It was a Jack Nicholson-Tom Cruise moment. President Donald Trump couldn’t handle the truth. He didn’t even know the truth. And he has no respect for truth, so even if he knew, why would he tell the truth about the truth?

At a White House lunch with African leaders on Wednesday, Trump engaged in a bizarre exchange with the New York Times White House reporter Shawn McCreesh.

US President Donald Trump, left, and Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defence.Credit: Bloomberg

The day before, when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president who authorised the pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine – at a time when Russia is engaged in a barbarous onslaught, indiscriminately killing civilians – Trump replied, defensively: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

The Pentagon’s puer aeternus, Pete Hegseth, was sitting right beside Trump. And reporters soon ferreted out the information that perennial screw-up Hegseth had ordered the pause without telling Trump, Marco Rubio and other top officials.

Trump reversed the Pentagon chief, reflecting a belated awareness of the fact that Vladimir Putin is playing him for a fool. Like a spurned lover, he keened that his Russian boyfriend’s promises are “meaningless.”

In a follow-up the next day, McCreesh asked Trump if he had figured out who had ordered the munitions to Ukraine halted.

When........

© The Sydney Morning Herald