Editor's Note: (Michael D'Antonio is the author of the new book, "The Truth About Trump." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.)
(CNN) As Donald Trump tries to shift the presidential campaign narrative away from accusations of sexual assault and his boasts about groping women, he's reviving themes, and a style, America has not heard so clearly since the Nixon years. Indeed, with a candidate tutored by one of Nixon's dirty tricksters facing an opponent who worked for the Congressional committee that investigated Watergate, we may be witnessing the last skirmish in the only political war that ever brought down an American president.
Trump's current emphasis, offered at recent rallies, has been on what he terms the corruption of the "establishment" that supposedly controls America in collaboration with "media corporations" who recognize in him an "existential threat." Leaving out only the Illuminati, his argument is a fever dream of conspiracy theories that evokes Nixon at his paranoid worst.
The main difference is that, unlike Nixon, Trump constructed his multi-billion-dollar brand, and his presidential bid, with the ample assistance of the media he now scapegoats. How strange it must be for a man who has received free publicity worth billions of dollars to find himself feeling victimized by the press.
For Nixon, journalists became a sworn enemy in 1962 when he was defeated in the race for governor of California and declared, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." In fact it wasn't Nixon's last press conference because, like Trump, he couldn't resist the lure of attention and power. He was back to run for president in 1968, getting advice from a young Roger Ailes (now the disgraced founder of Fox News and a Trump adviser), who helped him adjust to the medium of television.
Richard Nixon's life and career
President Richard Nixon was in the White House from 1969 to 1974, when he became the first president to resign from office. He died at 81 in 1994. Here's a look at his life and legacy:
Nixon was born in California on January 9, 1913. He is pictured at age 4.
As a teenager, Nixon poses for a portrait with a violin in 1927.
Nixon, No. 12, and his football teammates at Whittier College pose for a picture in the 1930s. After graduating from Whittier, he attended law school at Duke University.
During World War II, Nixon served as a lieutenant commander in the Navy.
Nixon, far right, stands next to John F. Kennedy and other freshmen members of Congress in 1947.
Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower and his running mate, Richard Nixon, with their wives at the Republican National Convention in Chicago on July 12, 1952. The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket won the election that year.
Vice President Nixon, right, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, center, share a laugh during Nixon's visit to the Soviet Union in 1959. The two leaders engaged in an informal debate about the merits of capitalism versus communism at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow.
Nixon poses for a portrait with his wife, Pat, and their daughters, Tricia and Julie, circa 1958.
Vice President Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy take part in a televised debate during their 1960 presidential campaign. Kennedy won the election that year.
Republican presidential candidate Nixon campaigns in New York in 1960.
Nixon addresses supporters after winning his party's nomination again in 1968. He went on to defeat the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
First lady Pat Nixon, center, watches as her husband is sworn in as the 37th president of the United States by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren on January 20, 1969.
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin laugh with President Nixon aboard the USS Hornet on July 24, 1969. The president was on hand to greet the astronauts after their splashdown in the Pacific.
In 1970, Nixon announces the invasion of Cambodia to the American public.
Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai toasts with Nixon during his trip to China in February 1972.
President Nixon, left, briefs the Congressional leadership in 1973 before his televised announcement of the ceasefire in the Vietnam War. From left are Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House Carl Albert, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
In 1972, Nixon ran a successful re-election campaign. Gerald Ford, right, became his vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973.
Surrounded by family members, Nixon delivers his resignation speech on August 9, 1974. He stepped down after the Watergate scandal, which stemmed from a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices during the 1972 campaign.
Nixon leaves the White House after his resignation over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
Former President Nixon is wired for a microphone on April 9, 1988, before the taping of the NBC television show "Meet the Press." It was his first appearance on the show since 1968.
Days after suffering a stroke, Nixon died in New York on April 22, 1994. A military honor guard carries Nixon's casket at the Stewart Air Force Base before the flight back to his hometown of Yorba Linda, California. His body was put on the same Boeing 707 that flew him home after his resignation.
Once Nixon was in office, Vice President Spiro Agnew served as his anti-press attack dog. But instead of crude, Trump-like rants -- Trump says reporters are "scum" and "slime" and "disgusting" -- Agnew preferred the elegant "nattering nabobs of negativity." When Agnew was driven out of office in a bribery scandal in 1973, Nixon added the press to his portfolio of complaint, which included grievances against many groups of people he considered elites.
Nixon came to his anger in a natural way. Born into a poor family, he long nursed grudges against people he perceived as haughty, over-privileged snobs. He took this chip-on-the-shoulder attitude into politics where, in his successful 1950 Senate campaign, he smeared his opponent as a secret communist. (His campaign also placed phone calls in which she was described as a "movie Jew.") Nixon believed, in the words of Roger Stone, "You had to galvanize those who shared your values, resentments, and anger to reach a governing majority by winning an election."
A young Stone served Nixon by planting false stories about his opponents during the 1972 campaign. After his president was driven from office by the Watergate scandal, Stone became one of the Nixon alumni who would convert the trauma of disgrace into decades of seeking to settle scores. Like Nixon's first campaign manager, who said "the purpose of an election is not to defeat an opponent, but to destroy him," Stone takes a scorched-earth approach that includes promoting conspiracy theories, such as the notion that Lyndon Johnson was behind John F. Kennedy's assassination.
