Free Republic

In the summer before I went to NYMA I spent quite a bit of time at the beach with Donald. He had set up a large tent on the beach in front of his family’s cabana. There, along with one of his sisters and his younger brother, Robert, we played cards and gabbed away the days. He told me a little about the military school. The place he described seemed to me dark, violent, and comfortless. He talked as if he loved it. That fall, as one of what the cadets called “New Guys,” I entered a closed society where...

The Daily Beast's foreign correspondent, Christopher Dickey, didn't pull any punches when asked what most Europeans think of GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and their recent statements about NATO and dealing with ISIS. After playing footage of former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and Sec. of State John Kerry responding to Trump's assertion that the United States should rework our relationship with NATO, along with Ted Cruz and his constant threats to use carpet bombing to deal with ISIS, here's how Dickey responded to Chris Jansing's request for comment. JANSING: What's the concern that you're hearing Chris,...

My friends at the AIPAC conference are shocked, shocked that so many fellow attendees gave Donald Trump an ovation last night. Just like my Republican friends are shocked that so many fellow Republicans have voted for him. Why the surprise, though? Is it at all surprising that a rightward-tilting, nationalistic, often-anti-Muslim pep rally of 18,000 people (many paid to be there by a handful of billionaires) would applaud a rightward-tilting, nationalistic, often-anti-Muslim leader of pep rallies? The weirdest shock of all, though, came from AIPAC itself, whose leader apologized this morning for Trump’s having insulted President Obama. Choking back tears,...

“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” the reporter at the center of the controversy at the conservative site told BuzzFeed News, the week after Trump’s campaign manager allegedly grabbed her. Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro are resigning from the company over the site’s handling of Donald Trump’s campaign manager’s alleged assault on Fields, BuzzFeed News has learned. Fields and Shapiro informed Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon of their decision Sunday night. “Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” Fields said in a statement sent to BuzzFeed...

My title. Fields told FOX she was "Violated" by the Trump camp "This is disgusting," Shapiro said. "No news outlet would stand for it." Breitbart News has not commented on the resignations. The Fields incident came a week after a Time magazine photographer was thrown to the floor by a Secret Service agent at another Trump rally and amid escalating concerns over the rhetoric used by the Republican frontrunner. Trump has come under mounting criticism — from Democrats and from Republican rivals — for failing to fully denounce violent incidents at his events and for creating a climate where such...

“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” the reporter at the center of the controversy at the conservative site told BuzzFeed News, the week after Trump’s campaign manager allegedly grabbed her. Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro are resigning from the company over the site’s handling of Donald Trump’s campaign manager’s alleged assault on Fields, BuzzFeed News has learned...

Several journalists have been caught lying to the public and committing fraud, new video footage reveals. Before we begin analyzing the Michelle Fields hoax, watch this video, which surfaced last night. This video clip shows Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski (the man in short cropped hair), moving past Michelle Fields (the handsome woman in glasses). Consider how deep this media hoax goes. Michelle Fields, a “conservative,” fabricated a story with Ben Terris, a “liberal.” Jabin Botsford of the Washington Post lied about being at the event, and then hid evidence that would have exposed the hoax. Lloyd Grove of the...

War was just an experiment for two of the U.S. military’s oldest and most unusual warplanes. A pair of OV-10 Broncos—small, Vietnam War-vintage, propeller-driven attack planes—recently spent three months flying top cover for ground troops battling ISIS militants in the Middle East. The OV-10s’ deployment is one of the latest examples of a remarkable phenomenon. The United States—and, to a lesser extent, Russia—has seized the opportunity afforded it by the aerial free-for-all over Iraq and Syria and other war zones to conduct live combat trials with new and upgraded warplanes, testing out the aircraft in potentially deadly conditions before committing...

Following our story on Rubio’s partying days and arrest in a known gay “hookup” site, the interwebs have lit up in his defense, but not quite from where you would expect. While CNN and Fox News have done all that they can to hide from the story, the liberal publication, the Daily Beast, has come out swinging from the trees like an angry orangutan to beat down anyone who whispers the words, “foam party.” The defense is surprising considering that Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of IAC, the parent company of the Daily Beast. Their tactic to protect Rubio?...

