US Election: Donald Trump Emerges As American 45th President
A
wealthy real-estate developer and former reality TV host, Trump rode a
wave of anger toward Washington insiders to defeat Clinton, whose
gold-plated establishment resume includes stints as a first lady, U.S.
senator and secretary of state.
Worried a
Trump victory could cause economic and global uncertainty, investors
were in full flight from risky assets such as stocks. In overnight
trading, S&P 500 index futures fell 5 percent to hit their so-called
limit down levels, indicating they would not be permitted to trade any
lower until regular U.S. stock market hours on Wednesday.
The
Associated Press and Fox News projected that Trump had collected just
enough of the 270 state-by-state electoral votes needed to win a
four-year term that starts on Jan. 20, taking battleground states where
presidential elections are traditionally decided.
CNN reported Clinton had called Trump to concede concede the election.
A short time earlier, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told supporters at her election rally in New York to go home. "Several states are too close to call so we're not going to have anything more to say tonight," he said.
Victorious in
a cliffhanger race that opinion polls had forecast was Clinton's to
win, Trump won avid support among a core base of white non-college
educated workers with his promise to be the "greatest jobs president that God ever created."
His
win raises a host of questions for the United States at home and
abroad. He campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more
isolationist, protectionist "America First" path. He has vowed to impose
a 35 percent tariff on goods exported to the United States by U.S.
companies that went abroad.
Both
candidates, albeit Trump more than Clinton, had historically low
popularity ratings in an election that many voters characterized as a
choice between two unpleasant alternatives.
Trump,
who at 70 will be the oldest first-term U.S. president, came out on top
after a bitter and divisive campaign that focused largely on the
character of the candidates and whether they could be trusted to serve
as the country's 45th president.
The
presidency will be his first elected office, and it remains to be seen
how he will work with Congress. During the campaign Trump was the target
of sharp disapproval, not just from Democrats but from many in his own
party.
Television networks projected
Republicans would retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives,
where all 435 seats were up for grabs. In the U.S. Senate, the party
also put up an unexpectedly tough fight to protect its majority in the
U.S. Senate.
Trump entered the race 17
months ago and survived a series of seemingly crippling blows, many of
them self-inflicted, including the emergence in October of a 2005 video
in which he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women. He
apologized but within days, several women emerged to say he had groped
them, allegations he denied. He was judged the loser of all three
presidential debates with Clinton.
TOUTS HIS BUSINESS ACUMEN
During
the campaign, Trump said he would make America great again through the
force of his personality, negotiating skill and business acumen. He
proposed refusing entry to the United States of people from war-torn
Middle Eastern countries, a modified version of an earlier proposed ban
on Muslims.
His volatile nature and
unorthodox proposals led to campaign feuds with a long list of people,
including Muslims, the disabled, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain,
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the family of a slain Muslim-American
soldier, a Miss Universe winner and a federal judge of Mexican heritage.
Throughout
his campaign - and especially in his acceptance speech at the
Republican National Convention in July - Trump described a dark America
that had been knocked to its knees by China, Mexico, Russia and Islamic
State. The American dream was dead, he said, smothered by malevolent
business interests and corrupt politicians, and he alone could revive
it.
He offered vague plans to win
economic concessions from China, to build a wall on the southern U.S.
border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants and to pay for it
with tax money sent home by migrants.
The
Mexican peso plunged to its lowest-ever levels. The peso had become a
touchstone for sentiment on the election as Trump threatened to rip up a
free trade agreement with Mexico.
His
triumph was a rebuke to President Barack Obama, a Democrat who spent
weeks flying around the country to campaign against him. Obama will hand
over the office to Trump after serving the maximum eight years allowed
by law.
Trump promises to push Congress
to repeal Obama's troubled healthcare plan and to reverse his Clean
Power Plan. He plans to create jobs by relying on U.S. fossil fuels such
as oil and gas.
CLINTON'S FAILED SECOND BID
Trump's
victory marked a frustrating end to the presidential aspirations of
Clinton, 69, who for the second time failed in her drive to be elected
the first woman U.S. president.
In a
posting on Twitter, Clinton acknowledged a battle that was unexpectedly
tight given her edge in opinion polls going into Election Day.
"This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything," she tweeted.
The
wife of former President Bill Clinton and herself a former U.S.
senator, she held a steady lead in many opinion polls for months. Voters
perceived in her a cautious and calculating candidate and an inability
to personally connect with them.
Even
though the FBI found no grounds for criminal charges after a probe into
her use of a private email server rather than a government system while
she was secretary of state, the issue allowed critics to raise doubts
about her integrity. Hacked emails also showed a cozy relationship
between her State Department and donors to her family's Clinton
Foundation charity.
Trump seized on the
emails to charge that Clinton represented a corrupt political system in
Washington that had to be swept clean.
Trump's
national security ideas, opposed by most of the elite voices across the
political spectrum, have simultaneously included promises to build up
the U.S. military while at the same time avoiding foreign military
entanglements.
He wants to rewrite
international trade deals to reduce trade deficits. He has taken
positions that raise the possibility of damaging relations with
America's most trusted allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
He has promised to warm relations with Russia that have chilled under Obama over Russian President Vladimir Putin's intervention in the Syrian civil war and his seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
"Wouldn't it be nice if we could get along with Russia?" he said at many rallies.
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