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While the far-right appear to have made gains in French elections, a reformist candidate led the slate of candidates in Saturday’s Iranian presidential elections, which will now head to a runoff between the top two vote-getters, CNN reports.

Reformist lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian will face off against the second-place finisher, ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, in the next round of the election, scheduled for July 5th.  Iran has had relatively free elections for its civil government since the Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s installed the religious head of the country as final authority in the country.

The liberal parties in Iran have gained support of voters in the weeks leading up to the election, which became necessary after a May 19th helicopter crash killed President Ebrahim Raisi.  Trailing conservative and religious candidates bowed out of the race in the days before election day, hoping to consolidate voters behind Jalili and other leading conservatives.

A dozen paid out-of-state operatives who don’t know how to spell the candidate’s name have registered in Arizona as part of the effort to get left-wing political dilettante Cornel West on the state’s presidential ballot to draw support from incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden, NBC News reports.

Saying the worked for Republican-linked Wells Marketing LLC, some of the individuals who registered to sign up voters said they worked for the campaign of “Carnel west” or “Cornelle West.”  While Arizona requires out-of-state signature gatherers to register, it does not demand them to list who’s paying them.

“The Democratic Party & the mainstream media are fabricating stories about us having ties to GOP operatives. False!” West campaign spokesperson Edwin DeJesus said. “We’re not hiring Republicans or Democrats. This is a clear smear because we’re championing workers, while they protect the interests of the wealthy elite.”

French far right extremist Marine Le Pen’s party is projected to make serious gains in Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections, the Associated Press reports on more owning of the libs.

Asked on Sunday by NBC’s Kristen Welker why the hell he thinks there was “smooth transition” from the Trump to Biden Administration in 2021 and reminded that “January 6 wasn’t exactly a smooth transition,” North Dakota Governor and likely Trump 2024 running mate pick Doug Burgum said “We have to say there was a smooth transition” which sounds awfully like he’s telling her that he, as a Republican and a Trump surrogate, is simply required to say it was “smooth” and that Americans didn’t see what happened live on television on the 6th and all of that shit beforehand.

Later in the bit, Burgum didn’t push back when Welker reminded him that Trump constantly lies and did so on Thursday, but said it’s okay because the lies are any new ones, just his usual falsehoods.

The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office on Friday announced that the petition for a ballot measure to amend the state constitution had qualified to be put to voters in November, Nevada Current reports.

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said the petitioners had gathered 127,865 verified signatures, Aguilar said – more than the 102,362 required by state law to qualify for the ballot in the swing state.

It’s not clear yet if this is definitely the final step to getting the question on the ballot. It is however just the first of two referenda on abortion in the Silver State as it will have to be approved by voters on the 2026 midterm ballot also to be ratified in the state constitution for real.

Forget all that shit Steve Bannon said about putting Dr Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray’s heads on pikes. He was speaking metaphorically to his very neurochemically balanced audience.

Anyway, the white nationalist alcoholic seems pretty upset about going to prison in about 24 hours.

A delegate to Germany’s far right Alternative for Deutschland Party’s congress is claiming self-defense after he bit a protestor during a scuffle Sunday outside the convention venue, DPA reports.

Stefan Hrdy, 67, says he was in his car on the way to the Grughalle Arena in the western city of Essen when he encountered traffic being blocked by a throng of leftist protestors. Hrdy got out to ask a cop to help clear the way when he was accosted. “Then I got kicked in the right calf, fell down and two or three fell on top of me, and then a kick came from the right, I was able to dodge a little, then I clutched the leg and bit down so that I didn’t get kicked again,” Hrdy told DPA.

A spokeswoman for Essen’s police department said this was news to them as they only learned of the biting incident via media reports and that neither Hrdy nor the unidentified protestor had filed a complaint. “Parts of the video do not match Hrdy’s account: It merely shows a demonstrator lying on top of him with his leg and Hrdy biting his calf. The kick to his calf that Hrdy described also cannot be seen in the video, although the view of the scuffle is partly obscured,” DPA writes.

A new CBS News/YouGov post-debate survey finds 40 percent of registered voter respondents said President Joe Biden told the truth during his otherwise shitty performance at Thursday night’s CNN debate versus 32 percent who said the same of convicted felon former President Trump.

