After the "Access Hollywood" scandal, Mr. Trump raged at Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, for going on TV to defend him, arguing that he wanted to attack Hillary Clinton, not play defense. Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign manager until he fired him, repeatedly groused to friends that he was forced to absorb all of the criticism for the campaign's practice of confining reporters at rallies in small pens. Mr. Trump, he told two people close to him, had ordered him to do it -- but placed the blame on Mr. Lewandowski when reporters complained about it.

The firestorm touched off by the Comey firing has only reinforced the lesson Mr. Trump has usually taken away from past crises, that only one person was truly capable of defending him: the man in the mirror. It would be a "good idea" to end the daily news briefing, he told a Fox News host on Friday, suggesting that he was considering hosting his own news conferences every two weeks or so.

"Trump is putting a lot on the backs of his spokespeople, while simultaneously cutting their legs out from underneath them," said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and a former adviser to Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. "There is nothing more discouraging or embarrassing for a spokesman than to have your boss contradict you. In political communications, you're only as good as your credibility."

The view that the communications dysfunction begins at the top of the White House organizational chart is bipartisan.

"The most hazardous duty in Washington these days is that of Trump surrogate because the president constantly undercuts the statements of his own people," said David Axelrod, a communications and messaging adviser to President Barack Obama.

"You wind up looking like a liar or a fool, neither of which is particularly attractive."