We don’t at all enjoy making our readers sad and depressed but sometimes the really pitiful stuff is unavoidable, like this report from Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman on how things are going in the House GOP conference’s Tuesday pep rally while titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy tries to right his ship as it’s on fire and riven by mutiny – when they’re supposed to be trying to pass a spending bill.

Sherman writes that McCarthy began by telling the story of meeting a downhill skier and asking the guy how he avoided the trees. “I never see the trees,” McCarthy said the skier told him and holy fucking shit. Ughhh. It gets worse. “McCarthy’s point was if you look at the trees, you’ll run into them instead of looking forward,” Sherman wrote. FUCK! “Biden, McCarthy said, has a lot of problems.”

“‘Let’s not hit a tree.’ McCarthy said the news media is counting on Republicans to fail,” Sherman wrote and no, we’re sorry, but we have to keep going with this. “We can win this argument… Let’s amaze America one more time. When they underestimate us and we get it done,” said McCarthy.

Fuck that is just… Where to even start? How many of them in the room were in Congress when their fellow Republican Sonny Bono got himself fucking killed while skiing downhill BECAUSE HE LITERALLY IGNORED THE TREES? Has to be at least a dozen. And even without that it still just sucked so badly. Again, we apologize for this deeply sad tale. We hope we didn’t ruin any National Zero readers’ morning. We promise to try our best to lighten everyone’s spirits in the next story.