Why Gen-Z Conservatives Are Rediscovering Richard Nixon Online

Online videos splicing archival footage of Richard Nixon with rap music have racked up hundreds of millions of views over the past year, fueling a trend conservative media have dubbed "Nixonmaxxing." The clips, many produced or amplified by the Richard Nixon Foundation, present the 37th president — who resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal — as a combative outsider rather than a disgraced figure, according to reporting by The American Spectator and the Richard Nixon Foundation's own blog.

What is "Nixonmaxxing"?

The name borrows from "looksmaxxing," an internet term for optimizing one's appearance, and applies it to Nixon's image. The Richard Nixon Foundation has leaned into the trend, selling merchandise with slogans such as "Pretty girls for Nixon" that has sold out repeatedly, The American Spectator reported. The foundation's Instagram following nearly doubled to about 113,000 over the past year, per the same report.

Jim Byron, president and CEO of the Richard Nixon Foundation since November 2021, has pushed the organization to reach younger audiences through social media, according to his Wikipedia biography. He appeared alongside Next 250 PAC founder CJ Pearson on Fox News' "Fox News @ Night" on October 20, 2026, to discuss Nixon's legacy, according to the network's video listing.

Why Nixon, and why now

Conservative outlets attribute the appeal less to ideology than to a sense of shared grievance. The American Spectator reported that many Gen-Z conservatives now see Nixon as a victim of what the magazine calls the "deep state," a framing that echoes how they view Donald Trump's legal and media battles. AMAC Newsline made a similar point, arguing that after watching the national media and federal bureaucracy treat Trump the way they treated Nixon, young people are increasingly suspicious that Nixon, too, was treated unfairly.

Vice President JD Vance has publicly endorsed the reassessment. Speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, in June 2026, Vance said Nixon's legacy was enjoying "a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so," and argued that "if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story," according to Newsweek's report on the event, which drew applause from the audience.

Newsweek reported that CNN commentator David Axelrod called Vance's remarks "mind-boggling," noting that Watergate involved a White House-directed burglary, a cover-up using federal agencies, criminal convictions and recorded evidence of Nixon's direct involvement — factual elements Axelrod said Vance's comparison glossed over.

The Nixon Foundation's own case

In an August 2026 post titled "The Rise of Richard Nixon," the Richard Nixon Foundation argued the renewed interest reflects three things: generational distance from Watergate itself, renewed attention to policy achievements such as Title IX, the Environmental Protection Agency, the opening of relations with China and the end of the military draft, and a broader distrust of "establishment" media and government narratives. The post did not cite specific viewership or attendance figures but referenced coverage in outlets including The Wall Street Journal and Blaze Media.

Not every conservative is convinced

The trend has also drawn criticism from within conservative media. Writing in The American Spectator, Alex Adkins argued Nixon is "the wrong hero for the New Right," pointing to a domestic record that expanded government rather than shrinking it: Nixon created the EPA, OSHA and the Federal Election Commission, more than doubled federal welfare spending, imposed wage and price controls, and ended the dollar's link to gold. Adkins also noted that three of Nixon's four Supreme Court appointees later voted for Roe v. Wade, and that Nixon instituted an early form of affirmative action by executive order.

Adkins concluded that Nixon "did nothing to build up conservative institutions and left movement conservatives dormant after he resigned" until Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 — a direct rebuttal to the online framing of Nixon as a proto-MAGA figure.

What this says about today's right

The split is less about Nixon himself than about how parts of the conservative movement relate to institutional power and media scrutiny, according to the competing accounts reviewed here. Figures like Vance and the Nixon Foundation frame Watergate-era investigations as a template for what they describe as later efforts against Trump, while critics such as Adkins insist on judging Nixon by conservative policy standards rather than by his conflicts with the press.