Stinging defeats exposed Trump is 'weak' — and 'terrified': legal experts

Trump suffered a humiliating week of defeats that exposed cracks in his iron-fisted façade, legal experts said Friday.

This week, President Donald Trump "suffered a string of defeats that exposed the real limits of his power at home and abroad," noted Slate's Marc Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick on Friday.

For starters, the Justice Department threw in the towel on its illegal bid to install loyalist Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney after a judge delivered a scorching rebuke, calling her conduct "wildly unprofessional" and accusing her of "masquerading" in defiance of court orders. The blistering opinion, penned by a Trump appointee, was so brutal it effectively ended the charade without even imposing discipline, they said.

"This was one of the most incandescent judicial opinions I think I have ever seen," said Stern.

Lithwick later added: "The really important thing here is that, in a world in which these folks act as though they have boundless impunity to do what they want, it is incredibly important for judges to say no. It’s the cornerstone of how we think about the judicial role."

She called Halligan's loss a "historic dressing-down of somebody who thought they were made of Teflon."

And the humiliations kept coming.

Trump abandoned his bombastic threats to seize Greenland through military force or crippling tariffs after broad pushback, particularly from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's fiery Davos speech. The president's eye-popping retreat left him with nothing — the NATO access he claimed as a victory already existed under current agreements, the legal experts said. He torched global markets and terrified allies for the status quo.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court slammed the brakes on Trump's attempt to purge Federal Reserve Chair Lisa Cook, with justices appearing stunned at how far he'd pushed their limits. The three-front collapse revealed an uncomfortable truth, they said: Trump crumbles when confronted with real consequences.

As Minneapolis residents continue protesting ICE raids on immigrant communities, the broader lesson for America is that resistance works.

"The truth is that he’s weak. He is not the muscular president he pretends to be on television. When someone says no, and uses tools at their disposal to enforce that boundary, he stands down, because he is terrified of being defeated in a way that he can’t spin as a secret victory," said Stern.