“Well, I’ll tell you what, if he doesn’t get repeal and replace done, and if he doesn’t get taxes done, meaning cuts and reform, and if he doesn’t get a very easy one to get done, infrastructure, he doesn’t get them done, then you can ask me that question,” Trump said.

McConnell has said that he doesn’t want to take up health care again until he has good reason to believe that he will win. The president’s frustration at his stalled legislative agenda is understandable, but it’s far from obvious that McConnell deserves the majority of the blame. Even if he does, attacking him is likely counterproductive.

There’s a dissonance to Trump taking time from vacation (one on which he is doing some work, while also squeezing in lots of golf) to attack McConnell. Although the Senate is in recess, that doesn’t necessarily mean members aren’t working. McConnell is home in Kentucky, speaking to people and making his rounds. Not all of a senator’s work is in Washington: These kinds of constituent services are an essential part of the work, which Trump doesn’t seem to understand.

But then, there’s a lot about the Senate that Trump doesn’t grasp. The president himself deserves a great deal of the blame for the health-care debacle. He has pushed hard for immediate repeal and replacement of Obamacare, but he has shown little understanding of either health-care policy or how it gets made. The president has presented no comprehensive plan of his own, but he has demanded that Congress repeal a major law and replace it with something better in a matter of months. (McConnell complained in Kentucky on Monday that Trump had “excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”)

Trump’s efforts to lobby lawmakers on behalf of the latest repeal bill were sporadic, unfocused, and tardy, and he keeps promising things (like lower premiums and expanded coverage) that no GOP plan thus far actually produces. He went from praising the House repeal plan to turning around and calling it “mean.” Even on the most basic question—should Congress simply repeal Obamacare, repeal and immediately replace it, or wait for it to falter?—Trump has changed his position repeatedly.

McConnell is not beyond reproach. He, along with other Republican leaders, promised for seven years that they would repeal and replace Obamacare, but the party never produced a detailed plan that had any chance of passing both chambers of Congress. His management of the recent process was criticized by members of his own caucus, notably John McCain and Ron Johnson. But their objections were rooted in the fact that McConnell was apparently trying to do Trump’s bidding and move a bill as quickly as possible. (As my colleague Russell Berman reported Wednesday, McConnell is under pressure not only from the White House but also from conservative groups and insurgent candidates for office.)