The Xi Regime on Tuesday finally sort of but not really explained where the hell Defense Minister Li Shangfu has been for the last two months, announcing that the commie military general has been fired nonchalantly in a release on CCP comings and goings, the New York Times reports.

US intel had indicated that Li was under investigation for some kind of corruption offenses before he was disappeared. It’s not clear if he’s just kicking back on the sofa or if he’s cuffed to a pipe in the basement of a military prison somewhere in Beijing in between tickle torture sessions.

“Sen Jeff Wilson was arrested at the Hong Kong airport Friday night after he discovered a pistol in his carry-on luggage and reported it to customs authorities. Wilson has been charged with possession of an unregistered firearm. He was released Sunday after posting bail and faces a hearing on Oct 30. ‘It was an honest mistake, and I expect the situation to be resolved shortly,’ he said. Wilson, traveling with his wife, was on the first leg of a five-week vacation in Southeast Asia.”

“Wilson said he did not realize his pistol was in his briefcase when he passed through airport security in Portland, and baggage screeners failed to note it. Wilson said he discovered the weapon mid-flight between San Francisco and Hong Kong, when he reached into his briefcase for a piece of gum, and felt his unloaded revolver inside. When the plane landed, he immediately went to customs officials and called their attention to the issue. Press accounts indicating that the weapon was discovered during a bag check are incorrect, Wilson said,” says a statement from dipshit Washington state Senator Jeff Wilson’s office after the unfortunate and hilarious fuckup.

CNN reports Wilson faces 14 years in a ChiCom prison for being such a goddamned idiot. Neither that article nor his statement say why he didn’t just dump the gun in the plane’s toilet or something.

“Donald J Trump respectfully submits this motion to dismiss the charges on the basis of selective and vindictive prosecution. The core conduct alleged in the indictment relating to the presentation of alternate electors has a historical basis that dates back to 1800 and spans at least seven other elections. There are no other prosecutions in American history relating to these types of activities.”

“The allegations in the indictment involve constitutionally authorized activities by President Trump as Commander In Chief, as well as speech and expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. Given this context, it is no surprise that in the months following the 2020 election, senior government officials rejected an investigation of President Trump as unfounded and potentially unconstitutional. However, biased prosecutors pursued charges despite the evidence, rather than based on it, with one prosecutor violating DOJ rules and ethical norms by forecasting the investigation in a television interview on 60 Minutes. Even the Attorney General felt ‘boxed in’ by the onslaught,” write the fat bastard’s stupid lawyers in a motion filed early Tuesday.

It’s just one of several Team Orange submitted to the court overnight. Another whines “The prosecution does not explain how President Trump violated these statutes, beyond simply saying he has while regurgitating the statutory language.” A third cries that “allegations related to” the Capitol insurrection in the indictment “are not relevant and are prejudicial and inflammatory.”

With the big-money donors winnowing the field of GOP candidates, a number have had to make some hard choices lately.  Mike Pence is having trouble qualifying for the third candidate debate, slated for November 8th in Miami, with Chris Christie and Tim Scott falling further behind.

The Washington Post reports Scott is also making the dramatic step of pulling all staff from New Hampshire–where Scott ranks somewhere between a “leaf peeper” and Dennis Kucinich in the polls–and piling his resources into Iowa, where he’s buying ads and adding field staff to try to drive numbers out for the January caucuses.

Text messages newly deciphered by the Arizona Republic after two years disclosed the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the incompetent group of Republican operatives hired by the Arizona GOP to try to undermine confidence in the final election tally, tried to recruit the Michigan GOP into a similar farce.

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan exchanged a series of texts with Michigan attorney Stefanie Lambert, who was leading an election denialism effort in that state, showing the pair discussing possible funding opportunities and concerns of then GOP state senate president Karen Fann about the public finding out about their funding plans.

“She doesn’t want the Senate to look bad for not properly funding it,” Logan messaged Lambert in July 2021–more than six months after Joe Biden had been inaugurated.  Lambert was indicted in August 2023 on charges of undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a computer system, and willfully damaging a voting machine.  Each charge carries a prison term of up to five years.

The GOP intraparty race to become Speaker of the House has taken a major hit as Pennsylvania Republican Dan Meuser announced that he’s dropping out of the race, less than twelve hours after the initial report that he was vying for the post, according to WHTM ABC-27 in Harrisburg.

As the House approaches the start of its third week without a Speaker, eight people on the ballot who will never get the 217 votes needed from Republicans to get the position.

Federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed charges against four members of a Philadelphia-area truck robbery crew who on April 13 made off with more than 2 million dimes being shipped from the US mint in Philly for Miami while the tractor trailer driver was sleeping in a parking lot, the AP reports.

Shut up libs! Nobody cares that President Trump said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is the leader of Turkey? Obama said there were 57 states once! Remember when he did that? And OH, don’t get us started on Joe Biden! He’s so old and he messes up all the time, like when he said “Corn Pop was a bad dude.” Remember that? No, because your lamestream media covered it up! It doesn’t matter that President Trump mixed up Turkey and Hungary. He was being sarcastic. It was a 12D chess move to get you leftist homos all riled up. LMAO! He’s got you libtards chasing your tails! LOL!

National Zero will resume our regular coverage after offering our MAGA readers this helpful guide on how to spin the gaffe experienced by their Orange Savior in New Hampshire on Monday.

Republican Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood tells CNN’s Manu Raju he’s been circulating a loyalty pledge reading “House Republicans need to elect a Speaker as soon as possible in order to return to work on behalf of the American people. It is time to put politics and personalities aside and unite behind the next Republican Conference choice for Speaker. I, [name of member], hereby pledge to support the Speaker Designate duly elected by the House Republican Conference-regardless of who that candidate is-when their election proceeds to the House Floor. Further, I pledge to vote for the Speaker Designate on the House Floor for as long as they remain the Speaker Designate,” and so far has gotten eight of the nine candidates to sign it, expecting the last one to be on board too soon.

The candidates themselves probably aren’t going to be the actual problem so much as the rank-and-file, whom Flood is going to start trying to get them to sign on before Tuesday’s internal nomination votes. The actual problem, what this is meant to address, is that Steve Scalise would be Speaker of the House right now if these assholes had just abided by the rules of every House majority conference, both Republican and Democratic, going back however many goddamned years, that say that you vote on the floor the way your conference voted. That’s it. You don’t fuck around on that and vote for someone else. Or maybe you do to lodge a protest vote like Nancy Pelosi encouraged a few front line Dems to do just to make a show of it, but the rest vote as they’re told.

On top of all that they could just sign it and then not honor it. That’ll probably happen too.

Police officials in Detroit on Monday said they were close to naming a suspect in the brutal stabbing murder of Isaac Agree Synagogue President Samantha Woll, who was found outside of her home on Saturday morning, and they’re “confident” her death was not a hate crime, the Messenger reports.

Pretty fucked up that we’re marginally relieved that the horrific murder of a 40 year-old faith leader appears to have been what appears to be some personal crime of passion (no signs of forced entry, per cops), but given the similarly horrific stabbing murder of a 6 year-old Palestinian-American boy by some MAGA scumbag in Illinois last week coming amid major tensions stirred by the Israel-Hamas war, it was on our minds based on the initial reporting. Still awful, less awful than it could’ve been.

Losing attorney-client privilege for your defense is no big deal when there’s Joe Biden secretly behind all the indictments and the impeachments and holy shit this fat bastard is so fucked legally.

Other lowlights from the Trump signing up for the New Hampshire primary ceremony include him declining to endorse any of the House Republicans running for Speaker, saying Jesus is the only person who could get elected, and libs yelling “LOCK HIM UP!” outside as he left the building.

Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa tells the Washington Examiner what everyone’s already thinking about disgraced former President Trump’s plans to withdraw from NATO should he return to power, saying in a statement that “Donald Trump’s threats to weaken NATO and side with Vladimir Putin undermine America’s strength on the global stage and threaten our national security. As president, Donald Trump spent four years cozying up to dictators and making our country less safe.”

“The idea that he would abandon our allies if he doesn’t get his way underscores what we already know to be true about Donald Trump: The only person he cares about is himself. And, it’s exactly why Donald Trump shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office,” Moussa continued in what the Examiner bills as an “exclusive” statement to them. Taking this to a right wing outlet rather than a lefty or mainstream one is pretty smart and we hope the Biden campaign keeps doing it.

So far in this MLB postseason the Houston Astros are 0 for 4 at home with punchably-faced Senator Ted Cruz in attendance, LoseCruz PAC Senior Advisor Sawyer Hackett reports, adding that Astros fans are “begging” him not to show up to Monday night’s ALCS Game 7 vs the Texas Rangers.

🇮🇱 FACT: Israel is BEHEADING Palestinian babies.

