Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

For nearly four years, top Republicans and conservative media, who originally shunned U.S. President Donald Trump during the Republican primaries in 2016, embraced him with open arms after his victory. They have routinely gone to bat for him at critical junctures, lied for him and peddled dangerous conspiracy theories on his behalf. But at the very end, when Trump was on the verge of losing the fight of his political life, they didn't come to the rescue. 

Fox News, the nation's top conservative news outlet, was one of the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Trump officials were immediately on the phone with top Fox executives and personalities, furious at what they saw as a premature decision. Trump's supporters were seen in videos cursing Fox News, and right-wing operatives on social media saw the network as traitors.

Fox's Arnon Mishkin, who runs its decision desk, said that "we strongly believe that our call will stand, and that's why we're not pulling back the call." Discussing the possibility that Trump could pull off an extremely unlikely win in the state as his supporters storm vote counting stations, he said the objections were like discussing "if a frog had wings."

At least one of the station's top personalities, Chris Wallace, condemned the president for his early victory call on Election Day. The anchor called the election an "extremely flammable situation," continuing that "the president just threw a match on it."

The New York Post, which is another outlet in the News Corp umbrella owned by Rupert Murdoch, ran a headline on Thursday night, "Downcast Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address." 

The article said in its introduction, "President Trump repeated his unfounded claim that political foes were trying to steal the election from him during a briefing on Thursday evening as he trailed his opponent and remaining swing states were leaning toward a Joe Biden presidency." 

This is the same New York Post that has been hailed for weeks by conservatives for publishing an article alleging that Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, introduced him to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm. 

Similarly, top Republican officials did not back up Trump in his outlandish claims. Nikki Haley, a former Trump official, eulogized the president before his loss was officially cemented and was blasted by Donald Trump Jr. for doing so. 

She said on Twitter, "We all owe @realDonaldTrump for his leadership of conservative victories for Senate, House, & state legislatures. He and the American people deserve transparency & fairness as the votes are counted. The law must be followed. We have to keep the faith that the truth will prevail."

Perhaps most importantly of all, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is the most powerful Republican in Washington, has been silent on Trump's unfounded fraud claims and has apparently given up on him. Instead, he's made clear that he will work to torpedo Joe Biden's administration by making sure he doesn't confirm "radical progressives" to key cabinet positions. 

McConnell understands politics; he is the best barometer for where the general Republican strategy is. It's clear from his behavior that they understand they've lost the White House, and it's been quite obvious for some time that they knew this was an inevitability, as did many of the most powerful political actors in the country.

This is why McConnell and his Senate Republican colleagues let down hopes for a new round of stimulus before Election Day, which is something that could have helped Trump. Instead, they focused and will continue to focus on locking in a Republican Senate majority for 2021 – to make sure that Biden will have no route for his legislative agenda. After all, that was exactly what McConnell did during the Obama years when he became Senate majority leader.

This strategic shift is evident in the fact that on November 4 Mitch said he's open to a new round of stimulus before the end of the year despite previously saying it wouldn't happen until next year. It's not because he had a sudden change of heart, rather because there will be two runoff Senate elections this January in the state of Georgia – which will determine Senate control in the next Congress – and the Republican candidates need to avoid the obvious attack that they are ineffective in passing legislation when it's needed most, for example, during a pandemic and economic catastrophe.

Republicans have mocked Democrats for years over the results of the 2016 election and their reaction. Unable to swallow the loss, Democrats and their supporters in the media concocted the "Russiagate" conspiracy to avoid any introspection over their sweeping defeat.

Republicans, the far more effective political party in terms of actually winning and passing their agenda, will not make the same mistake. They are smart enough to realize that peddling easily-dismissible conspiracy theories is unpopular and makes one look weak.

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