Free Republic

President Trump pulled an inside straight to win in 2016, and now he needs another one. The good news for Trump is that his approval rating has stopped falling recently. The bad news is that it has stabilized in the low 40s. Election-watcher Harry Enten points out that no president since Harry Truman has won with anything like Trump’s negative net approval rating. Truman won at –6, while incumbents who lost (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush) averaged out at about –13, roughly where Trump’s number is. The presidents who won reelection averaged an approval rating of...

Many Freepers will be pleased that my "Vanity" posting days have ended, I intend to spend the rest of my days on this Earth, with my beloved, terrific, family and friends, celebrating the "FREE" American way of life, driven by "individual effort" not government elected and non-elected, bureaucratic, power hungry, controlling, buffoons & goons. POTUS, Donald J. Trump who I have backed, supported and voted for, has caved in to Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party...thus setting the groundwork for the destruction of the American Republic Nation. America, the USA Republic, will soon perish on the road to...

On Sunday he spoke with Maria Bartiromo in his first interview. Schrage told Maria, “Halper was not that engaged up to the point he crossed paths with Page and Christopher Steele’s former MI6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove…” Schrage said he was surprised that Stefan Halper was making over a half a million dollars for writing reports for the government. Schrage said the key part, the real smoking gun in this is, “All these tentacles lead back to the “small group” including Stefan Halper in SpyGate, Christopher Steele at the center of Russiagate, Stefan Halper’s FBI handler. None of the Senate...

WASHINGTON -- Thanksgiving is going to be ugly this year. There's a real chance the public won't know who won the White House weeks after Election Day, and rather than feeling grateful, leaders in both parties are peddling grievances nonstop. Before the voting has begun, Americans have been told not to trust the outcome. And the worst offenders are the people who think they believe in the process just as they prepare to tear the country apart if they lose. A bipartisan group of 100 or so left-wing luminaries, institutional graybeards and never-Trumpers came together to work on what they...

In an e-mail sent by his campaign on Monday, President Donald Trump said wearing masks is “something we should all try to do.” “Friend,” the letter opens, “I know how difficult the past few months have been. Your unwavering support during this time has not gone unnoticed.” But rather than push for a “contribution,” this time President Trump is asking his supporters for a different sort of help. “We are all in this together,” the e-mail, signed by Trump, continued, “and while I know there has been some confusion surrounding the usage of face masks, I think it’s something we...

Former senior adviser to President Barack Obama Valerie Jarrett talks to FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo about the Trump/Russia investigation. "I have a high degree of confidence in our intelligence community, investigators comported themselves responsibly," Jarrett said. "Lindsey Graham is the one that encouraged Sen. McCain to turn over the dossier in the first place to the FBI.""I do know that it’s nearly four years ago and I don’t understand why our focus isn’t on what’s happening right now and today. That’s the investigation I’d like to see," she said. Bartiromo asked about the origins of the Steele dossier: "What’s happening...

FBI raids offices at downtown One Cleveland Center building tied to Ukrainian oligarchCLEVELAND, Ohio — The FBI on Tuesday raided the Cleveland offices of a company with ties to a Ukrainian oligarch that owns several downtown buildings. FBI spokeswoman Vicki Anderson said agents searched the offices of Optima Management Group in One Cleveland Center at East 9th Street and St. Clair Avenue. A spokesman for the IRS also said his agency’s investigators were present....Anderson said agents also executed search warrants at an office in Miami.Federal authorities in Cleveland have been conducting a wide-ranging probe involving Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky that...

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s 2020 U.S. Senate race is neck-and-neck with just three months to go until Election Day, as Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison’s well-funded campaign appears to have significantly narrowed the gap against Republican incumbent Lindsey Graham, according to a new poll released Tuesday. Graham led Harrison by just a single percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent, in the poll conducted by data intelligence firm Morning Consult, well within the survey’s 3.5 percent margin of error.More...

Imagine this: Donald Trump loses the 2020 election and runs again in 2020 under his own party. Don't think it can't happen? History says it could. The presidential election of 1912 was one of the only cases where one of the top-two competitors didn’t represent a major political party -- the Democrats or the Republicans. Although a Democrat took the White House, a member of the Bull Moose Party trailed behind, receiving nearly 30 percent of the popular vote.

