Officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo say they’re “on alert” after at least 71 people in a remote rural region of the country were sickened and died of an unknown “flu-like” illness in which the victims suffered fever, headache, cough, and anemia, the Associated Press reports.

“The disease resembles a respiratory disease but it is difficult to talk about how it is transmitted before the results of the analysis of the collected samples,” Congolese Health Minister Roger Kamba said. At least 380 people have been infected with the illness, but it’s unclear whether or not they recovered or are still convalescing. Kamba said it took two days for inspectors to reach the area.

Hopefully future Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and his senior adviser Joe Rogan will come up with a crystal or mercury-based treatment for the disease soon. We don’t want to get caught off-guard again by another Deep State plandemic meant to curtial our freedoms.

Thank you @SenJoniErnst — for your service to our country and commitment to this important process. https://t.co/Emosseba3Y

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) December 4, 2024

Following like five paragraphs of congratulatory self-suckery for one of the members of their team on an internal promotion at the outlet, the actual political news part of Thursday morning’s Politico Playbook newsletter leads with the questions of where Republican Iowa Senator Joni Ernst is at with rapey binge-drinker former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s bid to become the next Secretary of Defense, noting that all the media have are the above tweet with no indication of where she lands.

“We hear Trump himself is eager to get a readout of how Hegseth’s meeting yesterday with Ernst went, knowing full-well that everyone was looking to her – the combat veteran and advocate for survivors of sexual assault in the military – to determine whether Hegseth stands any shot at surviving,” Playbook writes as if the replies to Ernst from MAGAcels such as Joey Mannarino telling her “You are IRRELEVANT. Your job is to confirm him and shut the fuck up,” weren’t enough pressure.

Add to that the fact that Ernst, herself a veteran and a victim of sexual assault, has been mentioned in multiple reports as a possible replacement for Hegseth, and yeah, she’s definitely in a pickle.

It’s not clear yet if Penelope Hegseth reached out to Ernst to say her son is a good boy.

Separately Axios reports the Orange God Emperor “isn’t working the phones for Pete Hegseth in his hour of need, leaving the embattled Department of Defense nominee to press his own case to skeptical senators,” with one telling them “I don’t think [Hegseth’s bid is] going anywhere.”

NYPD sources say the words “deny,” “depose,” and “defend” were written on bullet casings found at the scene of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s early Wednesday morning assassination in Manhattan, the New York Post reports, linking it to a book, “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it,” by Rutgers Law Professor Jay Feinman.

Other details made public: The shooter waited at a Starbucks across the street before spotting Thompson and approaching him as he walked toward a Hilton hotel where a conference was being held. Cops say they’ve recovered a cup the assassin dropped in the garbage inside the store and presumably are examining it for DNA evidence. They also found a cellphone in a nearby alleyway but aren’t sure yet if it’s definitely linked to the suspect. A search warrant was obtained for its contents.

Cops have also described the shooter as proficient in firearms given that the pistol he used appeared to jam during the attack but the assassin rapidly cleared it and resumed firing.

“On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration. Since then, it has carried out relentless aerial and ground attacks, many of them with large explosive weapons, which have caused massive damage and flattened entire neighbourhoods and cities across Gaza, along with their life-supporting infrastructure, agricultural land, and cultural and religious sites and symbols deeply engrained in Palestinians’ collective memory. Israel’s military offensive has killed and seriously injured tens of thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children, many of them in direct or indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. Israel has forcibly displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants, many of them multiple times, into ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land that lacked basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death,” says Amnesty International in a report accusing Netanyahu’s regime of genocide, which is correct… but also fails to mention why they embarked on a military offensive on October 7, 2023. Leaving that out might ruffle some feathers, and justifiably so.

Tennessee state Senate Republican Caucus Leader Ken Yager is in big trouble in Georgia after the fucking idiot drunkenly sideswiped another vehicle and drove away on Tuesday, only to be nailed for DWI after he tripped and fell on his face in a nearby supermarket parking lot, WSMV reports.

“An unfortunate incident happened last night,” Yager, 77, admitted after his arrest in Jekyll Island, Georgia. “On the advice of my attorney, I cannot discuss the particulars at this time. I am and will continue to cooperate fully with authorities to bring this incident to an appropriate conclusion.”

So no, it doesn’t sound like he’s going to be resigning in shame over this reckless dumbassery.

Such rare and refreshing honesty from a politician these days: Senator Rick Scott says he does not want Pete Hegseth to void the NDA his rape accuser signed so she can go public and answer questions about the encounter, preferring to keep it under wraps so Republicans can continue to question her motives and make it sound like a Deep State conspiracy against America First.

“I am pleased to announce that former Congressman Billy Long, of the Great State of Missouri, will be appointed to serve as the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Billy brings 32 years of experience running his own businesses in Real Estate and, as one of the premier Auctioneers in the Country. He then served 12 years in Congress, because he ‘felt it was important for his constituents to have a Representative who has signed the front of a check!’ Since leaving Congress, Billy has worked as a Business and Tax advisor, helping Small Businesses navigate the complexities of complying with the IRS Rules and Regulations,” posted convicted felon President-Elect Trump on Wednesday, naming the chunky hillbilly to lead the federal government’s tax agency.

Billy Long only left Congress because he ran a failed primary campaign for the Senate, coming in fourth behind child beater sexual freak former Governor Eric Greitens, and just ahead of Mark McCloskey, the St Louis ambulance chaser whose previous claim to fame was pointing an assault rifle at Black Lives Matter demonstrators who came too close to his McMansion during a 2020 march. Part of Long’s failed campaign to be showered with Trump’s golden endorsement that year was an official platform of publicly calling for “Kamala Harris to resign, have Biden appoint Trump as VP, and then get Biden to resign” and hand out fake $45 bills with Trump on them.

President Joe Biden and White House lawyers are considering preemptive pardons of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, California Senator-Elect Adam Schiff, and others who may be targeted for retribution by a newly re-empowered convicted felon President-Elect Trump next month, Politico reports on a line of thinking that was also what reportedly prompted Biden to walk back on a pledge not to pardon Hunter, that the Orange God Emperor would make his life miserable on a petty whim.

“I would urge the president not to do that. I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary,” said Schiff, opposed to the idea publicly. Privately however, Politico says sources are telling them that, if not Schiff specifically, some Dems are absolutely in favor of the preemptive protection from revenge.

United Healthcare, the company helmed by some other exec now that CEO Brian Thompson was canceled by a brazen assassin in Manhattan early Wednesday morning, had among the highest claim denial rates out of any major insurer, according to a ProPublica report from last year.

Violence isn’t the answer. But since the violence already happened we can kind of not really be so upset that this guy was killed right? There’s no rule against that. Probably… Plus plenty of people who got fucked over by UHC are no doubt happy Thompson is dead. We can be happy for them.

Here’s Jesus Dork Speaker Mike Johnson blaming gerrymandering in Blue States for the fact that his majority lost a net two seats last month, putting just a five seat cushion under him AFTER three get filled with special elections. He wouldn’t have a majority at all right now were it not for Republicans in North Carolina wiping out three Dem seats. But since he doesn’t like such practices a Dem House member should help him out and intro a bill banning partisan gerrymandering nationwide, see if Johnson will take it up. We already know the answer but might as well make him look dumber.

“This law firm represents Kashyap Patel. Litigation will be filed against you if you fail to publicly retract defamatory statements you made about Mr Patel on MSNBC on December 2, 2024. Be further advised that you should identify and preserve all hard copy and electronically stored documents, information, and data that relate, in any way, to Mr Patel and to your statements about him on MSNBC. On December 2, 2024, you appeared as a live guest on MSNBC and made several false and defamatory statements about Mr Patel,” says a letter from douchebag MAGA lawyer Jesse Binnall to former aide-turned-anti-Trump media personality Olivia Troye.

“These comments include that Mr Patel would ‘lie about intelligence’ and would ‘lie about making things up on operations’ to the point where Mr Patel ‘put the lives of Navy Seals at risk when it came to Nigeria,’ and that Mr Patel was even misinforming Vice President Mike Pence. This is a complete fabrication, and you know it is false by virtue of your former position in the White House. At no point did Mr Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice President. Not only did you have actual knowledge of the falsity of this smear, but you also did so with the malicious intent of degrading his character and of cynical self-promotion. This is, of course, not the first time you have milked your former title as a means of spreading lies about associates of President Donald J Trump. You are already embroiled in a lawsuit for your disgusting lies about Ambassador Ric Grenell on Twitter,” the plainly butthurt letter from Binnall continued.

Sounds like Troye is “over the target” as the fanboys are so fond of saying in moments like this.

In a hostage statement packaged as a news article “Exclusive – Tillis Backs Bondi for AG, Patel for FBI; Will Vote for Hegseth and All Trump Nominees on Floor if Reported Favorably Out of Committee,” the right wing propaganda site’s extremely creepy “senior political reporter” Matthew Boyle has forced the North Carolina senator’s office on record capitulating to support whichever of the convicted felon President-Elect’s nominees that actually make it to the confirmation process.

“Senator Tillis has been focused on reviewing the nominees in his committees of jurisdiction and making sure they get fair hearings, and he is working on making sure Pam Bondi and Kash Patel get through the Senate Judiciary Committee and get confirmed on the floor,” Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin – and not Tillis himself – told Boyle on Wednesday. “Senator Tillis trusts his Republican colleagues to ensure that all of President Trump’s nominees get a fair confirmation process, and any nominee that gets a favorable vote out of committee will get the Senator’s vote on the floor.”

