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.