Trump's behavior this week has been so bizarre that psychologists, Republicans and ex-staffers are telling me they're worried

'We should not ignore the president’s ability to initiate a conflict with other countries in order to distract from his political troubles, perhaps with the hope of rallying the country around him'

Donald Trump is going through the motions of being President of the United States. He still lives resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he is still the head of the executive branch, and he's still the commander-in-chief of the world's most powerful military force.

He can still give orders and be reasonably sure that they will be followed, like the order he gave to a small group of US soldiers 12 days ago, requiring them to abandon the Syrian Kurdish allies with whom they'd shed blood on the way to defeating Isis. Those soldiers, loyal American servicemen, will follow those orders, even though doing so made them — in the words of one soldier — “ashamed for the first time in my career.”

But ordering US servicemen to and fro seems to be the limit of Trump's power at the moment. Because the rest of the world has figured Donald Trump out.

Such was the degree of anger at Trump's sudden abandonment of America's Kurdish allies — seemingly for no other reason than to please Turkey's leader — that on Wednesday, all but 60 House Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi's caucus to approve a resolution condemning the move, 354-60. In the Senate, a bipartisan group of senators is readying legislation to impose crippling sanctions on the Turkish regime, with a veto-proof majority expected to join their House colleagues in expressing their disapproval of the Trump administration's enabling of Erdogan's ethnic cleansing.

But Trump seems to think he's doing great and that everything is fine.

After the House dealt his Turkey policy a humiliating rebuke, Pelosi and the rest of the House and Senate leadership gathered at the White House for a briefing on the disastrous situation Trump had created. The president was so eager to boast of the "tough" stance he'd taken that he distributed a letter he'd sent to Erdogan — a letter which was so bizarre and childish in its wording that when it inevitably leaked to the media, journalists had to double-check to make sure it wasn't fake.

According to Pelosi, he "was not relating to the reality" that a supermajority of House members disagreed with him, to the point where she walked out of the meeting, joined by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Schumer explained how he'd reminded Trump of the dangerous conditions that could be created with the release of Isis fighters who'd been held by Kurdish forces, and noted that even retired Marine General James Mattis — Trump's former Secretary of Defense — had said that pulling out of Syria would enhance the terrorist group. According to a source who was in the meeting, Trump's response was to call Mattis "the world's most overrated general" and declare that he had personally "captured Isis in a month."

Another source, who spoke to CNN's Jamie Gangel, said that Trump's demeanor left even Republicans "completely shaken," "shell-shocked" and "sickened."

"He is not in control of himself, it is all yelling and screaming," the source said, adding that Trump was "100 per cent worse" and that even Republicans are now worried about his stability.

As if to prove the anonymous source's point, Trump has spent the past two days claiming that he has brought peace to the region, rather than hand an unearned victory to Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, and Bashar al-Assad.

"Without spilling a drop of American blood… we've all agreed on a pause or ceasefire in the border region of Syria," the president said while speaking at a rally on Thursday, failing to mention that militias backed by Turkey have continued to fire on Kurdish forces during the five-day “pause".

While congressional Republicans may be surprised to discover that Trump's present grip on reality seems tenuous at best, it's no surprise to Dr Bandy Lee, an assistant clinical professor at the Yale School of Medicine and the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which contains essays from 27 mental health professionals on the "clear and present danger" posed by The Donald’s mental health (or lack thereof).

"It's gotten to the point where you don't have to be a doctor to see there's something seriously wrong here," Lee told me, adding that the decline into instability many are now observing in Trump was actually made inevitable by his ascent to the presidency. "Such mental instability in a position of power would eventually get worse because of rising expectations after the taste of power with the constraints of reality catching up with them."

Lee explained that although she has not examined Trump personally, she and a group of mental health experts concluded that based on the reports of his conduct contained in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, Trump "doesn't have the mental capacity to carry out his duties."

Lee and the other experts she's worked with joined more than 200 mental health professionals in signing a letter to members of Congress, in which they warned that "the unfolding of an impeachment inquiry raises the specter of President Trump feeling threatened in ways he never has before."

"We also should not ignore the president’s ability to initiate a conflict with other countries in order to distract from his political troubles, perhaps with the hope of rallying the country around him, as often happens at the beginning of armed conflict," they wrote in the letter, which is dated October 3, three days before Trump ordered US special forces to leave their Kurdish allies behind.

"What happened over the last week is the result of his irrational decision-making under increasing pressures," she said to me. ”He will make decisions without heeding advice, he will not be able to take in facts, he will be impulsive in his decision-making, he will not be able to make sound reality-based decisions… That's all we've seen over the last week and a half."

Although Trump's defenders argue that the analysis of Lee and her colleagues is invalid because none of them have examined or even met President Trump, Skybridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci has met him, and he sees things pretty much the same way.

"It is painful to watch the deconstruction of Donald Trump...and the full-blown meltdown that I've been talking about over the past few months,” said Scaramucci, who was a longtime friend of the president when he briefly served as White House Communications Director, but is now one of Trump's most prominent critics.

But Scaramucci doesn't think Trump has lost his grip on reality.

"He's buying into the whole Fox conspiracy narrative, but he's still aware enough to know that there's a serious issue going on," he said, but noted that some of Trump's recent actions — including his decision to abandon the Kurds in Syria — don't seem to have any explanation except potentially a financial one. "Someone needs to ask what was in it for him personally."

Still, Scaramucci said he finds it "disheartening" that more Republicans are not speaking out about what he says is an obvious fact: That Trump is "getting worse and worse" each week.

"There seems to be a compounding effect because he's deteriorating more aggressively," he said, adding that in his opinion, Trump's decline will eventually lead someone else to be the one to square off against the winner of the Democratic primary.

"He will not be on the ballot for Republicans in November of 2020," he said.