This is from a review by Nixon biographer Richard Reeves of a new book by Henry Kissinger:

But Mr. Kissinger does not really believe in democracy. Neither did Nixon. Their fatal flaw was the contempt they had for American institutions—and Americans. The real enemies in their many books are, routinely, not the totalitarians they publicly and militarily opposed, but the Congress, the press and that misguided electorate....

I worked on the Nixon Presidency for the better part of 10 years, and found some of what I just said difficult to understand, at least at first. If one thing brought that together for me—and it was what I thought of while reading this book—it was something told me by Winston Lord, who was Mr. Kissinger’s principal assistant at the National Security Council and was often part of conversations between the President and his National Security Advisor. "They deliberately mirrored adversaries who were secretive," said Lord. "In China, only two or three people were involved in decision-making."

Not an exact parallel to the present day, but...