A few Republicans have done so: Sens. Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio, and the list is growing. They deserve credit. But Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus and Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, both tried to cover for Trump, and scores of others have been silent. There’s been no word from House Speaker Paul Ryan, nor from Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Republicans will try three different ways to duck condemning Trump. The first, as exemplified by Priebus and Pence, will be pretending Trump said something other than what he actually said. “He is going to accept the results of the election,” Priebus told NBC’s Hallie Jackson after the debate last night. Pence claimed Sunday that Trump’s talk of a “rigged” election only referred to “the obvious bias in the national media.” (Trump helpfully clarified a few hours later that the “rigging” included “many polling places.”)

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The second: pretending that Trump is just doing the same thing as Al Gore in 2000. No, he isn’t. Gore conceded the election as soon as the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. Before that, Gore didn’t even have to ask for a recount: The margin in Florida was so close that it automatically triggered the recount. And before Election Day, Gore never said anything about a “rigged” vote.

The third and most insidious: saying that Trump is just concerned about voter fraud and that he’s right to be. (Priebus has already done this.) It’s bad enough that claims of widespread voter fraud are demonstrably false: There have been more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States since 2000, yet only 31 incidents of voter impersonation. And a “rigged” election would require state and county-level officials across the country, many of whom are Republicans, to be in on the conspiracy. Worse, this defense continues the sowing of distrust in government-reported figures — not just vote totals, but job and economic growth numbers — that has helped fuel Trump’s rise.