Barely four months into Mr. Trump’s presidency, the vast majority of Republicans nationwide so far seem unfazed, polls show. Gallup reported his approval among Republicans this week at 84 percent, though that has slipped slightly in the last two weeks. Among all Americans, it is 38 percent.

Mr. Trump and his aides have already started playing to the mistrust that many Americans have with the country’s political and media establishment as a way to deflect the week’s news. The message was a classic “us-versus-them” battle cry: They want their power back, and we cannot let them have it.

His campaign issued that plea in an email to supporters on Tuesday night, just hours after The New York Times reported about his request to Mr. Comey to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Flynn. It read: “Every day from here on out will be an uphill battle — and we need to be prepared to go into the trenches to FIGHT BACK.”

In the conservative media, an alternate story line has already taken shape. In this story, Mr. Comey, an embittered and opportunistic employee whom Mr. Trump fired, is now trying to redeem himself with retroactively released — and unseen — memos of his version of events. On “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning, one of the hosts, Brian Kilmeade, expressed disbelief. “If you write it down, does that mean it’s true?” he asked.

The chief accomplice in this version of events is the media, which in the case of The Washington Post, erupted into cheers when its story on Mr. Trump’s disclosure of intelligence to the Russians broke. “WASHPOST Newsroom staff openly applauding at latest Trump hit finally clarifies how this has turned into nothing but a bloodsport!” Mr. Drudge wrote on Twitter. (A reporter for the Post had actually written on Twitter that the newsroom applauded when the story broke an online traffic record.)