I'm sure it's frustrating to be president and find yourself unable to make the policy changes you want to make, and were in fact elected to make. And that drives them all to try to act entirely on their own.
But most don't go TOO far. They accept those Supreme Court losses, and even losses in lower courts. Trump isn't like that; he evidently thinks he's king. And if he doesn't smarten up, he'll pay the price for that, as Nixon did before him.