The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022)

I was in junior high when Nixon resigned as president, and I have to say that while it was a lived experience, I really knew nothing of politics. So this film was eye opening, and reiterates that Trump is the most recent bad guy in the White House, he was operating from Nixon's playbook. In 1968, when Richard Nixon was elected the 37th president of the United States, Margaret Mitchell came to Washington with her husband John N. Mitchell, a former law partner of Nixon’s who, having run his successful campaign, the president had just named his Attorney General. But while the Mitchells moved into the Watergate Complex and beltway society, Martha had no use for the usual duties and decorum of a Washington wife. Instead, she made expressive quotes to the media, and cultivated late-night telephone relationships with journalists and favored newspapers. In a doggedly anti-press administration, Mitchell saw her role as one of openness, to which papers and pop media responded. Mitchell even appeared in a sketch on a 1971 episode of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In alongside Lily Tomlin. But when the reporter HelenThomas printed Mitchell’s negative assessment of the Vietnam War, trouble ensued. No one could be seen to buck the GOP party line. From the Watergate break in to Nixon's resignation and her husband's arrest, the attempt to shut her up and how she evaded that is priceless.