The audio is a clip from the Thursday edition of Ted Cruz’s podcast while the overlaid still photo is of Ted Cruz from his visit to the Mexican border on Wednesday. Listen for 39 seconds.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team have arguing in front of DC Circuit Judge Beryl Howell to get her to rope former Vice President Mike Pence in to testify to a federal grand jury investigating disgraced former President Trump’s 2020-2021 coup attempt in which Pence could have been lynched by an angry mob of MAGA scumbags, CBS’s Robert Costa reports.

According to Costa, the motion to compel came in response to the orange fat bastard’s lawyers unsurprisingly asserting ex-executive privilege to block Pence’s testimony, while Pence himself is trying to fight Smith’s subpoena based on his role as an officer of the legislative branch.

Understandably pissed off about Fulton County, Georgia Trump coup attempt investigation special grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs’s Tuesday media tour in which she all but said outright that the jurors had recommended the fat orange fuck be indicted for his crimes, Donald’s lawyers are struggling to come up with some way to use it to own the libs, the New York Times reports.

“We’re just considering everything,” Trump attorney Drew Findling, aka the “Hip-Hop lawyer” told the Times on Thursday after having promised the previous night that action would be taken to challenge the “poisoned” inquiry. No complaints have been filed to any court as of 10:20 AM EST on Thursday.

Legal observers have noted that if Kohrs did anything wrong, it was publicly discussing minute details like how Lindsey Graham made the jurors laugh during his testimony, as that would constitute a disclosure of what was supposed to be a secret legal proceeding. We’re not lawyers, but we’re pretty sure that’s not something that could form the basis of a complaint and even if it did how the fuck Trump would have standing on it, nor are there are any ongoing proceedings in which to lodge a motion as Donald has not been charged yet. If anything it would have to be between Kohrs and the judge who oversaw the special grand jury, who may’ve already ordered her to shut up.

The bottom line is that they’re frustrated that Kohrs got the libs fired up and excited that the fat bastard and at least several of his minions are all but certain to be indicted for his crimes against American democracy – and there’s nothing they can do about it at this point except publicly make vague and thus far empty threats in comments to New York Times reporters. Then those comments get picked up and appropriately mocked by lower-tier news websites. So much winning!

A dedicated and motivated reporter, Dylan was shot and killed while working at the scene of a homicide. Spectrum News remembers our fallen colleague. https://t.co/264x3y8Lup

— Spectrum News 13 (@MyNews13) February 23, 2023

Our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and coworkers of Spectrum 13 reporter Dylan Lyons, murdered Wednesday by a madman in Orlando (who also killed a 9 year-old boy, the sick fuck) while doing his job delivering the news to the people. This lazy, couch-borne blogger salutes his braver younger brother in the Fourth Estate. May his soul scoop eternal peace in the hereafter.

A Thursday piece in the Financial Times marking one year since Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched his bloody attempt at conquering Ukraine strongly implies that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes Putin has conversations with the ghosts of long dead Imperial monarchs.

“He has three advisers: Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great,” Lavrov reportedly told an oligarch shortly after the famous February 2022 meeting where he told them to shut the fuck up and deal with sanctions he knew were coming after the war started.

The piece also quotes Putin trying to find a silver lining to the shitshow. “It turns out we were completely unprepared. The army is a mess. Our industry is a mess. But it’s good that we found out about it this way, rather than when NATO invades us,” Putin has said to members of his inner circle, according to a former Kremlin official quoted by the Financial Times.

Iowa Republican leaders are getting increasingly worried that Dem trolls with no real need to vote in their own caucus could instead fuck with the GOP’s race by voting for Trump or some other shitty candidate and are trying to figure out a way to block them, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“We want people to caucus, but we should also be aware of the potential for a Democratic effort to back Donald Trump or some other candidate,” former Polk County GOP chairman Will Rogers told the Journal. “The campaigns are really going to have to drive turnout to overcome any potential of that.”

Huh. Almost like they fucking deserve it after all the hard work MAGA and Russian propagandists put into socking as Bernie Sanders fans in early 2020 to try to make sure Trump could face him instead of Biden in the general election. How dare those sneaky libtards finally learn a thing or two from Republican election fuckery over the years and start playing the same game.

