When Donald Trump won his second term, there was much speculation about what it would mean to have a president who started out as essentially a lame duck. “After nearly a decade - during which so many in the GOP cowered in fear at the costs of defying Trump - ambitious senators, House members and governors will be contemplating their own futures in a world without him,” wrote my colleague E.J. Dionne, adding that “recognizing the limitations on a Trump presidency is a first step toward holding Trump in check.”

However you would describe what is happening now, no one would argue that Trump has been held in check. Instead, we are witnessing something entirely novel in American political history: the YOLO presidency. (YOLO, for those unfamiliar, stands for “You Only Live Once” - which is to say, make the most of every moment you have.) Rather than being constrained by the fact that he can’t run for office again, Trump has been liberated by the fact that he doesn’t need to. He is free to do exactly as he pleases, knowing he will never again have to explain himself to voters.

Of course Trump has mused about running for a third term, telling NBC News on Sunday that he was “not joking” about the idea, but the 22nd Amendment is quite clear: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” It would take another constitutional amendment to allow him to run again, and he doesn’t have a Supreme Court pliant enough to wink at some exotic legal theory. Come January 2029, Trump will leave the White House, and he is certainly acting like someone who doesn’t need to worry about public sentiment.

Nor has he been limited by the normal forces that beset lame-duck presidents. A supine Republican Senate confirmed a television host to lead the Defense Department and a vaccine skeptic to head the Department of Health and Human Services with barely a murmur of concern. His more conventional establishment advisers, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, express full-throated defenses of his wildest innovations. Even the stock market, to which Trump has always paid close attention, seems unable to check his whimsical imposition of on-again-off-again tariffs.

Why is this happening? Why does the lame duck not walk or quack like one? The short answer is that Trump, once again, defies all normal political rules.

What has kept earlier lame ducks from YOLOing their way through their final term? For starters, they are usually establishment people, the kind of folks who defer to expert consensus and the conventional policymaking process. Oh, they may chafe at bureaucratic strictures and legislative horse-trading, but ultimately, if 95 percent of economists or lawyers say something is a bad idea, most presidents listen. Trump, of course, reviles those sorts of experts.

A second factor is that eight years of the hashtag “resistance” taught Trump to ignore public outcry, or better yet, to revel in it. In 2021, he left office in disgrace, with a 34 percent approval rating. Yet here he is, president again. If experience is the best teacher, it is suggesting he should listen to his heart, not some outraged pundit.

Third, and perhaps most important, Trump is not constrained by party loyalties, of which he has none. Most presidents have spent decades working their way up the party ranks and building relationships with other party members. The party has become the hub of their social network. Naturally, they care about its fortunes and want to leave it in better shape than they found it.

Trump has never displayed this kind of loyalty to any person or institution - and certainly not to a party he has always helmed as a conquering invader. His interest in the rest of the party is limited to bullying legislators into compliance, elevating his personal loyalists and exiling those he deems disloyal or embarrassing.

This all feels so unprecedented because normally someone who displays no loyalty to their party will quickly slip off the lower rungs of the greasy ladder that leads to power. Only Trump somehow managed to make it to the top in one wild leap, without ever giving the party a chance to shape him.

Instead, as has been noted many times, he has shaped the party into a reflection of himself. And this explains the real mystery of his presidency: Why has he gotten so little resistance from legislators and movement activists, who will ultimately bear the political cost of Trump’s last hurrah? Why hasn’t there been more pushback from the rising leaders who hope to take his place as the party moves beyond Trump?

The answer is that there is barely any party beyond Trump. Ideology and organization have both given way to Trumpian whimsy. He might not succeed in his dreams of restoring the American empire, but within the Republican Party, his imperial rule seems near-absolute. Whatever the emperor decrees, his subjects must apparently go along - even if the emperor decides they will be buried with him.