Donald Trump did something really shocking last week.

No, it wasn't getting into a dispute with Ted Cruz over their respective wives.

It was going into the lion's den and punching the lion in the nose.

The den in question was the editorial board of the Washington Post. The members thereof are perhaps the foremost proponents of what could be called a "Wilsonian" foreign policy if you like it or "neoconservative" if you don't like it.

Whatever you call it, Trump dismissed it decisively.

When asked about whether the U.S. should be "promoting democracy and freedom overseas," as was done in the Reagan years, Trump replied, "I do think it's a different world today and I don't think we should be nation-building anymore. I think it's proven not to work. And we have a different country than we did then. You know we have 19 trillion dollars in debt."

He went on to question why the U.S. should always take the lead in disputes ranging from the Mideast to the South China Sea. And then he followed up by repeating his hard-line stance on immigration.

"There's a serious, serious problem with the Muslims and it's got to be addressed," Trump said.

This did not go over well with the people at the Post. (Read this column of mine to realize why they have always been wrong about the Mideast while this of us they deride as "realists" have been right) But it goes over well with the people who vote in Republican presidential primaries.

If the results so far are any indication, those people share Trump's view that pretty much everything the Beltway crowd has done since 9/11 has been an expensive disaster.

We started out fighting a small group called Al Qaeda holed up in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan. After 15 years of war, we now find ourselves facing an Islamic State that occupies two countries and is exporting terror to Europe.

It didn't have to be that way. There were always two ways of looking at the threat post-9/11. One was expansionist and the other was what the Post writers like to call "isolationist."

I never thought that term made sense. Look at Switzerland. Somehow the Swiss have stayed out of other people's wars for centuries while maintaining good trade relations.

Their neighbors in France face a terrorist threat and the Belgians suffered that deadly attack last week. But nobody's bombing the Swiss.

The Swiss keep tabs on their visitors. Not the good old U.S. of A. Six months after those planes hit the World Trade Center, the Bush administration sent visa renewals to two of the hijackers.

Bush called it "an interesting wake-up call" and promised to reform the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But the borders remained porous. Instead of clamping down at home, Bush decided to declare an open-ended "War on Terror."

War fever was so rampant among Republicans at the time that few dared express doubts about the Iraq War. But as early as 2004 Trump was pointing out correctly that the experiment in nation-building was ill-conceived. Twelve years later, that message is resonating with the base.

That sentiment is so strong that even Ted Cruz feels obligated to make Trump-like statements when it comes to the issue of Muslim communities in America. In his reaction to the Brussels attacks last week, Cruz promised to have police "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized."

The image of officers commanding "Drop that Koran and put your hands up!" might make for a good cartoon, but not good policy.

Meanwhile when it comes to the wives, the pro-Trump Republicans I know like to talk about something that has nothing to do with looks.

State Sen. Mike Doherty, a conservative who was Trump's first major supporter in New Jersey, said that when he read that Tweet in which Trump threatened to spill the goods on Heidi Cruz, he assumed Trump was going to talk about the time when she and her future husband worked together in the Bush administration.

"She worked closely with the folks that crafted Bush's foreign policy," Doherty "And she's got ties with the Council on Foreign Relations, which is an interventionist globalist organization."

Doherty is a West Point grad who served as an artillery officer in Germany during the Cold War. He said Trump's right about getting our allies to pick up more of the tab for their own defense.

"He's really the first to ask why we are paying to defend Europe and Japan," Doherty said. "We have to pay rental on the bases. We have to hire host- country people to work there."

Doherty said that unlike the other Republicans, Trump has made it clear he wants to pull back from the Mideast once ISIS is defeated.

"We ran a pro-war candidate in 2008 and lost. Then we ran a pro-war candidate in 2012 and lost," he said. "Trump should repeat that Washington Post speech to everyone in America."

He should indeed.

As for sending Tweets, maybe he should quit while he's ahead.

ALSO: WHO'S THE CRAZY ONE? - Check this Washington Post account of the interview. The reporter finds it "baffling" that Trump did not take the bait and endorse Post publisher Fred Ryan's insane suggestion that we use tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS.

Nuclear weapons against a ragtag army of religious fanatics? If we somehow managed to trap ISIS troops in a location where they could easily be targeted, we could totally annihilate them with conventional strikes from B-52s.

But starting a nuclear war over a patch of dirt in the Mideast is so stupid it defies description. Yet the Post reporter clearly seems to think there was something odd about the way Trump brushed off the question.

The alternative would have been to say to the members of the editorial board: Do you realize that your publisher just asked me the single stupidest question anyone has ever asked a politician?

Here's the exchange:

Post publisher Fred Ryan asked Trump if he would consider using a tactical nuclear strike against the forces of the Islamic State, were he president. Trump responded that he didn't want to "start the process of nuclear," then reminding the editors that he was "a counter-puncher."

"Remember, one thing that everybody has said, I'm a counter-puncher," Trump said. "Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he's a low-energy individual, he hit me first. He spent, by the way -- he spent 18 million dollars' worth of negative ads on me. That's putting..."

Ryan jumped in. "This is about ISIS," he reminded Trump. "You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?"

"I'll tell you one thing," Trump replied. "This is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I'm talking to?"

Go to the 56-minute mark below to see for yourself the nuttiest question in journalistic history: