Nevada’s biggest newspaper tells Trump to give up

Nevada’s largest newspaper, owned by Trump megadonor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, told the president Thursday that he lost the election.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which was purchased by Mr. Adelson in 2015, said in an editorial that the president “does a disservice to his more rabid supporters by insisting that he would have won the Nov. 3 election absent voter fraud. That’s simply false.”

“Mr. Trump lost this election because he ultimately didn’t attract enough votes and failed to win a handful of swing states that broke his way in 2016,” the paper said.

The headline of the editorial was “President Donald Trump seeks to delay the inevitable.”

The Trump campaign and state GOP officials have dropped their court challenge to ballot counting in the Las Vegas area. Joseph R. Biden leads the president by about 36,000 votes in Nevada, which major news organizations called for the Democrat Saturday.

There are still some ballots remaining to be counted in the state, and Trump campaign representatives have alleged widespread voting irregularities.

The Review-Journal said there is no evidence that fraud “cost Mr. Trump the election, no matter how much the president tweets the opposite and his supporters wish it so.” The editorial said “rhetoric from Trump surrogates alleging widespread illegal activity has been devoid of detailed evidence supporting the charge that there was a concerted effort to ’steal’ the election through corruption.”

“An electoral system that involves the participation of 150 million Americans will have its share of issues, but it’s an insult to reason and logic to argue that isolated irregularities constitute proof of a grand national conspiracy,” the paper said.

Mr. Adelson and his wife Miriam gave $75 million this fall to super PAC attacking Mr. Biden.

The Review-Journal also had endorsed Mr. Trump for reelection.