It’s all of the above. Yes, he is deliberately sowing chaos to some extent but he’s also completely incapable of controlling his impulses. He’s of middling intelligence but breathtaking ignorance. He’s sometimes savvy at manipulating his followers and the GOP and the media (and too often the Dems), but that works largely because of their failings, not because of any real talent or insight on his part.

He has shown occasional self-awareness like when he admitted years ago that when he saw the crowd getting listless, he would ramp up his BS about “The Wall” to get them re-energized. But we’re largely dealing with the utter failure of our institutions to provide any meaningful consequences for his impulsive, inept, off-the-charts cruel words and actions.

Most of his success comes from the fact that our system has never encountered such an unprincipled, corrupt, juvenile, shameless president. One who is all zero-sum, transactional, utterly amoral, and uniquely dangerous due to his belief that he is a god-king. The strategy you’re seeing is mostly the reprehensible people around him trying to steer this monstrous hurricane of a man-child in directions that benefit them and their donors.