Chelsea Handler said political correctness isn't working for Americans. In a op-ed written for The Daily Beast, the 40-year-old comedian said she sat down with representatives from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Indians in Film & Television and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We had an honest discussion about whether or not it's funny, appropriate, helpful, or hurtful to traffic in ethnic, racial, and religious stereotypes," Handler said. Handler said they all "ended up smiling and laughing about examples of politically incorrect humor because they could see...

Campaigns are about conflict. It is absolutely necessary not only to show why you are better but the other candidate is worse. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he understands that to win a fight, you have to fight. Now the race is at a stage where it is clear to beat Trump, a candidate must engage Trump and drive him from the race. .... The good news should be that Trump is one of the easiest candidates to engage and defeat in modern history. But no one is taking advantage of his vulnerabilities. To defeat a candidate,...

Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning. Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t...

Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson reportedly met privately in a storage closet Thursday night in Greenville to try and cool relations between the two campaigns ahead of the primary here. But the clandestine meeting allegedly did not go well. Cruz called the meeting, The Daily Beast reports, to smooth over what has been a contentious public spat with the Carson campaign ever since the Iowa caucus. Carson accused Cruz of using dirty campaign tactics after one of Cruz's staffers saw a CNN report and told voters Carson was dropping out of the race right before voting started in Iowa....

The senator's super PACs have launched an unprecedented ground effort in South Carolina and seem intent on going where few super PACs have gone before--door knocking. We all know super PACs have permanently changed the face of American politics. But in South Carolina, right now, we're getting a preview of the unprecedented ways they can alter a campaign. South Carolina, as you may know, is kind of a big deal. It has a large population--4.8 million people--and a bad reputation because it's a place where candidates love to break out their dirtiest tricks. Or, in the case of Ted Cruz's...

This is in some respects a political show, and we are in the throes of hands-down the most insane presidential race in history. What do you make of it, and more specifically, of the rise of Donald Trump? It seems to me that, given the relentless 24-hour news cycle, it was only a matter of time before we had a media-savvy reality star ascend to this perch. Man, I don't know! Trump leaves me speechless. When he came down that escalator to announce that he was going to run for president, I thought to myself that it was a smart...

Rafael Cruz, father of Ted Cruz, is a preacher of the far-right doctrine of dominionism, which holds that Christians should take over the government and save it from the wicked. When Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for president, many assumed he would quietly distance himself from his father, Rafael Cruz, since the elder Cruz has long been extreme in his religious views, and outspoken in proclaiming them. But the opposite has been the case. Rafael Cruz has been the senator's primary surrogate on the campaign trail, particularly with the evangelical voters who are now Ted Cruz's base. The two have...

Appearing as a guest on Thursday morning's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, CNN political commentator and Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon used praise for Ted Cruz's ads and social media campaign to take an underhanded swipe at the GOP presidential candidate by suggesting that, unlike the ads, he is not "effective" or "charming." His jab at Cruz inspired laughter from host Costello as she mildly chided him for being "kind of harsh." The exchange came at 10:21 a.m. ET during a discussion of a Cruz campaign ad using humor to attack Donald Trump over the issue of his past...

The president's speech at that Baltimore mosque reassured a nervous population and struck just the right note-we're Muslim and American.

Republican operatives from inside and outside New Hampshire agree: Sen. Ted Cruz is all but doomed to finish below the top tier in the Granite State. The winning coalition Cruz put together in Iowa won't work in New Hampshire, they say, pointing to the fact New Hampshire has the second-lowest rate of church attendance in the country. So the edge that Cruz had among evangelicals isn't particularly applicable there. "I would advise Cruz to skip New Hampshire and go to South Carolina. I believe you shouldn't compete anywhere where it's not a favorable battlefield to win," said Stuart Stevens, a...

There's a lot about Ted Cruz that should worry constitutionalists considering voting for the senator in the presidential election of 2016.Recently, Infogram published brief but illuminating biographies of several of Cruz's key foreign policy advisors. The information disclosed in these revelations could trouble many constitutionalists otherwise keen on the senator and who rely on him to restore the rule of law to the White House.The first person highlighted in the article is the chairman of Cruz's foreign policy team, Chad Sweet.Sweet's professional and political background betrays Cruz's claims of being someone who promises "not to continue going in the same...