One Trump adviser called the current strategy a “dead end,” and said Giuliani’s high-profile attempts at drumming up legal obstacles to the certification of Biden’s election amounted to a “hostile takeover of the campaign.”

“The obvious thing is, this is a shitshow,” the adviser said. “When the Rudy show started, that was a sidelining of everyone else. At that point, it became an issue of going through the motions and the recognition of, ‘OK, this is definitely over because we don’t have a chance with… these conspiracy theories.’”…

As of Friday night, Stepien hadn’t tweeted in support of the legal salvos since Nov. 5. He hadn’t posted to Twitter at all since he tweeted about “#stopthesteal” and “#fightthefraud” that day…

Top officials on Team Trump, knowledgeable sources say, view the current legal endeavor to steal the 2020 election as a “fucking pile of garbage,” as one official succinctly described it—one that has no chance of working, even as the president continues to throw his support behind it.