Trump's chief of staff told GOP senators to 'make the most of' the next 45 days — an apparent admission that Trump could leave office

• At a meeting, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told senators to "make the most" of President Donald Trump's remaining few weeks in office, the Associated Press reported.
• The remark is striking given Trump's continued refusal to concede that he lost the election.
• One senator present reportedly said Meadows added the qualifier "whether it's 45 days or four years and 45 days," still incorporating the hope that Trump might somehow win.
• As time passes, more and more Trump allies are — either on purpose or through verbal slips — letting go of the pretense that Trump could govern for another term.

President Donald Trump's chief of staff has told GOP senators to "make the most of" the remaining 45 days of their time with Trump, an apparent admission the president will soon leave office.

Mark Meadows made the comment in a meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

It is striking in light of Trump's continued refusal to acknowledge he lost the 2020 presidential election and that Joe Biden is now president-elect.

The AP said one of the senators, John Cornyn of Texas, paraphrased Meadows's message by saying "basically just that we got about 45 days left of the president's term."

Meadows apparently did add a caveat in line with Trump's false insistence that he won. Cornyn, again paraphrasing, said that Meadows added "whether it's 45 days or four years and 45 days," the AP reported.

All the same, the implication was clear: Senior members of Trump's administration have no certainty that he will remain in office.

The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

It is one of several covert or unintended signals that the GOP increasingly accepts the validity of Biden's victory in private, even as most of them continue to publicly support Trump's position.

Trump continues to mount numerous legal challenges to the election result, and he has blocked the General Services Administration from authorizing official transition resources to Biden.

In Pennsylvania, where Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is presenting a case to challenge Biden's win there, one the state's US senators, Pat Toomey, told the AP: "Let me just say, I don't think they have a strong case."

On Tuesday, four GOP senators approached Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who represents California in the Senate, to congratulate her on her victory, the CNN reporter Manu Raju said. Of those, only one — Ben Sasse of Nebraska — has publicly acknowledged the election result.

One of those who congratulated her, James Lankford of Oklahoma, later told CNN that he was simply being polite.

Despite the continued public stonewalling of Biden's transition efforts, a trickle of current and former Trump administration officials have privately reached out to him with offers of informal help, CNN reported.

"Nothing that would get us in trouble," the official told CNN. "Just an offer to be of help. They know what we mean, and what we can and can't do or say."

Trump's refusal to release top-level information for Biden's transition is prompting a growing chorus of criticism.

Some Senate Republicans — while still supporting the president's right to mount legal challenges — have said Biden should still be briefed, Politico reported.

Lankford told the outlet: "Both of them have got to be ready to serve, if selected. We don't know who the winner is. So keep the briefings going."

Insider and Decision Desk HQ projected Biden's election win on November 6, a day before major networks drew the same conclusion.

Of the multiple lawsuits launched by Trump's team since Election Day, none have been successful.