In the wee morning hours following the election, in the decked-out ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, Donald Trump memorably proclaimed he would be the “president for all Americans”. It was a remarkable claim for a man who’d run a campaign mired in bigotry and xenophobia.

The following week President Obama declared he was certain Trump was “sincere” in his promise to be every American’s president, and over the weekend, in his final press conference of the year, the president was similarly conciliatory.

World leaders have likewise made olive-branch gestures. Shortly after the election, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, predicted Trump would change his views on climate, and a key dignitary at a major UN climate meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, made a similar argument.

“We have for many months listened to the candidate Trump. Today we have to deal with the President Trump,” Morocco’s minister of the environment, Hakima El Haité, told me days after the election. “Those are two personalities.”

Already such optimism looks unwarranted.

Since becoming president-elect, Trump has called for the mass deportation of immigrants. He’s also selected a cabinet that is mostly white, mostly male, and mostly business leaders – in other words, a cabinet that looks a whole lot like him.

That’s not populism; it’s cronyism. And it’s proliferating, even before inauguration day.

After winning over blue-collar workers in middle America with promises to restore their slipping quality of life, for instance, he chose a CEO to head his labor department. His nominee has been outspoken in his opposition to minimum wage increases. And Trump wants a man who was once denied a federal judgeship over accusations of racism to head the justice department.

But perhaps the best barometer thus far of whether Trump will really be everyone’s president is his approach to climate change, which has emerged as an area of overwhelming concern among Americans, and which, in the decades ahead, will transform the fiscal and political landscape across the world.

It may not rank near the top of people’s priorities list – it seldom does. But climate, and in particular renewable energy, has nevertheless emerged as a place where partisan rancor looks increasingly outdated.

Concern about climate change is already at an eight-year high, according to Gallup’s most recent polling, with 64% of respondents say they worry “a great deal” or a “fair amount” about global warming. Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say humans are responsible, and while the percentage of people who think climate will pose a serious threat in their lifetime has ebbed slightly, that number is still well over half the population.

But forget being the president for all Americans; Trump is not even accurately representing his own party’s views. A majority of Republicans now believe the world’s climate is changing and that humans play some role in that, according to a recent survey by Republican pollsters. Mitt Romney, the party’s most recent nominee before Trump, has gone even further by saying we must do something about it.

And at least some of the incredulity expressed over Trump’s recent cabinet picks has come from inside his own party – including from a former Republican administrator of the EPA.

The faint hope engendered by an early meeting with Al Gore, and Trump’s remarks that he was keeping an “open mind” about international climate accords, was unceremoniously quashed last week as he proceeded to roll out what looks to be the most climate-hostile administration in recent memory. And even before the cabinet announcements came out, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley was proclaiming Trump will do away with a wind energy tax credit, “over my dead body”.

Then there’s the fact that Trump didn’t even win the majority of votes in America. After campaigning on the idea that the American electoral system is rigged, back when he thought it was rigged in Hillary Clinton’s favor, he’s now espousing exactly the opposite: at a rally in Alabama on Saturday, he called the electoral college “genius”.

What changed, of course, was who the system benefited. Now that it’s clear the outdated system benefits him, he’s all for it.

The same is true of his claims Russian hackers influenced the outcome of the presidential election. Two years ago Trump said Russian hacking was a “big problem”. But now it looks to have benefited him, he calls claims Russia played any role in the election “ridiculous”.

Foreign dignitaries like Haité shouldn’t hold their breath, particularly where international cooperation is concerned. Trump isn’t going to be the president of all Americans. He’s going to be the president for rich white men like him.

