Illustration by João Fazenda

Shortly before President Trump, at a press conference last Wednesday, derided a CNN reporter as a “terrible person,” he claimed, briefly, to be out of touch with his emotions. How, the President wondered, was he supposed to feel about the midterm electoral defeat of so many moderate and suburban Republicans? “I’m not sure that I should be happy or sad,” he said. True, their loss had cost his party control of the House. On the other hand, as he saw it, many of them had never been demonstrative enough in showing their loyalty to him or in asking for his help; they didn’t “want the embrace.” They should have known that without Trump they were nothing. And so, on balance, he said, “I feel just fine about it.”

Whether the President is happy or sad has become the central, if not the sole, concern of the Republican Party and of his Cabinet. A few hours after the press conference, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was finally forced to resign, yet, even in his resignation letter, he pleaded to be understood as an ideological loyalist, praising the President for his focus on the “rule of law.” Sessions was indeed a true Trumpist, particularly when it came to immigration policy. The White House’s announcement, on Thursday, that it was severely restricting asylum claims could almost be seen as an act of spite—denying Sessions the chance to preside over the demolition of a system he had so eagerly undermined.

Sessions’s one misstep was to recuse himself from oversight of Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump believes that it’s the Attorney General’s job to protect the President from such annoyances. By most accounts, the man he has named acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, believes so, too. When a reporter asked Trump if Whitaker would “rein in Robert Mueller,” he replied only, “What a stupid question.” Perhaps, to him, the answer was obvious.

One of the more dangerous outcomes of the midterms is the belief, in some quarters of the G.O.P., that putting the Party in Trump’s hands was worth it. Three of the Democratic senators whom he personally campaigned against—Joe Donnelly, in Indiana; Claire McCaskill, in Missouri; and Heidi Heitkamp, in North Dakota—lost. “He worked very hard, drew large crowds, and I think it clearly had a positive impact,” Mitch McConnell, who will remain the Senate Majority Leader, said, apparently untroubled by the bigotry, the lies, and the fear-mongering that Trump had used as he worked up those crowds. McConnell also warned against “Presidential harassment”—a phrase that, in the Trump era, could describe many things, but by which he meant the Democrats’ using control of the House to investigate Trump.

Despite Trump’s description of the midterm results as “close to complete victory,” there were some notable setbacks for his party, especially at the state level, with a net loss of at least six governorships and more than two hundred legislative seats. Some of the Republican House members who won’t be returning in January, including the twenty-three who chose to retire, would likely agree that they might have been able to keep their seats if they had embraced Trump, but they just could not or would not make that bargain. Others stayed away for a pragmatic reason: Trump was deeply unpopular in their districts. The President said that Barbara Comstock, the incumbent in Virginia’s Tenth District, was among those who had forfeited a win by not aligning herself with him. In fact, she lost to an opponent, Jennifer Wexton, who had labelled her “Barbara Trumpstock.” Trump’s kind of Republican would have bragged about how great that sounded.

Yet Trump is right in one respect. The midterms were a party-building exercise, if all one was trying to build is the Party of Trump. The G.O.P. is acclimating itself to accepting divisiveness and unconstitutional travesties—including, perhaps, efforts to end birthright citizenship—in return for a few Senate seats. Worse, more and more Republicans elected under Trump’s auspices, such as Josh Hawley, of Missouri, and Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, don’t even see their association with him as a trade-off. They like what the President stands for and seem to regard being loyal to him and keeping him happy as natural parts of the job.

The same appears true of Whitaker. A former federal prosecutor who was, until last week, Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker is, in many ways, a walking distillation of Trumpism. He has spoken of the border as being “under assault” and of the need for “New Testament” judges; and, in an echo of his new boss’s flimflammery, he was recently involved in a questionable invention-marketing operation. (“Anybody that works for me, they do a number on them,” Trump said on Friday. He added, “I don’t know Matt Whitaker”—a reminder that Trumpist loyalty goes only one way.) Whitaker has already announced that there never was any collusion with Russia: last year, in a column for CNN, he wrote that Mueller was headed for “witch hunt” territory.

Nevertheless, instead of recusing himself, as Sessions did, Whitaker has taken control of Mueller’s investigation; even if he doesn’t fire the special counsel, he could try to veto subpoenas that Mueller’s team might want to serve on the President or on members of his family. Mueller has apparently begun writing his final report; efforts by the Administration to scuttle any indictments could easily escalate into obstruction of justice. According to the Times, by last Thursday congressional Democrats, who are anticipating the subpoena power that the chairmanship of House committees will give them, had held a conference call to map out ways to protect Mueller—or to jump into the fight themselves.

The firing of Sessions is an illustration of how the President’s demand for loyalty brings the country ever closer to a constitutional crisis. Whitaker has said that the list of Supreme Court decisions that he thinks are wrong begins with Marbury v. Madison—the landmark 1803 case that delineated the Court’s power to interpret the Constitution, and which is woven into almost every aspect of American jurisprudence. If the Court doesn’t decide what’s constitutional, who does? Trump?

On Friday, meanwhile, the President headed to Paris for a centennial commemoration of the end of the First World War. The trip gives him a chance to brag to other leaders about his midterm victory and, he no doubt expects, to accept their congratulations, their thanks, and their embrace. ♦