President Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton on election night and talked her into conceding to Republican candidate Donald Trump, The Hill reported this weekend. Citing Clinton campaign sources, Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen, authors of an upcoming book on the campaign from Crown Publishing, have told The Hill that Obama advised his former Secretary of State, “You need to concede.”
Obama made his move at 1:30 AM, according to the new book, after the AP had called the race for Trump. A while later, close to dawn, Clinton called Trump to concede her defeat.
According to The Hill, a fight has ensued between the Obama and Clinton camps over the wisdom of the concession so early in the process, and of trying to force a recount of three Rust Belt states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Several Clinton campaign sources are now saying the Democratic candidate would not have called Trump had Obama not pushed her to do it, because the numbers were very close. “If anybody knew what actually happened that night, no one would have conceded,” one source said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee does not want to be officially affiliated with Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s effort to recount the votes, because they are afraid of being perceived in a negative light as sore losers and as calling the elections rigged – something they criticized Trump for after the third debate. But the Democrats are nonetheless hopeful that Stein would succeed in proving an error in tabulating, if not worse, an outright hacking of the vote.
Stein filed her request for a recount in Wisconsin on Friday, hoping to be able to enforce a similar move in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well. Wisconsin registered just under 3 million votes, and the deadline to complete a recount is Dec. 13. Stein’s campaign needs to raise about $7 million for the effort, and so far its online crowdsourcing has picked up more than $6 million as of Saturday night.
President-elect Trump has tweeted furiously in response to the recount effort, stating, among other things, “Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in. Nothing will change.” He also called the Green Party’s effort a “scam” to “fill up their coffers.”