quality:corruption
Campaign rhetoric and political positions

Trump's political positions and rhetoric were right-wing populist. Politico described them as "eclectic, improvisational and often contradictory", quoting a health-care policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute as saying that his political positions were a "random assortment of whatever plays publicly". NBC News counted "141 distinct shifts on 23 major issues" during his campaign.

Trump described NATO as "obsolete" and espoused views that were described as non-interventionist and protectionist. His campaign platform emphasized renegotiating U.S. – China relations and free trade agreements such as NAFTA, strongly enforcing immigration laws, and building a new wall along the U.S.–Mexico border. Other campaign positions included pursuing energy independence while opposing climate change regulations, modernizing services for veterans, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing Common Core education standards, investing in infrastructure, simplifying the tax code while reducing taxes, and imposing tariffs on imports by companies that offshore jobs. He advocated increasing military spending and extreme vetting or banning immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

Trump helped bring far-right fringe ideas and organizations into the mainstream. In August 2016, Trump hired Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News — described by Bannon as "the platform for the alt-right" — as his campaign CEO. The alt-right movement coalesced around and supported Trump's candidacy, due in part to its opposition to multiculturalism and immigration.