It’s an important metric no doubt but it was about the only good one for Biden in the survey, which did not in this release include a horserace number, as CBS found a significant drop from 35 to 27 percent between June 9th and this weekend on whether Biden has the mental and cognitive health to continue serving as president. Trump saw a 1 point drop from 50 to 49 percent on this question.

“The beltway class is counting Joe Biden out. The data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story. On every metric that matters, data shows it did nothing to change the American people’s perception, our supporters are more fired up than ever, and Donald Trump only reminded voters of why they fired him four years ago and failed to expand his appeal beyond his MAGA base”

“Team Biden-Harris has raised over $33M since Thursday, of which $26M is from grassroots donations. Nearly half of our grassroots donations were from first-time donors to the campaign this cycle. Thursday was our best grassroots fundraising day ever,” says a memo from the Biden Harris campaign via CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane, about the “freakout” from democratic donors.

Cyclopian Republican Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw might’ve found a loophole in Congressional ethics regulations that allows him to benefit from running a for-profit company to finance his campaign.  On Instagram, Crenshaw was pitching a gun holster by a company called Endex Fitness, which is run by Crenshaw’s campaign.  In fact, in the Instagram video, Crenshaw calls the business “our Endex Fitness.”

“No, I don’t make a dime off of this,” Crenshaw says in a comment to the post. “This is campaign merchandise, just not the cheesy kind. In fact, my campaign barely gets anything. The profits for this clothing line go almost entirely to funding US House races around the country and growing the Republican majority.”

As the nation enters the Fourth of July weekend celebrating our nation’s independence from tyranny, a 74-year-old white man in Crete, Nebraska decided that his Hispanic neighbors weren’t ‘Murican enough for him, so he opened fire on them Friday afternoon when 15 people were at the residence, NBC News reports.  Seven people, including four children, were injured.

Officials say the shooter, Billy Booth, lived up the street and fired as people gathered in the backyard.  At least one of the victims, however, was shot inside the home.  After police determined the source of the gunfire, SWAT officers raided Booth’s home where they found him dead of an apparent self-inflicted wound.

Police said they received numerous complaints from the neighborhood regarding Booth, primarily about reckless driving and parking issues, but the victims’ family once reported him telling them to “go home,” “back to where they came from,” and to “Speak English.”

Echoing stories from his time in the White House about aides having to edit briefings to bullet-point and mention his names repeatedly to keep his interest, Donald Trump’s campaign staff has implored the Republican National Committee to simplify the Party’s “textbook-long platforms” to short snippets, presumably so Trump can understand them, the Washington Post reports.

Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles apparently never actually read a textbook because the last policy platform released by the RNC in 2016 was just 60 pages long. “Publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters,” they wrote.

You may remember that in 2020, the Republicans had no policy platforms; instead, it released a statement saying every from 2016 still applied plus whatever Trump says, and then they literally attached it to the 2016 printout, without changing the date on the document.

“I love you. You love me. We’re one happy MAGA family! With a Great Big Movement… And Patriotism shared from me to you… Won’t you say you’ll NEVER SURRENDER TOO?” says a Trump campaign fundraising email sent on Saturday to those of us masochistic enough to subscribe to this shit.

Fucking Barney?!? BARNEY?!? Are his campaign marketing team on shrooms or something? Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Like at least after that it says “This is my message to Americans all across the country! You can’t let Joe Biden DESTROY OUR COUNTRY. He’s Sleepy, and he’s Creepy! Believe me, his hands are FILTHY. You can’t let Joe Biden LAUNCH NEVER ENDING WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME!” after that which is on brand in its usual impotent and disarrayed outrage, especially since “Biden” already launched those “never ending witch hunts” a while ago.

That’s very on-brand, but also extremely dissonant from the adapted Barney song lyrics… Which in a way is on-brand too considering he’s a fat, soft reptile with an extremely annoying voice that should’ve died in the early 1990s and has no business being around children. And so is Barney.

