From Green Eagle:
When I was living in England in the early eighties, I had several people ask me why, after all he had done, the seemingly minor affair of the Watergate break-in destroyed Richard Nixon’s career and cost him the most powerful job on earth. Here is the answer I came up with:
There were always two narratives about Nixon; Nixon, the great statesman and master politician, and, to be blunt, Nixon the crook. Just enough people were induced to believe the statesman story to project Nixon into the Presidency, and keep him there four years later.
What caused Watergate to destroy him was that the incident, minor or not, was simply incompatible with the statesman narrative, but fit perfectly into the crook story. This caused enough people to switch which tale they believed, that he lost all support, and had to go.
And this, I believe, may be the result of the current news about Trump calling American soldiers suckers and losers.