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By Britt Nelson
The winning Trump Train — with hot smoking brakes, low on coal and packed with “deplorables” — pulled up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue early Wednesday morning and parked in front of the White House.
In a come-from-behind historical victory, Republican Donald J. Trump will become the 45thpresident of the United States of America on Jan. 20, 2017. The controversial New York real estate mogul is the first president to be elected having never held an elected office before and with no military experience.
Going into the general election Democrat Hillary Clinton led Trump in most of the polls but not all the polls. Some of the polls were right on the money.
By early this morning, with three states yet to be declared, Trump had amassed 289 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 218 votes, surpassing the required 270 votes. The popular vote across the nation was extremely close at 47 percent each for Trump and Clinton with only about 150,000 more votes for Trump.
As election night progressed Clinton’s supporters, who had gathered for a victory party at a Manhattan convention center, looked shell shocked and stunned. Many were crying and hugging each other with sad looks of dismay, confusion and disbelief.
From Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel, Trump spoke to his supporters at about 3 a.m. Wednesday and said he had received a telephone call from Clinton who offered him her congratulations on winning the presidency. As Trump spoke his 10-year-old son Baron stood next to him along with his mother Melania Trump and the rest of Trump’s family.
“She congratulated us on our victory,” Trump said to his cheering supporters who had filled the hotel’s grand ballroom and had waited for hours until Trump’s win was official. “And I congratulated her … she worked hard … It is time for us to come together as one united people … I will be president for every American and this is so important to me.”
Clinton chose not to appear publicly, optioning to send her campaign manager John Podesta to tell her supporters it was time to go home. Clinton instead spoke later Wednesday morning in New York City to officially concede the election to Trump.
Trump’s unprecedented win is due to angry working Americans, Christians and Independents showing up at the polls in record numbers and voting for real change to come to Washington, DC.
On June 16, 2015, Trump announced his presidential candidacy and he went up against 16 other Republican challengers, who one-by-one dropped out of the race as debate after debate was held across the country leaving Trump the last man standing and winning the Republican nomination for president in July.
In Clinton’s final and largest campaign rally in Philadelphia Monday night with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, along with former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea, she seemed confident of winning the presidency.
“I’m closing this campaign the way I started my career, fighting for kids and families, standing up for fairness and opportunity, for justice, equality, taking on all those kitchen table issues that keep people up at night,” Clinton said.
Certainly, one of Trump’s first actions as president will be to submit to the U.S. Senate his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Antonin Scalia who died earlier this year. With a Republican controlled U.S. Senate, Trump’s nominee should be confirmed quickly. President Obama submitted his nominee, but the U.S. Senate never held confirmation hearings preferring to wait until the election was over.
Trump has promised to repeal and replace President Obama’s signature accomplishment the failing Affordable Health Care Act. Also, Trump has pledged that many or all of President Obama’s executive actions will be reversed thereby diminishing the president’s long-term legacy.
It remains to be seen if Clinton’s legal problems involving her email scandal and the ongoing FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation will continue to haunt her now that she will remain a private citizen and retired to her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
This long and surprising presidential campaign has shown the need for massive changes in the way the United States of America elects its leaders in federal, state and local elections. The creation of an Independent Party equal in every way with the Democratic and Republican Parties is a long overdue necessity.
Liberal political commentator Juan Williams with Fox News, in the days prior to the election said, “The actual election won’t end the craziness. This year’s campaign is just the latest chapter in years of polarized, dysfunctional national politics.” This is why Trump won the election because of continuing gridlock between Democrats and Republicans that has resulted in a do-nothing Congress that has lost touch with the American people and their needs.
In a Facebook post early on Election Day, Valorie Tintinger, of Oregon, commented, “America is in labor now. In about eight hours we should know if it’s a boy or a girl.”
Well folks it’s a smiling billionaire boy.
About the Author
Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.
Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.
