Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump on Tuesday in her bid for the White House, being overcome by one of the most tumultuous campaigns in history.
At just after 2:30 a.m. EST, Republican nominee Donald Trump was announced as winner of the presidential election by The Associated Press, surpassing the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to secure the presidency.
The former secretary of state lost states such as Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, which proved fatal in her bid for the presidency.
CNN and MSNBC confirmed that Clinton conceded the election to Trump over the phone. She opted against speaking in front of the crowd gathered for her at the Jacob Javitz Center in Manhattan.
That came less than an hour after her campaign chair, John Podesta, told supporters to go home from the event and “wait a little longer” and that they would not “have anything more to say tonight.”
Her path to the presidency proved more difficult than originally anticipated ahead of the 2016 election cycle, and it ended up being too much to overcome, even against the unparalleled controversy sparked by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The attacks against her from Trump were among the most brutal in US political history.
During a presidential debate, Trump threatened to jail her for her use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state in what was the boiling point of near constant “lock her up” chants at his raucous rallies.
Trump, dubbing her “Crooked Hillary,” chiefly attacked Clinton for her past political decisions, her “stamina,” and her husband’s well-documented sexual history — even as the New York businessman was hobbled by countless controversies along the trail, namely when an October leaked tape showed him boasting about being able to make unwanted sexual advances on women in 2005 because he was famous. Subsequently, a fleet of women came forward to allege that he had made unwanted sexual advances on them.
Clinton also dealt with the blowback of an FBI investigation into her of the server, which she was originally cleared in July of further legal action by FBI Director James Comey, only to have Comey announce in a letter to congressional leaders in late October that he had discovered new emails from an unrelated investigation “pertinent” to the email case, setting off a firestorm less than two weeks ahead of the election. That matter was only resolved two days before Election Day.
Another problem for Clinton was the litany of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks and other hackers from the Democratic National Committee and from the personal account of her campaign chairman, John Podesta. One email revealed a transcript for a speech Clinton had delivered to Wall Street in which she said that she had a “public” and “private” position on issues.
Even though she gathered the support of her party, as well as prominent independents and Republicans who were dismayed with Trump’s vitriolic, anger driven campaign, Clinton was not able to overcome some of the largest stumbling blocks a candidate has faced in an election.
With an oft-erratic opponent, Clinton trailed in the general election cycle for only a handful of days, maintaining a substantial lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average throughout most of the cycle. But on Election Day, it proved all-for-naught.