Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried threw his meandering “What H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D” Twitter thread into damage control Wednesday after a Vox reporter published Twitter direct messages of him cursing about regulators – a group he famously and publicly courted for their influence.

“It’s *really hard to be a regulator,” he said Wednesday of three- and four-letter agencies with the “impossible” job of overseeing fast-moving industries such as crypto. “And so often they end up mostly unable to police as well as they ideally would.”

His diplomatic wording offered a blunt contrast with Bankman-Fried’s private verdict to Vox reporter Kelsey Piper Tuesday night: “Fuck regulators.” Also: “They make everything worse.” And: “They don’t protect customers at all.”

As Piper’s article quickly went viral on Crypto Twitter Wednesday, Bankman-Fried, who is reportedly under federal investigation after mishandling billions of dollars in customer deposits, said he didn’t know his messages with a reporter would be made public. He called some of his takes “thoughtless.”