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A listener note, this episode previously aired in 2022.

Wondry.

Thank you. It's mid-2020. It's mid-July, and President Richard Nixon is lying in bed in a hospital outside Washington.

He stretches out his arms and legs and takes a deep breath.

The aches are mostly gone.

So is the hacking cough.

Nixon almost feels like himself again.

And that is a big relief.

Because just a few days ago,

Nixon's chief of staff found the president in bed coughing up blood.

Nixon was quickly admitted to the

hospital where doctors diagnosed him with viral pneumonia. The president knows that a lung

infection is nothing to shrug off. Still, it's not the biggest problem on his plate. Watergate

has continued to be a nightmare for Nixon's administration. It started just over a year ago

when a group of Nixon's operatives broke into Democratic

headquarters. The men were attempting to spy on the Democrats in order to help Nixon win

re-election. And while Nixon himself didn't order the break-in, he did orchestrate a cover-up

of the crime, all part of an effort to protect his administration and make the scandal go away.

...