Trump’s week of calamities may finally be his downfall

put in the Cabinet, the businessman could name only one, his daughter Ivanka.

Abandoning traditional decorum President Barack Obama launched a five-minute diatribe in the White House East Room, calling the property mogul “unfit and woefully unprepared” for office. Michael Morell, former acting head of the CIA, called him an “unwitting agent” of Vladimir Putin because of his pro-Russian policies. There are few things worse that a presidential candidate could be called. Yet members of his own party did find some.

Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned talk show host, said he had received many calls about the billionaire’s mental health.

Karen Bass, a Democratic congresswoman, launched an online petition calling for Mr Trump to undergo a mental health evaluation to judge if he is “mentally fit to lead the free world”, ‘Most of my colleagues feel that Donald Trump is not crazy, and if he is crazy, he’s crazy like a fox’ suggesting he may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

But Dr Justin Frank, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, said: “Most of my colleagues feel that he [Mr Trump] is not crazy, and if he is crazy, he’s crazy like a fox.”

On Friday night Mr Trump responded to attacks on his state of mind. He told a rally in Wisconsin it was Mrs Clinton who was “pretty close to unhinged” and an “unbalanced person”.

And yesterday Mr Trump tweeted that Hillary Clinton was “brainwashed” after she admitted to mistakenly saying the FBI cleared her over the use of a private email server.

Polls at the end of his terrible week showed Mr Trump sinking to a perhaps insurmountable 15 percentage point deficit against Mrs Clinton.

Suggestions emerged that Mr Trump’s advisers had no control over him; campaign staff were said to feel they were “wasting their time” and Suggestions have emerged that Mr Trump’s advisers have no control over him, and that morale among his staff is near ‘suicidal’ their mood was described in one leak as “suicidal”. Behind the scenes the Trump campaign was described as “Crazytown”. Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s campaign chief, denied such reports but pointedly said that “the candidate is in control of his campaign”.

The fear for Republicans was that Mr Trump’s unpopularity could have a knock-on effect on other races in November, leading the party to lose control of the Senate. Party insiders were exploring what the contingency would be if Mr Trump left the fray. According to the Republican rule book, if the nominee steps down for “reasons of death, declination, or otherwise” the party’s National Committee can replace him.

Should a move be made to replace Mr Trump against his will he would certainly sue, and any coup would have to occur before the end of August.