If your puppy makes a mess on your carpet and you shout “Bad dog,” there is a good chance that that puppy’s ears will droop, his head will bow and he may even whimper. In other words, even a puppy acts ashamed when caught misbehaving. That is not true of Donald Trump. Day in and day out, he proves to us that he has no shame. We’ve never had a president with no shame — and it’s become a huge source of power for him and trouble for us.

And what makes Trump even more powerful and problematic is that this president with no shame is combined with a party with no spine and a major network with no integrity — save for a few real journalists at Fox News like the outstanding Chris Wallace.

When a president with no shame is backed by a party with no spine and a network with no integrity, you have two big problems.

First, there is no one inside his party or base who is going to sustainably stop Trump from being himself and doing whatever he bloody pleases. The Republican Party has completely lost its way. Don’t be fooled by the last-second tut-tutting of G.O.P. senators about Trump’s kowtowing to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and spurning of our intelligence agencies.

Until and unless the G.O.P.-led Congress passes legislation that protects special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired by Trump or enacts into law specific, deeper sanctions on Russia if it is ever again caught trying to tilt our elections — or secures Trump’s tax returns or the transcript of his two hours and 10 minutes of private conversation with Putin — it’s all just talk to cover the G.O.P.’s behind.

Let the Republicans in Congress do something hard and concrete that shows they love our country more than they fear Trump’s base and I will believe their words.

I can’t say it better than Michael Gerson, the former George W. Bush speechwriter, did in The Washington Post Monday: “Much of the G.O.P. is playing down Russian aggression. And it is actively undermining the investigation of that aggression. Trump’s political tools have become Putin’s useful idiots. The party of national strength has become an obstacle to the effective protection of the country.”