New York Times: “Fabrications have long been a part of American politics. Politicians lie to puff themselves up, to burnish their résumés and to cover up misdeeds, including sexual affairs. (See: Bill Clinton.) Sometimes they cite false information for what they believe are justifiable policy reasons. (See: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam.)”

“But President Trump, historians and consultants in both political parties agree, appears to have taken what the writer Hannah Arendt once called ‘the conflict between truth and politics’ to an entirely new level.”

“From his days peddling the false notion that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to his inflated claims about how many people attended his inaugural, to his description just last week of receiving two phone calls — one from the president of Mexico and another from the head of the Boy Scouts — that never happened, Mr. Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis.”

Washington Post: “In a disorderly West Wing in which decisions are evaluated not by ideology but by their impact on the Trump brand and their fealty to the president’s campaign-trail promises, McMaster has struggled to become a dominant foreign policy force… Among his biggest challenges was holding the attention of the president… Trump had little time for in-depth briefings on Afghanistan’s history, its complicated politics or its seemingly endless civil war.”

“Even a single page of bullet points on the country seemed to tax the president’s attention span on the subject.”

Said one Trump confidant: “I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for a half-page.”

Jonathan Chait: “Barring resignation or removal from office — which would require the vote of a House majority plus two-thirds of the Senate — we are stuck with a delegitimized president serving out the remaining seven-eighths of his term. Politically gridlocked presidencies have become normal, but for the office to be occupied by a man whose own party elites doubt his functional competence and even loyalty is, to borrow a term, unpresidented. Trump’s obsession with humiliation and dominance has left him ill-prepared to cope with high-profile failure. He seems unlikely to content himself with quiet, incremental bureaucratic reform.”

“And yet it is difficult to see what Trump can do to reverse the situation. His next major domestic-agenda item, a regressive tax cut, is highly unpopular. He has inherited peace and prosperity. Nobody in the administration has been indicted. It is far easier to imagine conditions changing for the worse than the better.”