Just within a short space today, especially this afternoon, major news fashioned the cycle and continued the saga of just how horrifying the Republican party — if our country’s future weren’t on the chopping block it would be guffaws all around as it’s obvious the current GOP brand is comically slapstick-useless beyond sight and sound.
However, the current circumstances make the muffled laughter reek of gallows humor.

In that burst of reports, most likely the heaviest long-range and deeply abiding event is the announcement that T-Rump’s last chief of staff, the gloop-head Mark Meadows, has flipped, and apparently has been flipped awhile. He even flipped on his own self.
Scoop from ABC News this afternoon:

The sources said Meadows informed Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump’s prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

“Obviously we didn’t win,” a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith’s team in hindsight.

And in interviews with the DOJ, Meadows supposedly corrected his own lies:

Sources told ABC News that Smith’s investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office — a book that promised to “correct the record” on Trump.

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

According to Meadows’ book, the election was “stolen” and “rigged” with help from “allies in the liberal media,” who ignored “actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze.”

But, as described to ABC News, Meadows privately told Smith’s investigators that — to this day — he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.

Special Counsel Jack Smith will use Meadows in probably the federal J6 insurrection case, and maybe the classified documents one as well. Meadows was up-close and personal with the asswipe T-Rump during some strategic, trying days. In that he should be worried — now that’s truly funny.

Next on the news docket is the horrifying continuing Republican clusterfuck trying to select a House speaker, and losing their shit over and over again — via The New York Times, also late this afternoon:

Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, dropped his bid for speaker on Tuesday hours after securing his divided party’s nomination, following a swift backlash from the right, including former President Donald J. Trump, left his candidacy in shambles.

Mr. Emmer’s abrupt exit signaled that Republicans were as far as ever from breaking a deadlock that has left Congress leaderless and paralyzed for three weeks. It made Mr. Emmer the third Republican this month to be chosen to lead the party, only to have his bid collapse in a seemingly endless cycle of G.O.P. grievances, personality conflicts and ideological rifts.

Republicans have now succeeded in repudiating all three of their top leaders over the past few weeks. The chamber has been frozen for the better part of a month as Republicans feud over who should be in charge, even as wars rage overseas and a government shutdown approaches.

Plus further asinine shit per The Washington Post (live blog):

Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) just stuck his head out of the Ways and Means conference room to whisper to me and another reporter that Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) is going to be the next House speaker.

“I just feel it in my bones,” Arrington said.

Jodey (what kind of name is that? And along with a shitload of these assholes I’d never heard of before the speaker shit started — who the fuck is/was Tom Emmer?) is most likely talking of not only his own bones, but also the bones of Keven McCarthy and Gym Jordan, who’ve gone into the darkness of failed votes before, and their stink will haunt all of America.
Supposedly, the House Republican dimwits will name someone tonight (Mike Jonson — who?) as there are still eight or nine assholes still vying for the job, and make a full House-floor vote tomorrow sometime after the noon hour..
Apparently, shit has gotten so bad, they floated the idea of a McCarthy/Jordan unit ticket — McCarthy as Speaker, perf-enabler Jordan as his deputy. One GOPer, however, that the idea was stupid, and “unconstitutional” anyway.

Meanwhile, earlier today down Georgia Way, another RICO case defender and former T-Rump lawyer, Jenna Ellis, pled guilty, marking the third such to do so — last week Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro turned a plea — and could be added havoc on the charges.
Analysis via Aaron Blake at The Washington Post:

Her centrality to the case, relative to the others, is debatable. Ellis often served more as a spokesperson than an actual practicing lawyer, though certain actions clearly involved legal strategizing and proximity to Trump. But her plea came with something the others did not: a tearful statement to the court that suggested she is prepared to cast blame up the chain. Whether and how much that includes Trump is a big question. But it would seem to be bad news for Rudy Giuliani and potentially, by extension, for Trump himself.

Ellis pleaded guilty to illegally conspiring to overturn the 2020 election loss of Trump in Georgia. Specifically, she admitted to aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony that will result in three to five years probation and other penalties. The deal cited false claims from Giuliani, her frequent traveling companion as they worked to overturn the election results, and a Trump campaign lawyer in Georgia, Ray Smith. Both were indicted alongside Trump, Ellis and the others.

Then Ellis spoke, driving the point home. “I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved speaking to the media and to legislators in various states,” she said, adding, “What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were, in fact, true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.”

[…]

And the plea by Ellis is particularly ominous for the Trump team, even aside from her close work with Giuliani. For one, she has in recent months criticized Trump and largely aligned herself with the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

The second reason is timing. The pleas by Powell and Chesebro made sense, given they were slated to face trial this week. But Ellis was not so obviously under the gun, as she did not request a speedy trial. She cut a deal anyway, and then elected to publicly and vocally point the finger at others whom Willis is prosecuting and could also try to flip as she pursues a conspiracy case with Trump at the very top.

There is no evidence yet that Ellis has gone full Michael Cohen, the first of the Trump lawyers to plead guilty and who, as it happens, testified against Trump in his New York civil fraud trial on Tuesday. But it is never a good sign when your own lawyer flips and then goes above and beyond to gesture at those above her.

I posted on Cohen’s visit/testimony this morning — a full news day,

Let Weezer close this news-cycle ticker with a pulled thread:

Heavy undone, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Illustration out front found here.)