Although no moment would have been opportune for Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, to plead guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and agree to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller, last week was a particularly bad time for the news to come to light. Flynn’s plea deal happened to top off a week in which the president seemed to become increasingly belligerent, repeating outright lies to his inner circle, and reportedly convincing himself that he is immune to backlash, either political or legal.

It was perhaps the sense that he could “operate with impunity” that motivated Trump’s delayed response to Flynn’s indictment on Saturday, when he tweeted what seemed like a damning confession—an impression his lawyers quickly moved to quash, with John Dowd taking responsibility for the tweet’s contents. Whether Dowd sent the tweet or not, however, was only the public manifestation of the crippling paranoia that is reportedly setting in behind the scenes at the White House, as well as the growing sense that Trump is spiraling out of control.

Politico reported on Sunday that staffers are increasingly unable to limit Trump’s ability to consume information—it is near impossible, one said, to prevent him from watching television—and Trump’s allies worry that White House lawyer Ty Cobb’s repeated promise that the probe will be over soon is “divorced from reality.” “There’s no quarterback. . . . They’re literally making it up as they go along,” a person close to the White House told Politico, describing the lack of any containment strategy. “We’re in very dangerous territory.”

Caught in the center of this Trump maelstrom is John Kelly, the former general-turned-chief of staff, brought in earlier this year to stabilize a warring West Wing and restrain the president from his worst impulses. Part of his initial strategy involved limiting the information that ended up in front of Trump, from news sources to people, even going so far as to reportedly keep Trump from entering the dining room at Mar-a-Lago. That worked—to a point. Several of Trump’s confidants outside the White House told The Wall Street Journal that now, if they wanted to get in touch with him, they simply call his wife, Melania Trump, and ask her to pass on messages to the president. “If I don’t want to wait 24 hours for a call . . . getting to Melania is much easier,” said one such confidant. Trump has also taken to asking his aides not to tell Kelly about his private phone calls (a request they declined at least once), and apparently has free reign on Twitter. “Believe it or not, I don’t follow the tweets,” Kelly said recently.

Though Trump’s colleagues were quick to emphasize to the Journal that Trump’s belligerence has not destabilized his relationship with Kelly, for whom he maintains a deep respect, Trump’s spiraling tantrums over the Mueller probe nonetheless have consequences for his staff. If they were paranoid that the plea deals of George Papadopoulos and Flynn would bring Mueller to their door, Trump’s tweets implicating himself have only put them further on edge. “They’re probably shitting bricks,” an attorney representing a senior Trump aide told Politico. “How can you not?”