A new New York Times/Siena College survey of likely voters in Virginia and Pennsylvania finds President Joe Biden leading convicted felon former President Trump 48 to 45 percent in Virginia while those same numbers flip in Pennsylvania. In a hypothetical matchup, Vice President Kamala Harris leads Trump 49 to 44 percent in Virginia but trails 48 to 47 percent in Pennsylvania.

This is all within the margin of error, but also sampled before the fat fuck came within a half inch of the eternal damnation he so justly deserves during one of his signature rallies on Saturday.

🚨 Nikki Haley now getting a VP push

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 15, 2024

Fox News’s Martha McCallum on Monday posted that Ohio Senator JD Vance had left his home in a motorcade, presumably to head to Wisconsin for the multi-day Trump rally in Milwaukee.

“Motorcade” was vague, but it would seem that the hype indicates that the conservative asshole who once called Trump “America’s Hitler” is going to be Trump’s pick for running mate. As has been pointed out, the only reason he needs a new running mate and is that he incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and said nothing when they tried to lynch the guy, former Vice President Mike Pence, for refusing to block the certification of their election loss.

“As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts – The January 6th Hoax in Washington, DC, the Manhattan DA’s Zombie Case, the New York AG Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!” posted convicted felon former President Trump on Monday, about as magnanimous and graceful as you would expect – or not if you believed all that bullshit about him “striking a tone of unity” after almost getting killed.

Forbes.com on Sunday deleted a guest op-ed by “DEI expert” and USC professor Shaun Harper titled “Will surviving gunfire be Donald Trump’s next appeal to black voters?” following some backlash and mockery, the Daily Mail reports. The tone of the piece, which unfortunately we didn’t get around to reading before it was dropped, appears to be less than serious and more like mocking the fat fuck for claiming all “the Blacks” – and Harper is Black – sympathize with the sexual degnerate convicted felon because something something centuries of racial disparities in outcomes for those who have faced the criminal justice system are like what he’s dealt with.

“The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly contended that the August 2023 release of his criminal mugshot deeply resonated with Black voters because they know firsthand the unfairness of our nation’s criminal justice system. Hopefully, being shot doesn’t become a similarly problematic strategy to link Trump with an experience that far too many Black people have. Another racially problematic kinship narrative is unlikely to make Black voters see Trump as one of them. And it most certainly won’t fix the gun violence,” Harper wrote in the now-vaporized opinion piece.

The number of sex workers registered with the German government rose to roughly 30,600 at the end of 2023, an 8 percent increase from the previous year in a sign that the paid intimacy industry is recovering slowly but steadily to it’s pre-COVID pandemic levels, DPA reports.

There were 40,400 registered prostitutes in the country at the end of 2019, back in the days when a head cold and maybe herpes were the main health hazards of paid copulation. This year’s data reveals that the vast majority of registered prostitutes – 75 percent – were between the ages of 21 and 45, while 21 percent were over 45 and 4 percent were between 18 and 25. German officials did not disclose the gender makeup of the registrants and are not legally required to do so.

MAGA Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday dismissed the entire case against convicted felon former president Trump for stealing classified documents from the White House following his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, citing the appointments clause of the US Constitution.

“Former President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on the Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is GRANTED in accordance with this Order [ECF No 326]. The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. US Const, Art II, § 2, cl 2. Special Counsel Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the Appropriations Clause, US Const, Art I, § 9, cl 7, but the Court need not address the proper remedy for that funding violation given the dismissal on Appointments Clause grounds. The effect of this Order is confined to this proceeding,” Cannon wrote in the intro to her order, pursuant to the commands of far right Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurrence with US v Trump earlier this month.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper was quick Sunday night to point out to Jesus Dork Speaker Mike Johnson that the “heated rhetoric” of calling convicted felon former President Trump a threat to democracy that Johnson and other Republicans have been claiming was the motive behind the failed assassination attempt has been deployed by the fat fuck himself, that on June 27th Donald called Joe Biden exactly that, a threat to democracy, to which Johnson spun around in circles helplessly.

MSNBC pull Monday’s edition of “Morning Joe” to avoid the possibility that guests would say anything “inappropriate” in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on convicted felon former President Trump, CNN reports on some asymmetrical restraint self-imposed by liberal media.

There have been some changes announced for the upcoming Republican National Convention in the last 48 hours, but with something else taking up the bandwidth, they flew under the radar.  After handing Tiny Ron DeSantis a speaking slot earlier in the week, former Never-Trumper Nikki Haley was added to the roster, presumably as a sign of GOP unity in the wake of the thing.

Two things will not change.  First, the security:  the FBI said no additional security will be added to the Milwaukee convention site because no specific threat has been identified.  Of course the FBI would say this, though:  they’re not going to disclose adding additional security or expanding the security ring, nor would they say, “Y’know, you’re right:  we didn’t plan for one of the conventioneers firing on us.”

Second, the speeches:  RNC officials have reportedly told the list of approved speakers not to change their pre-approved speeches to refer to the assassination attempt–an attempt that was made by a shooter who was called a dyed-in-the-wool conservative by his high school classmates–that winged Trump’s ear.  Convention organizers reportedly want to limit the mentions to a few pre-selected people.

