THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

What he will be speaking about will dictate which face he shows during each speech.

President Trump reverted to his script as commander in chief here on Wednesday.

The morning after he delivered an aggrieved and impromptu defense of his comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Trump spoke in a more measured tone to the national convention of the American Legion, telling its members that “we are not defined by the color of our skin,” and that the country will overcome its challenges by reaffirming its common values.

“We are here to hold you up as an example of strength, courage and resolve that our country will need to overcome the many challenges that we face,” the president said, speaking slowly and gravely as he read from a teleprompter. “We are here to draw inspiration from you as we seek to renew the bonds of loyalty that bind us together as one people and one nation.”

It was a day-and-night contrast to Mr. Trump’s performance Tuesday night in Phoenix, where he lurched from subject to subject and accused the news media of ignoring what he insisted had been his message of unity in the aftermath of Charlottesville.

But such contrasts have become a recurring motif of his presidency: Mr. Trump has toggled between Teleprompter Trump and Unplugged Trump every day since the deadly clashes in Virginia, leaving Washington and the rest of the nation with a chronic case of rhetorical whiplash.

The split speaking personality is not new. Mr. Trump spent years mocking President Barack Obama for using a teleprompter.

He has to make nice with the vets who support him even as he plans to screw them out ofas much as he can get away with. In contrast the Phoenix crowd were pure Trumpoons who came to be fedhis fact free malarkey and roar for more.

There were obvious differences between the venue and audience for the Phoenix speech and those here on Wednesday. The first was a campaign-style rally for his most boisterous supporters, against a thumping soundtrack of the Rolling Stones; the second was an official presidential event for an audience of veterans, complete with a bill-signing ceremony.

There were many reasons to believe that the president’s angry performance in Phoenix was the real Donald J. Trump. It was consistent with the way he has reacted to all sorts of setbacks since he took office, including the Senate’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the multiple investigations of his links to Russia.

His advisers had actually anticipated the possibility that he would go off-script after The New York Times reported earlier Tuesday on his toxic relationship with Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. The article was referred to frequently on the cable television shows that the president likes to watch.

While reporters declared his rally one of his most caustic in the past two years, some White House aides said privately on Wednesday that they found some comfort in the fact that it could have been worse.

Many presidents, of course, have complained bitterly behind closed doors about their treatment at the hands of the news media or their political opponents. Robert Dallek, a historian, said Franklin D. Roosevelt lashed out at the news media with his aides, while John F. Kennedy canceled a White House subscription to The New York Herald Tribune after a string of negative coverage.

“There was a difference between how they performed in public and private,” Mr. Dallek said.

The sane predecessors of Cheeto knew when to speak their mind and when to shut up but Cheeto is different. He is not trying to govern, he is selling himself to see how much he can get away with and as of now it looks like he can get away with a lot.