WASHINGTON — Looking around the table at the White House one day this week, President Trump chided fellow Republicans for kowtowing to the National Rifle Association. “You’re afraid of the N.R.A., right?” he challenged one senator.

The next evening, Mr. Trump invited the leaders of the N.R.A. to the White House. “Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office tonight with the NRA!” he wrote afterward. By Friday morning, his aides seemed to soften the president’s support for gun control measures opposed by the association, then denied that they were doing so.

If Mr. Trump and his team have yet to reach perfect coherence in their public messaging, it may stem from the president’s own tendency to veer sharply across the policy landscape. One moment he sounds ready to take on the gun lobby or unfair trading partners, and the next he is shifting gears and heading the opposite direction.

For all of the attention to the process chaos in the White House, recent days have made clear that there is also a policy chaos at work. While Mr. Trump has governed from the hard right for most of his presidency, he has at times confused some of his aides and allies with seemingly ad hoc, gut-driven proposals that conflict with Republican orthodoxy like seizing guns from the mentally ill without due process. Where other politicians strain for at least the appearance of consistency, Mr. Trump shows no reluctance to think out loud and change his mind.