President Donald Trump's top policy advisers often try to adjust administration policy to sync with his remarks.

WASHINGTON — Washington policymakers have a time-tested method for rolling out new ideas: float a trial balloon. Spread rumors of a policy change or selectively leak it to the press, then see how it plays and proceed only if it looks doable.

President Donald Trump has flipped that script.

Big and startling ideas fly out of his mouth or from his Twitter feed. Then the rest of his administration scrambles to catch up — and to figure out when his statements signal new presidential policies and when they’re offhand remarks that mean little.

In the past week alone, Trump has suggested he’s open to higher gas taxes, tweeted that a government shutdown could be a good thing and called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un a “smart cookie” whom he’d be honored to meet under the right conditions. Trump also invited Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, with a troubling human rights record, to visit the White House and insisted the GOP health plan would provide coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions, even though an ironclad guarantee is not reflected in the latest version of the legislation.

Such pronouncements sometimes force Trump’s top policy advisers to try to adjust administration policy to sync with the president’s remarks. His communications aides contort themselves to explain away inconsistencies in administration messages. And blindsided GOP congressional leaders have to decide when to realign their positions and when to stay the course.

“It’s a scramble drill in the White House every day, and certainly a scramble drill in Trump’s mind every day,” says Calvin Jillson, a presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University.

The frustration of Republican legislators was clear when Trump tweeted Tuesday that the government “needs a good shutdown” in September to fix the “mess,” after Democrats prevailed on a number of spending issues in a bipartisan budget bill designed to keep the government open.

“I do wish somebody would take his iPhone away from him,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.

“I wish he’d think twice before tweeting,” seconded Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

House Speaker Paul Ryan wondered aloud: “How many times have I had this, ‘Do you agree with the tweet this morning?”’

Ryan said he shared the president’s aggravation with Democrats over the spending negotiations. But he also defended the budget deal, telling reporters it was an “important first step in the right direction.”

On North Korea, Trump seemed to recognize the startling nature of his conciliatory comments about Kim in which he told CBS on Sunday that he would be “honored” to meet the leader if circumstances were right. The president labeled his own comments “breaking news.”

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer quickly stressed that Trump wouldn’t meet with the North Korean leader unless he changed course and showed “signs of good faith.”

Asked how Trump could be honored to meet with someone who’s threatened to destroy the U.S., Spicer said that because Kim was a head of state, “there’s a diplomatic piece to this.”

Likewise, it fell to Spicer to tamp down expectations after Trump told Bloomberg in an interview that he would “certainly consider” generating more money for his big infrastructure plan by raising gasoline and diesel fuel taxes. The idea of raising taxes is a no-go zone for most Republican legislators.

Spicer said Trump was merely showing “respect” for an idea that had been raised by industry groups and “there was no endorsement of it or no support of it.”