"Our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated," Trump said in a statement Saturday. "The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots."

The problem is, Trump's campaign has spent much of the past week in court with little success and without presenting anything close to evidence that points to a fraudulent result.

"You can't go to court just because you don't like the vote totals," Ohio State election law professor Ned Foley said on MSNBC over the weekend. "You have to have a legal claim, and you have to have evidence to back it up. And that's just not there."

Not since the beginning of time has anyone ever made greater use of superlatives than Donald Trump. He has constantly been "the most" this, "the least" that and always the "best ever."

Superlatives and exaggerations are a common indulgence to which we all succumb. Journalists are, well, just the worst. Take the first line of this story (see above). Or take Politico's summary Saturday morning: "It's been the most unconventional and contentious election season of our lifetime."

We know what we mean when we say such things. We also know what Trump means when he says things like "you're going to see things you've never thought about seeing" or "they will get hit like no one's ever been hit before." We have long since become inured to him saying he is "the greatest jobs producer God has ever created" or, on the other hand, "the least racist person you will ever interview" or "the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life."

To some degree, all this rhetorical excess makes it difficult to take what the president says seriously when he says serious things. Moreover, it becomes difficult to be taken seriously when reporting things that really do happen and really are unprecedented or truly record setting.