I’m at the point where I actually feel sorry for White House press secretary Sean Spicer. The guy’s job is basically equivalent to chasing a loose balloon around the room and explaining, to a firing squad armed with TV cameras and microphones, how the balloon’s erratic movements are completely logical, the result of a deliberate and carefully-maneuvered chesswork of political craft.

Sean Spicer

The Trump administration’s communications protocol has been so dysfunctional, their PR strategy so abysmal, one can’t help but wonder whether they’re all just rank amateurs, or whether their follies are the inevitable result of what happens when you’re hired to do the impossible: to articulate consistent, coherent messages for a boss who has a habit of flying off script and can’t stay away from Twitter despite steady pleas from his staff. Spinning the desperate movements of someone trying to put out a fire into some sort of Rube Goldberg machine of political brilliance only draws more attention to what is obviously a severe, ongoing crisis besieging the White House.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in writing about the Trump White House is the prospect of simply keeping up. It seems a new stunning revelation emerges virtually every day. In case you need a refresher:

• In May it was revealed that Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior adviser, had allegedly suggested to Russia ambassador Sergey Kislyak the creation of a secret back-channel line of communication between Russian officials and the Trump transition team shortly after the election.

• Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, who was fired in January for refusing to enact Trump’s travel ban, testified during a May Senate hearing that she’d attempted to warn the Trump administration that now-ousted national security advisor Michael Flynn — who’d lied to the White House about the nature of conversations he’d had with Kislyak and also took $65,000 from Russia-linked companies which he didn’t disclose to the Justice Department, as required by law — was a potential target for blackmail by the Russian government. Trump ended up keeping Flynn onboard anyway, until news broke that he’d lied about his Russia connections. It was later revealed that the Trump transition team knew Flynn was under investigation but had made him national security advisor regardless. Reports later surfaced that President Obama had also warned Trump about Flynn’s past.

• Media outlets reported that intelligence gathered by U.S. spies last year discovered Russian officials had attempted to influence Flynn as well as former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign last year after he failed to disclose off-the-books lobbying work he’d done for pro-Russian interest groups such as the Party of Regions.

• The House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas for Flynn as well as Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, as part of its investigation into Russia’s possible election interference. Meanwhile, the Justice Department — much to the chagrin of the White House — decided to appoint a special prosecutor, former FBI director Robert Mueller, to oversee its own Russian investigation. This provoked Trump to proclaim that he was the victim of the “single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

• Trump shared highly classified information with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador during a May Oval Office meeting, intel provided to the U.S. by Israel regarding a terrorist plot that involved the use of laptop computers on airplanes.

• Trump in May abruptly fired FBI director James Comey, officially — according to the deputy attorney general — because of his botched handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Trump later went off message during a May television interview, however, and admitted Comey’s firing was actually the result of “this Russia thing.” It was also revealed that days before his ouster, Comey had requested that the Justice Department expand its resources for the bureau’s investigation into the Kremlin’s possible election meddling. Trump also allegedly asked Comey during a private February meeting to shut down the bureau’s investigation into Flynn’s ties to Russia, igniting accusations that the President had, essentially, obstructed justice. Comey now says he’ll testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June regarding those meetings.

• We found out that several U.S. Senators had asked Comey in early March to investigate Jeff Sessions regarding any contact the attorney general may have had with Russian officials during the 2016 election campaign.

• White House communications director Mike Dubke resigned from his post after less than three months on the job. Dubke succeeded Jason Miller, who similarly jumped ship, in his case only days after taking the position. Apparently, the prospect of being a White House communications director is now so horrible that four qualifying successors thus far have asked that their names be withdrawn from consideration.

That was May. That was one month. If recent history is any indication, I’m sure another scandal will be unearthed by tomorrow.

So now comes the rumor of a shakeup within the White House’s inner circle of communicators, as if pressing the reset button on a communications strategy will do anything when the leader they’ve been hired to serve thrives on chaos and refuses to stay on message.

Undoubtedly, this retooled communications team will continue doubling down on its claims that everything in the Trump White House is going just swell, and in the process, will continue turning the most inconsequential of trivialities into news. Spicer’s hilarious May handling of Trump’s “covfefe” typo on Twitter, the fact that he couldn't simply admit that his boss misspelled a word and instead chose to dig in his heels, telling an incredulous press corps that it was an actual word, serves as a microcosm for everything that’s wrong here. When you deflect or double down, or when you give conflicting accounts of the same story, you’ll draw only more attention to the gross incompetence and failed leadership that has characterized the Trump presidency thus far.

“Ultimately, the best messenger is the President himself,” Spicer said during a May briefing. Indeed.