WASHINGTON — As President Trump continues to fight the presidential election results, numerous people close to him are expressing concern that he’s spiraling into rage and hurting his own legacy as well as the Republican Party.

Those concerns were exacerbated on Monday when Trump blindsided officials throughout the White House and at the Pentagon by firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper with a tweet, multiple people close to the president said. The hope, these people said, is that this week ends differently than the last, and that the president’s lawsuits challenging the election results in multiple states quickly run their course.

The moment is particularly perilous, even for a White House that’s powered through on chaos for nearly four years, with all the uncertainty unfolding against the backdrop of a new coronavirus outbreak among the president’s closest advisers — including his chief of staff and top lawyer on his campaign legal team.

“There needs to be a candid conversation with the president. There is no path to victory,” said one person close to Trump, who said the president “deserves his day in court” but added that continuing to cast doubt on the election results “destroys his legacy.”

Another Trump ally described the goal of the lawsuits and public statements alleging voter fraud as aimed at “branding Trump as something other than a loser.”

Most of those close to the president recognize these legal battles aren’t going to change the outcome, but few, if any, are telling him that.

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A video showing a Navajo and Tewa man celebrating President-elect Joe Biden’s victory with a traditional dance in Albuquerque, New Mexico, garnered 5 million views after it was posted to Twitter on Saturday by photojournalism student Sharon Chischilly.

Chischilly, who is of Navajo descent, said she was filming protests in Albuquerque when she overheard familiar music. She then spotted a man performing a traditional storytelling dance. 

“It grabbed my attention and I ran over with my phone,” she told NBC News in an interview. “I was trying to record him while taking photographs of the dancing.”

Chischilly said she was thrilled to see Native American heritage on display, but was disappointed she didn’t know who the dancer was. After posting the video on her Twitter account, she was able to connect with the dancer, Ashkia Randy Trujillo from Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico, when he commented on her post. 

“I was just dancing because I was happy that, you know, we're gonna be seeing ... different leadership. You know, something different from what we've seen these past four years,” Trujillo, 26, told NBC News. 

Trujillo said he was doing one of the many powwow styles of dance, which often tell the story of a successful hunt or a victorious battle. Although they do not completely share the same tribal heritage, Chischilly said the music reminded her of the Navajo traditions and growing up in Manuelito, in the Navajo reservation that encompasses part of the state. 

“It did bring back a little bit of like, normal, you know, and it definitely made me feel like I was at home,” she said.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Monday joined a handful of prominent Republicans in congratulating President-elect Joe Biden for his projected presidential win, breaking with the vast majority of GOP lawmakers.

Collins said Biden "loves this country," and wished him success on "his apparent victory."

Collins, who won re-election after a difficult campaign, is among the few elected Republicans to congratulate Biden publicly, joining Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska in referring to him as the president-elect. The overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans have yet to extend congratulations to Biden, who was a U.S. senator for decades before serving as vice president under then-President Barack Obama.

In her statement, Collins referenced the importance of the presidential transition and emphasized that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris "should be given every opportunity" to be ready to govern once they are sworn into office.

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Georgia is about to become the center of the political universe.

Control of the Senate is likely to come down to the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff, when voters could be asked to decide whether both Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler should continue to serve in the upper chamber.

Loeffler will face a challenge from Democrat Raphael Warnock after the two emerged from the crowded jungle primary. Perdue's race against Democrat Jon Ossoff is still rated "too close to call" by NBC News. The incumbent Republican remains short of the 50-percent threshold he needs to win the seat and avoid a runoff.

So far, Democrats have secured 48 seats in the Senate, and Republicans look poised to control 50 seats by the time all the votes are tallied in Alaska and North Carolina if the current leaders hold. Democrats will need to win both of Georgia's seats to secure control of the chamber with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The stakes are enormous.

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David Bossie, who was recently tasked to head President Trump's re-election legal challenges, tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News. 

“Because he can’t be at the campaign headquarters and he can’t be in the Oval Office [due to his diagnosis] Dave’s no longer a part of the decision-making process,” one of the sources said. 

