Questioning Donald Trump - NYT Editorial Board

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD NOV. 22, 2016

It was good to hear Donald Trump “disavow and condemn” the white nationalism of some of his supporters, in a meeting Tuesday at The New York Times.

It was good to hear him acknowledge that climate change is linked to human activity, and that maybe waterboarding isn’t such a great idea after all. And speaking for the home team, it was good to hear him even call The New York Times a “great, great American jewel.”

It was, of course, hard to square all these statements with his record of spreading the birther lie about President Obama, calling climate change a “hoax,” promising he’d “bring back waterboarding” and describing The New York Times as “failing.” But, hey, if President-elect Trump moderates his views, and then crystallizes those views in policies that, as he put it, “save our country,” we will commend him on growth in office. “I am awed by the job,” he said.

The problem is, as pleasant as it was to hear those remarks, it was alarming to confront how thinly thought through many of the president-elect’s stances actually are. Consider climate change. Mr. Trump said that he valued clean air and water, but that he hadn’t decided if combating climate change was worth the expense. “I have a totally open mind,” he said, making a virtue of not knowing the issue.

Or take torture. In the campaign, he stoutly defended waterboarding, which is contrary to American values and illegal under international law. Yet one conversation, with Gen. James Mattis, a candidate for defense secretary, may have changed his mind. General Mattis told Mr. Trump what experts have been saying for years: Torture doesn’t work. Mr. Trump said he was “impressed and surprised” by General Mattis’s assurance that, “Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.”

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