The Biggest Loser: Like Charlie Sheen, President Trump is still “winning.”

  The President came close yesterday to admitting Joe Biden won the election, then reverted to claiming he’s the victim of fraud. “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” Trump declared on Twitter.

  Earlier he had tweeted about Joe Biden that, “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

   It was that “only won” phrase that had political analysts wondering whether Trump was ready to give up, but no.

  The vote in the Electoral College is 306 to 232 for Biden, the exact numbers that Trump repeatedly described as a “landslide” in his favor back in 2016. Landslide then, fraud now.

  The President’s lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claimed on Fox News that Trump actually won in all the swing states and, “In every one of those states, we have more than enough illegal ballots already documented to overturn the result in that state.” He hasn’t produced the evidence.

  Trump’s refusal to admit defeat and cooperate with transition to the Biden administration is causing growing restiveness. Thousands of Trump supporters turned out Saturday in Washington for a “Million Maga March” that grew violent when confronted by counter protesters late in the day. At least 20 people were arrested and two police officers injured.

   While claiming to get to the bottom of this rigged election thing, Trump played golf twice over the weekend.

  A small but growing number of Republicans is calling for Trump to give up, among them former National Security Adviser John Bolton. He said on ABC yesterday that, “I think it’s very important for leaders of the Republican Party to explain to our voters — who are not as stupid as the Democrats think — that, in fact, Trump has lost the election and that his claims of election fraud are baseless.”

  That set off the predictable Trump personal attack on someone he hired but who turned out to be an idiot only after leaving the administration. Trump tweeted, “John Bolton was one of the dumbest people in government that I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ to work with.”

Viral News: The US has added a million new cases of the coronavirus in the past week, now at a total of just over 11 million. This country has about 3 percent of the world population and 20 percent of virus cases. Let freedom ring. 

  The vaccine is coming, but not fast enough. The drug maker Moderna announced today that its coronavirus vaccine is 94.5 percent effective, based on study results so far. Researchers say the development is wildly successful, but the vaccine isn’t likely to be widely available for months.

Outward Bound: It never gets old. Last night NASA successfully launched four astronauts aboard the privately-built SpaceX capsule for six months of duty on the International Space Station. Among them is  Victor Glover of NASA, the first black astronaut to go to the Space Station.

  NASA said last night’s launch was the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk of the Tesla car company. The plan for the future is to replace NASA space shots with pay-as-you go rides aboard commercial rockets.

The Obit Page:  Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a European socialite and jet-setter who was once the romantic companion of the psychedelic druggie Dr. Timothy Leary, has died at age 74.

  She was 26 when she met Leary, and he was 52, but they went tripping together both on land and in their minds. The guru of the psychedelic age promised her, “You are looking for a way out of the decadent aristocratic game, the limbo of Jet Set desperados. I’ll show you the way.” He did it with LSD.

  It took Harcourt-Smith years to process her experience with Leary, eventually writing a memoir about it, “Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary: My Psychedelic Love Story.”

  — Paul Hornung, the legendary running back for the Green Bay Packers, has died of dementia at a senior living facility. He had once sued Riddell helmets claiming they didn’t properly protect the head.

  A graduate of Notre Dame, Hornung was one of the golden boys of pro football. In nine seasons he led the NFL in scoring from 1959 to 1961 and helped the Packers win four National Football League championships. 

Literary Character: On the occasion of President Trump’s refusal to admit he lost the election and speculation that he might refuse to leave the White House, writer Sarah Lyall in The NY Timescompares Trump to fictional characters who refused to go when their time was up.

  Lyall asks, “Is Trump like King Lear, raging naked on the heath and desperately hanging on to the increasingly diminished trappings of power even as they are stripped from him? Or is he more like Bartleby the Scrivener, the inscrutable model of passive resistance who one day declines to do any more work or indeed leave the building, declaring: ‘I would prefer not to?’”

  Or, she asks, “Is he like Nellie, the character in ‘The Office’ who installs herself at the desk of the regional manager when he is out of town and unilaterally appoints herself boss?”

  We don’t say this as a criticism — you can’t mention every character — but Lyall neglected our favorite, Ronald Reagan in the Christopher Buckley satire, “The White House Mess.” A senile Reagan refuses to vacate the White House for his successor. An aide sent to ask Reagan when he plans to leave returns with the message, “sometime in the spring.” 

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