixon Presidential Library in California, he said: "I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but I think deservedly so."

Vance, at the Nixon Library in June: Nixon's legacy is having "a renaissance."

Vance then compared Nixon's 1972 election victory directly with Trump's. He argued that the coalition returning both men to the White House was broader and more durable than the one that elected Ronald Reagan. "you know Reagan could not have won his landslide in 2024," Vance said, pointing to America's changing demographics, "Richard Nixon maybe could have won his landslide in 2024."

To some in this new generation of conservatives, Nixon is no longer labelled as Watergate's villain. He has become an "America First" pioneer instead, a tough president loathed by the mainstream media, besieged by investigative agencies, and ultimately brought down, in their view, by the "deep state."

Years of Rebranding Behind the Scenes

None of this happened by accident. The Nixon Foundation has quietly run a years-long rebranding campaign, working to re-present the former president's "historic achievements." Those include the Apollo moon landing and the Sino-US rapprochement.

Jim Byron, chairman of the Nixon Foundation, said planning began back in 2018. The goal was to repackage the more than 46 million documents and 3,700 hours of recordings held at the Nixon Presidential Library into short-video content. Once the foundation started posting clips on Instagram and TikTok, "We really saw it explode," Byron said. Some clips have racked up millions of views on YouTube.

A 2024 short video posted by the foundation, with selected footage from the old TV series “Mad Men” that features the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race, went viral on X. The clip opens with the character Don Draper's assessment of the two presidential candidates, waxing poetically about "the Abe Lincoln of California, a self-made man," before concluding: "Kennedy, I see a silver spoon. Nixon, I see myself."

The footage then cuts to photographs of Nixon set to music by an American rapper. In an accompanying recording, Nixon can be heard saying: "And believe me, when you’ve gone through the fires of having to work your way through school, of having to fight campaigns with no money, of having to do it on your own, you’ll come out a pretty strong man, and you’re not in awe of anybody."

Netizens have flooded the comments with praise. Many call Nixon "one of the most underrated presidents," while others say "we were probably too hard on Nixon."

Matthew Foldi, an editor at the conservative outlet Washington Examiner, said the Nixon Foundation once gave him a limited-edition baseball cap. It was printed with Nixon's iconic V-for-victory hand gesture.

A Mirror to America's Political Mood

Nixon's renewed popularity taps into something bigger. It reflects the hard-edged populism and nostalgia that have taken hold on the American right in recent years.

Conservative commentator Shashank Tripathi argues that Nixon represents "heterodox middle finger to the establishment". That is precisely what appeals to the young conservatives championing him. In their eyes, Nixon is no longer merely the "crook" of Watergate. He has become an early victim of the "deep state," a framing that resonates deeply with Trump supporters.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in 2024 that Watergate was actually a "deep-state coup" orchestrated by the CIA and FBI. Podcast host Joe Rogan later echoed similar claims on his own show, saying "the whole thing was set up by the government".

1982: Trump calls Nixon "one of this country’s great men." A friendship is born.

Republican political adviser Roger Stone revealed that Trump has repeatedly asked him why Nixon chose to resign rather than fight back. Stone believes that "Nixon was in fact brought down by the same deep-state institutions that tried to bring down Trump".

White House spokesman Kush Desai struck a similar note. He said former President Nixon exposed the betrayals of the deep state and the "fake news" media. Decades later, Desai added, President Trump continues fighting these entrenched interest groups on behalf of the American people.

The Wall Street Journal noted that those pushing to rehabilitate Nixon's reputation see it as more than restoring the standing of one president. It is also a challenge to the system of constraints on presidential power built up after Watergate.

Since the start of Trump's second term, the White House has taken a series of steps to weaken these constraints. These include expanding presidential control over fiscal spending, firing inspectors-general, and adjusting protections for career civil servants.

Conservative commentator Christopher Rufo has gone further still. Nixon's importance to the right, he says, lies in the fact that "America has been essentially stuck in the year 1968." The right, he argues, needs to launch a "counter-revolution."

