He absolutely cannot blame the pests despite doing so. He's just so fucking terrible. The spaghetti factory incident was all his own, and his books are fucking awful. Even his slightly better earlier one(s) were collaborated on with the first, better wife. He had a modicum of clout to land on that science show because the production probably saw "sci-fi, author, recently successfully published" and didn't look further. Everything after was a decline because social media became way more prominent and a direct search saw he was a massive asshole even before the pests.
His stand-up is too verbose and niche, the joke about the Star wars fans or whatever all passing out and screaming causing a natural disaster is a prime example. His joke about hating peppermint and comparing it to his divorce/best friend fucking your wife could be funny, but in the example telling we have you can hear the genuine anger behind it and the audience picks up on that and he only gets pity laughs after the first few. Nevermind that he basically stole jokes and this is the theory of why he doesn't think Norm was funny (he tried the same delivery/shtick, bombed, assumed it wasn't his fault but the jokes), kicking off the pest arc.