Watergate happened in audio. Bless his patriotic soul, President Nixon generously bugged his own offices and tapped his own phones. It was Nixon’s own unmistakable voice, conspiring on dirty tricks and putative obstruction of justice, that checkmated him.

President Trump is also his own wiretap, and he may yet checkmate himself. But he uses another medium, another form of speech and another genre to wreck himself. Trump’s chronic self-incrimination — most of it, anyway — is not audio; it exists in tweets and on TV.