By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
Donald Trump, in a major upset, was elected
the 45th president of the United States over Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Donald Trump, US President-elect. |
He took the stage early Wednesday morning
before a raucous crowd of supporters in midtown Manhattan.
“I just received a call from Secretary
Clinton,” he said. “She congratulated us on our victory. And I congratulated
her on a hard-fought campaign.”
He praised Clinton for the hard work she’s
done for the country, and told the crowd that “we owe her a major debt of
gratitude” for her service to our country.
Polls going into Election Day had largely
shown Clinton ahead by a few points, though the expectation was that the race
would be tight. By early Wednesday, Trump had won 289 electoral votes and the
popular vote, compared to Clinton’s 218. Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire
had not been counted yet, and Trump lost his home state of New
York. After a bitterly fought election, Trump delivered a unifying
message -- he called on all Republicans and Democrats to “come together as one
united people” and he pledged “to every citizen that I will be president for
all our citizens.”
It was a remarkably conciliatory speech from a
candidate who had employed more fiery rhetoric his campaign and endured few
slights silently.
“The forgotten men and women of our country
will be forgotten no longer,” he promised.
Trump pledged to fix our inner cities, rebuild
the nation’s infrastructure, and “finally take care of our great
veterans.”
America “will no longer settle for anything less
than the best,” he pledged. The U.S. will double its growth and have the
“strongest economy anywhere in the world,” Trump said. And he promised to seek
common ground and “not hostility.”
Clinton’s concession call came as a surprise
to some of her staffers, who first heard of her call from reporters. Indeed,
not long before Trump spoke, the Democratic nominee had dispatched her campaign
manager, John Podesta to her election watching party at the Javits Center to
send her supporters home and wait for more conclusive results.
The crowd, which had appeared worried and
despondent on TV screens as the returns for Clinton showed an ever narrower
path to victory listened as Podesta told them it had been a long campaign, “But
I can say, we can wait a little longer, can’t we,” he asked. “They’re still
counting votes, and every vote should count.”
Clinton and her campaign had been confident of
victory going into election night, CBS News’ Nancy Cordes reported. All of the
data they were looking at told them she would win. And in the early hours
Wednesday, Cordes said her campaign was going over the data again, while also
looking for any voting irregularities that might have occurred.
Trump’s victory was a stunning upset -- the
political neophyte, who thought little of data gathering, the ground game or TV
ads, ended up carrying several key battleground states, including states
Democrats had little to no expectation of losing.
The fears of Trump’s down-ballot effect also
turned out to be unfounded. The Senate remains in Republican hands, as does the
House.
Trump’s dominance was also seen during the
primary season, when he knocked out 16 other Republican rivals in his party’s
primaries earlier this year, with a candidacy built on the slogan of “making
America great again” -- a promise predicated on increased isolationism. He has
proposed a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S., the building of a wall on the
southern border, the tearing up of international trade deals, and the reworking
of defense treaties.
While garnering only lackluster support for
his legislative agenda among top Republican lawmakers, Trump also alienated
many for his controversial rhetoric both on the campaign trail.
Early in his primary bid, the New York
businessman targeted Arizona Sen. John McCain,
his party’s former presidential nominee and a Vietnam War veteran, and said he
wasn’t a war hero “he was captured” as a prisoner of war. His attacks on his
own party elders didn’t end there: Later, Trump lashed out at vocal critic
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham by giving away his personal cell phone
number at a campaign rally. Trump mocked the disability of a New York Times
reporter at a campaign rally after he contested the candidate’s account of New
Jersey Muslims celebrating 9/11.After he became the Republican nominee, Trump
called House Speaker Paul Ryan a weak and ineffective leader.
During the general election, after Khizr Khan,
the father of a Muslim soldier who lost his life fighting in the Iraq War, gave
a speech at the Democratic convention criticizing Trump, the real estate
magnate leveled criticisms at the Gold Star family. And of the women who
came forward and accused him of sexually predatory behavior spanning decades,
he suggested they were lying -- and also unattractive enough for him to even
consider assaulting.
Clinton, the strong media and polling favorite
to win the election, targeted all those controversies in her campaign against
Trump -- to little avail. The Democratic nominee has not yet given a concession
speech.
CBS News’ Hannah Fraser-Chanpong contributed
to this report
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