Donald Trump has won the presidency – taking Pennsylvania to
secure 274 electoral college votes
Trump accepted the mantle of leadership with
uncharacteristic humility nearly three hours after Election Day was over
Hillary Clinton made the private call to Trump to concede
shortly after sending her campaign chairman to give her supporters exactly the
opposite message, that it was not over
She had just 218 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win
when Trump's victory emerged
In Trump's victor speech, he thanked Democratic nominee
Clinton, who had called him minutes earlier to concede the presidential race
He was joined on stage by his family, vice president running
mate Mike Pence and several supporters from the Republican Party
As Clinton's party fell flat and supporters streamed away in
tears, she was locked in a hotel suite just round the corner from Trump
Tower
Donald Trump marked his world-shaking victory over Hillary
Clinton early this morning with a dramatic peace-making gesture, saying: 'We
owe her a debt of gratitude and I mean that very sincerely.
After he sensationally won the White House race, Clinton
phoned him at 2:30 a.m. to concede she had lost.
She made the private call shortly after sending her campaign
chairman to give her supporters exactly the opposite message, that it was not
over – a humiliating and bizarre end to a political career which had put her on
the verge of being the first female president.
Trump accepted the mantle of leadership with
uncharacteristic humility nearly three hours after Election Day was over.
'Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division,'
he began his victory speech just before 3am.
'I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all
Americans – and this is so important to me.
'For those who have chosen not to support me in the past -
of which there were a few people - I'm reaching out to you for your guidance
and your help, so we can work together and unify our great country.
'I promise you that I will not let you down,' he said.
He thanked his parents, saying they were 'wonderful in every
regard'. He thanked his sisters, his brothers, his wife and children 'for
putting up with all of those hours. ... This political stuff was nasty and it
was tough'. He even thanked the U.S. Secret Service.
And in a twist nearly as bizarre as the sum of Campaign
2016, he thanked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who had called him minutes
earlier to concede the presidential race after declining to do it from the
stage of what was to be her own victory party.
Instead of bluster about her classified emails, Trump
brought a gracious acknowledgement of her decades of government service.
She congratulated us – it's about us – on our victory,' he
said. 'And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought
campaign over a very long period of time. We owe her a debt of gratitude and I
mean that very sincerely.
'I mean, she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long
and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of
gratitude for her service to our country.'
No one yelled 'Lock her up!'– an aggressive rallying cry
from Trump's hundreds of rallies and the Republican National Convention in
July.
Clinton has yet to concede the race publicly. Her campaign
chairman John Podesta mad the trek from a Manhattan hotel to the convention
center where confetti cannons were at the ready.
'Several states are too close to call,' he said at the time,
'so we're not going to have anything more to say tonight.
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A Clinton supporter covers her mouth as she breaks down with
emotion over election results on Tuesday
|
Everybody should head home,' Podesta told a ballroom
brimming with thousands of hopeful Democrats. 'You should get some sleep. We'll
have more to say tomorrow.'
Clinton, he said, 'has done an amazing job, and she is not
done yet.
But she was done, and Trump's crowd knew it the moment their
hero spoke.
Bringing all his family members and key staff on stage with
him, Trump thanked his senior aides one by one.
Campaign director Kellyanne Conway waved and smiled. She
curtsied and held both thumbs up, and then stuck around to talk to TV camera
crews until nearly 4 o'clock in the morning.
Dr. Ben Carson, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and even the 'Bridgegate'
scandal-plagued New Jersey Gov Chris Christie got a mention from America's most
improbable president.
Priebus, he said, is 'a superstar.' The two men embraced,
and then the RNC chief pronounced Trump 'the next President of the United
States.
At 3:08 a.m., with Clintonworld in ruins, Trump descended to
the stage into a hotel ballroom and mingled with invited guests and supporters.
Red caps flew in the air. The Rolling Stones played 'You
Can't Always Get What You Want,' perhaps a subtle dig at the Democrats or the
press.
