Trump 7                                                                       photo by Niki Ghosh

 

At around 2:30am this morning, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Donald J. Trump to concede her campaign just moments before he took the stage in New York under the title of the 45th President of the United States.

Trump gave a graceful speech that nobody expected to hear. He opened up by congratulating Clinton on a hard-fought race and paid his respects to her long and extensive political background. He also gave a message to those who did not support him throughout his campaign. He asked that those people guide him and help him in unifying the nation. He called out all Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to “bind the wounds of division.”

What started out as a tight election night soon turned into what many Democrats and Republicans thought was impossible – a Trump Presidency. Trump clinched key battleground states including Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Michigan in a razor-thin fight for the Oval Office. During the tabulations there were talks of a potential re-count because of how closely the numbers were coming in, but it became evident in the early morning as Trump received 278 electoral votes while Clinton’s path to victory became impossible as she trailed at 218. The electoral votes will continue to come in as the day continues. As of 8:00am today, Hillary Clinton has taken a slight lead over Trump in the popular vote. To date, Trump has received in 59,007,205 votes as Clinton has received 59,132,664 votes.

In addition to Trump’s White House win, the Republican Party has taken control of Congress, winning the majority of seats in both Senate and the House of Representatives.

The uncertainty of such a race had stock markets plummeting all over the world. The Dow Jones future fell 750 points at one point during the night.

Donald Trump had been fluctuating in the polls but recently received some validation after FBI Director James Comey’s reopened an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail messages. This pushed Trump in the polls closer than he had been in months, yet his victory still remained unlikely to journalists and polls of the general public.

President Obama has called to congratulate President Elect Trump. Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House tomorrow. It is yet to be determined what a Trump cabinet will look in Washington D.C.