If not a Pinocchio, a parsing:

Time | June 21, 2017
Will Robert Mueller Separate Fact From Fiction? - "In Washington, the 'first law of holes' is one of those shopworn maxims that are so familiar, they need not be spoken. It's like what you should do if you want a friend in the capital: 'Get a dog' goes without saying. But maybe things are different where Donald Trump came from. And maybe that's why he didn't know what to do when he found his young presidency in a small hole involving contacts between a few of his underlings and Russian officials. Now he's learning the local folklore the hard way. The first law of holes is, if you're in one, stop digging. Three times, Trump heard assurances from former FBI director James Comey that the Russia investigation wasn't aimed at him. Instead of putting his shovel down, though, Trump worked it furiously."

But, no, that would've been too easy. Instead, Obama chose to once again channel Herman Melville's Captain Ahab, lower the boats on the Pequod and give chase to Moby Dick's twin sister, the other great white whale known as "Bipartisan Support." How many times over the course of his eight years in office did that chase wind up running aground on the shoals of Capitol Hill?

And so, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predictably put the kibosh on that effort, just as he did on so many other Obama-era initiatives to reach across the aisle -- oh, well, so much for the U.S. electorate's opportunity to go to the polls with the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision. Only now are we learning about the extent of Russia's penetration, and that's been entirely piecemeal, thanks to a series of leaks from some heroic whistleblowers, eight months ex post facto.

Obama had a real opportunity here to cement his legacy as a truly great president. But rather than trust us with this information, he chose to keep us in the dark about what's since proved to be the most serious threat to our nation's national security since the Cuban Missile Crisis 54 years earlier.

And when future historians recount and assess these times, they will undoubtedly note that this was the key and consequential moment when President Obama failed us spectacularly and choked, setting in motion a subsequent series of events which not only washed that legacy away, but further placed the American Republic itself in mortal peril.

Trump seems to say whatever he thinks he needs to say to get himself back on top with whomever he is sparring, or to get whatever is his want of the moment, regardless of whether he said something completely different half an hour ago - and he won't bat an eye about saying something else entirely the next day.

He creates his own chaos in the belief that if he's driving it, he can take it where he wants to go.