Donald Trump has a gift for self-sabotage. His candor in an interview last year with NBC, after firing FBI director James Comey, is what got him the special counsel that haunts his presidency. His instructions to Donald Trump Jr. to lie about his meeting with a Russian lawyer during the election have placed his son and other senior White House staff in legal jeopardy.

The latest example of Trump getting in the way of his own good fortune is a tweet about former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. On Friday night at 11:08 pm, the president gloated: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI.” So the firing certainly looks political, right?

Except it didn’t look that way until the tweet went out. When he fired McCabe earlier that day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was following the recommendations of senior career Justice Department lawyers, after a report from the department’s inspector general, who was appointed by Barack Obama.