President-elect Trump's first press conference: What's clear and what was left unsaid

President-elect Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that Mexico would still pay for a newly constructed border wall — but not right away.

Trump told reporters that in order to expedite the construction of the wall, one of his signature campaign promises, the U.S. would initially pay for it.

In the meantime, he said, he would negotiate with Mexican officials over how "in some form," the country will reimburse the U.S., either through a tax or some sort of payment, neither of which he detailed. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has repeatedly vowed that his country will not pay for a wall.

"I want to get the wall started. I don't want to wait a year and a half," Trump said.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence was leading an interagency effort to plan for the wall's construction.

Trump said his dealings with Mexico have been "terrific," even as he said they had taken advantage of the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump's plan to let his sons run his business drew a biting attack Wednesday from the federal government's top ethics official, who said Trump is setting a bad example for the rest of government.

Walter M. Shaub, Jr., director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said in remarks at the Brookings Institution that Trump’s “perplexing” plan “doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the past four decades has met.”

Trump said he would retain ownership of his businesses but step back from running them, placing them in a trust to be run by sons Donald Jr. and Eric. He and his attorney said Wednesday that the plan would mean he has no involvement in decisions and little information about what his sons are doing.

Shaub said that didn't solve anything.

“The only thing this has in common with a blind trust is the label ‘trust,'" Shaub said. “His sons are still running the businesses, and, of course, he knows what he owns.”

“Stepping back from running his business is meaningless from a conflict-of-interest perspective,” Shaub said, adding that it is “quite obviously not true” that the president can’t have a conflict of interest. Just because the federal conflict-of-interest law doesn’t apply to the president doesn’t mean no conflicts will occur, he said.

“For that reason, it’s been the consistent policy of the executive branch that the president should act as though the financial conflict-of-interest law applied,” Shaub said.

Shaub, a former deputy general counsel at the nonpartisan agency, was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term that ends next year.

He said he was speaking out in hopes that “some constructive feedback” from the office could encourage Trump to change his plan.

He also pushed back on an argument from Trump's lawyer that it would be unfair to expect Trump to dump his businesses at a "fire sale."

“It’s important to understand that the president is now entering the world of public service,” Shaub said. “He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So, no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the president.”

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The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program can’t seem to escape the crosshairs of President-elect Donald Trump .

In his first news conference since the election, Trump on Wednesday slammed the aircraft program, saying it is “way, way behind schedule and many, many billions of dollars over budget.”

He added, “We’re going to do some big things on the F-35 program, and perhaps the F-18 program.” In December, Trump tweeted that he had asked Boeing Co. to price out a “comparable” F-18 Super Hornet. That came shortly after another tweet criticizing the F-35 program’s cost as “out of control.”

Built by defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp. , the plane has been controversial from the start. It is a so-called fifth-generation fighter that’s a bit like a flying Swiss army knife — designed to be stealthy, fly at supersonic speeds and use advanced sensors that can link data with ships, drones and other planes.

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On a day Washington is focused on the people Donald Trump has picked to help him upend much of the federal government, Trump made a surprise announcement signaling there is one large part of the bureaucracy he may be less eager to overhaul than he has let on.

Trump named a high-ranking Obama administration official to run the sprawling Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trump’s announcement that he has chosen for the post David Shulkin, currently the undersecretary at the department, came as a shock to veterans groups and represented a considerable setback to the network of nonprofits funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. Trump had earlier left the impression he would be cleaning house at the department in favor of a free-market approach favored by the Koch organizations that could shift a considerable amount of the care provided by VA facilities over to the private sector.

Shulkin has been an outspoken critic of such an approach, making him a favorite target of the  Koch-funded nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America. In a blog post in April, the group characterized Shulkin’s performance taking questions from a congressional committee as a “show of incompetence” and reflective of “what’s wrong with the VA.”

But Trump, who embraced much of the Koch-backed organization’s reform plan during the campaign, passed over contenders for the VA post who favored the blueprint championed by Concerned Veterans for America. Trump appears to have balked amid warnings from mainstream veterans groups representing millions of former soldiers against abandoning the reforms implemented by the Obama administration in favor of an approach more oriented toward privatization.

The organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said in a statement that of all the candidates for the post Trump considered, Shulkin represents the best hope of continuing with the Obama administration policies the organization favors. Shulkin would be the first secretary at the VA who is not himself a veteran. And he is the only person from the Obama administration that Trump has picked so far for a leadership role on his team. Another group, Veterans for Common Sense, said it was “relieved” by Trump’s pick of Shulkin.

Concerned Veterans executive director Mark Lucas said in a statement the group will continue to push its blueprint. “It is no secret that the VA has been failing veterans for years,” the statement said. “While Shulkin already holds a leadership position at the VA, as secretary, he will now have ultimate responsibility over the agency and we are hopeful he will take it in a new direction.”

President-elect Donald Trump's news conference Wednesday, his first in nearly half a year, clarified some issues, not others. Here's a look:

MADE CLEAR

Conflicts of interest

Trump will not sell his major assets to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

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

The Trump Organization will make " no new foreign deals " during Trump's presidency, but new domestic deals will be allowed, Dillon said.

