After three and half years of bullshit and delays, and nearly two years after he suffered a humiliating loss in the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Trump’s financial documents from Mazars USA are finally being sent to the House Oversight Committee, the New York Times reports. The document production comes after Mazars fired the Donald in February 2022, saying the could no longer put their name on the statements covering up his white collar crime spree.

“They have sent us a number of documents,” House Oversight Chair Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney told the Times on Saturday. “We’re reviewing them.” Better hurry if they want to find a new way to “interfere” in the midterm elections when the Donald himself isn’t actually on the ballot.

A former White House aide testified that Florida Republican Congressman and guy Frankenstein’s face in the movies was modeled after Matt Gaetz reportedly wanted to get a preemptive pardon from Donald Trump for any crimes he committed regarding to child sex trafficking federal authorities were reportedly investigating, the Washington Post reports.

According to people familiar with his testimony, John McEntee, Trump’s “body man,” told the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress that Gaetz told him he wanted the pardon.

Saying that he understood Gaetz wanted the pardon to protect against the sex trafficking investigation concerning Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg hiring underage sex workers, McEntee added that Gaetz told him “he did not do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great.”

Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox Jewish college in New York City, announced Friday night that it is suspending all undergraduate groups in reaction to a Supreme Court order that it recognize an LGBTQ student organization, the New York Times reports.

In an August decision, the Supreme Court sided with a lower court ruling that the University must recognize an undergraduate student group supporting LGBTQ members of the university community.  Yeshiva University had claimed that it is a religious group and therefore excluded from having to adhere to New York City’s anti-discrimination laws; state and federal courts have ruled that the University is an educational institution, not a religious one, and therefore must adhere to city and state anti-discrimination laws which would require them to recognize the LGBTQ student group.

In an unsigned letter sent to students, the University said that with the Jewish holidays coming up, it was suspending operation of undergraduate student groups while deciding how to “follow the road map provided by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“I will tell you this, too, everybody,” ripped foam packager and alleged election meddler Mike Lindell tells convicted felon and pending defendant Steve Bannon.  “Ah, it really hurt, I was doing a, um, I had a deal made on Wednesday with some new products to go up on MyStore [Remember MyStore?  It was going to be Lindell’s answer to Amazon], and they canceled on me, ah, out of fear the deal with Mike Lindell and MyStore.  These were entrepreneurs, Steve, that I had set up that I was gonna–.”

Some notes from my years of mentoring businesses:  First, if your business is run entirely on one cell phone, you’re a gig worker, not a business.  Second, if you don’t have a back-up plan for a time when your equipment get lost or broken, you’re screwed.  Third, if you don’t have a back-up plan for a time when a single member of your team is out of commission, you’re screwed.  And finally, give up on MyStore; it’s a loser.

Back in February, when we first reported on the pending launch of “The Right Stuff,” a dating app backed by nihilist billionaire Peter Thiel and helmed by former Trump scumbag Johnny McEntee, whose pending beta was to run among on an invite-only basis in DC, we guessed its user base would be “100 to 200 Caucasian men, all 35 or older with a certain jaw shape who work for GOP-aligned organizations and 2,000 or so women in their early 20s who don’t follow politics.”

Turns out we were likely way off the mark as a the Daily Beast’s report seems to suggest there are virtually no “attractive, conservative women” at all using the app, ignoring messages from Ryann McEnany (Kayleigh’s younger sister) trying to recruit them to sign up, writing “”Hi, I’m working with John McEntee’s team on an exclusive conservative dating app called The Right Stuff that’s expected to launch this summer! We would love to get you on our list for early access to the app.”

“It’s all of Mitch McConnell’s staffers,” one younger female GOP operative told the Beast, implying that those users are creepy weirdos. The other issue is the app only allows for heterosexual matches, leaving it a distinct disadvantage to Grindr in the DC right wing dating market.

• President Biden keeps the railroads running.  And without being a fascist.  Shocking, isn’t it?
• While Biden resolved a labor dispute that could’ve crippled the economy, DeSantis and Abbott continue their performance art with human props and taxpayer funds.
• Just want to point out that both Ted Cruz’s father and Marco Rubio’s parents came to the US as asylum-seeking refugees, just like the human props used by their governors, shipping them around the country.  Would Ted and Marco like their parents used as political fodder?
• Abbott and DeSantis should be charged in Massachusetts with kidnapping by inveiglement:  DeSantis funded, and Abbott executed, the kidnapping of these individuals who were lied to by being told they would be given jobs, housing and necessities in Massachusetts before being dumped on the side of a road.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LXXXVII”

CNN reports the Department of Justice has asked the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a stay of parts of Judge Aileen Cannon’s questionable ruling regarding government documents, including many classified documents, saying Cannon’s order barring the use of the seized documents in an investigation prevents federal officials thoroughly assessing the damage to national security Donald Trump’s possession of them at Mar-a-Lago caused.

