The most fun we’ve had all week is reading the transcript of Donald Trump’s off-again, on-again meeting with the New York Times. No need to worry about whether The Donald can handle himself. What a piece of cake. It’s not so evident, at least to us, on television as it is in print. But it turns out he has a whole technique for this kind of situation, raising ambiguity to a high art. And with occasional flashes of genius — and wonderful glimpses of the Times.

This started with publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. disclosing that he and the president-elect had just had a private meeting in the newspaper’s Churchill room. Nice to know there’s a room at the Gray Lady named after the famed conservative leader of wartime Britain. “There’s a photo of the great man behind you,” Mr. Sulzberger told Mr. Trump as he introduced him to his staff. Sure enough, there was (near the photograph of the Zionist founder Theodor Herzl).

No mention of Churchill’s views on race, by the way, though the British leader makes Mr. Trump seem like Martin Luther King. Churchill once ranted about India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi “striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace” to “parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.” Yet here he is, a room named after him at the Times — in which Trump talked about how good he felt about the election.

“I’d rather do the popular vote,” he confessed, but that would have required a separate strategy. “It’s like, if you’re a golfer, it’s like match play versus stroke play. It’s a whole different game.” In the nearly 250 years since independence, it’s hard to imagine anyone — not even an editorial writer of the Times — coming up with a more trenchant analogy. It seems he has grasped all along that Secretary of State Clinton was playing the wrong game.

The newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, asked Mr. Trump whether he felt that he’d said things that “energized” the Alt-Right. How was he “going to manage that?” Mr. Trump disavowed them and said he wanted to bring the country together. It struck us as a dismissal of less the Times’ concerns than of the Alt-Right, though time will tell. In any event, one of the paper’s political legs, Maggie Haberman, asked about reports that Mr. Trump had decided not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Trump noted a report that he was not “enthused” about such a prosecution. “Look,” Mr. Trump confirmed, “I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t.” He called the campaign “vicious,” adding that he assumed the Times sold a lot of papers. “So you’re definitively taking that off the table? The investigation?” an editor asked. “No, but the question was asked,” Mr. Trump said, adding that it was “just not something I feel very felt strongly about.”

So did he absolutely rule out prosecuting Mrs. Clinton? Our guess is that no five editors will agree. What happens if the FBI comes in with some new angle? Mr. Trump will soon have the power to issue a pardon, which we’ve long favored. His base wants him to enforce the laws that are being enforced against everyone else. We see issuing a pardon as enforcing the law, since the pardon is one of the most basic parts of our law. What certainty, though, does the Trump Technique provide either way?

Tom Friedman brought up his column suggesting that global warming could threaten the Trump National Doral Golf Course in Miami with rising seas. Mr. Trump said the Doral will be in “great shape.” The paper’s editorial page editor inquired: “Do you think human activity is or isn’t connected?” Mr. Trump acknowledged “some” connection, before saying that it “depends on how much it’s going to cost” American companies. One could almost hear that sinking into the Timesian brain.

Eventually the conversation moved to how Mr. Trump’s businesses might conflict with his presidency. “The law is totally on my side,” the tycoon-turned-president-elect said, “meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.” What he meant, he said, is “everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.” Someone asked, “With all due respect, you could sell your company and then …” Mr. Trump delivered a long reply, in which our favorite line was, “The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before. I can’t help that.” Call it the technique of incorrigible capitalism.

Arthur Sulzberger is not without his own crafty technique, which flashed when Mr. Trump was pressed again on the Alt-Right. Mr. Sulzberger could call him any time, the President-elect said, adding: “The only one who can’t call me is Maureen,” a reference to columnist Maureen Dowd. To which Mr. Sulzberger quipped: “As we all say about Maureen, it’s not your fault, it’s just your turn.” That prompted what must have been some appreciative laughter.

Columnist Ross Douthat noted that Mr. Trump ran as “a different kind of Republican.” Said Mr. Trump: “Paul Ryan right now loves me. Mitch McConnell loves me. It’s amazing how winning can change things.” Then he talked about how he’s “raised a lot of money” for Chuck Schumer over the years, adding: “I think I was the first person that ever contributed to Chuck Schumer.” (Maybe that accounts for Mr. Schumer’s protectionist streak.).

Then Tom Friedman asked about whether The Donald was worried that the jobs in all the factories Mr. Trump wanted to bring back would be taken over by robots. Mr. Trump replied, “we’ll make the robots, too.” It was the paper’s chief executive, Mark Thompson, who asked about the First Amendment; we thought he might be referring to freedom of religion. But, no, the conversation turned to libel, and Mr. Trump said they’d all be happy. It made us wonder whether maybe some day the Times will name a room for Donald Trump.