“Look, I’m not sure about who the individuals are on the individual details for the Secret Service but I can tell you, under this Biden Administration, the one thing I’ve seen is massive DEI hires, and I can tell you, when you primarily go after DEI, you end up with D.I.E,” an unnamed Fox commenter says as they do:  without information but with a pre-written punch line.  What a fucking joke.

The clip from the indispensable Aaron Rupar is too short to bother with plucking and putting up in a video, but on Sunday night Fox News dipshit Jesse Waters told fans not to “read too much into the political affiliation” of Thomas Crooks “because James Comey, also a registered Republican,” as if the former FBI Director famously fired in 2017 for not dropping the Russia investigation is even the most salient or recent example of an “anti-Trump Republican” compared to say, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, or the entire writing staff at the Bulwark, just to name a few.

Separately in a Sunday report in the Philadelphia Inquirer quotes Max Smith, a former high school classmate of Crooks’s, as saying the would-be Trumpslayer “definitely was conservative… It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate,” adding that in one mock debate in their history class a few years ago “the majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side.”

“Yep, a few slips on the teleprompter, ah, from the President in one of these big Oval Office moments,” the perfect Matha MacCallum chides.  “It’s the third time he has used this pulpit for this opportunity.  Um, y-y-y’know, now he shifting to talking about the importance of democracy rather than that Trump is the embodiment of, of an attack on democracy, which has been a huge thrust of the Biden campaign so far, so you see all that sorta shubtle, shuttle–I can’t talk either [Bret Baier chimes in, “There you go.”]–that, that, that subtle shift in the presentation.”

President Joe Biden, who according to the Supreme Court would be completely within his authority to order the assassination of his political rival if he felt it was to protect the country, will not likely confess to doing such a thing as he addresses the nation in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against his political rival by an apparent Republican gun nut.

We here at National Zero do our best to verify the information we publish here “above the fold,” either through sources we rely on or through double- or triple-checking stories we find on social media or other parts of the internet.  While we’re admittedly not “Ivory pure” at 99.99% accuracy, we’re pretty good at not falling into rabbit holes.

Not all the Interwebs can say that, with a portion of dead-named Twitter falling prey to what the Washington Post called “BlueAnon” conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania.  As those who witnessed in the comments, we’re not immune to the skepticism.  (The author was open to them, too:  he turned to his wife during the aftermath after photos of a bloodied Trump filled the screen and said they should check his hands for a pin.)

From gel packs of blood, to curiously-long exits off stage, to people speculating it was a ballet choreographed by the Kremlin to win the White House, we all considered it in the hours after the shooting.  But we’re not shooting up pizza parlors to prove our conspiracies.

Three years after a devastating winter storm forced Senator Ted Cruz to flee to Cancun (abandoning poor Snowflake) and left millions of Texans without power because the state’s power grid was shitty, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott rolled out his latest attempt to shirk responsibility by demanding the main power company around Houston upgrade its services, CNN reports.

Millions lost power as Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas last Monday; more than 400,000 people in and around Harris County are still without power a week later.  Heat continues to impact the region, with temperatures reaching into the 90s as people suffer without air conditioning.

Abbott, who rode out the storm on a “business trip” to Asia, demanded that CenterPoint Power come up with a plan to upgrade their network by July 31st, about two and a half weeks from now.  Although he hasn’t made a significant investment in the state’s infrastructure himself–instead taking credit for projects paid for under President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal even as he denigrated the bill as government overreach and overspending.

The Pennsylvania State Police released the names of the two Pennsylvania residents wounded in Saturday’s mass shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.  The second victim has been identified as 57-year-old David Dutch, of New Kensington is in stable condition, and the third victim was identified as 74-year-old James Copenhaver, of Moon Township, and he is also listed in stable condition.  A Florida man who sustained a flesh wound to the ear was treated at an area hospital and released.  The spectator killed in the shooting was former Buffalo Township Fire Chief Corey Comperatore.

We’ve been going back and forth quite a lot about what and what not to share with our readers about Thomas Crooks as far as his politics goes, but let’s start with the easier stuff.

💥 You may see some dispute over whether the FEC record for the $15 donation Crooks supposedly made to “Progressive Turnout Project” on January 20, 2021 is accurate since the record itself says the address is in Pittsburgh and but Crooks lived in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Problem is that the street address and ZIP code are the same but the city/town can be used interchangeably for whatever reason. Which means that, until we hear otherwise, the record is accurate.

💥 And so is the record showing that Crooks registered to vote as a Republican later that year in September, after he turned 18. He then voted in the next year’s midterms.

💥 Chat platform Discord, popular among gamers and far-right incel types issued a statement Sunday saying they had “identified an account that appears to be linked to the suspect; it was rarely utilized and we have found no evidence that it was used to plan this incident, promote violence, or discuss his political views. Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence, and we will continue to coordinate closely with law enforcement.”

The Associated Press reports local police officers–it’s unclear from which jurisdiction–responded to people in the audience pointing to the gunman atop a nearby building and climbed a ladder leading to the roof where Matthew Crooks was lurking, but retreated down the ladder after Crooks turned and pointed the rifle at him.  Seconds later, Crooks fired at the stage.

Scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET, President Joe Biden will address the nation Sunday afternoon after Saturday’s assassination attempt against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump while he spoke at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.