No one should need “coaching” on how to deal with Donald Trump.

As capricious as he is — and as vexed as America’s traditional allies tend to be by his puerile disposition — Trump’s jejunity makes him an easy study for anyone willing to concede The President of the United States is a 10-year-old by proclivity.

Western leaders used to find that hard to accept, mostly because it’s terrifying, but in the rare cases they could get past the potentially existential ramifications of Augustus Gloop as leader of the free world, they discovered that placating Trump’s not difficult. Shinzo Abe was famously adept in that regard, and Mark Rutte’s mastered it now too.

The problem is that the more people figure how to mollify Trump, the more pronounced his “last person I talked to bias” becomes. On any given issue, he demonstrates an ineluctable penchant for adopting the position of whoever spoke to him most recently. Now that everyone knows how to flatter and praise him, his issue-specific pendulum swings are becoming more pronounced.

Nowhere is that dynamic more noticeable than in Trump’s to and fro on Ukraine. In the past four months alone, Trump’s switched his support from Moscow to Kyiv and back again on multiple occasions, and every single time his one-eighties are presaged by a phone call or a meeting with Vladimir Putin or Volodymyr Zelensky.

The latest about-face came last week, when Trump stunned Europe with what was initially billed as a take it or leave it ceasefire proposal for Kyiv, the details of which were overtly favorable to Russia and indeed sounded quite a bit like they were written in Moscow.

In the ensuing days, European leaders and Zelensky pushed back, Trump suggested the plan isn’t his final offer after all and said there’s no deadline.

Now, reports indicate the proposal came together late last month after Steve Witkoff (who Trump ludicrously compared to Henry Kissinger while patting himself on the back for the Gaza ceasefire during a speech in the Knesset) coached Putin advisor Yuri Ushakov on how best to pitch Trump on a Kremlin-friendly Ukraine plan.

In the October 14 exchange, which apparently lasted all of five minutes, Witkoff told Ushakov that Putin should initiate a call and kick it off by lauding Trump as “a man of peace” while praising the Gaza deal. “From [there], it’s going to be a really good call,” Witkoff said.

According to a transcription of the chat reviewed by Bloomberg, Witkoff suggested actual language. Putin, he counseled Ushakov, should “say to President Trump: You know, Steve and Yuri discussed a very similar 20-point plan” to the Gaza deal “and we’re open to those sorts of things.”

48 hours later, Trump was on the phone with Putin, who took at least some of Witkoff’s advice on the way to cajoling Trump into announcing a possible summit in Budapest.

Notably, that call took place just as Zelensky was arriving in Washington to personally ask Trump for Tomahawk missiles. During their chat, Putin advised Trump against such a decision, warning it could escalate the conflict.

Trump then met with Zelensky at the White House where, according to some reports, the closed-door conversation was testy. That afternoon, Trump called on both sides to “claim Victory” and “let History decide.”

A mere six days later, in yet another apparent turnabout, Trump sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, a major financial escalation against the Kremlin.

Amid Trump’s schizophrenic about-faces, Witkoff worked behind the scenes to rally support around the 28-point proposal unveiled late last week. At least in its original form, the plan was rejected in European capitals, including Kyiv, where Zelensky’s struggling to contain a spiraling corruption scandal. Trump this week indicated Ukraine might still accept a modified version of the plan.

Witkoff’s going to Moscow next week, when he’ll discuss the ceasefire proposal directly with Putin. Trump’s also roped in US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, whose role in the resolution process remains the subject of some confusion.

Last week, Driscoll reportedly warned Kyiv that Russia was on the verge of winning the war and that the US might slow supplies to Ukraine. Driscoll’s message, one source told NBC, was “basically you are losing and you need to accept the deal.”

Separately, Bloomberg released a transcript of a call between Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. “Well, we need [to take a] maximalist position, don’t you think?” Ushakov asks. “I don’t think they’ll take exactly our version,” Dmitriev responds. “I’ll informally pass it along.”

After a bit of back and forth, Ushakov says, “We’ll see,” to which Dmitriev replies, “Yeah, you can talk later with Steve about [it].”

Dmitriev’s sanctioned by the US, but nevertheless serves as a crucial go-between for Putin with Trump. As one expert put it, in remarks to the AP, Dmitriev — a Kyiv-born, Harvard-trained Goldman alumnus — understands that “Trump Americans [are] business-oriented people who think in terms of profits.”

If your question is “Where the hell is Marco Rubio?” congratulations: You understand how highly unusual all of this is. Rubio should be spearheading any and all discussions with Moscow.

That Witkoff — a de facto personal assistant to Trump — is conducting one-on-one calls with the Russians and coaching them on how to ingratiate themselves with his boss while pushing a Kremlin-friendly war resolution plan is more than disconcerting, it’s arguably a national security threat.

And don’t take my word for it. Just ask congressman Don Bacon, a Republican, who said, “Witkoff acts like he’s on Russia’s payroll. He needs to be fired.”

In an interview with Axios, Bacon called Witkoff’s proposal the “Ukrainian surrender plan,” and said he considered resigning from Congress in protest last week, but ultimately decided to stick around out of respect for his commitment to constituents.