Free Republic

President Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board. Moore’s many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused. A decade ago, as the Fed was battling deflation (that is, price declines ) during the financial crisis, Moore preposterously fearmongered that hyperinflation (that is, out-of-control price increases ) was nigh: Americans could soon be carting “wheelbarrows full” of cash a la Weimar Germany. Moore has also repeatedly...

Spin, Spin, Spin! The famous Benny Goodman tune was "Sing, Sing, Sing" but one could be forgiven if the Spin tune title comes to mind along with the tune while reading Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's furious and often laughable spin on what is obviously for him a very disappointing Mueller Report. His highly entertaining spin control took place on Sunday in "Six takeaways from Barr’s letter about Mueller’s probe":

“America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach pointed the finger at U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and accused her of blatant anti-Semitism in a public, full-page ad printed in Sunday’s Washington Post just in time for this week’s 2019 American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington DC. Boteach placed Omar’s own anti-Semitic words alongside some of the most anti-Semitic tropes of all time together with a full-length photo of the freshman Congresswoman. He brought along a copy of the attack ad to the AIPAC conference, waving it at anti-AIPAC demonstrators at the Washington Convention Center as they chanted “Shame on you!” at...

AVENATTI then laid out again his threat of harm to Nike, adding that “as soon as this becomes public, I am going to receive calls from all over the country from parents and coaches and friends and all kinds of people – this is always what happens – and they are all going to say I’ve got an email or a text message or – now, 90% of that is going to be bullshit because it’s always bullshit 90% of the time, always, whether it’s R. Kelly or Trump, the list goes on and on – but 10% of it...

Full Title: Trump campaign sends memo to television producers warning about 'credibility' of six Trump critics who it says spread false claims about collusion Trump's re-election campaign sent a memo to television producers on Monday instructing them to "employ basic journalistic standards when booking" six current or former government officials that the campaign said "made outlandish, false claims, without evidence" while on air. The memo names: Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the chair of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency Rep. Adam Schiff,...

Watch in slow motion as Democrats, goaded by the media, conspire to re-elect President Trump: Voters care about the economy and making education and health care affordable. And so Democrats are talking about … abolishing the Electoral College? Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren started the latest distraction at a CNN town hall on Monday. “Get rid of the Electoral College,” she said, neglecting to mention that this has zero chance of occurring in the foreseeable future. The media took it from there. On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Garrett Haake pressed former representative Beto O’Rourke: “Getting rid of the Electoral College: Is that an...

Canadian goaltender Braden Holtby said he will not visit the White House with his Washington Capitals teammates, joining forwards Brett Connolly and Devante Smith-Pelly as players who have declined the invitation to honor the team’s Stanley Cup victory Monday. “I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going to respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said Friday morning. “In saying that, it’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing. You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows...

I suppose it’s true that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as the Washington Post’s slogan says. But journalism may also die, by morphing into forms that can no longer be described as journalism. Journalism may come to mean a crooked scandal sheet, or high-minded propaganda. Sometimes squalor and self-righteousness are equally disreputable. The Post’s apothegm, somehow off-kilter, with its alliteration and self-importance, was a purposeful bit of branding, designed to claim high ground and to poke a thumb in President Trump’s eye every morning. Such partisan intent detracts from the slogan’s claim to universality. The self-serving implication—the notion that, against the...

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now President Trump’s attorney, shared a misleading video clip on Twitter late Thursday night that has spread on right-wing conspiracy sites claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar took classes on terrorism. In retweeting the video, Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, wrote: “What is she laughing at in recalling her terrorism classes? This represents the future of the Democrat Party? God help us.” A liberal Democrat from Minnesota, Omar is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress last year and the first to wear...

President Trump has recently encouraged Jewish Americans to eschew their long-standing affiliation with the Democratic Party — a movement he and others refer to as “Jexodus.” He tweeted out claims that Jews are now leaving the Democrats over the party’s position on Israel. “Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.” Elizabeth Pipko, Jexodus. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019 The president then cited...

