A growing chorus of Americans–across the spectrum and from varying walks of life–are increasingly speaking out to get Donald Trump to accept the results of the presidential election and give up challenges which most say are damaging the nation.

While President-elect Biden holds a commanding 306-232 lead in the Electoral College count, Trump has seen his challenges of state vote totals not only consistently thrown out of court, but in a number of cases Trump’s own lawyers have had to withdraw the suits.

“And I just think it’s — and I think most of the Republicans I’ve spoken to, including some governors — think this is debilitating,” Biden said. “It sends a horrible message about who we are as a country.”

The uncertainty that Trump’s engendering is not good for the US economy, said former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, who last year also competed for the Democratic presidential nomination before endorsing Biden.

“There’s no uncertainty over who the president-elect is going to be. There’s no uncertainty that Joe Biden will put his hand on a bible on January 20, take the oath and become the president of the United States,” said Buttigieg, who also is likely to have a job in the Biden administration. “But there’s a lot of uncertainty now over whether this transition will be well managed. And that does have a very real, very specific cost. Look, the last time we had a crisis anywhere near this big, 2008-2009. And the outgoing Bush administration, to their credit, worked with the incoming Obama/Biden administration on rescuing the auto industry, figuring out what to do with the financial system because they knew you couldn’t just take a break and hope nothing terrible would happen in those few weeks when the system was blinking red and the house was on fire.

“It’s the same thing right now. And so, look, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not known for being a Democrat-friendly organization. This is not about politics for them. What they are saying is, ‘The economic cost of the obstruction of the failure to cooperate is real.’ Even though it has no bearing on the simple fact that Joe Biden is going to be our president in a matter of weeks.”

Republicans also are criticizing Trump, including Maryland Gov Larry Hogan.

He called the delay in the transition “outrageous” and “bad for the country.”

Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who came within a hair’s breath of becoming governor of Georgia in 2018 before walking away, also said that it is time for Trump to acknowledge his loss.

“But, as I did in 2018, I acknowledged the legal sufficiency of the election. I just simply challenged the system that allowed voters to be disenfranchised. It is time now for Donald Trump to acknowledge that the legal sufficiency of the system says that he is no longer the president, and unlike what happened to me, where we had enough evidence to go to federal court and to see changes made, he has to admit that there is no evidence of widespread fraud,” she said. “He can continue to fight, but he’s going to lose.”

Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, called Trump’s efforts to overturn the election “deplorable behavior.”

“You can say, oh, 71, 72 million, 73 million people voted for Donald Trump. That’s great. Seventy-nine to 80 million voted for Joe Biden. Put this in your conspiracy pipe and smoke it,” added co-host Joe Scarborough. “Joe Biden has received more votes than any American ever in the history of this constitutional republic. Not really even a close call. And by a lot. He won by a lot.”

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