President Obama Invites Donald Trump to Meet at the White House

The president will address the nation on the election results Wednesday.

Chris Kleponis/DPA/ZUMA

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President Barack Obama called Donald Trump on early Wednesday morning to congratulate him on his stunning presidential victory and extend an invitation to meet at the White House on Thursday to discuss a “smooth transition of power,” the White House announced in a statement.

“Ensuring a smooth transition of power is one of the top priorities the president identified at the beginning of the year and meeting with the president-elect is the next step.”

In his victory speech, Trump promised to be a “president for all Americans” and unite the country after one of the most divisive and bruising campaigns in the nation’s history. Trump’s win came as a shocking upset, defying national polls that consistently showed Hillary Clinton to be leading her Republican opponent by comfortable margins.

Obama is expected to address the country later on Wednesday to discuss the election results. The White House’s statement below:

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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