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President Trump won this election, Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the top Republican leader in the House, falsely told Laura Ingraham on Fox Thursday night.

Far from over. Republicans will not back down from this battle," McCarthy declared via Twitter on Friday.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended and even echoed Trumps unsupported claims that Democrats and their allies had rigged the election against the president.

Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake, Graham told Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Youre talking about a lot of dead people voting. Youre talking about in Nevada a lot of people voting who are not legal residents." Graham offered no evidence to support those claims.

Graham, who just won his own reelection victory, also told Hannity that everything should be on the table when the host suggested that GOP-controlled state legislatures in Pennsylvania and elsewhere might invalidate the election results over corruption concerns.

Other prominent GOP officials raised their voices to refute directly the steady drumbeat of misinformation coming from Trump, his children, and his campaign.

For example, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, pointed to Trumps contradictory calls to stop counting ballots in states where hes ahead and keep counting in states where hes behind.

You cant stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state, Blunt told reporters. That might be how youd like to see the system work, but thats not how the system works.

And Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical battleground in the presidential race and a target of many of Trumps unfounded claims of malfeasance, called the presidents Thursday night speech very disturbing" in an interview Friday with CBS News.

Theres simply no evidence anyone has shown me of any widespread corruption or fraud," said Toomey, who has announced he wont seek reelection in 2022. The presidents speech last night was very disturbing to me because he made very, very serious allegations without any evidence to support it.

But most Republicans appear to be hewing to their well-worn habit of tiptoeing around the controversy at hand, expressing any disagreement with the president obliquely for example, by not even mentioning Trump in their responses.

Heres how this must work in our great country: Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes," tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has otherwise declined to publicly address Trumps baseless claims of electoral wrongdoing. Thats how Americans' votes decide the result.

States have the authority to determine the specific rules of elections. Every valid vote under a states law should be counted. Allegations of irregularities can be adjudicated by the courts. We must all respect the outcome of elections," Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said in a statement released Friday morning.

The continued reluctance of many Republican officials to renounce Trump more directly may reflect their view that even if he loses, the president will remain a powerful force in the Republican Party.

Trump performed much better than the polls and many pundits had predicted, garnering the second-largest share of the popular vote in history, after Biden. And he continues to command the loyalty of tens of millions of voters across the country.

Congressional Republicans also defied expectations, picking up seats in the House and very likely holding on to control of the Senate, helped in many cases by the surge of Trump voters to the polls.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who just won a House race in Georgia and who has expressed support for the conspiracy theory QAnon, went after one of her future GOP colleagues on Twitter Friday for daring to even raise the prospect that Trump might lose.

The time to STAND UP for @realDonaldTrump is RIGHT NOW! Republicans cant back down. This loser mindset is how the Democrats win," she wrote, replying to a tweet from Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas.

"President Trump has fought for us, we have to fight for him. We wont forget. Trust me, she vowed.

Among those willing to condemn Trumps comments, many of the harshest rebukes came from a handful of regular Trump critics, including Mitt Romney, the Republican partys 2012 presidential nominee.

Romney, now a senator from Utah, said Trump was within his rights to request recounts and call for investigations where evidence of irregularities exist.

But Trump "is wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen, Romney said on Twitter. Trumps claim damages the cause of freedom here and around the world ... and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions, he said.

The presidents comments that theres some national conspiracy around this arent supported by any facts, added Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican who did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020. And theyre damaging to democracy. They cheapen all of those of us who serve in public life and who ran, and who were either elected or defeated based on the will of the people.

A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon, Representative Will Hurd, a Texas Republican set to retire in January, tweeted.

Some Republicans seemed to be recalibrating their reactions as Trumps claims drew more and more scrutiny.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, initially tweeted out a neutral statement Thursday about ignoring overheated rhetoric."

On Friday his office shared a more direct response. Voter fraud is a poison to self-government, so these are major allegations. If the Presidents legal team has real evidence, they need to present it immediately to both the public and the courts," Sasse said. "In the meantime, all legal votes need to be counted according to relevant state laws. This is our American system and it works.

Even Graham, who on Thursday night said he had given $500,000 to Trumps legal efforts, tempered his stance somewhat Friday.

President Trumps team is going to have a chance to make a case regarding voting irregularities, Graham said in a video message The Hill posted. They deserve a chance to make that case. Im going to stand with President Trump. If a Democrat were doing this, itd be cheered on.

This story includes material from the Associated Press.

Victoria McGrane can be reached at victoria.mcgrane@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @vgmac. David Abel can be reached at david.abel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

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Republicans face their biggest loyalty test of all - The Boston Globe