It would be nice if on just one day - just one - the president would have found the patience to do his homework and be right about something.
That day certainly was not Friday when Trump made good on a long-running threat to disavow the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Nor was it last Wednesday when he talked to Fox News to make his case.
In fact, the more Trump talks about his hate for the Iran Deal, the more clear it becomes that he doesn't really know what it is - an international pact among six nations led by the U.S. in which Iran agreed to stop making the brew for a nuclear weapon. Iran agreed to this in exchange for lifted international sanctions, including the return of U.S.-frozen Iranian money.
Trump told Fox: "It's no secret, I think it was one of the most incompetently drawn deals we've ever seen. $150 billion given, we got nothing. They got past the nuclear weapons very quickly.
"Think of this, $1.7 billion in cash. This is cash out of your pocket," Trump continued. "You know how many airplane loads that must be? ... This is $1.7 billion. Who would be authorized to do it and who are the people to deliver it? You may never see them again. Right? This is the worst deal. We got nothing."
We got nothing? One less volatile country that wants to aim nuclear weapons at us is nothing?
But back to the money. He's wrong about that, too. It's not "cash out of your pocket." It is Iranian assets that were frozen in U.S. banks for years. And $150 billion was the high-end estimate.
You'll have to think back to August of 2016 for this to sort of make sense of the things Trump has conflated in his wee mind. Just weeks after the Iran deal was announced, the GOP seized on photographs of cash being loaded on a plane and called it "ransom" for American prisoners in Iran, who were recently released.
State Department spokesman John Kirby called it "leverage."
We think of it as insurance on brilliant negotiation.
Then-President Barack Obama reminded reporters his administration had announced in January a planned $400 million payment when the U.S. was talking with Iran for the first time in decades also to achieve the nuclear deal. The money was part of a $1.7 billion settlement of lengthy financial dispute between the U.S. and Iran over a failed arms deal from the 1970s.
The U.S. had agreed to the $1.7 billion settlement after attorneys and advisers made it clear that a full tribunal - a court case set in motion by former President Ronald Reagan - could mean America might end up paying as much as $10 billion, counting interest and a possible fault judgment, according to both Obama and Hillary Mann Leverett, a former U.S. negotiator with Iran from the George W. Bush administration.
But Trump never lets facts get in the way of a grievance with anything Obama.
So he just nurses his hate of the Iran deal.
And now, when Trump refuses to add his formal presidential certification that the Iran deal is working as his advisers and five other nations with inspection privileges say it is, then Congress must make a decision about whether to reimpose sanctions.
It certainly seems like a good deal to us. Iran stops making the fixings of a nuclear bomb until 2031 in exchange for its own money and eased sanctions.
Fortunately Trump's decision isn't as bad as it could be. A disavowal of certification is far better than his earlier threats to unravel the accord or even rewrite it.
But it's still dangerous. It sends a message to the world that it can't count on the U.S. to be a responsible member of the international community.
And since Trump has dumped the Trans-Pacific Partnership and pulled the America out of the Paris climate agreement, that message grows louder each day.