Hillary Clinton has revealed for the first time what she planned to tell the country had she defeated Donald Trump for the presidency.
Clinton, 74, shared an excerpt of her planned November 2016 victory speech Wednesday on NBC’s “Today.” The full text was to be released today on the MasterClass streaming platform.
“I’ve never shared this with anybody,” Clinton says of the address she intended to give Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. “But it helps to encapsulate who I am, what I believe in and what my hopes were for the kind of country that I want for my grandchildren and that I want for the world.”
In her planned speech, Clinton would have said, “Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century. And by reaching for a unity, decency, and what President Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature,’ we met that challenge.”
“Our values endure, our democracy stands strong and our motto remains: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one,” the former first lady and secretary of state said. “We will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an ‘us versus them’ country. The American dream is big enough for everyone.”
Despite “a lot of bumps” during the final days of the campaign, Clinton told NBC’s Willie Geist she hadn’t prepared a concession speech prior to election night.