With so few other realistic opportunities on the map, Tillis’s seat is basically a must-flip for Democrats in 2026, even though it’s been however goddamned long since a Dem won a Senate seat in North Carolina, which is why there’s been some pre-game hype about how he votes in the upcoming gauntlet, so it’s obvious why Breitbart is acting as Trump’s enforcer to publicly lock him in now on the slate of freaks. Of course trying to make FBI Director Kash Patel a millstone around his neck is probably going to be less of a factor than the overall environment for Republican incumbents after two years of MAGA batshittery/tarifflation and whether outgoing Gov Roy Cooper runs.

Saying no more than “We’re not having it… I guess” to CBS’s Scott MacFarlane, Senator Bro from MO Josh Hawley on Wednesday confirmed that rapey binge drinking white nationalist former Fox News host Pete Hegseth backed out of a meeting with Hawley and maybe some other GOP senators.

Huh. Well maybe everything’s fine. Still, we were to understand that this was do or die for Hegseth, that “the next 48 hours were crucial” and all that. Probably not a great time to be canceling.

On the record. 👇 https://t.co/OIGDMv47BN

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) December 4, 2024

Pete himself told Megyn Kelly that everything’s still fine and that convicted felon President-Elect Trump has been encouraging him to “keep fighting” because Hegseth’s so America First and shit.

“The Wall Street Journal is becoming more and more obnoxious and unreadable. Today’s main headline is: ‘Trump’s DEA Pick Pulls Out In Latest Setback.’ With all that’s happening in the World, this is their Number One story of the day. Besides, he didn’t pull out, I pulled him out, because I did not like what he said to my pastors and other supporters. But, more importantly, what’s my ‘latest’ setback??? I just won the Presidency of the United States! They haven’t written a good story about me in YEARS. Somebody over there ought to look at what they’re doing. The only one worse than them is stupid, China-centric Forbes Magazine!” posted convicted felon President-Elect Trump on Wednesday, apparently forgetting that Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration for attorney general.

Also no way the fat shit actually reads the Wall Street Journal so much as has it summarized to him.

Convicted felon President-Elect Trump on Wednesday announced that other convicted felon Peter Navarro will return to the White House to serve as “Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.”

Not sure if that’s a real title or something Trump just made up, but it would appear to be a sign that the fat fuck is not just bluffing when it comes to the tariffs he’s vowed to impose.

We can’t say that conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration this week DEFINITELY backfired because he was already facing impeachment before the fucking stupid-ass move. But the Yonhap News Agency reports that now the opposition is completely unified with 191 lawmakers in the National Assembly signing on to a resolution for impeachment, which requires two-thirds of the 300-member chamber to pass and suspend Yoon from office pending a trial.

Which means, per Yonhap, the opposition will have to peel off eight votes from Yoon’s People Power Party to move forward (obviously there’s a math discrepancy here, but maybe there’s an empty seat). How tall of an order that is we don’t know. One on hand there was definitely opposition to the martial law declaration from within the PPP, but on the other no Assembly members from the party sponsored this motion. Dem lawmakers say they’re going to put it to the floor within on either Friday or Saturday as law requires any impeachment motion to be voted on within 24 to 72 hours.

We’re proooobably not going to be doing minute-by-minute updates on the whip operation on South Korean lawmakers neither we nor our readers have ever heard of before. Hell we know next to nothing about the country’s political culture and whether public signal of intent on such votes is a thing there. But if it looks like this son of a bitch is going to burn we’ll share the good news.

House Republicans are planning to denounce President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter in a press conference on Wednesday and there will probably be plenty of comedy when reporters ask them to square their outrage over that with convicted felon President-Elect Trump’s deeply corrupt pardon spree – Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner, Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon, etc – from four years ago.

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is interested in running to replace Jamie Raskin in the top Dem spot on feckless hick James Comer’s Oversight Committee as Raskin this week announced he’ll be challenging Jerry Nadler for the top Dem spot on the Judiciary Committee where Raskin can torment spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan, Politico reports.

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers. The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of @realDonaldTrump – and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth. Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” posted Pete Hegseth on Wednesday following reports that convicted felon President-Elect Trump is considering replacing him with other “Never Back Down” guy, pudding-fingered Florida Gov Ron DeSantis.

Meanwhile the New York Times reports that the fat fuck’s support for Pete is indeed “wobbling” with Trump beat duo Maggie Haberman and Jon Swan writing that Donald “has told people he was unhappy with the story about the email” Hegseth’s mother wrote in 2018 in which she called out his scumbaggery and that Team Orange “will watch closely how Mr Hegseth and his mother perform” in a series of interviews, lol. They’re literally doing a damage control press tour.