Remember hydroxychloroquine, the COVID miracle cure that fat former President Trump hyped during the height of the pandemic and loved by millions of right wingers until got replaced by the even more miraculous horse paste ivermectin? No? Well we don’t blame you because a lot of other stupid shit happened in the nearly four years since the heady days of the hydroxychloro-craze, like Dr Seuss books getting cancelled and Mr Potato Head losing his genitals and Herschel Walker…

Anyway, Politico EU reports that French researchers estimate that 16,990 people in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the United States died from having taken the malaria drug between March and July 2020, with the research team from having extrapolated that figure from a prior study on randomized mortality outcomes. The French team’s new paper stresses that the death toll they arrived at is almost certainly a lowball given the limited time and geographic scope.

“What do you have to lose? Take it,” then-President Trump said on April 6th, 2020.

God bless the self-important nouveau riche:  their political campaigns are the only truly successful form of trickle-down economics.  According to the Washington Post, Republican political dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy sold more than $33 million in the stock of his company, with a campaign spokesperson saying he’s “making a significant investment in the campaign.”

Ramaswamy divested about 5.5% of his holdings of Roivant Sciences, the company he founded, but he still holds more than 51 million shares valued at more than half a billion dollars.  His campaign reportedly abandoned traditional advertising in New Hampshire just weeks before the primary, and he’s dropping in the national polls as well, treading water at most polls’ margin of error.

The Messenger, aka The Hill 2.0, which just this morning the Daily Beast reported is weeks away from running out of cash to fund operations, having only generating less than $5 million in revenue after founder Jimmy Finkelstein promised $100 million after its May launch, is desperately seeking a buyer and if we hadn’t given it away in the headline you probably would have already guessed that this is exactly the kind of opportunity that malign, moneyed right wingers thrive.

The sharks include, per Axios “Omeed Malik, a financier who backed Tucker Carlson’s new media venture, Garrett Ventry, a Republican political operative, Ryan Coyne, founder of digital media agency Starboard, and George Farmer, the former CEO of Parler who sits on the board of Britain’s conservative news network, GB News.” Without any skepticism whatsoever, Axios writes that the group “aren’t interested in getting involved with the company’s editorial efforts, but believe The Messenger needs to create more revenue opportunities beyond traffic-based advertising and events,” even after mentioning that their $30 million offer “for a 51 percent position – could provide The Messenger with a much-needed lifeline, but would require Finkelstein to give up control.”

It’s not like The Messenger or The Hill under Finkelstein were ever bastions of progressive, rational coverage, but it’s hard to credit any of this shit about the MAGA propaganda dickheads not being interested in making any changes to the editorial direction of the site like Axios does so blithely.

Extremist Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs shouldn’t be THIS hard on his party. They did at least manage to expel George Santos and run Kevin McCarthy out last year. Those weren’t nothing.

“The question of presidential eligibility under the Constitution has been a hot button one, especially in recent years with the controversial campaigns of John McCain, Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, and most recently, Kamala Harris. The controversy arises from the text of the Constitution itself. Article II, Section 1, stipulates that ‘No person except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.’ The core issue centers on the meaning of the phrase ‘natural born citizen.’ The Constitution explicitly lays out three requirements to run for president: (i) be at least 35 years old; (ii) have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years; and (iii) be a natural-born citizen of the United States,” writes hardcore Trump ball-gagger Paul Ingrassia at American Greatness.

Love the “controversial” line, as if any of those “controversies” were generated by anyone other than far right conspiracy theorists themselves… Except for maybe with John McCain, who was born – to US citizen parents – on a Naval base in the Panama Canal Zone, but that was fucking stupid.

This Ingrassia ballsucker is trying the same shit John Eastman tried (before he became really famous and not in a good way for him) with Kamala Harris, with Ingrassia writing that “although [Haley’s] parents may have been lawful residents at the time of her birth on South Carolina soil, which may or may not confer her with the privileges of citizenship, it is important to note that she does not qualify for the Constitution’s higher requirement of natural-born citizenship,” and blah blah blah.

What Ingrassia does not do is draw any distinction between Harris, now the first ever female Vice President and first in line for the Oval Office, and Haley in the respective circumstances of their births. Meaning that all of these chodes have the opportunity right now to walk into a federal court and file a case challenging Harris’s vice presidency as a means of testing their hypothesis on Haley’s eligibility, rather than printing this bullshit. Let’s see more walking and less talking, you cucks.

Dem former Congressman Tom Suozzi on Thursday tweeted that WABC-TV informed him that his Republican opponent Mazi Pilip has backed out of the debate the station was set to host ahead of next month’s special election to replace Cameo star George Santos in New York’s 3rd District.

