AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States, defeating Hillary Clinton in a stunning upset that reverberated around the world. Trump carried at least 279 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 218, although Trump appears to have narrowly lost the popular vote. As recently as yesterday, some pollsters were predicting Clinton had a 99 percent chance of winning the election, but that was before Trump pulled off victories in the key battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio.

Donald Trump, who has never held elective office, opened his campaign in 2015 with a speech calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. He has proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States. He openly mocked his opponents, reporters, Asians, African Americans and the disabled. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault, and he can be heard in a 2005 videotape boasting about sexually assaulting women. Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump drew the enthusiastic support of the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist and hate groups. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana, cheered the outcome of the election. Duke tweeted, “This is one of the most exciting nights of my life -> make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump! #MAGA [Make America Great Again],” unquote.

Around 2:50 Eastern time this morning, Donald Trump took the stage at the New York Hilton Hotel victory party, saying he had received a phone call from Hillary Clinton congratulating him on the win.

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I have just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us—it’s about us—on our victory. And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she—she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. I mean that very sincerely.

Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I am reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so that we can work together and unify our great country.

As I’ve said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family. It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people.

And serve the people it will. Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream. I’ve spent my entire life in business, looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. That is now what I want to do for our country.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll have more on Donald Trump’s election as 45th president of the United States in a minute.