Free Republic

Democrat elites said President Trump’s policies would throw the US into recession. T hey said a 4.0% GDP rate was impossible. It was a thing of the past. Hillary Clinton: “Trump’s policies would throw us into a recession, the last thing we need.” Barack Obama: “What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.” Paul Krugman, The New York Times: “So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.” Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks: “In the event Donald wins, I have no doubt in my mind the market...

I recently participated in an email chain with conservative writers and thinkers on the inexhaustible subject of Donald Trump. Some of my correspondents, while supporting Trump as a political champion, regretted his "coarseness." He is, they alleged, rather too crude and rough hewn to comport with their ideal of proper presidential stature. Now I can understand that if Trump behaved like Hillary, prone to hysterics, outrageous and mendacious attacks on opponents, and perpetual grievance-mongering, one might regard him as unmannerly, unstable, and preposterous, as a truly "coarse" human being with a crippling behavior problem. If he had bevies of mistresses...

Beginning his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, President Trump declared that U.S. relations with Russia have “never been worse.” He then added pointedly, that just changed “about four hours ago.” It certainly did. With his remarks in Helsinki and at the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump has signaled a historic shift in U.S. foreign policy that may determine the future of this nation and the fate of his presidency. He has rejected the fundamental premises of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War and blamed our wretched relations with Russia not on Vladimir Putin, but squarely...

Meghan McCain wasn’t prepared for the gigantic water slides her mom, Cindy, gifted her for the 4th of July — but she will be after “a few beers!” Sen. John McCain‘s daughter shared videos of two huge, inflatable water slides on her Instagram story on Tuesday, saying they were “water park” quality. “Mom told me that she was getting us water slides; this is not exactly what I thought we were getting for the Fourth of July,” Meghan, 33, said with a laugh. “This is the biggest water slide in the world.” “Don’t ever say that Cindy McCain doesn’t go...

Hillary Clinton said, "Jesus Christ said, 'Suffer the little children unto me' not 'let the little children suffer.'" Three former first ladies — Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama — have stepped out their political retirement to condemn the Trump administration's practice of separating parents and children at the border while parents are prosecuted for illegally entering the country. Speaking at a women's group in New York City on Monday, Clinton called family separation "an affront to our values" and said she had warned Trump's immigration policy would lead to this during her 2016 presidential campaign against him. And...

The 21st century is reminding of us of some uncomfortable truths. Abroad, recent controversies over the rise of Chinese mercantilism, the specter of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons, tensions in the European Union, the calcified Palestinian question, mass migrations, and the resurgence of Islamic terrorism all offer a number of lessons. At home, just as instructive is the strange juxtaposition between Obama’s suave progressivism and Trump’s coarse conservatism. Here are 10 takeaways from our current controversies. The Western world is in turmoil largely because of the widening gap between what the people see as true and the “truth” that...

Let’s call it progressive peer-group privilege. The older I get, the more firmly I’m convinced of a fundamental psychological fact. We never really leave high school. Of all the forms of pressure that one can apply to a person — political pressure, market pressure, moral pressure — the one that matters most of all is the one that mattered in the lunch room when you were wearing your class ring and letter jacket. It’s peer pressure, the unbreakable bond of the high-school clique. No reasonable person thinks Samantha Bee would still have a job at TBS if she used the...

The clean energy transition and other initiatives to decarbonise Europe’s economy will represent 25% of EU spending under a seven-year EU budget plan put forward by the European Commission on Wednesday (2 May). Another key aspect is whether the EU will commit to stop funding fossil fuel projects like gas pipelines, which environmentalists claim risk locking Europe into unnecessary infrastructure. “I’m not sure it’s reached the upper layers of the Commission yet,” Gaventa said. Other parts of the budget could prove controversial, like a proposal to allocate 20% of revenue from carbon trading to the EU budget, as well as...

America is still very much teetering on the brink, and this is no time for half measures. Time to turn up the heat on all burners. A nation can survive its fools…but it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly…[but] the traitor appears not a traitor…he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body...

When the George W. Bush Presidential Center sends invitations to a three-day conference on some of the world's most pressing issues, people like Jeff Bezos, Bono, Condoleezza Rice, Ben Bernanke and John Boehner RSVP yes. ... The CEO of Amazon, the lead singer of U2 and former leaders of the U.S. State Department and Federal Reserve Board will speak at the Forum on Leadership along with other notables including Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. ... Bono, lead singer of U2, will receive the inaugural George W. Bush Medal for Distinguished Leadership for his lifetime of...

