Trump shrugs off talk of splits with cabinet picks

US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday downplayed talk of ideological splits within his incoming cabinet on Russia, torture and other key issues, saying he wanted his nominees to "be themselves."

With inaugural preparations gathering steam, Trump shrugged off the strikingly divergent positions adopted by several of his cabinet nominees, who publicly contradicted him in Senate confirmation hearings.

"All of my Cabinet nominee (sic) are looking good and doing a great job," he said in an early morning tweet. "I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!"

The 70-year-old Republican later elaborated, telling reporters at Trump Tower: "I could have said, 'Do this, say that.' I don't want that. I want them all to be themselves."

"And I'm going to do the right thing, whatever it is. I may be right. And they may be right."

Over three days of feisty hearings this week, Trump's nominees warned of the threat posed by Russia, hailed Nato, repudiated torture, defended the US intelligence community and cautioned against withdrawing from the Iran nuclear treaty and the Paris climate accord.

On virtually every controversial foreign policy stance that Trump took during the campaign, they hedged and backtracked and sought to assure senators that they shared the consensus that has shaped Western strategic thinking and institutions since World War II.

The contrast was all the more striking against the backdrop of an ugly feud between Trump and the US intelligence agencies, stoked by the leak of an unsubstantiated report that Russia had gathered compromising personal and financial material on the president-elect.

In his confirmation hearing Thursday, Trump's choice for CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said he had not seen evidence the intelligence agencies were politicised.

Trump, who sees an opportunity to cooperate with Moscow in fighting jihadist groups like the Islamic State, has expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and only reluctantly accepted US intelligence's conclusion that Russian hackers acting on Putin's authority interfered in the US elections.