The United States has had some turbulent and scandal-plagued
Presidencies during its two-hundred-and-forty-one-year history—those of
Richard Nixon, Warren Harding, and Ulysses S. Grant come to mind—yet
there has never been one like Donald Trump’s. On Monday morning, I sat down to write a post about the swearing-in of John Kelly as the new
White House chief of staff, and the beginning of Act II of Trump’s Presidency. By the time I had finished writing, not one but two news
cycles had turned. In the afternoon, news broke that Anthony Scaramucci,
the New York financier who was named Trump’s director of communications
just a week and a half ago, had been fired. And on Monday night, the
Washington Post revealed that President Trump had dictated a misleading statement that was given to the press about his son Donald Trump, Jr.,’s infamous meeting, last June, with a Russian lawyer.

In this Administration, the scoops and shockers and bloopers come so
fast that it is hard to keep up, let alone figure out what is ephemeral
and what really matters. But, at the risk of the next news cycle making
me look silly, here are three points to remember about how we got here
and where we are going.

First, conflict and chaos are chronic conditions for this White House.
Kelly, a former four-star Marine general, may be an effective manager,
but he is taking on a virtually impossible task. Within hours of being
sworn in, Kelly got rid of Scaramucci, demonstrating that he intends to
run a more disciplined West Wing—and that, for now, Trump has acceded to
this wish. But for how long? Throughout his career, Trump has
deliberately stirred conflict among his underlings, chafed at efforts to
rein him in, and reserved the right to act in arbitrary and
contradictory ways. The last military man who tried to impose some order
on the chaos, H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, has
been rewarded with a series of leaks about how Trump finds him annoying
and is thinking of getting rid of him.

Second, the Russia story will not go away. For weeks now, it has been
clear that Trump would prefer to decommission Robert Mueller, the
special counsel, and shut down his investigation. At one point it
seemed possible that Trump might try to force out Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, and then, during the August congressional recess,
appoint a successor who would agree to fire Mueller. But Sessions has
made clear that he isn’t resigning. And some Republicans in
Congress—most notably Chuck Grassley, the head of the powerful Senate
Judiciary Committee—have made clear that they won’t go along with such a
blatantly self-dealing maneuver.

Third, and most important, Trump remains a serious threat to American
democracy. As I wrote a few weeks after the election, “The big unknown isn’t what Trump will do: his pattern of behavior is clear. It is whether the American
political system will be able to deal with the unprecedented challenge
his election presents, and rein him in.” So far, the system—or parts of
it—has risen to the Trump challenge. The courts, the permanent
bureaucracy (Steve Bannon’s “deep state”), the media, and the American
citizenry have responded in commendable fashion, resisting the
encroachments of an arbitrary and unhinged President. But the threat of
democratic erosion persists, as made clear by Trump’s recent campaign
against Sessions, his summary announcement on Twitter that transgender
people will no longer be able to serve in the U.S. armed forces, and the speech that he delivered last week in which he encouraged cops to rough up
gang members they have arrested.

Engaging in demagoguery, targeting minorities, acting outside the normal
policy process, and seeking to exert personal control over
law-enforcement agencies: it should barely need saying that these are
the tactics of a would-be authoritarian. But after six months of Trump
as President a kind of familiarity has set in, and the warnings perhaps
do need restating. As the net of the Russia scandal tightens around
Trump, there is every reason to believe that his behavior will get even
more erratic and dangerous.

In the coming weeks and months, there is no knowing what he’ll do. He
may decide to call the Republicans’ bluff, fire Sessions, and nominate a
new Attorney General. Even if he doesn’t go that far, he will certainly
engage in all sorts of diversionary tactics and step up his attacks on
the people he perceives as his enemies, especially members of the press and
people inside the government whom he suspects of leaking to them. (The
embattled Sessions is reportedly about to announce a new Justice
Department effort to investigate and stamp out leaks.)

If Kelly and the rest of Trump’s staff can’t restrain him—and it seems
highly unlikely that they will be able to—the onus will eventually fall
on Republicans in Congress, who, until now, have largely acted as the
President’s cheerleaders and enablers, but who ultimately hold the power
to get rid of him. On the face of things, there isn’t any reason to
suppose that Republicans will grow backbones anytime soon. Trump is
still following their conservative agenda, supporting their efforts to
repeal Obamacare and cut taxes for the wealthy. Even if this weren’t the case, the thought of confronting Trump’s angry supporters in primary
elections is enough to keep most G.O.P. representatives and senators in line.

But at least some members of the President’s party have started to lay
down what could be interpreted as red lines. Grassley indicated that, if
Trump did get rid of Sessions, he wouldn’t schedule a nomination hearing
for a new Attorney General until at least the start of next year.
Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, went further than Grassley,
saying, “Any effort to go after Mueller could be the beginning of the
end of the Trump Presidency unless Mueller did something wrong.” Graham
also said that he will introduce a bill to prevent Trump from getting
rid of the special counsel without a judicial review.

As the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin, a Trump supporter, commented
over the weekend, the President is “trapped with no protection or escape
from Mueller.” The spectre of a trapped Trump should be alarming to
anyone who cares about preserving America’s reputation as a country of
laws and democratic norms that apply to everyone, the person in the Oval
Office included. As Act II of the Trump Presidency begins, we should be
prepared for it to be even more disturbing and dramatic than Act I.