America is heading for two years of constitutional brinkmanship

A Democratic Congress will not bring conventional gridlock. It will set the stage for a volatile struggle over presidential power. Republican political strategist, foreign policy analyst and former surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns.

To understand the coming collision between President Donald Trump and a Democratic Congress, one must first discard the textbook formulas of US governance. The United States is about to witness a political experiment for which there is no modern precedent: a purely transactional populist, entirely unmoored from traditional ideological orthodoxy, forced to share power with a legislative branch unified in partisan hostility. The conventional wisdom predicts immediate, paralysing gridlock.

That is a misreading of the terrain. Trump does not view politics through the lens of conservative dogma or constitutional restraint; he views it through the lens of the deal.