The Trump administration started out as: “This is not normal.” Each day seemed to bring a new norm ignored, tradition upended, or convention violated. Now, we seem to have entered a new phase: ”The walls are closing in.”

This may be wishful thinking on the part of his critics, but the president is beset by a great many troubles. If he were literate, he might cry out with Claudius, the “smiling damned villain” of “Hamlet:” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

Consider just a few of the threats, largely of Trump’s own devising, that now beleaguer him.

The Mueller investigation is relentlessly pursuing the Russian contribution to Trump’s election, and the latest reports suggest the crux of the matter may be possible quid pro quos that passed between the Trump campaign and Putin’s apparatus via Paul Manafort and Konstantine Kilimnik.

The prosecutors at the Southern District of New York have already turned Michael Cohen into a songbird and are now investigating corrupt floods of money that funded Trump’s inaugural committee. Where the dollars came from, went, and who or what they bought is not yet clear?

Trump’s macho attempt to win a border wall, his idee fixe, by shutting down the government backfired spectacularly. He lost the fight to Nancy Pelosi, saw his poll numbers sink, lost support among Republicans facing reelection, was exposed as weak, inflexible, and more interested in saving face than in protecting the public. Since many of those who suffered most from the shutdown were the kind of people who are Trump voters, he also appeared willing to throw them under the bus.

Trump clearly despises Jeff Bezos for wealth that dwarfs his own and for ownership of the “Washington Post” whose reporting has repeatedly exposed the slimy underside of the administration. Trump acolyte David Pecker, the tabloid troll, ran afoul of the law for conspiring to cover up Trump’s sex scandals.

Now, he has been caught trying to blackmail Bezos. In the process he has opened himself to penalties for violating an agreement with the Special Counsel and greater scrutiny. That may lead to additional illegality by Trump and the Saudis.

As in the campaign’s possible corruption regarding Russia, Trump’s questionable Saudi connections may involve money in and favors out. And for lagniappe, Pecker is also alleged to have a safe full of presidential dirty laundry. Might it get an airing?

In the House, committees now run by Democrats are lining up to investigate maladministration in one cabinet department after another, as well as some of that foreign money sloshing around Trump and his family, violations of the emoluments clause, and other possible low crimes and misdemeanors related to Trump and his business.

Trump’s own people are ratting him out right and left, and not just those nabbed by prosecutors. Tell-all authors are cashing in on their tenure in Trumpylvania, describing what one auteur calls a ”team of vipers.” When Chris Christie starts singing to cash in, more high profile divas are likely to follow.

Leakers have also revealed that Trump spends sixty percent of his work days not working. His “executive time” seems to be devoted to watching the Golf Channel, Fox News and tweeting, though he is also said to be talking on the phone. To whom?

Since he uses an unsafe non-government phone and this appears to be a solitary vice, no one knows who’s on the other end of the line. David Packer, Roger Stone, Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong Un? It may be he is conducting a second secret presidency in parallel to the one the public sees on TV. If, however, he’s chatting with bad actors overseas, NSA may actually be recording his crimes.

Trump should also worry that his rash moves on Syria and Afghanistan, the shutdown and international treaties have begun to get pushback from Congress, up to and including Mitch McConnell, until now slavishly wiling to trade any atrocity for ill-gotten Supreme Court justices.

Already Trump’s dangerously ill-informed foreign policy has provoked resignations by respected statesmen like James Mattis. And his intelligence chiefs have publicly declared under oath that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about and is putting the country at risk. Enough of that and even ardent fans may begin to realize that Captain Queeg is steering the ship of state.

But the biggest threat to Trump’s continued popularity with his base may come from an unexpected quarter — the IRS. He has claimed tax reform as his most consequential success, if you don’t count stealing a Supreme Court seat from Obama and giving another to an alcoholic sex molester.

In Trump’s telling, the biggest windfall for the super-rich is history was a tax cut for the average voter, his voters. Each would get a thrilling $4,000 a year. Hooray! America is great again. But as usual, he lied for present advantage without worrying about the future fallout. And now the future has arrived.

Ordinary taxpayers have begun to discover the promised $4,000 was a myth. The IRS predicts 10 million Americans who have been used to receiving tax refunds each year will get 1) smaller checks this tax season or 2) none at all or 3) may even find they owe more in taxes when April 15 rolls around.

The millions of suckers in this bait-and-switch largely belong to the same demographic as Trump voters. They may have been okay with the president stealing an election, being in bed with enemy tyrants like Putin, being racist, sexist, dishonest, vulgar, lazy, uninformed, greedy, and untrustworthy, but when they find out he has screwed them out of their tax refund, the honeymoon may be over. Many may seek an annulment. No Refund? No Dice