Daily Beast: “The official position of Donald Trump, his administration, and his reelection campaign is that he won the election that he just lost. But one of the campaign’s top surrogates bluntly says that Joe Biden indeed won, and he’s urging the president and the White House to focus on enshrining as many Trump policies as possible before the Democratic president-elect assumes power and starts undoing them.”

“‘It is what it is,’ Stephen Moore, an official Trump 2020 surrogate and an outside adviser to the president on economic and COVID-19 policy, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday evening. ‘It’s very depressing to me. I would say there’s maybe a 20 percent chance that [Trump’s legal challenges] all will work out. I am convinced the president would have won if the election was a week later than it was…I support using every avenue of legal challenge, but I’m skeptical it’s gonna work.’ Moore, a longtime conservative economist, said that he’s ‘not a lawyer,’ and doesn’t know if Trump’s legal team, headed by Rudy Giuliani, have any ‘bombshells’ coming. But he added that he doubts they’d be able to ‘prove’ anything that would overturn the election results by certification deadlines.”

https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1329542027495825410

?? And another one’s gone, and another one’s gone.  Another one bites the dust… ??

While taking questions after a press briefing on his transition team’s teleconference with governors from around the nation, President-elect Joe Biden said he’s made is selection for Treasury Secretary.

Biden also said he has not ruled out going to the courts to have the General Services Administrator Emily Murphy declare him the winner so the formal transition of power can begine.

Biden said he would not announce the pick for Treasury Secretary until after Thanksgiving.  A number of people have been rumored for the position, including:

• Roger Ferguson, currently CEO of TIAA/CREF and former Federal Reserve vice chair, head of financial services for Swiss Re, partner at McKinsey & Co.
• Janet Yellen, a fellow at the Brookings Institute and former Federal Reserve Bank chair.
• Elizabeth Warren, US Senator
• Raphael Bostic, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
• Lael Brainard, former Undersecretary of the Treasury

“Judge tosses out Arizona GOP lawsuit vs Maricopa County, denies motion to block canvass and allows state to recoup attorneys fees from Republican Party” – NBC 12 reporter Brahm Resnik.

https://youtu.be/N6b4fiYcaY4

New York Times: “Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law who emerged during the 2020 presidential campaign as a defender of President Trump’s basest political instincts, is now eyeing a political future of her own in her home state of North Carolina.”

“As Mr. Trump attempts to subvert the election to remain in power, Ms. Trump, three allies said, has been telling associates she is considering a run for Senate in 2022, in what is expected to be a competitive race for the first open Senate seat in a very swingy swing state in a generation. Senator Richard Burr, an unobtrusive Republican legislator who was thrust into the spotlight as chairman of a committee investigating the president’s ties to Russia, has said he will retire at the end of his term. Despite expanded turnout in rural areas, Mr. Trump won North Carolina by a smaller margin than he did four years ago, just 1.3 percentage points, a sign that overall the state is trending blue and that the race for the Senate seat will be tightly contested by both parties in the first post-Donald Trump election.”

We withdrew because we won! https://t.co/aMoNQXEj4z

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020

FACT CHECK:  Trump didn’t win the lawsuit.  He didn’t win Michigan.  He didn’t win the popular vote national.  He didn’t win the Electoral College.  He did not win reelection.

Karl Rove, whom George W. Bush nicknamed “Turd Blossom,” told Fox News on Thursday afternoon that he finds the accusations of election fraud made by Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s self-described “elite strike force team” to be “strange.”

https://youtu.be/q3yvISdk7hE

Rove called on Giuliani and Sidney Powell to prove their outrageous accusations in a legitimate court because not doing so would damage the fabric of our Republic.

In a nearly two hour rambling press conference outlining their accusations of election fraud, the self-described “elite strike force team” of Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Joe DiGenova and Jenna Ellis failed to coherently demonstrate that their claims make sense, let alone hold water.

With hair dye running down the side of his face, Giuliani led his team as they described an election scene where the creator of the voting systems used by 26 states, local election officials, and state and national Democratic leaders manipulated votes by using a combination of logarithms, trashing computer files, submitting fraudulent ballots and destroying ballots for Trump to propel Democratic President-elect Joe Biden to victory.

At various times, Giuliani claimed to have thousands of witnesses, at least 400 affidavits and/or 280 affidavits by poll watchers, vote counters and others.  Giuliani, however, claimed he could only publicly release eight of those affidavits out of fear for the safety of the people who swore them out. 

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1329501302246711296

Politico: “Joe Biden’s transition team has tried to project calm as President Donald Trump refuses to concede and many Republicans – and even one key part of the federal government — continue to have his back. But behind the scenes, Biden’s advisers are in the midst of a fierce lobbying blitz to get Trump’s allies to crack. They’re dispatching emissaries from past administrations – Republican and Democrat – along with a wide array of business and interest group leaders to intercede on Biden’s behalf. According to three transition officials, Biden’s team is in talks with multiple Republican leaders and officeholders to end the transition stalemate, warning them of risks to national security and public health if the president-elect isn’t granted access to the government.”

Caught on the Trump 2020 official YouTube channel by Oliver Willis of the American Independent.

