Free Republic

On November 8, 2016, America's chief storytellers—those within the bubbles of media and politics—lost the narrative they had controlled for decades. In a space of 24 hours, the concept of "conventional wisdom" seemed to vanish for good. How did this happen? What follows are over 40 brand new interviews and behind-the-scenes stories from deep inside The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, and more—plus first-hand accounts from the campaigns, themselves. We've spent a year hearing the spin. Now it's time for the truth. THE RUN-UP Steve Bannon, Trump campaign CEO: When I first came on the campaign,...

The synchronized leftist response to this latest attack on normal Christians was pre-planned, and it didn’t matter that this time it was another militant atheist weirdo instead of an ISIS-loving foreigner. The memes and the lies were all prepped and ready, and the villain was already chosen. No surprise – once again, it was you, the normal American who keeps and bears arms to protect yourself, your family, your community and your Constitution. But this time it didn’t go the way they wanted. Sure, they were giddy at first – the liberals got to trash people of faith for praying,...

The search warrant executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at MedCure Inc headquarters here on November 1 is sealed, and the bureau and the company declined to comment on the nature of the FBI investigation. But people familiar with the matter said the inquiry concerns the manner in which MedCure distributes body parts acquired from its donors. MedCure is among the largest brokers of cadavers and body parts in the United States. From 2011 through 2015, documents obtained under public-record laws show, the company received more than 11,000 donated bodies and distributed more than 51,000 body parts to medical...

Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile has been on a roll recently. She’s ripped into the DNC’s former leadership, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and now former President Barack Obama. In her new book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House,” Brazile outlined how Obama leeched off the Democratic Party to further his own causes, even if it meant bankrupting the entire party, The Daily Caller reported. “We had three Democratic parties: The party of Barack Obama, the party of Hillary Clinton, and this weak little vestige of...

Trump got a wall – just not the one he wanted. Manka Dhingra announced her victory in Washington state’s 45th District Senate race Tuesday night at the Redhook Brewery in Woodinville, an appropriately good-times setting to hand control of the state’s legislative chamber to her fellow Democrats. By knocking out the last GOP-held legislative body on the West Coast, Dhingra’s victory means one thing: The Great Blue Wall is back in place. On an election day when Democratic candidates unseated their Republican rivals in races from Virginia to Maine to New Jersey, delivering what the Seattle Times called the “GOP’s...

Three UCLA basketball players were arrested Tuesday for shoplifting in China, according to ESPN. LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested and are being questioned about stealing from a Louis Vuitton store, reported ESPN college basketball’s Jeff Goodman. The UCLA men’s basketball team, which had been staying in Hangzhou, is set to open its regular season against Georgia Tech in Shanghai on Friday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which covers Georgia Tech Athletics, reported Tuesday morning that local police were called to the Hangzhou hotel where UCLA and Georgia Tech players were staying to investigate an unknown matter. Police spoke...

If standard practices are applied, the three UCLA basketball players – including LiAngelo Ball – arrested Tuesday in mainland China under suspicion of shoplifting face between three and 10 years in prison if convicted, according to Chinese lawyers who briefed Yahoo Sports on the applicable laws. The sentencing guidelines could shift depending on the amount that the Chinese could prove was allegedly stolen. Authorities believe the players shoplifted from a Louis Vuitton store near the UCLA team hotel outside of Shanghai. The Bruins are in China to play Georgia Tech on Saturday in the season opener. The players were arrested...

Some 80 years ago, the American government produced a pamphlet encouraging people into work. It explained that being idle was just about the worst thing imaginable because it meant the loss of self-respect, pride and hope. By contrast, it went on: 'Let's look at what work does for us. Work keeps us from going nuts.' I sometimes wonder what would happen if our Government distributed such a pamphlet today. How long would it take for people to demand an apology? How long before the first online petition passed 10,000 signatures? For one thing, there is that incendiary world 'nuts', which...

Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her. One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, operating under a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details. The explicit goal...

Fox News may be enjoying large audiences right now, partly because of its close relationship with the president, but the network is taking a real risk — both to itself and to our democracy — by peddling falsehoods and making the president's political enemies its own. Given those risks, the network's eagerness to take on a role normally occupied by state media in strongman regimes, up through its current attempts to discredit special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation, is surprising. This disturbing situation, however, has been long in the making. From 2011 onward, Fox News promoted Trump's presidential ambitions and spread...

