If no senator objects to the Biden electors from any given state, and only a handful of Trump dead-enders in the House do, the objections will go nowhere, because they must have the support of at least one senator. But if they do have that support, then both chambers must consider the objections and then vote on them.

Why might McConnell want to avoid this scenario? Well, as Politico’s Jake Sherman reports, McConnell said on the call that this would require Senate Republicans to vote down those objections and that this is a “terrible vote,” because it would make Republicans appear anti-Trump.

The rage of the MAGA-heads is falling on McConnell today, but McConnell probably doesn’t care. He may assume he can be the bad guy if it protects other Republican senators from having to go on the record for being for or against the election results.

See also QAnon Supporters Vow to Leave GOP After Mitch McConnell Accepts Election Result at Newsweek and MAGA Turns on Mitch at the Daily Mail (UK). Short term, Republicans are going to take a hit in support. With any luck that might impact the Georgia runoff elections in the Dems’ favor. Mitch is probably banking on everyone settling down before the 2022 midterms.

Even today Trump is tweeting that he won the election. And he is re-tweeting stuff from Breitbart and OAN and the Epoch Times and random people I never heard of with “proof” of fraud and whatever. He may or may not understand that it was Mitch McConnell and the soon-to-depart Bill Barr protecting his ass for the past several months. Without those two, plus Fox News and other part of  Murdoch Media, he’d have had a lot harder time of it. Their protection allowed him to get away with corruptions no other POTUS in history would have even thought about.

But now Barr is leaving early — presumably fired for insufficient obsequiousness — and Mitch is cutting Trump loose. Trump may not be able to comprehend that Mitch watched his ass only for the sake of Republican power, and that Trump’s value to Mitch is now considerably diminished. And I would argue that as long as Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, he’s the most powerful man in Washington. Mitch is the gatekeeper. Very little happens that Mitch doesn’t allow to happen.

Even Fox News is backing away from Trump (see also). And I checked today’s Murdoch-owned New York Post. I found not one headline or editorial about voter fraud or calls to “stop the steal.” Although elements of Murdoch media may continue to pay lip service to “stop the steal,” it seems to me Murdoch has moved on.

Trump has completely lost the Republican/right-wing establishment, in other words. All he’s got left are the crazies.

The crazies are going to be with us for a while, and they can be dangerous. The mayor of Dodge City, Kansas, resigned yesterday after being slammed with threats over her support for a mask mandate. “I do not feel safe,” she said. I expect we will see more episodes of street violence for the next several weeks. The question is, is this flareup of right-wing sedition going to fizzle out in time, or will it grow?

See Jeannie Suk Gersen at The New Yorker, Trump’s Coup Attempt Isn’t Over.

In the United States, the longer our representatives contest the result of the election, the more possible violent escalation seems. The threats against U.S. election officials are particularly chilling in light of examples such as that of Kenya, where, three years ago, a top election official was murdered, and Belarus, where, last year, a former police officer revealed that he was involved in the 1999 abduction and murder of the former head of the central election commission.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said on Sunday that “if you want to restore trust by millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that’s why you’ve got to have the whole system play out.” But it remains unclear how pursuing the goal of overturning election results, simply because one’s own side lost, bodes at all well for what happens when the legal process finally runs out. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who received a pardon from his former boss, insisted at a rally over the weekend, “We decide the election,” after having tweeted out, two weeks ago, a petition warning that “the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent,” and urging Trump to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and order a new Presidential election under military supervision. Those calls were swiftly condemned as dangerous by military leaders. That puts into relief the overarching question about what the Trump Presidency has meant for our laws and legal institutions. Are they weathering a particularly bad storm while doing what they’re supposed to do—namely, to channel the potential for violent conflict into peaceful if begrudging resolution and coexistence? Or are they truly beginning to crumble around us in Trump’s final weeks in office? We likely won’t know for years whether the emerging norms of today are merely testing democracy or destroying it.

That’s what we don’t know.

The Republican establishment, including the media infrastructure anchored by Murdoch media, supported Trump as long as he was useful. But he has proven to be a treacherous ally for them. I believe that if he tries to run again in 2024 the Republican establishment will have him kneecapped. And I think that once he is no longer POTUS, mainstream media, even CNN, will leave him alone. Whether he can maintain any significant support or power with the backing of looney-tune media like Breitbart and OAN alone is questionable.

I doubt Trump is capable of processing what is happening to him now. He is too damaged. See When the Narcissist Fails at Psychology Today; it’s fascinating. Going by this, the one thing we can predict about Trump on his way out is that he will do as much damage to everything and everyone around him as he possibly can.