The guiding principle of Donald Trump’s governance seems to ricochet between brinkmanship, indecision, and ignorance—and his recent two-pronged attack on Obamacare is no exception. Last week, the president announced that he would be ending subsidies to insurance companies that help low-income Americans afford insurance, plunging millions of Americans into uncertainty regarding their health coverage. Since then, the White House has broadcast a series of conflicting messages about Obamacare's fate, throwing the president's own grasp of the situation into doubt.

When asked Friday whether the president would consider reinstating the payments should lawmakers reach a bipartisan compromise, his budget director Mick Mulvaney answered in the negative. “The president has said pretty clearly that he’s willing to talk to just about anybody about repealing and replacing [Obamacare],” Mulvaney told Politico. “But if the straight-up question is: Is the president interested in continuing what he sees as corporate welfare and bailouts for the insurance companies? No.”

Instead, Mulvaney suggested that Trump would accept subsidies in exchange for a full Obamacare repeal (a non sequitur) or for his greatest desire: funding for the border wall. And if he didn’t get any of those things, said Mulvaney, Trump would trigger a government shutdown on December 8 when the current budget runs out. “It would be highly unlikely for the president to sign a funding bill in December that does not fund his priorities.”

Hours later, the situation seemed to have changed. Politico reported Monday evening that the very next day, Trump called Republican Senator Lamar Alexander to request that he and Patty Murray, his Democratic partner, include funding in their bipartisan bill for the cost-sharing reduction subsidies he had just cut off. In return, Alexander recounted, Trump wanted to see “meaningful flexibility for the states in providing more choices.” Though that goal remains a point of contention between the two parties (Republicans want to hand states the choice to build and modify their own marketplaces, while Democrats argue that a federal system would contain better consumer protections), Trump's 180-degree flip seemed remarkable.

At Monday's press conference, Trump was quick to spin his ham-handed action on Obamacare as a clever strategy. “Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the C.S.R.s—because I cut off the gravy train,” he said. He also declared Obamacare “dead,” telling reporters,“It’s gone. It’s no longer—you shouldn’t even mention [it]”—a surprising stance considering the Murray-Alexander bill is explicitly designed to stabilize the program.