Conspiracy theories are no way for Donald Trump to govern

President Trump’s extraordinary Twitter allegation that the Obama White House wiretapped him during the presidential campaign dominated headlines all weekend. As it should have — there is no precedent for such a claim by one commander-in-chief about another, nor to having an FBI director urge the Justice Department to publicly reject such a claim, as The New York Times reports James Comey did on Saturday, to no avail.

Despite the lack of evidence for Trump’s allegation, it apparently will be folded into the expected congressional investigations into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian government agents. OK. Wild goose chases are not normally smart uses of a government’s time, but the claim is so serious that it demands an independent-minded probe.

Whatever the upshot of Trump’s latest tweetstorm, the cumulative effect of the president’s combative use of Twitter since his inauguration has been the sense of a nation adrift. Yes, it’s possible the Trump administration regains its footing this week by focusing on two of his biggest campaign issues: releasing a revised version of its stymied immigration restrictions and making progress with congressional Republicans on their proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Yet it’s also possible that this will be another week of stories in which the president’s own aides paint a picture of an impulsive, petulant man whose first impulse is to reject facts or pieces of evidence that do not flatter him or comport with his worldview.

A Sunday story in The Washington Post, based on interviews with “17 top White House officials, members of Congress and friends of the president,” describes how furious Trump became after the high point of his presidency — his gracious Feb. 28 speech to Congress — was eclipsed by a new chapter in the Trump-Russia saga: the discrepancy between Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ two prior meetings with a Russian ambassador and his denials to senators during his confirmation hearing that he’d had any contact with Russian officials while working with the Trump campaign.

Those meetings emerged via a leak to the Post, further fueling Trump’s and aide Steve Bannon’s apparent belief that the “deep state” — insider slang for the top national security and intelligence officials whose power is unaffected by changes at the White House — has it in for Trump. There has never been anything like this torrent of unflattering leaks about a new president, so Trump’s belief could be true on various levels. It could be true in a dark way — security and intelligence officials want Trump out because he is a threat to their power; a troubling way — they think Trump is dangerous and unfit to be president; or a simpler way — they know Trump’s aides have dissembled about contacts with Moscow and want to expose that.

At some point, Trump needs to grasp that a president must focus on the country, not on unproven conspiracy theories. He needs to fill the 1,200-plus appointments that require Senate approval because as of last week only 1 percent had been confirmed. He needs to focus on issues where there are real opportunities for bipartisan support, starting with tax reform and his bold infrastructure proposal. He needs to take his own advice in his address to Congress — to set aside “trivial fights” — and see the bigger picture. He needs to be that rarest of political creatures: a leopard that can change his spots.

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