In a major victory for the incoming president, Republicans will now control both houses of Congress

after the House was called for the GOP earlier this week. But this trifecta doesn't guarantee

smooth governing. As with Trump's first term, narrow margins in the Senate and House could make

passing major legislation difficult. So what will it take to govern in this divided time?

Casey Burgett is the director of the Legislative Affairs Program

at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University.

Casey Bergett, so good to have you on the program.

As we said, Trump now controls both houses of Congress.

When you couple that, he's got the White House, couple that also with winning the popular vote.

It seems like he has enormous freedom to do what he wants.

But that is, as we know, not always how it works out.

Absolutely.

The president, especially one who wins the popular vote, has both chambers of Congress in his pocket. He can be incredibly aggressive, and we're expecting President Trump to do exactly that. But his powers only extend as far as the members of Congress allow them to go. So as we saw within his first term, he had united government there.

But he was checked a couple times on nominations, policy once, and it doesn't just go as smoothly as we think it should, given that GOP has all levers of control in terms of governmental power.

I guess it depends also where you sit on the political spectrum. That's either a feature of the system or that's a bug in the system.

Exactly. We are taught from our youngest days that we have checks and balances.

That's the genius of our system.

And that's true too, even if every lever of government is controlled by the same party.

It's not just as simple as having the

same label next to your names and you get what you want. It depends what exactly you're trying

to do and how aggressive you're trying to be doing it. Trump has been announcing several of his

cabinet nominees this week. And even within the GOP, some of those people are very, very controversial.

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