It was supposed to be the most somber and impressive of presidential moments, a gathering of the national security team at the White House to discuss military options to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb that killed at least 60 people, including children. But as the meeting began, Donald Trump was more enraged by a crossed red line much closer to home: the F.B.I.’s raid on his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen. “I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys . . . it’s frankly a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense,” Trump said to reporters, as his new national security adviser, John Bolton, sat beside him looking uncomfortable.

There have been times during Robert Mueller’s investigation—Mueller’s subpoenaing of Trump business records, for instance—when White House advisers worried Trump seemed on the verge of triggering a constitutional crisis by firing Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The stunning Cohen raid is another one of these moments. “He’s sitting there bitching and moaning. He’s brooding and doesn’t have a plan,” a Republican close to the White House said last night. “I could see him having a total meltdown and saying, ‘Fuck it, I’m firing all of them,’” a Trump friend told me. “This is very dry tinder. If someone strikes a match to it, you could see it catching fire,” added a former official.

In the past, Trump’s impulses could be tempered by the calming presence of loyal aides like Hope Hicks and longtime security chief Keith Schiller. But both Hicks and Schiller are gone, leaving Trump to operate largely unchecked. His legal team remains leaderless following the resignation of Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd and Trump’s decision against replacing him with husband-and-wife attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing. Trump has fully marginalized his long-suffering chief of staff, John Kelly. “Trump’s just doing his own thing now,” the Trump friend said.

The structure Kelly had imposed on the West Wing has now been mostly swept away. According to two Republicans close to the White House, Trump told Bolton and recently appointed economic adviser Larry Kudlow that they report directly to him, signaling a return to the freewheeling, open-door structure Trump favors. Whether intentional or not, Trump has effectively stripped Kelly of his authority.

“It’s the Scaramucci situation,” another former official pointed out. “Trump just said, ‘You work for me.’”

Already, there have been flash points, conflicts beneath the level of Trump’s attention. According to sources, Bolton told Kelly he wanted to replace N.S.C. spokesman Michael Anton, but Kelly resisted. Bolton overruled him. “Bolton said to Kelly, ‘The president told me to get rid of anyone he thinks is a leaker. If you’re going to stop this then you’ll own every leak coming out of the N.S.C.,’” a person briefed on the conversation said.

Kelly also resisted Bolton’s request to remove N.S.C. official Ylli Bajraktari, who had worked as an assistant to the deputy secretary of defense during the Obama administration and was close to H.R. McMaster. Conservatives have accused Bajraktari of leaking the story that Trump ignored instructions not to congratulate Vladimir Putin on winning his election. (A source familiar with the discussions said Bolton was not responsible for Anton and Bajraktari’s departures, and that the two, as McMaster allies, had been planning to leave. The source added that they were not leakers. “It’s just not true,” the source said.)