This issue can be reproduced with:

diff --git a/Lib/site.py b/Lib/site.py
index ad1146332b..c850109c19 100644
--- a/Lib/site.py
+++ b/Lib/site.py
@@ -638,3 +638,5 @@ def _script():
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
     _script()
+
+sys.executable = None

Attached PR 12875 fix distutils.sysconfig and the distutils build command if sys.executable is None or an empty string. I don't expect that everything works magically, but at least, it's possible to run "./python -m distutils.sysconfig" and use "make" in Python which runs "./python -E ./setup.py build". I'm surprised, but setup.py is able to build C extensions using sys.executable = None :-)

I made a similar fix for sysconfig in bpo-7774: commit 171ba0504aa778d81346ea56fc9000b29d4d3e1d.