I hoped and expected that Trump would be in power by now, and observed that this would feel like a coup, and would require measures that resemble a coup.

CNN complains “Trump goes rogue” and complains that Trump is fighting for control of the presidency.

Now he is fighting for control of the presidency?

During the weekend, he issued a demand to end the great replacement, which has continued during his presidency.

Giving effect to these demands would require open political conflict with the Republican party, and open armed conflict with the permanent government.

If he yields, he will be a one term president, and the Republicans, to their immense relief, will be voted out in 2018 and 2020, giving them excuses for not implementing the policy that they run on in elections.

On his performance since the election, and the precedent of every president since Roosevelt, he will yield.

But he is Trump.

To win, he has to bring the White House into line, and then get heavily involved in a bunch of primary fights to remove Republican Party cucks in 2017. Which so far he has not been doing. He has been trying to make a deal with the establishment, a deal consistent with him remaining sufficiently faithful to his base to win re-election, and the establishment just is not having any.

Events so far have been consistent with the Moldbuggian view that elections and all that are as relevant as Queen Elizabeth going in a stagecoach to open the British Parliament. The Permanent Government runs the country day to day, Harvard sets policy, and the American Law Institute, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard, legislates.

Indeed CNN implicitly endorsed the Moldbuggian view, by complaining that the country has two foreign policies, one set by the State Department and the Defense Department, and Trump’s policy – with the clear implication that Trump should butt out and stick to robotically signing State Department policy.

The trouble with CNN’s solution, however, is that the State Department and the Defense Department do not have one foreign policy, but a hundred, with the result that their foreign proxies are always shooting at each other, and from time to time shooting at US troops and diplomats. Without a president in charge, they are institutionally incapable of acting as one. The Cathedral has not solved the institutional and organizational problem of acting as one without delegating all power through a single chief executive officer. They are not agreement capable.

And, not being agreement capable, they are incapable of making a deal with Trump.

Trump is a deal maker. But now he is in a situation where deals are just not possible. He has to fight and possibly be utterly defeated, or fail to fight and quite certainly be utterly defeated, fail to fight and be a lame duck for his entire single term, and then ignominiously lose the election in a landslide.

His attempts to cut a deal have alienated his base, and show absolutely no sign of producing a deal. He is dealing with a group of people institutionally incapable of making a deal. The accusation that Trump is intransigent is pure projection. Social Justice Warriors always project. Trump is alarmingly ready to compromise, but can find no one to compromise with. Winning will require measures that have been unthinkable – yet Tony Abbot and Duterte were willing to deploy such measures. I thought, therefore, Trump would be willing to deploy such measures. So far, however, he has yielded. Trump is a deal maker. He is going to have to be a general. He is going to have to seize the power of the presidency, or be a one term president as he takes the blame for Harvard’s policy of electing a new people.