Clinton, Obama pledge to unite behind Trump presidency

By Steve Holland and John Whitesides

(Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump put aside the celebrations and focused on his 73-day transition to the White House on Wednesday as rival Hillary Clinton promised to bury the bitterness of their long presidential race and work to unify a divided country.

After Trump's stunning upset of the heavily favoured Clinton, Democratic President Barack Obama and leading figures in the Republican Party who had struggled to make peace with Trump all vowed to move past the ugliness of an angry campaign to seek common ground.

"Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead," Clinton, the Democratic nominee, said in a concession speech in New York, joined by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea.

 

With a row of American flags in the background, she told supporters her loss was painful "and it will be for a long time," and that she had offered to work with Trump as he prepares to begin his four-year term on Jan. 20.

A wealthy real estate developer and former reality TV host, Trump rode a wave of anger toward Washington insiders to win Tuesday's election against Clinton, whose gold-plated establishment resume included stints as a first lady, U.S. senator and Obama's secretary of state.

Trump's victory marked a crushing end to Clinton's second quest to be the first woman elected president. She also failed in a White House bid in 2008.

Obama, who campaigned hard against Trump, invited him to the White House for a meeting on Thursday after a brutal night for the Democratic Party, which also fell short of recapturing majorities in both chambers of Congress.

"We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country," Obama said at the White House, adding that he and his staff would work with Trump to ensure a successful transition. "We are not Democrats first, we are not Republicans first, we are Americans first."

Trump and his senior aides were meeting at Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday to begin the transition. "They are hunkered down in meetings, plotting the next steps, the transition, the first 100 days, key staff positions," said a source close to Trump's campaign.

Trump will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress that could help him implement his legislative agenda and appoint a Supreme Court justice to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Now, Donald Trump will lead a unified Republican government and we will work hand-in-hand on a positive agenda to tackle this country's big challenges," House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who had a strained relationship with Trump, told reporters, saying Trump had earned a mandate in the election.

TRUMP PRIORITIES

In an Oct. 25 Reuters interview, Trump said his top priorities when he took office would be building stronger borders, repealing Obama's national healthcare plan, aiding military veterans and working to create more jobs.

In his victory speech early on Wednesday, he also promised to embark on a project to rebuild American infrastructure and to double U.S. economic growth.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that repealing the healthcare plan known as Obamacare would be a "pretty high item" on the agenda. [nL1N1DA2ZE] House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that she spoke to Trump about passing a "robust" jobs bill.

Worried that a Trump victory could cause economic and global uncertainty, investors initially fled stocks worldwide but Wall Street made a dramatic turnaround and the U.S. dollar hit its highest level against the Japanese yen in nearly four months.

The Mexican peso recouped some losses after falling to a record low. The currency has been vulnerable to Trump's threats to rip up a free trade agreement with Mexico and to tax money sent home by migrants to pay to build a border wall.

Scattered protests broke out around the country over Trump's triumph. In Berkeley, California, outside San Francisco, some 1,500 high school students and teachers walked out of classes chanting, "not our president." Smaller groups of students walked out of classes in nearby Oakland and in Seattle, Washington, while several hundred students protested at the University of Texas, according to local reports.

Speaking to cheering supporters in a New York hotel ballroom after his victory, Trump said it was time to heal divisions after a campaign that exposed deep differences among Americans.

"It is time for us to come together as one united people," Trump said. "I will be president for all Americans."

His comments were an abrupt departure from his campaign trail rhetoric in which he repeatedly branded Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" amid supporters' chants of "lock her up."

Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, on Wednesday did not rule out the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's past conduct, a threat Trump made in an election debate last month.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it hoped the tradition of not using the criminal justice system to extract revenge on political opponents would continue under Trump.

Despite losing the state-by-state electoral battle that determines the U.S. presidency, Clinton narrowly led Trump in the nationwide popular vote, according to U.S. media tallies.

Fuelling his upset was Trump's avid support among white non-college educated workers. He ran up big leads in rural areas, beating Clinton by 27 percentage points among voters outside of urban areas, a Reuters/Ipsos Election Day poll found.

While Clinton, 69, won Hispanics and black and young voters, she did not win those groups by greater margins than Obama did in 2012. Younger blacks did not support Clinton like they did Obama. She won eight of 10 black voters between the ages of 35 and 54. Obama won almost 100 percent of those voters in 2012.

At 70, Trump will be the oldest first-term U.S. president. The presidency will be Trump's 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 also from many in his own party.

GOOD NEWS FOR RUSSIA

Foreign leaders pledged to work with Trump but some officials expressed alarm that the vote could mark the end of an era in which Washington promoted democratic values and was seen by its allies as a guarantor of peace.

During the campaign, Trump expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioned central tenets of the NATO military alliance and suggested that Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to shoulder their own defence burden.

Russia and Putin appeared to be winners from Trump's victory. Defying years of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy, the Republican had promised much warmer relations with Moscow, despite Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war and its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Russia's parliament erupted in applause after a lawmaker announced that Trump had been elected, and Putin told foreign ambassadors he was ready to fully restore ties with Washington.

"It is not an easy path but we are ready to do our part and do everything to return Russian and American relations to a stable path of development," Putin said.

Russia is hoping that improved relations could yield an elusive prize: the lifting or easing of sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union to punish Moscow for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sparred with Obama, spoke by phone to Trump, who proposed they meet "at the first opportunity," Netanyahu's office said. Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing and Washington shared responsibility for promoting global development and prosperity.

Iran urged Trump to stay committed to the nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers. Several authoritarian and right-wing leaders hailed Trump's victory.

Other officials abroad, some with senior roles in government, took the unusual step of denouncing the outcome, calling it a worrying signal for liberal democracy and tolerance in the world.

"Trump is the pioneer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. He is also a warning for us," German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with the Funke newspaper group.

U.S. neighbour Mexico was pitched into deep uncertainty by the victory for Trump, who has often accused it of stealing U.S. jobs and sending criminals across the U.S. border.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist "America First" path.

He wants to rewrite international trade deals to reduce trade deficits and has taken positions that raise the possibility of damaging relations with America's most trusted allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Trump survived a series of blows on the campaign, 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 apologised 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.

A Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll offered some clues to the outcome. It found Clinton badly underperformed expectations with women, winning their vote by only about 2 percentage points.

(Writing by John Whitesides and Alistair Bell; Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Emily Stephenson and Christopher Kahn in New York, Letitia Stein in St. Petersburg, Florida, Luciana Lopez in Miami, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem and Kim Palmer in Ohio; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)