One is all the leaks - some of them from non-political people at State or the Pentagon or wherever, but a lot also from the political folks in the White House, though not necessarily on the same topics. But the biggest of all, of course, is Trump himself, especially but not only on Twitter. On most of the controversies that have broken out, Trump has either fanned the flames in very unhelpful ways, directly and openly contradicted his spokespeople and senior staff, or both. The drama is most certainly coming from the White House.

People like Richard Nixon or Nicolas Sarkozy were/are also 'a bit of an asshole' by most accounts - but they also had considerable political talent and some decent ideas. They turned into bad presidents only after a certain amount of time, when their ego and their combative personality got them to a point where they were more concerned about fighting political enemies than about what they could realize for their country. Trump seems to have skipped directly to that stage, possibly because he neither has decent ideas nor, from what we've seen so far, the kind of political talent that is still useful after the campaign has ended and the real work begins.

And as for speaking in ways that are not political - I get the whole 'political correctness has gone too far, it's stifling debate and it's just plain annoying' thing. What I do not get is people who seem to view this as the one defining issue of our time that trumps (pun intended ) all others.

The problem is there are so many real stories that there is a strong natural pressure, especially but not even exclusively on conservatives, to tune them out and minimize them. To allow Trump to redefine all reasonable standards to hold a president to, within the space of weeks or months. They are right to oppose that trend, as are the Republicans in Congress who are beginning to realize that as useful as it can be to have Trump bully Representatives into voting for shitty bills that he doesn't know or care the first thing about, he's causing a lot more problems than he solves.

Another thing is that there really doesn't seem to be any improvement visible. Whether during the campaign or now during his presidency, people always said 'he'll pivot' or 'he'll grow into it, give him time'. And considering that the country is pretty much stuck with him one way or another, there's a lot to be said for getting off the guy's case - if only, you know, he allowed that to happen. If he managed to string together a few weeks without both embarrassing and scaring the country, or at least with more tangible achievements than new controversies. But no. His achievement list remains basically limited to 'proposed Gorsuch for the SC', which while extremely important for his voters was also something that required very little actual input from himself, and 'didn't start a nuclear war yet'.