Transcript
A (0:01)
Hey, Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy. Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me. They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
B (0:24)
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
C (0:32)
In 1972, the year of the Watergate break in, President Richard Nixon was running for re election. The front runner in the Democratic primary was Senator Ed Muskie from Maine, and Nixon saw him as a real threat. The Democrat Nixon wanted to run against was Senator George McGovern from South Dakota. He was an unapologetically left wing and anti war candidate. He could be easily tarred as a friend to dope smoking communists. The famous attack line on McGovern was that he stood for acid amnesty and abortion. So Nixon's henchmen worked hard during 1971 and 72 to undermine Muskie and to deliver the nomination to McGovern. Essentially to pick their opponent. They employed some truly wild schemes to achieve their goal. Here's Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
D (1:17)
They hired a man named Elmer Wyatt, who was Muskie's chauffeur, but they got.
C (1:23)
Him hired as the driver.
D (1:25)
He volunteered, and so Muskie accepted him as a volunteer, and the Nixon people paid him $1,000 a month.
C (1:34)
Elmer Wyatt was a retired cab driver when he was hired to spy on the Muskie campaign. One of his jobs as a volunteer was to ferry documents from Muskie's Senate office to campaign headquarters.
D (1:44)
There were so many documents of Xerox that Wyatt rented an apartment, a Xerox machine, and then would stop and make copies of everything and send them to the Nixon campaign.
C (2:03)
That was just one of the many methods of interference the Nixon campaign engaged in while working to undermine Ed Muskie. Some of the others were just petty. On more than one occasion, members of Nixon's team sneaked into a hotel where the Muskie people were staying, stole all their shoes from the hallway and threw them in a dumpster. But others were less like hijinks and more like cynical acts of fraud. Voters in New Hampshire got phone calls in the middle of the night from people claiming to be Muskie supporters from Harlem. The callers, who had actually been hired by the Nixon campaign, spoke in quote unquote black accents and informed the white New Hampshireites on the other end of the line that Muskie would Deliver full justice for black people. All of this trickery got into Muskie's head and he came to a breaking point In February of 72, when a new Hampshire newspaper published a fake letter to the editor that had been planted by the Nixon campaign. In the letter, Muskie was accused of laughing when a member of his staff referred to French Canadians by the insulting term Canucks. The newspaper also ran an unflattering piece about Muskie's wife, which portrayed her as unladylike for telling off color jokes and smoking cigarettes. In response to these attacks, Muskie delivered a speech in front of the newspaper's offices. He defended himself and his wife, and he called out the newspaper's publisher.