A year ago, President-Elect Donald Trump was staring at one illusion and one trap. He fell for the illusion and marched straight into the trap.
The illusion was how much power he thought he would have. After winning full control of elected government—the presidency plus Republican majorities in both the House and Senate—and ranting with the kind of wild hostility usually associated with Elon Musk on ketamine, Trump imagined he could bully any opposition and push through whatever he wanted.
But that apparent dominance was always a heat shimmer, not solid ground. Congressional Republicans are notoriously divided—more like a roomful of feral cats than a disciplined bloc—which is why Trump managed to pass only one major bill in his first term and why GOP House speakers tend to have the lifespan of a mayfly. As the 2026 midterms drew closer, those “cats” only became harder to corral, with voters returning to their usual backlash stance. On top of that, the courts were always going to dump sand into the machinery.
Even so, Trump still had enormous power through the executive branch—if he could avoid the catch-22 he’d engineered for himself.
He was obsessed with dismantling the so-called “Deep State”—the career professionals in federal agencies who actually implement the laws Congress passes. These are the sorts of people who might balk at openly illegal or catastrophically bad ideas. The problem, as noted a year ago, is that when you push out competent experts, you’re left with loyal but clueless amateurs. If Trump indulged his craving for sycophantic yes-men, he’d hand the most potent tools of his presidency to the MAGA Keystone Cops.
That’s precisely what happened. He sprung his own trap, and now the illusion has dissolved.
The unqualified loyalists he installed managed to bungle almost everything they touched. The most embarrassing example was the “Liberation Day” tariffs—supposed to be the cornerstone of Trump’s economic and foreign policy strategy. Normally, a move of that scale would be carefully designed and vetted by hundreds of seasoned professionals. Instead, the tariffs looked like they’d been spit out by ChatGPT (literally), targeted remote islands populated only by penguins, rested on an obviously shaky legal basis, and triggered such immediate economic chaos that Trump had to yank them back.
And that was just one fiasco. The tally of self-inflicted wounds, pratfalls and clumsy screwups is long.
Trump’s marquee revenge efforts—criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James—imploded because Attorney General Pam Bondi, herself unqualified, illegally appointed the equally unqualified prosecutor Lindsey Halligan. Halligan replaced the seasoned professionals who had refused to bring such flimsy cases in the first place. Ironically, her basic procedural mistakes may have spared her from a brutal courtroom dismissal.
Bondi’s Justice Department also managed to sabotage Trump’s prized Texas gerrymander. They did it with a letter so legally absurd that a Trump-appointed judge used it as the central evidence in striking the plan down. It was like a pair of bank robbers writing out their heist plan and confession on the same sheet of paper and mailing it to the police.
A push to bypass National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews in order to fast-track infrastructure projects (and “own the libs”) has instead unleashed massive legal and bureaucratic confusion, leaving projects even more bogged down. A clumsy attempt to shift Education Department grant funding to the Labor Department was handled so poorly that the larger scheme to abolish the Education Department altogether is now at risk.
Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders were drafted so sloppily that they quickly became mired in legal challenges. Waves of politically motivated firings triggered backlash and rapid reinstatements, producing a dizzying loop of hire-fire-rehire worthy of an M.C. Escher drawing. The Brookings Institution has counted 26,511 such misadventures, including farcical efforts to oust the people who protect nuclear weapons, guard against Ebola and avian flu, and inspect the nation’s food supply.
As this trap has crushed much of what Trump tried to do through the executive branch, the rest of the original power mirage has faded too. Trump has managed to pass two significant laws—but neither is helping him much politically. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” has been such a public-relations debacle that he’s desperately trying to rename and reframe it, and the vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files was never part of his carefully crafted agenda.
Chances of additional Trump-friendly legislation before the midterms are rapidly shrinking.
Predictably, the courts have also slowed the administration down, ruling against it in nearly half of all lawsuits, with another third still unresolved. Meanwhile, a midterm backlash is building: the generic ballot is swinging toward the Democrats, and Trump’s approval ratings are plunging.
There’s no question Trump has caused serious damage. But he has also been his own greatest obstacle—and his influence is steadily eroding.
