Free Republic

Donald Trump has claimed  he has the "world's greatest memory," but when it came time this winter to give testimony in fraud cases filed against him and a real estate training program known as "Trump University," he displayed a repeated inability to recall names and faces of instructors he had claimed to have hired personally. "I can't remember that," he said on Dec. 10, when asked by trial lawyers in one of the class-action cases whether he had met one of the instructors in a program that provided training in building wealth through real estate. "The name sounds familiar but...

Why I Changed My Mind and Joined the #NeverTrump Movement DAVID FRENCH March 2, 2016 Let me begin by saying that I was wrong. Weeks ago I said on a number of radio interviews that while I opposed Trump in the primary, I’d back him if he won the GOP nomination. I hadn’t yet seen — or had been unwilling to believe — the full extent of his contempt for the truth, his fondness for far-left conspiracy theories, and his sheer malice. When I saw Trump in full, my decision was easy: Never Trump. I have spent my entire adult...

Miley Cyrus is coming in like a "Wrecking Ball" against Donald Trump. The frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination – who swept Super Tuesday, winning seven states – has become a fixture on the pop star's Instagram in recent days. "Donald Trump is a f---ing nightmare," Cyrus, 23, captioned a photo of the billionaire Republican on Tuesday. And as she peeked at Trump's strong standing on the Republican delegate leaderboard Tuesday, Cyrus explained that she was "gonna vom / move out da country." But the former Disney star's most emotional post came early Wednesday. Cyrus – who has been enjoying...

In winning Texas by 16 points, winning Oklahoma, winning (as of this writing) Alaska, and finishing second in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee, Ted Cruz has now solidified his grip on second place in the ‎GOP presidential race. He increased his lead over Marco Rubio in states won, votes won, and delegates won--and unless Rubio can win in Florida in two weeks (or John Kasich can win in Ohio), Cruz may soon be battling Donald Trump one-on-one (more or less) for the Republican nomination. But how can Cruz beat Trump? The number-one thing that needs to be undone from the...

Stuart Stevens called Trump "a dangerous person" and "someone who would embarrass America." The Republican Party's top strategist in the 2012 election would rather see Hillary Clinton as the next president than Donald Trump. "Personally, I think Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Donald Trump because I think that Donald Trump is a dangerous person and is someone who would embarrass America," Stuart Stevens, who advised 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, said Tuesday on Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect." "I have no desire to see Hillary Clinton as president of the United States," he added. "But if this is...

It’s been right there all along; a sense, an instinctual sense, a gut feeling, since late June 2015, and in all the subsequent months, it just kept reoccurring – and with the passing of events, each time it became more and more difficult to dismiss…. Before getting to the heart of this entirely speculative presentation, and specifically because it’s so far out there that, well, if accurate, a litany of people will claim we had to hold some insider connection, we must restate and remind everyone – we have never had any contact with any entity from the Donald Trump...

During my senior year in college, I applied to become an intern at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute. After passing a lengthy background check, I was given the lowest level security clearance. However, if I had been linked in any way to an ongoing law enforcement investigation, I'd never have been accepted even as an intern, and certainly would never have been given the lowest possible security clearance. Truth be told, you couldn't get a job at McDonalds if you were linked to an FBI investigation. Today, Hillary Clinton is linked to an ongoing FBI investigation, because she used...

Brand Index reported: Since the first GOP presidential debate last August, Fox News Channel seems to have lost its perception mojo with its core right-leaning audience. By mid February, FNC’s perception by Republican adults 18 and over had reached its lowest point in more than three years, and has declined by approximately 50% since January of this year. Coinciding with Trump’s rise to front-runner in the GOP presidential race, Fox News Channel has seen its perception by Republicans slide. In early August 2015, right after the first GOP debate aired on Fox News Channel,Trump went on a Twitter war with...

Attention all Druids! There will be a bingo game after the Wednesday night Oak Worship Service. The Religion Page of the Huffington Post should relocated to the Entertainment Page or, more accurately, the Comedy Page. Their bizzaro efforts to frequently use religion in all its forms to promote a plethora of leftwing agendas often yields highly comedic results. Remember Green Jesus? And now their Associate Religion Editor, Antonia Blumberg, has employed fictional liberal paganism to promote a leftwing fantasy world. 

Failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney lamented that the demise of traditional media is empowering Republican “insurgents” and preventing establishment Republicans from compromising more with Democrats. As the Republican establishment is trying convince Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 58% to run for House Speaker, Romney told David Axelrod on a recent “The Axe Files” podcast that the “extremes within our respective parties are having a louder and louder voice and demanding more attention” and “immediate action” as opposed to more “collaborative action.”

