Free Republic

Chinese leader Xi Jinping's two-day summit meeting with Donald Trump, overshadowed by the U.S. attack on Syria, gave each president the chance to take the measure of the other and, apparently, each liked what he saw. From the Chinese perspective, things went very well indeed, with China taking the initiative and the Americans going along. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Trump had plans to pressure Xi to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. Trump also expected Xi to "step up" and help rein in North Korea. Neither thing happened. From the beginning, China felt it had the situation under...

Has there ever been this level of resistance/interference by a prior administration to the incoming in U.S. history? Haven't we always prided ourselves on our smooth and peaceful transitions of power from one elected administration/party to the next? If we didn't know better and understand that this cannot happen in America, the level of organized and criminal interference and obstruction against the duly elected President Trump being put up by former President Obama himself and his new socialist organization, the entire democrat party, the GOP establishment, the entrenched holdovers throughout government, the liberal activist judges and the liberal media might...

Di Leo: The Deep State -- an Institutional Barrier Against Draining the Swamp By John F. Di Leo - As the Trump Administration began, two terms took over our discourse, from keyboard warriors on social media to the formal political theorists of the mainstream media. These two terms are not exactly antonyms, as one is a verb and the other is a gerund, but they certainly are diametrically opposed to each other: Draining the Swamp on the one hand, and the Deep State on the other. Draining the Swamp was easy to say, easy to understand, easy to cheer for....

As the Trump Administration began, two terms took over our discourse, from keyboard warriors on social media to the formal political theorists of the mainstream media. These two terms are not exactly antonyms, as one is a gerund and the other is a noun, but they certainly are diametrically opposed to each other: Draining the Swamp on the one hand, and the Deep State on the other. Draining the Swamp was easy to say, easy to understand, easy to cheer for. We all know there’s corruption in the federal government, both in regular terms (people breaking the law while holding...

The New York Times has published an article from opinion columnist and academic Thomas B. Edsall blaming the Internet for the collapse of establishment authority. Arguing that the Internet “threatens Democracy,” Edsall openly concedes that he believes the freedom unleashed by the Internet to be a threat to the establishment; to its norms and language codes "As the forces of reaction outpace movements predicated on the ideal of progress, and as traditional norms of political competition are tossed aside, it’s clear that the internet and social media have succeeded in doing what many feared and some hoped they would. They...

As the forces of reaction outpace movements predicated on the ideal of progress, and as traditional norms of political competition are tossed aside, it’s clear that the internet and social media have succeeded in doing what many feared and some hoped they would. They have disrupted and destroyed institutional constraints on what can be said, when and where it can be said and who can say it. Even though in one sense President Trump’s victory in 2016 fulfilled conventional expectations — because it prevented a third straight Democratic term in the White House — it also revealed that the internet...

Kellie Leitch is now the first choice for over one-fifth of Conservative party members, passing Maxime Bernier and nipping at the heels of an increasingly polarizing Kevin O’Leary campaign, according to the latest iPolitics CPC Leadership Tracker — powered by Mainstreet Research. Mainstreet reached 804 members between February 9 and 12 and found — with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20 — that Kevin O’Leary was the first choice for 22.01 per cent of members, followed by Leitch (20.90 per cent), and Bernier (17.54 per cent). The first leadership poll, conducted between...

Conservatism is the new counter-culture. I must say, it is refreshingly pleasant to be right and hip at the same time James Delingpole recently observed that Ted Mallach believes that “the Brexit and Trump shocks of 2016…are the counter-reaction to the global takeover by the liberal-left in 1968.” This long overdue counter-reaction is, in fact, (as Milo and PJ Watson note) the vanguard of a new counter-culture—conservatism.

2016 was the year that the grassroots started the fight-back against the Globalists and Establishment Elite. From the political earthquake of Brexit, to the stunning victory of Donald Trump, the political elites were left shocked, disgusted, and more determined than ever. In their “Groupmind”, these events were not thought possible; it showed that their claws were not so deeply entrenched in the fabric of society and the public psyche. Their war chests are being counted, their forces in the media are being marshaled, and their Generals are looking at the next theaters of operation.

