Yet even among those who celebrated the outcome of the case, many feared the longer term impact of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on public trust in democracy and the mechanics of elections.
“Pleased with the SCOTUS ruling, but also immediately slightly terrified of where this crazy train goes next,” Brendan Buck, an adviser to the last two Republican speakers, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, wrote on Twitter. He later added, “We should know by now there’s a bottomless supply of crazy.”
Not long after, Allen West, a former congressman and the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, slashed at the Supreme Court and said in a statement that hinted at secession that “perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the Constitution.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, called on the Texas G.O.P. to retract the statement and fire Mr. West. “My guy Abraham Lincoln and the Union soldiers already told you no,” Mr. Kinzinger wrote on Twitter.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has trained his anger at Fox News, the often sympathetic cable network, for accepting the election results, and directed his supporters to Newsmax, which has seen a surge in pro-Trump viewers since Election Day. On Friday, the Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly opened his 7 p.m. program by reassuring his audience, “It’s not over.”
When a guest, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, depicted Friday’s court order as a game-over moment for the president — saying there was now a “close to zero” chance that the Supreme Court might reverse the election results — Mr. Kelly objected.
“I’ve seen stranger things happen in a courtroom,” Mr. Kelly said, before invoking one of Mr. Dershowitz’s most famous legal cases: “I’ve seen O.J. Simpson walk!”
