The following podcast contains explicit language.

In May of 1973, Gail Sheehee 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. Shehee 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. Shee'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, Sheehi got to know the president's people.

She found them to be angry, demoralized, and disconcertingly comfortable with the idea of a police state run by Richard Nixon.

Terry, the bar owner, told Sheihi that you need some strong man on the top now to start whipping everything into shape.

It might scare some people. It doesn't scare me.

Behind the bar, Terry had hung up a novelty certificate that said,

Nobody of the Year award.

And that's the way these guys felt. They were nobody's, except that Richard Nixon gave

them an identity. Richard Nixon was the tough guy who was going to get rid of all those

...