Daily Times

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump clings to his trait of creating stunts after Hillary Clinton emerged a clear winner in popular votes.

During his first televised interview with the CBS after getting elected as president, Trump announced that he would not accept salary. He even expressed his ignorance how much the president earns in the United States.

“I think I have to by law take $1. So I’ll take $1 a year. But I don’t even know what it is. Do you know what the salary is,” he asked the host of 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl. She explained that he would be forgoing $400,000.

And Trump repeated that he would not take the salary. To US presidents – Herbert Hoover and John F Kennedy – had donated their salaries to charity in the past.

Also during the interview, the president-elect told his supporters to keep their cool against the anti-Trump protests in different cities. He said women might have to travel to different states for abortions if the pro-life Supreme Court judges he appoints overturn an old verdict on this.

He asserted he planned to deport or imprison 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants.

Clear winner: Latest vote count revealed that Hillary Clinton now holds a 668,483 lead over the Trump in popular vote count. She obtained 61,039,676 votes compared to Trump’s 60,371,193 votes.

In the US political system 270 electorate votes are necessary to become the president. Popular votes are no guarantee to win enough number of the electorates. This has happened several times in the past.

“As states still gather their final tallies, Clinton’s lead figures to grow even more. It’s possible Clinton will wind up with 2 million more votes than Trump, a 1.5 percentage point advantage,” The New York Times reported.

If it happens Clinton would have a larger margin of victory than Richard Nixon had over Hubert Humphrey in 1968 or John F Kennedy had over Nixon in 1960.

There has been an ongoing debate in the US whether or not he Electoral College should be abolished and the president be elected through popular votes. Clinton victory in popular votes is likely to embolden the resolve and demands of anti-Trump protests, which entered sixth day.