Last night with Chris Matthews, the great Dan Rather had said that, if the administration continues to lie its face off on issues large and small, the press should reply with "cold steel, oak and iron." (Dan Rather is the last Viking chieftain, motherfckers!) It might not take that level of energy, though. The administration seems to have taken on the internal dynamics of a middle-school run by the Borgias.

The Washington Post put together an overview of the first weekend that was startling in its implicit revelation that the backstabbing among the White House apparatchiks is reaching levels unseen in those halls since the rats were heading for the ratlines on Richard Nixon in 1972. After all, somebody had to tell these reporters about this amazing episode.

As his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was still unpacking boxes in his spacious new West Wing office, Trump grew increasingly and visibly enraged. Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief — Madonna even referenced "blowing up the White House."

"Visibly enraged." It took a long time for people to start talking openly about how nuts Nixon was getting as the noose tightened, and we've got people giving up the president on this kind of thing after only three days? Is there more? Of course, there is.

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media's failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public's perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

I would point out that the campaigns of Alexander the Great do not necessarily align with the president*'s own sense of his accomplishments.

Because Conway operates outside of the official communications department, some aides grumble that she can go rogue when she pleases, offering her own message and promoting herself as much as the president. One suggested that Conway's office on the second floor of the West Wing, as opposed to one closer to the Oval Office, was a sign of her diminished standing. Though Conway took over the workspace previously occupied by Valerie Jarrett, who had been Obama's closest adviser, the confidant dismissively predicted that Trump would rarely climb a flight of stairs.

Well, I'm comforted by that knowledge. What is remarkable, of course, is how readily people within a brand new administration were willing to give up on their colleagues, and on the man they purportedly came aboard to serve. There is a lot of talk that the administration is riven by conflicts between a Republican establishment faction led by Reince Priebus and a passel of bomb-throwers led by Steve Bannon.

That makes a certain amount of sense, but it also elides an important point. A president is supposed to be able to rein in his own employees so they don't go into business for themselves. But this president* doesn't know how to do this job, so he doesn't know to do this part of it, either.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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