He’s erratic. In the span of just a few days, the former president has gone from praising Putin’s designs on Ukraine as an act of “genius” to musing about the possibility of secretly starting a war with the Russians. We saw this same kind of behavior during his presidency, when he openly flirted with waging nuclear war with North Korea, only to ultimately become enamored with Kim Jong Un. He actively cultivated his aura of instability: Bill Barr says in his new book that Trump told him the secret to a good tweet was “just the right amount of crazy.”

Biden has contained the crisis with Russia largely by making sure Putin doesn’t have to guess about his intentions — there will be no “no-fly zone” in Ukraine, and NATO troops won’t be rushing in either. If he were president right now, Trump’s brand of “leadership” would add another unpredictable element to a fraught situation that doesn’t need it.

He’s surrounded by the wrong people. Trump’s comments came a few days after Fox News host Sean Hannity proposed on his radio show bombing a Russian convoy in Ukraine, “then nobody takes credit for it, so then Putin won’t know who to hit back.” Hannity famously had Trump’s ear during the White House years, and it sounds like he still does.

But it’s not just Hannity — Trump sidekick Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted last week about assassinating Putin, bringing bipartisan condemnation. Meanwhile, Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has gone in a few days from praising Putin as a “capable statesman” to suddenly calling for Taiwan to be recognized as an independent state. That’s a move that would create troubles, or even a possible war, with China at the worst possible moment. Trump doesn’t just have bad ideas. He gets bad advice.