That so many Republican officials to this day have yet to acknowledge president-elect Biden and vice president-elect Harris is also frankly, not a surprise. Neither Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy have even issued statements congratulating Biden and Harris, much less reached out to them to offer to work together for the benefit of the American people. Again, not a shock.

With very few notable exceptions, including Governor Hogan and Senator Romney with whom we spoke earlier, Republican officials have been complicit in the indecent behavior the president has subjected the nation to for the last five years—lies, the cruelty, the inadequate handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has cost more than 237,000 lives in the United States, a number that continues to grow.

They no longer have to behave this way, Republican leaders, but right now many of them are either, a, going along with this fiction that there is any credible evidence of election fraud, or, b, they are issuing mealy-mouthed statements about how the statement about how the president has has every right to seek his day in court for any legitimate claims, even though they know there are no legitimate claims.

So why? After all, president Trump will be shown the door on January 20th whether he concedes or not. Well, it's because he is not leaving American political life. As long as there is a twitter and a right-wing media ecosystem, Donald Trump will have a voice. As long as he has a voice, he will have influence with his tens of millions of supporters. And as long as he has influence with those supporters, Republicans who want to gain or to keep power will refuse to cross him.

In his address to the nation last night, president-elect Biden did something I've never heard a president-elect do. He presented as his mandate the notion of compromise. The desire to work with Republicans. The desire to heal divisions. This quality is actually one of the things about him that many progressives disdain. They think he is naive. Is he?

Are Republicans going to accept his offer in good faith? Will they join Democrats, roll up their sleeves and do everything they can to help this nation in pain? I don't know. The 70 million Trump voters, well they need leadership, frankly. They need to have their concerns addressed and fought for.

But right now the majority of Republicans in Washington, they are not on planet earth. They are with these guys. Do you know what this is? This is a press conference held by Rudy Giuliani and the rest of the president's legal team yesterday, making wild, completely unsubstantiated allegations about voter fraud.

Now, originally the president billed this press conference as taking place at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Philadelphia, but it actually ended up being held in the back of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, no relation to the hotel, very far from the center of Philadelphia, next to Fantasy Island Adult Books, across from the Delaware Valley Cremation Center, in an industrial part of town north of the that Coney Palm Island bridge.

An obvious screw-up in booking, but they all played along, pretended that that was the master plan the whole time.

That's what republican lawmakers want to stick with? Good luck with that.