Inside Job

Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just a special counsel, or a bitterly divided country under Trump’s lack of leadership, or even that Republicans will lose the House. All that is “a given.”

The test — which he does not grasp — is that many senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to quash his worst inclinations.

To be clear, this is not a “resistance” of the left.

Senior officials believe their duty is to this country. Meanwhile, this president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why so many Trump appointees have vowed to do what they can to preserve our democratic institutions.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any principles that guide him.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he invokes these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

His mass-marketing of the press as the “enemy of the people,” is clearly anti-democratic.

The president’s leadership style is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from him.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.