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) October 23, 2023

This was going to be a piece about this guy’s Twitter profile. It’s actually pretty notable that a former Tucker Carlson guest/outspoken MAGA influencer with a blue check and 1.4 million followers is going further than Rashida Tlaib with his pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli rhetoric. Just like the “mainstream” of the Trump right wing is only “pro-Israel” because they’re anti-Muslim, this guy is pretty obviously pro-Palestine because he’s an antisemite, as most MAGA hatters are – honest about it or not.

You don’t want to see the rest of Hinkle’s profile. It’s rife with images of death and suffering being inflicted upon babies and children in Gaza over the last two weeks. You will feel a lot of pain and sorrow, especially if you’re the parent of a young child. All of it is the collateral damage from indiscriminate bombing taken to avenge the horrors inflicted upon Israelis – babies and young children among them – after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on that bloody Sabbath.

“The fight in GAZA is ‘coming home’ to the USA. The tens of thousands of strong young men from the Middle East, that have already ‘invaded’ our Country, and are continuing to come, totally unchecked, will become a problem the likes of which we have never seen before. Crooked Joe Biden is a very ignorant (STUPID!) man, who has NEVER been right on a foreign policy issue in his life. CLOSE OUR BORDER, NOW. STOP THE ONSLAUGHT, STOP THE INVASION!” writes disgraced former President Trump as he spirals ever deeper into a vortex of racist rage and insanity.

The Indonesian Constitution Court on Monday handed down an 8 to 1 decision rejecting a petition to ban any candidate over the age of 70 or accused of human rights abuses from the presidency, clearing the way for current Defense Minister and former General Prabowo Subianto, age 72, and accused of human rights abuses to run in next February’s election, the Associated Press reports.

It was probably the human right abuses thing more than age thing that the anti-Subianto libs were concerned with, seeing as how he was a big deal former dictator Suharto’s regime until 1998.

“As Members of the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (‘CCP’), we are deeply concerned that the CCP and other foreign adversaries of the United States are working to capitalize on our vacant Speaker position in the US House of Representatives and constant threat of government shutdowns to discredit democracy globally and promote authoritarian governance models abroad. Following the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the US House of Representatives on October 3rd, Global Times – a CCP propaganda tabloid – published an opinion article on its English-language website, that stated that the United States ‘had long presented itself as a ‘beacon of democracy,’ but ‘with its domestic political turmoil, this myth has been shattered.’ The article states ‘the failure of the American democratic system domestically has raised questions about American values on the international stage.’ Continued coverage of the Speaker race from Global Times and other People’s Republic of China (PRC) media outlets similarly focuses on the chaos of the US political system.”

“This is the CCP’s message targeting international audiences in the English language, and it’s part of a broader global propaganda campaign to sow doubt about the strength of the United States and our democratic values. Therefore, we respectfully request a classified briefing from the US Intelligence Community (‘IC’) on how the CCP and our foreign adversaries are leveraging current political dysfunction in the US House of Representatives to discredit democracy globally in their efforts to promote an alternative authoritarian model of governance internationally, enhance their ability to form economic and national security alliances, and harm our standing with strategic partners,” writes Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi in a letter signed by 10 other Dems to CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haynes.

A new survey by Public Policy Polling sponsored by the Democratic Governor’s Association shows incumbent scandal-plagued doofus Republican Gov Tate Reeves leading Dem challenger Brandon Presley 46 to 45 with 10 days to go before the first round election, Mississippi Today reports.

The liberal non-profit news outlet cautions that it’s a Dem-sponsored poll by a Dem-leaning pollster (albeit a reputable one) but the disapproval ratings for Reeves are consistent with other surveys’ findings. There’s also that Presley might see a boost from independent candidate Gwendolyn Gray dropping out and endorsing the Dem earlier this month (though too late for her name to be removed from the first-round ballot). In any case, it’s extremely unlikely either Reeves or Presley will win outright on election day and are nearly certain will be set for a runoff on November 28th.

Family Matters: Biggest developments in the Biden finances story this year | Just The News https://t.co/b2iQ7Aan8D

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) October 23, 2023

An Israeli military spokesman said they will screen to a group of foreign journalists footage recovered from bodycams worn by Hamas terrorists killed during the October 7th attack on towns and villages in the vicinity of Gaza in order to remove all lingering doubts about the severity of the horrors inflicted upon Israeli civilians in the massacres, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“We are witnessing Holocaust-denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time as people are casting doubt on the magnitude of the atrocities that Hamas committed against our people and, in fact, recorded in order to glorify that violence,” said government spokesman Eylon Levy.