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On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” network contributor and Republican strategist Karl Rove discussed President Donald Trump criticism of NFL players for taking a knee during the national anthem at games. According to Rove, Trump would be “walking away” from this controversy a “loser.” ... “He could have come away from this the winner,” he continued. “But he is walking away from this a loser in the minds of the American people for exactly the reasons you pointed out. He was against the federal government interfering and telling the Washington Redskins what their name should be. Now he...

Various aphorisms address adult liberal behavior, especially that of elected governing elites of the left. When Democrats have the majority, they rule; when Republicans have it, they hold office. You can govern or you can spend. Wow – ponder that! Liberals lust after power to impose their coercive utopia upon the masses and to indulge their favored identity groups. Republicans would like to have power; they're just not sure why, or what to do with it. Democrats play offense; Republicans play defense...and have a miserable record in the red zone. Liberals accuse conservatives of preaching gloom and doom; the latter...

NEW YORK — The worst aspect of President Trump’s speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was not his immature taunting of a dangerous foreign leader when the stakes far outweigh those of a schoolyard fight. Calling North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” may make Trump happy by reminding him of the glory days of “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” But it does nothing to win over the allies we need. And his pledge “to totally destroy North Korea” is what you’d expect to hear in a bar conversation from a well-lubricated armchair general, not from...

The Washington establishment media and political elites continue their hypocritical attack on President Trump’s pardoning of Maricopa, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The criticism began last week with their disingenuous outrage that the president would free Arpaio (charged with a misdemeanor), a Korean War veteran, 23 year tenured sheriff; a man who dedicated his life to the protection of America and his fellow citizens. Little or no mention was made by the elites that in August 1999 the Clintons offered executive clemency (commuting sentences) to sixteen members of the infamous Marxist Puerto Rican terrorist groups Los Macheteros and Armed Forces for National Liberation...

The thing people like about House Speaker Paul D. Ryan is that he is a serious guy who is capable of thinking big and has an ambitious agenda to salvage our ungovernable federal bureaucracy. He was never the smoothest communicator or slickest politician. Serious, smart and honest has always been his currency. So now the question is, Mr. Speaker, where is your big, bold agenda? This country is at a political crossroads that only comes around once or twice in a century. Congressional Republicans are totally blowing it. Right now the GOP comfortably controls both chambers of Congress. In the...

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan opposes President Trump's pardoning of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an aide said Saturday, joining Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain in criticizing the decision. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan opposes President Trump's pardoning of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an aide said Saturday, joining Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain in criticizing the decision.

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Saturday criticized President Donald Trump for pardoning a former Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio, becoming the highest-ranking Republican to object to the move. “The speaker does not agree with the decision,” said Ryan spokesman Doug Andres. “Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.” The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Ryan’s statement. On Friday, the White House announced that the president had pardoned Mr. Arpaio, known as...

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Monday he believed President Donald Trump "messed up" in his response to the recent racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he equated neo-Nazis and white supremacists with counterprotesters. "I do believe that he messed up in his comments on Tuesday when it sounded like moral equivocation or at the very least moral ambiguity when we need extreme moral clarity," Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper at a town hall in Racine, Wisconsin, referencing a news conference Trump had last week. When asked by an audience member whether he would back censuring Trump, Ryan said he would...

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan warns North Korea's nuclear escalation, deteriorating relations with Russia and China, and U.S. engagement in the Middle East are a growing challenge for the U.S. military — and President Donald Trump "may need those transgender troops."In a piece for World Net Daily, Buchanan chides that, "Apparently, U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia are insufficient to satiate our War Party."

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has asked President Trump to apologize for his handling of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA last weekend. JUST IN: Mitt Romney says President Trump should apologize for his statements on Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/sRVuDfJwuP — NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) August 18, 2017 Other top Republicans share Romney's sentiments. House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted his disappointment in Trump's "moral ambiguity," while Sens. Marco Rubio (FL) and Tim Scott (SC) said condemning the real culprits should have been a no brainer.

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A prominent Republican senator delivered a stinging rebuke Thursday of Donald Trump’s short time in office, declaring he has not shown the stability or competence required for an American president to succeed. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, also said Trump “recently has not demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.” During comments to local reporters after a speech to the Chattanooga Rotary Club, Corker called for “radical changes” in how the Trump White House operates. His remarks, which were posted on Facebook, came two days after Trump declared at a New York...

Sen. Bob Corker blasted President Trump’s handling of racially charged protests in Virginia, telling reporters Thursday that the president lacks “stability.” Mr. Corker, Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Mr. Trump “has not demonstrated he understands the character of this nation.” His comments to reporters came after he gave a speech in his home state. “The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” Mr. Corker said. “He has not demonstrated that he understands what has made this...

The congressional calendar is jammed. There are serious doubts that there's room for all the legislation that's lined up waiting for a vote. ... There are just 12 days before the end of September, when the House and Senate are in session together. In those 12 days, Congress has to pass a budget and a debt ceiling extension. That's surely very difficult. Now throw in the Republican Party walking away from the Republican president. That is what's happening. And the chances of getting a budget, debt ceiling, health care, tax cuts and infrastructure done this year are surely slim and...

On Tuesday night, while Gary Cohn was fuming about President Trump's latest comments, Steve Bannon was excitedly telling friends and associates that the "globalists" were in mass freakout mode. Today, Bannon reveled in the disbanding of the president's business council, seeing this as yet more evidence that the Trump administration is at odds with the "Davos crowd," as Bannon often calls these corporate elites, in a voice dripping with contempt. Bannon saw Trump's now-infamous Tuesday afternoon press conference not as the lowest point in his presidency, but as a "defining moment," where Trump decided to fully abandon the "globalists" and...

Full title...............Exclusive — Audio Emerges of When Paul Ryan Abandoned Donald Trump: ‘I Am Not Going to Defend Donald Trump—Not Now, Not in the Future..........On a never-before-released private October conference call with House Republican members, House Speaker Paul Ryan told his members in the U.S. House of Representatives he was abandoning then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump forever and would never defend him ever again. In the Oct. 10, 2016 call, from right after the Access Hollywood tape of Trump was leaked in the weeks leading up to the election, Ryan does not specify that he will never defend Trump on...

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged President Trump on Tuesday to act as a voice for "moral clarity" and more forcefully reject racism and hate groups. In a series of tweets, Bush, who once battled Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said the president should quit parsing blame for the recent violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., on various groups and call instead for unity. This is a time for moral clarity, not ambivalence. 1/3 — Jeb Bush (@JebBush) August 16, 2017 I urge @POTUS to unite the country, not parse the assignment of blame for the events in Charlottesville. 2/3...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has weighed in on the weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, castigating Donald Trump without naming him. 'We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred. There are no good neo-nazis,' McConnell said in a statement. The choice of words, while careful, appeared to push back against Trump's claim on Tuesday that some 'very fine people' were among a crowd of white supremacists who rallied in the college town. McConnell's wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stood next to Trump on Tuesday as he insisted both sides of the weekend's clash bore some responsibility for...

On Tuesday afternoon we learned yet again that the president of the United States is against neo-Nazis, which is nice. They’re “very rough,” he said at an impromptu Trump Tower press conference — by which he likely meant some of the people he saw on TV in Charlottesville this past Saturday had beards and leather jackets and swastika tattoos and were overweight. The night before, by contrast, Trump said there had been some “very good people” rallying with “a permit” by a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Maybe he thought so because the photographs we all saw showed...