American intel officials have info indicating that the Kremlin actually fucking petty enough to have waited until after the midterms to pull their troops out of danger from a Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson to avoid giving Biden and the Democrats a win ahead of the election, CNN reports.

Republicans are not happy with Rick Scott after the GOP failed to capture the Senate majority amid favorable conditions in the midterms, Insider reports on internal shit talking.

“Sen. Scott will go down as one of the worst campaign chairmen in recent Senate history,” a former NRSC aide said, adding that the Squidward lookalike should “focus on his home state… and leave the national political arena to the grown ups. He went off message with a radical agenda that wasn’t endorsed by his colleagues as well as challenged the strategy and direction of the Senate Republican leadership,” the aide added, citing the batshit “Rescue America” plan.

“It will take years to undo Rick Scott’s mistakes,” said another former aide. A third wrote in an email to Insider saying that “Rick Scott’s smug, all-about-me style of recruitment and management of Senate races ( particularly in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania) has given Biden two more years to fill the court system with progressive judges.” We would like to know more about this infighting.

According to calculations by Worldometers, the population of the Earth surpassed 8 billion people at around 2:00 a.m. ET Tuesday.  The population reached 7 billion in 2010 and 6 billion in 2000, with the population growth rate flattening slightly.

Arizonans know BS when they see it.

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 15, 2022

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who infused some colorful details into the January 6th House Select Committee televised hearings, will testify before the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s tampering in the 2020 election, CNN reports.

The grand jury is investigating attempts by Trump and his minions to overturn the certified results, which put Joe Biden on top of the electoral count by more than 11,000 votes.  Central to the investigation is an hour-long call Trump and others had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump cajoled the Georgians to “to find 11,780 votes,” enough to give him the fake victory by one vote.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Wow! They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there!

6,026 15,617 Nov 14, 2022, 9:48 PM

By “they,” he of course means voters.  And it is really bad out there if you’re a politician running on Trumpism.  The nation’s over it.

In his roadshow to pitch his new book that the RNC and donors will likely buy in bulk before the copies show up at Dollar Stores nationwide, Mike Pence appeared on Trump advisor Sean Hannity’s Fox program.  Ever the one for understatement, Pence says that the single Trump term “did not end well.”  He also said he and his earthen vessel, Karen, are determining whether “they” will run for future office, which (in an unattached clip) Hannity susses out to be the presidency.  It’s a very interesting pronoun choice he made, because Karen will likely be a drag on his election efforts.

I’m not sure who the market for Mike Pence’s white (nationalist) wash of history or his presidential campaign will appeal to.  The radio deejay turned politician was about to lose reelection to Indiana’s governor when Trump plucked him to be his ticketmate, saving him from the humiliation of being a top-of-the-ticket loser.  A Pence presidential campaign would likely die in early 2024 with the effort never garnering more than a low single-digit of support.

I should win by 3% and @KariLake should win by 11%. If that doesn't happen you know the real story.

— Mark Finchem for AZ Senate (@RealMarkFinchem) November 15, 2022

The MAGAt who lost the election for Arizona’s Secretary of State race to Democrat Adrian Fontes by 120,000 votes and five full percentage points claims that this election was stolen too.  (It’s funny how any election a Republican won is never deemed stolen by Finchem and his lot, isn’t it?). Unfortunately, the actual numbers tell a different story.

With the latest dump of data coming from Maricopa County keeping a lead of more than 20,000 votes for Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs, NBC News has determined Trump acolyte and former TeeVee anchor Kari Lake has no path to victory with the remaining outstanding votes.

With the Arizona Senate seat going to Democrat Mark Kelly and Adrian Fontes beating election-denying MAGAt Mark Finchem, Democrats have taken three top seats in the state, with a Democrat Kris Mayes holding a razor-thin lead over Republican Abraham Hamadeh for attorney general.  Donald Trump endorsed all four Republicans.

Lake’s loss seems like a stake in the heart of Trumpism, though it’s unlikely the monster will actually ever die.  Trump’s headline endorsements largely lost, with Ohio Senate victor JD Vance the only Trump hand-picked nominee to claim victory in a tightly-contested state-wide race.  (Yeah, yeah, Ted Budd in North Carolina was endorsed by Trump, but he didn’t run on full Trumpism.)

Herschel Walker’s campaign is telling Republican fundraising operations to stop using the Senate runoff as the headline on marketing emails because they’re not giving money to the effort, NBC News reports; they’re raising money for themselves.

Many of these fundraising efforts, done without Walker’s knowledge or consent, give minimal amounts to the Walker effort, if anything; in one email, a slider the donor could use to decide how much money goes to a Donald Trump-aligned PAC versus Walker’s campaign was preset to 90% of the donation going to Trump.

