Of all the thresholds Biden had so far crossed in the election challenge—and, for that matter, the thresholds Trump had failed to get over—this was perhaps the most significant. Trump’s challenge, McConnell was saying, would get no help from the Senate. Even its tolerance, bare tolerance, for his acting out was over.

The election challenge, if anyone had any doubt, had failed.

That day, Trump and McConnell had a conversation, with McConnell absorbing Trump’s abuse—for the last time. Indeed, they would not speak after that, or, McConnell aides assumed, ever again. The conversation was as much a break from the language of politics, even at its most bitter, as there might be. It was a road-rage confrontation, escalating in seconds from zero to sixty, with Trump heaping obscenities on the Republican leader and assailing his honesty, competence, patriotism, and manhood. In the days after, McConnell seemed to regard the conversation with something between horror and awe. And fear, too. He had so often danced around it, but here it was: one of the three branches of government was run by someone unmoored from his constitutional and public responsibilities; the president was deranged, no longer in control of himself, if he ever was, no longer with the capacity to accept reality, if he ever could.

The past four years had been, for McConnell, a game of running the clock out, of letting Trump destroy himself without first letting the ever-increasing devotion and awe the party regulars had for him destroy McConnell or the party. And now, finally, the clock had all but run out. McConnell was letting it be known—seldom the tip of the spear, he allowed Senate allies like John Thune and Roy Blunt largely to speak for him—that he wanted nothing less than a straight-up ratification of the Electoral College tally on January 6.

On the call with the Republican caucus after the certification of the electors cementing Biden’s victory, McConnell reinforced his clear position: The Senate would not aide Trump’s specious challenge or his ludicrous theatrics. It was all over, but for the final ceremony (one that McConnell would particularly enjoy).

There was no pushback from anyone on the call.

But, curiously, the very fact that the Trump gambit was not going to succeed, that the election challenge had failed to advance and that all the checks against it had become only more formidable—and now, with the second-most-important person in the Republican Party and the most powerful Republican on the Hill standing against it—only made it easier to support.

So much of Trump politics was a public bow and a private guffaw. You could, apparently, fool most of the people most of the time.