“The court’s order hamstrings that investigation and places the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) under a Damoclean threat of contempt should the court later disagree with how investigators disaggregated their previously integrated criminal-investigative and national-security activities,” the Justice Department wrote.  “It also irreparably harms the government by enjoining critical steps of an ongoing criminal investigation and needlessly compelling disclosure of highly sensitive records, including to Plaintiff’s counsel.”

The very conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that a Texas law that allows for users to sue large social media platforms for removing social media posts dealing with politics, the New York Times reports.

This decision directly contradicts an earlier ruling by a federal court in Florida that blocked a similar law, with the court determining that social media companies have a First Amendment right to moderate what is on their sites.

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority decision on the three-judge panel.  The ruling could open the way for people who were banned from certain social media platforms to sue, claiming they were blocked for political views when, in fact, they were banned for being insufferable assholes.

Hey @GovRonDeSantis, clearly you're struggling, distracted, and busy playing politics with people’s lives. Since you have only one overriding need — attention –let's take this up & debate. I’ll bring my hair gel. You bring your hairspray. Name the time before Election Day. @CNN https://t.co/vTJHQxfArW

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 16, 2022

Apropos of basically nothing, it’s time for a factoid-filled article about those mountains (well usually they’re mountains) that spew hot ash and lava: Volcanoes! That’s right, we’re just going to write a medium length essay about volcanoes without any connection whatsoever to current events. There aren’t any really noteworthy ongoing eruptions or major studies of volcanoes we know of that would serve as a bridge to run such a piece, but fuck it, we’re not going to let that stop us.

So getting to it, did you know that Kilauea in Hawaii and Mount St Helens in Washington State have about as much in common as a dolphin and a shark? They were formed and have erupted through the result of completely different geological processes but get lumped in together as volcanoes because of their superficial similarities. Kilauea is a shield volcano, formed via a hot spot – or a weak spot in Earth’s crust – where a concentrated plume of super hot lava melts through the bottom of the Pacific plate and breaches the surface. The Hawaiian Islands were all formed the same way, lava piling up and creating a land mass slowly over hundreds of millions of years before gradually eroding into the ocean. You can see the chain going all the way up to Siberia.

The Trump team’s lies to the National Archives and Records Administration stretched all the way back to September 2021, when former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin told a NARA lawyer that former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had told Philbin that the disgraced former President had only 12 boxes of “news clippings,” stored at Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reports.

The National Archives and Department of Justice ended up recovering 42 boxes of various records and top secret classified documents from the Orange Caesar’s Floridian redoubt over the course of 2022, thefts for which the bloated despot is now under federal criminal investigation.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Chris Christie at a Roy Rogers at 11 PM in the evening trying to console himself

2,539 7,740 Sep 16, 2022, 13:38

Not even sure what Trump is mad at Chris Christie for. Probably something he said on TV about Trump being guilty of a crime or whatever, who knows. But this is the response he gets.

A new Emerson College survey finds the three far right candidates who won in the New Hampshire congressional primaries pretty much fucked as incumbent Dem Senator Maggie Hassan leads hardcore Trump fanboy Don Bolduc 51% to 40%, 1st District Dem Congressman Chris Pappas ahead of former Trump White House staffer and Gen Z scumbag Karoline Leavitt 47% to 42%, and 2nd District Dem Congresswoman Ann Kuster leading QAnon extremist Bob Burns 54% to 36%. Making these leads even more impressive is Emerson always leans further right than other pollsters.

But please let’s hear more about how “DemZ R sTuPid 4 sUPPoRtInG MaGa cAndIDaTeS iN GoP pRiMaRiEs.” It makes for great Politico and Chuck Todd material when they want to avoid talking about how fucked up and evil these people are. New Hampshire is a competitive state when actual conservatives are on the ballot and not authoritarian cultists who want to destroy democracy.

Sometimes we have lengthy analysis on news events here on National Zero.  Sometimes we do parody.  But in this case, we’re just going to point and laugh at televangelist and failed South Carolina Congressional candidate Mark Burns who tries to rile up the crowd at an Idaho rally by pointing out disgraced general Michael Flynn:  “Are y’all happy that General Michael Flynn is here in the great state of Iowa!”

Did we mention the rally was in Idaho?

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced Thursday his intent to run for reelection in 2024, surprising many observers who thought that like wasn’t allowed because the country’s constitution says that the president sort of can’t run for more than one consecutive term. But as the Daily Beast reports, Bukele has the law on his side and a Supreme Court packed with his appointees just gave him the go ahead to ignore the constitution they’re supposed to interpret.