Jonathan Bernstein: “I’m hardly the first to say this, but one thing remains clear about Donald Trump as a politician: No one has more contempt for his supporters than the president himself and those around him. Trump is currently taking his allies through a crash course in disdain for democracy. He’s inventing, repeating or embellishing entirely false accusations about fraud. He’s asking the courts to toss out hundreds of thousands of legal votes for basically no reason. He’s demanding that the election results be overturned altogether by Republican officials — judges in some cases, election administrators in others, or even state legislators in an extreme scenario. It could hardly be more unconstitutional and undemocratic. Oh, and it’s entirely impractical: Trump’s legal and political strategies have no realistic chance of working.”

“It’s clear that most of the Republicans who are going along with Trump know full well that he’s lost. Plenty of White House aides are sending out their resumes. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told allies in Congress to ask now if there’s anything they want before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Republican senators were seen congratulating Vice President-elect Kamala Harris when she stopped back in to cast a vote on Tuesday. That vote was only held in the first place to prevent Biden from filling a key vacancy. Republicans campaigning in the Georgia Senate runoffs keep tripping over themselves as they try to elide the awkward fact that they’re going to need 51 seats for a majority next year and not 50 — because they know that Harris, and not outgoing Vice President Mike Pence, will be the tie-breaking vote come Jan. 20.”

It’s increasingly obvious that Texas and Florida were rightfully won by Joe Biden and it will be illegal to give those electoral college votes to Trump. The voting machines in those states were built by a company called Brominion, which has been linked to Sheldon Adelson, Mohammed bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orban, and Vladimir Putin. There’s no way that there are that many Caucasian voters in either of those states. The rural areas are corruptly run. Bad, rotten things happen in Pampa, Texas. Miami has a Republican mayor of Cuban descent, and Republican Cubans are cheaters. The Jewish vote in Palm Beach was suppressed. Texas ballots for Trump were sent by people who are also on the mailing list for MyPillow catalogs, so they don’t actually exist. Demon sperm got into the brains of Latino voters in the Orlando area and made them cast supernaturally-influenced and thus completely invalid ballots for Trump.

So that’s it. Biden wins. Trump loses. End of story. Rudy can shut the fuck up.

Detroit News: “The top two leaders in the Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature are expected to visit the White House Friday, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.”

“The visits by Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, and House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, will come as a legal fight plays out in the battleground state with President Donald Trump attempting to challenge the results of the Nov. 3 election. Democrat Joe Biden won Michigan 51%-48% or by 154,000 votes, according to the current unofficial results. All 83 counties have approved their tallies, according to the Department of State. And the Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet Monday to consider statewide certification”

A story published by TheHill is leading to a backlash on Twitter, with many users pointing out the misleading headline about the percentage of people who believe outgoing Republican president Donald Trump should concede.

So 54% of Americans think Trump shouldn’t concede? NO. If you read past this false headline, you see that the survey actually shows most Americans think Trump SHOULD concede at some point, and just 12% of Americans think he should not concede. Come on, The Hill, this is nonsense. https://t.co/BHDxm8iY7b

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) November 19, 2020

“So 54” is the top trending political topic on Twitter thanks to the misinformation propagated by TheHill, which intentionally misrepresented the findings of a Politico/Morning Consult poll.  The poll found 78% of Americans thought Trump should concede with some respondents saying that he should do so when his claims of widespread fraud have been debunked.  Only 12% saying he shouldn’t.

Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy confirmed that the White House COVID vaccine distribution team has not yet contacted the transition team of President-elect Joe Biden to ensure a smooth continuation of programs.

First, there needs to be an integration between Trump's team and Biden's team to assure a clean hand-off of a complicated distribution plan.

Second, Biden will likely want to improve the plan, but he can't do that effectively if he isn't read into ahead of time.

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 19, 2020

Monica Palmer, one of the two Republican members of the Wayne Co. (Michigan) Canvassing Board, told the Washington Post she received a phone call from outgoing Republican President Donald Trump in the hours after a contentious board meeting in which the two Republican member voted to not certify the votes coming from Detroit.

“I did receive a call from President Trump, late Tuesday evening, after the meeting,” Palmer told The Post in a message. “He was checking in to make sure I was safe after hearing the threats and doxing that had occurred.”

Palmer and fellow Republican William Hartmann initially voted to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of primarily-minority voters in Detroit by not certifying the vote from the city.  They voted to accept the results from primarily-white suburbs of Wayne County, where error rates were reportedly higher than Detroit.

Ron Brownstein: “Congressional Republicans may be engaged in the political equivalent of a murder-suicide by abetting Donald Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him. By reinforcing Trump’s baseless narrative that he actually won the vote, Republicans could be suffocating President-elect Joe Biden’s already-slim chances of attracting any meaningful support from rank-and-file Republican voters, which will make it much tougher for him to build bipartisan coalitions in Congress. But by supporting Trump’s claims—either overtly or through their silence—Republicans are simultaneously cementing his position as the dominant figure in the GOP, snuffing out their chances of reconsidering the course he has set for their party.”

“‘Clearly, a lot of Republicans in Congress hoped that the election would be a bookend to Trump’s influence in the party,’ the GOP consultant Alex Conant told me. ‘By allowing this episode to prolong, it’s created a near certainty that his influence will persist.’ The longtime GOP strategist Bill Kristol, a leading Trump critic, says this dynamic shows how deeply Trumpism is engrained in the party. It increases ‘the chances of mindless partisan opposition to Biden and a refusal to repudiate conspiracy theorists,’ Kristol told me. ‘It just makes for a more extremist Trumpism party even if Trump retires from politics on January 20.'”