Contrast what President Biden said in his State of The Union address Thursday night that Capitol riot-adjacent Wisconsin MAGA Congressman Derrick Van Orden was specifically reacting to when he screamed “LIES!” and then what he said to CNN’s Manu Raju in an interview after the speech:

“My predecessor, failed the most basic presidential duty that he owes to the American people, the duty to care. I think that’s unforgivable,” Biden said of Trump’s abysmal, shambolic response to the virus hitting the country, which spurred Van Orden’s outburst. Yet afterward, having composed himself a bit, the bald asshole at first didn’t own up to it, then tried to make it more of a general complaint about Biden’s policies on the border and immigration, blah blah blah.

However it is very plain from the video that Van Orden actually lost his shit over the notion that his Orange God Emperor had failed to protect the nation from a deadly virus and that far more Americans died than needed to in 2020 as a direct result of Trump’s incompetence. It was as if Van Orden is an Islamic fundamentalist and Biden had just cursed the name of Allah. He simply could not tolerate the filthy infidel tyrant’s blasphemy against the sacred rule of the Holy Pornstar Fucker.

Ohio GOP Senate primary candidates Bernie Moreno and Matt Dolan are giving their mutual rival Frank LaRose hell over the No Labels scam operation promoting a public Zoom meeting featuring LaRose and with “longtime friend” who would be a better choice as an “independent senator” than the Trump-endorsed frontrunner Moreno, who would be a “Trump senator,” Fox News reports.

“On any given day, it’s unclear which version of Frank LaRose is actually going to show up in this primary. Ohioans clearly see Frank for who he really is, a political chameleon willing to change his stripes and undermine the will of Republican voters for financial support,” Dolan spokesman Chris Maloney told Fox. “No real conservative would be caught dead begging pro-amnesty and pro-gun control No Labels to fund their Senate campaign. They only support Democrats and anti-Trump RINOs like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. This is who the real Frank LaRose is,” Moreno tweeted on Tuesday. LaRose ultimately caved to the pressure and skipped out on the Zoom call.

What Moreno and Dolan forget is that LaRose is the current Secretary of State of Ohio and the whole point of his participation in a No Labels virtual event was almost certainly to lend “legitimacy” to their effort to help reelect fat former President Trump by splitting off moderate Republicans and “centrists” from Biden. Of course it was fucking stupid for them to take LaRose’s side in the primary, but those two dipshits probably should have let No Labels’ amateurish bullshit go and seen the longer game: That this was almost certainly way more about LaRose’s day job than his Senate bid.

President Biden’s campaign tells Politico Playbook the hour before and the hour during his Thursday night State of The Union speech were the two best fundraising hours ever so far in his 2024 reelection bid, with small dollar donations pouring in online. Actual numbers were not provided.

'BLESS YOUR HEART': Rising Republican star Katie Britt shreds Biden on border, rising costs in SOTU rebuttal https://t.co/wHICOfAIeK

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 8, 2024

Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s horrifying rebuttal is the lead story on the Daily Beast, quoting from a Republican who says “Everyone’s fucking losing it. It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

Is it robbing the cradle when your fiance, 25 years younger than you, is already eligible for Social Security?  No matter:  Rupert Murdoch, 92, announced his engagement to 67-year-old Elena Zhukova, a retired molecular biologist who can likely explain to him how vaccines work.

Per the Guardian, Murdoch met the sixth woman he’s been engaged to–his last engagement to conservative radio host Ann Lesley Smith lasted just two weeks and ended in early 2023–at a family gathering held by his third wife, Chinese national Wendi Deng.  Zhukova’s daughter was once married to a Russian oligarch who had previously owned the Chelsea football club in the English Premier League.

In immediate post-State of the Union polls, CNN found the number of people who thought President Biden’s programs would help the nation move in the right direction, the numbers literally flipped, from 45% before the speech thinking Biden’s policies are good for Americans to 62% after.

