Trump refuses to bend to the office of president He’s attacking his opponents. He’s not offering up his tax returns. He’s not dropping his business ties. And he won’t condemn Putin.

NEW YORK — The presidency is not going to change Donald Trump. Donald Trump is going to change the presidency.

The president-elect’s chaotic first news conference on Wednesday, two months after his victory shocked the world, unfolded much as his campaign did: defiant, with attacks on his opponents, memorable one-liners (“I’m also very much of a germophobe, by the way”), a deluge of news (he announced a nomination for a Cabinet post) and some of the toughest questions elided or ignored, including on his potential ethical and financial conflicts and on new reports of alleged contact between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.


It was clear Trump won’t be turning over his tax returns, at least not soon (“The only ones who care about my tax returns are the reporters”). He won’t be putting his assets or company into a blind trust (“I have a no-conflict-of-interest provision as president”). He won’t condemn Vladimir Putin (“If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability”). He will begin building a wall with Mexico as fast as he can, even if Mexico isn’t paying for it at first (“What’s the difference? I want to get the wall started”).

In short, he won’t be like any past president.

About 20 minutes into the news conference, Trump offered up a succinct answer that seemed to justify an approach that remains essentially unchanged from the day more than 18 months ago that he descended the gilded escalators in the very same Trump Tower lobby to announce his presidential candidacy.

“I won,” he declared. “I became president.”

For long stretches, Wednesday’s news conference was a jumbled swirl of media attacks and score-settling from a campaign that’s still clearly fresh on his mind.

It came in two 20-minute acts, with a 15-minute lawyerly intermission on why Trump wasn’t removing his multibillion-dollar empire from his family’s control.

“President-elect Trump should not be expected to destroy the company he built,” his attorney Sheri Dillon said.

Dillon said it was not feasible to either sell all of Trump’s many assets, which would create its own conflicts, nor to fully divest them when his name is central to the brand. “President Trump can’t unknow he owns Trump Tower,” she said.

Trump himself said that over the weekend “I was offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai with a very, very amazing man.” But he turned it down, he said, saying that such action was not required but magnanimous of him.

“I could actually run my business and run the government at the same time,” Trump insisted.

Trump instead is turning over control to his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, who stood on the sidelines along with their sister Ivanka, who is turning over operations of her company as she moves to Washington, D.C.

But while the details of how Trump would disentangle himself from his international real estate business were originally set to receive top billing on Wednesday, that went to new reports of contact between Trump’s campaign and Russia and allegations of compromising materials.

Trump focused most on the intelligence community’s leaking of those details, and the media’s publication of them.

“It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen,” Trump said of the allegations. “It was gotten by opponents of ours. It was a group of opponents that got together. Sick people and they got together and put that crap together. … It shouldn’t have even entered paper.”

Later Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he had spoken to Trump and addressed regret about the information leaks. "I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security," Clapper said.

When CNN’s Jim Acosta tried to ask a question, Trump cut him off. “Your organization is terrible,” Trump scolded. “Don’t be rude. … I am not going to give you a question. You are fake news.”

Trump even made a passing reference to some of the lurid alleged activities included in the raw intelligence document, which is unsubstantiated and was posted in full by BuzzFeed.

“I’m also very much of a germophobe by the way,” he said as a way of obliquely denying the allegations.

Trump said he was aware there are “cameras in the strangest places” and that he has warned colleagues not to misbehave. “You better be careful or you will be watching yourself on nightly television,” he said he has warned them.

While he for the first time conceded Russia’s role in the hacking of his 2016 opponents (“I think it was Russia”), he also blamed the Democratic victims for it. “The Democratic National Committee was totally open to being hacked,” Trump said.

As for his own campaign and the Republican Party coming out unscathed in the campaign, he said, “I think I get some credit” because he told staff, “I said I want strong hacking defense.”

Trump also offered up hard news that almost got buried in the spectacle, including an ad hoc announcement that David Shulkin will be his secretary of veterans affairs, and that he hopes to appoint a new Supreme Court justice in his second week in office.

Trump praised individual companies that have made hiring announcements that fit his job-creating narrative — Ford, United Technologies and Fiat-Chrysler — while issuing veiled threats to those that haven’t, including General Motors.

“I will be the greatest jobs producer that God ever created,” Trump bragged, in a reprise of a popular campaign line.

The exchanges on Putin were among the most fraught of the news conference, with Trump praising the Russian strongman for claiming on Wednesday that he did not, in fact, have compromising materials on Trump.

“I respected the fact that he said that,” Trump said.

And Trump defended a tweet he wrote on Wednesday in which he compared the leaking of classified materials to actions by Nazi Germany. “That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do,” Trump claimed.

Trump said Putin “won’t be doing it” when it comes to hacking on his watch because “Russia will have much greater respect for our country when I’m leading it,” although he left open the possibility that relations would not improve.

Trump dodged a final question about whether his campaign had had contact with the Russian government during the campaign.

“There is not a reset button,” Trump said in his final answer.

He was speaking about Russia. But he also could have been speaking about himself.

