Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president last November, many of the billionaire’s critics tried to convince themselves that he would finally tone down his divisive rhetoric and curtail the unhinged behavior now that he was actually going to be president of the United States. It was a kind of defense mechanism against the utter shock of the situation. Hardly anyone had truly believed that Trump would — or even could — be elected president, so when he was, many dumbfounded (and terrified) people resorted to self-deception in order to cope.

Of course, many Republicans had similarly deluded themselves earlier in the year, after Trump had managed to win the party’s nomination. Now that he was entering the general election as a major-party candidate for president, the reasoning went, he would finally “pivot” and start acting … well, presidential.

We all know how that turned out, of course. After just four months in the Oval Office it should be absolutely clear that President Trump will not be changing any time soon. That is to say, he will not stop tweeting like an unhinged maniac early in the morning or peddling blatant falsehoods and conspiracy theories or revealing classified information to foreign officials in order to boast, or repeatedly breaking democratic norms — whether it be personally attacking sitting judges who rule against his policies, or calling journalists “enemies of the people.” In other words, Donald Trump will not (read: cannot) stop acting like Donald Trump — an impulsive, vindictive and unscrupulous billionaire with the temperament of a pubescent boy.

And at this stage in the game, it is unclear whether Trump will even make it to the one-year mark in office. The New York Times’ bombshell report earlier this week, which claims that the president tried to get former FBI director James Comey to drop an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, suddenly made impeachment (and possibly criminal prosecution) seem like a real possibility.

Over the past week, of course, the heat kept building. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed as a Justice Department special counsel to oversee the investigation into the Trump campaign’s apparent connections to Russia. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was revealed to have joked last year, in a recorded conversation, that he believed Trump was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll. And investigators are now reportedly focusing not just on former close associates of Trump, like Flynn or onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort, but also on people who currently work in the White House.

No longer are genuine calls for impeachment limited to the liberal blogosphere and social media. Major publications and politicians are now dropping the I-word and considering whether the president belongs in office.