What did Donald Trump do today?

He said there were "no limits" on his power.

Trump's "peace deal" with Iran is receiving contemptuous reviews from essentially everyone not currently working for Trump. Israeli officials are calling it a "catastrophic capitulation." Republicans in Congress are saying it's Trump surrendering to Iran, not the other way around. Even Iran—which is already getting what it wants—is openly mocking Trump for agreeing to their terms, calling Trump's signature on the memorandum a "glorious defeat."

Asked what he'd learned today about the limits of his power, Trump simply responded that there aren't any. More precisely, he said, "I haven’t learned that lesson yet. I know there are [sic], but there are no limits." 

This is more or less what Trump has been saying all along: that as president, he can do whatever he wants, that he can stretch his promise to be a "dictator for a day" as far as he likes. That's not a popular position in a country that thinks of itself as a democracy, and it sparked some of the largest demonstrations in American history.

In reality—and even in practice—there are limits on Trump's power. Even during his second term, when he made a point of installing people purely for their loyalty to him above all other considerations, Trump has struggled to do nearly as much with that authority as he would have liked. (Many of them turned out to be less loyal than he thought they'd be, which is one reason that leaders who appoint people for competence rather than obedience generally get better results.) 

Iran itself is an example of one kind of limit on Trump's power: the Republican-led Congress put no real pressure on him to comply with laws governing when military force can be used, but that legal loophole didn't change the practical reality on the ground that Trump blundered into, leading to the disastrous outcome that those same Republicans are now furious about.

That sort of thing matters because, for all his bluster, Trump is very constrained by political realities. His plan to build a series of concentration camps is already being unwound as a result of public pushback. He was forced to abandon his plan to create a multi-billion-dollar slush fund to reward pro-Trump insurrectionists not by a court decision, but by the furious public reaction. 

The judiciary, which makes up a co-equal branch of the government that Trump is a part of, retains the ability to act as a check on Trump's power. Trump has been forced to rehire illegally fired government workers. He cannot spend money Congress hasn't appropriated, and he can't refuse to spend money that it has. Probably the most important way that courts have kept Trump from exercising the powers of a dictator has been in the criminal courts. No matter how many of his personal criminal defense attorneys Trump has appointed to key DOJ roles, they cannot create criminal liability where none exists. Judges have thrown out spurious charges selectively targeted at opposition politicians. Grand juries have refused to indict Trump's enemies for imaginary politically-motivated accusations. Trial juries have refused to convict protestors for minor, harmless acts of civil disobedience. Virtually all of Trump's campaign threats to jail Americans simply because he thinks of them as enemies have failed.

Among other things recently discussed on this site that Trump demonstrably doesn't have the ability to do—either the legal authority or the political muscle—include:

• revoke the broadcast licenses of TV networks whose content includes criticism of him 
• build a "military top-secret ballroom" without appropriations and permission from Congress
• pay himself $10 billion of taxpayer money 
• unilaterally dictate who's allowed to be elected to Congress 
• get an effective nuclear peace deal done with Iran for a mere $1.7 billion in unfrozen Iranian funds (as compared with the present $300 billion new-revenue figure currently on the table for a less secure arrangement)
• get Americans to believe that stopping an individual cargo ship near the Persian Gulf is a "GREAT AND BRILLIANT" military victory 
• force Iran to agree to any peace deal other than what it wanted
• literally erase the record of his two impeachments 
• dictate what gasoline costs just by declaring it 
• get Americans to believe that the economy is doing well in the middle of an inflation spike
• prevent Iran from charging fees to ships using the Strait of Hormuz
• enforce a ceasefire for more than one literal minute
• put reporters in jail for telling the public about unclassified information that makes him look bad
• make good on his threats to order the US military to conduct unlawful attacks on civilian targets
• get people to worship him as they would Jesus Christ   

Those examples are all from one month, April 2026. 

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump believing he is a dictator or even a god doesn't make it true.  

• The president is one part of the government of the United States, and is answerable to the people of the United States, whether he likes it or not.