Ashley Parker

In his first term, you have to keep in mind, it's stunning to remember, but Donald Trump had never run for any office, any political office.

He wakes up, he runs for president, and he wins.

So he has this kind of ragtag team who has never operated at that level.

some of whom had never been really in politics before.

Remember Hope Hicks, you know, who played a huge role in his first term.

The story, the lore was that when he told her, Hope, I'd like you to be part of my campaign, she said, which golf course, right?

Is it a marketing campaign for Trump Doral or something at Mar-a-Lago?

And so he ascends to the presidency and he suddenly has to fill all of these posts with

with people he doesn't know, doesn't trust, many of whom don't like him, don't trust him, and, you know, privately say he was their 16th choice to be president.

And a lot of them view themselves as guardrails.

They are there, you know, they would argue they are there to teach him how the presidency works and how democracy works and these norms.

But in a lot of ways, they really are followers

thwarting what he's trying to do.

In some instances, you have someone famously taking a piece of paper off of his desk so he can't sign something that they believe is problematic.

You have them undermining him by leaking to the media.

And you also have them saying, you know, here's the 10 reasons why you can't do this.

If you do this, I'll resign.

This time, and we mentioned this in our piece, but I think it's illustrative, one person we talked to, they said, look,

when the president asks for something twice, we have an unofficial rule, which is that we do it.

And I said, well, why twice?