Every president chafes at being stymied by Congress or the law, noted Timothy Naftali, a historian and former head of the Nixon Presidential Library. What makes Trump’s actions so unprecedented, he said, is the president’s reaction: Trump appears willing to steamroll through the constraints that American presidents have traditionally respected.
“Instead of learning to become presidential and accepting the structure of the American presidency, he is trying to reshape it,” Naftali said. “He has removed anyone, it appears, who stood up to him and said he cannot do this. This is a huge test of our institutions.”
Trump’s behavior has differed sharply from most presidents since his earliest days in office, when he dismissed the intelligence community’s warnings about Russian election meddling. Months later, he fired the director of the FBI, a drastic step that soon launched the special counsel probe that he regularly denounces as a “witch hunt.” And it’s not just Trump: Top officials routinely implicate thousands of federal workers in a “deep state” conspiracy meant to undermine his presidency.
Cabinet secretaries live in fear of provoking the president’s volatile temper, and often seek to curry favor with their boss in high-profile, televised moments when they know he’ll be watching closely.
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