During Nixon’s time, Americans could only get their news from a few outlets; if they wanted anything less mainstream than the NBC Nightly News, they had to seek out the Whole Earth catalog or their local Ron Paul-esque kook and his facsimiled newsletter. The internet has democratized information, but it has also muddied the waters. In 2017, we are all denizens of a customizable media reality that has never felt more subjective. Pre-web, a person at odds with the mainstream opinion about what the truth is would be pushed to the margins. Now, the president himself has endorsed a fringe news outlet that denies that the murder of dozens of children in Sandy Hook ever happened. We no longer agree what the definition of “is” is. The margins have gone mainstream.

Watergate fantasy porn neglects to realistically establish that Watergate was a series of freakish lightning strikes. It’s hard to imagine how they could replicate themselves in 2017. Even if the public trusted the press as they did in the early 1970s (they don’t), or if Trump is actually guilty of prosecutable wrongdoing as recognized by those in a position to prosecute (we don’t know, but are acting as though we do), or if Congress, given Trump’s theoretical wrongdoing, would move to impeach (also unknown), there’s the not-small problem of Trump’s supporters. They’re not going anywhere, and the reasons they were drawn to Trump aren’t going anywhere.