Nearly everyone is expecting that a presidential campaign pitting Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton would be unusually nasty. Already, Trump has made nasty comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee and her husband.

But he didn’t always feel that way.

Speaking on Fox News in 2012, Trump heaped extravagant praise on Hillary Clinton and her husband, and the context was the prospect of Hillary running in 2016:

Here’s how he put it:

Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman. I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. And I’ve known her and her husband for years and I really like them both a lot. And I think she really works hard. And again, she’s given an agenda that’s not all of her. But again, I think she really works hard. I think she does a good job. And I like her.

Many Trump supporters feel that their candidate is the only one who says what he really thinks and tells it like it is. That cannot be true, for the simple reason that so much of what Trump says now is directly contradicted by what he said in the recent past.

Today, he says, Hillary is an incompetent failure who was complicit in her husband’s abuse of women. A few years ago, the Clintons were terrific people and Hillary was a hard worker who does a good job. Trump flip-flops exactly like every other opportunistic politician.

Until his supporters see him as a man who’ll say anything to get elected, they’ll keep getting duped.