Placing Trump's Firing Of Comey In Historical Context

President Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey has drawn historical comparisons to the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973, in which President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor who had been investigating the Watergate scandal.

But historians Brian Balogh (@historyfellow) and Nathan Connolly (@ndbconnolly) tell Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson that to fully understand the relationship between a president and FBI director, one must look further back to J. Edgar Hoover, who oversaw the bureau under six presidents from 1924 to 1972.

Balogh and Connolly are co-hosts of the podcast BackStory, which is produced at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.