Arkansas lawmaker who asked transgender woman if she had a penis calls backlash 'all a show' https://t.co/RExLcarMKY

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2023

If the ultimate goal of Fox News’s coverage of gender issues overall is to deperson trans folks then why do they use “she” to refer to the woman in the headline? Doesn’t that directly play into the hands of the radical woke mob’s impositions on media and culture, by respecting her identity in a report that – by its very nature – would carry an implication of sympathy toward her? Even if the article is technically about this angry hick getting all defensive over the question, just bringing up his invasive attempt at public humiliation of a trans woman risks humanizing those whom Fox News fans have been indoctrinated to accord with acidic disgust if not outright and unremitting hostility.

Of course that downside wasn’t realized in the comments below, as none of the top ten or so or their replies took notice of the “liberal” use of the pronoun or showed any sympathy for someone who could be reasonably said to be a near victim of government intrusion upon their personal life.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu on Thursday updated the official death toll from a series of earthquakes in the country’s south-central region beginning with a massive 7.8-magnitude shake on February 6th to 43,556 as more bodies are pulled from the rubble, the AP reports. Combined with the toll in nearby Syria, the total number of deaths now stands at 47,244.

Since late 2021 edgelord “independent” Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign has paid $307,000 in “security expenses” to an LLC owned by Vrindivan Gabbard Bellord, sister of “Hindu” cult fascist former Dem Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, per FEC filings reviewed by the Daily Beast.

It gets better: Sinema’s campaign is apparently Bellord’s only client and the “security firm” is likely nothing but a slush fund for Gabbard’s evil New Age “Hindu” cult. Who the hell knows how they sank their claws into Sinema, but there it is in the required Federal Election Commission filings.

A Boulder, Colorado police detective testified in an initial hearing Wednesday that Club Q MAGA terrorist Anderson Lee Aldrich ran a Neo-Nazi website and constantly used racist and homophobic slurs while gaming online prior to the November drag show attack that killed five, the AP reports.

Aldrich, who “identifies as non-binary,” which is a complete horseshit post-facto bit of trolling, is the grandson of extremist MAGA Mormon California state Representative Randy Voepel.

The Alaska state House on Wednesday voted 35-1 to censure hardcore MAGA state Representative David Eastman, who they already should have expelled for being an Oath Keeper, for his asking about if there were any economic benefits to the deaths of abused children, Fox News reports.

What happens when you launch a presidential campaign and no one cares?  Well, you could ask Jeb! Bush, or you probably DM Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and … well… that’s about it, who announced yesterday he wants to be in the Oval Office.  Ramaswamy started a unicorn biotech company and made millions, but then became best known for being a bro, anti-woke Fox regular.  And now he thinks he should be president.

Here at National Zero, however, we’ll remember him for saying the climate change–or “global warming” as he derisively calls the event–isn’t a big deal because more people die of hypothermia every year than hyperthermia; they die of cold, not heat, he says, so global warming ain’t a thing.  He kinda missed all the other kind of damage climate change does.

Running as a Republican, the 37-year-old Ramaswamy won’t likely promote a guaranteed income program like Democratic dilettante Andrew Yang, but he’ll work the Carlson/Gutfeld corner of the base.

In the days before President Joe Biden made his historic trip to Kyiv to support Ukrainian defenders, the Russian military conducted an unsuccessful test of its new RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, CBS News reports, the latest embarrassment for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Known as the Satan II, the 200-ton missile had a successful test touted by Putin in April 2022.  The United States had been advised of the test, a provision of the New START Treaty that Putin would announce Russia’s suspension of just days later during the Kremlin’s version of the State of the Union address.

Details of how the test failed were not disclosed.  According to Russian propagandists, the Satan II has a very rapid initial stage, making it harder for missile trackers to pick up.  It also has a ten-ton total payload, ten-warhead lift capability.

“There’s not even an expectation of these guys doing their jobs.  Pete has no business in that position,” says a man, banned from serving on the boards of nonprofits, who only has his job because he’s genetically linked to the founder.  “But, y’know, he’s the guy who had no business running for president, but they let them do that because he was gay and they check off a box, ah, and then he didn’t win but well, he’s the gay guy so we gotta give him somethin’.  Let’s make him the Transportation Secretary.  What does he know about it?  Nothing.  His failure after failure after failure are truly affecting the American people.”

