What does President Trump really believe?
Does he want to run for a third term, or is that just a joke? Does he intend to seize control of Gaza and expel millions of Palestinians, or is that just a suggestion? Is Black History Month a waste of time and money, or worth a lavish celebration at the White House?
Anyone looking for definitive answers will have a hard time finding them.
Since storming back into office, Mr. Trump has used a dizzying rhetorical tactic of shifting positions like quicksand, muddying his messages and contradicting himself, sometimes in the same day. The inconsistencies have presented the American public with dueling narratives at every turn, allowing people to pick and choose what they want to believe about the president’s intentions.
Mr. Trump has long dealt in distortions and lies, including in his first term. But as he executes a much more aggressive agenda at home and abroad, his contradictions have become more brazen and more pronounced.
“He says so much, you can’t really pin him down,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and editor of a book of essays about Mr. Trump’s first term. “The point isn’t to have a contradiction, the point is to have cover.”
“The reality of our modern information world is that you can pick and choose what you want to believe,” Mr. Zelizer added. “He instinctively knows that.”
Within hours of taking office, Mr. Trump pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted Capitol Police officers, a move that clashed with his professed support for law enforcement.
He spent his first weeks disparaging diversity, equity and inclusion policies as “harmful” and blamed diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration for a deadly plane crash over the Potomac River. But just hours after the Jan. 29 crash, he backtracked.
“We want the most competent people,” he said. “We don’t care what race they are.”
Mr. Trump has eviscerated federal programs aimed at combating inequality in America and his Defense Department announced that the military would no longer “use official resources” to mark Black History Month.
Mr. Trump then marked the occasion in a formal ceremony in the White House.
His foreign policy pronouncements are equally baffling.
Last month, after making a stunning announcement that the United States would seek to seize the Gaza Strip, permanently displace the Palestinian population and rebuild the seaside enclave as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” Mr. Trump changed his proposal several times over two weeks, before saying it was merely a recommendation.
Earlier this week, during an address to Congress, he invited Greenland to choose to be owned by the United States. “We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” he said.
Moments later, he suggested it may not be a choice at all.
“One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he said.
On the matter of Ukraine, Mr. Trump in a social media post called the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator without elections.” Later, when pressed on whether he actually believed that, Mr. Trump said: “Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.”
White House officials argue that especially on foreign policy matters, Mr. Trump is showing his skill as a tough negotiator whose messages adjust to the fluidity of serious situations. An aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Trump’s ambiguity about the situations in the Middle East and Ukraine had pushed both regions closer to peace.
A White House spokeswoman said that Mr. Trump’s polling showed that his messaging resonates on issues that matter to Americans.
“The American public has ample opportunity to listen to the words of President Trump directly when he speaks to the press, and directly to the American people, on a near daily basis as the most accessible and transparent president in American history,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement, adding that Americans “recognize the beauty of the art of the deal.”
Throughout his career as a businessman and a politician, Mr. Trump became known as much for deal-making as he was for perfecting contradictions. Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Mr. Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal,” has said the president has one goal.
“His aim is never accuracy,” Mr. Schwartz wrote in an opinion essay during Mr. Trump’s first term, “it’s domination.”
Mr. Trump has boasted about his meandering speaking style, which he calls the “weave,” and he often muses about things — like whether he should be granted a constitutionally prohibited third term — with a wink and a nod.
But experts say the dissonance can become dangerous.
“Once you undermine consistency, the shared sense of reality, you’re undermining the basis of democracy,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale professor who has written books about propaganda and the erasure of history. “If there’s no shared sense of reality, we can’t collectively make decisions. So the only decision maker will be the disrupter in chief.”
Mr. Stanley said Mr. Trump’s contradictions boil down to a simple truth.
“If you’re constantly contradicting yourself,” he said, “you’re constantly lying.”