“We need everyone focused on winning the Georgia Senate race, and deceptive fundraising tactics by teams that just won their races are siphoning money away from Georgia,” Walker campaign manager Scott Paradise told NBC News.  “This is the last fight of 2022 and every dollar will help.”

Tim Miller from Showtime’s “The Circus” interviews collar connoisseur and King of Slobs, convicted criminal Steve Bannon, who was in Arizona to help Cecily Strong impersonator Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona Governor who’s trailing in the polls.  Miller confronts Bannon with his ongoing advocacy of the Stop the Steal lie and the violence it caused January 6th–Bannon claims “That was not by Trump” which is quite the ironic statement coming from the man who rallied people to violence in the days and weeks prior to January 6th–with Bannon responding a Republican-controlled Congress will investigate the “real causes” of the Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress but also “November 3rd,” the election day in 2020… ’cause let’s rehash every conspiracy, right?

Seize assets of all candidates, orgs, politicians, executives, campaigns, PACs & companies who were involved in the Ukraine money-laundering scam that spent money in the 2022 elections and ripped off the American People; then give the money BACK to the taxpayers. #AZSOS #FTX

— Mark Finchem for AZ Senate (@RealMarkFinchem) November 14, 2022

Arizona Secretary of State loser Mark Finchem apparently thinks he’s getting something at here. Like yes, FTX went bankrupt because the founder Sam Bankman-Fried fucked around with customers’ crypto funds which caused runaway withdrawals. Yes Bankman was a Dem donor to the tune of in $40 million in 2022 – not a lot relative to his net worth in before everything went to shit last week (while his co-founder Ryan Salame donated $23 million to Republicans).

So we got all that, we just think wing site AmericaFirstReport.com is making a little bit of a leap when they report “The FTX crypto slush fund run by now-disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried (and his MIT college buddies) laundered money for Ukraine into nearly $40 million worth of campaign donations for Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections,” and “Over the last year, Joe Biden and the Democrats have pushed through well over $50 billion in funding for Ukraine, using US taxpayer money.” Yes, $40 million is a lot, but when it’s really net $17 million after being offset by the other asshole, and over $16.7 billion was spent on the 2022 midterms in total, which works out to like 0.1% percent of total spending, we’re thinking that maaaaaybe they’re just pissing their pants and freaking out over nothing again. “Laundering” $40 million in US taxpayer money through Ukraine to Bankrupt-Fried sounds like a little more trouble than it’s worth relative to the impact it had overall.

“WTF are people doing still posting updates about the ballot totals. THE ELECTION SHOULD BE CALLED OFF IMMEDIATELY,” wrote Truth Social “influencer” @WallStreetApes, as if you really needed any clue as to what this is actually about. We’ll allow that it’s a little more creative and closer to logically sound than the Italian satellites and the bamboo ballots and all that shit.

With the House shaking out to be a likely 219-216 GOP majority, cowardly cuck Kevin McCarthy can afford no more than a single defection in his quest to become Speaker, a proposition that is in flux at best while the Freedom Caucasians plot against him. It’s still early and a lot of shit is going to happen, but the House GOP could end up concluding that the soggy worm of an excuse for a man is their only realistic option when this is all said and done, just as all the shit talk from various Dems ended with yet another term with the gavel for Nancy Pelosi back in late 2020.

https://youtu.be/ZtHqrHrRNFw

But Kevin McCarthy is not Nancy Pelosi. He’s not man enough to wear her pantsuits. It’s 218 votes to elect a Speaker, not whatever the majority of the majority is. Knowing this, and more importantly that she might not be able to sink her claws so easily into the scrotum of another would-be Speaker, the QAdulteress Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday warned that Liz Cheney could end up with the gavel with support of all Dems plus just a handful of Republicans if the House GOP didn’t immediately quit fucking around and start rallying behind Kevin McCarthy.

Well that was quick. Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel declared in a conference call on Monday she’ll run for another term as Republican National Committee chair, claiming she had already secured half the vote from the committee’s 168 members, Politico reports. We’re all for it considering that Ronna’s overseen three terrible national election years in a row for the Republicans. Lee Zeldin might’ve actually shaken things up a bit and figured out a winning strategy as, even though he lost in his New York gubernatorial bid, he helped some Empire State Republicans win down ballot.

The right wing school board takeover crusade which did more than anything else to propel Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin into office in 2021 largely fell flat with voters outside of Florida and Texas in 2022, an AP analysis found. Out of 50 candidates backed by the 1776 Project PAC, just about a third won last Tuesday, while only about half of the 250 endorsees of batshit cult “Moms for Liberty” won, which is kind of underwhelming given the issue’s salience last year.

“The messaging needs to be more positive,” Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project PAC said. “Sometimes you lose moderate voters because you’re too hyperbolic and you’re not speaking truth to something very local to them,” without realizing that the screaming hyperbole for banning books and Critical Race Theory was the only thing than got them attention in the first place.

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.