I’ve been spending the past few days watching that ongoing soap opera “As the Trump Turns.”

Not content now to come up with unsubstantiated accusations against the FBI and the special counsel (not council, as he spells it), Mr. Chump, err, Trump, now has Rudy Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney (who should know better) and designated propagandist out spreading the gospel according to Donald that he is now above the law — a dubious claim that many legal scholars are questioning.

Obviously, the Bobbsey Twins are forgetting history. In the early 1970s a president tried to put himself above the law, was shot down in court and then resigned in disgrace.

Of course the Trumplodytes and abecedarians who worship the ground King Donald walks on can always argue that Richard Nixon’s fight with courts involved the famous White House tapes, and he was arguing executive privilege. Executive privilege won’t be an argument for this sitting president, since the fastest thumbs in the west keeps tweeting about everything that happens at the White House.

I would find all this folderol hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. What we have here is a spoiled brat who has never really grown up serving as our chief executive. Here is a man who inherited a family business, was used to getting his own way, and tried to run roughshod over anyone who got in his way. He can dish out the insults and abuse at others but can’t take it when it comes back at him. A note to the president: my dad always told me, “If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t be dishing it out.”

In many ways, our president is as tragic a figure as Charles Foster Kane, “Citizen Kane,” who wanted people to love him but only on his terms.

He finds himself in a position he’s never been in before; a situation where, although he’s trying, he can’t bluff, bully or buy his way out, so he resorts to whining about how he’s being framed and calling the Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” even though it has resulted in several indictments and some guilty pleas. By contrast, the Republican Benghazi hearings ran 16 months, cost $4.5 million and came up empty as far as indictments or guilty pleas.

For all his complaining, posturing and spin the president has been doing over the Russia investigation, one has to wonder whether he was involved in all that mess. One has to wonder about his claim of “I didn’t do anything,” when he’s working so hard to discredit the investigation. Of course, one of the more interesting aspects in this mess is what is said one day is usually contradicted later by Trump or Giuliani. If all this were a book or movie, no one would believe it.

A letter to the editor we ran sometime back complained about people trying to discredit the president. Really, no one has to do that. Mr. Trump does a good job of discrediting himself.

John Surratt is a staff writer at The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.