Donald Trump’s supporters insist that the public shouldn’t lose faith in the president as Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice delve ever more deeply into his affairs. Sure, his personal attorney’s office was raided and his political associates keep having to strike deals after getting caught breaking the law.

But Trump supporters believe the president when he says that he is a victim of idiocy and corruption—that Jeff Sessions made “a very terrible mistake for the country” by recusing himself from the Russia investigation, that James Comey is out to besmirch his reputation, and that Rod Rosenstein is enabling “a witch hunt.”

Now, I don’t think the evidence supports Trump’s claims. But for the sake of argument, imagine all of that is correct and that his supporters are right to believe it.

That leaves Team #MAGA with an inconvenient problem: While Trump is not a crook in that telling of events, he is nevertheless an utterly incompetent president.

On November 18, 2016, President Trump announced that he would nominate Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general. “Jeff has been a highly respected member of the U.S. Senate for 20 years,” he said in a statement. “He is a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great Attorney General and U.S. Attorney in the state of Alabama. Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him.”