The Slatest

How Hillary Clinton’s Concession Call to Donald Trump Played Out

President-elect Donald Trump and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway at his victory party.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Anyone waking up with a sickening feeling in the pit of their stomach Wednesday morning—or anyone who didn’t sleep a wink Tuesday night—at the thought of reading about President-elect Donald Trump this morning can’t feel infinitesimally as bad as Hillary Clinton must have when she was handed the phone by top aide Huma Abedin early on Wednesday morning to concede the presidency to Trump.

Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has been recounting how receiving that call from Abedin and then connecting Secretary Clinton to President-elect Trump played out.

From the AP:

In a pair of interviews on ABC and NBC News Wednesday, Conway said Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, called her late Wednesday and connected Clinton with Trump. She said Clinton “congratulated him for his victory,” and he told Clinton that she is “very smart, very tough” and had “waged a tremendous campaign.”

A further account of the call from Conway on CNN:

My phone rang, it said Huma Abedin, I had a nice exchange with Huma, whom I respect very much, and she said Secretary Clinton would like to talk to Mr. Trump so I handed him the phone and they had a one-minute conversation, very gracious, warm, I heard Mr. Trump’s side of it, he commended her for being very smart and tough and running a very hard-fought campaign and I am told Secretary Clinton congratulated Donald Trump on his victory and conceded to him.

Conway was on CNN on Wednesday morning and the reporter asked her if she knew whether Trump would appoint a special prosecutor to bring unknown charges against Hillary Clinton for issues surrounding her email investigation—as he promised to do during the second presidential debate—“because that would not be in keeping with unity.”

“I have not discussed that with him,” Conway responded, “especially since he became the next president of the United States.”

Do Trump’s reportedly “gracious” phone call and the fact that Conway and Trump purportedly haven’t discussed criminalizing the president-elect’s top political opponent mean that he won’t actually do it? Of course not. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next and what Trump’s promise in the waning days of the campaign to “drain the swamp” means in terms of what he will actually do. That, of course, is the most terrifying thing of all on Wednesday.

See more Slate coverage of the election.