Missouri senator says it’s a waste of time to study history because it was a long time ago

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a fierce defender of President Donald Trump, is very upset that the House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from a Watergate-era figure on Monday about presidential obstruction. His reasoning: Watergate happened a long time ago.

John Dean, who was White House counsel for President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, will testify before the panel as part of a hearing entitled “Lessons from the Mueller Report: Presidential Obstruction and Other Crimes.” In 1974, the same committee approved articles of impeachment against Nixon alleging obstruction of justice. (Nixon resigned before the full House of Representatives could vote on impeachment.)

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Rather than learning from history, however, Hawley, 39, thinks it would be better to simply ignore it.

Asked by Fox News on Monday about the Dean hearing, Hawley decried it as a “ridiculous” waste of time and “theater to distract” from prescription drug prices and border security.

“Talk about living in the past,” he said. “The Democrats want to talk about Watergate? I mean this happened before I was born! This is a total waste of time. It’s a total waste of time.”