With the exceptions of Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan, Republican lawmakers have mostly stayed on the sidelines as Donald Trump conducts his own delirious impeachment defense, waiting, according to reports, for a grand strategy to come down from party leadership. But no such plan appears imminent; plans for the White House’s so-called impeachment war room have fallen apart, leaving Trump’s reelection campaign and his own frenetic Twitter feed as the first line of defense. GOP leadership has struggled to rationalize the president’s efforts to dig up dirt on his political opponent via a foreign country, and daily reports about his conduct have only made things harder. That’s left frustrated Republican lawmakers to fend for themselves—and could further imperil the president’s political standing. “There is no White House war room,” a congressional GOP source told CNN. “Why are we the ones who have to defend him?”

Trump’s allies have spent nearly three years running cover for him amid scandal after scandal, including the obstruction of justice outlined by former special counsel Robert Mueller. But most in the GOP have been conspicuously silent as the latest controversy has unfolded—a reflection, in part, of the severity of the situation. Not only did a rough transcript of the president’s July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky back up the most explosive claims in the whistleblower complaint, but the president and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, have outright admitted to seeking a foreign investigation into Joe Biden and his son. Trump’s conduct since Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry—giving unhinged press conferences, making wild threats against lawmakers and the whistleblower, spouting incoherent conspiracy theories—has been further cause for alarm, drawing some pushback from the very Republicans he’s looking to rally around him. “This is beyond repugnant,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted after Trump amplified calls for a civil war if he should be removed from office. “How can we defend his threatening whistleblowers?” a Republican source on Capitol Hill asked CNN, rhetorically.

Of course, rank-and-file Republicans haven’t gone so far as to join their Democratic counterparts in supporting the impeachment inquiry. But they have gone to absurd lengths to avoid discussing the matter, particularly when it comes to questions about the substance of Trump’s actions. Many have equivocated. “Let’s let the committee investigate it,” Sen. Mike Rounds said last week of the whistleblower allegations. Others suddenly became too busy to have read enough about the only story people in Washington are talking. “I’ve been running around this morning,” Ohio’s Rob Portman said when asked to comment the day the transcript dropped. And when some Republicans did hazard a defense of the president, they were made to look foolish, with Jordan getting smacked down in a real-time fact check by CNN’s Jake Tapper and McCarthy tripping over his words when 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley forced him to abandon the shaky talking points the White House armed him with.

If all that wasn’t enough to make congressional Republicans wary, the steady stream of new revelations about the president’s executive overreach might. Since Nancy Pelosi officially launched the impeachment inquiry, Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence have each been ensnared in the scandal, reports have indicated that Ukraine isn’t the only foreign country Trump has attempted to pressure into helping him settle domestic political scores, and the White House has suggested it may attempt to stonewall Democratic investigators. With Republicans bracing for more shoes to drop, many in the GOP seem reluctant to get out too far ahead of their skis, leaving Trump to go it alone with his reactive, scattershot impeachment defense—at the peril of both himself and his party “He is taking it upon himself to tweet about every shiny object,” a Senate Republican source told CNN. “That is not helpful right now.”