Trump blames himself?

President Donald Trump nominated Jeff Sessions to become his first attorney general. He nominated Rod J. Rosenstein to be Sessions’s top deputy. He later nominated Christopher Wray to be his FBI director. All three have turned out to be inconvenient hires.

According to Trump, though, none of these decisions were his own fault. In fact, they were each others’ faults.

In a wide-ranging interview Friday on Fox and Friends, Trump served notice that Wray is on thin ice as the president and Attorney General William Barr push to clean house inside an FBI that launched the Russia investigation. And in doing so, Trump suggested that putting Wray in that job wasn’t even his decision.

“A lot of things are going to be told over the next couple of weeks, so let’s see what happens,” Trump said. “He was appointed by Rod J. Rosenstein and—a lot of things are coming out.”

Trump then reinforced the point: “He was recommended by Chris [Christie], but he was appointed by—he was really recommended by Rod J. Rosenstein.”

In fact, it was Trump who nominated Wray to be his FBI director. Rosenstein may have played a role, but the selection of an FBI director—to a 10-year term, no less—is a president’s call.

But this is hardly the first time Trump has blamed his own appointments on someone or something besides determining they were the best person for the job. And the blame for his selections of top law enforcement officials has now come full circle.

In the same interview Friday, Trump said he installed Sessions as attorney general even though he wasn’t fit for the job because of loyalty and Sessions “begging” him for the job.

What’s even more puzzling about Trump’s comments is that he didn’t just nominate both Sessions and Wray, but also Rosenstein. So to the extent that Wray was a mistake facilitated by Rosenstein, wouldn’t that also reflect upon Trump’s hiring decisions?

“He was hired by Jeff Sessions,” Trump said of Rosenstein in 2018. “I was not involved in that process because, you know, they go out and get their own deputies and the people that work in the department.”

So Trump blames Wray on Rosenstein, he blames Rosenstein on Sessions, and he blames Sessions on Sessions’s begging and loyalty— while claiming he didn’t even want Sessions in the first place.

To some degree, it seems, whatever rot might exist in the Justice Department these days could be traced to the man who ultimately made the decisions about who would run it—the man who has claimed he hires only “the best people.”