Collins: President Trump is all hot air and no balloon — we hope

“Look, I have - nobody has better respect for intelligence than Donald Trump,” said the president of the United States this week.

I know, I know.

Trump was actually talking about CIA-type intelligence, but it's still a quote worth remembering. In fact, you might want to consider printing it out and posting it somewhere in your workplace, so you can look up at it every once in a while.

Or at a minimum, stick it in the irony drawer.

It's been an unnerving week, what with all the “locked and loaded” threats to North Korea from the White House. Meanwhile in Pyongyang, tens of thousands of people responded by waving their fists in the air and holding up slogans like, “Let's become bullets and bombs devotedly defending respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong Un!”

This is the North Korean version of a presidential tweet.

I believe I speak for a great many Americans when I say I am scared as hell of a confrontation between the head of the strongest nation in the world, who once wanted to play the president in “Sharknado 3,” and a nuclear power leader whose favorite houseguest is Dennis Rodman.

When a reporter asked the president about his threatening “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said “maybe it wasn't tough enough.” Followed by “maybe that statement wasn't tough enough” and “if anything, that statement may not be tough enough.” This was all within 30 seconds. There seems to be a theme.

This was during a media event at Trump's golf course in New Jersey on Thursday, and the president followed through with complaints about how the previous inhabitants of the Oval Office had left him with a big mess because they didn't know how to handle a rogue nuclear power like the Donald does.

“Look at Clinton. He folded on the negotiations. He was weak and ineffective,” Trump whined. “You look what happened with Bush. You look what happened with Obama. Obama - he didn't even want to talk about it.”

“But I talk,” our president said, unnecessarily.

The theme of my-terrible-predecessors ran on into another meeting with reporters Friday, in which Trump announced that South Koreans felt “more reassured with me than … with other presidents from the past.” Upping the ante, he also bragged that “very few presidents have done what we've done in a six-month period.”

“I'm not sure that anybody's done what we've done in a six-month period,” he amended. This was new - in the past Trump allowed as how Franklin Roosevelt might possibly have accomplished a little more. And take that, Abraham Lincoln.

Trump hadn't been so available in a long time, and he certainly had a lot to share. He differentiated between bad leaks “coming out of intelligence and various departments” and good leaks from the White House staff, which just involve people who “want to love me and they're all fighting for love.”

When a reporter asked about Vladimir Putin's recent decision to expel 755 workers from the U.S. Embassy, Trump demonstrated once again that there is absolutely nothing Putin can do that will make our president criticize him. (“No, I want to thank him, because we're trying to cut down on payroll. … We'll save a lot of money.”) What do you think he'd have said if Putin had jailed our diplomats? Expressed gratitude for the free room and board?

On Friday he claimed he was just being sarcastic. Still, he couldn't resist adding, “But we have reduced payroll very substantially.”

There's certainly something about Putin that makes Trump go gaga. Maybe the North Korean craziness is his attempt to impress Putin with his own manly manhood.

There's nothing in this administration that doesn't seem to come back to Russia sooner or later. Students of the future will look back upon the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow as the central moment in 21st century history. Third-graders will know that Miss Venezuela won.

Speaking of Venezuela, Trump spoke vaguely about “a possible military option” there, too.

Let's just pray his current bellicosity is all hot air and no balloon. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to soothe the country, saying, “Americans should sleep well at night.” He did not mention whether there would be nightmares.

Maybe there's some reassurance to be had in the fact that Trump tends to talk big and act, um, minimally.

Try counting the moments of real change, drama or even strong reaction over the past six months that go beyond verbal, and before you've gotten through the fingers on one hand, you'll probably already be down to the firing of the Mooch.

That's our best hope: That the guy with the nuclear football is not necessarily the same person as the one sending out loopy messages on his smartphone. People who've dealt with the private Trump often say they found him less crazy than the public version.

Of course, he's definitely a lazy thinker who doesn't like to confront a memo longer than a page.

But nobody's perfect.

Gail Collins is a columnist for the New York Times.