There’s a short scene in the film “Roxanne” in which Steve Martin drops a quarter into a box to buy a local newspaper. He stares at the front page for about two and a half seconds before screaming hysterically at the atrocities he finds reported there. Then he reaches into his pocket for another quarter. Mr. Martin puts the paper back in the box, closes it, and then proceeds on his way, his sense of tranquillity restored.

Following the news out of the White House these days is something like that — each week seems filled with so many things to make your hair stand on end that there are times that, like Mr. Martin, I find myself wanting to fish around in my pocket for an extra quarter just to make it all go away.

The last few days have been typical. On Thursday, H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, resigned and was replaced by John Bolton (a man Donald Trump was originally reluctant to hire because he didn’t like his mustache). On Friday morning, the president threatened to veto the $1.3 trillion spending package that Congress sent him in order to avoid a government shutdown, only to sign it later, after describing it as “ridiculous.” Was it really just three days ago that he called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to congratulate him on his victory in a rigged election, in spite of being specifically begged not to do so by his own staff?

Right about now is when you might want to start fishing around for that additional quarter.

So you can be forgiven if, while all that was going on, you missed when Mr. Trump issued a new ban on transgender troops on Friday night, reversing an Obama-era policy and providing only minor tweaks to the ban he’d already tried to put in place last year, before that policy was shut down by legal challenges.