"Crazytown" is what Donald Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly calls the West Wing of the White House under President Donald J. Trump, according to the man who helped uncover Watergate and topple Richard Nixon.
Of course, we didn't need the great investigative reporter Bob Woodward to tell us this administration is off the rails. We've been able to see for 19 months now that President Trump is - as many aides told Woodward - an "idiot," and his White House is in a near constant state of "nervous breakdown."
Trump's top aides have taken documents from his desk or hidden paperwork to stall dangerous potential trade and military actions.
His former attorney, John Dowd, tried to prepare him for possible testimony before special counsel Robert Mueller or Mueller aides, Woodward reports. When Dowd concluded the president simply couldn't tell the truth, he reportedly told Trump: "Don't testify. It's either that or an orange jump suit."
Secretary of Defense James Mattis had to talk the president down from removing the U.S. military from South Korea and explain that the military presence stays there to keep the U.S. "out of World War III." Mattis also had to temper Trump's alleged insistence to assassinate the Syrian president after a chemical attack on his own people.
Naturally, Trump and many of the staffers mentioned in those harrowing instances are denying they said or did those things. And what else would we expect from this sputtering administration? Frankly, we don't want to see Trump fire a James Mattis or even John Kelly. They are among the few remaining adults in the Situation Room.
Make no mistake: Bob Woodward isn't like other authors of recently released White House tell-all books - think reality star Omarosa Manigault-Newman, scorned former FBI chief James Comey or magazine writer Michael Wolff, who gained access to the White House (and most notably former Trump adviser Steve Bannon).
Woodward has credibility out the wazoo. He is known for his Pulitzer-winning reporting with Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post in the 1970s that uncovered Watergate and led to the resignation of our 37th president, Richard Nixon. That reporting was immortalized in the film "All the President's Men."
In writing about Woodward's new book - his 19th - titled "Fear: Trump in the White House," The Post as well as the book's publisher Simon & Schuster note that Woodward drew on the investigative reporting habits of his lifetime: "pulling details from 'hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, contemporaneous meeting notes, files, documents and personal diaries."
And don't forget tapes - one of which Woodward already has used to counter the president's first slam: Why didn't Woodward talk to him? And "nobody told me" he was trying to talk to me.
In a taped interview with Trump after the book was finished, Woodward got the president to acknowledge that Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham told him Woodward sought an earlier interview and also got Kelly Ann Conway, in Trump's presence, to acknowledge that Woodward asked her to set up an interview. And that was just two of numerous efforts.
But even before the hubbub about Woodward's book reached full crescendo, The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a Trump senior official who wrote chillingly of the Trump-induced chaos in our government:
"I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office. The root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making."
The letter continues: "Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't. This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state. Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until - one way or another - it's over."
Believe or don't believe these desperate and patriotic American leaders, but know that at least one take-away is crystal clear: The wheels are coming off of our president and our government. And our Republican majority Congress just keeps sucking its collective thumb.
Where is our Congress? Where are Republicans Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Fleischmann, Scott DesJarlais, Marsha Blackburn, Diane Black, Jimmy Duncan, David Kustoff and Phil Roe? Where are Georgia Republicans David Perdue, Johnny Isakson, Tom Graves, Rick Allen, Barry Loudermilk, Jody Hice, Doug Collins, Austin Scoot, Rob Woodall, Karen Handel, Drew Ferguson, and Buddy Carter?
Vote the cowards out in November.