What’s the harm in letting Trump blow off a little steam?

Let us be clear that Trump was dead serious about stealing the 2020 election, and he’ll have a lot more allies if he tries it again in 2024:

New emails from Justice Department and White House officials show how President Donald Trump‘s allies pressured then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to consider false and outlandish allegations that the 2020 election had been stolen at the same time that Rosen was being elevated to lead the Justice Department in December 2020.The emails show how Trump’s White House assistant, chief of staff and other allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election — and how Trump directed allies to push Rosen to join the legal effort to challenge the election result, according to a batch of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday

The documents also offer a window into how Rosen dealt with the political pressure coming from the White House.Trump’s campaign to pressure the Justice Department was occurring as he was replacing Attorney General William Barr — who had publicly said there wasn’t evidence of widespread voter fraud — with Rosen, the emails show.

This seems like an appropriate time to revisit the definitive stooge amongst Republican elite:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

Of course, a big reason we’re in this place is that this was the attitude of most of the political press toward Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle.