That sure didn't take long.

In a press conference yesterday, Trump administration spokesman Sean Spicer used the term "regime change" to describe the administration's goals in Syria.

That was a most curious choice of words. Donald Trump spent the 2016 campaign railing against the regime-change goals of his predecessors, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama.

But last week, we saw Trump revert to the policies he spent so much time criticizing.

First there was Trump's cruise-missile attack on an airbase in reaction to that chemical-gas attack in Syria. That was followed by calls from the administration for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad to change.

That outraged Mike Doherty, the state senator from Warren County who was the Donald's first major supporter in New Jersey.

"On at least 45 different occasions he talked about how stupid it was to have regime change," said Doherty. "Now you have a 180-degree change in policy in 48 hours."

Doherty sent along a link to an article by Tom McKay on the mic.com website headlined "Here are 45 times in which Donald Trump said attacking Syria was a bad idea and might start World War III."

In one tweet Trump answered a question on whether he would go to war against the Syrian regime: "No, let's make our country great again as they fight their war!"

In another, he addressed the issue of the Assad regimes brutal tactics by stating (punctuation his): "the president of Syria is killing people inhumanly" But the so called "rebels" may be just as bad (or worse)!"

Doherty, a West Point grad who served in Germany during the Cold War, said Trump's "America-first" foreign policy was a key reason he defeated Hillary Clinton, who ran on a platform of deposing Assad.

"Donald Trump was elected based on these issues," he said.

Why the sudden switch?

Doherty noted news reports that Trump acted because his daughter Ivanka professed alarm at the video images she saw coming out of Idlib.

And Trump gave a major foreign-policy role to Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner, who was pictured in Iraq last week running around in a bulletproof vest over a three-piece suit - a fashion faux pas if there ever was one.

I wrote last week about Kushner's role in remaking the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown. To listen to the locals, Kushner knows real estate.

But it's a big step from remaking malls one year to remaking the Mideast the next.

Yet that's the step Kushner seems to have taken.

Trump took a similar step.

That would have been fine if he'd stuck to his promises. You don't need an in-depth knowledge of the Mideast if your goal is to extricate the U.S.

(Even the liberal Washington Post is hammering the Donald on this point.)

But in the short time since he took office, the new president abandoned that goal.

In his inaugural address, Trump distressed the establishment with a short speech based on the theme of "America first." It ended with these words, "Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America."

That was the nationalist Donald Trump I was familiar with, confident and brash.

But the Donald Trump I saw on TV Thursday night (see below)

Jared Kushner: It's a big leap from remaking the Monmouth Mall to remaking the Mideast.

seemed oddly hesitant as he employed the language of the internationalists.

A statement about how Assad had defied the Union Nations Security Council was followed by a "call on all civilized nations" to take action in Syria, exactly the sort of call he criticized in the campaign.

The speech ended with a new variant on the "God bless America" line:

"Goodnight. And God bless America and the entire world."

The entire world?

That's a fine sentiment, but it's not one I heard from the Donald's mouth in the many campaign speeches I covered.

It wouldn't have fit in with his traditional segue into the song he employed as his finale, the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

We right-wing voters certainly didn't get what we wanted. I suspect Trump won't get what he wants either.

When I called former CIA agent Bob Baer, who served for years in the Mideast, he gave me this assessment of Trump's chances of successful regime change:

"Get rid of Assad and they'll put in some general who's even worse."

And he asked this about the Trump family:

"Why would you think a group of property developers would be able to understand the Mideast?" he asked.

I wouldn't.

And if Trump had kept his promises, I wouldn't have to worry about it.

COMMENTS: I seem to be getting an inordinate amount of comments from people who don't understand the difference between the conservative foreign policy Trump espoused during the campaign and the liberal internationalism he now espouses.

For those who don't know the difference, please read Pat Buchanan's latest column on this.

BELOW: At top is the Donald's press conference last week. Note the complete change of tone from the fiery "America first" rhetoric of the campaign into a please for internationalism.

Underneath that is an interesting piece on a reporter who has actually been to Syria, something few journalists have done. As I found in my coverage of Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s, the mainstream media just settle on a narrative and repeat it in the spirit of pack journalism.

In that regard, check this post on 18 op-ed columns in five leading newspapers in which not a single one offered the sort of opinion you are reading here.

That's pack journalism, boys and girls.

The reality is that it's almost impossible for us to know exactly what's going on in such places.Here's an excellent piece on Seymour Hersh's reporting on the the 2013 Syrian gas attack. Anyone who claims to know exactly what happened in a place like Syria is delusional.

That goes for the Donald as well.

He seemed to realize that before Jan. 20.

What the heck happened to him since?