“A smart friend of mine who is a moderate liberal asked why I was not recognizing Joe Biden’s victory. The friend made the case that Mr. Biden had gotten more votes, and historically we recognize the person with the most votes. Normally, we accept the outcome of elections just as we accept the outcomes of sporting events” Gingrich writes.

“So, my friend asked why was 2020 different? Having spent more than four years watching the left #Resist President Donald Trump and focus entirely on undoing and undermining the 2016 election, it took me several days to understand the depth of my own feelings. As I thought about it, I realized my anger and fear were not narrowly focused on votes. My unwillingness to relax and accept that the election was over grew out of a level of outrage and alienation unlike anything I had experienced in more than 60 years involvement in public affairs. The challenge is that I – and other conservatives – are not disagreeing with the left within a commonly understood world. We live in alternative worlds. The left’s world is mostly the established world of the forces who have been dominant for most of my life. My world is the populist rebellion which believes we are being destroyed, our liberties are being cancelled and our religions are under assault. (Note the new Human Rights Campaign to decertify any religious school which does not accept secular sexual values – and that many Democrat governors have kept casinos open while closing churches though the COVID-19 pandemic.) We also believe other Democrat-led COVID-19 policies have enriched the wealthy while crushing middle class small business owners (some 160,000 restaurants may close).”

Washington Post: “The U.S. government is weighing a request to declare Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman immune from a federal lawsuit accusing him of targeting for assassination a former top intelligence officer who could disclose damaging secrets about the prince’s ascent to power, according to legal documents related to the case. The Saudi government has asked that the prince be shielded from liability in response to a complaint brought by Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi counterterrorism leader and longtime U.S. intelligence ally now living in exile in Canada.”

“A State Department recommendation could also lead to the dismissal of the prince as a defendant in other cases recently filed in the United States, including ones accusing him of directing the death and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018; and of targeting a hack and leak operation to discredit an Al Jazeera news anchor, Ghada Oueiss, in retaliation for her critical reports on Mohammed and the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates.”

“In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Elizabeth Bartman and Elizabeth Weihman registered to vote as Republicans in Nether Providence Township, Delaware County officials said Monday. There was one problem: Both women had been dead for several years. The man behind those applications, Bruce Bartman, now faces two felony counts of perjury, as well as one count of unlawful voting for successfully casting an absentee ballot for President Donald Trump in the name of Elizabeth Bartman, his long-dead mother. Bartman was arraigned Friday and released on $100,000 unsecured bail” reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“His lawyer, Samuel Stretton, said the 70-year-old takes full responsibility for the crimes, and will cooperate with investigators. ‘In his political frustration, he chose to do something stupid,’ Stretton said. ‘And for that he is very sorry.’ Bartman used his mother’s driver’s license to register her to vote online, and then requested and filled out an absentee ballot in her name, Stollsteimer said. He repeated the process for Weihman, his mother-in-law, using her Social Security number. The state’s system flagged the information as belonging to a dead person, but Bartman signed a letter confirming the woman was still alive. He did not, however, cast a ballot in Weihman’s name, according to prosecutors. Bartman’s forgery came to light gradually, investigators said Monday. Rumors began to circulate on social media that a dead voter in Delaware County had cast a ballot, and a complaint was eventually brought to the county Board of Elections.”

Axios: “President Trump, in his final days, is turning bitterly on virtually every person around him, griping about anyone who refuses to indulge conspiracy theories or hopeless bids to overturn the election, several top officials tell Axios. Targets of his outrage include Vice President Pence, chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

“Trump thinks everyone around him is weak, stupid or disloyal – and increasingly seeks comfort only in people who egg him on to overturn the election results. We cannot stress enough how unnerved Trump officials are by the conversations unfolding inside the White House. Top officials are trying to stay away from the West Wing right now. Trump is lashing out, and everyone is in the blast zone: At this point, if you’re not in the ‘use the Department of Homeland Security or the military to impound voting machines’ camp, the president considers you weak and beneath contempt. Trump is fed up with Cipollone, his counsel. Some supporters of Cipollone are worried that Trump is on the brink of removing him and replacing him with a fringe loyalist. A source who spoke to Trump said the president was complaining about Pence and brought up a Lincoln Project ad that claims that Pence is ‘backing away’ from Trump. This ad has clearly got inside Trump’s head, the source said. Trump views Pence as not fighting hard enough for him – the same complaint he uses against virtually everybody who works for him and has been loyal to him. Trump has even been asking advisers whether they can get state legislatures to rescind their electoral votes. When he’s told no, he lashes out even more, said a source who discussed the matter with the president.”

