Washington: Remember his friend Newt Gingrich's line about the two Trumps – Big Donald and Little Donald? Well, the little version of the president-elect continues to slip his leash, stirring resentment with tweets of grievance when maybe he should be trying to mend a seriously fractured country.
On Sunday, he pretended there had not been a 35 per cent increase in digital subscriptions to The New York Times, tweeting: "Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the 'Trump phenomena'."
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Trump softens rhetoric in 60 Minutes interview
President-elect Donald Trump sat down with 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl to discuss his election campaign and upcoming presidency.
Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the "Trump phenomena"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016
In another he denied saying things that he actually did say and misrepresented a Times letter to readers as an apology for "BAD" coverage of the election – which it was not.
![Anti-Trump protesters in Madison, Wisconsin. The President-elect's Twitter account has excoriated and then saluted them.](/web/20161115035420im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/o/t/w/o/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsot2n.png/1479116924543.jpg)
The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change - doubt it?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2016
And on Friday he seemed bent on provoking the thousands protesting his election, tweeting: "Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!"
By Saturday morning, an adult has taken his mobile phone and a tweet purportedly from the same man declares: "Love[d] the fact that the small groups of protesters last night have passion for our great country. We will all come together and be proud!"
Those tweets were about all that Americans heard from Mr Trump until Sunday evening, when 60 Minutes served slices of mostly Big Donald with side dishes of his wife and the Trumpettes – Melania, Donald jnr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany.
![President-elect Donald Trump gives his acceptance speech on election night, flanked by his running mate Mike Pence ...](/web/20161115035420im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/o/i/j/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsot2n.png/1479116924543.jpg)
Given an opportunity to tick a series of policy boxes, Mr Trump was a different man, revealing himself as equivocal on key policy positions that were absolutes in the course of the campaign that he won so stunningly.
The single issue on which he gave absolutely no ground was abortion – on which he restated his undertaking to fill the existing Supreme Court vacancy with a judge who will cut down the historic 1973 Roe v Wade decision by which abortion became legal in the US.
![There are now more important things to do than locking Hillary Clinton up, Donald Trump says, insisting she and her ...](/web/20161115035420im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/o/t/3/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsot2n.png/1479116924543.jpg)
"I think Rove v Wade will be overturned and [the abortion issue] will go back to the states, but it's a long way to go."
Asked how women who wanted an abortion would manage, Mr Trump responded: "Well, they'll perhaps have to go ... they'll have to go to another state."
On to the wall on the Mexican border. It turns out that he'll be OK with some sections being a fence and instead, as promised repeatedly, of setting up a "deportation force" to round up as many as 12 million undocumented migrants in the country, he now says the first objective will be to secure the border and deport those with criminal records – but here Trump muddied the figures, claiming there are 2 million to 3 million criminal migrants in the country, when migration think tanks estimate the number to be more like 700,000.
The president-elect argued that once all that migration business had been attended to, he'd address the issue of the remaining millions, who were "terrific" people.
Mr Trump's defence of "traditional" marriage during the campaign was a cause of great disquiet in the LGBT community, but in the 60 Minutes interview he argued that same-sex marriage was a done deal – the Supreme Court decision validating same-sex unions had settled the matter "and I'm fine with that".
Throughout the campaign the entirety of Obamacare was to be repealed, but since spending 90 minutes with US President Barack Obama last week, he now wants to retain coverage for pre-existing conditions and the right of children living with their parents to be covered by the parents' insurance until age 26.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, in the wake of winning the election, some who the campaigning Trump had cast as the very worst demons now are not such bad people – Hillary and Bill Clinton, the Obamas and the former presidents Bush were referred to with a sentiment that could be described as fondness.
Mr Obama was "very smart, nice and had a great sense of humour"; the Clintons were "good people", he didn't "want to hurt them" and there was a list of greater policy issues ahead of "locking her up"; and the animosity against his two Republican predecessors seemed to have dissipated as he acknowledged that the Bushes had phoned to congratulate him.
Even Jeb Bush, who had challenged him for the nomination, was "a nice guy".
But a possible exception is FBI chief James Comey, whose intervention in the campaign derailed a Clinton campaign which analysts, with near unanimity, judged to be heading towards victory.
He did not rule out asking for Mr Comey's resignation. Instead, he answered: "I'm not sure. I would have to see – he may have some very good reasons for doing what he did."
After a campaign in which Trump amassed a combined social media following of almost 30 million, he is reluctant to go along with those of his advisers who argued that his need for regular Twitter fixes could be self-destructive.
Clearly proud of how his use of free social media had defeated a traditional $US1 billion-plus campaign against him, he wants to keep tweets in his armoury.
"I'm not saying I love it, but it does get the word out – when you give me a bad story, or when you give me an inaccurate story, I have a method of fighting back," he said.
Perhaps most remarkable for a candidate so maligned for his love of other people's money, Mr Trump said that as president he would not take a salary – or "just $1 a year to make it legal".
Sounding overawed, but insisting he wasn't, Mr Trump said he wasn't worried about any damage that might have been inflicted on the Trump brand in the course of the campaign because this – the presidency – was "big league" stuff.