NEW YORK — After the spectacle of Donald Trump’s campaign, his victory party was, for the magnitude of the moment, subdued.
Trump booked a modest ballroom at the Hilton in Midtown for the occasion, and by the time he wrapped his victory speech around 3 a.m. his supporters, though elated, were mostly on their way out the door to bed, promising to rest up for more celebrations to come.
Some continued to vent the anger that lingered at the end of a toxic campaign. Chants of “lock her up” periodically went up in the hall throughout the night. One older man in a red Make America Great Again hat angrily poked a cameraman on his way out the door and snarled, “The media sucks.”
But Trump’s speech was conciliatory, and the mood of the room followed suit.
Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right provocateur who works at Breitbart, railed against a group of reporters recording him. “American progressives should be thanking their lucky stars that Donald Trump is the worst thing that happened, because you have been lying to and about people for decades,” he said, decked out in sunglasses and chain necklaces.
Matthew Sheldon, who identified himself as Yiannopoulos’ publicist, continued where Yiannopoulos left off. “You blew it,” he shouted at reporters. “The corrupt media couldn’t change this election.”
But he also expressed a willingness to let bygones be bygones. “We hope that Hillary and the Democrats help to heal,” Sheldon said. “I will tell Donald tomorrow we need to reach out to Hillary and work together.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, the first senator to publicly embrace Trump, said the president-elect would find common ground with Democrats on foreign policy, immigration and trade. Sessions said he had spoken recently with one Democrat, “A very sophisticated leader in the U.S. Senate” whom he declined to name, about bipartisan cooperation on trade.
To America’s Baltic NATO allies, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, Rep. Peter King of New York offered assurances that the United States would honor its treaty commitments. “America will be there,” he said. “Donald Trump will be there.”
“People shouldn’t be worried,” said Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, before joining the president-elect on stage. “All the media hype is media hype.”
The night here began on a muted note, and the humble surroundings did not speak of confidence in the outcome.
But as the numbers shifted in Trump’s favor, the cheers became louder and the buzz grew more frenetic. Matt Boyle of Breitbart, a consistent cheerleader of Trump’s campaign, stood confidently by one of the cash bars wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and holding court with several young women.
After Fox News called Ohio for Trump, a joyous Shalabh Kumar, founder of the Republican Hindu coalition, which gave millions in support of Trump, said he felt his efforts had been crucial to the win, pointing to the existence of tens of thousands of Hindu voters in battlegrounds like Florida and North Carolina. He said he believed Trump would become the new Winston Churchill of a battle against radical Islamic violence.
Kumar was accompanied by his daughter, who took off three months from her job as an actress in India to volunteer for Trump’s campaign.
But even after Fox News called Wisconsin for Trump, a major upset that essentially sealed Clinton’s fate, the guests gathered here did not begin ringing in their victory. “They don’t believe it yet,” said Mike McCoskey, an Indiana farmer and friend of Vice President-elect Mike Pence.
McCoskey expressed cautious optimism about the coming years. “I don’t know if it’s going to be the best thing, but it’s better than the same thing,” he said. “I’m hoping that Trump has that ability to soften up and bring everybody on board.” He said he believed Pence would help soften the president-elect.
McCloskey added that he does not believe Trump will proceed with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, a point on which Trump’s campaign has offered ambiguous indications. “I’m in agriculture,” he said. “We can’t function without the Hispanics we have in this country.”
As the night wore on and the outcome became more certain, the guests grew impatient for Clinton to concede. When footage from October of Clinton fielding a question about conceding the election appeared on Fox, they chanted “Na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey good-bye.”
When Trump took the stage to claim victory and praised Clinton, many here joined in applauding her.
After his speech, the president-elect waded into the crowd in front of the stage to greet supporters and then disappeared behind a curtain.
Jerry Falwell Jr., among the most prominent evangelical leaders to embrace Trump, said he had felt confident all along. He displayed a text message he sent Sean Hannity at 5:55 p.m. on Tuesday, saying, “I have a good feeling about tonight.” The Fox News host responded, “Hope U R right.” Then Falwell went to congratulate the president-elect.
Standing nearby was Chuck Johnson, the self-proclaimed investigative journalist and pround internet troll, who offered a variety of slogans and predictions. “The trolls won,” he said, calling this election, “the comment section against the article.”
“We memed the president into the Oval Office,” he said, referring to the viral images he and his online allies manufactured and disseminated across the Internet. Johnson, headphones around his neck, touted the election as proof of the power of the “cracker coalition.”
And he said now he planned to turn his fire on Republicans. “We hunt down the cucks,” he said, using alt-right slang for conservatives considered insufficiently committed to the movement’s ideas. “Chris Christie will not be as powerful as he now appears.”
By 3:30 a.m. the house lights had gone up, and the stragglers were beginning to peel off, some to bars, but mostly to bed.