Citing “sources familiar with the conversation,” Jonathan Swan reports that in an Oval Office meeting in September, Trump told Robert Lighthizer, his top trade negotiator, to make South Korea think he was a loose cannon that could blow at any minute. (Defense Secretary James Mattis, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were all there to watch as this went down.) According to Swan, the conversation, which the White House does not dispute, went like this:

“You’ve got 30 days, and if you don’t get concessions then I’m pulling out,” Trump told Lighthizer.

“O.K., well I’ll tell the Koreans they’ve got 30 days,” Lighthizer replied.

“No, no, no,” Trump interjected. “That’s not how you negotiate. You don’t tell them they’ve got 30 days. You tell them, “This guy’s so crazy he could pull out any minute.’”

“That’s what you tell them: Any minute,” Trump continued. “And by the way, I might. You guys all need to know I might. You don’t tell them 30 days. If they take 30 days they’ll stretch this out.”

Perhaps the sources familiar with the conversation were simply trying, as Trump’s enablers often do, to spin his stark-raving crazy as strategic. Of course, whispering to the press that the president is only pretending to be crazy undermines the entire point. The so-called “Madman Theory” of diplomacy only works if your adversary believes you are truly liable to do anything. The only thing the White House seems liable to do with any regularity is to dilute its inanity with incompetence.

Either way, it’s probably a poor way to govern, and doesn’t seem to have achieved any discernible result on the trade front except to frustrate and concern our allies. As a senior official told Axios, “If you make a threat and don’t carry it out—such as Obama’s ‘line in the sand’ in Syria—your credibility is shot. ‘There he goes again’ will be the response to any new declaration.”