And Vice-President-Elect Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana
for another 73 days, beamed.
'I come to this moment deeply humbled, grateful to God for
his amazing grace,' Pence said as he introduced the man who had vaulted him
into the national spotlight.
'The American people have spoken and the American people
have elected their new champion,' Pence declared.
'America has elected a new president, and it's almost hard
for me to express the honor that I and my family feel, that we will have the
privilege to serve.
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Hillary Clinton supporters cry as they watch the election
results during Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election night
rally in the Jacob Javits Center glass enclosed lobby
|
When Trump emerged on stage along with nearly 50 aides and
family members, he apologized for putting the crowd on pins and needles while
the evening's drama played out.
'Sorry to keep you waiting. Complicated business,' he said.
The bizarre ending to Clinton's political career came after
Trump confounded pollsters at every turn, capturing one 'swing' state after
another in a line of toppled dominoes that stretched across three time zones
and now ends at the White House.
The last to fall was the Keystone State - after Florida,
North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin all went to the Republican. That gave him
274 votes in the electoral college - the winner is the first to achieve 270.
He is also winning in the popular vote by a more than one
per cent margin.
But Clinton is clearly gearing up to go to court across the
country to try to force recounts in close-fought precincts and counties in the
hope of grinding out a victory.
It is precisely the divisive end to the election she accused
Trump of planning when he said last month that he may not accept the result.
If her beyond-the-eleventh-hour tactic fails, Clinton is
contemplating the ruins of her career, a promise of a full-scale investigation
into her and Bill's charity and personal riches by a special prosecutor, and
the Democrats locked out of not just the White House but both houses of
Congress.
There will be a Republican lock on the Supreme Court which
could last a generation.
The victory Trump predicted as America's version of Great
Britain's historic 'Brexit' vote - he said it would be 'Brexit-plus-plus' and
'Brexit times 50' - will be remembered as one of the most astonishing campaigns
in American history.
Pennsylvania, the state where he attended the Wharton School
of Finance and two of his adult children went to boarding schools, put Trump
over the top when the Associated Press declared he had won it in early on
Wednesday morning.
 |
Hillary Clinton supporters cry as they watch the election
results during Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election night
rally in the Jacob Javits Center glass enclosed lobby
|
The last Republican to win the Keystone State was George HW
Bush, who snatched it from Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988.
New York Republican Rep Peter King told reporters that
the nation's next commander-in-chief had seeded the ground for his victory by
identifying with disaffected voters who were upset about job losses and the
implosion of the Obamacare medical insurance law.
'Donald Trump won because he tapped into the discontent and
anger of the American people,' King said. 'It's a wonderful, wonderful night.'
The night unfolded disastrously for Clinton. Holed up in a
hotel suite with her husband and family, her aides stopped speaking to the
press as the results came in.
The first big state to fall was Florida. It seemed
nail-bitingly close for a time – and then Trump won its 29 electoral college
vote.
Ohio fell to Trump without putting up a fight. Even North
Carolina, a nominally blue state, was no contest for the reality television
host and father of skyscrapers.
As vote-counters repainted the Buckeye State from blue to
red - President Barack Obama won it twice - the New York Times' live
presidential forecast gave the billionaire builder an 87 per cent chance of
winning the White House.
That grew to '>95%', its highest possible number. Then it
was effectively over – but there were hours to wait for confirmation.
America's Electoral College system provides one vote for
each member of Congress, including both the Senate and the House of
Representatives, plus three to represent the District of Columbia - 538 in all.
A candidate needs to claim 270 votes, the smallest possible
majority, in order to win the White House. Pennsylvania's 20 votes put Trump
over the top with 274.
Long before the end came, aides to Clinton told Fox News
that she was 'expecting a long night'.
When North Carolina's result was set in stone on Tuesday
night, the Manhattan ballroom where Trump supporters gathered erupted in
screams of 'USA! USA!
As a Florida victory looked imminent, young Trump fans
chanted at giant TVs: 'Call it! Call it! Call it!'
They exploded in a mass of cheers when the Sunshine State
contest was declared over. A few threw their red 'Make America Great Again'
hats in the air.
When Iowa and Wisconsin came through, a spontaneous
rendition of 'God Bless America,' earnest if off-key, drowned out Megyn Kelly's
voice blasting from a TV tuned to the Fox News Channel.
When Michigan made him the President-Elect of the United
States, sternum-rattling bedlam ensued.
Projections making the rounds online and republished by the
Drudge Report news website suggested that 140 million voters are participating,
a new record, far exceeding the 131.4 million total in 2008.
First-time voters, in particular, fueled the massive
increase. Fox News exit polls showed that group swinging toward Clinton by a
55-37 margin, according to Fox News Channel exit polls.
Trump's campaign built its momentum in part on the promise
of bringing a 'silent majority' out of the woodwork. He may not have needed the
help.
Trump, a billionaire first-time candidate whose political
debut was initially seen as an ego-stroking circus act, bested 16 other
Republicans for the right to face Clinton, who has lived and breathed campaigns
and elections for more than 40 years and had only one serious intra-party
rival.
The real estate tycoon built a devoted following of tens of
millions, including large numbers of Americans who had never voted before.
Along the way he angered some in the Republican Party
establishment who saw him as a reckless insult-generator destined to alienate
large swaths of the American electorate.
His campaign was less than a half-hour old when he generated
headlines by saying some illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border were
'murderers,' 'rapists' and other criminal aliens.
While accurate, the statement was contorted to create the
impression that the man who employs thousands of Hispanics at his country clubs
and skyscrapers actually hates them.
The label stuck.
Trump gave his enemies ammunition by repeating more than 500
times a pledge that as president he would wall off America from Mexico,
stemming the flow of narcotics and human chattel while defending the border
from an unchecked flood of immigrants with no legal right to be in the United
States.
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A woman weeps as election results are reported during
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election night rally in the
Jacob Javits Center glass enclosed lobby
|
The brash hip-shooter made his demographic hole deeper by
suggesting that a federal judge hearing a lawsuit against a defunct real estate
training seminar series that bore his name couldn't decide the case fairly –
because his parents were born in Mexico.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the Republican Party's
highest ranking elected official, called Trump's declaration 'the textbook
definition of a racist statement.
More damaging still was a series of episodes that angered
feminists and other powerful women in a year when Trump was running against
America's would-be first female president.
He feuded with Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly, saying
after a testy debate exchange that she had 'blood coming out of her wherever' –
a statement that some interpreted as a jab at her menstrual cycle.
His candidacy brought women out of the woodwork to accuse
him of sexual misconduct of varying severity, including one woman who sued him
for an alleged teen rape – and then withdrew the case when her story fell
apart.
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People in the crowd at Hillary Clinton's 2016 US
presidential Election Night event watch in tears as results come in on a big
screen at the Javits Convention Center
|
Another, a Venezuelan former Miss Universe, alleged that he
called her 'Miss Piggy' when she gained weight after winning the crown, and
denigrated her Latina heritage by calling her 'Miss Housekeeping' in private.
Trump denied every charge, calling his accusers rank
opportunists who sought 15 minutes of fame. Some, he said, were Democratic
plants, and others were cashing in.
He had a harder time explaining a hot-mic audio recording
from a 2005 taping of Access Hollywood, in which he was recorded lewdly describing
the ease with which famous men could sexually assault women in their orbits.
Through it all, Trump's campaign crowds grew, with his
reality-show star power outdrawing every other candidate in both parties.
One early rally drew more than 30,000 people to an Alabama
football stadium. Late in the general election cycle, 17,500 fans blanketed a
field near Fort Bragg in North Carolina to hear him speak.
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