Donald Trump. who runs the presidency as if he were a king, is learning the limits of presidential power in his struggle against political adversaries seeking to dethrone him by constitutional means.

The principal serious endeavor is the Justice Department investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s interference into the 2016 U.S. elections. That investigation from an early date scrutinized close Trump associates and has expanded into various other Trump business enterprises.

We are seeing a manifestation of Trump’s limitations in his frustrated yearnings to fire subordinates like his recused attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and prospectively his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, with whom Trump is to meet at the White House Thursday.

The apparent showdown comes in the wake of a sensational New York Times story alleging that Rosenstein earlier talked of taping the president and considered invoking the 25th Amendment on presidential succession against him, on grounds of unfitness to carry out the responsibilities of the office.

Rosenstein as acting attorney general has categorically denied the allegations, and indeed he may have been speaking sarcastically in the interlude the Times cites to make its case. In any event, such a palace coup is ludicrous on its face, if only because the process set forth under the Constitution could not be initiated by the deputy attorney general.

The president can voluntarily transfer his authority to the vice president if he is unable to carry out his duties. Alternatively, the vice president, acting with a majority of executive officers, could so certify the president incapacitated. However, Trump’s stand-in Mike Pence has proved himself to be a conspicuous Trump toady. Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine members of Trump’s cabinet playing along.

Nevertheless, the Times story has fed the narrative of the Trump presidency in turmoil amid a corps of “resistance” warrriors, echoed credibly in Bob Woodward’s latest insider best-seller, enticingly titled “Fear.”

For all of Trump’s bombast about his unparalleled achievements in making American great again, he continues to demonstrate weakness or lack of resolve in major assertions of presidential power.

For all the huffing and puffing over his dissatisfaction with the beleaguered Sessions, Trump still hasn’t fired him. And his unhappiness with Rosenstein’s failure to shortstop the Mueller investigation has led only to that scheduled meeting with him Thursday, with the acting AG hardly cast as supplicant underling.

From the start of his presidency, Trump has invited the image of a headstrong and impulsive chief executive endlessly being monitored by a cast of nervous watchdogs, self-appointed to keep the train on its tracks while saving the erratic engineer from his own incompetence.

Far from the history of some previous presidents who hired the best and the brightest of their generation, Trump has packed his administration with an oversupply of hustlers and grifters whose antics have already earned the reputation of a circus, lurching from one embarrassment to the next.

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Jules Witcover’s latest book is

“The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books.