On election night, John Podesta told Hillary Clinton’s supporters the election wasn’t over so please go home. At almost the same time, Clinton evidently called President-elect Trump to concede the race.
At the time, it struck me as a rather rude gesture to the people who had come out that night to support her. Some people suggested it was because she didn’t have a concession speech ready, but there were plenty of reports from earlier that day that she did.
Now we apparently have the answer: Obama himself intervened and demanded she concede:
Authors Amie Parnes, The Hill’s senior White House correspondent, and Jonathan Allen cite three Clintonworld sources familiar with the election-night request in the unreleased book from Crown Publishing.
“You need to concede,” Obama told his former secretary of State as she, her family, and her top aides continued to watch results trickle in from the key Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The latter state, called after 1:30 a.m. by The Associated Press, was the clear tipping point for the White House race, ensuring Trump would crest over the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to win. Clinton ultimately heeded Obama’s advice and called Trump to acknowledge her defeat in the early morning hours Wednesday.
The result was that in the moments leading up to Trump’s victory speech, pundits on many of the television networks were speculating right up until his victory speech that he would declare victory without any admission of defeat from Clinton. (A couple of the networks did get word of the concession call before he spoke.)
