His unfitness is beginning to damage his movement

This is one of those weeks when the Very Stable Genius's demonstrations of why he is completely unfit for the position of president come in a thick cluster. Any one of them could escape attention in the flurry of not only his embarrassments but events in general. But they must be considered individually and in sum.

The St. John's Church fiasco gets worse with some backstory. He'd been watching cable news and was concerned that is image was in jeopardy due to the unraveling of order in he vicinity of the White House. He served notice to his inner circle that he wanted a gesture to counteract the notion that he was rattled. There had indeed been a plan to pacify Lafayette Park across the street, but it hadn't been implemented:

After a weekend of protests that led all the way to his own front yard and forced him to briefly retreat to a bunker beneath the White House, President Trump arrived in the Oval Office on Monday agitated over the television images, annoyed that anyone would think he was hiding and eager for action.

He wanted to send the military into American cities, an idea that provoked a heated, voices-raised fight among his advisers. But by the end of the day, urged on by his daughter Ivanka Trump, he came up with a more personal way of demonstrating toughness — he would march across Lafayette Square to a church damaged by fire the night before.

The only problem: A plan developed earlier in the day to expand the security perimeter around the White House had not been carried out. When Attorney General William P. Barr strode out of the White House gates for a personal inspection early Monday evening, he discovered that protesters were still on the northern edge of the square. For the president to make it to St. John’s Church, they would have to be cleared out. Mr. Barr gave the order to disperse them.

After a day in which he berated “weak” governors and lectured them to “dominate” the demonstrators, the president emerged from the White House, followed by a phalanx of aides and Secret Service agents as he made his way to the church, where he posed stern-faced, holding up a Bible that his daughter pulled out of her $1,540 MaxMara bag.

There was the question from a reporter whether it was his Bible, to which he responded, "It's a Bible."

Did he open it and read from it? Of course not. So unfamiliar is he with its contents, no appropriate passages would have come to mind.   He just waved it around for a few seconds, stone-faced. That scowl was a particularly icy touch.

He did have a few remarks, nothing about healing or the spiritual foundations of the American idea, just some boilerplate brand-hustling:

Though in the physical vicinity of a place of worship, Trump betrayed no trace of piety. Asked his thoughts as he brandished the book he has never read, he defaulted to rally slogans: “We have a great country, and it’s going to be even greater. And it won’t take long. It’s coming back strong . . . stronger than ever before.”

More generally speaking, we're at another of those moments when the fissures within the administration can't be swept under the rug:

The optics of the past 72 hours are putting people inside the halls of the Pentagon on edge as images of U.S. troops on the streets of the nation’s capital dominate airwaves across the globe, and as the top brass is increasingly viewed as mixing politics and the military.

Defense Department officials say they are increasingly uncomfortable with the more prominent role the U.S. military is playing in tamping down violent protests breaking out all over the U.S., and the growing tendency of the president to call on the troops for domestic missions ranging from border security to law enforcement.

The difference of viewpoint became even more clear this morning;

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is on shaky ground with the White House after saying Wednesday that he does not support using active duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd and those forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a last resort. 

Speaking from the Pentagon briefing room podium, Esper noted that "we are not in one of those situations now," distancing himself from President Donald Trump's recent threat to deploy the military to enforce order.

"The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act," he told reporters. Esper also distanced himself from a maligned photo-op outside St. John's Church.

Wednesday's press briefing by Esper went over poorly at the White House, where he was already viewed to be on shaky ground, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

And now, a Trump obsession that was a big focus prior to the nationwide unrest of the last week has found its way back into the VSG's fevered thoughts. And it turns out he was preoccupied with it as early as three years ago:

President Donald Trump, via his son-in-law Jared Kushner, encouraged his pals at the notorious supermarket tabloid National Enquirer in 2017 to push the debunked conspiracy theory that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough murdered a female congressional aide, Lori Klausutis, knowledgeable sources confirmed to The Daily Beast.

More recently, the president has displayed a bizarre obsession with the allegations, even bringing it up Wednesday morning amid nationwide protests, chaos, and growing unrest, declaring on Fox News radio that he thought Scarborough “got away with murder.” Since last month, officials on Trump’s campaign and in his White House have also devoted time and resources to weighing in on the Scarborough smear.

Oh, and the VSG has made good on his threat to pull the Republican convention out of North Carolina, given that that state cannot guarantee that packing 22,000 people into an arena in August would be a prudent move.

No one would accept this litany of disastrous developments - or any of the litanies that have preceded it for three-plus years - from any other president, Republican or Democrat.

I can understand why the Laura Ingrahams, the Bill Mitchells, the Wayne Allen Roots, the Jeanine Pirros, and the Charlie Kirks of the world accept it. They are all up to their eyeballs in Kool-Aid, in thrall to a cult leader. Their investment in who they perceive themselves to be as human beings depends on their not letting any consideration that the object of their adoration might be riddled with failings.

What perplexes me and disgusts me is the way formerly principled conservatives, two of whom who had me enthused as contenders against Trump in 2016 - Ted Cruz and Scott Walker - have seen fit, for reasons of political opportunism, I guess, to hitch their wagon to this debacle. (It should be noted that Cruz's running mate, Carly Fiorina, has most definitely not succumbed to this abandonment of core values.)

For all this seeming ruin, I am actually more buoyed than I have been at any point since conservatism became infected by Trumpsim. Sites such as The Bulwark, The Dispatch, The Liberty Hawk, and Saving Elephants, as well as movements such as Principles First represent, if not yet a groundswell, a force that is not going away no matter how much Trumpism wishes it would.

And conversely, the St. John's stunt has not gone over well with significant portions of the evangelical community, and several polls show his support eroding among a key demographic, older Americans.

None of these heartening developments constitute a magic wand that will preclude his being the GOP candidate in November, but it's clear that the bloom is coming off the rose for the Trump phenomenon, and that in and of itself is a welcome thing to see.