Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election by winning 290 Electoral College votes despite losing the popular vote by more than 1.7 million votes. | Getty NYT: Trump would 'rather do the popular vote'

President-elect Donald Trump would “rather do the popular vote” and was “never a fan of the electoral college,” according to a tweet by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman quoted Trump making these remarks at his meeting with the newspaper's editorial staff on Tuesday.

Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election by winning 290 Electoral College votes despite losing the popular vote by more than 1.7 million votes.

“The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play," Trump tweeted after the election. "Campaigning is much different!”

That tweet represented a 180-degree reversal from 2012, when he tweeted in response to Barack Obama's defeat of Mitt Romney, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."