Free Republic

The newly installed chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is already backing down from his pledge to spend “every day” of 2024 to elect presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump as president again to instead spend most of Tuesday trying to save the embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson from justice, a report from Politico Playbook on Wednesday shows.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) pushed back on comparisons between the politically damaging dog stories that plagued both his and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s (R) potential bids for the White House. During Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, a decades-old story about him tying his dog Seamus to the roof of his car on a family road trip became a political headache for the then-Republican candidate for the White House. Now, more than a decade later, Noem faces a similar political firestorm that could doom her chances of being selected as former President Trump’s running mate in 2024. But Romney rejected the...

Robert F Kennedy Jr has dismissed Donald Trump as “unhinged” after a social media tirade from the former Republican president accused the independent White House hopeful of being a “Democrat plant” and “wasted protest vote”. “When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged,” Kennedy wrote Saturday on X in a post that doubled as a debate challenge. “President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims that should best be resolved in the American tradition of presidential debate.”

....In 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own. “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant....By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave....

Without fanfare and after business hours, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that prevents local governments from requiring worker protections from heat exposure and forbidding them to impose minimum wage requirements on contractors. DeSantis’ office revealed that he had approved the measure (HB 433) in a news release without comment on Thursday night. For much of his administration, including Friday, the governor has held news conferences to celebrate bill signings.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (NewsNation) — With dueling events this weekend, some of the nation’s biggest GOP donors will have to choose between former President Donald Trump or former presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump is expected to attend a major joint fundraiser between his campaign and the RNC on Saturday. A campaign source confirmed to NewsNation that it will be hosted at a private residence in Palm Beach. Expectations are high for Trump to offset President Joe Biden’s recent $25 million fundraiser, with the Trump campaign anticipating an estimated $43 million fundraising haul Saturday. That’s an effort that could...

Donald Trump Jr. is lobbying his father to select a running mate who can take a punch — and hit back even harder, he told The Post. “What I want in that role is I want a fighter,” Trump Jr. said. “I understand what they are going to throw at us. “In 2016 you needed someone to balance out [the ticket] — that’s where Mike Pence made sense, sort of the yin and yang, but [given] the vicious nature of the swamp and the insanity we see on a daily basis, you need someone who can take those hits,” said...

Miami Beach, FL (NewsNation) — The relationship between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis remains fractured following a contentious 2024 presidential battle. At a press conference Wednesday morning, DeSantis sounded unlikely to campaign for Trump. When asked by NewsNation’s Libbey Dean if he would join the presumptive GOP nominee on the trail, DeSantis was hesitant to commit. The governor’s reasoning: Florida isn’t “competitive” enough for him to stump for Trump. “This is not going to be a state that’s competitive in November,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “So, I don’t anticipate there being much campaign here...

Former President Donald Trump is facing "insurmountable difficulties" in obtaining a bond to satisfy the $464 million civil fraud judgment, his attorneys said Monday in a new appellate court filing

Tomorrow, February 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Garland v. Cargill; the case challenges the administrative prohibition on bump stocks imposed by the Trump and Biden administrations, via interpretation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). The Supreme Court docket is here. I co-authored an amicus brief in the case. The brief is on behalf on 9 U.S. Senators, led by Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), 10 law/history professors, and the Independence Institute (the Denver think tank where I work). Garland v. Cargill v. is not a Second Amendment challenge. The case is about administrative law:...

After a year of getting roundly humiliated by Donald Trump and failing to unseat him as the leader of the Republican Party, Ron DeSantis finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump’s bid to reclaim the White House. But while the former president publicly retired his “DeSanctimonious” nickname, Trump has privately made clear over the past two weeks that he’s not ready to let go of his grudge against the Florida governor and former ally. One of the sources, who has spoken to the ex-president about this topic recently, bluntly characterizes Trump’s attitude on DeSantis’ future as wanting to...

"Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?" Trump wrote. "What do you think? Perhaps, instead, we should be going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!" The company, which owns and distributes dozens of alcoholic beverage brands, caught flack from conservatives last summer when it partnered with the popular transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote its Bud Light products. Despite the partnership amounting to one short TikTok video in which the company provided the creator with one custom can of the product, it generated widespread antipathy among conservatives amid the Republican...

Video of his exit declaration

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has suspended his 2024 presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump. DeSantis announced in a video posted to social media ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. The governor quoted Winston Churchill, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that count.” “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill pic.twitter.com/ECoR8YeiMm — Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) January 21, 2024 Bloomberg had reported just minutes before that he would drop out and endorse Trump in the coming days. The report cited...

The Governor is backing the former President after all. Ron DeSantis is out of the presidential race and is endorsing Donald Trump. In a video released Sunday, the Republican candidate suspended his campaign, after a distant second place finish in Iowa, an expected even more distant third place in the Granite State, and an uncertain path for delegates ahead. “Now, following our second place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it. But I can’t ask...

Nikki Haley said after the Iowa Caucuses that it was a “two-person race” now. She was ridiculed because she finished third, though at the time the speech was written she was still projected to finish second. Nonetheless, she may be right. Reports and rumors are flying around social media after the campaign site of Ron DeSantis scrubbed all future events. The campaign also canceled scheduled interviews on corporate media for Sunday.

I don’t trust ⁦@VivekGRamaswamy⁩ pic.twitter.com/eXBtNfvf5l— LeoTerrell (@TheLeoTerrell) January 13, 2024

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination continues to slide in the latest Rasmussen poll, as he plunged to a tie for third place with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The poll released Tuesday showed former President Donald Trump with a commanding lead of 51% of those who were asked which candidate they would vote for if the GOP presidential primary were held today. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration, was next with 13%, followed by DeSantis and Christie at 9% each, and Vivek Ramaswamy at 1%.

Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH) said Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World” that former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) is going to be the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee Sununu said, “It’s the connection she has with voters. When she’s in New Hampshire, and she’s doing the town halls and all that, she’s not just telling you where she is. She does that. But she’s allowing folks to ask questions. She’s earning trust. And that’s why her numbers were soaring before I even got involved because folks are galvanizing around that. And then you have the international experience, which none of...

Trump argued that he was immune from E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit because of presidential immunity. This was always a questionable argument: While Carroll sued Trump over statements Trump made while he was president, immunity would require Trump to act in his official capacity as president in claiming that Carroll was making up her story of being sexually assaulted by Trump in the 1990s. The controversy, like Paula Jones’s lawsuit against Bill Clinton, involved an alleged sexual assault that happened before Trump was president, so the argument would have to be that the president’s defense of his personal reputation is...