You don't think it's weird that there is a static factory method that you have to call in order to get a factory that you have to call in order to get the real

You don't think it's weird that there is a static factory method that you have to call in order to get a factory that you have to call in order to get the real thing? IMHO, that's exactly the kind of thing that Java gets rightly ridiculed for. They could have had just a factory method on the TrustManager class itself.