Here’s the symmetry people don’t like to acknowledge.

Many liberals argued that even if Joe Biden were cognitively diminished, senile, or largely absent for stretches of his presidency, it didn’t meaningfully matter. Why? Because the presidency is not a solo act. It’s an institutional machine. A competent, experienced staff can still set policy, execute strategy, manage crises, and move legislation. The White House, they said, still functioned.

That argument is internally consistent. But it doesn’t stop being true when the name on the door changes.

If Donald Trump is a buffoon, a clown, impulsive, or morally unmoored, yet surrounded by a disciplined, ideologically motivated, and strategically effective team, then the same logic applies. Outcomes don’t vanish because you dislike the figurehead. Power doesn’t evaporate because you mock the man at the podium.

In both cases, the real question isn’t the president’s personality or neurological status. It’s the ecosystem: the advisors, the operators, the incentives, the institutional leverage, and the willingness to use it.

Reducing presidencies to “senile grandpa” or “orange clown” isn’t analysis. It’s coping. If you were willing to argue that Biden’s administration functioned despite Biden, you don’t get to pretend Trump’s administration can’t function despite Trump.

Either institutions and teams matter, or they don’t. You don’t get to switch the rule based on who you hate.