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'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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