5 times Donald Trump has already flip-flopped

Donald Trump has had a tumultuous first three weeks as President-elect, in which he's u-turned on a number of campaign pledges.

There's an issue here - some of what he pledged was anti-egalitarian and overtly discriminatory, and as such, many people would rejoice if he were to back down from some of his more extreme pledges.

However, if he breaks his word, that also needs to be noted as a failure to produce what he campaigned on.

Let's recount his early flip flops:

1. 'Locking up' Hillary Clinton

As a candidate Donald Trump regularly encouraged cries of "lock her up!" at his rallies, vowing to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her use of a private email server.

At one debate he said to her that if he were to become president:

You'd be in jail.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, he dramatically u-turned on the issue:

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.

She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious.

It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.

2. Building a wall

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump made many promises about building a "big, beautiful" wall on the Mexican border to curb illegal immigration:

We're going to build a wall. 

It's going to be built. It's not even — believe it or not — it's not even a difficult thing to do.

After the election, he told CBS:

There could be some fencing.

For certain areas I would [accept a fence], but certain areas, a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this, it’s called construction.

It's actually called a climbdown.

3. Repealing Obamacare

Another Donald J Trump repeated pledge was to completely repeal Obamacare.

Just days after the election, Trump made clear that he wanted to keep a number of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, including provisions to force insurers to cover people with pre-existing health conditions and another which allows parents to cover their children under the plan until their mid 20s.

However, he recently appointed a keen Obamacare critic as his choice for Health Secretary. All bets are off it seems.

4. Denying climate change

Another tenet of Donald Trump's campaign was climate change denial, and the dismantling of the Paris Agreement.

In addition, he's tweeted numerous times that he doesn't believe in climate change.

In a recent New York Times interview, he admitted he'd be looking at the issue very closely and said:

I think right now… well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies.

Following this interview, a statement from his chief of staff pick Reince Preibus interpreted this quote as follows:

As far as this issue on climate change — the only thing he [Trump] was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he’ll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he’ll have an open mind and listen to people.

So the "open mind" policy is that it's a "bunch of bunk". That's clarified.

5. The condemnation of the neo-Nazi, so called 'Alt-right' movement

Trump's campaign championed a rhetoric that America was great only prior to globalisation, multiculturalism and the victories for tolerance of recent years, such as the same-sex marriage supreme court ruling.

He, in conjunction with far-right publications such as Breitbart, now represented in the White House through the appointment of Steve Bannon, fostered a community of hatred and white supremacism perhaps best exemplified in r/The_Donald, a subreddit that panders to these hateful views and bans all dissenters.

Trump said of his supporters who were at the "alt-right" [read: fascism] convention in Washington:

First of all, I don’t want to energize the group. I’m not looking to energize them. I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group. They, again, I don’t know if it’s reporting or whatever. I don’t know where they were four years ago, and where they were for Romney and McCain and all of the other people that ran, so I just don’t know, I had nothing to compare it to.

But it’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.

And of those who had pledged their allegiance to nazism:

Of course I condemn. I disavow and condemn.

Watch the full video, below:

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