Business mogul, reality TV star and now US president-elect Donald Trump has rejected the official US $400,000 salary for the position, sticking to his campaign promise to only take the minimum amount possible.
“I think I have to by law take $1, so I’ll take $1 a year,” he told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview on Sunday.
“No, I’m not going to take the salary. I’m not taking it.”
Mr Trump’s announcement honours his campaign promise from September last year, when he declared he wouldn’t accept a presidential salary.
“The first thing I’m going to do is tell you that if I’m elected president, I’m accepting no salary, OK?” he said. “That’s no big deal for me.”
According to Forbes, Mr Trump is currently worth US$3.7 billion – down US$800 million from last year.
When asked about his taxes—a controversial issue during the presidential race—Trump dismissed the topic by simply saying, “Nobody cares.” “The only one who cares is, you know, you and a few people that asked that question. Obviously, the public didn’t care because I won the election very easily. So they don’t care. I never thought they did care,” he said.
By accepting just $1 a year, he also won’t have to pay a cent in tax.
In the same interview, Mr Trump said he wouldn’t take too many vacations while on the job, saying: “There’s so much work to be done and I want to get it done for the people.”
Mr Trump is the third US president to refuse his salary, after Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and John F Kennedy (1961-1963), who both donated their salaries to charity, according to Snopes.