Brett McGurk, the administration’s point person for “coordinating international efforts, from NATO allies to militia groups, in the effort against Islamic State militants,” quit in protest over Trump’s abrupt, ill-advised retreat from Syria (and his move to reduce U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan by nearly half). Trump said he didn’t know who McGurk is, which pretty much proved Mattis’s point that this president doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.

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Trump does know Mick Mulvaney, who has been named acting White House chief of staff, a move that inspires no one on the Hill, and who vows not to change Trump (as if anyone could).

Trump has an acting attorney general, whose appointment is constitutionally suspect, and to whom Trump complained about the progress of Southern District of New York prosecutors, a move many legal experts say reeks of obstruction. His attorney general nominee, it was revealed, wrote a memo advocating the view that a president cannot obstruct justice because he’s the president — a theory that Richard M. Nixon couldn’t get away with.

If you are keeping track, we have “acting” Cabinet officials at Justice, Defense, EPA, Interior and, soon, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (likely to be replaced with an ex-Fox News personality with no diplomatic experience). Trump’s real advisers — or are they puppeteers? — appear to be Fox News hosts.

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Trump doubled- and then tripled-down on his threat to keep the government closed until he gets his wall. He’s left hundreds of thousands of employees stranded without pay during the holidays. The Democratic House likely will pass a clean continuing resolution, send it to the Senate and watch Republicans try to figure out how to get themselves out of the mess Trump made.

Trump even asked a seven-year-old girl if she still believed in Santa, adding, “Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?”

What’s marginal is the recovery right now, as Trump’s shutdown and Trump’s Fed-bashing has sent the stock market tumbling downhill. Be calm! ALL IS WELL! Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke to six bank chief executives and then declared there was plenty of credit available — something no one doubted until Mnuchin hollered, “ALL IS WELL!”

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Trump’s tweets come at a faster clip — with a higher percentage of flat-out-lies and incomprehensible rants.

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal troubles mount — having been identified by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York as directing Michael Cohen to commit an illegal act and revealed by Robert S. Mueller III to have lied over and over again about his efforts during the campaign to secure a Trump Tower deal in Moscow.

Trump has had the worst few weeks of his presidency, maybe of any presidency with the exception of Nixon’s final weeks in 1974. For Republicans on the Hill and around the country, a sense of resignation if not dread is developing. Will Trump tank the economy entirely? Precipitate an international crisis? And most important, will they actually be stuck with him as their nominee in 2020?

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All but the Fox News, Kool Aid-drinking audience (and right-wing journalists cuddling up to the same cult members) must concede that Trump’s presidency is spinning out of control, the arguments for defending him becoming more inane and the danger to the country mounting. The real question for Republicans in 2019 is whether they start to push him out, or subject themselves, their party and the country to a full-term of the most inept, chaotic, mean-spirited and thick-headed president in our history.