Bukele reportedly enjoys approval ratings in the 90s. How much of that is bullshit we don’t know, though he’s obviously not Kim Jong Un and forcing people are forced to love him at gunpoint, nor does it appear that voiding part of the constitution will destabilize El Salvador’s government. But what the fuck? If this guy’s so confident he’s in the right here he should put the question to the people and ask them to vote in a special referendum to change the constitution. Or have the legislature figure it out. Don’t use the goddamned courts to get your way. Only cunts do that.

Many of the bodies recovered from nearly 450 makeshift graves uncovered near the Ukrainian city of Izium show signs of torture and abuse with many having their hands tied behind their backs when he was shot, the Associated Press reports.

The revelation strengthens accusations of Russian war crimes made by Ukrainian authorities and human rights observers, and the Ukrainian government said the vast majority of the people buried in the forest site were civilians.  Locals say the victims died of by gunshots, from artillery wounds and in Russian bombing.  Some also died after triggering mines laid by Russian forces.

Associated Press journalists and war crimes investigators found the mass burial site outside of Izium when the city of 45,000 was liberated by Ukrainian forces earlier this week.  Russia has been accused of war crimes for intentionally targeting civilian populations with their bombardments, with additional accusations of abuse and crimes committed by soldiers on the ground.

Records obtained by the New Jersey Globe show that, like his fellow Republican, Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, hardcore MAGA Pennsylvania gov candidate Doug Mastriano was, until recently, registered to vote in the neighboring Garden State. While both are pretty fucking blatantly stupid, Doug’s is extra egregious as he’s been a Pennsylvania state Senator since 2019. Just forget the whole “election integrity” crusade, that kind of hypocrisy is already priced in with MAGA candidates.

In yet another sign of just how badly Lindsey Graham is (possibly) fucking this up for the GOP in the closing stretch before the midterms, Republican Nevada governor candidate Joe Lombardo told a crowd of fans Thursday he would “fight” against Graham’s proposed national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the AP reports. “It’s the vote of the people within the state of Nevada, and I will support that. That is an issue that doesn’t need to be in politics,” said Lombardo, as if the GOP did not put the issue in politics by confirming pro-forced birth justices to the Supreme Court.

All this being said, we have to consider Lindsey Graham’s push for a national 15-week ban is actually kind of tactically shrewd in a way, if still a desperate break-the-glass move. If the math to get to 50% + 1 of the vote in a blue but tight state like Nevada means Lombardo has to piss off some extremists to reach independents who are pro-choice but would otherwise be receptive to the economy song and dance, then it makes makes sense. Lindsey’s taking the flak for what a dickheads like Charlie Kirk think is bad timing – even calling it “election interference” because God forbid a leading Republican be (relatively) honest and forthright with voters.

But as you can see right here he’s also giving Lombardo and other Republican candidates room to differentiate themselves from the party itself. Never mind this asshole would happily abide a national 15-week ban if still in office in 2025, which is the earliest possible year one could be implemented, the point is to just help him and others get elected. If they lose the 15% of hardcore MAGA voters in their states but gain 20% of pro-choice moderates then that’s 5% more votes they would’ve had. Time will tell if it’ll actually work – and our guess is probably not given the momentum Dems have on the issue, but having considered it further after seeing Lombardo using it to try to sell a moderate stance, we see how it can be used to help the GOP on the margins.

Democrats lead Republicans 46 to 44 percent on the latest New York Times/Siena College polling survey, an improvement by one point over the Dems’ July lead by the same pollster. The same survey found that 43% of respondents described the Republican Party as “extreme” compared to 37% for the Democratic Party. Democrats also lead on the question of which party has the corner on the most important issues, 40 to 38 percent, even though overall the survey found most respondents rating economic issues of the highest importance.

Justice Department: “A California man pleaded guilty on Sept. 8, 2022 in federal court in Springfield, Mass. to making threats to commit anti-LGBTQ violence against Springfield-based Merriam-Webster, Inc. and others. Jeremy David Hanson, 34, of Rossmoor, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of interstate communication of threatening communications to commit violence against the employees of Merriam-Webster, and to another count charging the same offense, initially filed in the Eastern District of Texas, targeting the President of the University of North Texas.”

“On April 20, 2022, Hanson was arrested and charged by criminal complaint and subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury on May 5, 2022. Between Oct. 2 and Oct. 8, 2021, Springfield-based Merriam-Webster, Inc. received various threatening messages and comments demonstrating bias against specific gender identities submitted through its website’s ‘Contact Us’ page and in the comments section on its webpages that corresponded to the word entries for ‘Girl’ and ‘Woman.’ Authorities later identified the user as Hanson. Specifically, on Oct. 2, 2021, Hanson used the handle ‘@anonYmous’ to post the following comment on the dictionary’s website definition of ‘female:’ ‘It is absolutely sickening that Merriam-Webster now tells blatant lies and promotes anti-science propaganda. There is no such thing as ‘gender identity.’ The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.'”