It’s Time for Republicans to Face Facts. Donald Trump Lost.

My question on the on-going and, from a legal perspective, increasingly silly and insubstantial arguments being made by the Trump campaign and its supporters, is this: Do Donald Trump supporters really think he won the election?

As for President Trump himself, I don’t know what he believes.  What I am interested in is whether his supporters think he was cheated.  There are polls that seem to indicate a large number of people who supported President Trump think he really won the election, but I don’t know how the polls were conducted or how the questions were worded – or whether the news media is interpreting or reporting the results of these polls correctly.

I am wondering if, with various media silos reporting only what people in that silo want to hear – on both sides (or should I say “every side,” since there may be more than just two sides), do people in the pro-President Trump silo think the election was stolen?  Certainly, some (maybe, most) of the media that is not in that silo has been, in its reporting, super clear as to what its view of the situation is.  It was telling us, even before the election, that claims by supporters of President Trump about potential vote fraud from an unprecedented increase in voting-by-mail was unsubstantiated and without basis.  In their reporting, not just their opinion pieces, they made it clear their view was the only correct one and any other view was fake news.  Given this view before the election, I can see why some supporters of President Trump would not believe what they are saying after the election – if they even read them.

Which is unfortunate because President Trump did lose, and it is time for people to accept that.  Instead, too many Republicans are not accepting that, at least publicly.  They seem to be scared of President Trump and his supporters and worried that, if they admit to what actually happened, they will be hounded out of office at the next election.

But that is not acceptable anymore.  It is time to face what happened.  The Democrats did not do a good job of that in 2016.  Even though Hillary Clinton conceded the day after the election, too many Democrats, for too long of a time, said President Trump’s election was illegitimate.  But Republicans are taking it even further, much further.  It has to stop.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  President Trump lost.  It is time to admit it.  If he won’t, Republicans still have to.  If that upsets some supporters of President Trump, so be it.  Sometimes you have to do what’s right.  Let’s start doing it.