Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in a resignation letter that he submitted to Donald Trump, on Monday, included a list of things for which he was, he claimed, grateful to the President. He started with the “opportunity to serve”—standard phrasing for a departure, and sometimes a way to dodge either praise or criticism. Not here. The next blessing from Trump that Rosenstein counted was “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.” Perhaps he added the “personal” for credibility, since in public Trump has not been particularly careful in his handling of Rosenstein’s dignity, or, really, of anybody’s. This past November, the President retweeted a collage of pictures of people behind bars which included not only his usual targets—Huma Abedin, Loretta Lynch, Barack Obama, the Clintons—but also Rosenstein. The caption read, “Now that Russia collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials for treason begin?”

At the time, the New York Post asked Trump why he had included Rosenstein. Instead of saying that it was a mistake, that he hadn’t spotted Rosenstein in the photo, or that it was just a joke, Trump replied, “He should have never picked a special counsel.” That task had fallen to Rosenstein in a roundabout way. At Trump’s request, Rosenstein had drafted a memo that was critical of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, particularly because of his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail case. (He had not been tough enough, apparently.) Trump cited that letter when he fired Comey, in May of 2017, but then suggested, in an interview with Lester Holt, of NBC, that the real reason for the firing was his annoyance with inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Jeff Sessions, then the Attorney General, had recused himself from that matter, because he had been part of the Trump campaign—and so Rosenstein turned to Robert Mueller. (Comey and Mueller are also in the behind-bars collage.) This made Trump very angry. In the end, though, Rosenstein stood behind Sessions’s successor, William Barr, as he portrayed Mueller’s report in a manner that, in its favorability to Trump, verged on parody.

The question of humor, as it happens, is not an incidental one in the relationship between Rosenstein and Trump. Also last fall, the Times reported that Andrew McCabe, who had been the acting F.B.I. director for a time after Comey’s departure, had written a memo recounting a conversation about whether Trump might be removed by means of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, on the basis of being “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

The premise was that erratic behavior might qualify. McCabe (who was later fired, for separate reasons) asserted in the memo that Rosenstein had raised the possibility of wearing a wire, presumably to capture Trump’s outbursts. Rosenstein strongly disputed the account, saying that he had never considered recording the President and that he had no doubts about his fitness. The Wall Street Journal cited a person who had been at the meeting and said that, although a wire was mentioned, Rosenstein had been, in the Journal’s words, “clearly joking.” The Times similarly noted that someone present thought that Rosenstein was speaking “sarcastically.” He kept his job, suggesting, perhaps, that this is an Administration at home with bitter jokes.

Rosenstein’s letter is stocked with free-floating praise for the rule of law and assertions that “credible evidence is not partisan.” It’s not clear whom he’s trying to convince of what. But it is clear whom he’s come to praise: his colleagues in the Justice Department—which is now staffed, he writes, with people who are “devoted to the values that make America great,” a resonant choice of words—and the President. In that respect, the most revealing source of gratitude for Rosenstein may be the third item that he lists in his letter: he thanks Trump “for the goals you set in your inaugural address.” Rosenstein describes those goals as “patriotism, unity, safety, education, and prosperity.”

The Inaugural Address was the speech in which Trump spoke of “American carnage” and accused his predecessors of usurping the people’s power and “refusing” to defend the country’s borders. He said, “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first—America first!” Would Rosenstein put that in the category of patriotism or unity? For an instant, one might wonder if he has been so disoriented by his time in the Administration that he has forgotten the character of the Inaugural Address. But other notes in his resignation letter suggest that he remembers it quite well: his final line reads, “We keep the faith, we follow the rules, and we always put America first.” How many in the Administration and how many Republicans in Congress have become not only tolerant of Trump’s xenophobia, bigotry, and resentments but comfortable defending and, even, embracing them? Are they, too, grateful?