It has been a busy two weeks in political news from the United States.
President Donald Trump dismissed James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Comey was leading an investigation into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian interference with the November presidential election.
The dismissal happened last week.
This week, The Washington Post reported that Trump shared
classified
information during his meeting with Russian officials. And The New York Times
reported about a memo that James Comey reportedly wrote. It said Trump had asked him to end a federal investigation into a former top Trump administration official.
And on Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named a
special
counsel
to take over the government's "Russia" investigation. He appointed Robert Mueller, who served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013.
Things are happening so fast that it is difficult to keep up.
Larry Sabato is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
"Everyone I know in the political system, on all sides and in all professions, is
exhausted
," he said. "There's never a break."
Alison Howard is a therapist in Washington, D.C. Almost everyday, she hears from patients who are "
stressed
out" about what they have watched or read in the news about politics.
Howard told VOA that people seem to deal with this stress in different ways. Some try to avoid reading or watching as much news as they have in the past.
Howard said, "Others take
comfort
in signing into social media and finding that other people feel the same way that they do."
"Pretty much anybody who is paying attention is stressed out by the
constant flow
of things coming from this administration," he said. Cope is retired after helping run centers for the mentally disabled
.
Cope voted for the losing Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, a fellow Republican.
"I think my decision not to vote for Trump has been
borne out
," Cope said. He criticizes Trump for supporting a health care bill that will stop coverage for millions of Americans, and reports that he shared secret information with Russian officials.
