Ideas

Why Trump Gets Away With It

The institutional checks that got the country through Watergate are far weaker now.

First published in The Atlantic on November 15, 2025.

by Clark Hoyt, The Atlantic

November 20, 2025 | reading time: 8 Min.

On a hot, drizzly Friday in August more than 51 years ago, I stood with other reporters on a temporary riser outside the East Wing of the White House. There, we watched as a disgraced Richard Nixon climbed the stairs to a presidential helicopter, turned at the doorway, extended his arms in a bizarre victory salute, and flew off into history.