Among all enemies, foreign and domestic, of the United States, there is none greater, nor more imminently threatening, than the Swamp creatures in Washington D.C., that aim to destroy an American President As the media battles pitting dueling, partisan strategists, talking over each other as they debate – if belching non sequitur talking-points is debating – the significance of this White House firing or hiring, or evidence of collusion or not, touting this “bombshell” announcement or that debunking of it, all this white noise ringing in our ears has, to many, become sound fury signifying nothing. And we, many, are...

I find it odd that people call Wednesday hump day. “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less.”Oh sure it’s technically in the middle of the work week. But when you wake up on Wednesday morning do you actually say “yippee! I’ve made it half way through the week!” Because you haven’t. And if you can convince yourself on Wednesday morning that you only have 2 more days to work, well, you’re a true optimist.So my guess is that like many modern conventions Hump Day as a concept was made...

America was founded to be free and democratic -- unlike England with its monarchy and rigid class system. While classes will always be with us, only in America is class mobility possible and likely. Over our two-hundred and forty-two years, millions of people have become successful because they were not bound to the economic plight to which they might have been born. Americans do not care about the state of one's birth. They revere hard work, invention, imagination, and success. Success, to most Americans does not necessarily connote great wealth. In this country it means having a work ethic, work...

Peter Schweizer talked during his appearance on Friday’s Breitbart News Tonight with SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and John Carney about the discovery of politically charged text messages between Peter Strzok, an FBI official involved in both the Trump and Clinton investigations, and his mistress. “This is, I think, a huge problem with bureaucrats in Washington, DC. I would point people to a book that was written just a couple of years ago by two Johns Hopkins University scholars, called What Washington Gets Wrong. They did a survey of precisely people like Peter Strzok, thousands of people who are senior government...

Because finally, finally this country has elected someone not of, by, and for the swamp, someone who owes them nothing and does not fear them: Donald J. Trump. I freaking love Donald Trump. The reason the swamp hates him, of course, is manifold. He is proven to be a potent crusher of political correctness and polite society, the way things are supposed to be said, i.e. not on Twitter, and a crusher of that elite vanguard also known as the swamp. He came in and he promised to smash their corrupt existing order, to overturn the money changers' tables. Right?...

In the continuing Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations controversy, there are a lot of unknowns. But we do know one thing: Mitch McConnell can't lose. The rest of us? Not so much. The accusations against Moore and the nature of those allegations couldn't have come at a better time for McConnell, whose top priority is and has always been consolidating his personal power in the Senate. Politically, this works out well for McConnell because the news broke a few weeks after Moore defeated Senator Luther Strange in the Alabama special election primary. Strange was the candidate McConnell backed in the...

AS ally Quinn, the well-known Washington journalist, has published a new memoir called Finding Magic. Even for those of us who have followed her nearly 50-year career with unflagging interest, it is full of news. Ingeniously, Quinn has outfitted the book with a literary device guaranteed to discourage bad reviews. Her fellow scribblers can only kick themselves for not thinking of it first. Quinn begins with a loving portrait of her childhood in Georgia, where the family servants schooled her in voodoo. Her mother was already initiated. When the local vet misdiagnosed the family dachshund, Quinn tells us, Mom lost...

OHIO VALLEY — A clip of actress Martha Plimpton’s exuberance over the “best” abortion she has ever had played on the television above a gas-station counter somewhere along U.S. Route 422 between Ohio and Pennsylvania. A woman with a name tag designating her as the manager rolled her eyes and said to no one in particular as she went about stacking the shelves behind the counter, “And they wonder why people don’t vote for Democrats around here anymore.” Plimpton, age 46, is best known for her role in the 1980s Steven Spielberg classic kid adventure movie The Goonies. She made...

So why should we normal Americans respect these people? Why should we submit to being constantly scolded, lectured, and treated as morally bankrupt simpletons anymore? We shouldn’t, and we aren’t, not anymore. They wonder why they got Trump. They are why they got Trump.

President Trump needs the support of Republican senators to pass key legislative items in the coming months. Upcoming measures include bills to raise the debt ceiling to avert default, fund the government to avoid a shutdown, and overhaul the American tax system. However, the out and out feud he has with Mitch McConnell may prove to be the undoing of his tax reform which the American people need and want. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is urging conservatives to bring it on. “I say: Let’s have this debate. Let’s tackle these baseless arguments head on,” Ryan said in prepared remarks for...