For his part, Trump is liberated to fight like a caged animal, asserting executive prerogatives vis-a-vis the legislature and engaging in flat-out Republican vs. Democrat combat.

Trump would prefer a world in which he’s universally praised, but short of that, this is his element. Despite the perpetual vein of press coverage over the past two years about how he’s on the verge of some sort of breakdown, he’s handled every controversy or fight—no matter how personal or treacherous—with the same straight-ahead aggression, for better or worse.

Weirdly, Trump is almost certainly better prepared and temperamentally suited for thermonuclear war with a Democratic House than he was to get substantive achievements out of a Republican House. He obviously hadn’t thought through an actionable populist-conservative policy synthesis, but he has a lifetime’s experience resisting and belittling enemies and extemporizing his way from one crisis to the next.