Free Republic

The Republican Party’s once-crowded 2024 presidential primary field has suddenly shrunk to just a handful of viable candidates. But a day after Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina stunned many of his own staff by suspending his campaign, it’s unclear whether the GOP is any closer to coalescing behind a clear alternative to former President Donald Trump. Instead, the fight between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis for a distant second place appears to be intensifying. And some lower-tier candidates insist on battling for relevance, despite growing pressure to bow out of the race altogether. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is cheering on...

Far-right wing website InfoWars on Sunday filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in the face of multiple defamation lawsuits. Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures put a hold on all civil litigation matters and allow companies to prepare turnaround plans while remaining operational. Alex Jones, founder of InfoWars, was found liable for damages in a trio of lawsuits last year filed after he falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. Jones claimed the shooting, in which 20 children and six school employees were shot dead...

Source: Twitter, Jill BidenOne of the memorable scenes in the 1993 movie "Dave" involved the president and first lady walking their dog in front of the cameras and promptly dumping him on staff when they walked into the White House. Having a pet is an easy way to get positive press that "humanizes" any politician, so almost every president does it -- and milks it. For example, there was Socks the cat, who came in with the Clintons in 1993. Then the Clintons added Buddy the dog at the end of 1997, weeks before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Hillary...

As talking heads on cable TV obsessed all weekend over the pending African-American female Supreme Court nominee—once Joe Biden’s handlers reveal to him who she will be—overlooked in the fracas is National Public Radio’s latest taxpayer-funded blunder involving the High Court. In mid-January, NPR Legal Affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reported—incorrectly—that Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor who has diabetes “did not feel safe” while sitting so close to people who were unmasked. Specifically, Tonenberg singled-out Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch who typically is seated near Sotomayor. The NPR veteran added that a “request” had been made for all justices to be masked when...

CNN anchor Brianna Keilar is hosting a temporary program pompously titled "Democracy In Peril." On Jan. 18, Keilar huffed: "We can't discuss the tsunami of disinformation, jeopardizing American democracy, without talking about the mothership, Fox." On the very same day, NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg aired a story claiming that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was callously ignoring requests from Chief Justice John Roberts to wear a mask during oral arguments in deference to diabetes-suffering colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Fox News reporter Shannon Bream, using a different source, appeared on "Special Report with Bret Baier" and announced it was...

This past Thursday, YouGov released a poll showing that 76% of Democrats thought Kyle Rittenhouse was guilty of homicide. Only 5% believed that he was not guilty. Similarly, 69% of blacks thought he was guilty, and only 6% felt that he wasn’t. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter that the verdict is a “heartbreaking miscarriage of justice and sets a dangerous precedent which justifies federal review by DOJ.” President Biden, who famously called Rittenhouse a white supremacist, also expressed Democrats’ anger: “While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned,...

Joe Biden—or more likely his behind-the-scenes handlers who tell him what to say and do—has nominated Jessica Rosenworcel to become the first female chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Biden as always read off the Teleprompter to tout his latest “historic first” as a champion for Internet and Cable connectivity for all. Chances are, however, Rosenworcel will be just another Washington insider mope passing through the revolving door of the FCC without making much actual “history.” But she could break that cycle if she’d take a long overdue run at placing oversight of cable tv networks under the same FCC...

One of the regular tropes of liberal cable news in recent weeks is how Big Tech is censoring any politicians or other leaders who are spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. They cheer when Sen. Rand Paul gets blocked by YouTube, for example, for questioning the effectiveness of masks. But these same liberal cable networks are spewing wild misinformation about COVID-19 ... when it comes to smearing conservatives and Republicans. You can call them murderers and terrorists, and the "independent fact-checkers" and the social media sites yawn and do nothing. These wild-eyed lies are somehow considered fair game. For example, on...

CNN became apoplectic whenever former President Donald Trump called them "fake news," but on July 21, they offered President Joe Biden a nationally televised boost that can accurately be described as a "fake town hall." A real town hall would sell tickets in a city like Cincinnati and let the locals mix it up with the president and ask him whatever was on their minds. That's not what CNN did. It was an "invitation only" audience, which means nobody boos or laughs at inappropriate times. CNN was talking over the video, but when Biden waved goodbye at the limited crowd,...

If someone inside the American media elite were tapped to deliver a State of the Media address in front of a distinguished audience, they would not be able to claim that their position is strong, stronger than ever. Sadly, a new survey by the Reuters Institute found the United States ranks last in media trust -- at 29% -- among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries. There are several easy answers for why this is true. But the most obvious one is the media's dramatic tilt to one side of the political argument. For many years, the Republicans attempted...

