Monday was a bank holiday in America. Donald Trump almost went golfing for the third day in a row, after attending his golf course the day before and on Saturday when he was not invited to John McCain’s funeral. Then – motorcade waiting on Monday morning – he appeared to change his mind abruptly and retreated to the White House. Maybe he could see storm clouds gathering. But it was the storm inside his own White House he needed to worry about – and on Tuesday it broke. Here’s what we learned this week.

• Tuesday kicked off badly. Protesters dressed as handmaids, and the kind of people Trump would probably call “nasty women” disrupted the opening day of the supreme court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s ultra-conservative choice for the supreme court.

• In the early afternoon, veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s eagerly anticipated book about the Trump White House broke cover. Fear dropped like a bomb as the Washington Post itself revealed devastating details, citing senior members of the administration calling the president, variously, an idiot, a professional liar, the mayor of Crazytown and a clueless, hopeless manchild.

• Woodward, who, with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” in the Trump administration. Fear tells of senior aides secretly snatching official papers from Trump’s desk in the Oval Office so he couldn’t sign them, as the only way to stop the president making dangerous policy decisions.

• Chief of staff John Kelly reportedly told staff, of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

• According to the book, previous chief of staff Reince Priebus dubbed the presidential bedroom, where Trump goes to tweet “the devil’s workshop” and called leisure time when a bored Trump tweets wildly “the witching hour”. Trump apparently referred to Priebus as a “little rat” who “scurries around”.

Play Video 1:12 'It's treason': Donald Trump on New York Times op-ed – video

• Gary Cohn, Trump’s former chief economic adviser, reportedly called Trump a “professional liar” and threatened to resign after the president said “both sides” were to blame when white supremacists clashed with protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Trump was later persuaded to condemn the neo-Nazis, but then told aides that was “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made,” according to Woodward.

• White House press secretary Sarah Sanders attempted to deride Fear as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the president look bad”. Kelly, for one, issued a statement calling the book “total BS”.

• Trump called the book a “shame” on Wednesday and Woodward a “con” and mused that US libel laws should be changed. Further details emerged, that Trump calls himself a “popularist”, despite his former aide Steve Bannon explaining that the word is populist. But this was just the eye of the storm.

• Wednesday mid-afternoon. The New York Times published an anonymous account written by a “current Trump administration official” claiming an internal White House “resistance” is working to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations” until he leaves – or can be removed from – office.

• The anonymous opinion column claimed aides had explored removing Trump via the 25th amendment to the US constitution, which allows for the replacement of a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”, but had decided against it. “So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until – one way or another – it’s over” the person wrote.

• Uproar ensued. Trump cried “treason” and called the author “gutless”. He was already on the prowl for the sources of Woodward’s book, but the witch-hunt escalated to fever pitch. Senator Rand Paul suggested lie detector tests for White House officials.

•Thursday saw a pitiful parade of senior administration officials, from Vice-President Mike Pence on down, issuing denials that they were the “resistance” mole in the White House. “Not mine”, “no”, “laughable” came the various statements. Trump repeated his cry of treason at a rally in Montana on Thursday evening.