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Loser MAGA Congressman Lee Zeldin, fresh off his defeat for the New York governor’s mansion, is looking into running for the Republican National Committee’s top post as Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel is rumored to be hanging up her “I fucking suck” hat and bidding hasta la vista to the party ahead of the leadership election at the RNC winter meeting in January, NBC News reports.

“[Zeldin] has received calls from around the country,” some douchebag said Sunday. “It’s likely that he will at least explore it… He’s fielding calls, talking to people, listening to them, but it has not gone beyond that.” The party’s rules require that the positions of chair and co-chair (which would be more accurately described as “vice chair”) be each occupied by a man and a woman without respect to which. With current RNC co-chair Tommy Hicks announcing his retirement on Monday, for Zeldin it would help for Ronna to bow out before another man declares for the co-chair spot.

Records provided to the House Oversight Committee by disgraced former President Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars USA reveal that agents of six foreign governments – Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and China – spent over $750,000 at Donald’s former hotel DC while they were in town on diplomatic business in 2017 and 2018, the New York Times reports.

“It paints an extremely troubling picture,” said House Oversight Chair Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, adding that the documents “sharply call into question the extent to which President Trump was guided by his personal financial interest while in office rather than the best interests of the American people,” which, no shit of course he didn’t care. Even better is how the MAGA cult will ignore this while screaming bloody murder about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Arizona GOP Chairwoman “Chemtrails” Kelli Ward’s bid to block a House January 6th Select Committee subpoena for her phone records, capping off an already shitty week for the demented doctor as her candidates for the US Senate, secretary of state, and probably soon governor and attorney general, were defeated by Democrats. MAGA Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, because of course they fucking did.

In a filing submitted to the court last week but unsealed on Monday, the Justice Department asked Trump Mar-a-Lago docs case special master Judge Raymond Dearie to order Donald’s lawyers to submit a sworn affidavit verifying the inventory of the documents seized by the FBI during the August raid on Mar-a-Lago. Shitty federal Judge Aileen Cannon had stepped in and overruled Dearie on a similar order back in September to prevent Team Trump from being cornered into having to admit Donald had in fact stolen classified docs, so it remains to be seen if she’ll do it again.

“Plaintiff Should Be Required to File a Declaration or Affidavit Regarding the Government’s Inventory The Court’s order appointing the Special Master requires the Special Master to ‘verify that the property identified in the ‘Detailed Property Inventory’ [D.E. 39-1] represents the full and accurate extent of the property seized from the premises on August 8, 2022, including, if deemed appropriate, by obtaining sworn affidavits from Department of Justice personnel.’ D.E. 64 at 2 2(a) (bracket in original). The Special Master has received an affidavit of accuracy from the government. Since the Court appointed the Special Master to ensure fairness, integrity, and even-handedness in the review process, see, e.g., D.E. 64 at 1, 19, 22, Plaintiff should be required to verify or correct the property inventory just as the government has done,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.

On a related note, we nuked an article from earlier on Monday about a separate motion filed by Trump’s lawyers in which they argued he automatically designated all stolen docs as “personal” while still in office. We mischaracterized this as them committing in court to the MAGA media defense that Donald had “automatically declassified” any documents he stole from the White House. For now we’ll maintain that it probably does give some insight into where they’re ultimately going with the criminal defense than might first appear – and specifically to the classified docs – but in absence of more informed analysis by the experts we’ll hold off on where it lands.

Seven college students–four at University at Idaho and three at University of Virginia–were killed in two separate incidents since early Sunday morning, with the UVa shooter, suspected to be a student, still at large Monday morning, USA Today reports.

University of Virginia officials instructed students to shelter in place and classes have been canceled Monday.  The shooting happened at an on-campus parking garage where three were killed and two wounded.  The shooter has not been captured, although police are looking for Christopher Darnell Jones, a UVa student, who they say is armed and dangerous.

Four University of Idaho students were found dead in their off-campus house Sunday morning, CNN reports.  Police have not released the cause of death or the identities of the victims other than to say they were students and that there was no additional risk to the community, implying the killer was one of the dead.

Two of the most prolific pollutors in the world and the two largest global economies, the United States and China will reinitiate discussions on curbing the greenhouse gasses released by the countries in an effort to get climate change under control, the New York Times reports.

Meeting in Indonesia prior to the Group of 20 summit, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed Monday to a series of negotiations to curb emissions while protecting the economic growth of each nation.

In Egypt, international negotiators at the COP27 climate conference responded positively to the two largest economic leaders agreeing to discuss climate change policy.  Breaking with their international counterparts, American conservatives whine about US efforts to cut carbon emissions because they believe if every other country isn’t doing more than the US to curb emissions–even though they have less developed economies–than the US doesn’t have to do anything.

