Tale of 2 Trumps:
President-elect shows serious, brash sides.
New York — Donald Trump’s skeptics hope the presidency will reveal a serious side of the brash businessman. His supporters want him to keep the freewheeling style that rattled Washington.
In true Trump fashion, so far he’s doing both.
Trump has soothed some Republican establishment anxieties with many of his early Cabinet picks, including the respected retired Gen. James Mattis to lead the Pentagon and Georgia Rep. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon tapped to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s hinted that he’s open to shifting some of his most controversial policies, including his rejection of climate change and support for torture. He’s been full of praise for President Barack Obama and largely respectful of Hillary Clinton, his vanquished campaign rival.
But Trump is also refusing to abandon the raucous, stream-of-consciousness rallies and Twitter tirades that defined his presidential campaign. He’s continued to level false statements, claiming without evidence that millions of people voted illegally in the election. And he’s infused the normally staid Cabinet selection process with reality television drama, inviting cameras into his dinner with Mitt Romney, a leading candidate for secretary of state, and announcing the secretary of defense pick in an arena, seemingly off the cuff.
“He was a very unconventional candidate,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said. “He’s going to be an unconventional president.”
Despite his tell-it-like-it-is reputation, Trump is fueled by a deep need to be liked, according to longtime associates. He often modulates his tone to his setting and frequently tries to curry favor with his audience by telling them what he thinks they want to hear. He often speaks in vague generalities, his policy plans short on details, and that allows supporters to read in what they wish.
And sometimes he seems to move in contradictions, as when he made simultaneous appointments of Reince Priebus — a nod to the Washington establishment — and Stephen Bannon — a shot across the establishment’s bow — to fill two key roles in his administration, giving opposing factions of his coalition something to cheer.
People who meet with the president-elect personally talk about there being “two Trumps” — the self-promoting celebrity that’s seen in public and the amiable and courteous grandfather who emerges in private.
“He’s charming in person,” said John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T, who recently met with Trump. “He absolutely has a lot of personal charisma.”
Indeed, Trump has appeared to win over some of his toughest Republican critics since defeating Clinton. GOP lawmakers have praised all of his Cabinet nominees, some of whom hold more traditionally conservative views than Trump himself. Romney, who was one of Trump’s fiercest critics during the campaign, emerged from their dinner this week with warm words for a man he’d only recently called a “phony.”
“He continues with a message of inclusion and bringing people together and his vision is something which obviously connected with the American people in a very powerful way,” Romney said in a stunning turnabout for the 2012 GOP nominee.
“Nothing is presidential except victory,” Trump said in March. “Victory is presidential.” In other Trump news Friday:
Trump announced the formation of an advisory group of more than a dozen CEOs and business leaders who will offer input on how to create jobs and speed economic growth.
The President’s Strategic and Policy Forum will hold its first meeting at the White House in the first week of February, shortly after Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump spoke with the president of Taiwan, a move that will be sure to anger China.
It is highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented, for a U.S. president or president-elect to speak directly with a leader of Taiwan, a self-governing island the U.S. broke diplomatic ties with in 1979.
Washington has pursued a so-called “one China” policy since 1979, when it shifted diplomatic recognition of China from the government in Taiwan to the communist government on the mainland. Under that policy, the U.S. recognizes Beijing as representing China but retains unofficial ties with Taiwan.