Once again, US President Donald Trump has claimed victory for solving a problem that most people would say he created himself.

A week after he suddenly withdrew American forces from northern Syria, effectively green-lighting a Turkish attack on the Syrian Kurds, the President sent in the two Mikes to broker a ceasefire.

Which they did. Maybe.

Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emerged from five hours of meetings in Ankara with a 120-hour ultimatum to the Kurdish forces: move out before it's too late.

Mr Pence called it both a pause and a ceasefire. Turkey only called it a pause.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 35 seconds 35 s US Vice-President announces temporary ceasefire in Syria

Mr Trump said he trusted that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would do the right thing, adding: "He's a leader … what he did was very smart."

It's a bit of a different tone than the one Mr Trump took in a bizarre letter that surfaced earlier this week.

It ended: "Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool. Let's work out a good deal! I will call you."

The letter was dated October 9, three days after Mr Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops and followed a whole lot of blowback from within his own party.

Reports suggest that the Turkish President literally threw the letter in the bin and then declared war in reply.

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Now, Mr Trump is saying "we've gotten everything we could've ever dreamed of".

"It's a great day for the United States. It's a great day for Turkey … It's a great day for the Kurds. It's really a great day for civilisation."

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Well, it's a great day for Turkey, which wanted the Kurds out.

Turkey had its way cleared by the US and moved in militarily.

Now it's seeing the US broker a deal to eject the Kurds and seeing threatened sanctions abandoned. In the end, Turkey may just get the "safe zone" it wanted in the first place.

But will it all end up as planned?

That's only the beginning of the questions this raises

Have the Kurds (who will apparently have their weapons confiscated) agreed to this? Has Syria's Assad regime?

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The planned re-population of that area with millions of Syrian refugees who are currently in Turkey, is that realistic and if so, when?

Even if the firing stops, who's going to monitor activity in the region to ensure a ceasefire holds?

Are the Kurds US allies once again?

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And what's the role of Russia and Iran in all of this?

Donald Trump is touting this as a major victory, but that's questionable in itself.

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The President did need some good news.

Less than 24 hours earlier, he was having a "meltdown" about Syria, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It started as a meeting.

"They said you wanted this meeting," Mr Trump reportedly told top Democratic congressional leaders. "I didn't want this meeting, but I'm doing it."

In fact, the White House had called the meeting.

It came only hours after the House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution condemning Mr Trump's actions, and the White House verified the letter from Mr Trump to the Turkish President was real.

So with that as the backdrop, it may not be a surprise that what began as a meeting to brief congressional leaders on the administration's plans for Syria took only 20 minutes to devolve into a round of insult-slinging that ended with a dramatic walkout.

Accounts from various witnesses suggest the conversation started with a mutual concern over Islamic State.

When Mr Trump said to Ms Pelosi, "I hate ISIS more than you do," things only went from bad to worse.

Ms Pelosi told the President that "all roads with you lead to Putin," in reference to how Russians have moved into the Syrian void where US troops once stood.

But you could also read it as a jab regarding the Russia investigation.

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"You're just a politician," Mr Trump said. "Sometimes I wish you were," Ms Pelosi responded.

Mr Trump then called her a "third-grade politician" (or a "third-rate politician," depending on who you ask).

And in the end, Ms Pelosi stormed out, flanked by the two next-highest-ranking Democrats in the room, and went straight to a press podium where she announced that Mr Trump was having a meltdown.

Right then.

It sure captured America's attention

For hours, cable news chyrons blasted out her words, giving them weight and urgency with a "breaking news" tag.

"Meltdown," the newspaper front pages screamed the next morning.

An image of Ms Pelosi throwing verbal rocks at Mr Trump went viral, evoking everything from accusations of an "unhinged" state to quasi-feminist celebrations of her power.

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Mr Trump was the one who released the image.

Ms Pelosi responded by promptly posting the photo as her Twitter profile.

Mr Trump responded with the classic schoolyard defence, "I'm not X, you're X," saying that it was Ms Pelosi who was having the meltdown.

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Eeesh.

But what's most surprising about all this is not Ms Pelosi's behaviour or Mr Trump's behaviour or the media's behaviour in focusing on that behaviour. It's that people were still interested.

After 1,000 days of a Trump presidency (yes, we hit that milestone this week), a dramatic meeting with the Democrats is just par for the course.

We saw the same thing during talks on the Russia investigation and last December's government shutdown.

We've seen Trump vs Pelosi photos go viral before.

Nancy Pelosi's clap during the State of the Union this year launched a thousand memes. ( Reuters: Doug Mills )

Yet the meeting was more or less the lead story, right up until the ceasefire was announced.

Speaking of which…

Now, the President is describing the deal as "something that will save lives" when it was his decision to take US forces out of the equation that helped trigger the fighting in the first place.

It's a recurring formula: create a problem, fix it, claim credit.

The President could also have followed the advice of Ms Pelosi, foreign policy advisors and experts, US diplomats, ambassadors, foreign leaders, the Republicans, the Democrats, the media, pundits, social media and so on and so forth, and avoided the crisis in the first place.