Just as they did during his campaign, Republicans insist that President-elect Donald Trump will âpivotâ and moderate his proposals and rhetoric when he takes office. On Monday, even President Barack Obama said he believes Trump ârecognizes that campaigning is different from governingâ and that âultimately, he is pragmatic.â
But so far, Trump has provided little evidence that confirms this wishful thinking. In the week since his election, he has done more to affirm his core campaign promises than assuage concerns about his presidency, and even his deviations from his campaign platform are not providing solace for his opponents.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the stomach-turning list of potential Trump Cabinet officials and senior staffers. His pledge to âdrain the swampâ has resulted in a slew of lobbyists angling for administration positions, former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin rumored as a candidate for treasury secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary, drawing the ire of progressives like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
While Trump had showed signs of anti-interventionism, the leading contenders for secretary of state are war hawk John Bolton and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Other names being floated for Trumpâs administration include Sarah Palin as secretary of the interior, climate change denier Myron Ebell as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and immigration hardliners Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) for attorney general.
Here are more signs that Trump isnât pivoting:
Trump hired the executive chairman of Breitbart News to be his chief strategist.
On Sunday, Trumpâs transition team announced that Steve Bannon would serve as Trumpâs chief strategist and senior counselor in the White House, meaning that a man who ran a website that espouses white nationalist and anti-Semitic views and serves as a mouthpiece for the so-called âalt-rightâ movement would have the ear of the president.
Trump and his aides claimed âprofessional protestersâ are behind the anti-Trump demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also claimed they were âprofessional protestersâ on Sunday and accused them of âexaggerating their fears of a Donald Trump presidency.â
Trump plans to deport or imprison up to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records as soon as he takes office.
âWhat we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,â Trump said in a â60 Minutesâ interview that aired Sunday. âBut weâre getting them out of our country, theyâre here illegally.â
Immigration experts say this figure is outlandish.
Trump also affirmed that he stands by his signature campaign proposal: building a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border. (He later elaborated that âfor certain areas,â a fence would be fine.)
âIâm very good at this. Itâs called construction,â he said.
Trump said he would appoint âpro-life judgesâ to the Supreme Court and that abortion should be left to the states to decide.
Referring to Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a womanâs right to an abortion, the president-elect said, âIf it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states.â
When CBS anchor Lesley Stahl asked how women would get abortions if Roe v. Wade were repealed, Trump replied: âYeah, well, theyâll perhaps have to go, theyâll have to go to another state.â
Trump claimed the media âbuilt upâ reports of racist incidents that have occurred since his election.
Since last week, some organizations that track hate crimes have reported an increase in racist and bigoted attacks surpassing the period immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
But Trump claimed he was unaware of these incidents and accused the media of overstating them, suggesting there were only âa small amount.â
âI think itâs built up by the press, because, frankly, theyâll take every single little incident that they can find in this country, which couldâve been there before â if I werenât even around doing this â and theyâll make it into an event, because thatâs the way the press is,â he said.
He did address his supporters, telling them to âstop it, if it helps.â
Trump wonât rule out appointing a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton.
During his campaign, Trump threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate his opponent, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for using a private email server while she was secretary of state. At a debate, he told Clinton that she âwould be in jailâ if he became president.
Asked on Sunday whether he would follow through on one of his major lines of attack against Clinton, whom he had repeatedly referred to as âCrooked Hillary,â Trump said he would not rule it out.
âIâll tell you what Iâm going to do, Iâm going to think about it,â he said, adding that he would give âa very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do â60 Minutesâ together.â
Trump did call the Clintons âgood people,â saying, âI donât want to hurt them.â
And heâs still tweeting.
In the last weeks of his campaign, Trumpâs staff controlled his access to his Twitter account and edited tweets before posting them. But now Trumpâs tweeting again, seemingly bothered that he didnât win the popular vote and railing against the âdishonestâ media.