Across Washington, Trump’s allies have been buzzing about the staff’s competence as well as the president’s state of mind. One GOP figure close to the White House mused privately about whether Trump was “in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion.”…

“This was the first major crisis or test they’ve had and it looks like a lot of systems failed,” said Chris Ruddy, a Trump confidant and chief executive of Newsmax. “My experience with the president is when he sees failure he quickly adapts and tries new things. He’s not a guy that keeps the same ol’.”…

White House aides have felt bewildered and alarmed by how Trump arrives at his decisions — often on impulse and emotion, and sometimes by rejecting the counsel of those around him — and how he then communicates them to his own personnel and to the public. Trump is in some ways like a pilot opting to fly a plane through heavy turbulence, then blaming the flight attendants when the passengers get jittery.

The result is a hardening portrait of sheer disarray.

“The Comey firing is just the most dramatic example of a White House that is completely dysfunctional, the most chaotic in modern history,” said Chris Whipple, author “The Gatekeepers,” a newly-published history of White House chiefs of staff.