Crazed Failing President Donald Trump is not having a great time of it lately. In fact, to be a Trump supporter, you have to support stupider and stupider words and actions. It’s like he’s seeing how far they will go.

Trump famously once promised before his first term that there’d be so much winning, you’ll get sick of the winning. That obviously hasn’t happened for Trump in the courts. He’s had a few wins, but mostly losses. Yesterday was an especially bad day for our friend Donnie.

At the very beginning of Trump 2.0, the Democratic Party seemed to be stunned to the point of delusion. It felt like they were curled up in a ball. Chuck Schumer was talking about bipartisan solutions for Real American kitchen tables, as if Mitt Romney had won the election. The Agin’ Cajun James Carville demonstrated the wisdom that enabled him to be Politic’s One Hit Wonder by declaring this in The New York Times:

With no clear leader to voice our opposition and no control in any branch of government, it’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.

To paraphrase the late great baseball manager Casey Stengel, does anyone around here know how to play this game?

The problem with this strategy is that it would allow Trump to hurt a lot of people, and frankly, the base wasn’t hearing it. Besides, as it soon became clear, Trump has no idea how to play this game.

At first, Trump either terrified or enthralled a lot of institutions. Universities were terrified at what he’d do and soon it was apparent what he would do – try to destroy science and education. Trump focused his ire on Columbia University, who folded like a cheap tent. Soon, law firms like Paul Craig proved they had the backbone of a jellyfish, and they folded to Trump, caving to his demands.

The demands included pretty basic pro bono work, kind of non-controversial stuff, but given this is Trump, he can’t be appeased. He is a gangster. So, now the law firms are discovering that bending the knee to Trump means you never stop owing him one, and the protection racket never slows down. From Molly Jong-Fast’s excellent piece in Vanity Fair about this:

Pretty clearly, appeasement in the face of executive orders and threats provides an opening for Trump to ask for more, just like any would-be autocrat might. According to the Times, Trump “has mused about having them help with his goal of reviving the coal industry.” Ahh, just what every ambitious young associate has always dreamed of: doing pro bono work for Big Coal. There’s reportedly talk of firms, which have collectively pledged close to $1 billion in pro bono work, being tasked with helping out the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Meanwhile, four law firms that opposed Trump’s executive orders have already had wins in court.

There’s that theme of losing in court. As Jong-Fast notes, things aren’t much better on the higher education battlefront for our Donnie. Harvard University took a look at what happened to Columbia and the fact that Trump is a moron surrounded by morons who do moronic things because they are morons, and said nah, we’re going to fight this prick. So that’s not going great for him either.

It’s not just fancy law firms and Ivy League colleges learning tough lessons. Our own Cassandra also outlined how Trump is even screwing over his own base in deepest red West Virginia, among the poorest areas in the U.S. The state’s governor is doing the GOP 2025 thing, telling Trump how amazing his amazing level of amazing is.

Trump got swept into office because of his promises to make the economy great again, even though it was great compared to the rest of the world. Trump was going to bring back the Five Dollar Foot Long and gas was going to go below two bucks a gallon starting at day one.

I haven’t been to one in a while, but I am going to guess the Five Dollar Foot Long has indeed not returned and has about as much chance of returning to Subway as Jared does. Instead, he has created chaos in the global economy, not just through his tariffs obsession, but with stuff like his interview with Time magazine where he claims he’s made 200 tariff deals (okay, grandpa, time for your medicine) that makes the markets think there just might be a dementia-addled old man running loose in the world china shop.

There are other fails happening for Trump, too many to cover here (haven’t even mentioned his rapidly collapsing immigration plan), and that all is giving people the will to fight back. Democrats no longer talk like they’ve been in a coma since 2012, big protests are happening all over the nation, people are energized, institutions are starting to grow spines, and the courts are even making noise about actually giving those Trump court losses some teeth.

I’ll close by quoting the end of Jamelle Bouie’s excellent Times column this week:

Trump wants us to be demoralized. He wants his despotic plans to be a fait accompli. They will be if no one stands in the way. But every time we — and especially those with power and authority — make ourselves into obstacles, we also make it a little less likely that the administration’s authoritarian fantasy becomes our reality.

The last word goes to boygenius.