Washington Post reporter Robert Costa said Republicans are "ready to move on" from President Donald Trump, but they're going along for now with his claims of election fraud.
The president has so far refused to accept his apparent election loss to Joe Biden, and Costa told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Republicans are hoping to extract a bit of his remaining political capital before cutting him loose.
"It was a revealing weekend because the transactional nature of the party and Donald Trump was laid bare, as Republicans took to the Sunday shows or just stayed off and did not join the fight mostly for President Trump to keep fighting the election results and questioning and attacking its integrity," Costa said. "This is a Republican Party ready to move on. Formally, privately, looking ahead to 2022, 2024 -- a big crowd of 2024 hopefuls."
"At the same time, as I write on today's Washington Post front page with Phil Rucker, Trumpism is here to stay, at least for the moment," Costa added. "It reminds Ed Rollins, who ran [Ross] Perot's campaign in 1992, a bit about Perot's movement, like George Wallace's movement, and they need leaders to be disciplined, to be dominant in order to sustain themselves in American politics. For now, most Republicans in Washington and inside of the White House are nodding along with the president's unfounded claims about election fraud because they think he has enough political capital, but not enough to make this a real fight. But they need to show the 70 plus million people who voted for Trump that they stand for him, at least in spirit."