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Donald Trump

WASHINGTON. — US President Barack Obama says it is not surprising that at this early stage of the presidential election process, Donald Trump is receiving a lot of attention, but he cannot win the White House in 2016. Trump continues to lead the Republican field nationally in the race to become a nominee for president.

According to the new poll by the CBS News, the real-estate mogul leads the Republican pack with 27 percent support, showing no changes since one month ago, when the previous edition of the survey was carried out. “He knows how to get attention. He is, you know, the classic reality TV character, and at this early stage, it’s not surprising that he’s gotten a lot of attention,” Obama said of Trump in an interview broadcasted on CBS News on Sunday.

“I don’t think he’ll end up being president of the United States,” Obama said. Trump’s presidential campaign has been marked by controversial statements, including disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants. Obama has meanwhile defended former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server despite controversies surrounding the issue.

Clinton’s use of the private e-mail server while she was the top US diplomat in Obama’s first tenure “is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered,” the president said in an interview with the CBS.

However, Obama noted that Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server was ‘‘a mistake’’ since “as a general proposition, when we’re in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data.”

He added that there is no evidence the private system was used to “hide something or to squirrel away information.” Now former CIA/NSA contractor, Steven D Kelly says Obama’s reaction is typical of people in these situations. “They each have dirt on each other. Certainly, Hillary knows Obama’s complicit in many crimes and certainly the information contained on her private server would implicate Hillary in many crimes,” Kelly pointed out.

Clinton, the former first lady, is currently the leading presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. — Press TV.