Thirty-nine years ago, disgraced Republican President Richard Nixon announced his exit from the Oval Office.
August 8, 1974 goes down in American history as one of those "I'll never forget where I was" days, said msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell. It was “when the worst president in history announced he was resigning,” he said.
“I will never forget the awe that I felt upon realizing that the system of checks and balances had actually worked,” said O’Donnell. “The courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Congress had allowed the head of the Executive Branch to be investigated through normal judicial and congressional processes--and the weight of their evidence against the president was so powerful that he decided to, in effect, plead guilty by becoming the first and only President of the United States to resign.”