The controlling President
It's always personal
Donald Trump is the most controlling president this country has ever had. He is not satisfied with the strong powers given to the president by the Constitution. Not even the extraordinary powers posited by the theory of the unitary executive. Trump wants total control, not just of U.S. government, but of U.S. power in the world.
The Constitution famously includes checks and balances on the president’s power. Legislative power is invested in Congress – specifically power over spending. Given President Trump’s total authority over the Republican Party, the painfully narrow Republican majorities in Congress pose no real limits to President Trump’s power. The courts have judicial power, including the power to limit constitutional authority. But President Trump feels free to ignore judicial authority when it suits him.
Just as Andrew Jackson is believed to have done in an 1832 case involving Cherokee Indian removal in Georgia. Jackson was reported to have said, ``Chief Justice John Marshall has rendered his decision [allowing the Cherokees to keep their land]. Now let him enforce it.’’ The result was the ``Trail of Tears.’’ Trump admires Jackson and has requisitioned his portrait for the Oval Office.
There is one more check and balance provided by the Constitution. Right now, it’s the only one operating with any real effectiveness – the press. The First Amendment provides, ``Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of the press.’’ Nevertheless, the Trump Administration tries to limit freedom of the press at every turn, from the president addressing a reporter as ``Piggy’’ to this statement at the end of 2025 by Tim Richardson, former Washington Post reporter and program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America: ``It’s safe to say that this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times.’’
Two recent incidents in particular demonstrate how far President Trump is willing to go in order to change the balance of power and assert total control of the federal government. One is his extraordinary assertion of authority over the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, which as in other democracies, was designed to be independent of political authority. in exercising control over the nation’s monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy (taxing and spending, which are essentially political).
President Trump has been openly hostile to Jerome H. Powell, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, because of his reluctance to support lower interest rates and thereby stimulate faster economic growth (and raise the risk of higher inflation). This month, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation’s inflation rate was holding steady, President Trump said, ``We have very low inflation [actually 2.7 percent, which is above the Fed’s 2 percent target but slightly higher than the Fed’s long-run 2 percent target]. That would give `Too Late’ Powell the chance to give us a nice beautiful big rate cut’’ – and help boost Republican prospects for the 2026 midterm election.
The President noted that ``mortgage rates are declining ``but that’s not with the help of the Fed.’’ Trump actually named Powell to the chairmanship of the Fed in 2018, during his first term as president. Powell’s chairmanship is scheduled to end in May, though he is scheduled to remain a member of the Federal Reserve Board through January 2028.
Speaking at an economic event in Detroit this month, President Trump noted that mortgage rates are declining, ``but that’s not with the help of the Fed.’’ The president went on to say, ``If I had the help of the Fed, it would be easier, but that jerk will be gone soon.’’ Thus, at a stroke, denouncing the existence of an institution of government deliberately designed to be independent of the president’s authority.
The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into whether Chairman Powell lied when he testified to a Senate committee in June about a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed headquarters in Washington. A potential criminal indictment is widely seen as retaliation by the Trump Administration for the Fed’s defiance of the president’s economic policy.
Chairman Powell – a registered Republican -- has plenty of powerful defenders in Congress, including the Senate majority leader, who warned that ``The charges against Chairman Powell better be real and they better be serious because the Fed’s independence in shaping monetary policy is something we need to ensure.’’ The idea of any independent authority – beyond the president’s control -- very likely does not sit well with Donald Trump.
We now have what some are calling ` ``two-year presidency’’ in the U.S. After a new president is elected, remnants of the old political order remain in power. About 90 percent of House members are typically re-elected, and two thirds of senators do not even have to run for re-election every two years. The result, as intended by the authors of the Constitution, is to slow the course of change resulting from elections.
A newly elected president like Donald Trump in 2025 has to deal with a Congress most of which came to power long before he did. Nevertheless, Congress has a fresh mandate from the latest election and will always pay attention to it. However, the president’s party almost always loses support in a midterm election. The president’s name is not on the ballot in a non-presidential election year. Support for the president has to be inferred from support for his party.
The key figure in a midterm election is the president’s popularity. Donald Trump has never been a popular president. According to the Gallup poll, Trump has never once reached 50 percent job approval. He was elected in 2016 with 46.1 percent of the national popular vote. His 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, led with 48.2 percent of the national popular vote but lost the electoral college, 306 for Trump to 232 for Clinton.
Trump then lost his bid for reelection in 2020 with 46.8 percent of the national popular vote. Democrat Joe Biden carried 51.3 percent. Trump won a second term in 2024 by defeating Democrat Kamala Harris, but still with less than a majority of the national popular vote (Trump 49.8 percent, Harris 48.3 percent). Trump’s job approval rating in the Gallup poll at the end of the first year of his second term: 36 percent (December 2025). Well below the 50 percent a president needs to protect his party’s standing in Congress. William Galston of the Brookings Institution wrote last year, ``Every time the president’s net job approval (approval minus disapproval) was negative a year before a midterm election, the president’s party lost ground in the House .’’
President Trump is going to great, sometimes ridiculous, lengths to showcase his control of the government. Why is he insisting that the U.S. acquire Greenland? Is it to demonstrate his imperialistic ambitions? President Trump has claimed that U.S. control of Greenland, a sovereign territory of Denmark, is necessary for national security. But allies dispute the claim that Greenland is threatened by Russia or China. U.S. acquisition of Greenland is more likely to divide the NATO alliance and play into the hands of U.S. enemies.
Trump offered a more personal explanation, namely, that he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump sent this message to the government of Norway: ``Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize . . . I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace . . . but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.’’
President Trump was misinformed. The Nobel Peace Prize is not decided by the government of Norway. It is decided by a group of Norwegian academics appointed by the Nobel Committee. Nevertheless, the U.S. is seeking retaliation by calling for a massive trade war with its European allies.
Trump’s ambition to purchase Greenland from Denmark is just another in a list of inexplicable Trump policies. The explanations are usually highly personal in nature. Why did he pave over the White House Rose Garden and demolish the entire East Wing of a cherished historical structure in order to replace it with a gigantic ballroom without out seeking approval from Congress or from the appropriate federal authorities? Could it be because he wants the White House to look as much as possible like Mar-a-Lago, his luxurious estate in Palm Beach, Florida?