'Scrooge on steroids': Trump in a state of 'Yuletide gloom' as he's bunkered in the White House during the shutdown

President Donald Trump's tweets show just how isolated and gloomy he is in the White House during his Christmastime government shut down -- and some experts are calling him a "King Lear"-like figure.

"The Christmas Eve grievances billowing from the White House on Monday formed a heavy cloud of Yuletide gloom," the WashingtonPost's Phil Rucker wrote Monday of the president's mental state.

"Even for a president accustomed to firing at foes on social media, Monday’s cascade of angry tweets on a day when many Americans were celebrating the season with their families was extraordinary," Rucker reported. "The rapid-fire missives painted the portrait of an isolated leader nursing a deep sense of injury."

Vice President Mike Pence, the report noted, was only a couple of miles away at the Naval Observatory with his family celebrating the holiday. First Lady Melania Trump was scheduled to return to the White House at some point Monday after making the couple's customary trip to Mar-a-Lago, but it was "unclear" when exactly she would arrive.

Trump, meanwhile, was tweeting -- about how "alone" he was in the White House, about his border wall, about outgoing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and about the Democrats.

Peter Wehner, a conservative writer who served in the three GOP administrations prior to Trump's, said the president's Christmas Eve tweetstorm paints "a picture of a lost and damaged soul."

“There’s something sad and poignant about a president isolated and alone," Wehner told the Post. "He’s like King Lear, raging against the winds.”

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley had a different literary allusion for Trump.

“It’s a sad and pathetic moment when on Christmas Eve the president of the United States is firing downer tweets in a petulant, loner mood,” Brinkley said. “This is like Charles Dickens’s Scrooge on steroids.”

Read the entire report via the Post.