Long before the pandemic, the local news business had been in a tailspin. Newspapers across the country lost classified advertising revenue thanks to internet sites like Craigslist. Terrestrial radio stations lost their audience to iTunes -- and then Spotify. Most commercial radio stations don't offer news anymore. Most Americans under 35 think of newspapers and radio news as odd products their parents consume, like Spam and Velveeta. As a college kid in Viroqua, Wisconsin, I covered local news in the summers for our local radio station and called in freelance articles on the city council or school board decisions to...

Do you remember this tragic and horrendous story? It started on the afternoon of April 27, 2018, when a 28-year-old man in Nogales, Arizona, tried to rob a taxi driver. It eventually led to the murder of a police officer. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later explained what happened in its annual summary of cases involving law enforcement officers who are "feloniously killed" in the line of duty. "Earlier in the day, a person called for a taxicab, intending to rob the driver and carjack the vehicle using a .223-caliber semiautomatic rifle," said the FBI summary. "Once he was seated...

On March 23, Mohammad Anwar of Springfield, Virginia, a 66-year-old immigrant from Pakistan earning his living as an Uber Eats driver, was killed by two girls, ages 13 and 15. They carjacked Anwar, Tasered him and then, as he held on to the car (the source of his livelihood) in an attempt to stop them from stealing it, floored the gas pedal and crashed the car, killing him when he was thrown from the vehicle.As reported the next day in The Washington Post:"Anwar tried to force his way back into the car by climbing on top of the teen in...

There is so much information in our world today, it's hard to know what is real information, what is misinformation and what is disinformation. To deal with the ever-increasing volume of data, we often look to other people or institutions to determine how to process the information. This is particularly true in politics and news, which have become more and more partisan. This allows us to process information quickly, with the underlying belief that we are right. This is heightened when politics crosses into other parts of our lives, such as religion, that hold great meaning for us. Every so...

Appearing at a friendly CNN town hall event this week, President Joe Biden dropped a string of untruths on issues both large and small. One of the president's most egregious falsehoods was the claim that "we didn't have (the vaccine) when we came into office." The first shot was administered back on Dec. 14, 2020. Glenn Kessler, lead fact-checker for The Washington Post, quickly jumped into action on Twitter, explaining that this was merely a "verbal stumble, a typical Biden gaffe, as he had already mentioned 50 million doses being available when he took office. Former Trump officials should especially...

The liberal-Democrat media celebrated Valentine's Day a traditional way: gushy tributes to the new first lady. On Feb. 12, Jill Biden tweeted on her @FLOTUS Twitter account a photo of herself, with a scrunchie in her hair, at a Washington, D.C., bakery picking up "Valentine's treats for the weekend." "Don't tell Joe," she joked. Glamour magazine posted an article titled "First Lady Jill Biden Wore a Scrunchie While Shopping and People Felt So Seen." New York Times reporter Claire Cain Miller tweeted, "Loving the scrunchie energy." A Washington Post "PowerPost" headline read, "Scrunchies and dog walking: the country gets a...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a darling of the left, not just in the news media but in Hollywood and pop culture venues. She's been on the cover of Time, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek, New York Magazine and the Hollywood Reporter. She is hailed all over for her social media prowess. But at a time when these left-wing venues have expressed a massive panic over misinformation on the internet and the need for fact-checking, they don't seem to feel this way about anything spouted by AOC. In the Feb. 1 CNN "Reliable Sources" newsletter, a top story headline read, "AOC...

Recent MSM attacks claim Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) is not a Ranger because he did not serve with the 75th Ranger Regiment. As a combat soldier who served more than 42 years in commissioned service, has been a Ranger for more than fifty years and served with the 75th Ranger Regiment, I can tell you that smear of Senator Cotton is false.Predictably the left-wing Salon, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Snopes, Military.com and other MSM outlets falsely smeared Sen. Cotton and maligned his exceptional military record. The authors of these articles, only one of which served in the military (USMC)...

If the name Tatiana Schlossberg sounds like a brand for white privilege, you would be right. She's not a top chef or fashion designer. She's the 30-year-old daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy. Like Maria Shriver at NBC News, Tatiana became an "objective journalist" for a while, covering the environment for The New York Times from 2014 to 2017. When she wrote a book in 2019 called "Inconspicuous Consumption," NBC put her on TV and pushed her to run for office. She deferred, saying she is a journalist ... a political...