Part of President Donald Trump’ s rebuttal to a report by a Washington Post journalist about chaos in his administration amid the lingering government shutdown was to note that “there’s almost nobody in the White House but me.”

But the president’s point that everything is fine because he’s essentially home alone was an odd and troubling rejoinder to reassure the public, especially for those troubled by his isolation and those who recall Richard Nixon’s final days as president. The increasingly isolated, off-the-rails Nixon wandered the halls of the White House at night, talking to the portraits of past presidents on the walls, according to the book “The Final Days” by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.