Republican Pennsylvania Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick “says some oppose Emmer because he voted to certify the 2020 election,” Fox News’s Chad Pergram reports on the least surprising news about this still ongoing House GOP shitshow that still three weeks later has no end in sight.

Taking the stand in the trial over New York Attorney General Letitia James’s $250 million lawsuit against disgraced former President Trump’s corrupt business empire, former lawyer and enforcer Michael Cohen on Tuesday told the court that the Orange Warlord commanded Cohen to assign values to real estate assets at whatever Trump wanted, saying “I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that [Trump] arbitrarily elected. And my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, predominately, was the reverse-engineer the various asset classes – increase those assets to achieve the number that Mr Trump asked us.”

Congratulations Speaker-designate @GOPMajorityWhip!

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) October 24, 2023

When is Elise Stefanik going to learn to stop using “speaker-designate“?

UPDATE 10/24/2023 12:57 PM EDT: Yeah Emmer is fucked. After a roll call vote of the entire conference he only got circa 191 votes saying they would vote for him on the House floor.

DINO asshole Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips is definitely launching a primary campaign against President Joe Biden as WCCO reporter Jason DeRusha on Tuesday posted video clips of a Phillips 2024 presidential campaign bus cruising down a highway somewhere in Ohio. The bus’s bumper says “MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN” in white letters on red. Sounds familiar.

In his day job in DC meanwhile Phillips also toyed with ways to make life less miserable for Republicans, saying he would sit out or vote present if and when fellow Minnesotan Tom Emmer’s speakership bid comes to a full floor vote, thereby watering down the expected GOP opposition.

Large-headed Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung got more than a little testy when a reporter from the Messenger asked him to comment on heels-wearing Florida Gov Ron DeSantis telling New Hampshire voters that he would lose less of the anti-vax vote to Robert F Kennedy Jr in a three-way race against Biden than Trump would given DeSantis’s crusades against “Faucism.”

“[Kennedy] will hurt Trump way more than he will hurt any other candidates,” DeSantis told the crowd at some diner he was visiting alongside Granite State Gov Chris Sununu. “If I’m the nominee, they all go to me because I stood up against Fauci. With Trump, though, he created Fauci. He elevated Fauci. He never fired him,” Mickey Maoist continued, adding that Bobby Jr serves as a “vessel” for voters who “want accountability” for the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines.

“Ron DeSantis is a dumbass to have that type of uninformed take,” said Cheung in a terse response, failing to elaborate otherwise on what was so uninformed about it. DeSantis is almost certainly doomed and even if Trump had a catastrophic paralyzing stroke tomorrow the little bastard would probably end up losing the primary to Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, but he’s not wrong about matching RFK Jr’s obvious appeal to the anti-vax vote in the MAGA base. It also could’ve been calling Trump out for not firing Fauci that really got the steam really coming out of Cheung’s massive cranium.

Republican Texas Congressman Pete Sessions was the first loser to be dropped from the field of seven candidates running for the GOP’s House speaker nomination on Tuesday, CNN’s Manu Raju reports adding that House Whip Tom Emmer came in first with 70-ish votes followed by Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson in second. Earlier on Tuesday backbencher Gary Palmer dropped out before the vote even started as did Pennsylvanian Dan Meuser on Monday night.

Tom Emmer might be screwed on the floor if he wins as Georgia MAGA Congressman Rick Allen said he’s not going to support Emmer because he voted in favor of protecting gay marriage, lol.

MAGA lawyer Jenna Ellis will take a plea deal Tuesday for her involvement in the Trump Regime’s post-2020 election coup attempt in Georgia, copping to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tamar Hallerman reports.

Ellis is now the fourth of the 19 defendants charged in the conspiracy to flip for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, following fellow MAGAttorneys Sidney “Kraken” Powell and Kenny Chesebro, and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall to agree to cooperate with the DA as she seeks to bring the Orange God Emperor and his minions to justice for trying to destroy American democracy.

Trump had famously refused to pay for Ellis’s representation since, by the time she was indicted along with him and the others, she had publicly endorsed now-doomed rival Ron DeSantis. Typical for the fat bastard as now Ellis is going to testify against him in this and probably his federal trial.

Lying hacks @RollingStone:

For 7 years, Catherine & I have attended nearly EVERY Astros home playoff game.

If they’re going to blame me for our recent home losses, pls also credit us for TWO World Series Championships & SEVEN consecutive ALCS’s—we were there cheering Stros on! https://t.co/fkk992f1am

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 23, 2023

Sorry, mistake in the headline. It should’ve said “Ted Cruz insists he’s not a jinx for the Astros hours before they lose for the fifth time – and get eliminated from the ALCS – with him in attendance.”

Because that’s what happened. The Astros lost their fifth of five 2023 postseason games with Ted Cruz present, falling 11 to 5 to the Texas Rangers in Game 7 of the ALCS on Monday night, with Texas now set to face either the Philadelphia Phillies or Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series.

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.