Senior adviser Stephen Miller went on the Sunday shows and refused to confirm the president’s confidence in national security adviser Michael Flynn — who nine sources revealed did not tell the truth about the content of phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Miller also managed to destroy whatever credibility he had by arguing that illegal voters were bused into New Hampshire. (Funny, then, that former GOP senator Kelly Ayotte didn’t challenge the election results.)

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White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is under increasing political pressure and risks losing the confidence of some colleagues following reports that he misled senior administration officials about his discussion of sanctions with a Russian envoy shortly before President Trump took office. As White House aides scramble to get their stories straight about the exact nature of those communications and as Democrats call for Flynn’s security clearance to be suspended or revoked, neither Trump nor his advisers have publicly defended Flynn or stated unequivocally that he has the president’s confidence.

As many predicted given his past management record (he was fired from his post as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency), the National Security Council is in disarray. Aghast permanent staffers view the crass politics of the Trump team with incredulity. The plethora of anti-Flynn stories suggests that a full-court press is on to push Trump into firing his national security adviser.

Flynn is hardly the only issue in the national security team. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, who reportedly still was reviewing the executive order when the president announced it, was compelled to take responsibility for the disastrous rollout. Probably no member of either party thought he was to blame. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s proposed deputy, Elliott Abrams, who received backing even from former Democratic nemeses, made it all the way to an in-person interview with the president — and then was rejected over critical comments he made last spring about Trump. Tillerson, we were told from those directly involved with the process, pushed hard for Abrams, who would have brought stability and expertise to the State Department. That was to no avail. The rejection submarined Tillerson, diminishing his standing in the administration.

Kellyanne Conway hired a chief of staff (!) presumably to increase her power base in the White House.

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Depending on which aide is leaking, the president either has great confidence in Sean Spicer or every day regrets hiring him.

Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his businesses and abide by the emoluments clause has blinded “constitutional conservatives” and frenetic House investigators. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Less intrigue and back-stabbing have transpired in four seasons of “House of Cards” than in the 3½ weeks of the Trump presidency. The explanation that Trump really likes abject chaos sounds increasingly like a weak rationalization for a White House in which incompetence is so rampant that one can survive only by blaming others. The president most certainly does not like the leaking, which he insists must stop. (Good luck with that.) He surely must see that his reputation (in some circles) as a successful businessman is quickly morphing into the picture of a hapless, forgetful man who is in over his head and cannot control his own raging narcissism, the White House, the executive branch or his own party.

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Many #NeverTrump Republicans warned of the incessant controversy and epic internal battles that would accompany Trump’s crew of ruthless characters suddenly responsible for — and quickly failing at — the nuts and bolts of governance. Trump’s steadfast opponents knew all along that chaos and dissension in a White House stem directly from the person in command, as they do in most dysfunctional workplaces. “Trump’s governing style to date can only loosely be called management. He makes decisions quickly, often without consulting relevant experts or even his own appointees. He reads almost nothing, at most a few bullet points — often ripped straight from cable TV — that cannot possibly capture the nuance of complicated policy issues,” writes President Obama’s former Justice Department director of public affairs Matthew Miller. “When his hastily considered decisions backfire in inevitable ways, he doubles down and attacks any critics who point out either the folly or impracticability of his orders.” The fish rots from the head, as it were, just as Trump’s harshest critics predicted.

Trump’s destructive influence is not limited to the White House, to be certain. We have frequently remarked on the degree to which the Trump phenomenon has exerted a corrupting influence on Republicans in Congress. On everything from the Constitution and trade to budget deficits and entitlement reform, most GOP lawmakers have abandoned principle for political opportunism. Right-leaning think tanks and conservative media have not been immune to intellectual corruption either.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, once the North Star for many conservatives, has over a period of months become peculiarly sympathetic to the president (with the notable exception of Bret Stephens); on the news side, its editor riled up the newsroom by publicly refusing to call Trump’s lies, well, “lies.” The brawl between principle and convenience burst into public view last week:

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News of the departure of Mark Lasswell, who edited op-eds for the Journal, comes as the paper’s internal tensions over Trump have begun to spill into public view. The reliably hawkish, pro-trade, small government conservative Journal op-ed page has been challenged by the rise of the populist, nationalist Trump movement. The Journal’s opinion pages have been a showcase for the intra-right divide over Trump, featuring Trump-sympathetic writers like Bill McGurn alongside anti-Trump columnists such as Bret Stephens. Lasswell appears to be a casualty of that divide, and his dismissal a victory for the pro-Trump faction on the editorial staff. . . . The tensions at the Journal are not limited to the editorial page. Recent stories in Politico and BuzzFeed News have detailed how rank-and-file staffers on the news side of the Journal have taken issue with what they have seen as editor-in-chief Gerry Baker’s apologism for Trump. There has been a shift, also, at the highest levels of the organization, as the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch went from Trump skeptic to ally over the course of the election.

The Fox-ification of the Wall Street Journal, resisted for years, now seems well underway.