To really be true to today's subject, I should have come up with a headline more along the lines of: "Donald Trump Takes America Back To 1890s!" That's a tad sensationalistic, but we do seem to be right in the middle of a good old-fashioned newspaper war. In the past month alone, I have lost count of the times that major scoops about the extent of the Trump administration's misdeeds have appeared in both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Even without counting them, the score seems pretty close to tied, although the Post may have a slight edge at the current moment.

I cannot say with any accuracy how many of the bombshell leaks the Post and the Times have offered up in the past few weeks are the result of dogged professional journalistic efforts, or just of reporters doing no more than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, as yet another White House staffer voluntarily dials in to dish the dirt. All presidents strive to stop such leaks (see: Richard Nixon, "The Plumbers," for just one historic example), but Trump seems even more obsessed than most -- so far, with little to show for it. The trickle of leaks has become a raging flooded river, and to date not a single leaker has been caught by Trump. Nobody's been fired because they leaked, and the leaks just keep right on happening, at what seems to be an ever-increasing pace.

The Trump White House has now reached the point where we need a new superlative simile to describe it. After all, there are plenty of ways to finish "crazy as a..." or "drunk as a...", but I know of few metaphorical comparisons which adequately describe the concept of "leakiest." Leaky as a busted sieve? Leaky as an old garden hose? Leaky as your husband's plumbing repair? I did find one Rudyard Kipling citation -- "leaky as a lobster pot" -- but this may not be immediately understood beyond the shores of Maine. At this point in the Trump administration, though, we all seem to be in need of such a superlative "leakiest" simile.

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President Donald Trump has only just begun his first road trip outside the United States, and he's already "exhausted," according to one of his own advisors. This may or may not be true, since anything either Trump or any of his spokespeople say at this point has to be taken with a grain of salt -- especially considering the "exhausted" comment was given as an excuse for a Trump gaffe (more on that in a bit). But this week's calendar for Trump seems to have been constructed on the theme of: "Any Trump campaign promises left unbroken? Well, let's see how many we can break in a single week!"

Let's begin with Trump's reported exhaustion. Trump apparently tried to cut the length of his first trip in half, because nine days on the road was just too much to ask. On Day Two of his trip, he's already got an advisor explaining a gaffe away because of exhaustion. That doesn't exactly bode well for the rest of the trip, does it? Especially since he made so much political hay on the campaign trail over the issue of how manly he was -- as compared to "low energy" Jeb Bush and "no stamina" Hillary Clinton. This is all pretty amusing in hindsight, after Trump's Day Two exhaustion.

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We'd like to begin today by apologizing for not including whatever scandal broke while we were writing this column. It takes us hours to write these, and while we're typing we're not reading news headlines. So this weekly wrapup will doubtlessly not mention whatever scandal broke in the past few hours, and for this we apologize. We would direct you to the final talking point today to cover this lapse (from which we also borrowed our subtitle today, because Daniel Drezner's article is such a hilarious piece of satire).

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From the beginning, the administration of Donald Trump has been providing roughly one scandal per week. Not a week went by without some explosive story appearing in the headlines. That pace, obviously, was unsustainable. Incredibly, however, this pace is now rapidly increasing. Last week, we moved into "scandal of the day" territory, and are now fast approaching "scandal of the hour." Welcome to the Scandalpalooza that is the Trump administration!

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The American presidency is being dumbed-down before our very eyes. It's as if we're all trapped within one of those "child in an adult body" movies (think: Big or Freaky Friday), awaiting the next wacky turn of events to play out across our screens. What will "Kid President" do next? Throw a tantrum on Twitter? Fire somebody else at the White House? Yell at his subordinates again? Try to fire Congress? Cause an international incident by doing something extremely rude while meeting the Pope? Stay tuned, the next unbelievable plot twist is right around the corner!

If that sounds a bit loopy, well, it's been a loopy sort of week. Last Monday, Sally Yates testified before a Senate committee about the firing of Michael Flynn. Tuesday, President Donald Trump fired F.B.I. Director James Comey because he was being too enthusiastic about investigating Trump's Russia ties, after which Trump sent all his White House underlings (including Vice President Mike Pence) to go out and peddle a complete lie about why Comey was fired. Wednesday, Trump was meeting in the Oval Office so he could give away secret intelligence to the Russians -- while barring American press from the event, but allowing Russian photographers to document the loving smiles all around. Thursday, Trump was on NBC, flat-out admitting that the Russia investigation was why Comey was fired. Friday, Trump was threatening Comey with "tapes" of their conversations, in what could be termed "attempted witness tampering." This week, we've already had a bombshell per day, with the revelations that (1) Trump gave away secrets Israel shared with us to the Russians, and (2) Comey took meticulous notes of all conversations with Trump, including one where Trump told him to "let Flynn go" and to let the whole Russia investigation go, for good measure. Who wouldn't be a little loopy after all of that?

