Advisers insist Mr. Trump is not driven by a desire to unravel the Obama presidency. But like the Manhattan real estate developer he is, they said, he believes he must in some cases demolish the old to make way for the new.

“He hasn’t dismantled everything, and I don’t know that that’s exactly what he’s looking to do,” said Hope Hicks, the White House director of strategic communications. “That may be a side effect of what he’s building for his own legacy. I don’t think anybody’s coming into the office every day saying, ‘How can we undo Obama’s legacy, and how can he go back?’ ”

Yet Mr. Trump has depicted the Obama legacy as a disastrous one that needs unraveling. “To be honest, I inherited a mess,” he said at a news conference soon after taking office. “It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country. You see what’s going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places, low pay, low wages, mass instability overseas no matter where you look. The Middle East is a disaster. North Korea. We’ll take care of it, folks.”

Critics say Mr. Obama brought this on himself. His biggest legislative achievements were passed almost exclusively with Democratic votes, meaning there was no bipartisan consensus that would outlast his presidency. And when Republicans captured Congress, he turned to a strategy he called the pen and the phone, signing executive orders that could be easily erased by the next president.

“I’ve heard it joked about that the Obama library is being revised to focus less on his legislative achievements as each week of the Trump administration goes by,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “It’s like living by the sword and dying by the sword. When your presidency is based on a pen and a phone, all of that can be undone, and I think we’re seeing that happening rather systematically.”

Mr. Obama would argue he had little choice because of Republican obstructionism. Either way, he has largely remained quiet through the current demolition project, reasoning that speaking out would only give Mr. Trump the public enemy he seems to crave. He made an exception on Thursday, taking to Facebook to assail the new Senate health care bill as “a massive transfer of wealth from middle class and poor families to the richest people in America.” But Mr. Obama’s team takes solace in the belief that Mr. Trump is his own worst enemy, better at bluster than actually following through.

“Obama’s legacy would be under much greater threat by a more competent president than Donald Trump,” said Josh Earnest, who served as Mr. Obama’s White House press secretary. “His inexperience and lack of discipline are an impediment to his success in implementing policies that would reverse what Obama instituted.”