On Tuesday, after much negotiation and drama over how the meeting would take place, Donald Trump sat down with a handful of New York Times journalists and editors to take their questions about his upcoming presidency. And, as they spoke, Trump proceeded to nonchalantly walk back several major promises he made during the campaign, prompting spittle-flecked headlines on Breitbart like “BROKEN PROMISES” and outrage from all corners of Trump’s Internet.
Few should be surprised that Trump, a political chameleon who was a registered Democrat in New York City before he crisscrossed America’s heartland in his Boeing 757 as a born again Republican, flip-flopping on issues ranging from the Iraq War to abortion as he went, may now be abandoning—or at least softening—some of his most extreme positions. The Muslim ban? It may or may not be happening. The Wall? A great “campaign device.” Obamacare, too, might not be so bad, Trump has said, as long as he can keep just the popular parts. Then again, it may be just as likely that Trump keeps his promises, depending on who has his ear and whatever he is feeling on any given subject at any given time. For now, here are Trump’s biggest broken promises from his big New York Times sit-down:
He Won’t Pursue a Clinton Indictment
Earlier Tuesday, Kellyanne Conway announced that Trump would no longer attempt to appoint a special prosecutor to indict Hillary Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state, a promise that Trump made to Clinton’s face during a debate and one that he used to whip his campaign rallies into a frenzy. Speaking to the Times, Trump confirmed Conway’s statement. “Look, I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t,” said Trump, adding that Clinton “suffered greatly in many different ways.”
Asked whether his supporters would be upset by his decision, Trump replied no. “I don’t think they will be disappointed. I think I will explain it, that we have to, in many ways save our country. Because our country’s really in bad, big trouble. We have a lot of trouble. A lot of problems. And one of the big problems, I talk about, divisiveness. I think that a lot of people will appreciate . . . I’m not doing it for that reason.”
(Those supporters would beg to differ.)
Trump Admits Waterboarding Might Be Bad, Maybe
During the campaign, Trump praised waterboarding—which has been labeled as torture and is illegal under U.S. and international law—at great length. “I like it a lot,” he said at a rally in June, and said it wasn’t as “tough” as the atrocities that ISIS was committing. “So we can't do waterboarding, but they can do chopping off heads, drowning people in sealed cages . . . you have to fight fire with fire.”
By November, Trump seemed to back off the idea of going immediately to waterboarding as a form of intelligence-gathering, citing a meeting with General James Mattis, his anticipated pick for Secretary of Defense. “I met with him at length and I asked him that question. I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said—I was surprised—he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer,” said Trump, who had expected him to say “‘It’s phenomenal, don’t lose it.’”
That said, Trump gave himself some wiggle room: “I’m not saying it changed my mind. Look, we have people that are chopping off heads and drowning people in steel cages and we’re not allowed to waterboard. But I’ll tell you what, I was impressed by that answer.”
Trump Admits Climate Change Might Be Man-Made, Maybe
In a memorable exchange during the debates, Clinton pointed out that Trump has previously described climate change as a Chinese-backed hoax to destroy the American economy. This is true. It’s also true that Trump’s position on the issue has been wildly inconsistent over time: Climate change is real, climate change is not real; climate change is caused by human activity, climate change is not caused by human activity; we need to invest in clean jobs, or we need to reopen the coal mines.
At the very least, Trump committed to being open-minded, in a fashion: “I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully. But I have an open mind.”
As for his promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, which committed the United States to leading the fight against climate change, Trump told Tom Friedman: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. “
Trump Acknowledges the Existence of the First Amendment, Sort of
Crowds at Trump’s rallies would often cheer when Trump promised to go after the “lying” and “biased” media that sought to tear him down. “I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” he pledged in February, blowing straight past the First Amendment protections afforded to a free press. “So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace . . . we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
Now, Trump appears to see some sense in the freedoms afforded to the press, at least insofar as they benefit him. “I think you’ll be happy. I think you’ll be happy,” he promised the Times on Tuesday, when journalist Mark Thompson asked if he was committed to protecting the First Amendment. “Actually, somebody said to me on that, they said, ‘You know, it’s a great idea, softening up those laws, but you may get sued a lot more.’ I said, ‘You know, you’re right, I never thought about that.’ I said, ‘You know, I have to start thinking about that.’ So, I, I think you’ll be O.K. I think you’re going to be fine.” (Let the record show that this is still a deeply troubling answer.)
The New York Times Is O.K., For Now
It was interesting that Trump agreed to sit down at all with the “nasty” Times, which he has often accused of being biased and unfair to him. On Twitter, he called the “failing” paper “really disgusting,”, “poorly run and managed”, and, of course, “SAD!”.
As of Tuesday, he told the Times board that he still didn’t think they treated him fairly—“I would say The Times was about the roughest of all”—but otherwise he had a different tune. “Look, I have great respect for The Times, and I’d like to turn [our relationship] around.”
