Trump changes his tune on climate, jailing Clinton
Republican presidential rival Ben Carson offered Cabinet post
NEW YORK—Two weeks after his election victory, President-elect Donald Trump began backing off campaign promises on Tuesday, including his hard line on climate change and his vow to jail “Crooked Hillary” Clinton that had brought thunderous “Lock her up” chants at his rallies.
A top adviser said Trump is now focused on matters that are essential in setting up his administration, not on comments he made during the heat of the campaign.
After a year blasting The New York Times, Trump submitted to an interview with reporters and editors at their Manhattan office. Among the topics covered, he:
Conflict of interest
Pushed back against questions about conflicts that could arise due to a lack of separation between his government post and his many businesses, declaring that “the law’s totally on my side, the President can’t have a conflict of interest.”
Took his strongest stance yet against the “alt-right,” a term often used as code for the white supremacist movement. Though members are celebrating his victory, he said, “It’s not a group I want to energize. And if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why.”
Spoke positively not only of fellow Republicans in Congress — “Right now they are in love with me” — but also of President Barack Obama, who he said is “looking to do absolutely the right thing for the country in terms of transition.”
Presidential rival
Trump, who left late Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving at his estate in Florida, also continued to work to populate his incoming administration, officially asking GOP presidential rival Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to a person familiar with the offer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the deliberations publicly. Carson is expected to respond after the holiday.
Adviser Kellyanne Conway said earlier on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Trump is “thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign aren’t among them.”
Possible prosecution
His interview comments on a possible prosecution of his former foe Clinton stood in stark contrast to his incendiary rhetoric throughout the campaign, during which he accused her of breaking laws with her email practices and angrily barked at her that “you’d be in jail” if he were president.
“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said.
Sympathetically, he said, “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”
Though he declined to definitively rule out a prosecution, he said, “It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.”
Trump had vowed throughout the campaign to use his presidential power to appoint a special prosecutor to probe his Democratic rival for both her reliance on a private email server as secretary of state and what he called pay-for-play schemes involving the Clinton Foundation.
Adviser Conway signaled to congressional Republicans earlier on Tuesday that they should abandon their years of vigorous probes of Clinton’s email practices and her actions at the time of the terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
Good thing
“If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing,” she told reporters at Trump Tower in New York.
But some of his conservative supporters strongly disagreed.