Joe Biden spoke with power and authority–and sometimes his brain got ahead of his lips, leading to characteristic slurring–demonstrating a command of the issues that sometimes put the Republicans into a corner by pointing out their inability to get anything done.

Coming out with strength on facing our nation’s enemies both domestic and foreign, Biden presented himself as a strong leader in a democracy, pointing out how Republicans act one way but tell their followers something else.  “You’re sayin’ no.  Look at the facts,” Biden told Republicans who claimed he was lying about support for the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate.

Biden pushed programs to help home buyers hit by higher interest rates, and continued to hit how the GOP has attacked reproductive rights.  In an off-script moment, Biden looked at the members of the Supreme Court in the audience and told them that they’ll soon learn about the political power of women. 

Let me be clear folks, this is going to be a very important State of The Union address. It’s a big deal and you want to know something? This will be Joe Biden’s best chance to get the American people on his side when the forces of fascism and hate embodied by the sick f… Anyway folks, let’s finish the job and get together to provide hard-working National Zero readers with the coverage they deserve. Then we can look forward to getting ice cream afterwards. God bless America.

A new study concludes that the use of masks, social distancing, hand washing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions saved an estimated 831,000 lives in the United States during the pandemic, particularly during the early days when vaccinations weren’t available, a new study finds.

The researchers note that not all the averted deaths would have been associated with the Covid virus; during the first two years of the pandemic, the fatality rate of seasonal influenza also dropped thanks to the more hygienic habits of the population.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer tells the Daily Wire that he expects Republicans to act like adults during Biden’s State of the Union address, saying “There is a time to be a professional, there’s a time to be an adult. We don’t behave like Democrats. Democrats do stupid stuff.”

“They like to gyrate and wear a certain uniforms and, you know, make terrible hissing sounds and all this other stuff,” Emmer continued, lol, adding. “You know what? It’s time that adults run Congress. And I’m pretty confident our guys will take that attitude tonight.” Famous last words.

A Republican former New York Congressman who remains fairly popular in his caucus because most of them voted against expelling him, George Santos, will be present in the House chamber for Joe Biden’s State of The Union address on Thursday night, Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports. Watch out to see if he interacts with Senators Mitt Romney and (allegedly) Kyrsten Sinema again.

“The first statement that Crooked Joe Biden should make tonight when addressing the Nation is that he will immediately terminate the Witch Hunt against his Political Opponent, ME. Prosecutors and Judges have teamed up as though we were a third world nation!” writes fat former President Trump on Truth Social, previewing his planned tedious “live reaction” stream of consciousness.

Powerful, Chinese-built ship-to-shore cranes at ports around the United States are equipped with mysterious communications devices that may be relaying information about American economy and trade to the Chinese government, Congressional officials found in an investigation, according to The Wall Street Journal (via the National Desk).

The devices appear to be cellular modems which are not uncommon for industrial cranes, but the ports had not specified them when ordering the equipment, and the devices are not transmitting data to port offices though they appear to be communicating with outside contacts.  The cranes were built by the Chinese company ZPMC, which built around 80% of the heavy-lift cranes used at ports around the United States.

God this woman-ish person is insufferable. Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly asked Greene and her ilk to behave themselves during the State of The Union address., which is probably the reason why she’s already saying she probably won’t. Then she’s claiming Biden’s on performance-enhancing drugs as a way of preemptively dismissing what will hopefully be a widely well-received speech.

Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday tossed disgraced former President Trump’s bid for a stay of the execution of the $83.3 million judgment a jury awarded to writer EJ Carroll for defaming her by calling her a liar after she went public with the time that her raped her circa 1995.

