Mike Pence can’t stop pretending that Donald Trump’s extremely public statements aren't real

Vice presidential hopeful Gov. Mike Pence claimed on Thursday that his running mate’s blanket ban on Muslim immigration is definitely not a part of their campaign anymore – even though the plan is still live on the campaign’s official website.

Pence’s about-face comes on the heels of this week’s vice presidential debate where he repeatedly pretended that a string of high-profile, inflammatory and very, very public comments and policies of Trump’s had simply never happened.

Asked point-blank during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether the Muslim ban, which Donald Trump trumpeted to widespread horror in December 2015, remains part of the campaign, Pence replied, “Of course not.”

But to no one’s surprise, the announcement outlining Trump’s Muslim ban remains live on his campaign site, complete with his call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

The campaign hasn’t issued anything to formally torpedo the ban, but in May reposted a CNN story highlighting Trump saying the Muslim ban was “just a suggestion.”

“We’re talking about areas of the world, territories and specifically countries, that have been so compromised by terrorism that we can’t know for certain who those people are,” Pence said on “Morning Joe.”

In another Thursday morning interview on CNN, Pence again insisted that Trump has ditched the idea altogether. When asked why he no longer condemns the Muslim ban, Pence replied, “Because it’s not Donald Trump’s position now.”

Those remarks echo the campaign’s ever-evolving rhetoric about its plans to curb the threat of terrorism through immigration policy. Trump has recently said he would only shut down immigration from “dangerous” and “terrorist” countries.