No one wants to cross the commander in chief.
Presidents therefore get used to hearing only what they want to hear. And Oval Office bubbles have rarely been as impermeable as the one around Donald Trump, with his Cabinet of yes-men and yes-women and the hero worship of conservative media.
This is a president who blasts suspected cartel speedboats out of the oceans in what critics say are extrajudicial killings. He sends troops into American cities. He ripped down the historic White House East Wing — just because he could.
Trump’s projection of omnipotence is reaching new heights as the misery of the government shutdown deepens. Tearing his eyes from global peacemaking and summitry with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he insisted in a “60 Minutes” interview that pain for millions would only end when Democrats cave. This followed his apparently unironic Halloween Party on a theme of the Great Gatsby, the parable of how of corrupting wealth and materialism wrecked lives in the Jazz Age.
Only judges who’ve reined in some of his most audacious power grabs have managed to slow Trump. But as he claims the greatest nine months of any administration, while polling suggests Americans feel otherwise, he seems primed for a fall — a possibility America’s inexorable election calendar is often only too happy to oblige.
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