Unlike the Obama administration, which was criticized for setting a timetable for withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Trump administration has declined to say when it will withdraw U.S. troops from countries where they are advising local militaries that are fighting insurgencies (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere). National-security officials say the U.S. will remain as long as the conditions require U.S. troop presence. But, as with other foreign-policy flash points (Iran, Qatar, North Korea) what the president says in public often appears at odds with what the rest of his administration is saying. This is true of Syria, as well.

“Let the other people take care of it now,” Trump said in Ohio last week. “Very soon—very soon we’re coming out.”

The Associated Press reported Friday that Trump told his advisers in February that he wants out of Syria. But Trump’s aides, the AP reported, thought they had persuaded the president of the need for an open-ended U.S. military presence in Syria. The New York Times Magazine reported in late March:

The president signed off on the plan just before Christmas (to the generals’ great relief), during a meeting in the White House Situation Room. It would not become official until mid-January, when the man ostensibly responsible for American foreign policy, Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state, gave his endorsement in a speech in California. But it was decided months earlier under Mattis’s supervision, with the help of the elite Special Operations forces who have led the battle against ISIS in Syria. Once again, Trump had reluctantly deferred to the national security establishment, just as he did on a larger scale with Afghanistan last summer.

Those who have advocated a longer-term U.S. presence in Syria included Tillerson and H.R. McMaster; Tillerson has left the administration and McMaster is leaving next week. James Mattis, the defense secretary, remains. He may have allies on the issue in Mike Pompeo, the incoming secretary of state, and John Bolton, McMaster’s successor as national-security adviser. Both have in the past advocated for a more muscular U.S. posture in Syria.

Trump’s reluctance to keep U.S. troops in Syria contradicts not only his advisers, but also his own prior diagnosis of what the Obama administration did wrong in Iraq: He pulled out too quickly, in Trump and others’ assessment, leaving a vacuum in which ISIS and other radical groups flourished. What caused the president to land on his current position—after criticizing Obama’s quick Iraq withdrawal, then declaring he was pursuing his own quick withdrawal from Syria, then finally settling on a commitment to “eliminating” the remaining ISIS presence in Syria despite the “rapid end” of the mission—is not clear. The Washington Post reported, however, that Fox & Friends, a show the president is known to watch and rely on for advice, urged him Wednesday morning to keep troops in Syria.