2020 presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke ate dirt after losing his Senate race against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last year. The revelation comes in a lengthy Washington Post report which divulged new details on the road trip the former congressman took after his defeat in the midterm elections and the ensuing "funk." During a January stop in New Mexico which did not make it into his blog, O'Rourke, 46, ate the local dirt, which the report said is believed to have "regenerative powers." He also brought some of this New Mexican dirt home to his family to eat.

Sometimes stories are simpler than they're made out to be. That appears to be the case with Jeff Bezos. When the National Enquirer reported that Bezos, the Amazon founder who is the world's richest man, was having an extramarital affair and had sent racy texts, including photos of his penis, to his girlfriend, Bezos assembled a high-priced legal and PR team to mount an aggressive defense. All of a sudden, sympathetic commentators began suggesting Bezos had been hacked. There was word that a "government entity" had gotten hold of the texts and photos. There was dark speculation of international intrigue,...

Jeb Bush calls on Republicans to challenge Trump Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush says Donald Trump should face a Republican primary challenge in 2020. Bush, who ran for president in 2016, told CNN the party “ought to be a given a choice.” “I think someone should run. Just because Republicans ought to be given a choice,” he said. “To have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative I think is important...And our country needs to have competing ideologies that people -- that are dynamic, that focus on the world we’re in and the world we’re moving towards...

A day after releasing audio of Tucker Carlson making numerous misogynist remarks, Media Matters for America published a new video with clips of the Fox News host using racist and homophobic language to describe Iraqi people, African Americans, gay people and immigrants while speaking on a radio program between 2006 and 2011....

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just got a humbling lesson in the power of anti-Semitism: It can’t be bribed away with a plum subcommittee appointment or threatened out with a primary challenge. Watching the utter disaster that unfolded when congressional leaders suggested making a simple, full-throated condemnation of anti-Semitism, I tried to think of something less surprising. I couldn’t. This began bad for the Jews; it ended bad for the Jews; and in the middle was a whole heaping pile of bad for the Jews. Last week, after freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., had made the latest in a series...

Go ahead and criticize President Trump’s Mika tweet, but there’s no denying this was disturbing. On Thursday’s Hardball, MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews compared the President to not only communist Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and a modern-day Romanov but also channel Benito Mussolini having son-in-law Jared Kushner murdered. As he’s previously done(documented here, here, and here), Matthews reiterated his belief that Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump are akin to the murderous sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay. Let’s first start with Matthews invoking Mengistu. During a tease about reported disarray in the Trump administration with Secretary of State Rex...

In private discussions with his aides, President Trump has devised an eye-popping formula to address one of his long-standing complaints: that allies hosting U.S. forces don’t pay Washington enough money. Under the formula, countries would pay the full cost of stationing American troops on their territory, plus 50 percent more, said U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the idea, which could have allies contributing five times what they provide. Trump calls the formula “cost plus 50,” and it has struck fear in the hearts of U.S. allies who view it as extortionate. Rumors that the formula could become a global...

Welcome to JEXODUS. On Saturday, Roger L. Simon lamented at PJ Media that anti-Semitism is once again becoming respectable – or at least acceptable – across the Western world, and that this time around the Jew-haters are predominantly Muslims and leftists. Among the more prominent new standard bearers of this old hatred, noted Simon, are our two recently elected Muslim congresswomen, who, he quite reasonably surmised, “were likely inculcated at an early age, as were too many Muslim children, with the belief that Jews only (pace Darwin) were the descendants of pigs and apes and should be wiped from the...

It feels like Backward Day in the mainstream media this week. Case in point: The editorial board of the Washington Post published an opinion on deficit spending. The short version is that they believe there’s too much of it going on and the Trump administration, abetted by the GOP in Congress, has been burning through cash like a sailor on shore leave. In their opinion, the projected $900B deficit we’re looking at for 2019 is a sign of an unhealthy democracy. For our part, we don’t think the deficit per se is likely to cause short-term economic harm, or that...

By Margaret Sullivan Media columnist