“Unbelievable… What is she scared of? What is she hiding?” Suozzi wrote, without drawing the obvious conclusion that (if Pilip really did cancel) she’s obviously following the example set by the illustrious leader of the GOP, who says debates are for losers like Liddle Ron DeSanctis, Birdbrain Nikki Haley, and Sloppy Chris Christie, and Pilip can just declare she won without having to show up.

A new survey by American Research Group finds disgraced former President Trump with 37 percent support among likely voters in the New Hampshire GOP primary, just 4 percent ahead of former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley at 33 percent, with fat former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in third at 10 percent, with heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 5 percent, just a point ahead of assclown Vivek Ramaswamy at 4 percent. Last month’s survey found the same 4 point gap with Trump 33 to Haley’s 29, both results just on the edge of the 4 point margin of error.

The poll was conducted December 27, 2023 to January 3, 2024, per ARG and Haley’s slavery fuckup came on the night of the first day so it’s possible she hasn’t taken too much damage from it.

The old “Trump speaks to a larger truth [when he makes up about this or that fucking nonsense]” is a particularly time-honored vintage of explaining (or excusing) why the fat bastard’s cultists still worship him despite his outright lies to them over the years. From a 2018 New York Times news analysis of his non-stop bullshit: “Advisers say privately that Mr Trump may not always be precise but is speaking a larger truth that many Americans understand. Flyspecking, tut-tutting critics in the news media, they say, fail to grasp the connection he has with a section of the country that feels profoundly misled by a self-serving establishment. To them, the particular facts do not matter as much as this deeper truth.” Further down the Times mentions how Trump himself – really more likely his ghostwriter – coined it as “truthful hyperbole” in his shitty 1992 book “The Art of The Deal.”

A December 2020 Atlantic piece also picks up a tweet by reformed ex-MAGA political consultant Matt Sheffield, who wrote “Truth for conservative journalists is anything that harms ‘the left.’ It doesn’t even have to be a fact. Trump’s numerous lies about any subject under the sun are thus justified because his deceptions point to a larger truth: that liberals are evil.”

So it’s not like we just made it up from whole cloth in our September piece about Trump repeating his stupid “you need to show ID to buy groceries” line, writing, emphasis added, “Not even the most dull and obtuse of Trump fans hear that and say ‘My God, he’s right. I get carded for Lucky Charms all the time. We need national voter ID now!’ If they even acknowledge that he said it at all it’s just ‘Well President Trump is exaggerating to speak to a larger truth about the need for election integrity’ and other such self-debasing excuses we’ve come to know and hate from the MAGA worms.” Same last June on Trump’s deranged “secret fentanyl deal with Xi” when we wrote that the “cynical Trump fanboys who admit he’s full of shit always say there’s some ‘greater truth’ behind the lies.”

Earlier this week, I informed Craig Riedel (OH-09) that I will be withdrawing my endorsement. I was very disappointed in his inappropriate comments regarding President Trump. As we begin 2024, my focus is on ensuring we nominate the strongest candidates on the ballot who are…

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) January 4, 2024

“…my focus is on ensuring we nominate the strongest candidates on the ballot who are committed to electing President Trump this November and expanding our House GOP Majority” is what the rest of the really scary House Republican Conference chair’s tweet said after the ellipses in the embed.

We missed this last month but Ohio 9th District contender Craig Riedel saw a collapse in his support after small-faced weasel Charlie Kirk obtained audio of Riedel telling a donor he thinks Trump “is arrogant. I don’t like the way he calls people names. I just don’t think that’s very becoming of a president.” Which likely leaves 2022 loser JR Majewski – a QAnon freak and proven Stolen Valor asshole who dropped out of a retry earlier this year citing mental health issues or something only to re-declare – as the likely frontrunner in the GOP primary to take on Dem Marcy Kaptur.

Spokesmen for ISIS, the global Islamic terror group founded by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claimed responsibility on Thursday for Wednesday’s deadly bombing of a memorial for Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleiman in the city of Kerman, CNN reports.

Hillary’s jihadis did not offer any evidence they were behind the blasts that killed at least 84 fans of the Shiite terrorist leader Soleiman on the fourth anniversary of his death in a US drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq – and CNN’s report notes some inconsistencies between their account and Iranian state media’s coverage, but it’s not like anyone else is stepping up to take credit for it.

A new Chick-fil-Ation analysis that Fox Business News reports was complied by Newsweek (without actually linking to Newsweek’s article) finds a troubling increase in the price of a Christian-themed chicken sandwich from Lindsey Graham’s favorite joint has increased by 21 percent since 2021.

Fox Business cites the usual factors of ingredient costs and supply chain disruption as the root cause of the increase. However this raises the question of why Chick-fil-A didn’t just tell its largely conservative fanbase that it was because of Bidenomics and socialism that they needed to pass these costs along to customers or, better yet, tell them that they were just going to absorb those costs in contrast to woke fast food chains that are open on Sundays like McDonald’s or Taco Bell.

