Free Republic

NEW: Joe Biden said he was vice president when the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, took place. Except, it happened in 2018, two years after he left office -- the latest gaffe by the Democratic presidential front-runner.

Bernie Sanders says the industry is a criminal enterprise. Joe Biden is vowing to take action against it. Other candidates are competing to say who will wean America from its products the soonest. The fossil fuel industry is squarely in the cross hairs of Democrats running for the White House as they move sharply to the left on climate change, evoking growing alarm from a sector that’s found a cheerleader in the Trump administration. It has moved to rescind regulations on oil drilling and proposed extraordinary measures to aid coal mining. “We are made to be just some kind of...

As Democrats descend on Iowa to kick off a six-month sprint to the first primary vote, party activists are increasingly anxious that former vice president Joe Biden, the consistent polling leader, has not disposed of persistent questions about whether he is well-equipped to take on President Trump. Adding to the Democrats’ nervousness is that a clear alternative has yet to emerge. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is rising in the polls and has a high-quality campaign organization, but doubts linger in some quarters about the appeal of her left-leaning policies in a general election. Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Bernie...

New video footage shows presidential frontrunner Joe Biden forcefully grabbing a young woman by the arm at the Iowa State Fair in response to the woman asking Biden how many genders there are. The clip shows ‘Katie’ – a college student in Iowa walking up to Biden and asking him, “How many genders are there?” “Pardon me?” responds Biden, before Katie repeats the question. “How many genders are there?” “There are at least three,” responds Biden. “What are they?” asks Katie. “Don’t play games with me kid,” responds Biden. The video then shows Biden grabbing Katie by the arm, turning...

Last week’s second Democratic debate did little to change the race — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren continue to be the top candidates, per new post-debate polls.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told me yesterday that he’d advised President Trump it would be a huge mistake, substantively and politically, to withdraw all U.S. military members from Afghanistan by the 2020 election. What he's saying: "When it comes to the election of 2020. I think it would be very easy for the president to defend leaving a counterterrorism force that was recommended by our military and intelligence community, to protect the homeland after the debacle in Iraq." "It would be hard, in my view, and a high-risk strategy, to reject such advice for political reasons," Graham added. "As to...

Former Vice President Joe Biden pushed back Monday evening on President Trump’s characterization of mental illness as the cause of an El Paso, Texas mass shooting over the weekend. “Hatred is sick, but it's not a mental illness,” Biden said in a Monday interview on CNN. "White supremacy is wrong. But it's not mental illness." The suspect in the shooting, which killed at least 22 people on Saturday, has been tied to a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto that was posted online just before the attack began and speaks of a Hispanic “invasion” of the U.S. Although President Trump condemned white supremacy...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Thanks for that, Joe. We know you’re so darn sincere. – Elderly Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden, speaking at a high-dollar fundraiser in San Diego on Sunday, comforted the mourning people of El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio by offering his heartfelt sympathies over the “tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before.” You just seriously could never make these people up, folks. That Dayton shooter? He was an Elizabeth Warren fan. – So he said himself on his Twitter profile, which was dug up by law enforcement...

Former Vice President Joe Biden misstated the locations of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, while speaking to donors at a high-dollar fundraiser in San Diego on Sunday night. Biden, 76, mistakenly referred to the shootings as “the tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before" Biden seemingly confused Houston for El Paso and Michigan for Ohio when speaking to donors about the shootings. “You know what, the president’s words have meaning, no matter who he or she is. They are the face of America,” Biden said at the Sunday fundraiser.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe has a history of passionate opposition to President Trump and calling for his impeachment, and he continued the trend Sunday by blaming Trump for a pair of shootings that took place over the weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Tribe first promoted discussion of impeaching Trump for inciting violent acts, then took it a step further and outright accused the president of the United States of terrorism. "How many more people have to DIE violent deaths at racist hands before impeaching the president for inciting white nationalist terrorism and violence is taken as...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) strong performance in this week’s Democratic presidential debates invigorated supporters who see her as slowly but surely making the case that she’s the best Democrat to take on President Trump. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) were widely seen as the biggest winners of the two debates, along with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who tangled with former Vice President Joe Biden in the week’s second debate. Sanders and Warren were the stars on the first night, and they avoided battling one another while presenting a united front against centrists arguing against the progressive proposals.

