I love it when MAGA bros speak Yiddish.

“The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon,” John Ullyot, who just quit as a top aide to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote in a takedown of his former boss in Politico this week.

Ullyot, who had been the department’s chief spokesman, described “a month of total chaos at the Pentagon,” a “near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks” and a “full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon,” and he alleged that “the Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.”

Let me offer Ullyot a heartfelt mazel tov, both for his courage and for his use of the term “mishegoss” — which is on point, if not entirely precise. It means, literally, “insanity,” though as the late Leo Rosten noted in “The Joys of Yiddish,” mishegoss “is nearly always used in an amused, indulgent way” to connote tomfoolery. But there is nothing amusing about what these shmegegges are doing at the Pentagon. Their insanity is putting the lives of our troops and security of our nation at risk.

We now know the woefully unqualified Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, shared details of a military operation in a second Signal chat; this one, the New York Times reported, included his wife, brother and lawyer. He also had the app put on his Defense Department computer. Hegseth has purged his top staff — people he just hired — and blames them for a series of damaging leaks. He set up a top secret briefing on China for Elon Musk, ignoring an outrageous conflict of interest that even the Trump White House couldn’t stomach. He brought his wife to sensitive meetings. He had a makeup studio set up for TV appearances, CBS News reported.

Under Hegseth, the whole place has devolved into paranoia and vulgar recriminations. Hegseth’s ousted chief of staff, two of his former colleagues told Politico, “graphically described his bowel movements to colleagues in one high-level meeting.”

Oy gevalt.

It’s not just at the Pentagon. Across the executive branch, in agency after agency, it’s amateur hour under the Trump administration.

That titanic legal battle with Harvard University now underway over academic freedom and billions of dollars in grants? The whole thing might have been set off by mistake. The Times reported that the university, after announcing its intention to fight the administration, received a “frantic call from a Trump official” saying the administration’s letter full of outrageous demands that provoked the standoff was “unauthorized” and should not have been sent.

Likewise, in the celebrated case of Kilmar Abrego García, deported from Maryland to El Salvador in violation of a court order, the Trump administration blamed “an administrative error” and “an oversight” for the original deportation. Now, the administration is trying to justify Abrego García’s deportation retroactively with a statement from a disgraced police officer who claims the Maryland resident was an “active member” of the MS-13 gang in Upstate New York — where he has never lived.

And — oops — the administration did it again. On Wednesday, a Trump-appointed judge ruled that the administration had deported another person, a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant, in violation of a court-approved settlement, and must facilitate his return.

There’s mishegoss at the IRS, which is now on its fifth commissioner in three months; the last one presided for only three days before being replaced last week, the victim of a power struggle between Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that exploded into a shouting match in the West Wing.

There’s mishegoss at the Department of Homeland Security, where Secretary Kristi Noem had her Gucci bag containing $3,000 in cash stolen from under her seat at the Capital Burger restaurant in D.C. on Sunday. This follows her recent visit to El Salvador, where she posed in front of imprisoned deportees while wearing a $50,000 Rolex.

There’s mishegoss at the Department of Health and Human Services, where Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made the ridiculous claims this week that “teenagers in this country have the same testosterone levels as 68-year-old men” and that diseases such as juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, which have been described in medical literature for centuries, “were just unknown when I was a kid.”

There’s mishegoss in the White House briefing room, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt this week gave a seat of honor and the first question to far-right influencer Tim Pool, who has various white-nationalist ties and was funded (unknowingly, he says) by a Russian propaganda outlet.

There’s mishegoss at the National Security Council, where national security adviser Mike Waltz, while promoting the fiction that the president’s unilateral executive orders are acts of Congress, claimed this week that Trump “just passed an amazing executive order” — as though it were a kidney stone.

But the meshuggener in chief resides in the Oval Office. There, Trump announced this week that “the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94 percent since we took office.” If that were true, eggs should now cost about 39 cents per dozen.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Trump edged closer this week to admitting that the centerpiece of his economic agenda — his trade war — was a mistake. Two weeks ago, Trump was still attacking China for its “lack of respect” and raising tariffs on Beijing to 145 percent. But as stock markets were finishing what would have been their worst April since the Great Depression, Trump did another about-face, as he had done earlier with his “reciprocal” tariffs. “We’re going to be very nice” to China, he said this week, and the tariffs “won’t be anywhere near” the current 145 percent. In China, which denied Trump’s claim that the two countries were in talks, analysts claimed victory, citing Trump’s “panicking.”

The markets also forced Trump to acknowledge error in his plans to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Last week, Trump proclaimed that Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough” and Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said “the president and his team will continue to study” the legality of firing Powell. But Trump reversed himself this week, saying he has no plans to fire Powell: “None whatsoever. Never did.”

Why would anyone think otherwise?

The president can’t even seem to keep his endorsements straight. Back in December, he endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson’s candidacy for Arizona governor. But this week, he announced that he was also endorsing Robson’s opponent in the GOP primary, Rep. Andy Biggs. He offered “My complete and total endorsement to both.”

We are by now all accustomed to Trump’s amateurism. When he rolled out his “reciprocal” tariffs, they targeted penguin-occupied Antarctic outposts and the like.

When his administration rolled out its memo requiring a government-wide spending freeze, the memo was quickly rescinded as White House officials claimed it (like the Harvard letter) hadn’t been approved.

The whole meshuggene administration could use some oversight. So what is Congress doing? Well, Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations announced this week that he would hold a hearing on … his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job. “Start with Building Seven,” he said during a podcast, referring to a common conspiracy theory. He said that the World Trade Center structure collapsed because of a “controlled demolition,” that the evidence was destroyed, and that the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s investigation was “corrupt.” Quoth QAnon Ron: “My guess is there’s an awful lot being covered up in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11.”

Trump this week voiced his determination that “we’re not going to be a laughingstock” among nations. It’s a bit late for that.

— >> —

Let’s review where Trump’s mistakes have left us over the last week.

The International Monetary Fund reduced growth forecasts for the United States to just 1.8 percent this year, down from 2.8 percent last year, in large part because of Trump’s trade war. After saying it would reach 90 trade deals in 90 days, the administration has yet to negotiate even one. The CEOs of Walmart, Target and Home Depot warned the president that his tariffs would lead to empty shelves, as Axios first reported — part of what caused Trump’s latest surrender on China. Markets were pleased, but Americans have been deeply shaken. A Gallup poll found a record number of people saying their personal financial situation is deteriorating.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 37 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, lower than it ever was during his first term. Fox News found that Trump is lower in public esteem than any other president has been at the 100-day mark in more than a quarter-century.

Trump’s cruelty, by contrast, exceeds that of all others.