James' World 2

Hmmmm … Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein!

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President Trump is routinely called powerful and also weak. He holds an iron grip on the G.O.P., helping to dispatch such perceived enemies as Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, and Representative Thomas Massie.

But on Wednesday, a handful of House Republicans voted to try to rein in the president’s war-making capacity in Iran. Republicans in the Senate have resisted his “weaponization” fund and refused to kill the filibuster, an obstacle to passing the SAVE Act. And a judge ordered his name to be pulled from the Kennedy Center.

So, powerful or weak? Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist and writer of the Good Politics/Bad Politics newsletter on Substack, makes sense of this apparent contradiction in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.

John Guida: President Trump presents a conundrum. He seems both powerful and weak. His record in Republican primaries appears formidable.

Jonathan Bernstein: First of all, his dominance within the Republican Party is a bit overrated. For one thing, a lot of his primary-endorsement successes are pretty hollow. He often, as he did in the Texas Senate race, waits until a leader emerges. He clearly was the main actor in purging Thomas Massie, but it’s not clear in those other cases whether he was the main actor or if other party leaders — especially those in Republican-aligned media, such as local talk-show hosts — were the key players.

It’s hard to compare Trump to other presidents because they generally didn’t try to do such things — for good reason; it risks a lot of blowback. In other words, bullying can get Trump some things that other presidents don’t get, but only at costs that other presidents haven’t had to bear.

Guida: So you think his winning is both overblown and in pursuit of questionable goals. But you have written that he is also losing “a lot” — “far more than any other modern president.” How do you make sense of this?

Bernstein: All presidents lose. Trump loses more often, on more things, than most. I usually begin by following the analysis of Richard Neustadt, the presidency scholar who wrote the 1960 classic “Presidential Power.” Neustadt advised presidents to increase their influence by building a strong presidential reputation and by doing what they can to be popular with voters. Trump has consistently done neither.

The most important tool to achieve those things, for Neustadt, is information. Presidents have more access to useful information than anyone they deal with. Trump, by all accounts, ignores it. Instead, he’s built his second presidency around the goal of keeping himself, as much as possible, from not having to confront information that might contradict his impulses. And that leaves him unable to negotiate deals with friends or enemies abroad, or to adjust his policies at home to account for realities other politicians must live in.

Guida: Could you give examples of where you see Trump losing? You’ve often noted this in his dealings with Congress, right?

Bernstein: Just this week, he had several setbacks. The House embarrassed him with a war powers vote that would end the war in Iran — and then immediately after that, they took a procedural vote to move ahead with support for Ukraine. That’s extraordinary. In the modern House, the majority maintains strict control over the agenda, but a handful of Republicans were willing to defect and basically give Democrats agenda control on both of these foreign policy issues. Normally, a president would have found a way to defuse that revolt, but he’s so alienated some of those Republicans, and his word is so worthless, that he’s not really able to, even if he tried.

Then over on the Senate side, Republicans revolted against his “weaponization” slush fund and against his ballroom. They removed funding for ballroom security from the spending bill they’re working on.

Congress is important, but this is going on everywhere — especially in the courts, where Trump’s Justice Department has squandered the presumption of trust that judges have always had for administration statements. Misleading, if not lying to the courts — or to Congress, bureaucrats, state-level politicians, or foreign nations — might yield some short-term victories. Maybe. But over time, it’s a losing move. Reputation matters.

Guida: The conventional story of Trump 2.0 is that Republicans in Congress have done nothing to oppose the president and have instead enabled his agenda. You are suggesting that this narrative is not true, or at least not complete.

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Daniel Ribar for The New York Times

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