Tom Brokaw: Obama’s Scandals Aren’t As Big As Watergate, Iran-Contra, Or Even Abu Ghraib

NBC Newsman Tom Brokaw dismissed the significance of the various scandals surrounding President Barack Obama‘s White House on Thursday. Asked about the scandals like the targeting of conservatives by the IRS and the Department of Justice’s subpoenaing the communications records of journalists, Brokaw said that they do not compare to scandals involving past administrations including those of Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.

“With regard to the IRS and AP scandals, we hear the word ‘Watergate’ thrown around a lot,” The Cycle co-host Touré said. “Are these actually Watergate-esque?”

“No,” Brokaw replied. “Watergate was a constitutional crisis of the highest order.”

“For political purposes, I can see why people would make that [comparison],” Brokaw added. He said that Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote that the IRS scandal is the worst of its kind since Watergate, but she did not account for scandals that had occurred in the 1980s and 2000s.

“I was covering Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration when she was working for that president,” Brokaw added, “in which we were funding a war illegally. We were trying to make a deal with the Iranians at the time. That was a pretty big damn scandal.”

“Abu Ghraib was a big scandal and how it – no one was really held accountable for it,” Brokaw concluded. “This happens in every administration, and it’s happening again.”

Watch the clip below via MSNBC:

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