Trump's team knows he lost and there's nothing he can do about it

Top White House aides have admitted it’s accurate for President-elect Joe Biden’s team to refer to Donald Trump’s refusal to concede as “theatrics,” according to a Wednesday report by NBC News.

And a new Washington Post report claims that Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s unofficial adviser Corey Lewandowski have all admitted behind closed doors that the likelihood of Trump winning any of these suits is close to nil.

“Even Trump realizes that the likelihood of the result changing is almost zero,” one adviser told NBC News. Another called Trump’s antics “unsustainable.”

The atmosphere in the White House is grim as the Trump campaign continues filing frivolous suits in contested states while making false claims of “election fraud.” A number of those lawsuits have already been dismissed by federal judges.

Karl Rove, a former top George W. Bush aide who served as an adviser on the Trump campaign, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday saying Trump’s legal efforts “are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome.”

One of Trump’s more recent suits involves allegations of misconduct in Wayne County, Michigan. But Michigan Department of State spokesman Jake Rollow was emphatic in a recent statement that the Trump campaign’s false allegations in the suit were merely a tantrum intended to undermine the public’s belief in the transparency of the election process.

“It does not change the truth,” he added. “Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, securely, transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people.”

In a failed suit filed in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Trump’s own attorney admitted he had no evidence of voter fraud.

“Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?” a Pennsylvania judge asked Trump’s attorney, Jonathan Goldstein.

“To my knowledge at present, no,” answered Goldstein.

Even if the Trump team could produce evidence of voter fraud, the number of ballots Trump is contesting in some states isn’t even enough to sway the election. In Pennsylvania, for example, Trump is attempting to throw out around 7,800 ballots in total — but Biden leads the state by more than 53,000 votes, according to the New York Times tally.

“If those ballots couldn’t change the election to make any difference to how Pennsylvania will be decided, then [Trump] doesn’t have a claim he can bring,” University of Pennsylvania law professor Deborah Hellman told Bloomberg.

Steven Huefner, the deputy director of Ohio State University’s program in election law, told the outlet that Trump’s courtroom challenges could only reverse the outcome if it were only a single state “that he has to flip.”

“A challenge in a single state is a long short,” Huefner said. “[But] he’s got three long shots, or something, that he has to make all in succession.”

University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller told the Washington Post that without any clear evidence of voter fraud, Trump’s lawsuits don’t stand a chance at delaying the certification of multiple states.

“[And] I don’t see anything significant at the moment,” Muller said, referring to the absence of evidence to support Trump’s claims. He also noted to the outlet that he could think of no precedent for a court decision prompting such a certification delay.

But in the wake of Trump’s recent lawsuit seeking to throw out 1.2 million Michigan votes, even Michigan’s House Minority Leader Christine Greig seemed fed up with what she described as Trump’s “antics.”

She noted to the Post that while state officials had “strategized about a range of possible antics,” Republicans’ futile attempts to stop vote counts and throw out valid votes were merely “a pathetic attempt to delay the inevitable.”

But Trump continues to rile up his base with inflammatory and baseless claims, despite the futility of the venture.

“WE WILL WIN!” he tweeted Wednesday night, accompanying old footage of a Trump rally.

And Thursday, he again asserted without proof that poll watchers had been blocked from access to rooms where ballots were being counted.

“Pennsylvania & Michigan wouldn’t let our Poll Watchers & Observers into counting rooms,” he tweeted. “illegal!”

But in one hotly contested voting locale in Detroit, Michigan, angry poll watchers were blocked from access because the room was already well beyond capacity — with 268 Democratic, 227 Republican, and 75 independent poll watchers already in the room, according to the Detroit Free Press.

The maximum number of observers permitted in the state of Michigan is 134.

And Trump’s own attorneys admitted in court that Republican observers were indeed present during contested Philadelphia vote tabulations.

President-elect Joe Biden had a word for Trump’s failure to concede and flurry of frivolous litigation.

“I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” Biden said Tuesday. “I think it will not help the president’s legacy.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.