“We have heard nothing so far,” a senior Democratic official on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which must sign off on any funds that State wants to reallocate, told me. “What money are we talking about? For what purposes? What’s the timeline for this? It’s been weeks now, and we’ve asked multiple times, and we know nothing.” (A State Department spokesperson told me the department is still undergoing a “review of all Department of State and USAID FY 2017 foreign assistance funding on current agreements and awards” in order “to provide detailed data to the Secretary to determine the best way forward pursuant to the President’s direction.”)

Read: Trump’s chief of staff says he’s having a ball

In the Trump White House, a month and a half is more like a lifetime, meaning that many officials, voters, and reporters—not to mention Trump himself—have long since moved on from the momentary chaos. (Indeed, one outside adviser to the president’s 2020 campaign told me he didn’t even recall that Trump had pledged to cut off the aid.)

This routine has both drawbacks and benefits for the president. But for American taxpayers and citizens of other countries, the effects can be devastating. By impulsively announcing a policy, Trump often harms his chances of actually seeing it brought to life, given a directive’s typical lack of vetting. But because so much of the news cycle is driven by Trump’s off-the-cuff statements and tweets—and not necessarily the follow-through—his supporters are often left with the image of a president who has, in fact, slashed aid to Central America, even if the money is still flowing into the three countries in question. (It is.) As one senior Trump-campaign official told me last week, the president’s appeal is about “the fight,” not “the resolution.”

Since assuming office, Trump has issued many private demands to aides that have either been slow-walked or altogether ignored. But when the president dictates those spontaneous orders publicly, officials are suddenly accountable to a much broader audience—at least in theory—to make them a reality.

Take an early morning in July 2017, when Trump tweeted that he was banning transgender individuals from serving in the military. According to two former White House officials, who asked for anonymity to share private conversations, Trump tweeted news of the ban from the residence shortly after a phone call with a handful of senior aides, in which the president had broached the topic, but agreed to wait and discuss it with the aides and other Defense Department officials in the Oval Office that afternoon. “We had literally just spoken to him about holding off on a decision and having a conversation later that day, maybe even bringing in Mattis and McMaster for it,” one of the sources recalled. “But then he tweeted it, and there wasn’t really any easy or effective way to walk it back.” (White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders declined to comment on the record for this story.)