While the rampant homophobia is rampant, we’re opting to point out another of Junior’s idiocies.  Just a reminder that nearly two years ago exactly–February 26, 2020–Donald Trump said this about the coronavirus [emphasis ours]:  “We’re going very substantially down, not up. Going very substantially down. Schools should be preparing. Get ready just in case. The words are ‘Just in case.’ We don’t think we’ll be there. We don’t think we’ll be anywhere close.  When you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

A man suspected in the 11 a.m. Wednesday shooting death of a woman in Pine Hills, Florida returned to the scene at 4:00 p.m. where he shot into a news van covering the original murder, killing one of the two occupants, and then entering an apparently random house where he killed a 9-year-old girl and wounded the girl’s mother.

According to NBC News, a Spectrum News crew with a reporter and a photographer was on the scene in Orange County reporting on the murder of a 20-year-old woman when, police say, 19-year-old Keith Melvin Moses opened fire on the vehicle.  Police do not know if Moses was targeting the news crews, nor have they found any connection between Moses and the woman or child he shot.

Standing beside Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, attention Karen and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the carmaker will keep its technological headquarters in the Golden State and expand operations there, Reuters reports, a blow to Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s efforts to lure the company through huge tax breaks.

Musk announced Tesla’s headquarters would relocate from California to Texas in October 2021 in a tantrum about coronavirus restrictions in California.  Employees expressed shock and concern about what Musk’s impulsive announcement meant for them, with many of the high-skill technical workers pushing back against moving to Austin, where Tesla started building a plant in 2020.  Musk then clarified he would only move headquarters staff, about 300 positions.

The move was more ornamental than functional:  Tesla is a corporation registered in Delaware, and as Newsom noted after Musk’s announcement, keeping the company’s engineering and technology headquarters makes California “effectively a headquarters of Tesla.”

“The contrast between the real President and fake President is like night and day…So refreshing to see Trump back in action” says the current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “President Trump Buys McDonald’s Meals for East Palestine First Responders,” posted Wednesday.

So suppose for a moment that Trump actually paid for what was no doubt a mid-3-figure order with a personal credit or debit card rather than one of his presidential campaign’s (and we may be able to nail that down within the next few months, it would have to be reported to the FEC). The “contrast” with Biden is still that Joe went to a goddamned war zone to support a strategic ally under attack by a foreign adversary while Trump went to a fucking McDonald’s to buy people food after a toxic train wreck that his administration’s rail industry-friendly policies likely contributed to.

And he told the lady at the counter that he knows the menu there better than she does.

Absolute titan of MAGA virility Garret Miller was sentenced Wednesday to 38 months in prison for his participation in the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol, NBC News reports. Pictured above is the Greek mythological deity as he was upon his arrest in late January 2021.

Officials with the Perry County, Arkansas Sheriff have ruled that the May 2022 death of former Clinton Administration aide Mark Middleton, who was found tied to a tree with an electrical cord around his neck, dead of a gunshot wound, was Arkancide, the Daily Mail reports while noting that Middleton signed Jeffrey Epstein in as a visitor to the White House several times in the 1990s.

The Daily Mail also adds that no gun was recovered at the scene, according to the police report which kinda sounds like something pretty important that wouldn’t just be confined to a shitty British tabloid with dozens of ads on every fucking article. If as they claim they exclusively obtained the sheriff’s department’s report on the death then why was it so hard to pick up the phone and get clarification from the department on why they ruled it a suicide but didn’t recover a gun?

Isn’t that sort of lying by omission or inaction on the Daily Mail’s part? Look at it from the other side: Exposing the “Clinton Crime Syndicate” would be the story of the century and millions of American readers would flock to the Daily Mail if they could somehow implicate the local sheriff in the “coverup.” It’s not clear if the newsroom is being fucking lazy or just wanted to leave it open-ended and not pursue what would likely lead to a not very tantalizing reason the gun wasn’t there.

And in related, less tenuously sourced Epstein news, Law and Crime reported Wednesday executives from Deutsche Bank were at Epstein’s home in New York City in January 2015, talking business while sex-trafficking victims were also there at the same time.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to nepotism hires Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to testify to a grand jury investigating their role in the failed attempt to overturn Donald’s humiliating loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, the New York Times reports.