Extract from ABC news
Analysis
You wouldn't have known Donald Trump lost the US election looking at this week's rally.
He lost the popular vote by more than 7 million. He came up 38 votes short of the 270 needed to win the electoral college.
But as the President prepared to take the stage at a rally in northern Georgia, the song We Are The Champions blasted through the loudspeakers.
The crowd chanted "fight for Trump" and "stop the steal".
And less than a minute after taking the podium, Mr Trump turned what was supposed to be a "get out the vote" speech into a criticism of the US election system.
"They're not taking this White House. We're going to fight like hell."
Trump added more personal pressure to his 'rigged election' narrative
Mr Trump spent the next 80 minutes warning that Democrats would "destroy the country", while also suggesting that members of his own party were complicit in overlooking "rampant fraud".
The President bashed Georgia's Governor and Secretary of State for certifying the vote there, saying they weren't true Republicans and would struggle to be re-elected.
He criticised the US Supreme Court for denying him legal standing in a fraud case.
He thanked the senators who had come forward to say they would object to the certification of electoral college votes in Congress two days from now — a highly symbolic move that legal experts say won't stop Joe Biden from being named President.
Mr Trump also put pressure on his Vice-President, Mike Pence, to intervene, though Mr Pence's role in the electoral college process, as outlined in the US Constitution, is limited to reading the result.
The rhetoric overall was in line with the "rigged election" narrative Mr Trump has been pushing since the US started shifting its voting methods in the face of coronavirus.
But the timing of the rally itself ties Mr Trump's words to a critical new test: the Georgia Senate run-off elections.
The Georgia Senate races are the most high-stakes of a generation first and foremost because they will decide which party controls the upper chamber of Congress.
If the two Democratic candidates win, it'd mean wide legislative freedom for Joe Biden during his first two years in office, before the next congressional election.
If the Republicans lose, the party might be forced to rethink their strategy, which looks very much like the strategy that lost them Georgia in the general election: following the President's lead in revving up his base, rather than trying to build bridges to the moderate Republicans.
Two consecutive losses of such a magnitude will force the party to reconsider what it needs to win elections going forward.
The party's loyalty to Mr Trump is on the line.
There's a growing rift between Republicans over what to do with Trump's fraud claims
Just in the two months since the election, some of Mr Trump's most loyal allies have begun splitting with the President in small but notable ways.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has acknowledged Joe Biden's presidential win, though he's stopped short of condemning election fraud.
He also led the Senate in sticking with $US600 ($778) stimulus checks as part of a recent COVID-19 relief bill, siding with the Republicans' pre-Trump brand of fiscal conservatism over the President's populism.
Republicans voted overwhelmingly to override a presidential veto on a defence bill that's popular with military families who've long leaned Republican.
And Mr Trump's hand-picked Attorney-General, William Barr, publicly said the Justice Department doesn't believe the election should be overturned because of fraud.
Granted, there's still some members of the party who are willing to bet that taking up Mr Trump's battles will gain them the support they need to win future elections.
The two senators leading efforts to object to the electoral college vote are Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley — two men whose 2024 presidential ambitions are an open secret.
And then, of course, there's the whole mess of Georgia.
Georgia's Senate races are still toss-ups
It's tough to get a read on which candidates are leading in the race, which is atypical in every way.
We've got two simultaneous run-offs of high stakes, held during a pandemic, two months after an election with the biggest voter turnout in US history, in a state that flipped from Mr Trump to Mr Biden.
Polling for run-off races isn't as reliable as general election polling, but the numbers show a toss-up.
Fundraising for both candidates has broken records — collectively amounting to more than $US500 million, making them among the most expensive Senate races in history.
Early voting turn-out, too, has smashed the standards, drawing over 39 per cent of the state's registered voters.
"In Georgia, run-off voters are usually older and whiter, and that benefits the Republicans," said Niles Edward, who covers Georgia politics for the website Decision Desk HQ.
"But this time around, we're seeing presidential-level early voter turnout, especially in key Democratic counties. Some Republican counties are significantly behind where they were for early voting in November."
But the Republican Party is not stepping back from the strategy.
The candidates on the right, senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, have consistently picked Mr Trump's side over the rest of the party's, even if it meant condemning Georgia's election system as unfair as they ask people to vote for them.
Both senators announced they would object to the electoral college vote on Wednesday (local time).
But the biggest wager may be asking Mr Trump to speak on election eve.
The party knew full well that he'd come out swinging on the "rigged election" lines, especially after a recording of a call revealed that Mr Trump pressured Georgia's top election official to change the general election results.
Will voters turn out for an election they don't believe is fair?
Notably, the party chose Whitfield County for the site of the rally.
The Republican-leaning region, which voted for Mr Trump by a 44-point margin in 2016, saw high early voting turnout in the general election, but is trailing the state average by about eight points now.
Rally attendees like Elena Merino said there was nothing risky about asking Mr Trump to speak so close to the election day.
She said the Republicans she knows are coming out to vote because, even though they believe the election was stolen, voting is the only course of action they have left.
"I've done everything else I can do. What other choice do I have?" Ms Merino said.
Mr Trump, too, framed voting as the best recourse against a rigged election.
"We've got to swamp them."
If the Republicans lose control over the Georgia Senate because of low turnout, we'll never know for sure whether it was because Mr Trump's voter fraud narrative led some to stay home out of fear or frustration.
But we also won't be able to rule that out.
The Republican Party will have to move forward believing, at least a little, that Mr Trump's power has become a liability in a President Biden era.
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