Yesterday, more than 30 House Republicans stormed the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in the basement of the Capitol, cellphones in hand, where a closed-door hearing was taking place as part of the impeachment inquiry. This flouting of strict rules governing electronics use in the sensitive space alarmed national-security experts.

The chaotic image made for a bizarre contrast to how other Republicans had discussed issues surrounding impeachment yesterday alone. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked to confirm that he told Trump his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “innocent,” as the president claimed, McConnell bluntly denied that they’d even spoken about the topic. Later, when reporters asked Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina whether the White House needed to do a “better job” of messaging on impeachment, he simply answered: “Yes.” (The whiplash continued this morning, when Graham announced that he and McConnell would introduce a resolution condemning the probe.)

The messaging disarray began to manifest on September 25, when the White House released a summary of Trump’s call with Zelensky—the centerpiece of the whistle-blower complaint. That day was an opportunity for the Trump administration to mold the controversy that was sure to ensue over the call’s contents.

In the past, the administration had made the most of such opportunities: On March 24, for example, when Attorney General William Barr issued his four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, he set the tone for how the years-long saga would be perceived. The report, Barr told the country, revealed “no collusion” and “no obstruction”—phrasing that immediately infiltrated cable-news chyrons and Trump’s Twitter feed.

It didn’t matter that, upon its release, the report proved far more damning than the attorney general’s cursory summation had suggested. Barr’s insistence on speaking for the report—rather than letting the report speak for itself—may have been one of the reasons Trump avoided impeachment in the spring. But in the case of his call with Zelensky, Trump failed to follow his attorney general’s blueprint: When the White House released the summary of the call, there was no authority figure like Barr out front reframing the narrative. There were no early talking points for Republican lawmakers to parrot.

White House attempts to reshape public impressions of the scandal have backfired. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, made a rare appearance in the White House press briefing room last week and fielded questions about Ukraine, but he only helped confuse matters. One reason an aid package to Ukraine was held up, Mulvaney said, was because Trump wanted the country to open an investigation into the 2016 election that could help him politically. Mulvaney later tried to walk back what sounded precisely like a quid pro quo. Trump, who in recent weeks has considered firing Mulvaney, “wasn’t pleased,” a person close to the president told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Trump’s views about his staff’s performance. “The Mulvaney thing hurt us. You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out.”