Illinois MAGA insurrectionist Shane Jason Woods, currently out on federal bail while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in September to assaulting a cop during the January 6th Capitol riot, was arrested in his home state Tuesday on charges of reckless homicide, aggravated driving under the influence, driving under the influence and fleeing/eluding police after he killed a 35 year-old woman in a head-on wrong way collision on I-55, The State Journal-Register reports.

Woods, who admitted he had ripped a female Capitol cop off her bicycle while she was pursuing another rioter who had sprayed a chemical irritant on her – and then hours later body checked a reporter while the rioters were smashing media equipment as the insurrection was winding down – faces up to eight years in prison on the federal felony charges at his sentencing in January. Now he faces considerably more time behind bars for killing a woman while drunk driving.

Need we reiterate our point about how not coincidental at all it is that the people who fought to overturn the 2020 election turn out to also be just fucking awful human beings separate and apart from their politics of MAGA malevolence and cruelty? Seriously, we challenge the right wingers in our audience to bring us an example of a Capitol rioter who is active in charitable efforts, built an orphanage in Cambodia, volunteers with inner city kids, runs a food bank that helps the less fortunate, whatever. Something, just anything more concrete than and preferably predating the shit their defense lawyer writes for them like “Oh he’s really active in his church community.” We would sincerely welcome the challenge to our perception – based on a vast body of evidence – that they’re just fucking terrible people. Please by all means try to change our minds here.

Shitty right wing blog American Greatness got all black-pilled over the weekend in a Midterms post-mortem titled “Third World Electorate – Candidate quality? How about voter quality?” exploring this new “blame the voters” line of self-pitying bullshit in the MAGA media universe.

“The picture we got from Tuesday is that of a decadent, vegetative electorate easily swayed by platitudes and sentimental appeals, fervently attached to its entitlements. Within the living memory of many Americans, abortion was widely illegal and considered a grave evil. Americans now appear to regard it as a treasured right. In Montana, voters even rejected a measure to provide life-saving care to infants born alive after a botched abortion. Republicans performed well with married men and women—the people who should be the center of our civic life, while Democrats dominated with unmarried women and the twitchy, nihilist Gen Z. Again: voter quality.”

“Where did Republican messaging stumble? The party, perhaps, could have been more affirmative about what they support. But they cannot be blamed for betting that voters would recoil at the ugliness of the alternative. Even the Democrats are surprised by their success. The choice here was pretty stark: ‘You can vote for more crime, child mutilation, and toddlers in masks, or you can vote for us, but you have to give up your abortions.’ There was a rational choice, and the people didn’t make it,” and please by all means check it out for some more delicious copium.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday hailed the recent recapture of the eastern city of Kherson as the “beginning of the end” of the war but acknowledged the price paid in blood as he spoke to civilians and troops in the city’s central square, the Washington Post reports.

“Nobody just gave us anything,” Zelensky said when a reporter suggested that Russian troops had fled the city without much of a fight. “The price of this victory is considered very high,” he adding that the cost was “a lot of people wounded and a very high number of dead. I think they ran because our army threatened the enemy and they were in grave danger,” Zelensky said of the Russian invaders. “There were intense fights. And here is the result: We are here today in Kherson.”

Fat former President Trump is announcing his 2024 campaign launch on Tuesday, come hell or high water, because any delay would be seen as an admission that he more than any other single person fucked up the midterms for Republican voters, Politico reports. One minion told Politico Donald wants the launch to feel “more like 2016, less like 2020,” so he comes across like an “outsider.”

Disgraced former President Trump was found to have government documents with classified markings mixed in with correspondences dated from after he left the White House in 2021 in his desk at Mar-a-Lago, the Guardian reports on details from a new filing from the Justice Department.

The DOJ’s description pretty clearly is meant to demonstrate that Donald didn’t merely accidentally or even just carelessly stuff the shit in boxes when he was leaving the White House but knew exactly what he had and that he wasn’t supposed to have it. The motion was filed Saturday to Special Master federal Judge Raymond Dearie, whose role in the case has been diminished by a stay from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and may end entirely as soon as the court rules on the Justice Department’s appeal of MAGA judge Aileen Cannon’s bullshit intervention in the case. Dearie’s task now is to sort out what records could be attorney-client or executive privileged, something that does pretty much jack shit to help Trump stave off a criminal investigation over his theft of classified documents, which definitionally cannot be “privileged” at all and are out of Dearie’s hands. So even though it’s a pointless exercise overall, Saturday’s filing shows the Justice Department aren’t going to waste the chance to have a little fun with it by dropping hints to the public about Donald’s guilt.

In response to questions from the New York Times, Donald Trump’s second White House Chief of Staff John Kelly stated Trump repeatedly sought to have the IRS and the FBI launch investigations into his political enemies.

