Hillary Clinton Post About JD Vance's Comments on Nixon Backfires Spectacularly
“Happy birthday to this future president.”
Come on, now. If you’re an internet user and politics junkie of a certain age, you don’t even have to search far in your mental database to retrieve the author of that gem.
In the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton — or at least some poor comms staffer who’s been working her way from barista to Starbucks district manager in the decade hence — was so confident she was going to win that she patted herself on the back thusly:
Happy birthday to this future president. pic.twitter.com/JT3HiBjYdj
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 26, 2016
She was a bit belated in her well-wishing; Donald Trump’s birthday is June 14, not Oct. 26.
Whatever the case, the tweet (yes, kids, they were once upon a time called that, and geezers like me — who miss the days when IRC, not Discord, was the group chat app of choice — will still always call them that) crystallized Clinton’s reputation as someone who could put her digital foot further in her digital mouth than she could IRL.
Considering this was a woman who could put size-16 Doc Martens in her maw without a smartphone, that’s some impressive gaffing game on the socials.
Some 10 years later, she thinks that she still has it.
As you may have heard three or so news cycles ago, social media was all a-twitter over the fact that Vice President J.D. Vance made a visit to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, quipping that Watergate would be “like a 12-hour news story” if it occurred today.
“I think Nixon’s historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so,” Vance said. “I joked that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.”
JD Vance: “I think Nixon’s historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so. I joked that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.” pic.twitter.com/osy0V3QLyN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 25, 2026
He also drew parallels between himself and Nixon in another very obvious joke.
“Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media,” Vance said. “It kind of sounds like J.D. Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”
Anyhow, jokes are never jokes to The New York Times, a paper that should have changed its motto from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “That’s NOT Funny” sometime in the 2010s. It ended up with this headline: “Vance Downplays Watergate and Compares Himself to Nixon.”
That Thursday story should have been the most pearl-clutching reaction to this, but Hillary Clinton apparently owns herself a lot of pearls and believes clutching is great exercise. Also, she loves social-media self-owns — so on Saturday, she became the story.
“Maybe Vance doesn’t know this history because it’s in one of the books his administration banned,” Clinton wrote on X, posting a screenshot of The New York Times’ headline.
“The difference between Watergate and now is that back then, Republicans actually did something about a law-breaking president,” she continued. “Today, they only roll over for their cult leader.”
Maybe Vance doesn’t know this history because it’s in one of the books his administration banned.
The difference between Watergate and now is that back then, Republicans actually did something about a law-breaking president. Today, they only roll over for their cult leader. pic.twitter.com/LO01hbE92T
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 27, 2026
Sure, “Happy birthday to this future president” was the more infamous of the posts, but it was only wrong in one way. This managed to both miss Vance’s jokes, but also be wrong in several different ways.
First: Which books have been banned by Donald Trump’s administration or other Republicans? Which book can’t you buy? And which book specifically about the Nixon administration or Watergate? Spoiler alert: Zilch.
What book has the administration banned? This is so unserious. https://t.co/1wMpl2MjSA
— Tricia McLaughlin (@TriciaOhio) June 28, 2026
Then there’s also the allegation that Clinton was a staff attorney for the Watergate inquiry who was fired for unethical behavior:
For background.
Hillary Clinton worked on the Watergate investigation until she was kicked out for unethical behavior. https://t.co/F6MQNFgxRD— Robert ‘Landfill’osophy’ Yerkes (@robert_yerkes) June 28, 2026
This is rich coming from a woman who literally wrote a legal brief arguing that Nixon didn’t have a right to counsel during his impeachment hearing. Especially since her husband went to have his own impeachment hearing.
I am posting a link to the best five minute explanation of… https://t.co/Dj9hpopR7e
— Dave Browning (@DaveWBrowning) June 28, 2026
This is kind of untrue, as The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler pointed out in 2016, but the truth is arguably worse. Kessler was forced to acknowledge that her supervisor on the inquiry, Jerry Zeifman — a Democrat, mind you — didn’t precisely have kind things to say about her:
In neither of his books does Zeifman say he fired Clinton. But in 2008, a reporter named Dan Calabrese wrote an article that claimed that “when the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.” The article quoted Zeifman as saying: “She was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.” …
There is no actual quote from Zeifman saying he fired her. Moreover, in other interviews, Zeifman acknowledged that he did not fire Clinton. In 1999, nine years before the Calabrese interview, Zeifman told the Scripps-Howard news agency: “If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her.” In a 2008 interview on “The Neal Boortz Show,” Zeifman was asked directly whether he fired her. His answer: “Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were — we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not — could not recommend her for any further positions.”
But perhaps the most important point on the matter was made by National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, who noted — or “pounced upon,” given that he’s a conservative — Clinton’s quote, “The difference between Watergate and now is that back then, Republicans actually did something about a law-breaking president.”
“If only we could find the people who started this whole thing of a national party closing ranks behind a president who committed felonies in office,” McLaughlin wrote, while posting a popular meme from Netflix’s “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” regarding a sketch where everyone’s trying to find out who crashed a car shaped like a hot dog.
If only we could find the people who started this whole thing of a national party closing ranks behind a president who committed felonies in office. https://t.co/eQVjKhapWQ pic.twitter.com/ZE8s3j9ZBD
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 27, 2026
Yeah — which party was that? Which party decided that you could lie to the American people, commit perjury and obstruction of justice, and get away with it?
And more critically, who was married to the person who committed those offenses and got impeached for them?
Maybe the Starr Report is the only book the Trump administration has banned, because therein you’ll find the answer.
Of course, neither of Trump’s impeachments involved actual perjury or obstruction of justice, unlike former President Bill Clinton’s did when it came down to whether he had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
In that way, she should welcome the idea that maybe we’re looking at Nixon’s presidency a bit differently, probably because she and her husband believed that lying under oath and encouraging others to do the same over an affair with an intern should be treated as a 12-hour news story. Same with running an email server with classified information on it out of your home.
Congratulations, though, Hillary. If history reevaluates X posts the same way it evaluates White Houses, “Happy birthday to this future president” might not be the dumbest thing you’ve ever written on the platform.
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