This blatantly antisemitic meme really does say it all about MAGA Congressman Scott Perry. Jewish Insider reports that Perry, a credibly suspected traitor under federal criminal investigation for his role in convicted felon former President Trump’s post-2020 election coup attempt, had his campaign spokesman tell them “After receiving your inquiry, learning the history of the image, and contacting several members of the Jewish community (some who were familiar with it and some who were not) out of grave concern that it is considered antisemitic – we removed it immediately.”

“Immediately” meaning at least four days after they posted it, as evidenced by the relative timestamp in the screenshot. The mural was painted in London in 2012 by some far left American street artist named “Mear One” who said it depicted “Jewish and white Anglos” as the bankers sitting around the Monopoly game board. It too was removed shortly after that, painted over due to the pretty blatant antisemitism. But digital images are forever, as Perry and his campaign are aware.

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign tells the New York Times’s Shane Goldmacher they raised $27 million since Thursday night’s shitshow in Atlanta. Part of that was at a donor event in Manhattan on Friday night with Elton John, but either way it was a pretty solid haul, rivaling the $34 million convicted felon former President Trump raised the day after he was found guilty last month.

The fat bastard’s campaign pulled in $8 million as of Friday afternoon on his “debate bump.”

Not really so sure this is a “silver lining” to Biden’s crash and burn as opposed to an actual legitimately good development in the story of this campaign. That for all the fucking weasels at the New York Times and the other corners of Bedwetter World saying he needs to step aside that regular folks – as well as some not so regular rich liberals – are simply stepping up to the challenge and focusing themselves on making sure Trump loses and dies in prison come hell or high water.

Convicted felon former President Trump has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than a titanic struggle for whether or not he dies in a federal prison. He has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to democracy – an erratic and self-interested cunt unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His white nationalist supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats.

If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system. At Thursday’s debate, the former president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr Trump is not the man he was four years ago – he’s considerably worse.

Ending his candidacy would be against all of Mr Trump’s personal and political instincts. He has picked himself up from two impeachments and 88 felony charges in four different jurisdictions – 34 of which he’s already been convicted of and faces sentencing on in 12 days – among other setbacks in the past and clearly believes he can do so again. Supporters of the fat fuck are in a brainwashed messianic cult and think his deranged ramblings are somehow normal. But the former president’s repeatedly unhinged performances on the trail cannot be written off as a bad stretch or blamed on “context” because they affirm concerns that have been mounting for months or even years.

It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation from the malign warping of Mr Trump. And it is the best service that Mr Trump can provide to a country that he has no business running again.

• Biggest takeaway from the debate:  Joe Biden reportedly had a bad cold and still gave his best effort to meet the American people’s needs as the nation’s president and nominee for office.  Donald Trump wouldn’t go out in the rain to honor American war veterans and those who died defending the country.  Biden works for Americans; Trump is all about himself.  Biden will recover from his cold.  Trump will never shake off his narcissism.
• As you read this, Steve Bannon has less than 70 hours remaining as a free man.  Let that put a smile on your face.  
• Ralph Lauren should be banned from designing Olympic ensembles.  Yes, it’s a luxurious brand, but it’s not even close to the style of 97% of Americans.  JFC, the designs make every American athlete look like a snobbish sonnovabitch from the Yacht Club.
• Should the Supreme Court incredibly rule on Monday that a concept called “absolute presidential immunity” exists, I hope Joe Biden is sitting in the back of the courtroom as the decision is read and lets out a low, ominous laugh as he points at Samuel Alito.  

On his last appearance on his podcast before reporting for jail on Monday for a four-month sentence, shirt fetishist and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon colors himself another victim in a long line of failed conservative media voices.  Let the schadenfreude shine as Bannon lists the collapsing conservative media infrastructure targeting the Republican Base.

We at the National Zero editorial desk anxiously await the expected invitation to the upcoming White House conference for online content creators scheduled for August, as the Washington Post reports, although some on the expected guest list said they would turn down the invite to protest various Biden Administration policies.

Christian Tom, the Biden administration’s director of digital strategy, announced the summit while speaking at VidCon, a major conference for content creators being held in Anaheim, saying Friday, “This is an opportunity for the thousands of creators and industry professionals who think about the creator economy every day to really have a seat at the table,”