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President Donald Trump departs after presenting Theodore Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor that was in the Roosevelt Room at the White House House, to be kept on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, in Medora, N.D., Wednesday, July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding the new Air Force One, Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md.<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump speaks before signing a presidential memo to the EPA on pollution control in vehicles, in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington.<\/p>\n
Jacquelyn Martin\/AP Photo\/Jacquelyn Martin<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding the new Air Force One, Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md.<\/p>\n
Julia Demaree Nikhinson\/AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump waves from his motorcade vehicle as he arrives at the opening of the Great American State Fair on the National Mall, Wednesday, June 24, 2026, in Washington.<\/p>\n
Carolyn Kaster\/AP Photo\/Carolyn Kaster<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 When the U.S. and Iran reached a tentative agreement to end the war, President Donald Trump managed to both trumpet the deal and raise questions about its viability, all in the same answer.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s a very strong deal,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody knows what it is. But it\u2019s very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It was the kind of mixed signal the president frequently sends: He\u2019ll seem to commit to one side of a major issue, then the opposite \u2014 only to subsequently suggest he\u2019s not actually decided and may not be wed one way or the other.<\/p>\n
Just as Ronald Reagan was the \u201cGreat Communicator\u201d and George W. Bush declared himself \u201cThe Decider,\u201d Trump increasingly seems comfortable as the \u201cGreat Equivocator,” oscillating between contradictions in what he says on one subject or multiple times in a single online post.<\/p>\n
Taking so many positions means the president can\u2019t be fully wrong while letting the public fix on different, albeit often conflicting, statements that can reinforce their own beliefs. It differs from Trump’s propensity for falsehoods, which can be part of a concentrated effort to cloud the facts for his own political benefit.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is, generally, all over the map,\u201d said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian at Northwestern University and author of \u201cHow to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.\u201d \u201cHis friends forgive him, and his enemies hate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Those close to Trump say it’s strategic <\/p>\n
White House spokesperson Kush Desai dismissed questions about the president’s shifting positions as an \u201casinine obsession with splitting hairs.”<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s results speak for themselves,\u201d Desai said, noting the ceasefire agreement, a resulting decline in energy prices and administration efforts to lower prescription drug prices among the “many other victories for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aides from Trump’s first administration say the president likes to lean on the business concept of \u201coptionality,\u201d or staying flexible enough to have always multiple choices available. That allows him to shift abruptly as the politics or his personal needs change.<\/p>\n
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Deepak Malhotra, a Harvard Business School professor and author of \u201cNegotiating the Impossible,\u201d finds that implausible.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusiness leaders and politicians have always sought to create option value whenever possible. But they wouldn\u2019t go about it by taking incoherent, or mutually inconsistent, positions on major issues,\u201d he said. \u201cThat erodes credibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Trump’s style can make him a feared negotiator since no one knows his next move. It recalls President Richard Nixon’s \u201cmadman\u201d theory of foreign relations, in which he sought to gain an upper hand by spreading uncertainty about his personal volatility.<\/p>\n
Trump has mostly abandoned any pretense of the United States playing its traditional role as leader of a rules-based global order. That could damage the country’s international reputation, but it also gives Trump a freer hand, Immerwahr said.<\/p>\n
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Most presidents \u201care interested in systemic power, the whole chessboard,” Immerwahr said. Trump, meanwhile, is \u201cinterested in what\u2019s in front of his face.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not just a pathology of his, that\u2019s his worldview,\u201d Immerwahr said. “That is a strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is consistently inconsistent<\/p>\n
While politicians typically try to avoid accusations of waffling, Trump has long been unafraid to contradict himself \u2014 refusing to be pinned down even when it unsettles financial markets or sparks consternation among fellow Republicans ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
