Nixon insisted to editors: "I am not a crook"
On this day · 17 November 1973
Cornered by Watergate, Nixon assured 400 newspaper editors at Disney World he had never profited from public office.
On November 17, 1973, with Watergate closing in, President Richard Nixon faced more than 400 Associated Press managing editors at a televised question-and-answer session inside Disney’s Contemporary Resort near Orlando, Florida.
Pressed about his finances and whether he had enriched himself in office, Nixon delivered the line that outlived everything else he said that night.
“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.”
The give-and-take ran over an hour and covered Watergate, his taxes, and the missing tape gaps. Yet history remembers a single defensive sentence. Far from settling doubts, the phrase became shorthand for a presidency unraveling. Less than nine months later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned rather than face near-certain impeachment, the only U.S. president to leave office that way. The protest had effectively confirmed the question.
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