What did Donald Trump do today?

He declared war, peace, both, and neither in the space of a few hours in an attempt to keep his Iran misadventures from spiraling further out of control.

Yesterday, Trump refused to rule out the prospect of a military draft for his Iran war, reiterating his position that more Americans could expect to die as a result of it.

This afternoon, with markets falling and oil prices spiking, Trump abruptly decided he'd had enough and declared victory—or at least that he'd achieved victory "very complete, pretty much." He also publicly distanced himself from any responsibility for starting the conflict in the first place, shifting blame instead to "Steve [Miller] and Jared [Kushner] and Pete [Hegseth]" as well as Marco Rubio.

That announcement came a few hours after the social media account for the Department of Defense claimed that "we have only just begun to fight," and a few hours before the US and Israel launched another attack at Iran, and Iran launched missiles at Turkey.

Then, after the markets had closed and Iran had once again taken advantage of the opportunity to remind him that the enemy gets a vote, Trump said that the United States would "not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated."

Then, asked why he was declaring peace and his Secretary of Defense was declaring war, he said it was "both."

Then he retreated to social media again, where said he'd "hit" Iran "TWENTY TIMES HARDER" and that "Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them."

In other words, in chronological order, Trump said today that:

• the US is in a long, deadly conflict with Iran
• the US has already won its conflict with Iran
• it's not his fault that the US attacked Iran
• the US is continuing to attack and be attacked by Iran
• the US will never relent in its attacks on Iran
• the US is both at war and not at war with Iran
• the war with Iran will get twenty times more intense 

(Posted at 9:30 PM EDT. Further updates will follow if Trump changes his mind again.)

Why does this matter?

• A president who doesn't know why or if he's gotten the country into a war with Iran isn't fit to serve. 

• Americans' safety and prosperity is infinitely more important than Donald Trump's need to save face.