Hillary Clinton: We ve reached a milestone'

President Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night to congratulate them on their Democratic primary race, according to a White House statement.
"The President congratulated Secretary Clinton for securing the delegates necessary to clinch the Democratic nomination for President," the statement read. "Her historic campaign inspired millions and is an extension of her lifelong fight for middle-class families and children."
Obama will also meet with Sanders at the White House on Thursday at Sanders' request.
The statement serves as Obama's first acknowledgment of Clinton's elevation to the presumptive Democratic nominee. Reaching the highest peak yet in a tumultuous and trailblazing political career, Clinton wasted no time Tuesday in wooing Sanders supporters and praising his "extraordinary campaign."
"Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone," she said during a speech in Brooklyn. "Tonight's victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible."

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Her long-awaited moment of celebration came as six states held contests that wrapped up a roller-coaster primary season. She will notch wins in the New Jersey, South Dakota and New Mexico Democratic primaries, according to CNN projections, adding a slew of delegates to her column. All eyes are now on delegate-rich California, where Clinton has the early lead.
Primary results maps

Clinton took the stage in Brooklyn to an explosion of cheers from her crowd, in the kind of eruption of enthusiasm that has been fleeting during much of her campaign. Clearly delighted, she stood with her arms outstretched on stage, savoring the adulation.
Reaching out to Sanders supporters, Clinton praised the Vermont senator for his long public service and mirrored some of his progressive economic rhetoric. She played down any notion of divisions and said their vigorous primary campaign was "very good for the Democratic Party and for America."
Sanders is due to speak later in California and it's unclear whether he'll back down. As Clinton's speech ended, he announced a Thursday rally in Washington, D.C., which holds its primary next week.

Clinton vs. Trump
Clinton intensified her assault on Trump, laying out a case that his values and rhetoric are incompatible with American principles and that he's "temperamentally unfit" to be President.
"He is not just trying to build a wall between America and Mexico. He is trying to wall of Americans from each other. When he says let's make America great again, that is code for let's take American backwards."
She hit Trump hard for his recent attacks on a judge with Mexican ancestry along with mocking a disabled reporter and calling "women pigs."

"He wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt in wounds and reminding us daily just how great he is."
Clinton also signaled a robust challenge to Trump resonating with gender and personal themes. She spoke of how her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, taught her "never to back down from a bully."
Sanders, who CNN projects will win the North Dakota caucuses, faces an existential campaign question. He is grappling with whether to honor his vow to fight on to the Democratic National Convention next month or accept the electoral mathematics that give him no viable path to victory and join Clinton to unite a party divided by a much more competitive primary race than expected.
CNN's Brianna Keilar reported that the campaign managers for Clinton and Sanders are in touch, keeping the lines of communication open so they can eventually unify the party, according to a source familiar with the conversations.
The New York Times reported the Sanders campaign is about to undergo a significant reduction in staff. A top campaign official would neither confirm nor deny the report to CNN. But notably, as the campaign reaches the end of the primary season, the campaign has not moved to staff key battleground states and little appears in the works beyond recent promises to fight to the convention.

Trump's controversy
For Trump, the question Tuesday was how he would extricate himself from the political hole opened up by his controversial comments about a judge of Mexican descent who is overseeing a lawsuit aimed at Trump University. His accusation that the judge is biased because of his ethnicity has horrified senior GOP leaders who recently reluctantly endorsed him. He tried to neutralize the furor with a statement Tuesday saying his comments had been "misconstrued."
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Amid the furor, Trump, who won the Republican contests Tuesday, delivered a more conventional speech that seemed a departure from the free wheeling approach he often takes. Using a teleprompter -- notable for someone who has blasted Clinton for being scripted -- Trump attacked Clinton and called for GOP unity. For one night at least, it seemed that the unpredictable billionaire had heeded calls by the GOP establishment -- which he built a campaign on vilifying -- to rein himself in for the good of the party.
"We are only getting started and it is going to be beautiful," he said.
He didn't mention the judge during his speech and instead sought to convey that he understood his new role as the leader of the GOP.
"I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle and I will never, ever let you down," he said.
A top campaign adviser told CNN's Jim Acosta that Trump's speech was "very important to recovering from these five bad days."

Consequential night
The dueling public appearances add up to one of the most consequential moments so far in the presidential campaign with just as much symbolic importance as the party conventions next month and the three presidential debates in the fall.

History's muted moment

Clinton's event represented the closing of a personal and political circle, coming eight years to the day after she folded her 2008 primary campaign against Barack Obama in a speech that lamented her inability to crack the "highest, hardest glass ceiling" in American politics.
Sanders' appearance late on Tuesday night after polls close in California will be closely watched for signs of his intentions. He has his political legacy and future career to consider, as well as what may turn out to be the last rites of his presidential bid. If he decides that it is the end of the road, Sanders must also encourage his fervent supporters to embrace Clinton -- an experience many may find unpalatable after the euphoria of his unlikely insurgent campaign.

California
Should Sanders win California, he will strengthen his argument for fighting on after the primary season has officially wound down. But should Clinton triumph, she will put an exclamation point on her victory in the four-and-a-half month primary marathon and the pressure for Sanders to quit could become unbearable.
The Sanders campaign is furious at media organizations, including the Associated Press and CNN, which have declared Clinton as the presumptive nominee based on their own calculations of the intentions of superdelegates — party officials and lawmakers — who overwhelming favor the former first lady and New York senator.
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The campaign argues that because superdelegates do not officially cast their votes until the convention, naming Clinton as the presumptive nominee is premature.
"If you don't have 2,383 in pledged delegates you go to the convention and the superdelegates will decide," said Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver on CNN's "The Lead" with Jake Tapper. "Even though somebody may be ahead, they have not won if they don't have 2,283 in pledged delegates."
Still, Clinton did capture a majority of pledged delegates available in the campaign during Tuesday's contests -- a milestone that further hikes pressure on Sanders to admit defeat and join her in uniting the Democratic Party to take on Trump.