Just got this email....(I try to keep up with the enemy)....Check out the last paragraph..... .............................. David, today, we are heartbroken. But it’s more than that -- At least 29 lives were stolen, families broken, communities shattered in El Paso and Dayton within 13 hours. Dozens more wounded. Between those two mass shootings, dozens more were killed and injured by gun violence that didn't make national headlines. First: Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines don’t belong on our streets. We must stand up to the NRA and gun manufacturers -- they don’t own this country. We the people own this country....

Let me toss an idea at you and, if you don’t like it, you can give it right back: The Harris/Gabbard debate exchange on Wednesday is to 2020 what the Rubio/Christie debate exchange was to 2016. In both cases a longshot candidate torpedoed a promising top-tier candidate with real coalition-building potential, paving the way for the frontrunner to secure the nomination.Nah, doesn’t quite work, I think. For one thing, it’s way too early still. Christie blew up Rubio on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, when the stakes were as high as could be, whereas right now we’re...

Joe Biden is being portrayed as the Democrats’ safest potential presidential nominee, despite his obvious flaws as a candidate. But one wonders how Biden’s history of swamp corruption will play if he actually faces the scrutiny of a national run. Biden’s family has gotten wealthy, like those of so many low-paid “public servants”–Tom Daschle and Harry Reid are obvious examples. How does that happen? Politico headlines: “Biden Inc. Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.” It begins:

Joe Biden’s younger brother James received a series of “unusually generous” bank loans during the 1970s, while the former vice president served on the Senate Banking Committee. Politico reported on Friday that James Biden, who has a history of murky financial dealings, was able to parlay his role as the chief fundraiser for his brother’s 1972 Senate run into the startup capital required to open a nightclub. The loans were considered “unusually generous” given that the younger Biden was a salesman without any business experience and purportedly had a net worth of less than $10,000 at the outset of the...

Former Vice President Joe Biden has a 2-to-1 lead nationally over the next closest Democratic presidential contender after the second round of debates, according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll. The new survey finds Biden with 34 percent support among Democrats, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 17 percent. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is in third place with 9 percent support, followed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 8 percent, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 4 percent, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke at 3 percent and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at 2 percent.

In an interview which aired Friday on Fox Business Network’s “WSJ at Large,” former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel questioned the strategy behind the shots taken at former President Barack Obama during the second round of Democratic presidential debates. Host Gerry Baker said he found it “a little odd” to see candidates take shots at Obama as candidates targeted former Vice President Joe Biden who he said is “the most popular Democrat in the country.”

Joe Biden survived the second round of Democratic presidential debates, but it became more apparent that over half the 22-person field is irrelevant and should get out, the sooner the better. The former vice president was repeatedly under attack on health care, criminal justice, immigration and abortion. He stumbled sometimes, but overall was sharper than his mediocre performance in the first debate a month ago. This won't assuage fears of mainstream Democrats that the 76-year-old Biden may not be up to the challenge of a protracted primary fight and bitter battle against Donald Trump. Still he was sufficiently engaged to...

A Biden/Gabbard Democrat ticket for 2020 would pose the most legit threat to President Trump and therefore I hope it doesn’t materialize. I am NOT impressed with Tulsi Gabbard’s record or speeches — and her platform is as leftist as they come. Immigration, abortion, you name it. People are praising her anti-interventionism foreign policy stance, but this would only be relevant if Trump were truly a warmonger. Which he is not. He is the consummate diplomat if anything. She also says it would be better to have kept the Iran deal in place... Yeah. No. But alas, I can see...

Team Harris will say (and has said) that there was no accusation of racism aimed at Biden at the last debate, that in fact Harris began her spiel about busing by saying to him specifically, “I do not believe you are a racist.” But that’s nonsense. That was Harris’s sly way of having her cake and eating it too, simultaneously avoiding calling Biden a racist while suggesting that the matter is in enough doubt that one might rightly hold an opinion on either side of it. It’s a debate, see, and what was suddenly being debated was whether the...