Report: Obama Ultimately Convinced Clinton to Concede on Election Night
A new report suggests that Hillary Clinton’s concession call to Donald Trump in the early morning hours of Nov. 9 to congratulate him on winning the presidential election may not have happened if it weren’t for the urging of President Obama.
Amie Parnes, who serves as chief White House correspondent for The Hill, and Jonathan Allen are writing a book about Clinton’s defeat in the election. Among the stories they have compiled is the tale of what happened as the stunning results seemed to all but guarantee a Trump victory.
Parnes and Allen say that according to sources within the Clinton campaign and the White House, just after the Associated Press called Pennsylvania on behalf of Trump at approximately 1:30 a.m. EST, the president called Clinton.
His message was simple.
“You need to concede,” he told Clinton.
Clinton ultimately agreed to call Trump, but according to Parnes and Allen, not without hearing plenty of objections from members of her own staff, who believed there was still a chance Michigan and Wisconsin could turn into victories for Clinton.
“There was a lot of discussion about Michigan and Wisconsin and whether the numbers could flip it,” The Hill quoted one of the sources as saying.
While campaign chairman John Podesta went on stage to address supporters who had gathered to for what was anticipated to be a Clinton victory party at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City — he ultimately told them to go home for the evening because there were still votes being counted in the Rust Belt states — Clinton finally listened to what the president had suggested and decided to call Trump.
The Michigan outcome was so close — approximately 13,000 votes — that the state conducted its own recall, only to determine this week that Trump won by slightly more than 10,000 votes. The win officially gives Trump 306 electoral votes.
With Green Party candidate Jill Stein and other liberals demanding recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, there are some conservatives pointing out the irony that Trump was ridiculed for not coming out and saying during the third presidential debate that he would automatically accept the results of the election if he were to lose. And yet, more than two weeks after the election, some on the Democratic side are the ones not willing to accept the results because Clinton has lost.
Stein said Friday that her online efforts have raised more than $4.5 million to launch recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Officials with the Obama administration are not among those unwilling to accept the results. In fact, the White House has tried to dissuade the financial and logistical investments necessary to challenge the final vote totals because it does not want to be seen as doing anything to disrupt the smooth transition of power between the Obama and Trump administrations.
Clinton has also not lobbied for any official examination of the results, although Podesta has reportedly been contacted by a group of data experts who claim they’ve seen circumstantial evidence of “irregularities” in some of the vote totals, particularly in certain counties in Wisconsin. (For more from the author of “Report: Obama Ultimately Convinced Clinton to Concede on Election Night” please click HERE)
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