<p>House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz on Tuesday sent a letter to the White House in response to multiple reports that President Trump discussed sensitive information about a North Korean missile test in a public setting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Chaffetz asks for answers on security protocols at Trump’s property.</p>

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is in the hot seat. But the real target is President Trump and his foreign policy. Donald Trump was elected as a change agent by Americans unhappy with the trajectory of the country and with the cozy concord that exists between political adversaries in a Washington where the politicians find more in common with each other than with the American people. Donald Trump ran on a foreign policy platform that explicitly repudiated the disastrous bipartisan consensus of moral imperialism and international “busybodyism” that has prevailed for the last quarter century and that has cost the...

Retired LTG Mike Flynn, President Trump’s national security advisor has been the object of an unprecedented campaign of defamation and abuse from Democrats and some Republicans in the DC defense establishment. General Flynn’s sin in their eyes is strangely contradictory, but logic is not necessarily the forte of these Michael Flynnstrange political bedfellows. In the eyes of Russophobic Democrats Flynn is soft on Russia. So, in an unprecedented attack, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called for Gen. Flynn to be suspended and for his intelligence clearance to be revoked until U.S. officials fully review his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. Pelosi...

But President Trump’s “default position” on climate change is that “most of it is a bunch of bunk” A group of Republican insiders was scheduled to meet at the White House today to push the Trump administration to embrace slapping carbon taxes on the nation’s floundering economy, Sean Moran reports at Breitbart News. On the campaign trail President Trump came out against enacting a carbon tax. “I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!” he tweeted May 13, 2016. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus previously said that Trump’s “default position” on climate change is that “most of...

In other words, it's working perfectly One of the biggest mistakes of the political establishment - one they show no sign of grasping - is that when they constantly complain about how Trump is violating all the norms of politics, the presidency and international relations, they totally miss that this is exactly what the people who voted for him wanted him to do. And they totally miss that he is doing it intentionally and with purpose.

The Trump administration's frenetic pace right out of the gate has confounded Democrats and kept the national press on its toes. "Incredible pace of activity in the Trump White House on week one," tweeted ABC News' chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. "When have we seen a public sked as packed as yesterday's and today's?" Entering his first full week in office, President Trump has issued executive orders clearing the way for the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, pushing for relief from the costs imposed by Obamacare, reinstating a ban on public funds for international organizations that perform or advocate...

The new president owes nothing to the ‘Bush Barnacles’ The media have paid much attention to how Donald Trump broke through to blue-collar voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and captured the presidency. Trump is certainly assembling what might prove to be a new GOP coalition. But one shouldn’t forget that Trump’s temperament cost him upscale Republican voters in key suburbs. To solidify his reelection chances, he will have to overcome their doubts with policy successes that assuage their concerns about his rough edges. Trump won an impressive victory, carrying 31 out of 50 states. But in several of them...

The left wants to rewrite our laws, redo our elections, and unravel our democracy. I wrote a piece for American Thinker, Yes, There Is a Coup On in America to call attention to the fact that our government, media, and Washington establishment is attempting a coup d’etat right before our eyes. I pointed out that per 18 USC Ch. 101, Hillary, Clinton, even without an indictment, was legally disqualified to run for President after her mishandling of classified information. I called out the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) as accessories after the fact when they used their positions to...

He is upsetting the establishment's apple cart, and positioning the United States to divorce globalist conditioning, and reestablish our sovereignty I am thoroughly enjoying watching Trump make the establishment, the media, and the Never Trump jerks squirm. They don’t understand him, and are trying to criticize his every move, and in the end Trump will likely make them all look like chumps. While the opponents of Donald Trump fail to understand his moves, and are all over the place trying to make him look bad, the truth is to understand Donald Trump’s “unorthodox” methods is as simple as turning a...

In the first of what Mike Pence called "several very important announcements," Politico reports that former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is set to be announced later Tuesday as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Transportation.The other contender for the position was former Democratic U.S. Representative from Tennessee Harold Ford.As Politico adds: Chao, who ran the Labor Department under President George W. Bush, met with the incoming president at Trump Tower last week and discussed labor and transportation policy, Trump’s transition team said then. The formal announcement is expected at 1 p.m., one source said. The wife of Senate...

Outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., is at the top of President-elect Trump's list for secretary of defense, according to a Washington Post report published Friday evening. Other candidates up for the Pentagon chief slot are retired Army Lt. Gen. Joseph "Keith" Kellogg, former Defense Intelligence Agency director Gen. Mike Flynn and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. snip.... Sources said Ayotte's neoconservative background would help her serve as a liaison between the GOP establishment in Congress and Trump administration. She would also be the first woman to oversee the Defense Department.