Rollercoaster Washington week ends with Trump's exit – but he'll be back

President will hope for positive headlines around the world but Republicans will have fitful nights fearing the president’s next missteps – or impeachment

As Donald Trump boarded Air Force One for his first international trip, he left behind a Washington shaken to its core – just not quite in the way he had promised.

It was a rollercoaster of a week that saw a month’s worth of revelations about the Trump administration seem to unfold with every passing hour. Democrats started talking about impeachment. Republicans just wanted to get off the ride.

Every day brought a new bombshell. On Monday, it was reported Trump shared classified information with Russia. On Tuesday, it emerged that Trump had pressured then FBI director James Comey to stop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. On Wednesday, a special counsel was appointed to investigate Trump and his ties to Russia. By Thursday, all of Washington was trying to catch its breath and dreading the next push alert for breaking news.

Between these shocks came other revelations that would have been front-page news in quieter times but instead were swallowed by the news cycle, including that White House officials knew Flynn was being investigated before he was appointed to be national security adviser and a top Republican suggesting that Trump was on Russia’s payroll. And of course, throughout all of this, the president was tweeting.

Air Force One took off – with Trump, his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner on board – and within an hour, two more remarkable stories emerged, guaranteeing that the narrative when Trump landed in Riyadh would be one of a president fleeing from chaos at home.

The New York Times reported Trump had called Comey a “nut job”, and moments later a Washington Post story suggested the Trump-Russia FBI investigation was treating a current White House adviser as a “person of interest”.

Trump will hope for positive headlines around the world, but at home, exhausted Republicans will have fitful nights fearing the next Trump missteps.

The torrent of new revelations has left besieged politicians scuttling for the safety of the senators-only elevators, which are no-go zones for journalists, while the Senate press gallery has written to reporters about the dangers of overcrowding near the chamber’s doors.

Whether to stand by Trump is still a dicey proposition for Republican lawmakers. They face a seemingly unending series of scandals and controversies, with implications for their ability to pass tax cuts and healthcare reforms, and creating genuine hazard for their own political safety with midterm elections on the way in 2018.

But Trump has survived before, managing to win the 2016 election in spite of being caught on tape boasting about sexual assault.

However, by week’s end, even some Republicans on Capitol Hill were starting to openly wonder about impeachment.

Justin Amash, an arch-conservative congressman from Michigan, conceded that, if Trump had asked his FBI director to shut down an investigation, it would be grounds for impeachment.

When his comments were published, it sparked an unlikely backlash from another Republican. Carlos Curbelo of Florida earned a correction when the liberal magazine Mother Jones described Amash as the first Republican to mention impeachment. Curbelo wanted it on the record that he had mentioned impeachment first. However, neither of the two Republican lawmakers voted for Trump in the 2016 election.

Others were wary of defending Trump in public for fear what news would come next. Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, a loyal stalwart of House leadership, saw parallels to the acceleration of the Watergate investigation, which unfolded when he was a young dental student in the early 1970s.

“I can remember the start of it was a lot similar to what’s going on now – ‘oh, fake news’. ‘Bad reports’. ‘That didn’t happen’, you know, etc etc etc. But, oh yeah, this did,” Simpson said. “The next day something else happens and pretty soon you’ve got an avalanche of stuff.

“I’m not saying this is going to happen now. I’m not saying this is what this is. But I think people have a memory of that and say, ‘Nah, let’s just keep my powder dry until we figure out what the hell is going on.’”

The veteran Idaho congressman lamented that each new day seemed to bring a new string of headlines so that “consequently, you find Republican politicians a little leery about saying they support Trump”.

“They’ve seen what’s happened in the past,” Simpson said, referring again to Nixon’s trial. “As long as this continues, it’s hard to stand behind him.”

This hesitation was shared by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who compared the situation to “a centipede”. He added: “I guarantee you there will be more shoes to drop, I can just guarantee it.”

Others, such as congressman Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, were just tired of the constant churn. “You turn on the news and this is consuming the news cycle.”

Diaz-Balart, who represents a district in south Florida that Hillary Clinton won in the presidential race, expressed his regret that Trump’s woes were making it more difficult for Congress to actually pass any substantive legislation.

“I don’t know if the folks are really paying attention to the stuff that we have to do, I think the more that there are distractions, the more difficult it is to actually get to the stuff that we have to do,” he said.

But for Republicans deciding where to draw the line on Trump, abandoning him is a gamble. He may be historically unpopular for a president in his first months in office – only 38% of Americans approve of the job he is doing – but among Republican voters his approval ratings remain relatively high.

“Trump supporters are setting the boundaries for the acceptable reaction among Republican lawmakers,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.

“Among Republican voters, Trump maintains an 80% or greater approval rating, which explains why many Republicans haven’t yet broken with Trump in an overt way.”

On Tuesday, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell asked for a “little less drama” from the White House, but the theatrics without an interval.

The morning after, House Speaker Paul Ryan was asked if he still had confidence in the President. “Yes,” he said quietly, before exiting a press conference.

It was left to Jeb Bush, the “low energy” candidate all but bullied out of the Republican presidential running by Trump in 2016, to sum up the mood in an interview on Friday, telling CNN: “When I ran for office, I said he is a chaos candidate and would be a chaos president. Unfortunately, so far, chaos organizes the presidency right now.”