In the current campaign, he is best known for developing outrageous theories about both Clintons, including much of the material Trump now uses, without proof, to argue that Bill committed many sexual assaults, and somehow it is Mrs. Clinton who should be scorned for enabling him.
During the 1992 campaign, an Arkansas state government worker named Gennifer Flowers told reporters she had a long-time affair with Democratic candidate Bill Clinton. Clinton aggressively denied Flowers' allegation and went on to defeat President George H.W. Bush in November. Click through the gallery for more campaign scandals throughout history:
Some presidential candidates didn't survive their scandals. In 1987, the Miami Herald reported that White House hopeful Gary Hart, a former Democratic Colorado senator, was having an affair with a young model. Hart challenged the media to prove the allegations. Soon after, the National Enquirer obtained photographs of a model named Donna Rice sitting on Hart's lap on a yacht named Monkey Business. Once the pictures were published, Hart dropped out of the race.
Democratic presidential nominee Sen. George McGovern, right, chose Sen. Thomas Eagleton, left, as his running mate in 1972. But when it was revealed that Eagleton had been hospitalized for depression where he underwent electroshock therapy, the scandal was enough to force him off the ticket. He was replaced by a Kennedy in-law and former director of the Peace Corps, Sargent Shriver. McGovern lost in a landslide to Republican incumbent Richard Nixon.
When Nixon was running as Dwight Eisenhower's Republican vice presidential nominee in 1952, a scandal over a dog nearly got him thrown off the ticket. Nixon was accused of accepting inappropriate campaign funds. A supporter also gave Nixon a pet cocker spaniel, which the family had named Checkers. Nixon went on TV and delivered an emotional speech defending himself. In a stroke of political wizardry, the speech included Checkers. "... the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it," he said. The speech worked. Eisenhower kept Nixon on the ticket, and they won election to the White House six weeks later.
During the 1884 election, Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering a child with an unmarried women. Cleveland's campaign disputed that he was the father, but they did admit that Cleveland knew the mother, according to Smithsonian.com. Voters didn't seem to mind too much. Despite his scandal, Cleveland won his race for the White House.
The 1872 campaign of President Ulysses Grant was muddied by a massive bribery scandal involving the Union Pacific Railroad and a construction company called Crédit Mobilier of America. The scandal implicated Grant's vice presidential nominee, Henry Wilson. Nonetheless, both men easily skated into office.
Long before he ran for President, Andrew Jackson married his wife, Rachel, in 1791. Later they discovered that her previous husband had not gotten a proper divorce. After they fixed it, the Jacksons quietly remarried in 1794. During the 1828 election campaign, Jackson's opponents spread rumors that he'd slept with Rachel while she was married to another man. Although words such as "adultery" and "bigamy" were thrown around like bombs, Jackson still managed to win the election.
Trump wasn't born poor. In fact his father was one of the richest men in America. However, he was an outer borough kind of fellow who found himself snubbed by Manhattan society, and this rejection hurt. In the early 1970s, ironically enough, the Nixon administration charged his family firm with discrimination against black applicants for apartments. Trump responded with pugnacious aggression, claiming "reverse discrimination" in a lawsuit that was soon dismissed.
Later came reports of his prejudicial view of Jews and African-Americans and a stream of his own racially insensitive remarks. Having received an admiring letter from the ex-president himself -- "whenever you decide to run for office you'll be a winner!" -- Trump began to express himself as a Nixon-like law-and-order tough guy as he bought newspaper ads to advocate for the death penalty. He expressed resentment over affirmative action and opposed marriage equality for gays and lesbians.
During the current presidential race, Trump has borrowed one of Nixon's catch phrases, calling his supporters the "silent majority." Like Nixon, who said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war, Trump says he has a secret plan to defeat ISIS.
His main campaign theme of "Make America Great Again" evokes nostalgia for the 1950s, when the United States dominated world affairs and heterosexual white males enjoyed unchallenged primacy. In Trump's view, as in Nixon's, rivals are enemies who lurk everywhere and form wicked conspiracies.
In a recent campaign speech, Trump gathered all of his enemies together and described them as participants in a vast conspiracy intended not only to defeat him, but to destroy the country. Clinton resides at the heart of the conspiracy because, he said, she "meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors."
Historically, the term "international banks" has been modified with the word "Jewish" by those who seek to exploit anti-Semitism for political purposes. Today, just as overt racism is socially unacceptable, anti-Semitic views about international finance are beyond the pale. But there's no mistaking the dog whistle signal Trump offered as he spoke of a "small handful of global special interests rigging the system."
At the Florida rally where Trump made these accusations, he was interrupted several times by cries of "Lock her up! Lock her up!" The chant echoed Trump's promise that, if elected, he will seek his opponent's prosecution and imprisonment. Trump's threat, which defies our democratic traditions, went beyond anything Nixon ever said, even though he did seek to use the government to punish his enemies. Trump, who seems willing to take Nixonism to its logical end, might consider how it worked out for the man who created the art form.