It’s been a humbling few days for Donald Trump, even if the American president is reluctant to acknowledge it.
In a series of setbacks, Trump has faced adversity in matters both large and small; two of which he cares about dearly and one that could determine his and his party’s political fate for the remaining two years of his presidential term.
From a flawed attempt to renovate a Washington landmark to questions about his pick to head the justice department to increasingly complicated efforts to end his war in Iran, the president has been handling tricky issues – many of his own making.
Trump’s response has been a familiar one. A first term refrain – that the president makes his own reality with “alternative facts” – is still the operative one. He sticks to beliefs even in the face of contravening evidence.
Unlike his first term, however, when many of his most notable conflicts were with dissenters in his own administration, this time around he has butted heads even with those who have proven themselves the most loyal to him.
On Friday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host and stalwart Trump ally, moved to drop felony destruction of property charges against former Olympian David Hearn, who federal prosecutors had accused of intentionally damaging the Reflecting Pool near the Washington Monument.
“The damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism,” she wrote in a 20-page court filing announcing her department’s decision. She attributed her decision to prosecute Hearn as the result of misleading information provided by the Department of Interior.
Trump may embrace alternative facts, but the evidence Pirro confronted – what she would have had to defend in court, before a judge and potentially sceptical jury – provided scarce support for her case. And so she abandoned it.
Trump had enthusiastically endorsed the vandalism explanation, however, and he stuck by it. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he criticised Pirro’s decision to drop the case and did so again in comments from the Oval Office on Monday.
“She folded like an umbrella,” he groused.
If the Reflecting Pool case was an instance of Trump being forced to face legal reality, up on Capitol Hill it was an unpleasant political reality that confronted him.
One of Trump’s closest allies – his former criminal defence attorney Todd Blanche – was hitting stiff headwinds in his bid to become attorney general on a permanent basis.
Two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had joined Democrats to block Blanche’s nomination. They were demanding Blanche provide a letter formally disavowing any attempts to revive the proposed $1.8bn fund to pay individuals who claimed to have been the targets of politicised government prosecution.
Tillis called it a “payout pot for punks” amid concerns it could be used to compensate people prosecuted over the US Capitol riot by Trump’s supporters in 2021.
In another Saturday Truth Social post, Trump wrote that he would keep Blanche on as acting attorney general and “push hard” to get Congress to pass legislation authorising the fund.
“It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done,” he wrote, suggesting that no matter what the ultimate outcome of Blanche’s nomination, Trump is unlikely to ever let the issue go.
The political maths in the Senate, however, was undeniable. By the next day Blanche had acceded to the senators’ request, releasing two letters that Tillis and Cornyn said satisfied their concerns.
In comments from the White House on Monday, Blanche escaped the scolding that Pirro the prosecutor received. Trump said he “didn’t look at” Blanche’s documents. “I understand there’s been a sign-off, but I don’t know what they agreed,” he said.