Points for honesty, I guess. If there was one microcosm of Trump's attitude toward blame acceptance, this was it. In the span of a few seconds, Trump served notice that he separates himself from any responsibility for what Congress does or doesn't do. It's all on them.

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This is quite a different tune than Trump was singing when President Obama was in the same situation in his first two years (yes, Obama had more Democratic senators, but he only had 60 votes for a few months):

And while this might be the most transparent bit of blame-shifting from Trump yet, it's certainly not the first time he's done it:

(This is necessarily a partial list.)

Look: It's fine to note that things aren't completely under your control as president — we don't have a dictator — but presidents do get a chance to exert influence over the things the country talks about and Congress passes. The president can bring to bear plenty of pressure when it comes to swaying wavering lawmakers. When it comes to health care, Trump needed only to help win over skeptical Republican senators.

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But Trump has shown considerably less interest in providing a helping hand to McConnell and Ryan than he has in absolving himself of the blame for their failures to produce. He has frequently given conflicting signals about what he wants to see from the health-care effort, has feuded with senators who provide key votes — often after the bills have already failed — and has generally shown very little interest in policy details. It's one thing to not be a details guy; it's another to seem completely clueless about what's working its way through Congress at any given moment. Trump is almost always far to the latter end of the spectrum.

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Shortly after making the comments above, Trump also suggested he understood why his former top White House aide, Steve Bannon, would target a bunch of Republican incumbents in primaries. That's a message that has to have the National Republican Senatorial Committee screaming right now. But Trump seems to be attempting in one fell swoop something he's failed to do on an individual basis when it has counted — win the votes of key lawmakers using his bully pulpit.