Trump has "relinquished leadership and management" of his company, but plans to resume running the company after his presidency.

"I hope at the end of eight years, I'll come back and say, 'Oh, you did a good job.'" Trump said. "Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I'll say, 'You're fired.'"

He's not releasing his tax returns . "I'm not releasing the tax returns because as you know, they're under audit," Trump said.

Since the IRS routinely audits each president's tax returns, that would seem to rule out disclosure for the duration of his presidency.

Intelligence agencies

He blames the nation's intelligence agencies for leaking derogatory information about him.

"It was disgraceful — disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out. I think it's a disgrace, and I say that — and I say that, and that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do," he said.

LEFT UNCLEAR

Border wall

Trump said he wants to move ahead quickly with building a wall along the Mexican border, but did not explain how it will be paid for.

Taxpayers "will be reimbursed" by Mexico, he said, but it's "less likely that it's a payment" from the Mexican government. Maybe "a tax" would be involved, he said, without specifying what that might mean.

Obamacare

He doesn't like the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare now and replace it later, Trump said. But he provided no clue on what his administration's own Obamacare replacement plan would look like.

Trump said he would submit a plan after his Health and Human Services secretary pick, Rep. Tom Price, wins confirmation, something that's not likely to happen until next month at the earliest.

Big drug companies are Trump's latest target, and he revived the idea of having the government negotiate drug prices for federal programs like Medicare. But he said nothing about how he would convince congressional Republicans to approve negotiated drug prices, something they have staunchly opposed for years.

134 years.
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If he is confirmed as secretary of State, Rex Tillerson said he would plan a "full review" of the international accord that blocks Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb.

But appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Tillerson did not promise to rip up the deal, as President-elect Donald Trump sometimes has said he would do.

Tillerson said he would increase monitoring and verification systems to ensure Iran does not violate the agreement, which eased international sanctions against the country in exchange for destroying most of its nuclear fuel production facilities.

“We need ... to examine our ability to clarify whether Iran is complying,” Tillerson told the committee.

“That means no nuclear enrichment in Iran, no storing of nuclear materials in Iran,” he said.

Reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, have not cited any significant violations by Iran since the deal was implemented last January.

Tillerson also said he favored “empowering” women in the developing world.

In December, the Trump transition team had raised concerns when it requested information on State Department staffing and budgets for foreign aid programs intended to help women and promote general equality. Many of the programs were begun when Hillary Clinton headed the State Department.

Under questioning from the lone female member of the committee, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Tillerson committed to continuing those programs, not rolling them back.

Tillerson also was questioned about fears that the Trump administration would conduct a “witch hunt” of Obama-era officials who worked on programs aimed at reducing climate change.

“That would be a pretty unhelpful way to get started,” Tillerson said, to laughter.

Asked his personal views on climate change, Tillerson said his many years as an engineer and scientist had convinced him that “the risk of climate change does exist.”

He said that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are having an effect, but added that science can’t yet predict how quickly they are affecting global warming.

President-elect Donald Trump said he would probably announce his nominee for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court within two weeks of his inauguration.

The Republican took the unusual step during the campaign of releasing a list of potential nominees, compiled with significant input from prominent conservative groups like the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.

Trump said he has met with "numerous candidates," calling each "outstanding." The Supreme Court has had just eight justices since the death of conservative icon Antonin Scalia nearly 11 months ago.

President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to fill the vacancy, but the Republican-led Senate refused to hold hearings or a vote to confirm him.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had said at that time that the next president should fill the vacancy. Senate Democrats are now threatening to block any Trump nominees they consider extreme.

Roiling an already turbulent relationship with the country's top spies, Donald Trump suggested Wednesday that U.S. intelligence officials may be behind the leak of unproven allegations that Russian spies had collected information to blackmail Trump.

"It may be the intelligence agencies," Trump said at his first news conference since he was elected in November. "It would be a tremendous blot" if U.S. intelligence agencies were responsible for the leak, he said.

“I think it was disgraceful that the intelligence agencies would allow information [to leak] that turned out to be false and fake. I think it was a disgrace,” he said.

President-elect Trump faces unverified allegations that Russian officials had gathered compromising information about his personal life and political associates, further deepening the controversy over Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

"It's all fake news, it's phony stuff," Trump said, adding that the report was put together by his political opponents.

The information is contained in a 35-page file that was released Tuesday by BuzzFeed, which said it was publishing the material in the interest of “transparency,” but had not been able to corroborate it.

Several news organizations reported that senior U.S. intelligence officials had included a two-page synopsis of the file when they briefed Trump last week on evidence of Russian involvement in the election and that they had also informed top leaders of Congress about the allegations.

Trump also accused U.S. intelligence officials of leaking to the press details about his classified intelligence briefings. “I think it's pretty sad when intelligence reports get leaked out to the press,” he said. “First of all it's illegal,” he said.