Free Republic

A consortium of television networks yesterday released a joint statement inviting President Joe Biden and his presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, to debate on their platforms: “There is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.” President Biden’s spokesperson should answer like this: “The Constitution is not debatable. The president does not participate in forums with a person under criminal indictment for his attempt to overthrow the Constitution.” In their letter of invitation, the networks refer to presidential debates as a “competition of ideas.” But one...

"I respect and admire the French, who have been a far greater nation than we shall ever be, that is, if greatness means anything loftier than money and bombs." — THOMAS FLEMING, "HARD RIGHT," MARCH 13, 2003 rom the very beginning of the War on Terror, there has been dissent, and as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous. Perhaps that was to be expected. But here is what never could have been: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves "conservatives." These conservatives are relatively few in number,...

Blaming Conservatives For The Attack On Pelosi Is A Cynical Effort To Chill SpeechThe left’s insistence that every conservative personally “condemn” the actions of the mentally ill man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul has nothing to do with lowering the rhetorical temperature or averting violence, and everything to do with trying to compel Republicans to take responsibility for the incident.Forget the ugly, transparent cynicism of partisans like Joe Scarborough or David Frum or Bill Kristol. Take The Washington Post, which ran a triple-bylined, reported piece headlined, “Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her.” “Years of...

In March 2020, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives posted a video message addressed to two Democratic political candidates that issued a threatening challenge if they passed laws he did not like. Standing in his Capitol Hill office, Ken Buck of Colorado’s Fourth District gestured toward a rifle mounted on the wall. “I have a message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke. If you want to take everyone’s AR-15 in America, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C., and start with this one.” At this point, Buck reached for a stars-and-stripes-decorated rifle mounted on...

On October 7 Musk claimed on Twitter SpaceX had already eaten $80 million in costs for the operation, a price tag that is expected to hit $100 million by the end of the year. “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote to the Pentagon in a September letter that was obtained by CNN. That Musk no longer wanted SpaceX to pay for critical satellite services in Ukraine and was asking the Pentagon to foot the bill didn’t sit...

TUCKER CARLSON: So what's interesting, as you watch people like the man we just interviewed flee the capital city of Ukraine, is how quickly huge parts of that country seem to fall in the face of the Russian invasion. That makes you wonder where were its defenders, not just within Ukraine but the United States? People you've been watching for years now have been encouraging conflict in Ukraine, of course, and saying we need to go all out to defend it. David Frunm, the Canadian who is everywhere, is telling us you are a traitor if you are not willing...

The Atlantic’s insufferable staff writer David Frum appears to have been triggered that the world’s richest man insulted him on Twitter. The Post Millennial released a report on Frum’s political hypocrisy. Frum went after Tesla CEO Elon Musk for being allegedly uncouth in posting a satirical meme. The meme compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler following the former’s forceful crackdown on truckers protesting Canada’s draconian COVID-19 policies. The Post Millennial pointed out that Frum is the last person who should complain about Musk’s meme. In November 2020, Frum compared the Million MAGA March in Washington,...

On CNN's New Day this morning, David Frum defended his tweeted proposal to: "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last."Frum wasn't merely proposing that the unvaccinated be given emergency care last only for Covid, but for ALL emergencies. Gunshots, car accidents, etc. — unvaccinated to the back of the line. There was pure malice and vindictiveness in Frum's suggestion that hospitals do this "quietly." If Frum actually wanted there to be a public benefit, he would have proposed that hospitals prominently announce their intention. That might encourage some to get vaccinated. His proposal reveals a malicious...

The Atlantic's David Frum issued a tweet in which he claimed that one Covid prevention/punitive measure is to "Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last." Seems the best option is: 1) Keep encouraging vaccines and boosters; 2) Impose vaccine mandates where it can be done; 3) Otherwise return to normal as fully as we can, especially the schools; and 4) Let hospitals quietly triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 12, 2021 This tweet, which has since been widely circulated and mocked, albeit with horror, by many on the conservative side...

You really have to listen to David Frum to understand just how melodramatic the Never Trumper became on CNN's New Day this morning in appealing to Americans to fight back against the former president. At the 1:15 point in the clip below, his voice filled with emotion, Frum actually cited the prophet Isaiah from the passage (Chapter 6) in which the Lord asks whom shall I send? and Isaiah answers, "send me!" Frum's point was that instead of waiting for some savior to come along to rescue American democracy from the evil clutches of Trump and his supporters, each American...

The neoconservatives who launched the war in Afghanistan would very much like you to know the war’s ignominious ending is someone else's fault. In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols wrote a piece titled, “Afghanistan Is Your Fault,” saying the loss of the war should be blamed on American voters. Former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum said we could have won the war in Afghanistan with this one little trick (namely killing Osama bin Laden in December 2001 instead of May 2011). Eliot A. Cohen — a founder of the infamous neoconservative group Project for the New American Century — said now...

A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast. A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers “extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation” for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times. A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers “young people doing big...

David Frum is the first prominent journalist to fictionalize the debate over the origins of COVID, but he won’t be the last.The Atlantic’s David Frum appears to be first out of the gate in what will likely become a coordinated, aggressive media campaign to defend the people and institutions that got the COVID-19 origin story wrong — and absolve them of all responsibility, however complicit they might be — and instead blame it all on Trump and his supporters.It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true. Frum thinks Trump and his tens of millions of supporters “are not interested in...

David Frum’s dangerous argument is part of a larger effort to suggest that if China attacks democratically ruled Taiwan, helping Taiwan is not worth the risk of war with China.David Frum is a prominent member of the foreign policy priesthood, albeit an accidental one, and he continues to urge U.S. foreign policy errors in a new Atlantic article about China. “China Is a Paper Dragon” argues the Biden administration is unnecessarily concerned about the People’s Republic of China (PRC).Frum’s argument is part of a larger effort by high-profile pundits to suggest that if China attacks democratically ruled Taiwan, helping Taiwan...

Leftists and weak-kneed Republicans were quick to accuse President Donald Trump of attempting to overthrow the democratic process on January 6 as individuals bearing Trump campaign flags and paraphernalia ran amok in the United States Capitol while lawmakers were attempting to officially certify the results of the November 6 election. The election –don’t forget—that the Democrats stole with the connivance of those same Republicans. The disorder in the Capitol complex, during which an apparently unarmed Trump supporter, 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was shot to death by police, didn’t end the certification process, but merely delayed an official...

To read reports in the mainstream press about the throngs of President Trump’s supporters who rallied in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, you’d think the crowd was made up of a bunch of conspiracy theory-addled rubes and delusional far-right extremists all of them hoodwinked into thinking the election was stolen. To read David Frum’s Twitter take, you’d think they were all Nazis. The march came on the heels of a poll last week that found a staggering 70 percent of Republicans now say they don’t believe the presidential election was free and fair. That news, like news of the self-described...

The row over Donald Trump’s alleged remarks denigrating American soldiers has now seen the US president target one of his core areas of support as he called for a Fox News journalist who reported details of the scandal to be fired. The Atlantic magazine published a story that described how Trump said he cancelled a visit to pay respects at an American military cemetery outside Paris in 2018 because he thought the dead soldiers were “losers” and “suckers”. Other outlets confirmed the news and detailed more incidents of Trump’s insulting attitude to American soldiers. 'He is a coward': Trump condemned...

It's CPAC weekend - the grand rallying of the conservative clan here in Washington. It's a season where conservatives from across the country meet to compare notes, share stories, and seek political consensus. The consensus forming this year however is an ominously dangerous one - ominously dangerous to conservatives themselves that is. Conservatives live in thrall to a historical myth, and this myth may soon cost us dearly. The myth is the myth of the Goldwater triumph of 1964. It goes approximately as follows: In 1964, after years of watered down politics, Republicans turned to a true conservative, Arizona Senator...

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter remained mum on Sunday after a guest slammed his network for keeping commentators supportive of President Trump on its payroll. The Atlantic columnist David Frum appeared on Stelter's weekend program "Reliable Sources" and was asked about his previous claim that Trump got "favorable, flattering news coverage" from the media despite his performance, and his assertion that the media "should be more critical." Frum doubled down -- and even dragged Stelter's own network, suggest that CNN was running into problems because it was trying to be "fair."

Even on its own terms, the media’s Get Trump project has proved a monumental failure. If the blob of blue-checkmark Twitterati wanted to help President Trump portray the latest impeachment push as a partisan witch hunt, they couldn’t have done a better job than they are now. Consider the latest example: On Sunday, CBS’ venerable “60 Minutes” program reported on Twitter that “the government whistleblower who set off the impeachment inquiry of President Trump is under federal protection because they fear for their safety.” The explosive news seemed to vindicate his opponents’ darkest fantasies about the president: Of course Trump...