On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump tweeted two simple words to his millions of followers: “WITCH HUNT!” The subtext was impossible to miss, particularly as the tweet was preceded by a pair of quotes from special counsel Ken Starr and legal professor Jonathan Turley, both arguing that there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The tweet comes as Trump’s lawyers are reportedly weighing their options for testimony before special counsel Robert Mueller, and it embodies Trump’s approach to the concept of Russian meddling as a whole: despite confirmation from his own intelligence agencies, the president reportedly becomes irritable when staffers so much as mention the Russia question. Worse, it appears that his attitude has trickled down the White House ranks, kneecapping top agency officials in the face of what is clearly an ongoing threat.

As the scope of Mueller’s probe continues to expand, U.S. Cyber Command chief Admiral Mike Rogers told Congress that Trump has yet to direct him to focus on ongoing Russian threats against American democracy. “Nobody’s . . . directly asked me,” Rogers said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, adding, “I’ve certainly provided my opinion in ongoing discussions.” Rogers disputed the notion that the U.S. is “sitting back and waiting” for the next cyber attack, but said it’s fair to say that “we have not opted to engage in some of the same behaviors we are seeing” with regards to Russia.

To date, Rogers said that the U.S.’s response to Russia “has not changed the calculus or the behavior on behalf of the Russians,” and added that “they have not paid a price that is sufficient to change their behavior.”

Other agencies report a similar lack of guidance from the White House; in a report on efforts in countries like Sweden to preemptively meddle-proof elections, The Washington Post noted that the F.B.I. likewise “says it has received no White House orders to secure the 2018 midterms against Russian influence,” and the heads of six intelligence agencies recently testified that Trump “has not directed his intelligence officials to specifically combat Russian interference.”

Meanwhile, Russian efforts are only gaining steam. As Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified earlier this month, Russia is expected “to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen, and other means to influence, to try to build on its wide range of operations, and exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States.” Last month, cybersecurity firm Trend Micro Inc. asserted that Russians had spent months eyeing the U.S. Senate, possibly with plans to sabotage senators’ e-mail accounts—their report suggested that Fancy Bear, the same group of Russian hackers that infiltrated the Democratic National Committee, was behind the new wave of sabotage. And during the Winter Olympics, Russian hackers reportedly used North Korean I.P. addresses to orchestrate a cyber-attack against the Olympics’ computer servers.

In the face of the impending threat, state officials across the country are returning to paper ballots in an attempt to secure their voting systems. Yet the White House remains paralyzed, in part, sources told CNN, because talk of Russian meddling hurts the president’s feelings—an outcome that is surely far more dire than the upending of our democracy.