ArcaMax

Bold words. But as a former member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Pence should know how often we have heard promises of very quick wars with "very little" troops before -- only to be bogged down in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, to name a few.

"Now look, we are going to get rid of ISIS, big league," said Trump, jumping back into the fray. "And we're going to get rid of 'em fast."

But we did go to war in Iraq, Stahl reminded him, which didn't turn out well. That's because, said Trump, that war "was handled so badly" and "that was a war that we shouldn't have entered," and "I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning."

Actually not from the beginning, according to a Sept. 11, 2002, radio interview with shock jock Howard Stern that Buzzfeed dug up. Trump expressed his support for the Iraq invasion in that interview more than six months before the war began.

I offer this information as a service to people who care about facts, a group that apparently does not include Trump's supporters -- or Trump.

For example, when Stahl pointed out that Trump's running mate voted for the war in Iraq, Trump's answer was quick, direct and resolute: "I don't care." It was "a long time ago," he said.

But would he be as uncaring about Hillary Clinton, who voted the same way as Pence when she was in the Senate? No way, he told Stahl.

"He's entitled to make a mistake every once in a while," Trump said of Pence.

"But she's not?" Stahl asked.

"But she's not," Trump repeated.

Maybe Trump already is rehearsing the answers he plans to give after he makes his first mistakes as president, should we, the voters, be foolish enough to elect him.

"Everyone is entitled to make a mistake every once in a while," he might say, "as long as they're on my side."

That's the Donald. When he steps out of the fog, the fog stays with him.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.