For all that, it seems possible that every one of Trump’s nominees will make it through. None is in certain danger now, especially after wavering Senator Marco Rubio announced he would support Tillerson’s nomination. James Mattis, who needed a congressional waiver to even qualify for the post of secretary of defense, won all but a single vote in the Senate.

That’s better than Barack Obama’s record at the outset of his administration, and he had a huge Democratic majority in the Senate. Tom Daschle (health and human services) and Bill Richardson (commerce) both had to withdraw after investigations. Tim Geithner (treasury) nearly went down over tax discrepancies. Judd Gregg (commerce again) withdrew over differences with Obama.

Or take Trump’s promise to intervene to prevent jobs from leaving the country. That vow, particularly targeted at the air-conditioner manufacturer Carrier, was dismissed during the campaign. But Trump quickly swung into action after the election, and announced a high-profile deal with Carrier to keep jobs in Indiana. The devil was in the details, of course: Carrier was still moving jobs to Mexico; Trump had unusual leverage over Carrier’s parent company, a major contractor; the deal cost taxpayers dearly; many of the “preserved” jobs might still be automated in the future.

But Trump got his symbolic win, and he’s since collected a host of others. Companies have announced expansions of jobs in the U.S. that were already planned or already disclosed, and Trump has hastened to claim credit for them, whether they were his doing or not. CEOs, who are not eager to get on the wrong side of a new president, are in no hurry to set the record straight.

There are plenty of other minor political triumphs underlying all of this. On Monday, Trump met with union leaders at the White House, and even though labor leaders endorsed Hillary Clinton, the meeting apparently went well. Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions, told Josh Eidelson “it was by far the best meeting I ever participated in” reaching back to 1999. The leaders of both Canada and Mexico have signaled they’re willing to open negotiations on revising NAFTA.

Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, show little interest in investigating Trump’s conflicts of interest.

Trump’s conduct over the last few days has lots of observers scratching their heads. The Washington Post’s James Hohmann homes in on Trump as a sore winner, and while it’s impossible to disagree, the president’s insistence on repeating obviously, provably false claims—he had the biggest in-person crowd at an inauguration, or he would have won the popular vote if not for illegal voters—are also arguably an essential political strategy for him. Trump has no apparent interest in policy details or in working the levers of Congress; he has approached the presidency more as a bully pulpit than as a demanding executive role. But it’s a lot harder to use that bully pulpit if you’re not always viewed as a winner, so Trump insists he’s a winner even when he is not.