If there was a fancy Malibu rehab center for Trump Derangement Syndrome it would be jam packed with celebrities right now. Ten months into Trump’s first term Hollywood actors, directors, comedians and singers are STILL having trouble coping with life under President Trump. Comedian Rosie O’Donnell confessed her sick obsession: “I spend like pretty much 90 percent of my waking hours tweeting hatred” towards Trump. And for some celebs Trump became a literal nightmare they can’t wake up from. Actor Rob Reiner whined: “I’m in a nightmare that doesn’t ever stop,” and hippie-singer David Crosby wailed about the “orange nightmare...

You know the “Blue Screen of Death”? The way your PC screen turns blue when the Windows operating system goes kaput? During the Clinton administration, the cause of a BSoD was liable to be hardware-related — owing, say, to a failed motherboard — so the bluetastrophe was lethal. Irreparable. The disaster that befell the Democratic Party a year ago is exactly this kind of fatal blow, a political BSoD. We Democrats believed that things were moving, slowly, in the right direction; that our Republican friends and relatives would see sense, somehow, eventually — no way were they really that racist,...

One year ago, Manka Dhingra was preparing for a celebration, a gathering of family and friends to mark Hillary Clinton’s election as the nation’s first woman president. Today, she is bearing the hopes and dreams of Democrats crushed by Clinton’s loss and trying to help the party pull itself from a deep hole. A state Senate race pitting two campaign novices in the upscale suburbs east of Seattle has turned into a major battle between the two national parties, becoming the costliest legislative contest in state history and serving as a test of the Trump effect far from the other...

Progressive organizations scrambled over the weekend to give Democrats a boost in Tuesday's New Jersey and Virginia elections by rallying against Republican candidates who used ads linking gang crimes to Democratic candidates and immigration policies. Organizations such as CASA in Action, America's Voice, and others have been focusing on Latino voters in Virginia, knocking door to door trying to remind Hispanics to vote on Tuesday. In a press release issued by Prospero Latino, the coalition of organizations claims to have knocked on fifty thousand doors and have texted over twenty thousand voters. "The Virginia GOP and Ed Gillespie have run...

Noted Native-American fabulist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) made an early bid to lock up the Black vote for a prospective 2020 presidential run by discovering that in addition to being part Cherokee she is also part Black. “Just this last week I was told by a ninth cousin that our great-great-great grandmother was a slave who was serially raped by John Calhoun back in the 1850s and bore him more than a dozen children,” Warren told a Black audience earlier this week. “I am proud to say that I am one of the descendants of one of those children.” The...

Reactions to the church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas have broadly consisted of sympathy and calls for prayer for the victims and their families, but some prominent left-wing voices have taken the opportunity to politicize the incident. Some on the left have used the shooting to mock the concept of prayer and Christianity. [Snip] Following the shooting, a number of prominent media personalities, celebrities and liberal pundits took the effort to mock the concept of prayer and called for gun control. Wil Wheaton, the washed-up liberal actor best known for "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and self-proclaimed "geek icon," attacked...

Shortly after Rand Paul was attacked by some man who people had previously never heard of, news media reported that the senator from Kentucky had suffered some "minor injuries." Well, unless having potentially life-threatening injuries is now classified as "minor," those initial reports were somewhat mistaken: 'A senior adviser for Rand Paul says the U.S. senator is recovering from five broken ribs following an assault at his home. Doug Stafford said it is unclear when Paul will return to work since he is in considerable pain and has difficulty getting around, including flying. Stafford said Sunday that the broken ribs...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday slammed Republicans for offering their condolences in the wake of the Texas church shooting while failing to take concrete steps to curb gun violence. "Thoughts & prayers are not enough, GOP. We must end this violence. We must stop these tragedies. People are dying while you wait," Warren wrote in one tweet. Warren took to Twitter to express her anger and heartbreak after a gunman opened fire at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing at least 26 people and injuring about 20 others. She took aim at the National Rifle Association (NRA), asking...

... Paul had three displaced fractures, which can lead to life-threatening injuries, as well as lung contusions. Paul and his wife, Kelley, "appreciate everyone's thoughts and well wishes and he will be back fighting for liberty in the Senate soon," Stafford said.

Former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, who was sentenced to 21 to 27 months in prison for sending obscene material to a 15-year-old North Carolina high school student, must report to federal prison by Monday, WABC reported Friday. Weiner, 53, who pleaded guilty last May to a single count of transferring obscene material to a minor, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. The disgraced politician will serve his time in Massachusetts at the Federal Medical Center, Devens, located about 40 miles west of Boston. The facility houses more than 1,100 male inmates who require medical or mental health...