“Donald Trump has privately acknowledged he lost the presidency. He knows Joe Biden will replace him. He recognizes Congress will formally certify the results on Wednesday,” Politico reports.

To one person, Trump even confided he was “just disappointed we lost.”

“Trump’s acceptance has taken shape in recent weeks, according to three people who have spoken to Trump in that time span, with one conversation occurring a week ago. Trump admits his defeat, but still maintains he would have won a fair election, they said, despite no concrete evidence emerging of widespread voter fraud. He has even discussed his exit plans from Washington with staff, debating when to move to his South Florida Mar-a-Lago resort.”

“Vice President Mike Pence told President Trump on Tuesday that he did not believe he had the power to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election despite Mr. Trump’s baseless insistence that he did,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Pence’s message, delivered during his weekly lunch with the president, came hours after Mr. Trump further turned up the public pressure on the vice president to do his bidding when Congress convenes Wednesday in a joint session to ratify Mr. Biden’s Electoral College win.”

For members: What Pence Might Do Tomorrow

“Far-right online forums are seething with references to potential violence and urging supporters of President Trump to bring guns to Wednesday’s protests in Washington — in violation of local laws — as Congress meets to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory,” the Washington Post reports.

“Many of the posts appear to be direct responses to Trump’s demands that his supporters pack the nation’s capital in support of his bogus claims that November’s national vote for Biden resulted from election fraud. Congress’s largely ceremonial role in confirming Biden’s victory has emerged as a catalyst for expected unrest that has D.C. police and the National Guard deploying on city streets to quell potential trouble.”

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) writes in The Mercury that will vote to certify Joe Biden’s victory as the next president: “To vote to reject these state-certified electoral votes would be to act outside the bounds of the Constitution, which I will not do.”

Ben Jacobs: “It’s a banzai charge. The path to successfully contesting election results required a number of contingencies to come into place in several states. It hasn’t happened in a single one. State election officials have found consistent Biden victories in contested states and, as a result, state legislatures have declined to send competing slates of electors. However, Trump has been undeterred by his legal team’s constant failures in courts of law (as well as frequent humiliations in the court of public opinion). At this point, the strategy of his legal team is far more Jim Jones than James Baker.”

“But this has long left the realm of a legal fight. Instead, it’s a political battle governed by two facts. Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge that he has lost the election, and he has a sky-high approval rating with Republican voters. This means many Republican elected officials have either fully drunk the Kool-Aid… or just believe that their prospects for future electoral success rely on staying in Trump’s good graces.”