When confronted at the Fox News debate with a video reel showing him changing his position on three separate topics, Donald Trump said there was nothing wrong with being "flexible," adding: "If you're going to be one way and think it's wrong, does that mean the rest of your life, you have to go in the wrong direction because you don't want to change?"
Moderator Megyn Kelly teed up the video by saying people like Trump because he "tells it like it is," but he's also known to "reverse" himself later. The video featured Trump talking about sending troops to Afghanistan, allowing Syrian refugees to enter the United States, and whether President George W. Bush lied leading up to the war in Iraq. Each clip was followed by another interview or debate appearance, with Trump sharing the opposite viewpoint from earlier. Trump defended each of his responses, and launched into explanations of why he said what he did. On Syria, "the first time the question was put to me, it was very early on," he said. "We just started hearing a very small number, days later the number was thousands and thousands."
Trump said it was okay for him to change his mind because he has a "very strong core," and he's "never seen a successful person who wasn't flexible, who didn't have a certain degree of flexibility. You have to be flexible because you learn." Marco Rubio piped up to say that there's a "difference between flexibility and telling people what you think you need to say to get them to do what you want them to do. That is what Donald has done throughout his career."
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