Free Republic

Why did Hillary Clinton lose the election? There are numerous reasons fair game for finger-pointing, but to truly leverage any of those elements required data and know-how. Russia clearly used both to help influence an election. They and others may have used that knowledge to spread fake news. One of the best catalysts for spreading the message — fake or otherwise — and reaching voters at the heart of their concerns was Facebook, which was right there with the campaigns, trying to help. But did one campaign accept more help than other other and, in doing so, help to sabotage...

During the presidential election, Middle-Americans were just too stupid to vote Democrat. At least, that's one of the reasons why Hillary Clinton thinks she lost. The former Democrat nominee refuses to walk away from politics, and in her new book explaining her defeat, she blames everyone from Putin in Moscow to blue collar voters in the Midwest. She has some particularly harsh words for that last group. The poor white working class who helped vote her husband into office, Clinton argues, have made themselves perpetual martyrs. "A culture of grievance, victimhood, and scapegoating has taken root as traditional values of...

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton broke her silence Tuesday on sexual harassment allegations against former film studio executive Harvey Weinstein, who has donated to Clinton's past campaigns. "I was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein," Clinton said in a statement. "The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior." The New York Times published an investigative report last week on Weinstein, a major Democratic donor, alleging the Hollywood film mogul paid off sexual harassment accusers for decades. The Weinstein...

Stephen Bannon is looking to challenge every sitting GOP lawmaker except Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), saying "no one is safe" as he looks to challenge the Republican establishment in the 2018 midterms and beyond. "There's a coalition coming together that is going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz," Bannon told host Sean Hannity on Fox News' "Hannity" on Monday night. The former White House chief strategist said he plans recruit candidates who can run against the lawmakers who have not faithfully fought to enact Trump's agenda. "There's a basic agenda that Trump ran on and won. He...

Britons who supported Brexit in last year's referendum on European Union (EU) membership "voted against modern Britain," Hillary Clinton said in an interview published Sunday. The former U.S. secretary of state told The Sunday Times: "They voted against modern Britain and the EU, believing that somehow this would be good for their small village. It made no sense… The same thing played out in my race, but I didn't think we were so vulnerable. But it turned out we were wrong — in part because the Russians played a much bigger role." American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian President...

A former Westmount High student could prevent U.S. President Donald Trump from winning a second term in 2020. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is considered by many to be a potential candidate to give Trump a run for his money. At a time when the Democratic Party is looking for a new identity, some betting websites have placed her in front for the Democratic nomination. Mother Jones, a current-affairs magazine, recently argued that she is “one of the Democrats who could beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election.” In 2015, the Washington Post ran a profile of her under the headline:...

Although nearly one year has passed since the U.S. presidential election in 2016, the public opinion has still not forgotten Hillary Clinton's poor performance against Donald Trump. Clinton, on the other hand, is still trying to blame her weakness in the campaigns and the failure of this political platform on the FBI and the U.S. security agencies. This is while Hillary Clinton's sharp downturn in the polls is more likely to be due to her lack of apparent marginalization with the Republicans. Many American citizens have rightly concluded that there is essentially no difference between Clinton and the Republicans. Recent...

Facebook insisted it did not allow either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton's campaigns to "hand pick" who would work with them at Facebook, appearing to dispute what Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale told "60 Minutes." In an extensive interview, Parscale said he insisted only Republicans work with them. "I wanted people who support Donald Trump from their companies," including Google and Twitter, Parscale told Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes." In a statement Sunday night, Facebook did not directly address Parscale. But, the company said "the campaigns did not get to 'hand pick' the people who worked with them from...

El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke isn't betting his bid for toppling Sen. Ted Cruz entirely on backlash against President Donald Trump, or probes of Russian ties to his campaign, or his efforts to ban Muslim visitors, or deport young immigrants, or wall off the southern border. But he isn't shy about raising those topics and using them to tar the polarizing senator for his coziness with an even more polarizing figure in the White House. This being Texas, where Democrats haven't won a statewide contest since 1994, stoking misgivings about Trump may be O'Rourke's best shot at stopping Cruz from...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in an interview broadcast Sunday that no law could have stopped the suspected shooter, Stephen Paddock, who was behind last week's mass shooting in Las Vegas. Feinstein spoke on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” about gun legislation in the wake of the attack launched from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel targeting a country music concert.....