“We all know that the Democrats will win due to rampant voter fraud.”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Poll: Dead Heat in Georgia Senate Runoff” posted Monday evening.

Daily Beast: “Bristling at his defeat in Georgia, President Donald Trump increasingly believes that Gov. Brian Kemp has not done enough to deliver him a victory or challenge the state’s election results. Now, sources close to the president – and Republicans in Georgia – say it is a foregone conclusion that Trump will help stand up a primary challenger to Kemp when the Republican is up for re-election in 2022. ‘It’s a fait accompli,’ said one veteran Trump political adviser.”

“According to two people who’ve discussed Kemp with the president this month, Trump has largely focused on how Kemp would be ‘nothing’ without him or his endorsement in the 2018 gubernatorial primary. The president has also mentioned that he’s looking forward to fundraising and campaigning against Kemp in Georgia, in the likelihood that a GOP primary challenger emerges. One of the sources said that Trump had privately compared his desire to see Kemp’s political future ruined to how he wanted to see the political implosion of his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, during an attempted comeback this year in Alabama. Kemp’s office did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. But not everyone allied with the president thought that challenging the governor would be a good idea. ‘It is not wise because if you haven’t learned anything from the Senate race this year, you could at least say that having two strong candidates has nearly cost us the seat,’ said former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA). ‘So I think that Georgia no longer has the luxury of having a divided Republican primary and then going on to win in November.'”

With the Christmas holiday coming at the end of the week, the United States hit a new high for the number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus, according to the COVID Tracking Projects.

With more than 115,300 people hospitalized with the virus, officials fear a new crush of cases after the holiday season, when people will be anxious to meet with family and friends.  The increase in cases the nation is experiencing happened in the weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday; the Hannukah, Christmas and New Year’s holidays could accelerate the case spread.

Another factor that may impact the spread of the virus is a newly found strain of the coronavirus that has a 70% greater chance of causing infection, particularly among younger people.  That variant of the virus is spreading through the UK now, but may already be in the United States.

The hack of US Treasury Department systems by agents working with the Russian government was aimed at senior officials in the Department and resulted in a “serious breach” of Department systems, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said in a statement.

Politico reports that Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the cyberattack was a “serious breach, beginning in July, the full depth of which isn’t known.”

Lame duck president Donald Trump has cast doubt on the Russian source of the attack, saying that it could have originated in China.  It continues Trump’s habit of defending Russia even when significant technical evidence and intelligence exists pointing to Kremlin’s involvement.

The House and the Senate both passed the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill, sending the bill to the White House for President Trump’s signature, as the nation sits atop the worst spike in coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, MSNBC reports.

The package provides a one-time $600 payment to adults who make less than $75,000 per year for an individual or $150,000 for a couple.  Parents can get up to $600 per child for up to two children.

The bill also provides $300 per week in supplemental unemployment payments until mid-March for people who have lost their jobs, giving a vital lifeline to 20 million Americans who became unemployed during the pandemic.

Axios: “President Trump lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night for acknowledging Joe Biden won the election, sending a slide to Republican lawmakers taking credit for saving McConnell’s career with a tweet and robocall. It’s an extraordinary broadside against McConnell by the sitting president and most popular Republican in the party, ahead of a crucial runoff election in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate.”

“‘Sadly, Mitch forgot,’ reads the top of the slide sent to Republican senators by Trump’s personal assistant, written in red for emphasis. ‘He was the first one off the ship.’ While both the message and its delivery targeted McConnell, they also carried a subtle warning to other Republicans who may follow suit as the president grasps at the last straws of his election-fraud claim. Trump’s remaining power over the GOP is not his waning authority as president, but the perception of his lingering ability to make or break politicians in their re-election campaigns.”

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported breaking news tonight that Rudy Giuliani, a member of outgoing president Donald Trump’s Elite Special Force Team of legal advisors, is the subject of a “very active” federal criminal investigation based out of the Southern District of New York.

“We can report tonight, according to two sources familiar with the investigation, that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have expressed interest in and discussed the possibility of trying to obtain Mr. Giuliani’s electronic communications,” Maddow reported.

