Trump’s authoritarian mindset can’t handle dissent from his appointees

“It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business,” Michael Corleone tells his brother, Sonny, in The Godfather. But for Donald Trump, it’s always personal. And he leaves this week feeling betrayed.

First, the US supreme court rejected his effort to restrict mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “They are merely a shell of their original selves.”

Then the Federal Reserve defied Trump by raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 3.75% to 4%, marking its first rate hike in three years. The Trump-appointed Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, described it as “a sober decision, serious decision, responsible decision”.

The president lashed out again but was careful to blame the board rather than Warsh. Trump told reporters he had spoken to the chair. “I said you might ⁠as well vote with the board because it’s not going to matter. The board is very hostile. They’re very political.”

It was an effort to rationalise a shock to the system for Trump, who instinctively assumes that anyone he appoints to high office will be eternally in his debt and automatically do his bidding. It is a view constantly reinforced by his cartoonishly loyal cabinet, from defence secretary Pete Hegseth to attorney general Todd Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal lawyer.

Blanche held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday and staunchly defended Trump. He was rewarded two days later when he attended a campaign rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, and heard Trump say of him: “He’ll go down as the greatest attorney general in the history of our country.”

But the supreme court is a different matter. Its conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump during his first term. It has certainly given him plenty of wins in emergency appeals during his second term, lifting lower court orders that had blocked his crackdown on immigration, ban on transgender people serving in the military and dismantling of the education department.

Perhaps that is why the defeats rankle and, to him, appear inexplicable. The justices struck down his far-reaching tariffs on nearly every other country and his restrictions on birthright citizenship while blocking his attempt to immediately fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

Last week, the court refused to allow Missouri to use new elections maps redrawn at Trump’s urging to help Republicans gain an extra seat in the House of Representatives.

Then came this week’s knockback of his administration’s planned restrictions on mail-in voting, which Trump has long condemned as fraudulent while continuing to vote by mail himself. Of the nine-member court, only justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

For the authoritarian mindset, this does not compute. Trump has become accustomed to snuffing out the first sparks of dissent among Republicans in Congress before the flames of rebellion can spread. He has taken a scythe to government departments and entities such as the Kennedy Center, which he is now threatening to demolish.

But not even he can control his own appointments when they serve in institutions protected by America’s system of checks and balances. The irony is that they might be saving Trump from his own worst impulses. The Fed’s intervention, for example, is aimed at curbing the rising prices that are hurting Trump politically. Warsh explained: “The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long.”

It may only be a matter of time before Warsh’s honeymoon period ends and he feels the president’s wrath. But the Fed chair may also be aware that time is be on his side: every day brings Trump closer to the point at which Republicans begin looking beyond him to 2028.

Last weekend, Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said only that Congress will “debate and discuss” Trump’s promise to give Americans $5,000 if Republicans retain control. On Thursday Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, forcefully criticised the president’s deportation agenda in a campaign ad.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, says: “We’re starting to see institutions like the supreme court and the Republicans in the Senate more consistently resisting him. This is the beginning of the lame duck session for Trump. This is the entry point for where it’s going to be: a sour grapes moment in Trump’s political career.”