NEW YORK – Billionaire businessman Donald Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in hard-fought election, giving the liberal world its worst nightmares.

“I am at a Trump rally in Manhattan, and thousands are chanting “We hate Muslims, we hate blacks, we want our great country back”. Disgusting,” Simon Rowntree tweeted.

“This is an embarrassing night for America. We’ve let a hatemonger lead our great nation. We’ve let a bully set our course. I’m devastated,” Chris Evans added on Twitter.

Trump was declared the new president of the United States hours ago, after a long, bitter and divisive election campaign.

Speaking to his supporters in New York after clinching victory, Trump said that Clinton had congratulated him on his win.

“I have just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us on our victory … and I congratulated her and her family on a very very hard-fought campaign.”

Trump said it was “time for us to come together”, pledging to be president “for all Americans”.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from New York, described the result as “a political bombshell that we haven’t seen in modern history”.

The bombshell did not only fall in America.

In France, the country’s serving ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud, tweeted out the “world is collapsing before our eyes” when it emerged Trump was set for victory.

The 63-year-old said: “After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. Dizziness.”

The tweet was apparently deleted shortly after, perhaps not surprising given that Araud and his team will have to work with Trump’s government.

Yet, he wasn’t the only one in France to link Trump’s victory to Brexit.

Journalist Anne Sinclair, former wife of disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said Trump’s victory was a “nightmare for the world and for Europe”.

France Left did not have a positive surprise either.

“The Left has been warned. If we continue our irresponsible childishness it will be Marine Le Pen,” said Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the first secretary of France’s Socialist Party.

A former reality TV star, Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.

Since then, the billionaire businessman from New York has consistently alienated minority groups, refused to release his tax returns and remained seemingly unapologetic for leaked tapes in which he brags about sexually assaulting women.