Historian exposes Trump’s corruption escape hatch — and how to shut it down

U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor "Angel Families" who have lost family members to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

The president has a secret escape hatch that’s carried him through numerous scandals, and it isn’t his lawyers or his wealth.

Donald Trump has survived in the political arena because he can convince people that every politician in Washington is corrupt. Historian Timothy Snyder says Democrats have a small window to break the spell, and he revealed the strategy to get it done.

The On Tyranny author, in an interview with Public Notice’s Aaron Rupar, says corruption is currently at the top of a lot of people’s minds. He points out that the majority of people believe that the system is broken, but they think that Trump is more corrupt than the presidents who came before him.

This is where Snyder thinks the problem lies. Trump’s staying power has been predicated on the idea that all politicians are corrupt. The moment you get the electorate to believe that every single person in Washington is corrupt, Trump can position himself as the one who is better at the game.

In Snyder’s view, Trump’s pitch is something of a confession: everyone lies, everyone is corrupt, but he is just better at it and more charming about it.

To stop Trump from escaping the noose, Snyder says that Democrats need to move fast, and do it publicly. Snyder is calling for “ostentatious investigations” and legislation that would limit the role of money in politics. He emphasizes that the public needs to see the action, and not just hear about the reforms being done behind closed doors.

Timing is everything, Snyder said to Rupar. He believes that Democrats need to be on the move in November and January. If they’re not, by the spring he expects the public to be back in the mindset of believing the whole political class is corrupt, and Trump knows exactly how to survive it.

"As far as an emergency brake, I agree with you. I would just say you pull the emergency brake and then you jump out of the car and you get another one because the task is not fixing what we have at this point. The task is building something different," he said.

Snyder has been hammering this idea for a few months now. Back in June, he appeared on The PoliticsGirl podcast and was rather direct about it. “Giving billions of dollars of tax money to his friends is not popular,” he said.

Snyder has pointed to a country like Hungary, where Orbán’s government was defeated after the opposition successfully linked the public’s anger about corruption to a larger narrative. This is the strategy that Snyder thinks Democrats should adopt, instead of just promising to bring the electorate back to normality.

The advice is being put to the test now. Democrats took both houses of Congress in the Nov. 3 elections, and the campaign focused on voters’ frustration with the cost of living and perceptions of public corruption. House Democrats have said that they will engage in very aggressive oversight of Trump’s family, business and administration. “There is a cost to corruption,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to the media before the elections.

Snyder’s legislative strategy may not come to fruition, as Trump has said he will veto any bill led by a Democrat. This leaves investigations, which are something the electorate can see, as something Democrats can pursue on their own. If Snyder is right, the window to act is already closing.

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