There was a line of thinking at one time that Donald Trump’s policy reversals were part of a calculated strategy to keep the world off guard. Trump was an unpredictable wild card, his allies said, claiming that the president’s behavior was deliberate.

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We now know that there was no 3-D chess behind Donald Trump’s moves. His erratic behavior was unpredictable because he was broken and unable to devise and stick to coherent policies.

On Monday, Trump sat in the Oval Office and told reporters:

We’re protecting by the countries that we’re helping. For instance, you look at the five countries. You have Saudi Arabia, you have UAE, you have Qatar or Qatar, as I always say. You have Qatar, Bahrain. And by the way, you have others. You have Kuwait, and you have others. And they will do very well, but we think it’s appropriate that we’re– we don’t need them.

By Tuesday morning, that idea was long gone.

Why?

Middle Eastern countries told him they aren’t giving him one cent.

So Trump unleashed a barrage of lunacy, one suspects, in the hope that no one would notice what he did.