Free Republic

Donald Trump’s first presidential debate was a disaster. That’s the assessment of Republican insiders in this week’s POLITICO Caucus, our weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, activists and operatives in Iowa and New Hampshire. They offered their reactions immediately after watching Thursday’s 9 p.m. prime-time debate in Cleveland. Story Continued Below Forty-four percent called the controversial real estate mogul the biggest loser of the evening, critiquing everything from his refusal to rule out a third party run, to perceived misogynistic comments to his acceptance of single-payer health care in other countries. ---- While Rubio and Bush were both perceived...

Top donors ordered Republican candidates last night to “Take out Trump” before the debate. The top contributors are concerned that Trump is ruining their plans for another Bush or Clinton White House. It should also be noted some of these high-powered donors are helping to finance the campaigns of BOTH Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Presently, Donald Trump represents the single greatest threat to their intention of controlling the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would “certainly not give up” the possibility of running as a third-party candidate if he is not treated “fairly” by the GOP.

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)35% had been planning to call up on the House floor last week a measure from Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC)96% that would have removed him as Speaker of the House if it succeeded—intending to embarrass Meadows—but abandoned the plan after his entire leadership structure learned that they did not have the votes to re-elect him as Speaker before the August recess. “[House Majority Leader Kevin] McCarthy was making phone calls—he was whipping it—and so was [House Majority Whip] Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)74% ,” a senior conservative movement leader who’s had many personal and direct discussions...

ecause the Republican presidential candidate hasn't gotten around to mocking everyone in the world just yet Perhaps no presidential candidate in history has wielded the put-down quite like Donald Trump. John McCain’s a “dummy.” John Kasich is “desperate.” Rick Perry “needs new glasses.” Karl Rove is “a total loser.” Lindsey Graham, Trump said Tuesday as he announced the South Carolina Senator’s cell phone number on live television, is a “stiff. What a stiff.” The list goes on. Feeling left out that Trump hasn’t gotten around to insulting you or your friends? Here’s an app for that. Built on the real-live...

<p>Breitbart Texas has learned that 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is heading to the Texas-Mexico border to get a firsthand look at the current border security situation. Trump is expected to meet with Border Patrol agents of the Laredo Sector.</p>

Rick Perry told Hannity last night that Donald Trump painted with a broad brush and basically said ALL MEXICANS were rapists and killers, which is patently false. Hannity challenged him on that mischaracterization but Perry gave a non-answer, refusing to acknowledge that Trump was only referring to ‘some’ illegals. I’ve liked Rick Perry for a long time and believe he did a lot of good things for Texas, things that would be good for the country. But I am now seeing a side of him I do not like. It’s one thing to disagree with his comments in an honest...

<p>An Ohio woman was arrested after she called 911 to complain about a Chinese food order that simply wasn’t up to par.</p>

As recently as eight months ago, at a gubernatorial debate, Haley answered her Democratic opponent’s call to take down the flag by countering that none of the CEOs who’ve brought their businesses to the state seemed to have any issue with it. That may be about to be change, though — protests to burn the flag on Saturday are already picking up steam on Facebook — so evidently Haley’s position will change with it. Last year 61 percent of South Carolinians supported keeping the flag in place on the state house grounds, but Haley’s term-limited as governor and is probably...

The Treasury Department announced on June 17, that Hamilton would be replaced and diminished on the $10 bill in order to feature a woman to be announced at a later date. The goal is to have new bills out by 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote. “Our democracy is a work in progress. We’ve always been committed to a more perfect union,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said according to CBS News. ”This decision to put a woman on the $10 reflects our aspirations for the future, as much as it is...

Q: What’s the difference between Bill Ayers and Dylann Roof? A: Dylann Roof isn’t a friend and colleague of an American president who enjoyed a cushy life in academia before retiring to life as the kind of author who’s invited on-the-air by the mainstream media to hawk his books. Other than that, both of these pigs share much in common. Bill Ayers is an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Dylann Roof is an unrepentant domestic terrorist. Bill Ayers despises America. Dylann Roof despises America. Bill Ayers’s terror group The Weather Underground targeted and murdered innocent people. Dylann Roof targeted and murdered innocent...