Shouldn’t a “faith-based” business have faith that they’d be able to recoup such losses on volume?

House Oversight Committee Dems led by Jamie Raskin on Thursday issued a report titled “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump,” concluding that fat former President Trump’s corrupted businesses pulled in at least $7.8 million from 20 or more foreign governments during just part of his failed administration.

“Many reports get published in Congress every year and sink into oblivion, but this one is unlikely to disappear. The findings and conclusions presented by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s Democratic staff are astounding – and they demand urgent action by the Congress and by the American people. Drawing from actual receipts and records and using the most conservative possible accounting methodologies, White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump documents how, as President, Donald Trump accepted more than $7.8 million in payments from foreign states and their leaders, including some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous Commander-in-Chief,” the Dem staff write in the foreword of the report.

Further down they write, emphasis theirs, “To be sure, we know about only some of the payments that passed into former President Trump’s hands during just two years of his presidency from just 20 of the more than 190 nations in the world through just four of his more than 500 businesses.”

“President Donald J Trump respectfully moves this Court for an order to show cause why prosecutors Jack Smith, Molly Gaston, and Thomas Windom (collectively, the ‘prosecutors’) should not be held in contempt for violating the Court’s order ‘stay[ing] any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant,'” write disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers in a Thursday motion, still complaining about Smith continuing to work on the case while it’s stayed pending a decision from the DC appellate court

Cops in the Des Moines suburb of Perry, Iowa responded Thursday morning to a shooting at Perry High School, an official tells ABC News. No futher details were available so it’s too soon to talk about gun control. It will also be too soon when more details become available and then again when they are all known. Then it’ll be there were too many doors and then time to move on from this tragedy.

A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll finds 34 percent of Republican respondents believe it is “definitely” or “probably true” that “FBI operatives organized and encouraged” the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection at the US Capitol. while another 34 percent said “not sure,” leaving just 30 percent agreeing that the debunked conspiracy theory was “probably/definitely false.”

Which, when you take out the 2 percent for “No opinion/Skipped,” leaves 68 percent of GOP voters who aren’t convinced that thousands of Trump voters stormed the Capitol with the intent of disrupting the certification of fat former President Trump’s humiliating defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election on their own. The majority among respondents identifying as Trump voters is even higher: 44 percent saying the “Fedsurrection” is probably or definitely true, plus another 33 percent saying “not sure,” with just 21 percent agreeing that it’s probably or definitely false.

Among overall respondents this actually works out to a slim 51 percent majority saying either the false flag fantasy was probably/definitely true at 25 percent and another 26 percent who say they aren’t sure versus 48 percent saying it’s probably or definitely false. On another result that the Post didn’t break down by political affiliation, the pollsters found that 11 percent of respondents say there’s “solid evidence” the FBI organized the attack, another 13 percent saying it’s a “suspicion only,” and 26 percent are not sure versus 48 percent saying “FBI did not organize” the riot.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday told reporters his Conservative Party would prefer a little more time before they get fucking destroyed for their years of misrule and will likely hold the next general election in the fall rather than the spring, the BBC reports.

“I want to keep going, managing the economy well and cutting people’s taxes But I also want to keep tackling illegal migration,” said Sunak said. “So I’ve got lots to get on with and I’m determined to keep delivering for the British people.” The deadline for a general election is January 2025.

After being shown the flabbergasting clip of Preacher of the House Mike Johnson and his “cronies” on a field trip to the border, claiming he’s spoken to Border Patrol agents who told him they don’t want $14 billion in manpower and equipment, as the Biden Administration proposed, Democratic Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett’s eyes display her shock at Johnson’s unrealistic claim that what the officers want is only policy change.  After pointing out that many of the Border Patrol agents are being pulled away from their families to placate conservative furor, Crockett countered Johnson:  “I will disagree and say that they need the funding, but I will also agree that there needs to be policy changes as well.  It’s not about doing one or the other.  It’s about doing both.”  That, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, is how you undercut the performance art of the House Republican Conference.

With the campaigns of Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis pulling ads because of campaign finance crunches, Donald Trump has started to pick up the bargain basement ad campaign time in New Hampshire airing ads attacking Nikki Haley as the former South Carolina governor’s popularity starts to rise, NBC News reports.

Trump’s ads focus on Haley’s immigration position which isn’t that far from Trump’s–but the ads allow Trump to highlight the epidermal similarities to between Haley and the migrants he’s demonizing.  Given that Trump’s current support is polling around twice that of Haley’s and has been consistent, the campaign obviously wants to knock down any momentum Haley might gain.