These are just some of the colorful ways Washington insiders are describing the state of the White House

It’s rumored that GOP lawmakers are hesitant to talk about Donald Trump, James Comey, and memo-gate at all (Charlie Rose said on CBS This Morning that 20 Republican lawmakers had declined invitations to speak on Wednesday), but we rounded up a few examples of how Washington insiders are describing the current state of the White House:

• “I feel like running down the hallway with a fire extinguisher,” one senior Trump administration official told The Daily Beast.

• Another aide told The Daily Beast that the scene inside the White House on Monday night was tense and like “a morgue.”

• Senior staffers were said to be “hiding in offices“ (which is a step up from hiding “among” the bushes). 

• “The president’s legislative agenda is lying in ruins on the floor of this building. … You can still see teeth and blood on the floor here,” House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), said on MSBNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. 

• “At this point I’m wondering if we’ll ever be able to stop talking about Russia,” a White House staffer told The Daily Beast after the Washington Post report was published. “It’s totally self-inflicted. Every time I feel like we’re getting a handle on the last Russia fiasco, a new one pops.”

• “A week ago, we were talking about the agenda grinding to a halt,” a “Republican operative” told Axios. “Now, the train is going down the hill backwards.”

• “[Trump] thinks he’s playing chess when he’s actually playing checkers,” a former FBI official told The Daily Beast.

• Sen. John McCain told Bob Schieffer at an award dinner last evening that the Trump scandals have reached a “Watergate size and scale.”

• “They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” one White House official told the Washington Post about the night James Comey was fired. ML