It’s beginning to feel a lot like the 1970s. No, not because of all the talk of NASA’s Apollo program—or the pending release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I’m referring more precisely to 1973 and 1974, when a special prosecutor named Leon Jaworski was busy building a case against President Richard Nixon and his inner circle; House Democrats were scheduling appointments to grill Nixon’s advisers; and the daily news cycle became punctuated by phrases like “smoking gun” and “unindicted co-conspirator.” History, to borrow from Karl Marx, repeats itself—first as tragedy, second as reality TV.

And yet what we are witnessing in Washington these days is less like The Apprentice than it is like a premium-cable series centered on several intertwined scandals, an epic, binge-worthy drama replete with serial liars, corrupt antagonists, and a huge and hapless ensemble cast. In fact, the ever expanding set of crises that define The Trump Show has only one predecessor—Watergate—in terms of the sheer number of colorful, conniving, and improbable bit players.

Yes, there have been other presidential scandals with other scoundrels, opportunists, and well-meaning innocents thrust into history’s maw. The Iran-contra affair, during the Reagan ’80s, had an extraordinary array of characters caught up in a plan to trade weapons to help free American hostages. There were foreign intermediaries (such as Nicaraguan contra leader Adolfo Calero and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar), shadowy desperados (Richard Secord, Albert Hakim), and a National Security Council aide named Fawn Hall, falsely accused of smuggling top secret documents in her bra. The crises that dogged Bill Clinton had their own salty assortment: from shady fabulists and nemeses (Cliff Jackson and David Brock stand out) to a veritable 1990s Moe, Larry, and Curly (Independent Counsel Ken Starr, literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, and Monica Lewinsky’s duplicitous confidante-coworker, Linda Tripp).

Watergate and Russiagate, however, are in another class altogether. Watergate’s cast of characters was arguably Game of Thrones grade. The scandal had a turncoat White House counsel (John Dean), a headstrong FBI associate director (Mark Felt, who was later revealed to be “Deep Throat,” the confidential source who had leaked secrets to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein), a villainous ex-attorney general (John Mitchell), his outspoken spouse (Martha Mitchell, who was silenced and smeared after she deigned to complain about the Nixon administration), a pretorian guard of advisers (led by H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman), a doddering presidential mouthpiece (Nixon’s businessman-buddy Bebe Rebozo), a media bête noire (the Washington Post), a secret Nixon “enemies list,” a prevaricating communications staff and a squad of burglars, “dirty tricksters,” and so-called plumbers (most notably the spooks G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt).

Russiagate, nearly a half century later, has a comparably madcap ensemble. Among its players are a turncoat personal attorney (Michael Cohen, now in jail), a headstrong former FBI director (James Comey), a neutered and cast-off attorney general (Jeff Sessions), two formerly silenced women who claim to have had affairs with the president (Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels), a pretorian guard of family members-cum-advisers (Jared Kushner and Trump siblings Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr.), a doddering and now sidelined presidential mouthpiece (Rudy Giuliani), a media “enemies list” (the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc.), a prevaricating communications staff, and a squad of Trump-whisperers, including one Roger Stone, who began his career working for none other than…Richard M. Nixon. In addition, Donald Trump has had his own roster of renegades, such as the mogul mercenary Erik Prince, Stone, and his coterie (including Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg, consultant Jason Sullivan, conservative writer Jerome Corsi, radio host Randy Credico, and “Manhattan Madam” Kristin Davis), as well as the guilty-as-charged Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, Alex van der Zwaan, and Richard Pinedo.