Early in the evening on election night, I spoke with a couple of people in Donald Trump's camp and the mood was not very upbeat. They doubted that Trump would win, and with all of the polls coming out, it looked like there was no real path to victory. It was kind of a somber mood, so I said, after dinner, we should go over to Donald’s party at the New York Hilton. I thought they usually call these things around 9:30 pm, and it’s likely to be a Hillary win, so we’ll get there a little earlier.
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The red states started coming in when we arrived. I checked the New York Times website when the voting first started, and they said the probability of Donald Trump winning the presidency was about 20 percent. So obviously, the assumption at the Hilton was that it wasn’t going to happen. Around 9:00 p.m., the Times’ graph started to trend in the other direction.
By about 9:30 pm, that number had jumped all the way to a 92 percent chance that Donald was going to win the election.
I don’t know how they were monitoring things, but it’s the Times, so I said this may just happen.
More states started coming in and Virginia turned blue. I said, uh-oh, here it comes, because I have been around enough elections to know that when things start trending, you can’t be too confident. Things have a way of changing very quickly.
One by one, the states turned red.
I think that people are going to see a different Donald Trump than the one who was running because he knows he was just blessed with a miracle.
Hours later, we were stuck at 254 electoral votes and we needed either Michigan or Pennsylvania. We’re watching the TV, and they gave us all the variables of what Hillary needed to do to win. She was still very much in it. They went from state to state, and in each of those states, it was so close that it really could have gone either way.
It was getting late, and I was getting nervous. Everyone around us is celebrating, and I said, hey, we have got to stop celebrating because we’ve got to get one of these two states. I didn’t like the way it was going with nobody calling it.
All of the sudden, the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Donald. All the cheers went up. We waited until about 3:00 in the morning, and that’s when Donald came over with the family.
It was a remarkable, remarkable time.
It’s a miracle for someone to come from so far behind like this. I think that people are going to see a different Donald Trump than the one who was running because he knows he was just blessed with a miracle. The speech he gave after he was elected was very eloquent and understated. He was humble and very presidential. I truly expect that to continue.
I listened to Hillary Clinton’s concession speech yesterday. It was eloquent, wonderful and magnificent.
She made you feel very good. She gave her full support to Donald Trump. She is a classy lady. If she won, I think she would have would have done a fine job. I listened to President Obama and he was very gracious, too.
... [A] lot of people, the so-called silent majority, were not happy with the policies of President Obama. They didn’t protest. They didn’t take part in polls. They just waited until Election Day to make themselves heard.
This is what I love about America. We can have a real knock-down, drag-out campaign. And this one was mean, ugly and vicious.
When it’s over and it’s all said and done, we all support that person, and we all gather around and try to bring America together. That’s why I am so glad to be an American. That’s why, certainly, the country is going to heal.
There will be some initial hysteria, but I think people will give Donald Trump an opportunity to show people how he’s going to lead. I have known him for 40 years. I have worked with him, and I have worked for him. He gets things done. Now, he’s going to be getting things done for the American people.
In the end, I really think that a lot of people, the so-called silent majority, were not happy with the policies of President Obama. They didn’t protest. They didn’t take part in polls. They just waited until Election Day to make themselves heard.
This was a referendum against Obama and his policies. The American people viewed Hillary as just a continuation of the same policies of the last eight years, and they didn’t want to keep going in this direction. They obviously wanted change, and they came out in droves to make this an incredible, stunning win for Donald Trump.
Bo Dietl is the founder and chairman of Beau Dietl & Associates, a leading investigative and security firm based in New York City, and of the most highly decorated detectives in the history of the New York City Police department.