President Obama has called Donald Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the 2016 presidential election, according to the AP. Obama also reportedly invited Trump to visit the White House on Thursday to discuss the presidential transition.
"Ensuring a smooth transition of power is one of the top priorities the President identified at the beginning of the year and a meeting with the President-elect is the next step," a statement from the White House said.
In addition to calling Donald Trump, President Obama also reportedly "called Secretary Clinton and expressed admiration for the strong campaign she waged throughout the country."
President Obama plans to address Trump's victory in a speech from the White House sometime on Wednesday. The speech will include a discussion of "what steps we can take as a country to come together after this hard-fought election season," according to the White House's statement.
In a surprising turn of events considering pre-election polling, Trump achieved a fairly commanding victory in the electoral college on Tuesday night. With several states still counting total votes as of Wednesday morning, Trump is already well over the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. The popular vote—another important, if largely symbolic indicator—remains much closer. Clinton has a roughly 125,000 vote lead at the time of publication. If these results hold, Clinton would become the fifth candidate in American history to win the popular vote but lose the election. The last presidential candidate to do so was Al Gore in the 2000 election against George W. Bush.
