‘Icannot forecast to you the action of Russia,’’ Winston Churchill declared in 1939. “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’’

A modern-day Winston would have far less trouble foreseeing the short-term course of the Trump administration. After all, it is merely a rabble wrapped in mendacity inside ineptitude.

In the last few days, it’s the ineptitude that’s been on most prominent display. On Friday, the Trump-fueled Affordable Care Act repeal rocket crashed back on the launching pad in a spectacular conflagration. With the fires of failure still raging on that oft-repeated Trump campaign promise, the White House is trying to portray itself as unruffled and eager to proceed to its next priority.

Unfortunately, things keep going off script.

Things like, say, Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, caught in the spotlight as the cat’s-paw for the very administration his panel is investigating. Nunes first attempted to provide the president with cover for his debunked assertion that Barack Obama had him wiretapped, saying Trump transition-team messages may have been caught up in incidental surveillance. With committee members outraged that Nunes had briefed Trump before talking to them, the chairman-cum-Trump-ally tried to end that story by apologizing. Problem: The news soon came that as part of Nunes’s Trump rescue mission, he met a source on White House grounds, apparently at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, to review intelligence information. That was followed by reports that Nunes canceled a public Intelligence Committee hearing featuring former acting attorney general Sally Yates because her testimony about cashiered National Security Adviser Michael Flynn could prove embarrassing to the White House.

All that raises two questions: First, was the Trump administration the source of the very information Nunes alluded to in his effort to create wiggle room for a rhetorically reckless president? And: Is Nunes more interested in obstructing than conducting this probe?

Then there’s Paul Manafort. Despite his assertion that he has never had ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, AP has now reported that, from 2006 to at least 2009, Manafort earned $10 million a year from a close Putin ally to push messaging in the United States and Europe to “greatly benefit the Putin government.’’ In the best tradition of the old USSR, the White House has gone about airbrushing Manafort from history, claiming he played “a very limited role for a very limited amount of time’’ for the Trump campaign. Trumpkins may nod credulously, but less gullible voters will recall Manafort as the Trump campaign chairman, until allegations of secret payments by a pro-Russia Ukrainian faction necessitated his abrupt departure.

Even son-in-law Jared Kushner has taken a turn in the unflattering spotlight, with the news that he had more dealings with Russia than previously known. During the transition, Kushner not only met with Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak, but later, at Kislyak’s relayed request, with the head of a Russian bank under sanctions since Russia snaffled Crimea and began fomenting turmoil in Ukraine. What did they discuss? Those sanctions, perhaps? Nothing of consequence, asserts Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Hmm. Remember how we were assured that Michael Flynn hadn’t discussed US sanctions against Russia with Kislyak — until it turned out that he had?

So what will Trump do? Faced with all that noise, the White House will try valiantly to change the subject and create the illusion of forward motion. That’s the obvious intent of the timing of things like Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ renewed threat that his department will deny federal grants to sanctuary cities. And of the executive order to begin a review of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And of the declaration that the White House will soon take up tax reform (read: big tax cuts that will balloon the deficit).

After all, with this president, what matters isn’t action but distraction.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.