Watergate holds fresh appeal today for a simple reason. Americans can now scarcely imagine a president choosing to resign with dignity, sparing the country a long, divisive impeachment battle on the principle of putting "America first" rather than himself first.

Today's "Nixonmaxxing" may have less to do with young Americans genuinely warming to Nixon himself. It works more as a mirror, reflecting present-day American society's fraught relationship with its own past, its institutions, its power structures and its political order.

Deep Throat

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

The future belongs to artificial general intelligence (AGI). China and the United States are pursuing different strategies in the contest for global leadership.

But one US national security think tank wants to take the rivalry to an extreme. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has gone so far as to suggest that Washington consider extreme measures to stop China from achieving AGI first.

CNAS released “Superpowers and AGI” report late last month.

Jacob Stokes, one of the report's authors and a former White House official, called on the US to prepare itself. He listed possible extreme measures, from diplomacy and espionage to cyberattacks and coercive steps. Among them: military strikes on Chinese data centers.

Stokes, one of the authors of the report urged extreme steps, even strikes on Chinese data centers.

CNAS is headquartered in Washington and was founded in 2007. It has long advised the US government on defense, Indo-Pacific and China strategy. Its lean is hawkish.

Late last month, CNAS released a report titled “Superpowers and AGI”. The document reeks of gunpowder. It argues that the race for AGI, and the technology's potential emergence, could profoundly affect US-China competition. It could also heighten the risk of military conflict or catastrophe on multiple fronts.

The Containment Checklist

To that end, the report urges US policymakers to act on several fronts. First, ensure that American resources and technology do not aid China's AI development. Second, establish AI-focused diplomatic channels with allies and with China, so that the potential emergence of AGI is placed on the agenda. Third, develop a technically sophisticated method to track the inputs into AGI and the key performance thresholds of frontier AI systems.

The list goes on. Washington should conduct scenario exercises testing when and how the US should intervene to halt China's AGI development. It should prepare to reverse-engineer or steal the technology should China obtain AGI first. And it should limit and contain the reach of authoritarian digital infrastructure.

The most extreme proposal of all is military strikes. The South China Morning Post reported on 4 September that Stokes, deputy director of CNAS's Indo-Pacific Security Program, addressed an online event on Thursday.

His message was blunt. The US Department of Defense, the National Security Agency and other agencies should begin assessing what intelligence would be needed to justify such operations. That would pave the way for the "hard action" to follow.

The Cold War Playbook

Stokes served as a national security staffer under former US president Barack Obama. In the report he unabashedly lays out a menu of what he calls "diplomatic, espionage, cyber and kinetic measures." Among them are military strikes on the data centers that train and run China's AGI systems. He even touts preventive strikes before China develops AGI at all.

Stokes goes so far as to compare the undertaking to the way "in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons." His declared method is to "work backwards from the science to the policy implications."

Citing assessments by research outfit Epoch AI, the report notes that the US currently leads China in advanced AI models by only "months." But it warns that China could pull off an "unexpected technological breakthrough" in fields such as robotics and "embodied AI."

Citing research institute Epoch AI data, the report sees China pulling off surprise breakthroughs.

Notably, Stokes also concedes a gap on the American side. The US government and its intelligence agencies have "not been organised for espionage to gather technological secrets for decades."

"The Height of Recklessness"

Stokes' extreme remarks have drawn questioning within the United States itself. William Hartung, a senior arms and defense budget expert at the Washington-based non-profit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), publicly slammed the report as "the height of recklessness."

Hartung warned that any strike on Chinese data centers would "risk starting a shooting war between two nuclear-armed powers". Such a war could bring tragic consequences for all concerned.

China has consistently maintained that AI should be people-centered and that intelligence should serve the good. Military applications must remain under human control. Beijing opposes turning technological issues into bloc confrontation or weaponry.

Make no mistake: technological competition is no casus belli. When individual American politicians and think-tank figures reach for threats of "military strikes" and "espionage" at every turn, they gravely violate the basic norms of international relations. They also expose a dangerous bid to politicize and militarize technology.