Trump Appears to Back Away from Some Campaign Promises

Asked whether he had ruled out prosecuting Hillary Clinton, he replied, “It’s just not something I feel strongly about,” Mr. Trump said in a meeting with the New York Times, according to Politico which cited Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum, who had live-tweeted the meeting.

Prosecution, he said “would be very, very divisive for the country,” Mr. Trump told the room, according to Times political reporter Maggie Haberman.

“My inclination for whatever power I have on the matter is to say let’s go forward. This has been looked at for so long, ad nauseum.” In addition to the FBI’s investigation, the House Select Committee on Benghazi has looked into Clinton’s emails, as did several media organizations and watchdog groups like Judicial Watch.

Mr. Trump also said that Clinton had “suffered greatly” and he does not “want to hurt the Clintons.”

This was a far cry from the cries of “Lock her up” he encouraged at rally after rally during his campaign. And during the second presidential debate, Mr. Trump told Clinton he would appoint a special prosecutor. “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception,” he said.

Mr. Trump also appears to have had a change of heart on the use of torture. Gen. James Mattis (ret), he said has told him “’I’ve never found it to be useful.’” Mattis, who is under consideration for secretary of state, told Mr. Trump that building trust with terror suspects and rewarding cooperation elicited better results.

“‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better,’” Mr. Trump said, quoting Mattis. “I was very impressed by that answer.’’

Torture, Mr. Trump told the Times, is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.”

This is also a stark departure from his campaign rhetoric, when Mr. Trump expressed support for waterboarding and worse. In dealing with the threat posed by ISIS, Mr. Trump said in February, “Torture works, okay folks?...Believe me, it works.” Waterboarding, Trump has said is “your minor form,” and said “some people say it’s not actually torture.” And he said, “we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”

On climate change, too, which he has more than once called a “hoax,” in the meeting with the Times, when he was asked whether he thought it was related to human activity, he said, “I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much.”

Mr. Trump did not say with certainty he would withdraw from climate change accords, indicating it was a matter under consideration. “I’m looking at it very closely,” he said. “I have an open mind to it.” This again, differs from his past insistence that he would walk away. “We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement,” he said in May.

He did say, however, that he’s taking into account the impact on US businesses, “how much it will cost our companies” and the impact on American competitiveness, he told the Times.

There was even a change of tone on First Amendment rights. Mr. Trump, who told the Times he thought its reporters had been “very rough” on him during the campaign, has threatened to sue the Times over its stories on him. He also threatened to change the libel laws during his campaign. “One of the things I’m going to do, is I’m going to open up the libel laws,” he told a rally in Radford, Va., in February. “...[W]hen people write incorrectly about you and you can prove that they wrote incorrectly, we’re going to get them through the court system to change and we’re going to get them to pay damages.”

A reporter in the room asked him about whether he still intends to “open up the libel laws.” It seems he’s rethought this idea, telling the Times that someone pointed out to him, “’You know, you might be sued a lot more.’ I said, ‘You know, I hadn’t thought of that.’”

During the hour-long conversation with the Times, Mr. Trump was also asked about other issues, as well.

Has he energized the alt right? “I don’t think so, Dean,” the president-elect replied to Executive Editor Dean Baquet. “I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group,” Mr. Trump said.

The president-elect did not appear to address the concerns of minority groups about the right-wing news site Breitbart under Steve Bannon, who will be his chief White House strategist, and he defended the site by saying it covered stories like the Times does.