You have to hand it to Donald Trump as a political innovator. Thursday, he gave a 77-minute press conference that people are still reviewing as if it were Altamont, where the Rolling Stones played Sympathy For The Devil while the Hells Angels beat a man to death with pool cues.

The President said his administration was a “fine-tuned” machine; declared that it had achieved more in its first month than any other presidency; announced that he would be holding a “campaign rally” in Florida; said that he had won the electoral college by 306 votes, the greatest victory since Ronald Reagan (it was 304, and it isn’t); declared that prescription meds were becoming “as cheap as candy bars”; attacked the intelligence agencies for leaking information on now-resigned national security adviser Mike Flynn, which he said was real information, damaging to be out in public, and then called the stories about the information “fake news”. He railed against the press as he always does, and then did what Politico reporter Josh Dawsey called a “lightning round” in which he responded to a series of questions about foreign policy issues, such as North Korean missile testing, with the phrase “not good”. Taking a question from an African-American journalist, he asked her if she knew the Congressional Black Caucus, and said he could “set up a meeting” for him, between them and himself.

The press conference was called to announce the nomination of Alexander Acosta for labor secretary. The rambling press conference by a minor official is a hallowed institution in American political life; so too is the gonzo press conference, by a celebrity figure storming the heights of public office. Trump’s genius is to combine the two into the gonzo ramble, and deliver it from the centre of American power. Polling would suggest that this remains popular among enough of his base, and sections of the population beyond. All good fun, but, whatever the political support in the heartland, team Trump is running into serious political trouble in the series of institutional wars that constitute US government.

Days after Trump announced an inquiry into the intelligence agencies following the leaks that brought down Mike Flynn — Trump is now against leaks — the FBI released hundreds of files relating to their 1972-1974 investigation into the Trump company’s (run by his dad, with the Donald learning the trade) discriminating against black renters and home-buyers in New York. Standard release, purely coincidental, of course.

Congress and the Republicans in Congress are also distancing themselves, with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announcing that possible links between Trump admin officials and the Russian government “must be investigated”. Following Trump’s gonzo ramble, speaker Paul Ryan’s office put out a press release titled “Meanwhile in Congress…”, addressing a range of issues, from the Affordable Care Act to tax policy, which Trump’s presser never landed on in any comprehensible fashion.

Team Trump has now made some very powerful enemies, within institutions, and it would appear to lack both the leadership, expertise and personnel to deal with that. Fighting Congress and the courts is one thing, and can be done in the open, with both portrayed as “elitist obstructionists”; fighting the intelligence agencies is a different matter entirely.

The crucial problem for the Trump administration is that the intelligence agencies have enormous power, but, really, appear nowhere in the tripartite separation of powers designed into the US system. Indeed, the very existence of a police force — which came into existence after the US constitution was drafted — problematises the separation of powers. Are the police executive? Legislative? Judicial? They are part of all three, but also of none. A police force is a standing “form of exception”, which is one reason why the US has so many local police — City of Waxahachie PD etc — because the full separation of powers does not apply at that level.

When you have a national police — i.e. a Federal Bureau of Investigation — you have a problem. For decades, FBI head J Edgar Hoover maintained his power through confidential information gathered on politicians, a practice that eventually prompted a fightback against the agency in Congress. The CIA was also targeted in that general sweep, because it is similarly “exceptional” — indeed it is exceptionally exceptional.

President Harry Truman wanted to abolish its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, after World War II had passed, and not replace it. He was persuaded otherwise. During the next three decades, the agency ran riot through the world, with and without White House support, until being brought to heel somewhat by the Senate Committee run by Senator Frank Church in the 1970s. But when Ronald Reagan was elected, the Company was back in business.

Despite blunders, and general uselessness, in terms of actual threats, it has prospered. The first task, often the only task, of intelligence agencies is to reproduce themselves across multiple administrations. They would all be far happier under a Pence administration, and their means of getting to that would be collect and and then release information so damning that Congress has no choice but to move to impeachment. That would create an unknowable degree of resistance from Trump supporters — somewhere between meh and uprising — and the US would have not merely a constitutional crisis, but a major social-political one.

Great presser! Thumbs up! MAGA!