On the Clinton investigation

“I don’t think they will be disappointed. I think I will explain it, that we have to, in many ways save our country.”

Mr. Trump’s crowds at rallies frequently targeted Hillary Clinton, chanting “Lock her up!” and referring to her as a criminal. In July, Mr. Trump himself encouraged a crowd in Colorado, telling them “I’m starting to agree with you” as they chanted “Lock her up!” In addition, despite Mr. Trump’s remarks here, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which have investigated Mrs. Clinton’s email server and the Clinton Foundation, conduct criminal inquiries largely independently of the White House. A president attempting to intervene in those kinds of inquiries, in any direction, would be a major scandal.

Here is our full story about Mr. Trump’s reversal on prosecuting Mrs. Clinton.

-Carolyn Ryan

On the alt-right movement

“I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group.”

Mr. Trump has been criticized for not specifically denouncing bigotry and groups that spread bigoted views. His statements about such conduct tend to be vague, including here, when he says “I disavow the group.” That nonspecific language has been comforting to leaders of the alt-right, a rebranded white nationalist movement, including Richard B. Spencer, who led a gathering at a federal building near the White House last weekend that included some audience members offering a Nazi salute.

-Carolyn Ryan

On the family brand

“The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that, but I don’t care. I said on ‘60 Minutes’: I don’t care. Because it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters to me is running our country.”

Mr. Trump here acknowledges, perhaps for the first time, that being president will perhaps help enrich his family. He also concedes that the arrangement might fairly be called a conflict of interest.

-Eric Lipton

On torture

“It’s not going to make the kind of a difference that maybe a lot of people think. If it’s so important to the American people, I would go for it. I would be guided by that. But General Mattis found it to be very less important, much less important than I thought he would say. I thought he would say — you know he’s known as Mad Dog Mattis, right? Mad Dog for a reason. I thought he’d say ‘It’s phenomenal, don’t lose it.’ He actually said, ‘No, give me some cigarettes and some drinks, and we’ll do better.’”

Back in February, when he was still a candidate, Mr. Trump said definitively that torture was effective. “Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works,” he told an audience in South Carolina. “O.K., folks? Torture, you know, half these guys: ‘Torture doesn’t work.’ Believe me, it works. O.K.?”

So Mr. Trump’s answer on Tuesday offered a revealing insight into his willingness to shift or rethink a position, especially after talking with someone he respects. Gen. James N. Mattis may well be Mr. Trump’s secretary of defense, and his rejection of torture clearly had an effect on the president-elect.

-Michael D. Shear

On factory jobs

“You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now. They’re really largely noncompetitive. About four weeks ago, I started adding a certain little sentence into a lot of my speeches, that we’ve lost 70,000 factories since W. Bush. 70,000. When I first looked at the number, I said: ‘That must be a typo. It can’t be 70, you can’t have 70,000, you wouldn’t think you have 70,000 factories here.’ And it wasn’t a typo, it’s right. We’ve lost 70,000 factories.”

The reality is more complicated. The number of factories and the number of Americans who work in factories both have declined sharply in recent decades. But the nation’s manufacturing output is at the highest level in history. The labor-intensive production of low-value goods, like socks, has been replaced by the largely automated production of high-value goods, like circuits.

-Binyamin Appelbaum

On immigration

“You know, you’ve been talking about immigration bills for 50 years and nothing’s ever happened.”

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a landmark law that prohibited the hiring of illegal immigrants, provided new resources for enforcement along the Mexican border and offered legal status to several million illegal immigrants. Experts say the law did little to slow migration to the United States, but made crossing the border more difficult and dangerous.

-Robert Pear

On health care

“’Cause health care is — you know people are paying a 100 percent increase and they’re not even getting anything, the deductibles are so high, you have deductibles $16,000. So they’re paying all of this money and they don’t even get health care.”

Premiums for many health plans under the Affordable Care Act are increasing 20 percent to 40 percent or more, but increases of 100 percent are extremely rare. Deductibles for many plans are high, but not $16,000. For a family plan in 2017, the maximum out-of-pocket cost, including the deductible, is $14,300.

-Robert Pear