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On Iran, Trump indicated that two top objectives were to remove Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and eliminate its ability to fire ballistic missiles. More recently, however, he has suggested Iran should be able to keep both, citing the need for fairness among regional powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that,\u201d he said in June of the enriched uranium. “You have to use a little common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of Tehran’s missiles, the president now says, \u201cThey have to have some because other people have some.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malhotra said Trump \u201chas become accustomed to people not holding him accountable for outcomes because he is typically able to change the subject or declare victory regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are now witnessing what happens when someone like that realizes there are limits to how much you can spin reality,” he said. \u201cYou start to promise everything and nothing, and you get fixated on making excuses for yesterday rather than strategizing for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desai countered that the ceasefire agreement amounted to \u201cthe Art of the Deal in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also frequently offered conflicting statements about the war itself. He claimed repeatedly that it was already won even as fighting escalated. He downplayed the war as \u201ca little excursion\u201d and \u201cnot a big thing,\u201d while pointing to it as the reason he couldn\u2019t do other things, like attend his son\u2019s wedding in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a point where he goes into default sales mode for whatever he\u2019s trying to sell,\u201d said Thomas Wright, a former special assistant to President Joe Biden and senior director for strategic planning at his administration\u2019s National Security Council. \u201cAnd he\u2019ll say, with great conviction, points that will sometimes be in contradiction to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
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It’s not just Iran<\/p>\n
Cuba, Trump has said, is \u201cready to fall\u201d without U.S. military intervention. while also suggesting that the quick-strike U.S. operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro could be a model for the island’s communist government.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you have to use it,” Trump said of the military during a March investment forum. \u201cAnd Cuba is \u200bnext, by the way.\u201d On Wednesday, in a North Dakota speech he was even more explicit saying of Cuba: \u201cAfter many, many decades, it\u2019s coming our way.\u201d<\/p>\n
After spending years slamming Biden for rising inflation, Trump said recently, \u201cI love the inflation,\u201d as prices rose under his own watch during the Iran war.<\/p>\n
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Even when it comes to seeking a third presidential term, Trump has toggled between teasing another run and hinting that he’s only joking \u2014 or maybe not.<\/p>\n
Reagan, known for his keen storytelling and ability to project warmth, got his moniker from a background in radio and movie and television acting. Bush declared himself the ultimate arbiter at a low moment of the Iraq War when asked about firing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.<\/p>\n
Trump doesn’t struggle to communicate. As a developer in 1980s New York, the future president was so obsessed with managing his image that he used fake names to call reporters and pose as his own spokesperson.<\/p>\n
Now, he talks constantly to the media and is the unquestioned decision maker at the White House, where aides often have to scramble to make their own past and present statements coincide with the boss’ latest about-face.<\/p>\n
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Trump nonetheless talks in circles as a matter of course.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe like everybody really in the room. I don\u2019t like a few people, but that’s OK,\u201d the president said recently following an occasionally heated lunch with Senate Republicans.<\/p>\n
Trump’s approach carries risk even for allies<\/p>\n
Daniel Ames, a professor at Columbia Business School whose research focuses on social judgment and behavior, said Trump may be driven by showmanship.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe could look at President Trump\u2019s behavior through the lens of content production and managing for viewership,\u201d Ames said. \u201cConstant twists and cliffhangers may seem like attractive levers for engagement, leaving viewers wondering and having to tune back in to find out \u2018What will I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But Wright, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Trump\u2019s ever-changing sentiments also mean he can fully support something, then shift his position without warning \u2014 leaving even close allies squeezed. For instance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been politically weakened by the Iran war’s major objectives going unfulfilled.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit like riding the tiger,\u201d Wright said. \u201cYou might sometimes get him to move in your direction. But, when all is said and done, one might wonder if it was better just to leave the tiger alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Will Weissert has covered the White House for The Associated Press since 2022, after covering politics, the drug war and immigration in Texas, Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala since 2000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump departs after presenting Theodore Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor that was in the Roosevelt Room at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":906919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,372,57214,367036,176137,69,3755,83,82,92550,184754,364538,184752,325469,364535,364534,324520,28967,15119,7202,7203,2053,358,367035,367034,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-906918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-america","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-cuba","tag-daniel-immerwahr","tag-donald-rumsfeld","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-w-bush","tag-iran","tag-joe-biden","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100505-member-choice-news-analysis-option","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-32520-ap-online-other-u-s-government-news","tag-product-33351-ap-online-analysis","tag-product-41019-news-analysis-dsa","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-richard-nixon","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-san-antonio","tag-sanantonio","tag-tehran","tag-texas","tag-thomas-wright","tag-trump-great-equivocator-mixed-signals","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}