Is Trump softening on his core issues? That’s the question asked this week at the Washington Examiner, and by RedState for months, and the answer of course is “yes, inasmuch as you can sustain the pretense that he was ever serious in the first place.”

After his offering of the “benefit of the doubt” for Hillary, Trump was less than certain about the prospect for building his wall.

Near the end of the hour-long pro-Trump broadcast, Hannity asked Trump about the confidence he had that he would actually deliver on his campaign promises.

“How certain does the wall get built? How certain does Obamacare get repealed?” Hannity asked.

“You can never say 100 percent, but I’m telling you pretty close to 100 percent the wall gets built,” Trump responded. “We need it.”

You might dismiss that statement as slight hedging against future opposition, if it weren’t for the million other things that Trump has said. For example, when he was asked about surrogate Chris Collins suggesting the wall might really just be a “virtual” wall, Trump said this a few months ago:

“Look, everything, honestly, is going to be up .. we’re going to negotiate. I can’t make these decisions myself. We have congress … we have to deal with a lot of people. I mean, you know, I can’t just take executive orders like Obama and .. it’s me, and lots of congressmen and lots of senators and lots of everything. So I would say that certain things will be changed

That’s politician talk, people. He’s saying the same thing about the wall that he’s already said about the Muslim immigration ban and his supposed list of Supreme Court justices. He’s saying he can’t promise you anything and whatever happens, happens. Open your ears.

If anyone but Trump offered this much equivocation, everyone would “know” that he had no intention of following through. But because of this absurd election, all his supporters “know” he doesn’t mean the things he says that they don’t like, and absolutely means the things he says that they do like.

But you can’t deny reality. Is the wall certain? No. It’s not. It’s less than certain. Trump said so himself. Even Trump fans must admit at least that.