You can for the most part evaluate intent based on actions. There are some actions which can have multiple possible intents behind them, where things get trickier. But in most situations, there is one primary consequence of something, and the action needs to be taken with deliberation, hence you can state with high certainty what the intention was, based purely on what was done. Consversely, if a person has complete freedom to complete some action, but chooses not to, then we can say their intention wasn't to do that thing.

Intend and action don’t have to align if the people with the intend don’t know what they are doing.

“If Trump is not credible”!!??? If??!

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me 500 times, I want to be lied to”

Similarly no one believes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to “denazi-ify” it as Putin and the kremlin claimed many times among other things.

Neither was the troop building up in 2022 near Ukraine purely for training as repeatedly claimed by the top Russian officials.

Trump is equally credible.