U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has softened his initial immigration threat to build a wall along the United States border line with Mexico.

Speaking with New York Times on Tuesday, Trump said he might have to build a fence, rather than a wall, in some areas of the U.S.-Mexican border to stop illegal immigration.

This is contrary to one of his signature campaign promises on immigration where he promised to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trump also for the first time did not sound so optimistic about investigating and prosecuting his rival at the polls, Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways,” he told reporters, editors and other newspaper officials at the Times headquarters in Manhattan.

Recall that during his campaign, Trump never missed to stress how he would prosecute Clinton for her family’s charitable foundation or her use of a private email server while she was U.S. Secretary of State.

The U.S. President-Elect is also reconsidering his threat to back out of the International Climate Change Deal saying he was now keeping an ‘open mind’.

He in an interview that he thinks there is “some connectivity” between human activity and global warming, despite previously describing climate change as a hoax.

Recall that Trump had been quoted as seeking the fastest way to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change.

But speaking on Tuesday, Trump said “I’m looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it.”

U.S. withdrawal from the pact, agreed to by almost 200 countries, would set back international efforts to limit rising temperatures that have been linked to the extinctions of animals and plants, heat waves, floods and rising sea levels. .

Trump also said that he was thinking about climate change and American competitiveness and “how much it will cost our companies,” he said.

Two people advising Trump’s transition team on energy and environment issues said they were caught off guard by his remarks.

A shift on global warming is the latest sign Trump might be backing away from some of his campaign rhetoric as life in the Oval Office approaches, Reuters reports. (NAN)

•Photo shows U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Update news