Free Republic

An old journalism axiom says that if everyone’s mad at you, you must be doing something right. Since NBC announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the recently deposed chair of the Republican National Committee, as a paid contributor, everyone’s been mad. NBC executives are sure to be consoling themselves that they’re doing something right. It’s just hard to see what.

This might be Nikki Haley’s moment. Not her moment to become the Republican presidential front-runner. (Don’t be silly.) Not even her moment to nip at Donald Trump’s heels. But it could be her chance to consolidate the anti-Trump support in the GOP, and to make a solid play for the silver medal and maybe a good speaking slot at the RNC in Milwaukee next summer. The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador has risen, slightly, in recent polls, and is now third in RealClearPolitics’ average of national polls, after Trump and Ron DeSantis. She is consistently coming in...

Last year, Eric Trump was asked about Secret Service protection at Trump Organization properties. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” he said. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.” You will be stunned to learn this is not remotely true. Instead, as the indefatigable David Fahrenthold and three colleagues at The Washington Post...

FULL TITLE: Dan Gainor: Media decide Trump is wrong on Iran — whether he strikes back or not. Plus, more press missteps Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. Welcome to the media’s Iran coverage where President Donald Trump is never really right — whether he responds militarily to Iran or opts not to do so. Iran, a theocratic loony bin that is the world’s No. 1 terror state, shot down a military drone this week that was worth at least $130 million. While it was flying over international waters. What followed was a high-speed, condensed version of media...

<p>With the race between North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory and Democrat Roy Cooper down to a razor-thin margin, Republicans filed claims of voter fraud with county boards of election around the state. The GOP was aiming to delegitimize Cooper’s lead and to legitimize years of effort to overhaul voting laws to make them more restrictive, claiming serious fraud.</p>

The White House’s expected victory in getting Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court is in part a product of an unusual approach by President Trump: restraint. While the president has a tendency to lash out when he doesn’t get what he wants immediately, he approached allegations of sexual misconduct against his nominee with unusual calmness. Rather than go on the offensive, the White House allowed the allegations to play out within tightly circumscribed grounds. For example, the president publicly greenlit an FBI probe but secretly set limits that made sure it would be fast and shallow. Only as Kavanaugh’s...

Acts of sabotage against the president are perilous to the American system of government. They're also self-serving. The title of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, contains a multitude of meanings. For one thing, it describes the attitude of many of President Trump’s own aides toward his judgment. It’s not just that many sources were willing to tell Woodward damaging stories about Trump: The most stunning examples are those where top aides reportedly thwarted his will. Even more stunning is an anonymous op-ed published in The New York Times Wednesday afternoon written by a purported “senior official in the Trump administration.”...

Sometimes you can't believe what you read in the press. Can you imagine, for example, that a Republican governor with a reputation as a small-government conservative would try to launch a government-run news service to disseminate information under the guise of journalism? Oh ... wait: Gov. Mike Pence is starting a state-run taxpayer-funded news outlet that will make pre-written news stories available to Indiana media, as well as sometimes break news about his administration,