Aw, fuck.  We can’t get rid of him.

In another speech that illustrated an unreal dystopia of America in a hellscape “like no one has seen before,” Donald Trump brought up a list of grievances from election fraud to North Korea to immigration in a Mussolini-like speech that highlighted Trump’s version of history

Calling back to January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, Trump said he and his followers would take over the “corridors [carters?] of power,” an intentional invocation of violence that is one of the hallmarks of fascism.

Relying highly on nationalist imagery, Trump glorified himself as the savior of America, predicting that the next two years will take the nation into a hole, “the likes of which no one has ever seen.”  Trump’s rewrite of history blows past the fact that he skyrocketed the debt and had to financially prop up industries like manufacturing and agriculture to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending due to his trade wars, which he claimed were raging successes.

He then went on to talk for more than 40 minutes.  Blah blah blah.  “Trump great.”  “Biden ruined everything I did.”  Blah blah, blah blah blah.  “Election stolen.”  “Most persecuted person.”  “Everybody loves Trump.”  If you’ve seen one Trump rally, you’ve seen them all, except this time, the exceptionally white audience was in a gaudy ballroom.

USA Today reports Donald Trump filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee confirming that he will run for the presidency in 2024, his fourth campaign for the office, having failed as a Reform Party candidate before reaching office as a Republican.

One week after leading the Republican Party to a disastrous showing in the midterm elections–the GOP lost one Senate seat, is gaining the majority in the House by the hair on its chinny-chin-chin, and lost a net two governorships, with Trump’s hand-picked candidates losing bigly–itinerant defendant and paper hoarder Donald Trump may or may not announce his candidacy for president in the 2024 election.  Trump is scheduled to speak at 9 p.m. ET, but we’re launching the festivities early.

We all know Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Georgia) is not quite up to speed on Constitutional issues.  And math.  And anatomy.  And, well, pretty much anything that involves the application of cerebral ability.  So when she was asked about the widespread losses of candidates endorsed by Donald Trump in the midterms, she claims that the lack of the “red wave” Republicans touted in the month prior to the election was due exclusively to redistricting.

And continuing her career as one of the least intelligent members of Congress, Taylor asserts that the non-existent Red Tsunami didn’t materialize because the US Census used to determine redistricting was done prior to the pandemic.  This, of course, is not true:  the Census took place in 2020, the year the pandemic actually happened, with canvassing for the Census first delayed and then altered because of the coronavirus.  Redistricting also doesn’t explain when virtually all of Trump’s high-profile endorsements for state-wide office lost.

A federal judge in Washington, DC has suspended enforcement of Title 42, a 1944 public health directive invoked by the Trump administration to justify the deportation of millions of migrants and to block immigration into the US, CNN reports.

The CDC had announced earlier this year that it intended to phase out enforcement of the rule, which states the Surgeon General could authorize a block of travelers from countries where communicable diseases were prevalent.  During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the United States led large industrialized nations in infection and fatality rates, the Trump administration claimed it had to stop migrants from exacerbating the already-raging pandemic the administration claimed it had under control.

Under the rule, people interdicted at the border were returned to Mexico immediately, without a hearing or due process.  Also under the rule, the Trump administration required people seeking asylum in the United States, who would normally be allowed to stay in the US pending their status hearing, to remain in Mexico.

A county judge in Georgia has suspended the state’s 2019 ban on abortions after six weeks into the pregnancy, saying that when the state law was enacted, the Roe decision stood and superseded the Georgia law, making the state law invalid, the New York Times reports.

Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court stated that because the law was enacted in 2019, he had to examine the law under the Supreme Court rulings of the time; Roe prevented any state from enacting a ban on abortions prior to fetal viability, so therefore he suspended the state law.

McBurney noted that the state legislature could pass the law again, now that the Supreme Court overturned Roe’s protections for bodily autonomy and reproductive rights; under the current Supreme Court guidance, the law would likely stand.

“I called and congratulated Mark Kelly this morning. There were obviously a lot of problems with this election, but there is no path forward in my race. To the thousands of people who helped on my campaign, who made calls, knocked doors, wrote postcards, donated, and hosted events – thank you. To every patriot who voted – thank you. And I especially want to thank my incredible wife Catherine, my parents, and my boys. The campaign trail is not easy for families. We cannot afford to have another election cycle like these midterms. Republicans are the underdogs now.”

Blake Masters with his family.

