During the primary campaign, Democrats were up in arms when Donald Trump hinted that he may or may not "accept" the final results of the presidential election, depending on what they were. It's why it was so laughable when Democrats refused to accept the election results following Trump's victory.
We know that Hillary Clinton has remained in deep denial over the outcome. New reports, however, reveal that in addition to her throwing tantrums on election night, former President Obama had to get her on the phone and instruct her to concede the election after she refused to accept the obvious.
"You need to concede," Obama reportedly told Hillary Clinton by telephone after White House calls to her campaign had failed to motivate her. Apparently, Obama even repeated the instruction in a subsequent call to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The Washington Post of all outlets, reports the details:
Around 7:45 on election night, when Hillary Clinton and her aides still thought they were headed to the White House, troubling news emerged from Florida. Steve Schale, the best vote-counter the Democrats had in the state, told campaign officials they were going to lose the biggest battleground in the country. Yes, Clinton was doing well in some places, but Donald Trump’s numbers in Republican areas were inconceivably big.
“You’re going to come up short,” Schale said, stunning aides in Brooklyn who were, until that moment, comfortably cradled in the security of their own faulty analytics.
The call with Schale marks the beginning of a riveting account of the final, dreadful hours of Clinton’s long pursuit of the presidency, as told by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes in their insidery new book, “Shattered.”
As fear gave over to dread in the Peninsula Hotel, the Clinton campaign reacted as you might expect: Bill became furious, Hillary turned stoic, and their cocksure aides started to blame one another. It wasn’t long into the night before Bill Clinton called his old pal, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and told him not to bother coming to New York. There would be no victory to celebrate.
Shortly after 11:00 p.m., after Wisconsin was called by Fox News, Allen and Parnes report that the campaign fielded a series of calls from the White House pushing Hillary Clinton to concede, even though the margins in many states were extraordinarily close. President Barack Obama thought it was over and did not want a messy recount.
First came a call from White House political director David Simas to Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook. “POTUS doesn’t think it’s wise to drag this out,” Simas said.
But Clinton was dragging it out.
So then she got a call from POTUS. “You need to concede,” urged Obama, who repeated the message in a follow-up call to Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Alas, as the exasperated WaPo puts it: "And then the first woman who was going to be president got her opponent on the line and said two words she never expected to say: 'Congratulations, Donald.'"