If you’re a fan of Netflix’s popular series Orange is the New Black, chances are you recognize its newest star Ruby Rose, the tattooed actress and model who identifies as “gender fluid.” Rose has been promoting the idea of gender fluidity recently, and told Elle.com that although she was born a woman, she doesn’t feel like one; therefore she doesn’t identify as any specific gender. “Gender fluidity is not really feeling like you’re at one end of the spectrum or the other,” Rose explained to the site last week. “For the most part, I definitely don’t identify as any gender....

On Thursday, 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton blamed the Charleston, South Carolina church shootings by racist Dylann Roof on the rhetoric of 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Speaking with host John Ralston, she explained, “Public discourse is sometimes hotter and more negative than it should be, which can, in my opinion, trigger someone who is less than stable.” She continued, “I think we have to speak out against it. Like, for example, a recent entry into the Republican presidential campaign said some very inflammatory things about Mexicans. Everybody should stand up and say that’s not acceptable.” Presumably, Hillary...

The Clinton administration had bankrupted the intelligence community and refused to let the CIA prioritize anti-terrorism over other major priorities in the late 1990s, leaving the agency stretched too thin in the days ahead of the 2001 terrorist attacks, former Director George J. Tenet said in a 2005 document declassified Friday. Mr. Tenet, who was head of the agency at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks and has taken severe criticism for not anticipating and heading them off, said in the document that he took the threat of Osama bin Laden very seriously, and put major effort into trying...

In the two years since the Edward Snowden saga went public, a handful of people who actually understand the Western signals intelligence system have tried to explain the many ways that the Snowden Operation has smeared NSA and its partners with salacious charges of criminality and abuse. I’ve been one of the public faces of what may be called the Snowden Truth movement, and finally there are signs that reality may be intruding on this debate. No American ally was rocked harder by Snowden’s allegations than Germany, which has endured a bout of hysteria over charges that NSA was listening...

The co-hosts of Fox News Channel’s The Five began Tuesday’s show with discussion of actor Vince Vaughn’s recent comments in support of gun rights and grew rather heated when first-time co-host Geraldo Rivera compared Vaughn to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Following co-host Greg Gutfeld’s opening commentary about Vaughn’s, the media’s reaction to them, and how killers often seek out places where it’s unlikely that anyone will be carrying a gun, Rivera first commented by remarking that “[t]he Second Amendment is most lavishly defended” amendment in “all the Constitution of the United States.” After Gutfeld asserted that is important since...

Amidst the media euphoria surrounding the former Bruce Jenner’s gender reassignment surgery and cover photo on Vanity Fair, a 74-year-old transsexual who deeply regrets his decision has come forward to caution those who think that transgenderism solves people’s psychosexual problems. In a CNN interview on Tuesday, Walt Heyer warned viewers that the relief accompanying gender reassignment surgery doesn’t last. After Jenner expressed exhilaration over the Vanity Fair cover, Heyer responded that such elation is normal, but transient. Heyer acknowledged that “this is really the most exciting time in a transgender’s life.” It is, he said, “the debut,” when “all the...

Breaking tonight on CNN is the news that Pamela Geller was in fact one of the beheading targets of 26-year-old Usaama Rahim, a Muslim jihadi that police shot dead yesterday in Boston: Usaamah Rahim, who was fatally shot after waving a military knife at law enforcement officers, was originally plotting to behead Pamela Geller, an activist and conservative blogger, law enforcement sources told CNN on Wednesday. CNN host Erin Burnett gets Geller on the phone, and during the interview sites the Southern Poverty Law Center suggesting that Pamela Geller is the most visible and flamboyant figurehead of the anti-Muslim movement...

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly finally aired her big, much-anticipated interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, in which they opened up about their son Josh Duggar‘s public confession that he molested several young girls, including his own sisters, when he was a teenager. The first time it happened, they explained, was when their son came to them, crying and saying he had touched his young sisters when they were asleep. Michelle Duggar said, “We had one ray of hope in that Josh had a tender conscience.” There were more instances afterwards, Jim Bob Duggar said, in which their son had...

An IT manager at a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Co was one of two men arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of planning to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), police and company sources said on Monday. The pair were detained during a raid in the capital Dhaka on Sunday night, said Sheikh Nazmul Alam, a senior official of the police detective branch. One man, Aminul Islam, was the information technology head of a multinational company, and worked as a regional coordinator for ISIS, while the other, Sakib Bin Kamal, was a teacher at a school in Dhaka,...