“I was outspent by over $70 million. That’s what happens when you take on the national Democrat machine, the media, the universities, Big Tech, and woke corporations. So Republicans need to start thinking like underdogs. No more consultant one-size-fits-all strategies. We have to build on what works, scrap what doesn’t. The vast majority of people agree this country is headed in the wrong direction – we have to reach them. I believe in Arizona and I believe in America. We can still save our home. We just have to fight harder and smarter… because we’re running out of time,” says Reptilian alien Blake Masters in his concession statement admitting defeat to a human.

In ironic twist, Hobbs vote total in Az. comes close to 'test' results aired on Fox in October | Just The News https://t.co/RAOV8jZaI2

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) November 15, 2022

Disgraced former Hill “reporter” John Solomon is too much of a scared little bitch to go full MAGA and say the Arizona gubernatorial election was “rigged in advance,” instead relying on a stupid misuse of “ironic” to carry that implication for him. The fanboys had freaked out in late October when local station Fox 10 accidentally aired a test graphic showing Hobbs winning in the vote total. As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after it was called, Hobbs leads Lake 1,269,578 to 1,251,713 votes, far closer than the 1,252,437 to 1,102,326 Hobbs lead shown on the graphic. So really the only thing they got right in the fuckup was a really rough estimate of the vote total and that Hobbs would win. Not sure what’s supposed to be “ironic” or “twisty” about that.

Congressman Tom Emmer defeated rival Jim Banks for the House GOP Whip title 115 to 106 on Tuesday, dealing a blow to Tucker Carlson, whose son Buckley works for Banks, and hates Emmer for apparently shit talking Buckley’s position, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports.

Rick Scott, the guy who went to Italy while he was supposed to be helping the Republicans win control of the Senate is going to challenge the most effective (and evil) legislator in modern history for leadership over their caucus, Punchbowl’s John Bresnahan reports in fewer words.

California Republican Kevin McCarthy won a vote to remain the leader of the Republican conference in the House, but through a split 188-31 election, with MAGAt Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs garnering the opposing votes within the caucus, the New York Times reports.

It’s a good news/bad news outcome for McCarthy:  while it shows he still merits strong support among Republicans, the Freedom Caucus holdouts may put his effort to become Speaker of the House on the rocks if he cannot gain 218 votes within the overall House.  Democrats could, if they choose to, support an upstart candidate like Biggs–generally regarded as a far right loon by members of both Parties–to be Speaker to send Republicans in further disarray.

With Democrats expected to take around 215 seats in the House, any split in the Republican caucus–for any vote, not just the election of the Speaker–would allow Democrats to control legislation passage if the entire fractured GOP conference does not vote as a bloc to pass a bill.

At least two people are dead as at least two Russian missiles struck a farm near the town of Przewodow, Poland, located about five miles from the border with Ukraine, amid a blitz of strikes on Western Ukraine, the AP reports. The Polish victims were reportedly farm workers harvesting grain.

Polish government press officer Piotr Mueller did not immediately confirm the information, but said top leaders had convened an emergency meeting due to a “crisis situation.” While a missile strike on a farm close to the border is almost certainly “unintentional,” the recklessness from which it was wrought speaks to the cavalier and incompetent way with which Russia has conducted this war and now it’s on Poland to keep its dogs leashed in absence of further provocation.

Asked his reaction to comments by Donald Trump disparaging him and Trump’s scheduled Tuesday address in which he’s expected to announce a 2024 presidential run, a smirking Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis responded, “At the end of the day, I-I would just tell people to check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night. … The fact of the matter is, we, um, it was the, the greatest, uh, Republican victory in the history of the state of Florida.”

For the record, while the vast majority of Trump’s endorsements in competitive races lost, DeSantis’s picks fared no better.  He endorsed Joe O’Dea, who lost the Colorado Senate seat to Democratic Michael Bennet.  DeSantis also endorsed Paul LePage in Maine (who lost).  Along with Trump, he endorsed Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, also a loser.  Basically, outside intrastate school board races in Florida, DeSantis’s endorsements on the national scene were just as useless as Trump’s.

Donald Trump is scheduled to make some self-serving announcement Tuesday night at 8 p.m. ET (which you can watch live here on National Zero), and with the Republican candidates he endorsed performing horribly during the midterm elections, some people are speculating that instead of kicking off a 2024 presidential campaign, Trump has shifted from announcing a run to make another pronouncement, such as:

