HILLARY Clinton called Donald Trump to concede the White House on Wednesday morning, minutes after she sent her campaign chairman to her supporters’ party to say: “It’s not over.”
John Podesta was dispatched by the Democratic candidate to tell a tear-stained crowd in Manhattan’s Javits Centre that she would not emerge until the morning and until “every vote is counted.”
But just minutes later Clinton gave up the race, calling her Republican rival to tell him she was standing down, Mail online said.
Podesta spoke shortly after Donald Trump passed the 270 mark in the Electoral College after Pennsylvania and Wisconsin chose the Republican.
Trump won with 276 electoral votes to Clinton’s 218, and 48 per cent of the popular vote to her 47.
Clinton is due to give her concession speech later on Wednesday.
The candidate has not been seen since she holed up in the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday, which served as a holding area while the results rolled in.
According to a press pool report her camp “noshed a little bit” on a buffet that included salmon, roasted carrots, vegan pizza, and French fries as they awaited the results.
Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky were there, along with children Charlotte and Aiden.
Also “milling around” were long time aide Huma Abedin, campaign manager Robby Mook, former aide Philippe Reines, and communications director Jennfier Palieri.
Only a few Clinton campaign surrogates were on hand at the Clinton party to address reporters and do TV interviews. But when the news went south for Clinton, the aides vanished.
Clinton remained in hiding Wednesday as her camp absorbed the shocking news along with the rest of the country.
Instead of savouring victory, she is now contemplating the ruins of a political career, thanks to her own self-destructing campaign.
Podesta spoke to the crowd shortly after Donald Trump passed the 270 mark in the Electoral College after Pennsylvania and Wisconsin chose the Republican.
The campaign chair said he wants ‘every person in this hall to know’ that “your voices and your enthusiasm means so much to her … and to all of us.”
But moments later the Democrat called her rival to concede, after one of the nastiest electoral races in living memory.
It was not immediately clear why Clinton did not choose to address her supporters. When Podesta first came out to address the crowd, his call that “every vote should count” hinted at a possible legal strategy to challenge close elections.
But not long after Podesta’s vague statement, Clinton called Trump to concede the race, her spokesman confirmed.
The campaign didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about why she didn’t speak to her backers.
Trump appeared moments later onstage to give his victory speech, saying the forgotten people of the country “will be forgotten no longer.”
It is a second disappointment for Clinton. who fought back from a 2008 defeat to win a second chance at the presidency and try to break through the ultimate “glass ceiling.”
But in the end it was her own campaign and Democrats’ hopes of extending the Obama legacy that were shattered.
Rather than going down as the first woman president, she became the Democrat who failed to extend the run of a fairly popular two-term president during a prolonged economic recovery – and lost an election to a political novice with a killer instinct for political attacks, but whose own party held him at a distance.
Her defeat had one mother, herself, but many fathers, including husband Bill Clinton, Russian President Vladimir Putin (according to U.S. intelligence), FBI Director James Comey, and disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner.
and then