THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE SIX MONTHS IN

It has come to this for Captain Chaos, after six months in the White House: he’s fired his spokesman, switched his lawyer; fired his national security advisor, he’s furious with his Attorney General and he has reportedly made inquiries about his power to pardon members of his family (and, possibly, even himself) should they eventually be convicted of something. Oh, and his legislative agenda has just suffered a huge setback.

In short, things have gone about as was to be expected when the United States somehow elected a patently unqualified narcissist and mountebank as President. 

During the campaign, Donald Trump identified and articulated some genuine economic resentments on the part of Americans who feel that globalization has passed them by, or kicked them in the gut—but it was always clear that he didn’t have any genuine solutions to offer, and the constant turmoil and infighting that characterized his campaign was a harbinger of things to come.

From November 8, 2016, onward, the central question has been whether the institutions of U.S. democracy would turn out to be bigger than Trump. 

So far, the indications have been generally positive: the courts, the permanent federal bureaucracy, and the press have risen to the challenge, and even some Republican-controlled committees on Capitol Hill have held some informative hearings, such as the one in which James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, detailed how Trump had pressured him to go easy on Mike Flynn, the former national-security adviser who was forced to resign because of his undisclosed contacts with the Russian Ambassador.

Excepted from the New Yorker