President Donald Trump laid out his immigration principles for Capitol Hill on Sunday — a list of hardline policies that could seriously complicate the prospects of striking a deal with Democrats over the future of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants. “The priority for Congress ought to be to save American lives, protect American jobs and improve the well-being of American communities. These reforms accomplish that,” a senior administration official told reporters on Sunday night. “They live up to the president’s campaign commitment to have an immigration system that puts the needs of hardworking Americans first.” The broad parameters...

Brad Parscale told 60 Minutes that Facebook employees worked right alongside the Trump 2016 campaign workers to help President Donald Trump win the presidency. Parscale is Trump’s digital director – and as seen in the below 60 Minutes video, Brad called Facebook the “500-pound gorilla,” taking up 80 percent of the digital budget. Meanwhile, people on Facebook and Twitter are calling it troubling that Parscale spoke of micro-targeted Facebook ads that helped Trump win the presidency. Especially troubling to folks unfamiliar with social media strategizing is the notion that Facebook employees were “embedded” in the Trump 2016 campaign, according to...

The former Secretary of State and Democratic hopeful discussed how difficult it was for her to come to terms with losing to political wildcard Trump and said it was not what she expected. “I thought I’d be a damn good president, I did not think I was going to lose,” she said in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine. Mrs Clinton describe her loss as “deeply troubling” and said is left her feeling a “sense of real loss for our country, that we elected someone who knows so little, cares even less and is just seeking the applause of...

Neither Michelle Obama, Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton will go away. Why does the media keep giving them a platform and allow them to continue to encourage and enable division in America? The former First Lady’s latest attention-grabbing stunt was to dismiss the entire GOP as entirely male and white. Needless to say, the Republican Party is not taking kindly to Mrs Obama’s reckless race-baiting. “It’s unfortunate Michelle Obama would disregard the contributions of conservative women and people of all backgrounds with one sweeping, false accusation,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News on Thursday. Obama’s comments came on...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/nolan-finley/2017/10/07/clinton-shadow-president/106428408/

Anti-Trump resistance groups are attracting big money from major liberal donors, creating a challenge to respected liberal institutions according to a report in The New York Times. Groups like Flippable, Swing Left, Sister District, Women’s March and Indivisible have seen an uptick in donations since July when the Democracy Alliance gave its donors a “resistance map” with their names. Democracy Alliance is a network of progressive donors who coordinate their political donations to groups that the Alliance has endorsed. “We’re in a disruptive period, and when we get through it, the progressive infrastructure landscape may look different,” Gara LaMarche, president...

It began as a relatively quiet day in the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were each holed up with their aides on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016, preparing for the second presidential debate, scheduled for Sunday night. Hurricane Matthew, which was churning off the Florida coast, led the Friday-morning newscasts. The Chicago Cubs were beginning a quest for their first World Series title in more than a century. But by midafternoon three separate bombshells, all coming within the span of roughly 90 minutes, threatened to throw the race into chaos. First, the top intelligence officials of the Obama administration...

Miley Cyrus and the women writers of "The Tonight Show" penned real-time thank you letters to guest Hillary Clinton, and for six minutes, we all got to live vicariously. If you’re a woman who loves Hillary Clinton, it’s pretty easy to feel erased. We are treated to endless deep dives of the Trump voter: who are they, who wronged them, what is the specific nature of the anxiety that led them to vote for an ignorant embarrassment of a bigot. If you supported Bernie Sanders in the primary, it was easy to find breathless articles extolling your existence: your youth,...

President Trump’s legislative affairs team met with a small group of House lawmakers at the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the administration’s plan for rebuilding U.S. infrastructure. Two Democrats and three Republicans attended the meeting, including two members who sit on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The panel is expected to be a key player in Trump’s $1 trillion rebuilding proposal, which has yet to be released. The administration is also hosting an infrastructure briefing Thursday evening with state transportation officials, industry groups, union representative and other stakeholders. The event will be lead by Transportation Deputy Secretary Jeffrey...

'I’m sick and tired of nothing happening,' one contributor says of the party's legislative failures.