President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday that his decision to fire James Comey had nothing to do with the memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that criticized the FBI director but didn’t call for his ouster. “Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation,” Trump confidently told NBC News’ Lester Holt. “Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.”

Trump’s statement embarrassed his own White House, which on Wednesday had strenuously argued that the Rosenstein memo was the motive for Comey’s firing. “The American people expect a president to act on the recommendations of those within the administration who are charged with oversight,” Vice President Mike Pence said, “in this case the deputy attorney general provides the oversight to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

But Pence and the White House communications staff weren’t the only ones who took the Rosenstein letter at face value, and thus got clowned by Trump. A broad swath of conservative pundits, including those who ostensibly claim to be Never Trump conservatives, have taken refuge in the memo, arguing that it justifies the firing of Comey—even if Trump’s motives differed from the memo’s rationale.

“The reasoning Rosenstein lays out in his letter is airtight,” The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway wrote on Wednesday. “And it’s a good and convincing read. Comey’s failures in the investigation of Hillary Clinton are more than sufficient grounds for firing, but observers are reasonably suspicious that Trump, of all people, would fire an FBI director because the latter had been unfair to her.”

“Rosenstein’s presentation of the facts is fair and scrupulous,” National Review argued in an editorial. “Of course, Donald Trump has often been less than forthright in his public statements, and the reasons that President Trump should have fired Comey—for example, those outlined by Rosenstein—appear not to be the reasons he did.”