Ross Douthat: “Anyone familiar with his career could have predicted that he would claim to have been cheated out of victory. Anyone watching how he wielded power (or, more often, didn’t) as president could have predicted that his efforts to challenge the election results would be embarrassing, ridiculous and dismissed with prejudice in court. And anyone watching how the Republican Party dealt with his ascent could have predicted that its leaders would mostly avoid directly rebuking him, relying instead on the inertial forces of American democracy, the conscientiousness of judges and local officialdom, and Trump’s own incompetence to turn back his final power grab.”

“So far, so predictable. But speaking as a cynical observer of the Trump era, one feature of November did crack my jaded shell a bit: not his behavior or the system’s response, but the sheer scale of the belief among conservatives that the election was really stolen, measured not just in polling data but in conversations and arguments, online and in person, with people I would not have expected to embrace it.”

Rick Hasen: “Three weeks ago, I and others in the election law field determined that Trump’s path to use lawsuits to overturn the results of the election were dead. The campaign had uncovered no significant fraud or irregularities and none of the states where Trump lost were close enough that a recount could plausibly change the results of the election. By one count, Trump has lost 46 of his lawsuits and won only one minor one, in PA.”

“But the lawsuits keep coming and coming. They make much more sense when one thinks of them as about grift and delegitimizing the upcoming Biden presidency.”

President Trump demanded to know who the Republican lawmakers were who acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election when they were asked by the Washington Post.

The newspaper has since updated the count to 27 Republicans.

“President Trump called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Saturday morning to urge him to persuade the state legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state and asked the governor to order an audit of absentee ballot signatures, the latest brazen effort by the president to interfere in the 2020 election,” the Washington Post reports.

“Hours before he is scheduled to hold a rally in Georgia on behalf of the state’s two GOP senators, Trump pressed Kemp to call a special session of the state legislature to get lawmakers to override the results and appoint electors that would back him… He also asked the governor to demand an audit of signatures on mail ballots, something Kemp has previously noted he has no power to do.

“Kemp declined the entreaty from Trump.”

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) said that pleas from some GOP lawmakers to overturn the results of the state’s presidential election are illegal and “cannot and will not” happen, the Arizona Republic reports.

Said Bowers: “As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election. I voted for President Trump and worked hard to reelect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”

CNN: “According to conversations with seven Republicans close to Pence, the vice president remains committed to toeing the line for Trump. That’s not only part of Pence’s loyal disposition, it’s also key to what sources say are Pence’s significant ambitions to run for president in 2024.”

“Pence and those around him have long hoped that his fealty would pay off and position him as Trump’s natural successor.”

“There’s just one problem: Trump doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. He has floated the idea of running in 2024, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since the election, some of which went to a new leadership PAC Trump has established that could help fuel his future political ambitions.”

“Two years before she’d become the breakout star of the clown show Rudy Giuliani brought to Lansing this week, Mellissa Carone was sending her then-boyfriend’s ex-wife graphic videos of the two of them having sex,” Deadline Detroit reports.

Politico: “Georgia’s campaign ads tell a tale of two states: Raphael Warnock’s ads are bright and sunny, featuring the pastor expounding on health care policy, telling his family story and walking a puppy. But the majority of Kelly Loeffler’s spots take a grimmer tone, attacking Warnock as ‘the most dangerous, radical candidate in America.’ In one ad, the camera pans across a photo of Warnock, who is Black, darkened and superimposed over footage of riots. ‘Saving the Senate,’ the narrator intones, ‘is about saving America … from that.’”

“It could work. But with Georgia’s demographics shifting, Loeffler’s approach — a familiar playbook tailored to older, whiter voters who skew Republican — is just as likely to prove out of step with a changing electorate. It’s pitting the politics of the Old South, often characterized by thinly-veiled racist rhetoric and maintenance of the predominantly white status quo, against the New South’s increasingly young and racially diverse constituency.”