Washington (CNN) Fresh off one of the best -- or, at the very least, most consequential -- weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump just experienced one of his worst weeks in the White House.

The week was totally defined by the botched handling of the separation of families at the border -- a crisis that the Trump administration created earlier this spring by instituting a "zero-tolerance" policy for people trying to enter the country illegally. Every person who did so was referred for prosecution. And since children can't be detained in a federal prison, children were taken from their parents while those adults were waiting for their day in court.

The week began with Trump talking tough about its border policies -- and casting them as a necessary step to get the border under control. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen held a tone-deaf press briefing Monday night in which she claimed to have not seen pictures of children being detained in cages and repeatedly insisted that the administration was simply enforcing the law (they weren't).

The middle of the week was more of the same with the White House trying to beat back an increasingly intense chorus -- from within the Republican Party -- to end the policy of family separation. Late Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order -- after he and Nielsen insisted only Congress could fix the problem -- that allowed kids to be detained with their parents beyond 20 days. (That executive order faces a perilous legal future.)

The problem didn't disappear, however. By Thursday, it was clear that the Trump administration had no plan for how to locate and reunite the 2,000-plus kids who had already been separated from their families. And word came that the administration was preparing for the possibility of housing up to 20,000 migrant children on military bases around the country -- a size and scope that far eclipsed most peoples' expectations.