• His current wife has opted out of the option year of her contract so she can return to the Motherland, and Trump is declaring himself to be the next contestant on The Bachelor.
• Donald is challenging the results of the Florida election because DeSantis got too many votes.
• Trump will confess to fathering a previously unacknowledged son, named Eric.
• Due to the politically unfriendly environs of New York and Florida, the Trump Organization will reorganize as a North Korean corporation with headquarters in North Korea’s second-largest city, Hamhung, which Kim Jong Un has agreed to rename Pencehung.
• Elon Musk is paying $44 billion for Truth Social, which is news to Musk himself.
• In conversations with Vladimir Putin, Trump has discovered it’s not Russian troops invading Ukraine, but antifa and BLM, who are hiding 8 million uncounted 2016 Trump ballots from Maricopa and Fulton Counties.  
• Trump has been adopted by the Saudi royal family and is changing his name to El Al-whiz bin Pohr.
• A new Trump publishing division will release a volume of Donald Trump’s papers.  They’re not things Trump wrote or received, just the ones he stole from the White House.
• Junior is entering rehab and he’s requesting privacy for his family during this difficult time.
• He had nothing at all to do with the 2022 Republican midterm disaster.  He didn’t even know there was an election. He hardly knew the candidates he endorsed.  They were all just coffee boys.  It’s all Melania’s fault.  

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Tim 4:7). I entered this arena for my family and those all over Nevada and America who believe our country is headed in the wrong direction. This race and the 2022 election cycle didn’t go as we hoped, but I am proud of the race we ran. I would like to thank our countless volunteers, our supporters, and our incredible campaign team. I am enduringly grateful for your tireless efforts, and for your passion for a better Nevada and America. Moving forward, we need to better adjust to our new election laws or we need to work to fix them. But I am confident that any challenge of this election would not alter the ultimate outcome. That is why this morning I called Catherine Cortez Masto to congratulate her on her win.”

“It has been a privilege to meet and get to know so many great Nevadans from every community. We have a remarkable state, full of remarkable people who love their country. We relentlessly campaigned for 16 months, and ran the race we wanted to run. Despite the staggering $120 million spent against us, we ended within half a percentage point of our opponent in the closest Senate race in America. Our team left everything on the field and should be proud. My biggest concern when entering this race was the toll on my wife and our four young children. I am thankful for their love, support, and tremendous sacrifice this year. I now get to return to being the husband and father I strive to be, and return to private life and private practice. I am grateful for the outpouring and encouragement I have received, and I’ll remain forever committed to our state, our country, and our cause,” writes Republican Adam Laxalt in his concession statement.

I invoked the Invasion Clauses of the U.S. & Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion.

I'm using that constitutional authority, & other authorization & Executive Orders to keep our state & country safe: pic.twitter.com/2Jt5HEMgp5

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 15, 2022

Election law expert UC Irvine Professor Rick Hasen now thinks democracy is less fucked after the GOP’s weak showing in the midterms. “With developments over the last week, culminating on Monday night with the loss of election denier Kari Lake for governor in the key swing state of Arizona, I’m a little less worried. If we were two minutes to midnight on the doomsday clock before last week’s midterm elections, we are now back to 10 minutes to midnight,” Hasen writes at Slate.

Hasen still warns of a number of threats that remain, including the fact that MAGA election denier Secretary of State candidates still won in deep Red States, that Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party and could win fairly in 2024, and that whenever he finally leaves the next Republican candidate could be more effective at finding ways to subvert election results.

“So maybe pour a glass of champagne and celebrate that we got over the very low bar of not electing truly anti-democracy candidates to offices in states where it matters. But don’t drink the whole bottle. We need to soberly assess what’s ahead and not reduce our vigilance to safeguard democracy,” Hasen concludes. We concur and recommend readers switch to whiskey.

Elderly granny Republican Louisiana Senator John Kennedy has been sending out fundraising emails for deadbeat dad Herschel Walker’s run for the Senate ahead of a hotly contested runoff election against incumbent Georgia Dem Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock, which would be great for Walker since he needs all the help he can get. However as NBC News’s Marc Caputo found, the WinRed payment portal shows 90 cents on the dollar going to Kennedy’s campaign (unless donors manually change it). It’s just another example of other Republicans, Trump included, naturally, who are sucking money away from Walker’s campaign, who are pleading with them to stop.

What makes this even funnier is that yes Kennedy already won reelection in Louisiana, but the fucker is reportedly exploring a gubernatorial bid for next year. So he’s raising money for himself while pretending it’s for another Republican Senate candidate while planning to ditch the Senate.

A survey conducted last week by CWS Research for the Texas GOP found far right Florida Gov Ron DeSantis ahead of disgraced former President Trump 43 to 32 percent, a reversal from an October survey by the same pollster (sponsored by a right wing PAC) in which Don led 46 to 29 percent.

Ted Cruz got 3% in the October survey. CWS didn’t even mention him in November. Mike Pence got 5% in October and 4% in November. Nikki Halley got similar single-digit support both months.