![\"Trump\"](\"http:\/\/english.thesunrisetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Trump.jpg\")
Donald Trump has stunned America and the world, riding a wave of populist resentment to defeat Hillary Clinton in the race to become the 45th president of the United States.\nThe Republican mogul defeated his Democratic rival, plunging global markets into turmoil and casting the long-standing global political order, which hinges on Washington\u2019s leadership, into doubt.
\n\u201cNow it is time for America to bind the wounds of division,\u201d Trump told a cheering crowd of jubilant supporters in the early hours of Wednesday in New York, pledging to work with Democrats in office.
\n\u201cI pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans,\u201d he declared, in a conciliatory address in which he paid tribute to his defeated opponent and thanked his staff.
\n\u201cHillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,\u201d he said of Clinton, whose hopes of becoming America\u2019s first woman president were brutally dashed.
\nDuring a bitter two-year campaign that tugged at America\u2019s democratic fabric, the 70-year-old bombastic tycoon pledged to deport illegal immigrants, ban Muslims from the country and tear up free trade deals.
\nThere was no disguising the concern of Washington\u2019s European partners that Trump\u2019s victory might destroy the Western alliance they still regard as a touchstone for stability and the rule of law.
\nRussia\u2019s autocratic leader Vladimir Putin offered warm congratulations and seized on the opportunity to urge Trump to help him get \u201cUS-Russia relations out of their critical condition.\u201d
\nBut EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker invited him to an EU-US summit at his \u201cearliest convenience\u201d to seek reassurances about trans-Atlantic ties.
\nAnd NATO head Jens Stoltenberg warned Trump, who spoke during the campaign of making US allies take a bigger share of the Western security burden, that \u201cUS leadership is more important than ever.\u201d
\nTrump openly courted Putin during the race, called US support for NATO allies in Europe into question and suggested that South Korea and Japan should develop their own nuclear weapons.
\nJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted to Trump\u2019s election by insisting that his country and the United States are \u201cunshakeable allies.\u201d
\nOne ally took heart from Trump\u2019s win. Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett said it guaranteed that his state would never have to accept the idea of an independent Palestine.
\nAnd some of the most enthusiastic support for Trump came from far-right and nationalist politicians in Europe such as French opposition figure Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini of Italy\u2019s Northern League and British euroskeptic Nigel Farage.
\nTrump, a businessman turned TV star turned-politico \u2014 who has never before held elected office \u2014 will become commander-in-chief of the world\u2019s sole true superpower on January 20.
\nThe results prompted a global market sell-off, with stocks plunging across Asia and Europe and billions being wiped off the value of investments.
\nMexicans, fearing Trump\u2019s vow to build a wall to cut America off from its southern neighbor, were dismayed and the peso fell to historic lows.
\nBut it was not all economic gloom, Moscow\u2019s stock market surged on the news and a Philippine property firm that is building a skyscraper licensed by the US tycoon saw its shares surge 20 percent.
\nTrump\u2019s message was embraced by a large section of America\u2019s white majority who have grown increasingly disgruntled by the scope of social and economic change in the last eight years under their first black president, Barack Obama.
\nMany Americans from minority backgrounds expressed dismay at Trump\u2019s victory, which some saw as the result of what some observers said was a backlash against multicultural America.
\nStreet protests over Trump\u2019s win in San Francisco and Oakland, California led to small disturbances, with demonstrators facing off against police.
\nAlthough he has no government experience and in recent years has been as well known for running beauty pageants and starring on his reality television series \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d as he is for building his property empire, Trump is the oldest man ever elected president.
\nYet, during his improbable political rise, Trump has constantly proved the pundits and received political wisdom wrong.
\nOpposed by the entire senior hierarchy of his own Republican Party, he trounced more than a dozen better-funded and more experienced rivals in the party primary.
\nDuring the race, he was forced to ride out credible allegations of sexual assault from a dozen women and was embarrassed but apparently not ashamed to have been caught on tape boasting about groping women.
\nAnd, unique in modern US political history, he refused to release his tax returns \u2014 leaving a question mark over how much, if any, tax he has paid while running a global empire.
\nBut the biggest upset came on Tuesday, as he swept to victory through a series of hard-fought wins in battleground states from Florida to Ohio. He amassed at least 290 electoral votes to 218 for Clinton, according to network projections.
\nClinton had been widely assumed to be on course to enter the history books as the first woman to become president in America\u2019s 240-year existence.
\nAmericans repudiated her call for unity amid the United States\u2019 wide cultural and racial diversity, opting instead for a leader who insisted the country is broken and that he \u201calone can fix it.\u201d
\nTrump has an uneasy relationship with the broader Republican Party, but it will have full control of Congress and he will be able to appoint a ninth Supreme Court justice to a vacant seat on the bench, deciding the balance of the body.
\nSo great was the shock of defeat that the normally robust Clinton did not come out to her supporters\u2019 poll-watching party to concede defeat, but instead called Trump and sent her campaign chairman.
\n\u201cWe are so proud of you. And we are so proud of her,\u201d chairman John Podesta told shell-shocked supporters. \u201cShe\u2019s done an amazing job, and she is not done yet.\u201d
\nThe campaign confirmed Clinton herself would speak early Wednesday.
\nThe election result was also a brutal humiliation for the White House incumbent, Obama, who for eight years has repeated the credo that there is no black or white America, only the United States of America.
\nOn the eve of the election, he told tens of thousands of people in Philadelphia that he was betting on the decency of the American people.
\n\u201cI\u2019m betting that tomorrow, most moms and dads across America won\u2019t cast their vote for someone who denigrates their daughters,\u201d Obama said.
\n\u201cI\u2019m betting that tomorrow, true conservatives won\u2019t cast their vote for somebody with no regard for the Constitution,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n