The following podcast contains explicit language.

In May of 1973, Gail Sheehy was out on assignment for New York magazine

to find some of Richard Nixon's most unwavering defenders.

It was the first day of the Watergate hearings that I installed myself on a bar stool

and Terry's bar in Astoria, Queens.

Sheehy went to Terry's bar every day for a week straight.

The customers there were blue collar Nixon voters.

They were iron workers, construction workers, elevator repairmen.

Sheehy's plan was to watch the Senate hearings alongside them

and talk to them about why they loved Nixon.

But when the bar owner put the hearings on TV and floated the idea with his regulars...

Hey guys, you want to watch that Watergate thing?

Their answer was unanimous.

Turn it off!

It wasn't just that they weren't interested.

As far as the bar flies at Terry's were concerned,

the Senate hearings were just a big show,

put on by liberals who wanted to take down the president.

Why should anyone reward them by watching?

Over the course of her week in Queens,

Sheehy got to know the president's people.

She found them to be angry, demoralized,

...