It's been a dizzying week of rebukes for President Donald Trump.
Rebukes may be too strong a term. What's happening may be more akin to beleaguered parents trying to baby-proof their home now that the little Trumpkin is toddling around the White House.
Consider:
- The Senate this week denied Trump a repeal of Obamacare - not once but three times.
To date, this president has no major legislative wins.
But he has one gob-smackingly embarrassing legislative loss.
- Adding insult to injury, Congress also defied him over Russia.
No - more than defied him. Congress handcuffed Trump on Russia with a Thursday night Senate vote of 98-2 to establish a new congressional review process designed to keep the White House from itself easing Obama-era sanctions against Russia in place under executive orders. It also adds a new batch of sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The Senate vote came just days after a similar bill coasted through the House of Representatives with a vote of 419-3.
You can't get much more bipartisan than that. Of the votes, Vox writes, "Nothing unites the parties like mistrust of the president."
Trump's new communications chief Anthony Scaramucci has said Trump "may veto the sanctions" to "negotiate an even tougher deal against the Russians."
Try not to laugh out loud, though we're sure you have a life-sized vision of Vladimir Putin negotiating "tougher" sanctions on himself. The only thing more bizarre about Scaramucci than his profanely bad manners is his total and complete cluelessness. With only five of 522 senators and representatives voting against the sanctions bills, any presidential veto would easily -and embarrassingly - be over-ridden.
- On Wednesday, Trump made a surprise policy announcement on Twitter - yes, Twitter - banning transgender Americans from serving "in any capacity in the U.S. military." The move angered and bewildered transgender soldiers and veterans, with some active service members now wondering if they've put themselves at risk by outing themselves as transgender when the Obama administration allowed them to do so.
It also blindsided the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford.
"There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance," Dunford wrote in a memo. "In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions."
In his tweets, Trump said he had decided to bar transgender troops because the military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."
Again - try not to laugh. It should not come as a shock that the Pentagon spends about 10 times more on Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs annually ($84 million) than on gender transition-related health care costs.
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions also is ignoring Trump's tirades especially those designed to goad him into resigning. It's been widely speculated that Trump wants a new AG who could and would fire Russia probe Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
That standoff began when Trump told The New York Times that he would have chosen a different attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the law enforcement investigation into Russian election meddling. Sessions of course was bound by ethics laws to recuse himself and still believes he made the right decision.
Meanwhile, Republican members of Congress and the Senate have made it clear that they will not confirm another AG, should Trump fire Sessions - a former senator. What's more, lawmakers in both the houses of Congress are talking of writing legislation that would protect Mueller.
- Even the Boy Scouts of America have rebuked President Trump, issuing an apology to Scout parents for the speech given by the president at their National Jamboree recently.
Think about that for a minute: The Boy Scouts of America had to apologize for the president of the United States.
- New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks recently wrote a piece about Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake's new book called "Conscience of a Conservative."
Brooks writes that Flake, a Republican and a Mormon, has written "a thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it. Most important, he understands this moment. The Trump administration is a moral cancer eating away at conservatism, the Republican Party and what it means to be a public servant."
Here are the questions for the rest of us - and for Congress.
Will we accept the chaos and destruction Trump continues to thrust upon us? Or will we exhort our Congress to take even more legal steps to rescue our country?