National Review editor Andrew McCarthy said Monday he is sorry to hear President Donald Trump is distancing himself from the decision to hire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and putting the blame on Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"I'm very sorry to hear the president say that," McCarthy told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "Put on your big boy pants. He's a Trump nominee."
"He was hired by Jeff Sessions," Trump said in an interview with Geraldo Rivera airing Monday. "We will make a determination. It's certainly a very sad story."
The problem with Rosenstein, said McCarthy, is that "he's always cultivated his good relationship with Democrats. He thought when he wrote this memo, which was used to oust Comey, that people were going to be cheering and applauding that he was taken aback by the blowback from that, and he has been trying to get into their good graces or back into their good graces ever since."
This includes, he added, talking about the 25th Amendment and about wiretapping the president, as was reported in The New York Times. Rosenstein has denied doing either thing.
"Fox and Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade argued that Trump is right and was not the one who picked Rosenstein, but McCarthy said he doesn't buy that and didn't think Kilmeade did either.
"You are the president or you are not," said McCarthy. "He is the guy. He is the main guy. He appointed these guys. He (Rosenstein) is a Trump nominee, and it's his administration. Stop blaming everybody else."
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