At a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday, JD Vance promoted his book Communion and discussed his conversion from atheism to Catholicism. During the event, he stated that if the Watergate scandal had occurred in the current media environment, it would have dominated news coverage for about 12 hours and would not have led to a presidential resignation. Vance added that the institutions that brought down Nixon were the same that pursued investigations into Donald Trump during his first term, when Trump was impeached twice, once for actions related to Ukraine and once for the January 6 Capitol attack. He said Nixon’s legacy is experiencing a renaissance, with renewed attention to his diplomatic efforts that ended the Vietnam War and opened relations with China, and described Nixon as a political genius with whom he shares traits. Vance noted that Nixon was a young senator, vice president, author of bestselling books, and was widely disliked by the media, and said this resembles his own profile. He did not mention Nixon’s role as president.