Maryland’s GOP governor skewers Republicans’ ’embarrassing’ refusal to accept election results

Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan on Monday assailed the wide swath of Republicans on Capitol Hill who have refused to accept the outcome of the presidential election, casting their stance as “embarrassing” for the Republican Party.

“I understand at the beginning maybe some people had some concerns about some of the allegations, but now we are several steps down the road. They are out of runway. We just have to acknowledge: This is embarrassing us. It’s an affront to our democratic process and it’s diminishing the presidency,” Hogan told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“I think it’s bad for our party, bad for the country, and it weakens our position in the world.”

Hogan’s pointed comments came shortly after California’s 55 electors put Joe Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president, affirming his election as the 46th president of the United States.

And while a growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to publicly acknowledge Biden’s win, the President’s staunchest defenders are urging him to fight his loss all the way to the House floor in January.

The divide follows weeks of voting conspiracy theories from Trump, despite courts in all of the battleground states rejecting his campaign’s challenges to the election. The Supreme Court dealt the final blow against his efforts to overturn the election result late Friday, dismissing a case brought by the Texas attorney general that sought to disenfranchise millions of voters in four states.

“Look, this election is over and I know that the President had every opportunity to provide some kind of evidence of widespread voter fraud. We haven’t seen any. All the court cases are done, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case because there wasn’t any factual evidence, and now the states all across America — the Electoral College has voted,” Hogan said Monday.

“I signed the ascertainments of the vote here in our state and we are forwarding them to the president of the Senate, the vice president, who will have to read these before a joint session of Congress on January 6.”

The country, he said, has to “start moving forward and recognize the fact that whether you like it or not, no man is above the law, not even the President of the United States. We counted the votes. The election is over.”