The president-elect’s pick’n’mix approach since his victory has the country wondering whether it will get a statesman, a businessman, or a provocateur

Fresh from his Thanksgiving Florida break, Donald Trump is due to finalise his cabinet in the coming days in an unconventional presidential transition that has kept supporters and critics alike in suspense as to the true nature of his administration.

The president-elect has so far adopted a pick’n’mix approach to his appointments, embracing both loyalists and rivals, both career politicians and outsiders with little salient experience. He has similarly been a shape shifter on policy, tempering numerous campaign promises and spitting out random ideas, such as his undiplomatic proposal that Nigel Farage become British ambassador to the US.



Observers are asking: will the real Donald Trump please stand up? The one who will be president, that is?



“I guess it all depends which President Trump shows up in the oval office,” said Leon Panetta, former defence secretary and head of the CIA. “If it’s the Trump who’s made some irresponsible statements about foreign policy and things we ought to be doing, obviously that would be cause for concern.

Each time a pattern appears to be developing in his transition plan, the impulsive rule-breaker thwarts it

“If it’s the more responsible President Trump, the guy who gave a pretty good election night speech and had a good meeting with President Obama, if it’s the businessman Trump who’s interested in working with good people and cutting deals and trying to serve the best interests of the county, then it could be a different Trump. I think we’ll get a test of that not only by the tone of the remainder of his appointments but also in how he handles himself once he goes into the oval office.”



Since his stunning election win on 8 November, Trump appears to have relished keeping the pundit class guessing. Each time a pattern appears to be developing in his transition plan, the impulsive rule-breaker thwarts it with an out-of-the-box manoeuvre or reality show-style tease.



He threw a bone to the Republican party with the appointment of Reince Priebus as chief of staff but simultaneously cheered the so-called “alt-right” by naming Steve Bannon of Breitbart News as chief strategist. Yet when white nationalists celebrated at a conference in Washington, even giving Nazi salutes, Trump publicly disavowed them, leading some to accuse him of betrayal.

The president-elect gratified hardline conservatives – and mortified liberals – with a triumvirate of national security appointments: Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general, retired army general Mike Flynn as national security adviser and Representative Mike Pompeo as CIA director. Sessions has been accused of racist comments – he denies any racial prejudice – while Flynn tweeted in February: “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”

Asked if Flynn was the right man for the job, Panetta, who knew him at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said: “He could be if he went back to the old Michael Flynn; I don’t know if that’s possible. He’s been a little erratic and frankly, in the job of national security adviser, you need somebody who is thoughtful, objective and stable and can allow for different views to be presented to the president.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, in the lobby of Trump Tower on 11 November. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

But just when it seemed that Trump was rewarding the white men who shouted loudest on his behalf, and deepening the Washington “swamp” that he promised to drain, he switched gear. This week he named Nikki Haley, an Indian American who is governor of South Carolina, as UN ambassador and Betsy DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist, as education secretary. Both women had made clear their antipathy toward him during the Republican primary contest in which they supported other candidates; DeVos’s ascent was welcomed by Trump’s old foe Jeb Bush.

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Haley has little by way of foreign policy experience. Ben Carson, who is African American, is tipped for housing and urban development secretary, even though his expertise lies in brain surgery. This week Trump also held talks with representative Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat who endorsed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders in the primaries, and a sprinkling of multimillionaires.

Team or rivals or team of yes-men? The answer is a bit of both so far. A prime example is the speculation around the plum job of secretary of state, which appears to have come down to a straight fight between one of Trump’s most raucous cheerleaders, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and one of his most ardent critics, ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who previously branded him a “con man” and “phony” but who Trump reportedly believes “looks the part”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump meets with Mitt Romney at Trump’s golf club on 19 November. Despite being one of Trump’s most ardent critics, there is speculation Romney is in the running for secretary of state. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

All this fits with Trump’s habit of nurturing internal competition in his organisations as well as his role of the showman, the circus master, forever bending the spotlight in his direction with a surprise meeting here or diverting tweet there. In 1990 he told Playboy magazine: “The show is ‘Trump’. And it is sold-out performances everywhere.” In this he is the polar opposite of the cool, at times professorial, Barack Obama.

Tobe Berkovitz, a political media consultant, told the Hill website: “Trump has again demonstrated that all he has to do is send out a tweet and the media will just go crazy – and it’s good for at least two news cycles. [He has] a total understanding of what celebrity is, how do you capitalise on celebrity, how do you profit from celebrity. It’s Celebrity Apprentice except now it’s Celebrity President.”

