Donald Trump is continuing his assault on many of the rights found in the Constitution, including freedom of speech, due process, and birthright citizenship. Moreover, his administration has appeared willing to defy federal courts that find his actions unconstitutional.

In this environment, many commentators are doubling down on a set of rules written in 1787 as a bulwark against Trump’s agenda. Case in point is a recent New York Times editorial board article — “Who Will Defend the Defenders of the Constitution?” — which asks the Supreme Court justices to become “bolder about protecting the legal system they oversee.” The Times is not alone in hoping the Constitution will stop Trump’s agenda. University of California, Berkeley, law dean Erwin Chemerinsky has declared that “the only checks on the unconstitutional acts of the Trump administration will come from the courts.” MSNBC host Chris Hayes insists that Trump’s vision of executive power “is the absolute nightmare of our founders.” Jamelle Bouie, in a Times op-ed, describes Trump’s abuses as a degradation of the “constitutional order.” And during their Fighting Oligarchy tour, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez advised Trump to “read the Constitution.”

But an honest investigation of what led to the present moment brings us back to the Constitution itself. Trump came to power in 2016 despite losing the popular vote — an outcome enabled by the Electoral College, an eighteenth-century contraption designed to insulate elite rule from democratic majorities. Once in office, Trump had his Supreme Court justice nominations confirmed by the comically undemocratic Senate. Thanks to its malapportioned system of representation in which each state gets two senators regardless of population, all of Trump’s nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population.