Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and policy adviser for President George W. Bush, believes that there's a pattern to President Donald Trump's attacks on American institutions -- namely, they're the only institutions capable of holding him accountable.
Writing in the Washington Post, Gerson argues that Trump is trying to turn the office of the presidency into a CEO-style position in which all his orders are followed without question.
"Trump’s sustained attack on the FBI’s credibility (“in tatters,” he claims) comes in the context of a broad assault on the integrity of American institutions," he explains. "In a short political career, Trump has maligned the CIA (comparing it to the Nazis), the electoral system (“rigged”), the media (“fake news”), the federal judiciary (U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is a “hater” and a “Mexican”) and the Justice Department (harboring the “deep state”). Any institution that checks him is smeared."
Gerson says that Trump's efforts to attack institutions that would hold him in check would not succeed were it not for the efforts of Fox News, which has worked to amplify the president's theories about a "deep state" conspiracy to oust him.
"In this matter, sincerity is downright scary," he writes. "It means we have a conspiracy-minded, 71-year-old Fox News viewer engaged in a strange feedback loop with conservative cable television — each encouraging the delusions of the other."