First it was President Barack Obama. Then it was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Now, Donald Trump isn't sure whether Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is eligible to be president. Rubio was born in Miami to immigrant parents. He is eligible to be president. In an interview on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, Trump played down the importance of his tweet -- but he left hanging in the air doubts about Rubio. "It was a retweet. ... I'm not really that familiar with Marco's circumstances," Trump said. "I mean, let people make their own determination," he added. Host George Stephanopoulos followed up,...

I'm voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential primary. -snip-Not this time.-snip-Should Bernie Sanders become the nominee, the data is similar: Sanders leads Trump and trails Rubio (although he is running slightly ahead of Cruz). So for either Democratic candidate, Trump proves to be the most favorable -- and desirable -- matchup.Moreover, should Donald Trump earn his party's nomination, some GOP strategists fear that some Republican voters would be so disenchanted with (or appalled by) Trump that they might not vote in the election at all, leading to down-ticket victories for the Democrats by attrition. This theory is supported...

Progressives angry about the extensive amount of free, sympathetic coverage Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gets on Fox News may have found an unlikely ally in former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. During Monday's episode of Fox & Friends, Gingrich took the hosts to task for giving Trump a massive platform to spread his views -- likely referring to the network's wall-to-wall coverage of his campaign as well as Fox & Friends' regularly scheduled Monday segments featuring Trump as a pundit, which ran from 2011 to 2015. "This time the billionaire is spending the least amount of money and running...

Writing that headline shocks me as much as it probably shocks some of you. There's no mistaking the fact that, since announcing his candidacy last summer, Donald Trump has been a loose cannon who has not only stirred up tremendous controversy, but has also shaken up the entire political process. Trump has managed to alienate most ethnic groups living in America, insult women with his sexist comments, allow violence against protesters at his rallies, insult journalists and restrain freedom of the press at his rallies, and even now is engaged in an ever-escalating feud with fellow Republican candidate Ted Cruz....

Trump is no Romney. He is running an unsubtle, racist campaign that has particularly targeted Latinos. His chances of winning swing states with significant Latino populations -- Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- are extremely low. But he doesn't need them to win. All he has to do is carry the Rust Belt -- a region perfectly attuned to Trump's fiery denunciations of American trade policy and his angry condemnation of Washington corruption. While Romney hailed free trade, globalization and "creative destruction," Trump rails against the North American Free Trade Agreement and promises to bring jobs back home.

In an fascinating exercise in selective data use, the Huffington Post has published a remarkable essay suggesting that the vast majority of terrorists have nothing to do with Islam and that Islam itself has nothing to do with encouraging violence. In his article Monday, "Is Islam Really the Religion of Violence? Here Are the Facts," Saudi-born writer Hanzala Bin Aman tiptoes through an FBI study on terrorism to cull the statistics that seem to justify his thesis that Islamic terrorism only makes up a tiny percentage of all terrorist acts, and therefore shouldn't be singled out as a source of...

Bernie Sanders has positive favorability ratings. He's the only leading candidate in 2016 with positive favorability ratings. If you care about losing to a Republican this year, then you should care about this fact. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do not have positive favorability ratings. 59% of Americans distrust Donald Trump. 67% of Americans find Hillary Clinton "not honest and trustworthy." Yes, more Americans trust Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Only Bernie Sanders can prevent a xenophobic billionaire from making decisions in the Oval Office. Negative favorability ratings, in addition to an ongoing FBI investigation, pave the way for a...

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is finally getting off the sidelines to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), in a final effort to defeat Donald Trump after the billionaire took early states in New Hampshire and South Carolina by storm. According to the Huffington Post’s Scott Conroy, Romney had been waiting for Jeb Bush to exit the race before endorsing Rubio citing “respect" for the former Florida governor.

Trump will win most -- and likely all -- of the state's delegates. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has never won a presidential primary. That didn't change on Saturday, when Rubio lost the South Carolina Republican primary, finishing behind angry rich guy Donald Trump for the third time this primary season. When Rubio finished third in Iowa, his campaign -- and many members of the media -- acted as if he had won. His fifth-place finish in New Hampshire made that spin even harder to believe. Just a few weeks ago, Rubio's campaign was telling reporters he'd finish second in New...

Donald Trump comfortably defeated his Republican presidential rivals on Saturday in South Carolina's GOP primary. Trump's resounding victory isn't simply a boon to his prospects for winning the Republican presidential nomination, an outcome once thought impossible that is looking increasingly more plausible. It is also an embarrassing repudiation of conservative orthodoxy that has dominated Republican politics for decades. It suggests that the party's intellectual leaders, who organized the base around the National Review/Weekly Standard consensus -- small government, free trade, pro-Israel, deregulation, low taxes, social conservatism and an aggressive foreign policy -- have been generals of a phantom army. The...