That's the other fun side of Trump. He says a ton of outrageous things but, if you like him, you just pick and choose which bits are ridiculous and jokes and which are truthful when it's actually impossible to figure out which is which. Is he going to take over Greenland with force? His followers will say probably not because they don't see it. Is he going to introduce tariffs to Canada? His followers will say yes because they do see it. Has he done either? Not yet. Will he? Who knows!

But whether he's serious or not about a claim really comes down to whether someone likes it or not. Regardless, I'd argue that's a really poor way to lead.

I don't like Trump at all, but I'm not blind to history. He likes building things, particularly with his name on it. Even with Gaza his inclination is to build something in that completely devastated area.

He's also very sensitive to public opinion of him, and he knows public opinion is against military conflict. People are sick of it.

So war is the complete antithesis of everything he's ever demonstrably cared about. That's a pretty solid piece of evidence that lets you distinguish what seems reasonable, but that gets conveniently ignored by people that let their feelings about him influence their judgment.

I think there's more going on with the war than just he's anti-war, but I can kind of see this argument. But if we take it as true, it would seem that he's bad at working towards the things he professes to want. He either doesn't understand them or he pushes to get the fastest result without thought as to whether that would be the best.

This is my explanation for what you describe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43219380

I don't like it, but I can't deny that he's made it work more often than expected. Possibly with some negative downstream effects we haven't seen yet. Time will tell.