Ryan: Trump is “much more disciplined”

As BuzzFeed reporters Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott reported in February, Trump told Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that he did support the invasion of Iraq, if a bit halfheartedly. Trump only began questioning the merits of the war several months later, as USA forces became mired in a war against Iraqi insurgents.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump pledged to launch a new USA military buildup, saying America was under threat like never before from foes like Islamist extremists, North Korea and China.

“He said one nice thing about me”.

He ignored follow-up questions asking for clarification.

“It’s not, it’s not a serious presidential campaign”, Clinton said during a press conference Friday.

He said: “I don’t think the guy’s qualified to be president of the United States and every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed”.

Mr Trump also predicted that if elected in November, “I think that I’ll be able to get along with him”.

The Republican presidential nominee told the forum the Russian president “has been a leader far more than our president [Obama] has been”.

The hodgepodge of deflections and explanations offer a microcosm of Trump’s approach to all contentious policy issues in this campaign, in which he has deliberately eschewed facts in order to appeal to all sides of a debate.

As it is, Donald Trump’s performance in the commander-in-chief forum Wednesday night is getting panned.

Asked about what critics call her hawkish foreign policy record, Clinton said: “We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again and we are not putting ground troops into Syria”. “He supported it”, Clinton said. Well: “It used to be to the victor belong the spoils”, Trump said.

Trump suggested at the event in which he and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton made back-to-back appearances that US generals had been stymied by the policies of Obama and Clinton, who served as the Democratic president’s first secretary of state.

Trump remained persistently vague about his plans for defeating the Islamic State group, insisting that he privately has a blueprint for taking on the terror group but wanted to remain “unpredictable”.

Earlier, Mr Trump pledged to increase U.S. military spending – already much higher than any other nation – with an active army of about 540,000 troops, an air force of at least 1,200 fighter jets and a navy of 350 ships.

“Hillary Clinton is always complaining about what’s wrong”, he said during a campaign stop in Cleveland, where he visited a charter school and proposed federal spending on “school choice” programs. In an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll released Wednesday, Clinton trailed Trump by 19 points (55-36 percent) among current and retired service people.

Two months before Election Day, Trump’s policies remain largely unformed. “I’m not sure anything surprises us anymore”. He replied, “Yeah, I guess so”.

Clinton’s argument that Trump is ill-prepared to be commander in chief has been bolstered by a flood of Republican national security experts who have chosen to back the Democratic nominee instead of their own party’s pick.

“The obvious takeaway from these numbers is that Donald Trump has staged a comeback from his post-Democratic convention lows, especially in Pennsylvania and Ohio”, Quinnipiac’s Peter A. Brown noted.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway spoke with Trump supporters in Congress on Thursday morning, and Trump spoke with the group by phone to thank them for their support.