Easy questions only for Donald Trump: President Snowflake loves his safe space. Donald Trump is a coward enabled by Fox News and the GOP. Never has a modern president so carefully avoided pointed questions or had so much to answer for.

Jason Sattler | Opinion columnist

Show Caption Hide Caption President Trump: 'Spies in my campaign would be unprecedented' “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!” Trump said in an early morning Twitter tirade

What isn’t President Trump afraid of?

Forget going under oath to testify for the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump even refuses to go on camera to be interviewed, unless the interviewer can pass for a giddy member of his fan club.

Since Trump told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he was thinking about “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia” when he fired FBI Director James Comey on May 11, 2017, Trump has only consented to be interviewed on television 15 times.

“He has given 11 interviews to Fox News and Fox Business, one to Christian Broadcasting Network’s Pat Robertson, one to Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Mike Huckabee, one to CNBC’s Joe Kernen, and one to ITV’s Piers Morgan,” reported John Kerr and Dina Radtke of Media Matters for America.

In these interviews, he faced some scorching inquiries.

More: If people on food stamps made Kushner's paperwork mistakes, they might starve

More: Senate celebrates Sen. Tammy Duckworth, abandons America's other moms

Fox News’ Pete Hegseth asked, “Who has been your biggest opponent? Has it been Democrats resisting? Has it been the fake news media? Has it been deep state leaks?” Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro asked, “Are you moving so quickly that your communications department cannot keep up with you?” And Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked, “I’ve never seen any one person face as much, in terms of attacks, as you have,” which isn’t actually a question.

And it's not as if there's nothing to ask about. In this year since the NBC News interview, Trump has rarely taken a break from committing questionable actions, often with no explanation.

He has cut his own taxes, hidden two more years of tax returns and pulled out of the Paris climate accord. He has helped craft a false response to an email revealing that his son met with Russians claiming to have high-level contacts in the Putin government during the campaign, and refused to fire an Environmental Protection Agency administrator who is under 12 federal investigations.

He has spent about a third of his time at his private businesses, including one that charges $200,000 a year just to watch him chew and golf, and he hired the world’s biggest cheerleader for the Iraq War as his national security adviser after years of pretending he was against the invasion. He broke an international nuclear deal with Iran that our key allies believed was working, and threatened to sanction those allies for trying to keep it alive.

He promised to help ZTE, a Chinese phone company that had been fined for violating sanctions on North Korea and Iran — and he did it only 72 hours after the Chinese government and Chinese businesses had committed about a billion dollars to a project in Indonesia that will benefit the Trump Organization (which Trump still owns in violation of a campaign promise).

Never has a modern president of the United States so carefully avoided pointed questions, and never has a president had so much to answer for.

Ditching anything resembling an adult conversation on TV hasn’t been enough for Trump. He has also abandoned solo news conferences, which have been a standard practice of the modern presidency, in favor of shared appearances with other world leaders in which he fields just a few questions, usually from hand-selected friendly media. And this still hasn’t helped him manage his fear of people armed with question marks.

Trump reportedly asked the FBI to jail journalists and publicly threatened to take credentials away from news outlets that publish negative news about him.

Cowardice in the face of dissent has been the defining principle of the Trump presidency, from the early morning when Trump pops on Fox & Friends for his daily pep talk until late at night when Sean Hannity tucks him into bed. Fox News is now like a Disney Channel that has decided its main purpose is to make Mickey Mouse feel better about his disapproval ratings.

More: State of the Union: One different Trump choice and we'd be talking seven more years

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Out of fear of deflating his own ego, which he once claimed determined his net worth, Trump filters the information he takes in — both from the media and by removing a team member who doesn’t nod along with everything he says, leading to a record turnover rate in his administration.

And if you were Trump, you’d have to believe that your safe-space strategy is working. He hasn’t had to personally face several questions that would have overwhelmed other presidencies.

Even beyond all of the above, he has never had to answer for the foreign workers he’s hiring for his businesses even as he deports long-term residents and cuts guest worker access for other businesses. He has never had to explain why WikiLeaks, which he mentioned at least 164 times in the last month of the election, is good but the leaks that come out of his White House are bad.

And he has never had to face any serious questioning about the massive array of coincidences that connected his campaign to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sphere of influence, or why he still refuses to fully implement sanctions against Russia and a serious cybersecurity strategy to protect our elections.

Of course, this strategy works only because House Republicans believe that their constitutional oversight obligations apply just to Democratic administrations and Hillary Clinton. They are the quislings that make Trump’s cowardice possible.

He literally couldn’t abuse the Emoluments Clause without them.

Now just imagine what Trump’s second two years will look like if, after their performance this year, Republicans still manage to keep their majorities.

Jason Sattler, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and host of The Sit and Spin Room podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @LOLGOP.