“I want him to be successful, but I find myself in a position where the best way I can help the president is to tell him the truth as I see it,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant and frequent golf partner, said as he denounced the president’s abrupt decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria against the counsel of his military advisers.

Trump is surrounding himself with “yes” men and women — at least relative to Mattis and other former military generals who tried to keep him at bay — who see their jobs as executing his vision, even when they disagree. He has designated some officials, including the new White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, as “acting,” meaning they must labor to please the president to eventually be empowered in their positions permanently. And he is railing against his handpicked chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, whom he blames for the sliding market and says he never should have chosen…

The increasingly isolated president explained his mind-set in a Nov. 27 interview with The Washington Post: “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”