Ezra Klein

And so there was some kind of normal structure around him.

that was built to somewhat restrain him.

Yes.

And if you were looking at the first State of the Union, the State of the Union a year into Trump's first term, who would the Speaker of the House have been?

Been Paul Ryan, another senior Republican who did not owe his career to Donald Trump, who was not fully bought in on Trump.

Trump has fully taken over the Republican Party.

His administration is truly stacked with loyalists.

There is a complete submission all around him to the rules of winning his favor, which is to say you tell him things he wants to hear, you flatter him.

I thought one of the both funny and dark refrains of the speech was,

was where he kept saying that, oh, it wasn't his idea to name the savings accounts Trump accounts.

It wasn't his idea to name the website TrumpRx.gov.

He didn't say this in the speech, but he said elsewhere, it wasn't his idea to put his name on the Trump-Kennedy Center.

People around him know one way that you curry favor with him is you name things after him and present it to him.

And he said, oh, what, me?

For me?

You want to name it after me?

And when the world around you has bought into manipulating you that way, and you have an ego like he already has...

and you don't have rigorous modes of thought or policy process, it is actually impossible that you will maintain a normal connection to reality.

It's hard enough to do that just as any president, but he is not going to be able to do it, and sure enough, he is not doing it.

I thought it was in a way, because here's what I think.