And so their incompetence has caused a breakdown already. Surprise surprise.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government.

Imagine how the fur will fly when they actually have to do things!

Mr. Pence took the helm of the effort on Friday after Mr. Trump unceremoniously removed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who had been preparing with Obama administration officials for months to put the complex transition process into motion. Now the effort is frozen, senior White House officials say, because Mr. Pence has yet to sign legally required paperwork to allow his team to begin collaborating with President Obama’s aides on the handover.

An aide to Mr. Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of the document was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.

Still, the slow and uncertain start to what is normally a rapid and meticulously planned transfer of power could have profound implications for Mr. Trump’s nascent administration, challenging the efforts of the president-elect to gain control of the federal bureaucracy and begin building a staff fully briefed on what he will face in the Oval Office on Day 1.

It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it – finding yourself president of the United States with everybody staring at you impatiently waiting for you to do all those important things that need doing…and you have no clue what they even are. You try to get started but there keep being boxes to unpack, and then you can’t find the right box to unpack, and then there are all these cats everywhere, and you can’t find your wallet…and then you wake up. Trump can’t wake up from it.

I have zero sympathy for him though.

The chaos caught the attention of some senior Republicans who criticized Mr. Trump during his campaign but said after he won that they would not necessarily rule out joining his administration or advising him.

Eliot A. Cohen, a former State Department official, said on Twitter that after having spoken to Mr. Trump’s team, he had “changed my recommendation: stay away. They’re angry, arrogant, screaming ‘you LOST!’ Will be ugly.”

Well quite. That’s who they are. That’s why we hate them and don’t want them running the country. They’re bad people: they’re mean and domineering and shouty. Their jefe is extremely mean and domineering and shouty, and that’s the role model they have. The result: bad hombres. Stay away.

[I]n response to a series of questions about whether the Obama administration had begun to brief Mr. Trump’s team, White House officials said late Monday that the president-elect’s decision to abruptly replace Mr. Christie on Friday with Mr. Pence had, for the time being, frozen the process.

By law, the document must be signed by the chairman of the transition operation, and Mr. Pence has yet to do so.

Among other things, the paperwork serves as a mutual nondisclosure agreement for both sides, ensuring that members of the president-elect’s team do not divulge sensitive information about the inner workings of the government that they learn during the transition period, and that the president’s aides do not reveal anything they may discover about the incoming administration’s plans.

Do I trust the Trump people to refrain from divulging sensitive information about the inner workings of the government that they learn during the transition period? No, I don’t. Even with the nondisclosure agreement? You betcha.

Brandi Hoffine, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama’s team was working with Mr. Pence to sign the document, a standard agreement whose wording is largely governed by statute. “We look forward to completing that work so that we can provide the necessary access to personnel and resources to get the president-elect’s team up to speed and deliver on President Obama’s directive for a smooth transition,” Ms. Hoffine said.

Politely put. Apparently Pence wants to tweak a document whose wording is largely governed by statute, and that’s an obstructionist and not very clever move.

The turmoil at the highest levels of his staff upended months of planning and preparation for a process that many describe as drinking from a fire hose even in the most orderly of circumstances — a period of about 70 days between the election and the inauguration on Jan. 20. During that time, the president-elect must assemble a team to take the reins of the massive federal bureaucracy and recruit, vet and hire 4,000 political appointees to help him run it.

In other words the administration people did their best to help with the transition, working at it for months, and it’s all up in the air because the Trump people are clowns.

I guess this is what swamp-drainage looks like?