Bossie, who heads the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, is apparently at home and feeling OK, the source said, noting that it's particularly problematic that Bossie is now “sidelined” from the legal push he was supposed to lead.

Bossie was most recently seen at a Trump campaign press conference in Phoenix, on Thursday.

Bloomberg News first reported that Bossie had contracted the virus.

Thirty former Republican members of Congress, many of whom previously endorsed Joe Biden, called on President Donald Trump on Monday to accept the results of the election and stop promoting baseless allegations of voter fraud. 

"As former Republican members of Congress who swore an oath to the Constitution, we believe the statements by President Trump alleging fraud in the election are efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election and are unacceptable," the group wrote in an open letter. 

"Every vote should be counted and the final outcome accepted by the participants because public confidence in the outcome of our elections is a bedrock of our democracy," the group added. "Going forward it is our hope the nation will, regardless of party or persuasion, recognize that President-elect Joe Biden has won this election." 

The letter was sent to reporters by former Missouri Rep. Tom Coleman, who represented a Kansas City-area district for almost two decades, but supported Trump's impeachment and became one of many Republicans to endorse Biden. 

Other signatories include former New Hampshire Sen. Gordon Humphrey, former Minnesota Sen. Dave Durenberger, former Oklahoma Rep. Mickey Edwards, who was a founding member of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and former Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who both lost re-election in the 2018 Democratic wave.

Georgia’s statewide voting system implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling, said Monday that widespread voter fraud has not occurred in Georgia, adding that the state's change from red to blue was part of a trend.

President–elect Joe Biden’s lead was just over 10,000 votes, and many of the ballots had split ticketing, such as voting for Biden, as well as Republican Sen. David Perdue, Sterling in a briefing with reporters.

Sterling also dismissed a claim that more mail-in ballots came in from Gwinnett County than were sent to the county's residents, explaining it was merely a false impression created by the way the results were reported.

“Gwinnett is the one county in Georgia that has to use two languages, Spanish and English, and doing so essentially double the size or double the number of the pages on their balance ... ," he said. "In the reporting, it says ballots cast, it's really pages scanned, and we've already talked to Dominion about the fact that language needs to be changed," referring to the voting system's vendor.

Shortly after Sterling spoke, the two Georgia senators up for re-election, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, claimed without providing evidence that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had mismanaged the vote count and called for him to step down. 

"There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems," the senators said in a joint statement. "While blame certainly lies elsewhere as well, the buck ultimately stops with the Secretary of State."

Raffensperger responded with his own statement refusing to resign and defending the work of his office. “If I was Senator Perdue, I’d be irritated I was in a runoff," he wrote. “And both senators and I are all unhappy with the potential outcome for our president.”

In his briefing, Sterling repeatedly said the results coming out of Georgia should be trusted, adding that claims to the contrary should not be given credibility. 

WASHINGTON — As President Trump’s allies have rallied behind his cries of election fraud and publicly encouraged him to keep fighting, Vice President Mike Pence has been notably absent from the conversation, waiting until Monday to make his first public comments on the election results. 

“Told @VP Team Today, 'it ain’t over til it’s over.. and this AIN’T over!' President @realDonaldTrump has never stopped fighting for us and we’re gonna Keep Fighting until every LEGAL vote is counted!” Pence tweeted Monday, more than 72 hours after news organizations called the race for President-elect Joe Biden.

Pence made his first public appearance since Election Day on Monday — briefly walking down the steps of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in view of the television cameras — after a meeting with his staff. He is also scheduled to hold the first coronavirus task force meeting since Oct. 20 on Monday afternoon. It is the only activity that has been on his public schedule in five days.  

Behind the scenes, Pence was at the White House on Friday and has been making calls to donors to try to raise money for the legal fight, but aside from two retweets of Trump campaign solicitations for money for the legal fight, he had made no public comments about the election results until his tweet Monday.

Trump announced Monday that he fired Mark Esper as his defense secretary and said that Christopher C. Miller would serve as acting secretary of the Defense Department.

"I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately," Trump tweeted.

He added, "Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service."

The ousting of Esper is Trump's first personnel move since losing the presidential election. Esper has been working with Congress recently to strip Confederate names from military bases, which Trump opposes.

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