Las Vegas newspaper that endorsed Trump twice says he should concede

A Las Vegas newspaper owned by a major Trump donor that endorsed the president twice called on him to concede the 2020 election to President-elect Joe Biden.

“It is too fitting that the Trump presidency concludes amid a babel of bluster and bravado. But the president does a disservice to his more rabid supporters by insisting that he would have won the Nov. 3 election absent voter fraud. That’s simply false,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote in a Thursday editorial.

Trump has refused to concede the election, alleging without evidence that Biden’s projected victory is the result of widespread voter fraud. The president’s campaign has also mounted legal challenges in several battleground states, including Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The editorial acknowledges that the Trump campaign is “certainly within its rights” to mount legal challenges before the results are certified.

“There is no evidence, however, that fraud cost Mr. Trump the election, no matter how much the president tweets the opposite and his supporters wish it so,” the editorial notes. “Mr. Trump would still trail in Pennsylvania even if mail-in ballots received after Election Day were discarded. He would remain well behind Mr. Biden in Nevada even if unverified GOP claims of thousands of illegal votes were dropped from the tally.”

A group of election infrastructure officials on Thursday said in a statement that there was no evidence of vote manipulation, calling the election the “most secure” in the nation’s history.

The editorial goes on to note that Republican gains in the House and a better-than-expected performance in Senate races undercut the idea of an organized conspiracy to cheat in the election.

“Mr. Trump can keep fighting — and no doubt will. In the meantime, however, he has nothing to lose by cooperating with President-elect Biden’s transition team,” it reads.

“Mr. Trump expected no less from the Obama administration in 2016 even as Hillary’s acolytes floated ways to manipulate the Electoral College vote,” it continues. “Mr. Biden deserves the same consideration today regardless of how long the president seeks to delay the inevitable.”

The opinion piece comes as many Republican lawmakers have not acknowledged Biden as president-elect yet, but several GOP senators have said Biden should begin receiving intelligence briefings. 

The push from the senators comes as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not in contact with Biden because the General Services Administration hasn’t certified him as the winner. 

The Review-Journal, the first major newspaper to endorse Trump in 2016, is owned by casino magnate and GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson.

Although Adelson and his wife Miriam spent nearly $200 million on the 2020 election, Trump reportedly lost his temper on a call with Adelson in August, accusing him of not doing enough toward his reelection.