Ever since President Donald Trump ham-handedly fired FBI Director James Comey, a cadre of journalists, partisan Democrats and activists has demanded that Congress, a specially appointed independent commission, FBI agents and at least one special prosecutor singly or in unison burrow into Trump's dalliances with Russian operatives — with the goal, of course, to bring to light the evidence that Trump is a stooge of the Kremlin intent of destroying the American republic.

With last week's appointment of a special counsel to look into Trump's affairs, it seems such calls have been inescapable for the average news consumer. And yet, we now know few seem to care.

The Wall Street Journal and NBC News reported the results of their joint poll of roughly 800 people that found 38 percent of Americans do, in fact, disapprove of Trump dispatching Comey back into private life.

But, stated differently, the survey found that nearly two of every three Americans either supported Trump's decision to fire Comey or didn't know enough about the issue to register their opinion on it.

While a strong plurality (46 percent) concurred that the president fired Comey in attempting to slow the investigation into Russia's supposed meddling in the 2016 election and the administration's potential connection to that, almost as many (38 percent) accepted Trump's explanation that Comey was canned for flubbing the investigation into Hillary Clinton's release of classified information over her home-brew email server. In other words, 54 percent think Comey's departure was unrelated to the Russia inquiry.

Thus, the Comey affair appears to be a tempest in a Washington teapot.

This should tell us something, especially those who are trying to make the Trumpinator's dismissal of Comey into the second coming of Watergate: to wit, that the national media's intense and relentless frenzy over Trump's supposed malfeasance is having the same effect as the pleas for help offered by the little boy who cried wolf.

CNN breathlessly reported that the president gets two scoops of ice cream for dessert while his guests must live with just one. MSNBC revealed that Trump, long held up as a devious tax cheat, actually paid almost $40 million in income taxes (at least in 2005). Others claimed Trump had renamed Black History Month or wanted to invade Mexico, when he hadn't and didn't.

Assuredly, the president has bungled many things, Comey's dismissal included, and he hurts himself with an arm's length relationship with the facts.

But remember: The FBI has probed the Russia-meddling allegation for almost a year and has yet to produce one concrete shred of evidence that something criminal happened.

If this great republic crashes after 230 years, our demise will be self-inflicted, and not because we elected Trump. It will be because we've let the national media's hare-brained obsession with discrediting Trump and their frenetic, self-posited and dishonest accusation that we are in a constitutional crisis that can only be resolved by his removal get the better of us.

REPRINTED FROM THE NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS