Free Republic

In the hours after Sunday’s mass shooting at an Orlando night club, Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department said the gunman’s weapons included a pistol and an “AR-15-type assault rifle.” On Monday night, officials clarified that the rifle Omar Mateen used in the shooting was not an AR-15, but a Sig Sauer MCX rifle. While aesthetically similar to and just as lethal as an AR-15, the MCX is internally a different beast, thus all but removing it from the AR-15 family of rifles. Yet while the weapon is different, the MCX and the AR-15 share the same design...

They flat-out lied about his Orlando comments. And they know it too. You have heard in the past few days that Donald Trump has “banned” the Washington Post from covering his campaign. He has done no such thing. He can do no such thing. The Post can write about Trump’s campaign every day, and they have continued to do so. What Trump has done is revoked the press credentials of the Post’s reporters who want to attend his campaign events as working media. And had I been Trump after the events of the past few days, I would have done...

Top Republicans joined with President Obama and other Democrats Tuesday in sharply condemning Donald Trump’s reaction to the nightclub massacre in Orlando, decrying his anti-Muslim rhetoric and his questioning of Obama’s allegiances as divisive and out of step with America’s values. Trump — who just a week ago signaled an intent to snap his campaign into a more measured tone for the general election — showed no sign of backing down from his suggestions that Obama was somehow connected to or sympathetic with terrorists, telling the Associated Press that the president “continues to prioritize our enemy” over Americans. In separate...

Holy hell, even I didn't know that He, Trump was dumb enough to cancel the credentials of The Washington Post. But Tiger Beat On The Potomac was all over it. "Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post," Trump posted on Facebook. Trump had posted to Facebook nearly 20 minutes earlier "to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is." "I am no fan of President Obama, but to show you how dishonest the phony Washington Post is, they...

Jenna Johnson, who covers Donald Trump's presidential campaign for The Post, wrote a very important piece Monday that details how the presumptive Republican nominee moves rumor and innuendo into the public consciousness without ever having to directly answer for it. Trump's strategy comes down to three simple words: "People are saying." As in: "There are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think...

Trump expanded on that in a statement released Monday night. Here it is, in full: The Washington Post unfortunately covers Mr. Trump very inaccurately. Today's headline, "Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting" is a perfect example. We no longer feel compelled to work with a publication which has put its need for "clicks" above journalistic integrity. They have no journalistic integrity and write falsely about Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest. The fact is, The Washington Post is being used by the owners of Amazon as...

Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post.

The ex-wife of the 29-year-old man suspected of killing 50 people in a Orlando nightclub early Sunday said that he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married. The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him. At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive. [Snip] After the couple split, a friend of Mateen's said the young man became steadily more religious. The friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mateen several years ago went on...

A coalition of civil rights groups planned to hold an event Monday attacking Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his rhetoric against Mexicans and Muslims, but cancelled it after 50 people were killed and at least 53 more wounded in a reported Islamic terrorist attack Sunday. The event was supposed to include leaders from several top rights groups including National Council of La Raza and Muslim Advocates, an advocacy group founded by American Muslim lawyers. The groups said in a press release promoting the event they planned to condemn Trump for “demonizing” certain groups and would demand an apology. The...

The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban. Seddique Mateen, who has been referred to as Mir Seddique in early news reports, hosted the “Durand Jirga Show” on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. Dozens of videos are posted on a channel under Seddique Mateen's name on YouTube. A phone number and post office...

Of all the displays of political myopia and intolerance in the American academy over the past several years, this story may be the most astonishing: Students and faculty at Northwestern University have forced Karl Eikenberry—a retired three-star general and fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies—to withdraw his appointment as head of a new global affairs institute on the Evanston campus on the grounds that he is a “career military officer.” The Washington Post‘s report on the story contains a truly remarkable, and telling, quote from one student involved in the crusade against the general (who has...

Donald Trump called for the Republican Party to fall in line behind his presidential bid Saturday during campaign swings through Florida and Pennsylvania, attacking skeptical members of his own party along with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. “We have a war to win against a very crooked politician. The Republican Party really should get their act together,” Trump said here Saturday. “They have to come together. We have to win. And if for no other reason, the Supreme Court, remember that.”

After spending an hour meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House, Bernie Sanders vowed to stay in the race for Tuesday's District of Columbia primary while acknowledging that he would work with Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in the general election. Sanders ticked through a list of his priorities, promising to take those issues to the convention in Philadelphia next month.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Last Thursday, I left work about 5 p.m. and drove to the San Jose Convention Center to hear Donald Trump speak. I’ve been voting for conservative candidates for 15 years and a registered Republican since 2015. Now that the general election is underway, I believe Trump is the best candidate to fix our country’s many problems, and I believe he’s going to be the next commander in chief. So I was excited to hear him, and to show my support. Walking into the rally with a friend, I was a little wary: Trump’s speech to the...

Elizabeth Warren could be on her way to becoming Hillary Clinton’s choice for Vice President. Today, Clinton invited Warren to meet with her at her D.C. home. Politico reports: Cameras captured Warren exiting a blue SUV with legislative director Jon Donenberg and heading into Clinton’s Whitehaven residence Friday morning, more than an hour before Clinton was scheduled to deliver remarks at the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

A Washington D.C. law professor has given credence to Donald Trump’s charge that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel has a conflict of interest in a court case involving the likely Republican presidential nominee, saying the judge’s affiliation with a group that advocated for illegal immigrants creates “an appearance of impropriety.” Mr. Curiel’s membership and active role in the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, whether or not it creates an actual bias, is enough to disqualify him from presiding over the case, said Victor Williams, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. “The standard isn’t that one...

There was a recent domestic shooting in Maryland.  The presumed perpetrator was a federal law enforcement officer.  He is reported to have killed his estranged wife and two other people.   His wife had a protective order against him in March, and the Federal Protective Service, of which Mr. Tordil was a member, took his service firearm and seven other firearms.This was in Maryland, which requires handguns to be registered. From the washingtonpost.com: Sheriff’s deputies can’t be faulted for not knowing about that gun because, thanks to the national gun lobby and the cowardice of Congress, there is no...

I was stunned over the weekend when Newt Gingrich went hard after Donald Trump for the real estate mogul's comments about the ethnicity of a judge overseeing a case involving Trump University. *snip* Given that back and forth, I reached out to Gingrich to see what he made of the hubbub — and whether it had changed his generally positive views on Trump. It has not. Here's what Newt told me: Trump is going to be fine as a candidate. He is learning very rapidly. When [Ted] Cruz dropped out so early it took away the 60 days Trump and...

Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor plans to vote for Hillary Clinton for president this year, but not because the longtime Republican and former top aide to then-Gen. David Petraeus has had a political conversion. He just thinks Republican Donald Trump is too dangerous to be president. “It will be the first Democratic presidential candidate I’ve voted for in my adult life,” said Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University. Clinton’s campaign hopes that there are many more national-­security-minded Republicans and independents who would vote for her, even grudgingly, rather than see Trump win the White House.

Columnists are starting to blame voters for the rise of Donald Trump, and say their collective decision to make him the presumptive Republican nominee is a terrible mistake. Liberal columnist Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that the election has filled him with a sense of "fear of my fellow Americans." "I don't mean the occasional yahoo who turns a Trump rally into a hate fest," he wrote. "I mean the ones who do nothing. Who are silent. Who look the other way… I always knew who Trump was. It's the American people who have come as...