In the era of primal Trump, West Wing advisers have been bracing for the moment when Donald Trump instigates a moral and political crisis from which the White House can’t recover. The current situation, with its heartbreaking images of migrant families being separated on the southern border, and children interned in camps and kept in cages, might be that moment. There are echoes of Charlottesville, with the president digging himself deeper, even as the midterms loom. “This is brutal,” said one Republican close to the president. “Trump is riding high in the polls, and it’s playing into his mental state that he’s invincible.”

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On Wednesday, Trump partially retreated from his position, signing an executive order that directs immigration officials to imprison parents and children together. But the president’s hardline rhetoric on family separation has sowed chaos in the West Wing, two sources close to the White House told me. For the second day in a row, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—already eyeing an exit, though not for months—did not hold an on-camera briefing with reporters. “She’s tired of taking on water for something she doesn’t believe in,” a friend of Sanders told me. “She continues to have a frustration that the policies are all over the map,” another person close to her said. “It’s not a good look for Sarah.” According to sources, if Sanders were to leave earlier than expected, Trump is high on former Fox & Friends anchor Heather Nauert, who’s currently the State Department spokesperson, to be his next press secretary. “Trump loves her,” one former administration official said. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Meanwhile, as the border crisis spirals, the absence of a coordinated policy process has allowed the most extreme administration voices to fill the vacuum. White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has all but become the face of the issue, a development that even supporters of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” position say is damaging the White House. “Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border,” an outside White House adviser said. “He’s a twisted guy, the way he was raised and picked on. There’s always been a way he’s gone about this. He’s Waffen-SS.”

Making matters worse, Trump doesn’t seem to have an end game for the inhumane policy that is opposed by two-thirds of Americans. The executive order that Trump signed on Wednesday is internally inconsistent and is almost certain to be challenged in court. (A 1997 consent decree prohibits the government from detaining undocumented children for more than 20 days, even if they are housed with their parents.) He’s continued to blame Democrats for allowing immigrants to “infest” the country; while in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night with congressional Republicans, he called on them to end family separation and “fix” the immigration system. He’s effectively boxed himself into a corner. “He doesn’t like this policy, and he knows it’s not helping him,” a Republican who’s spoken with him said. “But he can’t get within him that this is a problem, and he needs to take ownership of it.”

This article has been updated to reflect the president’s new executive order on family separation.