President Donald Trump's rocky and freewheeling start to the presidency has led to numerous course-corrections after three months in office. In addition to significant shifts on foreign policy, the seeming death of his health-care bill and the ouster of his National Security Advisor, Trump is sparring with Congress as well as handling his group of bickering advisors.
All of these actions may portend trouble for Trump, but they don't necessarily spell doom for his presidency. Plenty of presidents go through early staff changes and find their sea legs. But for a president who is laser-focused on his re-election run in 2020—to the degree that he filed paperwork for re-election on his inauguration day—Trump should be very concerned. While polls show that many of his voters, including independents, have maintained their support for him, more than any president in memory, Trump has gone after his fellow Republicans, managing to antagonize wide-swaths of his party's faithful.
Trump is clearly mindful of the need to control the GOP. Reports have shown that his political team has been pushing his supporters into positions of control over the individual Republican State Party leaderships, mostly notably winning a battle for the Ohio GOP Chairmanship over Governor John Kasich's choice in the wake of the election. But as Trump has personally proven in his stunning primary run in 2016, that is not enough. Whatever changes Trump has wrought on the political process may make it more likely that a challenger could come after him in 2020.
Trump is right to worry about a challenge. Historically, primary challenges are the death of sitting presidents. Even before the primary and caucus system started taking over the presidential selection process in the early 1970s, incumbents facing any primary challenge find themselves finished by November.