Two Trumps have been on display to the media this week. In a meeting with broadcasting executives and anchors, he reportedly caused outrage with a series of self-righteous rants at “liars!” in their ranks. But then, visiting the office of the New York Times, he struck a magnanimous tone. A coherent ideology was elusive, however, as he backpedalled from several assertions forcefully made during the election campaign.

Last month, for example, he told election rival Hillary Clinton: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.” To the New York Times, he said this week: “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t … It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about.”

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Does human activity cause climate change? In March, Trump told the Washington Post: “I am not a great believer in man-made climate change.” To the New York Times he said: “I think there is some connectivity. Some, something.”



And in a speech in North Dakota in May, he said: “We’re going to cancel the Paris climate agreement.” To the New York Times he said: “I have an open mind to it.”



Perhaps one of the most telling U-turns came on the issue of torture. In a speech in South Carolina in February, Trump insisted: “Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys –‘Torture doesn’t work!’ – believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form ... we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”



Then he told the New York Times that retired marine general James Mattis, who is under serious consideration for defence secretary, had told him waterboarding is not such a good idea. “I was surprised – he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer.”

To the president-elect’s defenders, this could be evidence that he is flexible, pragmatic and willing to change his mind. To his detractors, it suggests that he is like a cushion, bearing the impression of the last person he meets.



To his detractors Trump is like a cushion, bearing the impression of the last person he meets

The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, noting that Trump veered within hours from slamming the the Gray Lady as a “failing” news organisation to lavishing praise on it as a “world jewel”, commented: “There was a lesson here about his desire to be approved of and his hunger to be loved. There was another about the shockingly unformed, pliable nature of the clay that is our 70-year-old president-elect.”

That diagnosis makes the cast of characters surrounding him even more important. So far there has been scant consolation for Democrats, although Mattis does have some admirers. Panetta, who was Pentagon chief under Obama, said: “He knows military issues, he’s very thoughtful about how to use the military and I always found him to be a very good adviser. I certainly have no criticism of him as a military leader.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump and retired marine general James Mattis, who has admirers among Democrats. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump is managing to strike a delicate balance, believes George Ajjan, a Republican consultant and strategist. “Trump’s appointments thus far indicate that he wants to reward loyalty and stake out ideological ground on a few issues, but also appear as a magnanimous unifier and avoid reinventing the Washington wheel,” he said. “The transition seems well planned and on track, despite the fact that allegations of nepotism and conflicts of interest will hamper him constantly.”

As for those conflicts of interest involving his business, Trump had an answer this week that echoed Richard Nixon: “The law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Nixon became the first president to resign while facing impeachment.

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Trump spent the Thanksgiving holiday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, a luxury estate that was opened in 1927 by one of the richest women in the world, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and donated to the US government in 1973 for use as a winter White House. Trump bought the 128-room property in 1985, opening a private members’ club; a portrait of him in a tennis sweater hangs over the bar.

The family’s Thanksgiving dinner included stone crabs, oysters, and jumbo shrimp as well as the traditional turkey, stuffing, sweet mashed potatoes and gravy and, for dessert, selections including the tantalising “Three Layer Trump Chocolate Cake”.

The businessman could not resist Twitter for an entire day, however, posting: “I am working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana). MAKING PROGRESS - Will know soon!” Carrier, a manufacturing company, announced earlier this year that it would move 2,000 jobs at two of its Indiana plants to Mexico.

After his break he was due to return to Trump Tower in New York to continue the shaping his team, which is still essentially an enigma, his presidency still maddeningly hard to predict.

Obama is leading optimists who believe the presidency will cut him down to size but others point to evidence that Trump will always be Trump: at 70, he is a man who is used to getting his way and not likely to change. Speaking at the Montclair film festival, tje TV talkshow host and political satirist Stephen Colbert said: “I’m all for give him a chance but don’t give him an inch. I believe everything he said and I remember everything he said. And it’s horrifying.”

He added: “Everyone tried to stop him and they didn’t. He owes them nothing. He goes on a balcony and he says to the crowd, ‘Shall I do it?’ And they say ‘Yes. It shall be so.’ And the balcony is Twitter – that’s the balcony for him – and that’s what scares me, is that he owes the checks and balances of Washington nothing because they tried to stop him and they couldn’t. He’s a vindictive person. So it’s all going to be fine.”



• This article was amended on 28 November 2016. An earlier version said James Mattis was under consideration for secretary of state; that has been corrected to secretary of defence.