“Over the weekend, President Trump was accused by a Republican senator of running the White House like a ‘reality show.’ In the 48 hours that followed, this is how the president rebutted the characterization,” the New York Times reports.

“He called out the offending senator for being short and sounding like ‘a fool.’ He challenged his secretary of state to an I.Q. contest and insisted he would win. He celebrated the downfall of a critic who was suspended from her job. And his first wife and third wife waged a public war of words over who was really his first lady.”

“Mr. Trump’s West Wing has always seemed to be the crossroads between cutthroat politics and television drama, presided over by a seasoned showman who has made a career of keeping the audience engaged and coming back for more. Obsessed by ratings and always on the hunt for new story lines, Mr. Trump leaves the characters on edge, none of them ever really certain whether they might soon be voted off the island.”

First Read: “Trump and congressional Republicans haven’t passed a health care bill. And tax reform still seems to be a gigantic lift. But Trump and his supporters can crow about this — the president has won back-to-back battles in the Culture War.”

“Yesterday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote a letter to NFL owners and executives, saying: ‘We believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem,’ and said that the NFL has developed a plan that it will address at next week’s meeting.”

“Also, ESPN suspended host Jemele Hill for violating the company’s social media policy after she tweeted about boycotts against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.”

“He thinks he has to be loyal to his base. I keep on saying, ‘But who is your base? You don’t have a natural base. Your base now is the world and America, so you have all these constituencies; show them who you really are.’ In my opinion, he’s better than this.”

— Longtime Trump friend Thomas Barrack, quoted by the Washington Post, saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by some of the president’s rhetoric.

A senior Republican source told Gabriel Sherman that White House chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary James Mattis talked about what they would do if President Trump “lunged for the nuclear football.”

President Trump told Forbes that the size of some federal agencies is “unnecessary,” which is why he has left vacant so many positions that would require a presidential appointment.

Said Trump: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be — because you don’t need them. I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary. They have hundreds of thousands of people.”

“The big advantage that I would get is if the economy does well. That’s a great thing for me–politically and otherwise. But the economy is a very, you know it’s very interesting, Randall. I built a great business, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. My children are running it. It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I don’t even think about it because this is so big, what I’m doing now.”

— President Trump, in an interview with Forbes, on whether his tax reform plan would benefit his own family.

“I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake.'”

— President Trump, quoted by The Hill.

From a new Brookings Institution paper:

“Our review of the facts and the law leads us to the view that the president likely obstructed justice. Should that conclusion be borne out, we believe he will be held to account under one or another of the vehicles we have outlined, for no one is above the law in our system.”

“I think it’s fake news. But if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

— President Trump, in a Forbes interview, on reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “moron.”

The Washington Post has completed “two-thirds of our year-long project analyzing, categorizing and tracking every false or misleading claim by Trump, as well as his flip-flops. As of our latest update Oct. 10, 2017, or his 264th day in office, the president has made 1,318 claims over 263 days. He has averaged five claims a day, even picking up pace since the six-month mark.”

“With almost exactly 100 days left to go in our year-long project, Trump is inching ever closer to breaking 2,000 claims.”

Morning Consult: “Trump has failed to improve his standing among the public anywhere — including the states he won handily as the Republican nominee during the 2016 presidential election, according to the survey.”

“The negative swings in net approval ranged from as high as 30 percentage points in solidly blue Illinois and New York to as low as 11 points in red Louisiana. But in many of the states Trump easily carried last year — such as Tennessee (-23 points), Mississippi (-21 percentage points), Kentucky (-20 points), Kansas (-19 points) and Indiana (-17 points) — voters have soured on the president in 2017.”

“Frustrated by his Cabinet and angry that he has not received enough credit for his handling of three successive hurricanes, President Trump is now lashing out, rupturing alliances and imperiling his legislative agenda,” the Washington Post reports.

“In a matter of days, Trump has torched bridges all around him; nearly imploded an informal deal with Democrats to protect the young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children; and plunged himself into the culture wars on issues ranging from birth control to the national anthem.”

New York Times: “President Trump’s latest rupture with a Republican senator has widened the schism with his own party on Capitol Hill, potentially jeopardizing the future of his legislative agenda even as he presses lawmakers to approve deep tax cuts.”

For members: Trump Has Effectively Lost His Senate Majority

David Frum: “Among other insights, Corker’s Sunday interview forces Americans to confront some tough questions: By what methods is the president being contained? Is he, for example, being denied sensitive information by agencies that remember how he blurted a closely guarded secret to the Russian foreign minister and the location of U.S. nuclear submarines to the president of the Philippines? Are allies and potential adversaries being signaled that presidential statements do not actually represent the policy of the United States government? That was how National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster dealt with Trump’s refusal to read aloud the endorsement of NATO’s Article 5 in the speech written for Trump to deliver at NATO headquarters in May. ‘He did not make a decision not to say it.'”

“To what extent does the president remain in the military chain of command?”