After President Donald J. Trump tweeted — without any apparent grounds — a title that his forerunner Barack Obama had Trump ’s " wires tapped " in New York City ’s Trump Tower , it seemed only a affair of time until somebody would refer to Trump ’s accusations asTowergate . And the uproar around the Trump administration ’s Russian relationships have taken the nameRussiagate .
So where ’s all this " -gate " stuff coming from , anyway ? Back in 1972 , when operatives of President Richard Nixon ’s re - election campaign werecaught break into the officesof the Democratic National Committee in Washington’sWatergate complex . The expose of that scandal and the subsequent back - up elbow grease leave to Nixon ’s surrender in 1974 . But it had another consequence as well . affix the " -gate " suffix to the name ofa malicious gossip — whether great or modest , actual or imagine — quickly became a convention for headline writers everywhere , and surprisingly rapidly .
During the Jimmy Carter governance , the 1980 scandal over whether the president ’s brother Billy Carter and his tie-in to the Libyan regime became known as Billygate . President Ronald Reagan was look withDebategatein 1983 after it became know crusade stave had access code to his opponent ’s briefing books before a debate , and in 1986,Iran - Contragateerupted when it became evident that official in his governance secretly sold branch to the Persian regime in exchange for the tone ending of hostages , and then divert the proceeds to illegally build up Nicaraguan contra militant . In the late nineties , President Bill Clinton ’s legal troubles over his affair with White House houseman Monica Lewinsky became have sex asMonicagate . In the mid-2000s , the controversy that plagued the Bush administration over the blown top of CIA secret agent Valerie Plame Wilson became known asPlamegate . After the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya shoot down four Americans in 2012 , some critic of the Obama administration started talk aboutBenghazigate .
And that ’s just in the United States . AsAlex Seitz - Wal noted in The Atlantic in 2014 , headline writers in at least 10 countries have grafted " -gate " onto their own countries ' malicious gossip — some of them considerably less consequential than Watergate . In the 2010s , Canada had itsPastagateover a Quebec Gallic speech regulation that compel Italian eating place to rename particular on their menus . In 2016 , a news photo of British Prime Minister Theresa May clad in high-priced designer leather pant was quickly dubbedTrousergate .
In recent years , the " -gate " suffix has migrated into other realms beyond political sympathies — such as the NFL’sDeflategateandDonutgate , the minor tumultuousness that ensued after a security department camera captured singer Ariana Grande lap a tray of donuts . And in 2012 , on the 40th anniversary of the Watergate Hotel burglary , the proliferation of " gate " force Washington Post writer Monica Hesseto lamentthat " all of the salacious occurrences of the world — the fraud and felony and loose - zip failure — have been corralled together to reside in one vast gated community . "
With the suffix losing its shameful ambiance , maybe it ’s time to take a break from naming any more " -gates . " Perhaps we could call it Hiatusgate .
