Later, Trump pledged his full support to the NATO alliance, despite repeatedly calling it “obsolete” for more than a year.

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On the issue of Syria, Trump seemed to step up his warnings to President Bashar al-Assad, calling him a “butcher” at a news conference and an “evil person” in an interview with the Fox Business Network. To the Wall Street Journal, Trump said another use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would prompt another military response from the United States, and he did not rule out taking action against the use of barrel bombs.

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And yet, on the same day Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Moscow that Assad could not be part of a long-term government in Syria, Trump seemed to offer more leniency.

“Are we insisting on [Assad’s departure]? No. But I do think it’s going to happen at a certain point,” Mr. Trump told the Journal.

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This flurry of developments makes Trump’s already hard-to-decipher strategy when it comes to world affairs appear even more complicated.

Wednesday also offered several examples of Trump and his administration seeming to learn the realities of certain conflicts as they go along.

On Russia, Trump continued to pressure President Vladimir Putin to abandon his support for Assad, telling Fox Business the choice is “very bad for mankind” and “for this world.” Tillerson pushed a similar line in Moscow, where he met with Putin. But Russia indicated the effort would go nowhere.

On North Korea, Trump told the Journal that he offered Chinese President Xi Jinping more favorable trade terms in exchange for help “solving the problem” of Pyongyang. He also told Xi to tell North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the United States has nuclear submarines, in addition to aircraft carriers. But Trump indicated that his understanding of the situation changed after Xi explained the history of China and Korea to him. “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” Trump said.

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IS BANNON’S WHITE HOUSE JOB SECURE?

Stephen K. Bannon was once considered one of the most powerful people in Trump’s government. Now, he’s struggling to keep his job.

As our colleagues reported, Bannon is a “marked man — diminished by weeks of battles with the bloc of centrists led by Trump’s daughter and son-in-law and cut down by the president himself.” One friend, in an interview, likened Bannon to a terminally ill family member who had been moved into hospice care.

The gravity of the situation became clear on Tuesday when Trump did not definitively say he had confidence in his senior adviser in an interview with the New York Post.

“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the paper. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”

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TRUMP TO SHIFT FOCUS BACK TO HEALTH CARE

It’s sometimes hard to pin down exactly what Trump wants to accomplish legislatively and when.

We learned a bit more Wednesday, however, when the president suggested he wants to focus on revising the Affordable Care Act before pursuing an overhaul of the U.S. tax code — a change in strategy from a few weeks ago.

“Health care is going to happen at some point,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business. “Now, if it doesn’t happen fast enough, I’ll start the taxes. But the tax reform and the tax cuts are better if I can do health care first.”

Together with Republican congressional leaders, the Trump administration has already made one failed attempt at overhauling the 2010 health-care law known as Obamacare. After the effort ended in defeat at the end of March, Trump told reporters he was shifting his energy to tax reform.

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The about-face reflects a “harsh political reality that White House officials are now accepting,” our colleague wrote. To put it simply, it will be easier under congressional budget rules to overhaul the tax code once the Affordable Care Act’s taxes are repealed.

Trump also has a notion of how to bring Democrats to the negotiating table: risk damage to insurance markets by withholding government payments to insurance companies under the ACA. He outlined this idea in an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal.

DHS LOOKS TO BUILD UP IMMIGRATION FORCE

Remember Trump’s campaign promise to build a deportation force? His administration appears to be following through.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering ways to speed up the hiring of new Customs and Border Patrol officers, while also opening “discussions with dozens of local police forces that could be empowered with enforcement authority,” our colleague reported based on an internal DHS document obtained by The Post.

As a reminder, Trump signed executive orders in January to increase the number of deportations and strengthen enforcement along the border.