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When Trump entered the oval office, Trump asked himself the deep question of whether his undisciplined and improvised character would be tamed by the magnitude of his new responsibilities and by his presidential codes of conduct framed for more than two centuries.
Or is Trump, an impetuous outsider motivated by his ego who never follows the rules, would he change the office by setting precedents that his successors would eventually use to justify their own bending of presidential power?
It is too early to assess the long-term impact of Trump on the presidency's desk, a judgment that will depend on the end of his reign after one or two terms and the final conclusions of the investigation into the Russia.
His efforts against standards are not limited to his duels with Congress.
One of Trump's most enduring strategies is his willingness to take easily depreciable positions if they support his political goals – another way of not being bothered by the constraints of many of his predecessors. In a new manifestation of his resistance to the objective fact, he openly destroys data collected by his own agencies when he does not support his hunches on what he calls an "invasion" of undocumented migrants.
He even insists that he's already building his border wall – which reflects the potential political price that he might have to pay for not honoring his 2016 promise.
"I use a lot of statistics – I use a lot of statistics," Trump told a reporter who was challenging him with official government data on drug trafficking last week. "Let me tell you that you have worse statistics than the ones I use."
Silence embarrassed
Trump's onslaught on the international system – a step that no president since the end of World War II would have dreamed of taking – is expanding. It cancels trade agreements, nuclear pacts and puts pressure on strange alliances that underpin decades of American power in pursuit of its "America first" creed. "
The feelings of Europe were summed up by the embarrassing silence when Vice President Mike Pence conveyed Trump's greetings to an annual national security conference in Munich on the weekend.
At his shocking press conference on Friday, Trump exploded into institutions shaping a free society – including constitutional principles, freedom of the press and the independent judiciary. He has even publicly envied China's record of extrajudicial executions in an open reprimand of traditional American values.
"There is a feeling that maybe there needs to be a change of leadership in this position," Ruddy said.
If Trump dismisses Coats for insubordination, it will be a new example of how the president appears more detached from the personal, political and behavioral security slides than any commander-in-chief of modern history.
Trump's second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is as motivated by his personal desire for political victory – or a Nobel Peace Prize – as any sign that their first meeting has made much progress towards denuclearization.
His administration, which fired its staff at a historic event, now looks more and more like a top-down family business with loyal agents who have characterized its real estate empire.
As Republican concern over a domestic emergency last week shows, Trump is not worried about placing his own party in uncomfortable political positions.
His statement of urgency is in itself an expression of contempt for the power of Congress and is different from previous emergency statements since he plans to spend money already allocated by lawmakers to for other purposes to build a wall that they refused to finance.
Trump: "I want to go faster"
Trump's explanation that he had chosen a national emergency last week to build his wall could have undermined his legal arguments in favor of a congressional bypass in the context of a fresh attempt by the courts – one of the few obstacles to overcome for Trump during his first two years in office – frustrating the president.
But his remark revealed a presidency based as much on personal gratification as on the desire to elicit indignation as a long-term ideological agenda.
"I wanted to do it faster, I could do the wall longer, I did not need to do it, but I'd rather do it much faster," said the president.
Other presidents have declared national emergencies. Some, like Richard Nixon, have been erratic and inconsistent in public. Franklin D. Roosevelt, considered one of the best presidents in history, has achieved ambitious takeovers. Barack Obama dodged Congress with his "pen and phone" strategy of executive orders. Theodore Roosevelt has made the presidency an extension of his turbulent and restless temperament. Andrew Jackson exploited the power of fiery populism and Trump said he admired the old Hickory.
But it is hard to find a historical precedent for such a volatile, publicly selfish and apparently unconscious commander-in-chief as Trump.
Now that most restrictive influences – like James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, or Rex Tillerson, the former Secretary of State – have left the administration, Trump has little internal limitations.
"Donald Trump does not have a containment vessel," said Timothy Naftali, presidential historian at New York University. "It's a perfect storm for the presidency."
What the chief says is
For Trump's critics, the United States is embarking on a dangerous autocratic path: it seems unlikely that the president, who has the taste to go it alone in case of national emergency, interferes.
Yet the fact that Trump, despite the fact that he has never achieved a 50% approval rate in most polling stations, remains a viable political force and can be reelected, suggests that a considerable number of millions of Americans like what they see.
For Trump's voters, the president is attacking a political system and a government structure that, in their view, does not represent them, after long years of economic difficulties and endless foreign wars.
His complaints about the fact that foreign nations are bleeding dry in the United States are popular among voters tired of foreign commitments – a sentiment that is also found in the democratic base early in the 2020 campaign.
Trump's relentless basic strategy has intimidated his Republican compatriots, further loosening the controls on a presidency that, until recently, was enjoying a loose congress dominated by the GOP.
Republicans, such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, seem to have concluded that the way to avoid a main fight is to embrace Trump – a testimony of the president's power with the grassroots.
"When the leader says to do something, he tends to do it," said Monday the former Ohio governor, John Kasich, CNN's senior political commentator.
"There has been more allegiance to the leader than I am used to," said the Ohio Republican. "When I was in Congress, we sometimes told leaders:" We do not agree with you and we will do what we need to do. "
Nevertheless, it is likely that some Republicans will separate from the president when a resolution ending his state of emergency will be lifted in both Houses, though few observers predict a majority in the House. veto test.
Siding exclusively on one vote, the minority if it is engaged will pose problems to Trump's hopes of reelection.
And the fact that there is a debate on the state of emergency suggests that now, under the leadership of the Democrats in the House, Trump will not have things his way, especially since a new monitoring operation by the chairs of the committees are getting ready.
"We have to keep in mind that not all institutions have been turned into trump," said Naftali. "The American people went to the polls in November and voted in the House by a Democratic majority, that's a big problem."
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