Broadly speaking, the federal prosecutors have talked about trying to obtain those communications for a case against Mr. Giuliani that is not just ongoing, it may be ramping up,” Maddow continued, noting that the story was posted on NBCNews.com simultaneous to her breaking it on air.

Washington Post: “With his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud rejected by dozens of judges and GOP leaders, President Trump has turned to a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss. The president’s orbit has grown more extreme as his more mainstream allies, including Attorney General William P. Barr, have declined to endorse his increasingly radical plans to overturn the will of the voters. Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.”

“Members of the group assembled­ in the Oval Office on Friday for a marathon meeting that lasted more than four hours and included discussion of tactics ranging from imposing martial law in swing states to seizing voting machines through executive fiat. The meeting exploded into shouting matches as outside advisers and White House aides clashed over the lack of a cohesive strategy and disagreed about the constitutionality of some of the proposed solutions.”

AP: “Santa found himself a little more tied up than usual this time of year. A Northern California man impersonating Santa Claus and flying on a powered parachute was rescued Sunday after he became entangled in power lines, authorities said. The incident happened shortly after the man took off near a school in Rio Linda to deliver candy canes to children in his community. He flew into a maze of power lines and wound up suspended in them, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman told KCRA-TV. The man, who wasn’t identified, was not injured. Video from the rescue shows the red-white-and-blue aircraft dangling overhead as Santa sat fastened to the pilot seat. Neighbors watched from the ground as crews worked. Colleen Bousliman, who lives nearby, said the pilot flies overhead often.”

“‘He flies just around so people can see and flies around people’s houses,’ she said. ‘This was the first time he was in his Santa suit.’ Power was shut off during the rescue to about 200 customers in the Rio Linda area, according to Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District spokesman Chris Vestal. ‘It’s unfortunate, but we all need to remember that there’s still a lot of good out in the world, there are people doing good things and to look at the brightness of the holiday season,’ Vestal said. He said it didn’t take long to rescue the costumed pilot and lower him to safety.”

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on Twitter that the nation was dedicating part of its Grove of Nations in the Jerusalem Forest as the “Kushner Garden of Peace” in honor of outgoing president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

“We are here in the Grove of Nations for the planting of eighteen olive trees. Now the numerical value of the Hebrew letters for eighteen is chai, which means life, and the olive branch is a traditional symbol of life and peace,” Netanyahu tweeted.  “It is fitting that we choose to honor Jared Kushner in this way. Jared, you’ve played a critical role in the inception and in the implementation of the Abraham Accords.”

The efforts Netanyahu refers to resulted in two nations, with which Israel never entered hostilities, recognized the nation of Israel.  The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain promised to open official diplomatic relations with Israel. 

New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi brings the epic tale surrounding the infamous Four Seasons Landscaping parking lot press conference on November 7th:

“It’s hard to know what counts as a fuckup when you work for Donald Trump. Looked at by the standards of a traditional campaign with a traditional candidate who possesses a minor-to-moderate capacity for traditional human feelings, like shame, what happened at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, or the fact that it happened at all, was a disaster. A press conference is supposed to convince the public of whatever case you’re making through the act of being – or more likely pretending to be – transparent. That is, obviously, not what happened on the blacktop. But looked at in terms of attention generated and relevance sustained, two other goals of a press conference, the thing was a clear success. Plus it was the rare political joke that appealed to everyone.”

“A ‘conservative’ event by Turning Pointing USA featured two scantily-clad women firing cash through a cannon into a crowd of cheering Republican teenagers. Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA 2020 Student Action Summit conference on Sunday was sponsored by Bang Energy’s ‘Bang Girls’, who blasted free cash into the crowd of college and high school students. ‘Folks, we are trying to get that thing [money cannon] rolling,’ Bang Energy CEO Jack Owoc stated before blasting out the free cash at the supposedly anti-socialism conference. Naturally, the event prompted many actual conservatives to raise their eyebrows at the strip club-styled free money extravaganza. Turning Point USA is a notorious vehicle for Conservative Inc. aka the Republican establishment, who is more focused on the needs of Israel and corporations than America’s borders and national security. What exactly is TPUSA ‘conserving’?” – Infowars.

“Four people briefed on events said Sidney Powell was back at the White House again today, for third time in four days.” — Maggie Haberman of the New York Times.