Free Advice for Trump: Stop Talking About Comey

According to former FBI Director James Comey, Donald Trump views the investigations into his campaign's alleged connections with Russia as a "cloud" hanging over his administration. That's what it looks like from the outside too—every week brings a fresh round of stories that darken the skies about the White House.

The latest trouble stems from Comey's essentially calling the president a liar in his testimony before the Senate last week, during which he also said Trump told him he "hoped" the FBI director would drop the case against Michael Flynn—just weeks before firing Comey.

Even Republican politicians haven't been all that eager to defend Trump lately, leaving the president to try and get out from this cloud all by himself.

At a Friday press conference, Trump implied that Comey had lied under oath, and on Sunday morning the president rambled on Twitter about Comey leaking an unclassified memo about their conversations:

This is Donald Trump at his most instinctual: When someone hits you, you hit back. That's how he's gotten in feuds with everyone from Rosie O'Donnell to New York's attorney general to the parents of a dead veteran. That habit arguably served him well during the 2016 campaign, when his fans loved Trump's combative nature. If anti-Trump attacks are just the establishment trying to tear him down—the Swamp's defenses swinging into action—his refusal to back down just shows his commitment to fighting for his people.

But Trump the president has a lot more to do on any given day than Trump the candidate. For instance, last week was meant to be "Infrastructure Week," during which Trump was supposed to detail what he wanted to do about the sad state of the country's airports, bridges, and roads, long teased as a $1 trillion investment in America. Instead, he offered vague anti-regulation platitudes and a reheated Republican plan to privatize air traffic control. Also on the president's docket was a diplomatic crisis brought on by a disagreement between Qatar and its Persian Gulf neighbors, which Trump blundered his way through.

So why, why why, why would Trump spend so much time on what James Comey is saying?

Ever since before Inauguration Day, the path forward for Trump was plain from a political perspective: Let the investigations into the Russian hacking proceed, tell the public you're confident they'll find nothing, get busy with the running of the country.

Instead, the transition team let Flynn become national security adviser even though they reportedly knew he was under investigation, increasing the odds he would get tarred by scandal. Trump initially denied Russian culpability for the hacking of his Democratic opponents. Then, of course, the president allegedly leaned on Comey to stop the investigation into Flynn, fired Comey, issued contradictory explanations for the firing, implied he taped his conversations with the FBI director, and is now in an energy-sapping public feud with him.

All of these things have added to Trump's cloud. Like a character in a fable about Washington, DC, every time Trump curses the cloud or orders it to leave him alone, it instead grows bigger and rumbles more ominously with thunder. The media, and I say this with affection, is collectively not that bright: If the president says something, they will cover it, and if the president is pushing back against some scandal, they will cover that scandal. This is arguably a stupid status quo, but it's not something Trump can change. Every president has to deal with those sorts of clouds, and they never really go away—you just have to ignore them and get on with the business of running the country.

I think Trump honestly wants to achieve the things he said he wanted to achieve—the infrastructure plan, the wall, the economic growth. Doing all that requires a lot of work. It requires actually fighting for the people who got Trump elected rather than merely promising that he's going to fight for them so hard they won't believe it, folks.

If Trump delivers on promises to his base, they won't care about the cloud. But the more Trump focuses on the scandals, the day-to-day rush of accusations and stories, the less he is working on those promises. You can't control the cloud, but you can get lost in it.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.