In October, Trump said—baselessly—that “what was just found out is the Department of Justice, the State Department, and the FBI colluded—got together—to make Hillary Clinton look less guilty and look a letter than she looks.”

In his memo, Rosenstein complained that Comey had broken “the longstanding policy that we refrain from publicizing non-public information” with his October 28 letter to Congress, which Clinton has blamed for costing her the election. But Trump, at the time, was full of praise.

“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts,” Trump said at an October 31 rally. “I was not his fan, but I’ll tell you what: What he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back.”

Another fan of the decision was Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama and top Trump surrogate. “He had an absolute duty, in my opinion, 11 days or not, to come forward with the new information that he has and let the American people know that,” Sessions told Fox Business at the time. Yet in a letter attached to Rosenstein’s memo, Sessions, now the attorney general, told Trump that “for the reasons expressed by the Deputy Attorney General in the attached memo,” he recommended firing Comey in order to reaffirm the Justice Department’s “commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations.”

Couldn’t Trump have had a change of heart since October? Theoretically, sure. But he was still criticizing Comey for being too light on Clinton just a week ago:

FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

...Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017

Taking Trump’s rationale for the firing at face value would require believing that the president had reversed a deeply held belief in the course of just a week. Trump has had some notable flip-flops, as on Syrian intervention, but few so plain or abrupt.

In a combative CNN interview Tuesday night, Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway herself suggested that the Clinton material was mere pretext. “This has nothing to do with the campaign from six months ago,” she told Anderson Cooper. “This has everything to do with the performance of the FBI director since the president has been in the White House.”

Trump himself contradicted the stated rationale, too. “He wasn't doing a good job. Very simply. He was not doing a good job,” the president told pool reporters Wednesday morning, his first non-Twitter comments on the firing.