With each passing day, it is increasingly evident that Donald Trump’s grip on reality is slipping in ways that threaten to engulf even some of the most trusted and loyal sycophants within his inner circle.

The week ended with huge questions about the futures of two former Fox News stars who have been fixtures within the White House firmament. In both cases, attempting to maintain a fact-based relationship with Trump has led them to come a cropper.

Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, is a proven rottweiler, willing to go to the mat for Trump on every issue, rain or shine. A former judge and prosecutor in New York, she made her name on Fox News zealously defending and promoting Trump’s antics from the moment he flirted with the idea of seeking the presidency.

Today, she serves as his hand-picked top prosecutor in Washington, DC, and finds herself fighting to stay in her post because she has no evidence to pursue a trumped-up prosecution against a three-time Olympic canoeist falsely accused of vandalising the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.

In a court filing late last month, Pirro conceded that the Department of Justice could not proceed with the prosecution of David Hearn, who was facing the prospect of a 10-year jail sentence for the destruction of government property. Trump insists that the problems besetting his renovation of the Reflecting Pool lie with “vandals” rather than his own swimming pool contractor, who was awarded a no-bid $6.8m (£5m) contract to refurbish the landmark.Hearn, 67, was arrested by the National Guard and the US Park Police in June after he decided to visit the Reflecting Pool to see what all the fuss was about. Spotting a piece of its new “American Flag-blue” flooring floating to the surface, he reached his hand into the water to grab it and take a closer look. He was then detained and questioned for several hours, before being criminally charged. He denied all charges.

But Pirro realised she had a problem. There was no evidence to support Trump’s claim that vandals were responsible for the problems with the Reflecting Pool. But she concluded there was evidence to suggest that Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, another Trump ally, had been unwilling to tell Trump the truth: that Trump hand-picked contractor had botched the project, ballooning its costs to at least $13.1m (£9.7m). Burgum defended himself, saying his staff “provided every piece of evidence” requested to prove vandals had damaged the pool.

When the charges against Hearn were dropped, Trump angrily accused Pirro of “folding like an umbrella” and claimed she had “choked” before a judge who “was extremely unfriendly” and “really vicious”. Called to the White House last Monday amid reports of her imminent firing, she fought back, wheeling boxes of evidence into the Oval Office to demonstrate that Burgum misled Trump, and that Hearn was innocent.

Trump says he still has not decided whether she can remain on his team, although even after Monday’s showdown he continued to rage about her decision to abandon the charges against Hearn. He insists co-ordinated acts of vandalism by multiple suspects had targeted the Reflecting Pool, even though on one occasion he conceded that “we weren’t necessarily thrilled with the contractor”, an associate he now denies ever knowing.

The second former Fox News star in trouble with the boss is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s slavishly loyal Secretary of War, who found himself upended by the reality of US’s dwindling weapons stockpile.

As long ago as 3 March, 72 hours after the US and Israeli war on Iran began, Trump proclaimed that the US military’s stockpile was effectively limitless. On his Truth Social account, he said that the availability of US munitions “at the medium and upper-medium grade” had “never been higher”. The US, he said, had “a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons… Wars can be fought ‘forever’ and very successfully, using just these supplies”, he wrote. Hegseth dutifully echoed the President’s assurances.

At the time, both men dismissed reporting by CNN and The Wall Street Journal indicating that senior military commanders were concerned about the rate at which some of the country’s most expensive missiles were being deployed. Two days into the Iran war, CNN reported that Tomahawk cruise missiles (replenishment cost: $3.6m apiece) were being fired at Iran at an unsustainable pace. The Wall Street Journal claimed that a top general was already flagging concerns about munitions stockpiles, a report that Trump branded “wrong and a disgrace”.

Ever since, Trump and Hegseth have publicly dug in, even as Democrats in Congress indicated that in classified briefings, Pentagon officials were sounding the alarm over the rate at which Tomahawks, SM-3 interceptors and Patriot missiles were disappearing from the US inventory.

Last Friday at Camp David, Trump reportedly erupted after top commanders indicated that his proposed “decapitation” of Iran might not be able to proceed because of a lack of weaponry. The Washington Post reported that he “demanded answers…on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages”. Hegseth reportedly passed the buck, blaming his deputy Stephen Feinberg for the shortages and for failing to inform Trump about the accurate picture.

The White House insists the standoff never occurred. “This is 100 per cent fake news. Literally never happened,” claimed press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” she added.

But both Hegseth and Pirro now find themselves in an invidious position, largely of their own creation. Their willingness to genuflect before Trump has known absolutely no bounds, and both will have fully come to terms with the dystopian realities of a presidency that is not anchored in facts.

But they may now pay the ultimate price for sycophancy that has run headlong into the unwelcome buzzsaw of reality.