A handful of republicans are beginning to show enough backbone to question the tiresome charades of the president:
Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, called the conduct of President Trump’s legal team, which has indulged in a web of conspiracy theories about voter fraud, “a national embarrassment,” given the blistering dismissals of their lawsuits in court and their failure to produce evidence of widespread improprieties.
“They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don’t plead fraud and they don’t argue fraud,” Mr. Christie, a longtime Trump ally, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “Elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen.”
Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, on Saturday congratulated Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory, saying that the president had “exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge” the state’s result after a federal judge dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit challenging the election outcome there.
Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, on Friday became the most senior Republican to urge Mr. Trump in a statement to begin “respecting the sanctity of our electoral process”
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, released a statement condemning the president’s pressure campaign on state legislatures as “not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process.”
Mr. Hogan [ie Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland] responded to Mr. Trump’s criticisms by suggesting that the president “stop golfing and concede.”
“Here again in Michigan, it’s not a razor-thin margin — it’s 154,000 votes,” Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of the first congressional Republicans to congratulate Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, said in an appearance on CNN. Mr. Trump has made false charges of widespread fraud in Michigan and pressured state legislators to undo the results, but “154,000 votes is plenty to overcome,” Mr. Upton said. “I mean, it’s over.”
“It’s past time to start a transition, to at least cooperate with a transition,” Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, said on Sunday, even as he insisted that Mr. Trump should have additional time to pursue legal challenges to the outcome of the election. “I’d rather have a president who has more than one day to prepare.”
John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, urged his party to speak out against the president’s behavior, calling on “senior Republican leaders to join those who have begun to come out and say, ‘Trump’s behavior is inexcusable.’”
“Look,” Mr. Bolton continued on “State of the Union,” “the Republican Party is not going to be saved by hiding in a spider hole. We need all of our leaders to come out and say, ‘The election is over.’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/us/p ... e=Homepage
I especially appreciate John Bolton comparing Trump to Saddam Hussein!
http://content.time.com/time/specials/p ... 77,00.html
‘the smaller Aegean islands’ means any islands in the Aegean Sea except the islands of Crete and Evia.