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I thought it'd be fun today to take a look at President Donald Trump's poll numbers. This is mainly because any casual interpretation of such polling would have to conclude that Trump's numbers are about to fall off a cliff. So I thought it'd be fun to take a "before" snapshot, to see where Trump was before the whole "telling secrets to Russia in the Oval Office" thing is reflected in his job approval polling. Over the next week or two, the impact of this week's scandal will become clear, but for now the polling data doesn't reflect any of it.

If I had to summarize where Trump finds himself with the public in a Trumpian tweet, it'd have to be: "Trump poll #s still terrible. Sad! Obama miles better." That pretty much says it all. On the Real Clear Politics polling average page, Trump is currently at 40.7 percent average job approval and 53.9 percent disapproval. At the same point in his term, Barack Obama was at a whopping 60.8 percent approval and only 32.0 percent disapproval -- over 20 percent better, in both directions, than Trump.

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The war against the Islamic State, currently being waged (to varying degrees) by the United States, Iraq, Iraqi Kurds, Iran, Syria, Syrian Kurds, Syrian Rebels, Turkey, and Russia is approaching a big turning point. The Islamic State has been steadily losing territory for over a year now, and they're on the brink of losing control over the two most important cities in their self-proclaimed caliphate: Mosul and Raqqa. This could be a death blow to the Islamic State's territorial claims, although the group itself will probably survive as a stateless international terrorist organization (much like Al Qaeda).

This war is both complicated and slow, which are two reasons why Americans haven't been paying much attention to it lately. Military alliances shift as you cross the Syrian/Iraqi border, and Syria is engaged in its own multiyear civil war, of which the fight against the Islamic State is but one part. Complexities abound, which isn't really that surprising for a conflict in the Middle East.

Putting most of those complexities aside, though, when you focus solely on the Islamic State, it's pretty obvious that they're losing, and losing badly. By the end of the year (at the latest), the Islamic State could lose control of all the territory in Iraq they once held. The situation in Syria is much harder to predict, but even there the Islamic State's footprint is definitely shrinking.

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We always wanted to kick off with an authentic tabloid headline, and this week just seemed like the perfect time. "Trump Dumps Top Cop" just seems somehow appropriate -- we've got a tabloid president, so why not go whole hog on the tabloid headlines?

This week will go down in American political history as the week people stopped comparing Donald Trump to Andrew Jackson, and instead began comparing Trump to a different Oval Office predecessor, Richard Nixon. If we had a dollar for every time the word "Nixonian" was written or uttered onscreen this week, we could retire tomorrow.

At this point it's hard not to call Trump Nixonian -- and that was true before today's threats about possible "tapes" made in the White House ("James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"), and about the possibility of just ending press conferences altogether. With that thrown into the mix, it's hard to come up with any other descriptor than "Nixonian."

Even Nixon's own presidential library had the occasion to (1) troll the sitting president, (2) have some fun, and (3) boost the reputation of Richard M. Nixon's presidency. We're betting they've never seen such a trifecta before! Here's what they tweeted in the midst of all the frenzy: "FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian."

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[Program Note: This article was originally supposed to run on Tuesday. Given the late-breaking news about James Comey, however, I had to pre-empt it. So while I think I've cleaned up all the "last night" phrases to read "Monday night," if I've missed a few, this is the reason why and I apologize in advance.]

The medieval idea of a court jester has always been an intriguing one -- the motley fool sitting at the foot of the throne with near-absolute impunity for any improper thing he might say. Now, I have no real idea how historically valid the stereotype is, or how prevalent the phenomenon ever actually was. Ye kings of olde never seemed restrained enough in the use of absolute power to put up with a jester constantly cracking wise (for the lords and ladies of the court to titter at), but then my knowledge of this period is sketchy at best. I am no medieval historian, so who's to know how valid or widespread the concept ever actually was?

There must be something to the myths, though, even if only in a Jungian-archetypical kind of way. Because they certainly still remain with us. In today's world, of course, they are not dressed in motley (well, some less so than others...); and instead of a perch near the throne, they crack wise on television shows to an audience of millions. They are our late-night comedians. Two of them were in the news earlier this week, but before I get to Monday night's performances by Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, I'd like to confess my own evolution in favor of our modern court jesters.

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Donald Trump hasn't even been in office for four whole months, and already he's being compared to Richard Nixon. That is both stunning as well as somewhat expected, really. Just on personality alone, Trump seems the most Nixonian figure to occupy the Oval Office since Tricky Dick himself roamed the hallways. Sooner or later, Trump's penchant for vengeance against his perceived enemies was going to cause some problems. It's now obvious that "sooner" won out over "later."

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