That was fast. Donald Trump’s journey from suffering a historic midterm electoral reckoning to extending the slenderest of olive branches to turning the White House into a bunker transited at light speed.

The president had barely finished floating the idea that he could play ball with Democrats, who will control both chambers of Congress, before he announced on Friday that Stephen “The-powers-of-the-president-to-protect-our-country-are-very-substantial-and-will-not-be-questioned” Miller would be his new chief of staff. He also said on Friday that Joe Gruters, a Trump loyalist who steered the Republican National Committee into the midterms debacle and will play a pivotal role shaping the GOP’s presidential primary process in 2028, should still get to keep his job because he is a “MAGA Warrior.”

Trump advised on Saturday that the Justice Department would begin investigating Democrats for what he described as “criminal” behavior. He said just a little later that he had offered Dana White, who oversees the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the job as his new press secretary. (I’ll admit I found that funny, but I don’t have to attend White House press gaggles.) Crafty political strategist that he is, the president said on Sunday night that he “was only kidding” about White becoming his official spokesthug. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Expect more of this.

I noted in a column last week that Trump has typically lashed out when he’s cornered or defeated, so I didn’t have high hopes that the bonhomie he professed would last long. I did expect it to last longer than a couple of days, but such are the perils of trying to solve a problem like the POTUS. Still, this is the same old Trump doing variations of the same old things — some of them tragicomic, some of them merely comic, and some of them serious and potentially dangerous.

How Democrats and Republicans respond is essential because the US is overdue for a sustained and substantial stretch of congeniality, a sentiment that will never inhabit Trump’s wheelhouse.

Let’s consider what Trump has wrought over the last several days as actionable signals for navigating the months ahead.

Miller has the unshakable presence of a guy who tattled on everyone in grade school before graduating into more militarized retribution. Retribution is Trump’s stock-in-trade, however, and he quickly identified Miller, a longtime aficionado of macho claptrap, White nationalism and anti-immigrant vitriol, as a useful operative. He’s been with the president in both of his White House tours.

Trump trusts him and relied on him to help shape his second-term cabinet, his immigration policies and his uses and abuses of emergency powers. As my colleague Erika D. Smith noted, Miller embodies exactly what a plurality of US voters coalesced against in record numbers: masked, armed and poorly trained federal agents occupying city streets to pursue an ill-considered, abusive and sometimes lethal deportation policy.

It is in Republicans’ interest to distance themselves as far from Miller as possible while holding on to their goals of creating a tighter and more secure southern border (which Democrats overlooked for too long). Democrats have been the voice of reason and moral purpose in response to the Trump administration’s obscene deportation tactics, and they will have the legislative and legal muscle to combat it more forcefully. Both parties would do well to cooperate on crafting immigration policies that permanently dispense with Millerisms.

Gruters is a reminder that Trump doesn’t care about the future of the Republican Party, how it reclaims its conservative legacy or how it charts a political comeback in the two short years before the next presidential election. Gruters is there for Trump, Trump is there for Trump, and the RNC in their hands will foster a cult of personality — and likely continue to recruit politicos enamored of the president but incapable of crafting sophisticated public policy that is broadly constructive and appealing.

Republicans should accept this for what it is and sprint toward untethering their party and their political futures from Trump, starting now. Opportunists like JD Vance, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis don’t seem (to me at least) like leaders who can carry that weight. So the GOP needs to recruit with the same gusto and acuity that the Democrats demonstrated in the run-up to the midterms.

Democrats’ own policy goals should reflect an awareness that the wind currently in their political sails may not be permanent. The Latino, young and white working-class voters who swung so strongly to them in the midterms want answers, not promises. If the Democrats lose sight of sound economic stewardship and a dedication to tackling an affordability crisis Trump dismissed, voters aren’t going to stick with them permanently.

The Democrats could come roaring out of the gates next year by pushing, with Republicans’ help, every effort to unravel Trump’s tariff regime and end the Iran war. Both moves would have bipartisan appeal. Healthcare, housing, education, civil rights, fiscal probity and workplace legislation have found their moment as well.

Trump’s threat to weaponize the Justice Department against foes, real and perceived, was triggered by discussions among Democrats about investigating the White House and the Trumps, primarily around corruption. Trump’s frantic response suggests he may recognize that voters were repulsed by the billions of dollars he and his family have hauled in during his second term. Democrats shouldn’t back down from a corruption investigation, but they’ll need to approach it surgically and effectively. Whatever law-and-order and good-government impulses remain in the GOP can be resurfaced in a collaboration with Democrats on a corruption probe (though that may be a bridge too far for many of them).

Lastly, Trump recruiting White for media outreach is just more performance art from someone who has an eccentric and unquenchable interest in carny acts — and a measure of how out of touch and peculiar the president is. He also chose White to introduce him at the Republican National Convention in 2024 when he accepted the GOP’s presidential nomination. I watched from the convention floor as that transpired, and the only thing more otherworldly was when the late Hulk Hogan took the main stage to tear his shirt off in honor of Trump.

The current press secretary shenanigans also offer a lesson: Trump is a fundamentally unserious and troubled man presiding over the federal government and the US’ place in the world during a deeply serious time. Again, Republicans should accept that they need to cut their political and reputational connection to Trump, posthaste.

Trump has had a lifelong fascination with the notorious Mafia don John Gotti. He once told me that he appreciated Gotti’s willingness to sit in a courtroom and openly disrespect the judges and judicial process trying to bring him to heel. As Trump continues to absorb and respond to a political whooping, he’ll channel his inner Gotti. Democrats and Republicans don’t have to playact, though. They just have to stand firm, deliver for voters and leave this era behind.