Nevada’s Trump Forever Party continues to hammer away like cross-eyed carpenters at the state’s presidential election results and Gov. Steve Sisolak’s response to the state’s coronavirus pandemic. You’d think their thumbs would be sore by now.

They flail with disproven claims of widespread voter fraud and use their falsehoods in daily fundraising pitches on social media. They swing and miss in courtroom after courtroom even in the wake of the Nevada Supreme Court’s Nov. 24 approval of the final canvass of the Nov. 3 election.

On Friday in Carson City, District Judge James Russell delivered more bad news in a withering judgment dismissing the latest attempt by Trump’s Kool Aid drinkers to contest the outcome of the election. The judge gutted the plaintiffs’ witnesses and so-called experts and made confetti of their argument.

Alas, missed again.

This just in: Joe Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes. It wasn’t close, and even Attorney General William Barr has acknowledged reality.

Then there’s the state Republican Party’s Sisolak Pandemic Project, which goes something like this: He’s done too much, but then he hasn’t done enough. Trying to make a scintilla of sense of their rhetoric is crazy-making. Mask mandates recommended by the medical experts and the White House Coronavirus Task Force is fine, but wearing a mask robs patriotic Nevadans of their freedom to spread a deadly virus to their neighbors. Lowly science runs counter to their magical thinking that spreading COVID-19 would somehow create “herd immunity.”

It would almost be comical if it weren’t, you know, killing people.

Adding to the increasingly reckless rhetoric this past week was misinformation generated by a social media post that claimed Reno’s Renown Regional Medical Center somehow perpetrated a fraud on the public by creating a COVID-19 M*A*S*H unit in its parking garage to handle the surge in patients. It wouldn’t have mattered had the conspiracy theory not been picked up by President Trump, the conspiracy theorist in chief, who tweeted the distortion out to his more than 80 million Twitter followers, adding the lie, “Fake election results in Nevada, also!”

The Associated Press, The Nevada Independent, and other credible media sources quickly debunked the hurtful fabrication, which originated with a Twitter feed and website that drips with anti-Sisolak vitriol, coronavirus conspiracy theory, and anti-mask snark.

This is what the state’s Republican Party has been reduced to in the age of Trump. Fellow citizens are dying, hospitals are stretched to capacity and beyond, widespread availability of a vaccine remains months away. But there’s still room to take pot shots at health care professionals and first responders in the name of propping up the cult of personality.

With so many rubes and true believers, it’s no wonder the GOP continues to use pandemic politics and the “Stop the Steal” gag as fundraising pitches on social media. As long as people keep sending in their hard-earned cash in the name of denying the undeniable, they’ll keep filing fraudulent lawsuits and claiming coronavirus is just a bad cold blown out of proportion by the liberal media.

Pick your poison when it comes to Sisolak’s response to the pandemic and the state’s crushed economy. His decisions deserve legitimate debate.

An attempt to balance health and economic concerns, something faced by governors in 49 other states, have placed him on a high wire in a hurricane. The inability of the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation to help Nevadans in anything approaching real time is nothing short of scandalous. The threat of a crush of evictions just in time for the holiday is heartbreaking. But at least admit that Sisolak was placed in an impossible situation facilitated as part of a political strategy forward by Team Trump.

Sisolak in general hasn’t dwelled on Trump’s inept and deadly response to the coronavirus pandemic, but the president’s most recent tweet slime about the Reno hospital and the state’s election pushed him to respond with a statement.

“For nearly nine months, the State of Nevada has not only had to battle this pandemic, we have had to fight the President's nonstop attempts to politicize a virus that has led to over 260,000 American deaths,” he said.

“His consistent misleading rhetoric on COVID-19 is dangerous and reckless, and today's implication that Renown's alternate care site is a ‘fake hospital’ is among the worst examples we've seen. It is unconscionable for him to continue to spread lies and sow distrust at a time when all Americans should be united during this historic public health crisis. Enough is enough.”

But we know by now that enough is never enough. It’s something to keep in mind as the days pass and Trump hints about martial law as his zealots openly talk about taking to the streets to block the peaceful transfer of power.

In that statement, Sisolak gave his usual shoutouts to healthcare workers, especially those in Northern Nevada faced with the reality of creating an alternate care site in a parking garage.

 “They aren't liars, as the President implied -- they are heroes,” Sisolak said.

Then the governor did something really audacious in its simplicity. He asked Nevada leaders regardless of political party to join him in condemning Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the state’s health care workers.

The response from what passes for the leadership of Nevada’s Republican Party was predictable.

Crickets.

Followed by a fundraising pitch on social media to mount a phony legal battle over a lost election.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR. His newest book—a biography of iconic Nevada civil rights and political leader, Joe Neal— “Westside Slugger: Joe Neal’s Lifelong Fight for Social Justice” is published by University of Nevada Press and is available at Amazon.com. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith