it is the nature of personalist authoritarian regimes. Anything that presents them with information or outcomes that don’t serve the leaders goals gets turned in to an enemy, even if it’s the dumbest strategic choice possible.

They have an incredibly favorable Supreme Court, and rather than working with it to consolidate power, they are throwing rocks at it for not letting them do what ever they want.

It’s a pattern across a lot of dysfunctional organizations, when a leader doesn’t accept “not possible” for an answer. Doesn’t care about the dissent presented by subordinates and dismisses it as disloyalty. If you don’t want to get fired, you just go along with the boss and never present him with the reality.

The real messes occur when this kind of behavior scales. When the subordinates of the leader start doing the same to their own subordinates. When people start lying to their superiors about what is happening because they know the boss doesn’t want bad news or to be told their idea didn’t work. You get a game of telephone where information is distorted as it moves up the chain.