Washington: Whether giving an impromptu media briefing, tweeting before dawn or revealing a cabinet nominee at a rally, US President-elect Donald Trump’s methods of communicating his news have been totally unorthodox for an incoming head of state, making press releases seem positively old-fashioned.

Sheet of paper

‘This is Masa of SoftBank from Japan.’

The president-elect stepped out of the gold elevator in his Manhattan skyscraper Trump Tower on Tuesday, and made an unexpected announcement to the reporters who have been camped in the lobby since his election.

Masayoshi Son, the flamboyant head of Japanese telecoms giant and a self-made billionaire, had ‘just agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States and 50,000 jobs,’ the president-elect said, putting his arm around his grinning visitor.

The Japanese magnate then held up a piece of paper that looked like a printout of a PowerPoint presentation slide. It had logos for Softbank and Taiwanese technology group Foxconn, as well as the figures announced by Trump. But no other details were available.

Economic announcements of this magnitude are rare and generally take place through a news release or a carefully planned news conference, requiring the efforts of many public relations experts who carefully consider every word and gesture.

Early morning tweets

Trump’s transition team published an official statement last Friday to confirm that the president-elect had spoken on the phone with the president of Taiwan — breaking from decades of diplomatic tradition — sending watchers of the delicate US-China relationship into a tizzy.

The president-elect followed it up with two tweets, declaring that Tsai Ing-wen had ‘CALLED ME’ and how he found it ‘interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.’

As controversy swirled, Trump’s top advisor Kellyanne Conway and his incoming vice-president Mike Pence appeared on Sunday morning news programs to quiet the brewing storm. That night, Trump went on a Twitter tirade against China, blasting Beijing for its currency policies, taxing US imports and building military installations in the South China Sea.

Before dawn that same day, the political novice also announced on Twitter that he planned to heavily tax companies that move their operations abroad. The outburst didn’t fit within 140 characters, so he made the statement in a string of six tweets to form one long sentence.

Televised nomination reveal

Steven Mnuchin (tapped to become Treasury secretary) and Wilbur Ross (commerce pick) announced on CNBC television that they had been appointed to their positions by Trump.

The official announcement was published several hours later.

And while members of his future cabinet were talking on the ‘Squawk Box’ program, Trump announced in a tweet that he would hold a news conference on December 15 to explain how he will separate himself from his real estate empire to avoid conflicts of interest while in the White House.

Surprise rally reveal

As for the nomination of his future Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, the president-elect announced the pick during a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, the first stop of his ‘thank you tour’ in the industrial states that gave him the presidency.

‘We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense,’ Trump told cheering supporters.

‘But we’re not announcing it until Monday so don’t tell anybody,’ he quipped.

To date, no official announcement has been made.