Trump keeping 'open mind' on pulling out
of climate accord
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[November 23, 2016]
By Roberta Rampton
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect
Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was keeping an open mind on whether to
pull out of a landmark international accord to fight climate change, in
a softening of his stance toward global warming.
Trump told the New York Times in an interview that he thinks there is
"some connectivity" between human activity and global warming, despite
previously describing climate change as a hoax.
A source on Trump's transition team told Reuters earlier this month that
the New York businessman was seeking quick ways to withdraw the United
States from the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
But asked on Tuesday whether the United States would withdraw from the
accord, the Republican said: “I’m looking at it very closely. I have an
open mind to it."
A U.S. withdrawal from the pact, agreed to by almost 200 countries,
would set back international efforts to limit rising temperatures that
have been linked to the extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves,
floods and rising sea levels. .
Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, also said he was thinking about
climate change and American competitiveness and "how much it will cost
our companies,” he said, according to a tweet by a Times reporter in the
interview.
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Two people advising Trump’s transition team on energy and environment
issues said they were caught off guard by his remarks.
A shift on global warming is the latest sign Trump might be backing away
from some of his campaign rhetoric as life in the Oval Office
approaches.
Trump has said he might have to build a fence, rather than a wall, in
some areas of the U.S.-Mexican border to stop illegal immigration,
tweaking one of his signature campaign promises.
Also in Tuesday's interview, he showed little appetite for pressing
investigations of his Democratic rival in the presidential campaign,
Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a
lot and suffered greatly in many different ways," he told reporters,
editors and other newspaper officials at the Times headquarters in
Manhattan.
But Trump said "no" when asked if he would rule out investigating
Clinton over her family's charitable foundation or her use of a private
email server while she was U.S. secretary of state during President
Barack Obama's first term.
If Trump does abandon his campaign vow to appoint a special prosecutor
for Clinton, it will be a reversal of a position he mentioned almost
daily on the campaign trail, when he dubbed his rival "Crooked Hillary,"
and crowds at his rallies often chanted: "Lock her up."
His comments to the Times about Clinton angered some of his strongest
conservative supporters.
Breitbart News, the outlet once led by Trump's chief strategist, Steve
Bannon, published a story on Tuesday under the headline, "Broken
Promise: Trump 'Doesn't Wish to Pursue' Clinton email charges."
The FBI investigated Clinton's email practices, concluding in July that
her actions were careless but that there were no grounds for bringing
charges.
The Clinton Foundation charity has also been scrutinized for donations
it received, but there has been no evidence that foreign donors obtained
favors from the State Department while Clinton headed it.
BUSINESSMAN AND PRESIDENT
Trump, a real estate developer who has never held public office, brushed
off fears over conflicts of interest between his job as president and
his family's businesses.
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![](../images/112316pics/news_L19.jpg)
President-elect Donald Trump reacts to a crowd gathered in the lobby
of the New York Times building. Trump, who has never previously held
public office, was quick to bristle at unflattering news coverage
during the campaign, even as he remained accessible to certain
reporters, including several from the Times. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
"The law's totally on my side, the president can't have a conflict
of interest," he told the New York Times. My company's so
unimportant to me relative to what I'm doing," Trump said.
Conflict-of-interest rules for executive branch employees do not
apply to the president, but Trump will be bound by bribery laws,
disclosure requirements and a section of the U.S. Constitution that
prohibits elected officials from taking gifts from foreign
governments, according to Republican and Democratic ethics lawyers.
"There may be specific laws that don’t apply to the president, but
the president is not above the law," said Richard Painter of the
University of Minnesota, a former associate counsel to Republican
President George W. Bush.
"Do we really want to run our government where you have the
president, the leader of the United States and the free world,
saying: 'I'm going to do the bare minimum to squeak by?'" asked
Norman Eisen, a former top ethics lawyer in Obama's White House.
Trump's businesswoman daughter Ivanka joined her father's telephone
call with Argentine President Mauricio Macri earlier this month and
attended a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, raising
questions of possible conflicts of interest.
When asked whether House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and
other Republicans in Congress would consider his trillion-dollar
infrastructure plan, Trump boasted he was popular with the party's
leaders on Capitol Hill.
“Right now, they’re in love with me," he said.
Since his Nov. 8 election victory, Trump has been meeting with
prospective candidates for top positions in his administration.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Nov/23/images/ads/current/dd_spec_BD_lda_wpic_2016.png)
Ben Carson, a former Republican presidential hopeful who dropped out
of the 2016 race and backed Trump, has been offered the post of
secretary of housing and urban development, Carson spokesman
Armstrong Williams said.
Carson, a retired surgeon who met with Trump on Tuesday, will think
about it over the Thanksgiving holiday, Williams said.
Trump arrived in Florida on Tuesday evening to spend Thursday's
holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus and Amy Tennery in New York;
Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Steve Holland, Emily Stephenson and
Valerie Volcovici in Washington; and Curtis Skinner in San
Francisco; Writing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech; Editing by
Frances Kerry and Peter Cooney)
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