After disastrous and chaotic week, Sarah Sanders hides from the press

The curtains are drawing tighter around the White House as Trump and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have essentially gone into hiding while chaos envelopes the West Wing.

As of Friday morning, there is no scheduled White House press briefing, which means only one will have taken place this week. That’s a stunning development, especially since Trump has been in Washington, D.C., most of the week. (When the president travels, there are fewer briefings.) It’s stunning even for an administration like Trump’s that actively takes cover from the press.

Three’s little mystery in terms of why Sanders has gone into hiding. It’s likely because the White House has recently been rocked by even more scandals, resignations, and firings that undercut the administration’s narrative of a fully functioning West Wing.

On Thursday, Trump’s top attorney, John Dowd, quit out of frustration that Trump refuses to follow his legal advice. Dowd had been Trump’s point person on special counsel Robert Mueller’s ever-widening Russia probe.

The White House seems to have no answers for the mountain of pointed inquiries into possible collusion with Russians during the 2016 campaign, and then what appears to be his heavy-handed attempts at obstructing justice.

“The focus on Trump himself in Mueller’s pursuits has alarmed and angered the President,” CNN reported this week.

Dowd made headlines last weekend when he said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should shut down the special counsel’s investigation, a reckless and stunning suggestion for a presidential counsel to make.

It’s gotten so bad that even former CIA chief John Brennan this week conceded he thinks that Russian officials “may have something” on Trump, which is why he continues to bow to the Kremlin. It “continues to say to me that he does have something to fear and something very serious to fear,” Brennan warned.

In place of Dowd, Trump has hired a Fox News conspiracy nut to be his attorney instead.

Hours later on Thursday, Trump dismissed his national security adviser, the widely respected H.R. McMaster. Trump hired a warmongering Fox News conspiracy nut to take his place.

Are you sensing a pattern?

It doesn’t help Sanders that only a week ago, she insisted on Twitter that “contrary to reports,” Trump and McMaster “have a good working relationship and there are no changes” coming.

On Thursday, Trump also seemed to brag about his campaign using an embattled data analysis firm now at the center of an international election scandal.

The boast came after explosive reports detailed Cambridge Analytica’s potentially illegal activity, including harvesting Facebook data from more than 50 million Americans, and then using it — without their knowledge or consent — to help the Trump campaign.

More bad news this week? Lawsuits are piling up against Trump and they’re gaining traction in the courts.

“Trump is now facing a triple-barreled litigation drama involving a porn actress, a reality show star and a former Playboy model that promises further embarrassing allegations,” CNN reports.

It’s no wonder Sanders doesn’t want to take questions at the end of this week.

Update: Later Friday morning, the White House scheduled a press briefing, just its second of the week. It then canceled that briefing, saying in a statement that in place of the briefing, Trump would have a “press availability.”