Free Republic

Carly Fiorina received a BA from Stanford in medieval history and philosophy almost 40 years ago, but she’s always ready to revisit her undergraduate glory days. Last Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate tried to burnish her national security credentials by claiming that her bachelor’s degree prepared her to fight Isis. She said: “Finally my degree in medieval history and philosophy has come in handy, because what Isis wants to do is drive us back to the Middle Ages, literally”. I’d like to state unequivocally that my years of training to become a professor of medieval history in no way make...

Wait for it. Carly Fiorina, it turns out, is a former donor not only to the Democratic Party at large, but to one high profile Democrat in particular: Hillary Clinton. And unlike Donald Trump, who has been quite open about his own donations for business reasons, Fiorina has tried to convey the exact opposite impression, as in her first debate appearance in August, when, looking around at her fellow candidates on the “second tier,” Fiorina went after Trump with this line: I didn’t get a phone call from Bill Clinton before I jumped in the race. Did any of you...

As Carly Fiorina gains increased media attention and ramps up her presidential campaign after her strong performance in the second Republican debate last week, she may still be struggling to overcome the obstacles that led to her defeat the only previous time she sought elected office. While Fiorina has billed herself as an "outsider" candidate, she does have political experience -- she just wasn’t successful. Her 2010 campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in California saw fierce campaigning (she’s often remembered for the “demon sheep” ad) and pressure on Fiorina to defend her business record before the former Hewlett-Packard...

The surging candidate’s remarks on Planned Parenthood drew Steinem’s ire. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem blasted Carly Fiorina in a post on her Facebook page, saying the presidential hopeful’s commentary on Planned Parenthood at the Republican debate last week “was a 100 percent lie.” “I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes,” Fiorina railed during the debate. “Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” Fiorina was referring to a series of “sting” videos produced by the Center for Medical...

Carly Fiorina made several false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims in responding to questions about Hewlett-Packard’s involvement with a foreign subsidiary that sold products in Iran. The former HP CEO claimed that a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation “proved that neither I nor anyone else in management knew about” a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary doing business in Iran. We have found no such ruling from the SEC, nor could Fiorina’s campaign provide one. She also claimed that the company that actually sold HP products in Iran was “not honest” with HP about its dealings. But that company said in a 2003 press release...

As a professor, hearing my name once, let alone twice, before 25 million TV viewers in an historic U.S. presidential debate is a surreal experience. “The head of the Yale business school, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, wrote a paper recently,” Donald Trump proclaimed in his attack on Carly Fiorina’s business record, “one of the worst tenures for a CEO that he has ever seen.” Immediately, the phones started ringing, text messages dinging, emails beeping—notes from thrilled old students, proud colleagues, teasing friends, pleased former teachers, curious clients, and my own immediate family in shared, flushed, utter shock. So used to being identified...

A former CEO gets taken to the woodshed for job cuts—and loses an election. Sound familiar? Carly Fiorina has a Mitt Romney problem. Fiorina, like Romney, is a wealthy former CEO from an affluent Republican family. Like Romney, she entered the Republican presidential contest assuming that her record running a large company would be one of her greatest assets. But she may be about to learn that her opponents have little trouble turning that record into her greatest liability. Like Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, the private equity firm at which he oversaw the dismantling of numerous companies purchased by...

As Carly Fiorina has risen in the polls over the last week, there is renewed focus on her controversial tenure as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. Yet her career at Lucent Technologies has been treated as little more than a footnote. It shouldn’t be. “My story — from secretary to C.E.O. — is only possible in this country,” Mrs. Fiorina likes to say on the hustings. In between her stint as a receptionist for a real estate company in the late 1970s and her being named Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive in 1999, Mrs. Fiorina worked for nearly 20 years at AT&T and...

Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — a vocal critic of lifting economic sanctions on Iran as part of the nuclear deal — delivered a paid speech to French bank BP Paribas in June of last year, six days after the Wall Street Journal reported the bank was the subject of a federal criminal probe for flouting U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. According to a June 2015 financial disclosure, Fiorina was paid $48,000 for the speech on June 3, 2014. The Wall Street Journal’s report, last updated on May 29, 2014, said that U.S. authorities were pressuring...