“Mr Trump’s current situation is a result of his own dilatory actions. He has had since January 26 to organize his finances with the knowledge that he might need to bond this judgment, yet he waited until 25 days after the jury verdict – and only shortly before the expiration of Rule 62’s automatic 30-day stay of judgment – to file his prior motion for an unsecured or partially secured stay pending resolution of post-trial motions. The Court ordered expedited briefing and assured the parties that the motion would be decided as promptly as was reasonably appropriate, but due to the delay in its filing, the Court notified that it could not render any decision as quickly as Mr Trump requested. Dkt 307. That remains true today,” Kaplan wrote, twisting the knife on the fat bastard.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office filed its responses to a series of Trump lawyers’ attempts to get the federal documents case in Florida thrown out, citing things like

• the Presidential Records Act (which explicitly does not give a former president permission to retain classified documents as personal records);
• the appointment and funding of the Special Counsel (a real long shot that, should Judge Aileen Cannon accept the argument, would undermine every investigation of a Special Counsel in recent history);
  Read More ▶ “Special Counsel responds to Trump’s attempt to dismiss documents case: “Even if it had merit (which it does not)””

Michigan MAGA lawyer Stefanie Lambert, the far right scumbag charged last year with tampering with a Dominion ballot tabulator she and several co-conspirators stole from a township clerk, is now a fugitive from justice as the Detroit News’s Craig Mauger reports that, as of 4:10 PM EDT on Thursday, Lambert had not shown up to her 3 PM pretrial hearing, prompting the the judge to issue a bench warrant. They should check Mike Lindell’s safe house first when they start looking for her.

The Florida state senate, surprisingly including the Republicans, removed the co-founder of the sexual adventurers’ club Moms for Libertines Liberty, a nominee of returning Florida Republican Governor and guest garden gnome Ron DeSantis from a list of nominees for the state ethics commission after it received a complaint from a citizen that she’s a lobbyist and barred from such a position, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Tina Descovich was removed from a list of DeSantis nominees after the slate had been approved on Party lines by the senate’s Ethics and Elections Committee, but she was later removed from the roster after a political consultant noted to the commission that her actions for Moms for Liberty clearly amounted to lobbying, an activity disqualifying for nominees to the Commission on Ethics.

Her removal comes just a few months after the Commission’s former chairman, Glen Gilzean, was forced to resign from the panel because he had the $400,000-per-year position given to him by DeSantis to oversee the land Disney previously operated; state rules bar someone on state government salary from sitting on the Ethics Commission. Gilzean was also been named by DeSantis to oversee Orange County elections, a job that comes with a $200,000 per year salary; it’s unclear if the Ethics Commission would condone one person simultaneously holding these two positions.

With the perfunctory 2024 GOP primary over and done with, US officials are planning to resume briefing fat former President Trump with classified intel, a tradition going back to 1952 for all major-party presidential nominees and the first time that one currently facing trial on federal felony charges for violating the Espionage Act will be given them, Politico reports.

We maintain that it’s perfectly fine to give Trump classified info so long as it’s made-up bullshit designed specifically to expose his treason. For example, if officials could tell him that a Russian cabinet official is secretly a Ukrainian spy and that official gets thrown out a window two days later then Trump can be prosecuted again for mishandling classified information. It’s a win-win.

Fresh off winning her primary, Republican California Congresswoman Michelle Steel on Thursday told the House she does “not support federal restrictions on IVF” and she’s removing herself from her sponsorship of the Life at Conception Act, NBC News reports.

“I’m removing myself from the bill because it could create confusion about my support for the blessings of having children through IVF. I hereby remove my name as cosponsor,” Steel said after catching a lot of shit for conceiving it and then coming up with a lame, non-binding resolution to affirm support for protecting IVF. Her likely Dem opponent Derek Tran kept the pressure up.

“Michelle Steel just admitted she’s been lying to every one of her constituents about her abortion-banning, IVF-restricting legislation,” Tran told NBC in a written statement. “She can try to explain this away all she wants, but Californians see her exactly for who she is – a reproductive right-dismantling extremist who has no business representing the interests of California’s 45th District.”