Using mob-esque phraseology like “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on,” Trump would tell Kelly and others about his plans to use the IRS and the Justice Department to harass people like FBI Director James Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.  Trump also wanted to use the IRS to harass his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton; CIA Director John O. Brennan; Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of The Washington Post; and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page former FBI officials who became the target of scores of conservative conspiracy theories.

“The U.S. government, whether it’s the I.R.S. or the Justice Department, should never be weaponized or used to retaliate, and certainly not because someone criticizes you in the press or is your political opponent,” Kelly said in an email responding to the Times’ questions. “The average federal employee or F.B.I. agent or I.R.S. agent goes to work and executes the laws and regulations and shouldn’t be put in this position.”

Democrat Katie Hobbs maintained her lead in the Arizona Governor’s race after the latest dump of more than 97,000 votes by Maricopa County, although her lead shrunk a bit.  After the latest dump, Hobbs holds a 26,011 vote lead over Republican conspiracy theorist and future Sean Hannity replacement Kari Lake.  With about 100,000 still outstanding in Maricopa County, Lake would have to take 63% of the remaining vote to claim victory, but the current splits don’t merit a lot of hope.

Democrat Andrea Salinas has defeated Republican Mike Erickson for Oregon’s 6th District, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman projects. Erickson was the Herschel Walker of the House, meaning he paid for an abortion before running for Congress as a “pro-life” conservative.

pic.twitter.com/JlpP39uOKm

— Doug Mastriano (@dougmastriano) November 13, 2022

National Zero skipped this “FTX meltdown” bullshit because we had actual politics and elections to report on this week. Then there’s that crypto is for pseudo-libertarian man-boys playing pretend with digital Monopoly money so we pretty much only cover it when we feel like mocking it.

Anyway, shitty right wing news site The Post Millennial reports Bahamian authorities have detained FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, and his minions Nishad Singh and Gary Wang before they could flee to Dubai. FTX, an exchange for crypto nerds, collapsed spectacularly this week when a report revealed they had leveraged funds in customer accounts for their own trades, causing runaway withdrawals and tanking the price of Bitcoin and other fake digital fiats. Bankman-Fried’s net worth went from tens of billions to relative jack shit overnight and FTX is now being run by a former CEO of Enron as it unwinds. Amazing how the whole crypto thing – which was supposed to be a response to the corruption and incompetence of the real world financial system epitomized by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 – ends up collapsing in a remarkably similar mess of incompetence and corruption. Much faster than Lehman Brothers actually.

President Biden’s granddaughter Naomi, 28, will marry her dude Peter Neal, 25, at the White House on Saturday, November 19th, in the 19th ceremony to be held at the presidential mansion since the British burned it down in 1814, the Associated Press reports. Naomi, Hunter Biden’s oldest daughter, is a lawyer while Pete is a recent University of Pennsylvania law school grad.

It’s the first presidential family wedding at the White House since Tricia Nixon married Chris Cox in 1971. Their son Chris Jr married Andrea Catsimatidis, daughter of right wing billionaire John Catsimatidis when Cox was 30 and she was still in high school but got divorced a few years later. Andrea is now the chair of the Manhattan Republican Party. They have zero elected candidates in office. Older Nixon sister Julie is the one who married Dwight D Eisenhower’s grandson, David. They didn’t want a White House wedding and got hitched quietly in December 1968. As far as we know none of their kids married high schoolers. Camp David in Maryland is named after David Eisenhower.

What was this article about again? Oh yeah, Naomi Biden’s wedding. We suspect it’ll be a happier occasion than a certain wedding hosted by a certain former President was on Saturday. That poor fucking kid, having to have Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Donald, Don Jr, Melania, and Eric for in-laws.

“Students for Trump” founder Ryan Fournier, who is kind of like a low rent Charlie Kirk (as if Charlie Kirk himself isn’t low rent enough), blocked National Zero at some point after this reply:

Heard about your little DWI problem, Baby Goebbels

— National Zero (@NationalZeroUSA) October 26, 2022

Unlike the recent Glenn Greenwald situation which we reported on pretty much immediately, National Zero staff were unaware of Fournier block until Sunday, nearly three weeks after the little Nazi punk had apparently gotten all pissy about us just making conversation. Jeez.

A new post-midterms survey by YouGov finds Napoleonic little bastard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leading disgraced former President Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination 42 to 35 percent among GOP voters and GOP-leaning independents. However, Trump leads by a tighter 45 to 43 among those who self-identified as “Strong Republicans.”

It’s a reversal from a Yahoo-sponsored YouGov survey from last month which found Donald leading Ronald 45 to 35 percent for the nomination among GOP voters and exciting hype for those of us eager to watch an all out war between its top two personalities consume the Republican Party.