U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday conceded her presidential election defeat, calling former President Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory and telling her supporters that it was no time to end the fight for a progressive vision for the country.
"It's OK to feel sad and disappointed," she told a crowd at Howard University in Washington, her alma mater. "While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign."
The Democratic candidate said the battle would continue "in the voting booth, in the courts and in the public square."
"Sometimes the fight takes a while," she said. "That doesn't mean we won't win."
Trump won Tuesday's election to become the country's 47th president as he captured at least five of the seven pivotal battleground states and was leading in the other two as vote counting continued. Trump and his vice presidential running mate, first-term Ohio Senator JD Vance, will take office on January 20 for a four-year term.
In a tightly contested race, Trump, a Republican, secured at least 295 of the possible 538 electoral votes, easily giving him the necessary majority to become only the second U.S. leader to win nonconsecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland in the 1890s.
Trump's campaign said that in his call with Harris, he acknowledged her "strength, professionalism and tenacity throughout the campaign, and both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country."
President Joe Biden also called the president-elect to offer his congratulations. The White House said Biden invited Trump to visit the White House soon and "expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition and emphasized the importance of working to bring the country together."
Biden plans to discuss the election in a Thursday speech, the White House said.
Trump, at 78 the oldest elected U.S. presidential candidate, claimed victory early Wednesday as he thanked his supporters at a rally in Florida.
"This was a movement like nobody's ever seen before, and, frankly, this was, I believe, the greatest political movement of all time," Trump said.
Trump, who vowed in his campaign to deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the U.S. back to their homelands, pledged to "fix our borders" with Mexico and "fix everything in our country."
Trump also said he would work to deliver a "strong, safe and prosperous America."
Harris, 60, who joined the race late after Biden dropped out in July, was trying to become the first woman elected to the U.S. presidency and the second Black president after Barack Obama.
Trump is the billionaire head of his family’s New York real estate conglomerate who first emerged on the U.S. political scene in 2015. In winning the presidency again, he overcame an array of obstacles, including scathing condemnations from some of his closest advisers who served him during his 2017-21 term as president.
Some contended that if elected again, Trump would govern as an authoritarian and that he met the definition of a fascist.
He faced two assassination attempts in recent months, with one shot grazing his right ear at a campaign rally.
In Photos: Reaction to US presidential election
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts linked to his hush money payment to a porn film star just ahead of his successful 2016 run for the presidency and faces sentencing on November 26.
He was impeached twice by the House of Representatives stemming from actions during his presidency, including for fomenting a riot at the U.S. Capitol seeking to block his 2020 election loss to Biden, although both times the Senate acquitted him, once after he left office in 2021.
Inroads with voting groups
On Tuesday, exit polls of voters showed that he rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction with the direction of the country under Biden and Harris.
Harris pledged to push for “a new way forward” in the country, characterizing Trump as “an unserious man” and a threat to the country’s democratic norms.
But when first asked the question of what she would have done differently than Biden over his White House tenure, she said, “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Trump linked Harris to rising consumer prices over the last four years and the influx of thousands of undocumented migrants across the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico. Trump accused the immigrants of causing a crime surge in the U.S. despite evidence that violent crime had declined.
Exit polls of voters on Tuesday showed he won a new term in office by winning a majority of votes from men and white voters without college degrees, while cutting into two usual Democratic constituencies, Latinos and young voters.
Trump could win the national popular vote, the first time a Republican has achieved that since 2004, although that will depend on Harris’ final margin in the Democratic stronghold of California, the country’s most populous state.
Trump and Vance will enter office with a new Republican majority in the Senate. Political control in the House of Representatives was uncertain on Wednesday.
Criminal charges
Trump still faces federal criminal charges stemming from his attempt to upend his 2020 election loss and his hoarding of classified national security documents at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office.
But during the campaign, he vowed to fire the prosecutor in both cases, special counsel Jack Smith, “within two seconds” when he takes office and said he would consider pardoning many of the protesters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress met to certify Trump had lost the 2020 election.
Trump pledged during his campaign, without offering specific plans, that if elected, even before he takes office, he would end Russia’s 33-month war on Ukraine. Israeli media accounts say that Trump has pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel's 13-month war against Hamas militants in Gaza before he takes office.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Netanyahu and Hamas leaders have not given any indication that an end to the fighting in the two conflicts is near.
Another key foreign policy focus in a new Trump administration will be relations between the United States and China, including conflicts over trade, Taiwan and China’s actions in the South China Sea.
Trump instituted a series of tariffs against Chinese imports amid a trade war with China during his previous administration.
Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
