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London / AFP
Political novice and former reality TV star Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton to take the US presidency, stunning America and the world in an explosive upset fueled by a wave of grassroots anger.
The Republican mogul immediately pledged to unite a deeply divided nation. But global markets had already plunged into turmoil and the long-standing global political order, which hinges on Washington’s leadership, was cast into doubt.
Around the world, as the once feared prospect of a Trump presidency settled in as cold, hard reality, the November surprise was greeted with warnings that America has lurched into a national crisis, its leader “an unstable bigot, sexual predator and compulsive liar,” in the words of Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.
Trump called for national reconciliation in his first comments after Clinton conceded defeat in a result that virtually no poll had dreamed of predicting, her hopes of becoming the first female US president brutally dashed. “Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division,” Trump told a cheering crowd of jubilant supporters in the early hours of Wednesday in New York, pledging to work with Democrats in office.
“I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans,” he declared.
Trump praised Clinton—in the last presidential debate, he called her a “nasty woman”—for her hard work and years of public service. His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the pair had a “very gracious, very warm conversation” by phone that lasted about a minute.
“We owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said of Clinton, whose hopes of becoming America’s first woman president were brutally dashed.
In his first post-election tweet, Trump wrote: “The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. We will all come together as never before.”
As day broke in Washington, the White House said President Barack Obama called Trump to congratulate him. Trump will visit him there Thursday.
During a bitter two-year campaign that tugged at America’s democratic fabric, the 70-year-old tycoon pledged to deport illegal immigrants, ban Muslims from the country and tear up free trade deals.
There was no disguising the concern of Washington’s European partners that Trump’s victory might destroy the Western alliance they still regard as a touchstone for stability and the rule of law.
Nervous allies
Russia’s autocratic leader Vladimir Putin said he wanted to rebuild “full-fledged relations” with the United States after Trump’s victory, as he warmly congratulated the president-elect.
But EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker invited him to an EU-US summit at his “earliest convenience” to seek reassurances about transatlantic ties.
And NATO head Jens Stoltenberg warned Trump, who spoke during the campaign of making US allies take a bigger share of the Western security burden, that “US leadership is more important than ever.”
Trump openly courted Putin during the race, called US support for NATO allies in Europe into question and suggested that South Korea and Japan should develop their own nuclear weapons.
Some of the most enthusiastic support for Trump came from far-right and nationalist politicians in Europe such as French opposition figure Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League and British euroskeptic Nigel Farage.
Trump will become America’s 45th commander-in-chief of the world’s sole true superpower on January 20.
The results prompted a global market sell-off, with stocks plunging across Asia and Europe and billions being wiped off the value of investments.
Trump’s message was embraced by a large section of America’s white majority who have grown increasingly disgruntled by the scope of social and economic change in the last eight years under Obama, their first black president.
Many Americans from minority backgrounds expressed dismay at Trump’s victory, which some observers blamed on a backlash against multicultural America.
Although he has no government experience and in recent years has been as well known for running beauty pageants and starring on his reality television series “The Apprentice” as he is for building his property empire, Trump is the oldest man ever elected president.
Yet, during his improbable political rise, Trump has constantly proved the pundits and standard political wisdom wrong.
Opposed by the senior hierarchy of his own Republican Party, he trounced more than a dozen better-funded and more experienced rivals in the party primary.
During the race, he was forced to ride out credible allegations of sexual assault from a dozen women.
And, unique in modern US political history, he refused to release his tax returns—leaving a question mark over how much, if any, tax he has paid while running a global empire.
Watchdog warns Trump to respect press freedomÂ
Paris / AFP
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders warned US president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to respect press freedom, accusing him of bullying journalists throughout his controversial election campaign. The Paris-based group said it was alarmed by threats made by Trump that he would reform US libel laws so that “when the New York Times or the Washington Post writes a hit piece (critical of him), we can sue them.”
The Republican, who won a shock victory over favourite Democrat Hillary Clinton, also revoked the credentials of Washington Post journalists following him, complaining of the “phoney and dishonest” coverage their paper was giving him, it said in a statement.
Trump win ‘opens
period of uncertainty’
Paris / AFP
French President Francois Hollande, who once said Donald Trump made him want to retch, warned on Wednesday that the Republican billionaire’s stunning victory in the US election “opens a period of uncertainty.”In a televised address, Hollande underlined that the United States was a key partner for business, for solving wars in the Middle East and tackling global warming—something Trump has dismissed as a hoax. “This American election opens a period of uncertainty,” he said in a statement that offered only brief congratulations to the Republican billionaire. As well as France keeping up its global role, “this context calls for a united Europe, capable of making itself heard and of promoting policies wherever its interests or its values are challenged,” he said.
Hollande, who has disastrous approval ratings ahead of France’s presidential election next year, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and in October had predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton.