White House drama unfolds like soap opera

We’re going to have to start calling it the witching hour for the Trump Administration.

Every day this week, right on schedule about 5:30 p.m., a new bombshell has landed on the White House.

Monday it was word that the president had revealed highly classified information to Russian officials during a visit in the Oval Office at which the U.S. media was banned, but Russian media was not.

Tuesday right on schedule was the report from the New York Times that ousted FBI Director James Comey had a memo in which he suggested Trump had asked him to end the investigation into fired national security adviser Michael Flynn and his connections to the Russians.

And just like clockwork, Wednesday saw word arrive that a special counsel has been appointed to lead the investigation into possible Russian tampering with the U.S. election.

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was named to the post, and was greeted with near unanimous praise from both sides of the aisle.

Area congressman U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan offered the following statement after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the appointment of Mueller:

“Bob Mueller is a man of integrity and I have every confidence he will pursue this investigation and follow the facts, wherever they lead him,” Meehan said. “His appointment as special counsel should give the American people confidence that the investigation into Russia’s activities surrounding the 2016 election will be conducted thoroughly and free of political influence. I applaud Deputy Attorney Rosenstein’s decision,” said Meehan.

Meehan is very familiar with Mueller. Both are former U.S. attorneys. Meehan worked closely with Mueller in Justice during Mueller’s tenure as Director of the FBI.

Amid the daily drama emanating from the White House, it’s easy to forget what isn’t happening. Just about anything else. No one is talking about health care, which now has been passed over to the Senate after the House went ahead with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and approving the GOP replacement, the American Health Care Act.

Immigration? On the back burner. The wall? Forget it. And that’s not all. The president’s ambitious tax reform program also is now stuck in the muck of all the rest of this fallout.

Business – including Wall Street – liked what they heard in that plan. Take notice of what happened Wednesday as it became clear to Wall Street that the plan likely is going nowhere fast. Stocks went off a cliff, with the market plunging more than 370 points.

Even some Republicans seem to be tiring of the daily soap opera surrounding the Trump White House.

Grizzled Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell had to admit he wouldn’t mind “a little less drama” out of the White House.

Meanwhile, Wednesday, while addressing the graduating class of the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut, President Trump decided to use the occasion to talk about his favorite topic – himself – telling the graduates that “sometimes in life you won’t be treated fairly.” He went on to lament that he had been treated worse than any other president.

Thursday morning he was back on his favorite form of communication, taking to Twitter to lambaste the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections a “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

He wasn’t done. As he is prone to do, the president insisted on looking backward, not ahead.

“With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special councel (sic) appointed!” he tweeted.

We’ve wondered in this space before when the president is going to start acting like it – and we’ve hailed him in the rare instances when he has.

But all too much of the time he continues to act like this is just the latest chapter in the reality TV show he hosted.

Unfortunately this is not reality TV. It’s not a soap opera, despite how if often appears.

So we ask again – now knowing, of course, what today’s drama could bring.

You are now the president, the commander-in-chief, Mr. Trump.

Please start acting like it.