Donald Trump’s recent policy reversals, and reports that he’s exasperated with right-wing advisers like chief strategist Steve Bannon in favor of moderates like son-in-law Jared Kushner, have given rise to a media depiction of the president as a burgeoning centrist. By declining to label China a “currency manipulator,” to shutter the Export-Import Bank, or to replace Janet Yellen when her Federal Reserve chairmanship expires, Trump has moved “toward the economic policies of more centrist Republicans,” according to The Washington Post. “Trump is, if not behaving normally, at least adopting normal positions,” writes Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who cites Trump’s declaration that NATO is “no longer obsolete” in addition to other flip-flops.

Because these reversals are real and meaningful, it is important to be precise when we describe the transformation, and to think carefully about why it happened and whether Trump deserves to be praised for it.

It is strange, for instance, to describe the combined law enforcement policy of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, economic policy of adviser Gary Cohn, and foreign policy of Trump’s Twitter feed and the military generals in his good graces as “centrism.” Trump has instead taken the three-pronged fusionism of standard movement conservatism—pro-corporate economic policy, religious right-wing social policy, and hawkish foreign policy—and stripped away any pretense of concern for racial equality and inclusiveness. Describing that kind of platform as “centrist” is both inaccurate and a gift to reactionary forces in society.

It is also strange to reflexively applaud a president for serially violating campaign promises—or to assume that the new positions are good, simply because the old ones were bad. The instinctual feeling of relief overtaking the political establishment is understandable—even appropriate—but the reasons are being misdescribed, and wrongly attributed to a rational process supposedly happening in Trump’s mind.

What we are really seeing is the consequence of the fact that Trump’s efforts to corrupt and degrade governing institutions that threaten his power are failing. That is genuinely good news, and worth celebrating, but it should not blind us to the ways in which the institutions Trump is now co-opting are themselves flawed, and potentially dangerous in Trump’s hands.