WASHINGTON — As the Kansas Senate primary barrels to a close, tensions are rising between Senate Republicans and the White House over the potential nomination of Kris Kobach, who party officials fear would jeopardize the seat and further imperil their Senate majority. Senator Mitch McConnell is worried that Mr. Kobach, the controversial former Kansas secretary of state who lost the 2018 governor’s race, may win the nomination in Tuesday’s primary, only to lose the seat in November — and he is frustrated that President Trump is not intervening in the race, according to multiple G.O.P. officials. Mr. McConnell and other...

For years, #NeverTrump activists were pushing the challenge to Trump supporters on social media: “Is there anything that Trump could do that would cause you to stop supporting him?” It was one of the primary “Orange Man Bad” themes. The morality test is that Trump supporters are abandoning all principle by worshipping Donald Trump as our Messiah and engaging in a cult. Leftists in both parties have lied about Donald Trump, hurling smears and invective, accusinng Trump of saying things that Trump never said and doing things Trump never did. And yet it just isn’t working. Why don’t any of...

The State of Texas is not on the list of battleground states at Real Clear Politics but Democrats in Texas and in Washington, D.C. are fighting as though it is. On Tuesday a new hashtag popped up as trending on Twitter – #TrumpKilledTexas. The message is that the bad Orange Man has blood on his hands.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday said he believed many of President Trump’s tweets have “coarsened discussion,” but praised the president for having “a backbone." “So many of us are so sick and tired of Republicans that roll over and whimper when encountering the slightest resistance. And I think probably the best characteristic about the president is he’s got a backbone. And he will fight,” Cruz told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, when asked how the president has changed the Republican Party. “Now I will say ... I wish his tone and some of the things he said were...

Given what they've put the country through since November 2016, the groups that need to be asked if they will accept an election loss in November 2020 are the media, Democratic politicians, and other Resistance activists. The media and Democrats have returned to their pre-2016 election talking point that Donald Trump won’t accept election results. But after nearly four years of refusing to accept their defeat in the last presidential election, it is they and other members of the Resistance who must commit to accepting election results that don’t go their way.The final 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald...

President Trump announced Sunday he wouldn't be throwing out the opening pitch for the New York Yankees next month as he had planned, citing meetings and other work related to the U.S.'s COVID-19 outbreak. In a tweet, Trump said that he would plan to throw out the first pitch at a game later in the MLB's season, which began last week. "Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August...

Most American cities find themselves caught in the Growth Ponzi Scheme. We experience a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities. We deprive our communities of prosperity, overload our families with debt and become trapped in a spiral of decline. This cannot continue.

Walls used to be a bad thing to the far left but now they are all the rage. In Portland, for example, the riots and protests have created a Wall of Moms, a Wall of Dads, and now they are joined by a Wall of Vets. That’s right, military veterans have come together in an organized effort to protect the protesters from the federal officers sent to Portland by President Trump. The activist veterans claim that reports “of federal officers in tactical gear emerging from unmarked cars with automatic weapons to pick up protesters” were too much for them...

There is no police power in the federal Constitution. The police power is left to the states. To the extent the President can send federal officers into Portland, Oregon, and other cities, it should be to protect federal property. The President cannot save Portland from itself, and he should not. He cannot save the other cities either. I want a mask mandate, but there is no federal police power for the President to impose it. It must come from governors, who have more expansive police powers than your average libertarian-leaning person would have you believe. The President does not have...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday refused to accept an apology from Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) delivered just hours earlier, framing it as an insincere gesture following a tense exchange between the pair on the steps of the Capitol two days earlier. "I will not teach my nieces and young people watching that this an apology, and what they should learn to accept," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Yoho is refusing responsibility." - Does not apologize or name any action he did - Does not accept responsibility - Lies (this was not a “conversation,” it was verbal assault) - Distracts by making it...

Donald Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was consciously modeled after Richard Nixon's 1968 run, seems to think he can win reelection by emulating his predecessor's appeal to a "silent majority" disgusted by raucous anti-war protests. Trump is offering voters a choice between his firm hand and the pusillanimity of "liberal Democrats" who let "violent anarchists" run wild in the streets. Notwithstanding Trump's pose as "your president of law and order," his heavy-handed reaction to the protests triggered by George Floyd's death represents neither. In response to largely peaceful demonstrations against police brutality that have been punctuated by criminal behavior, he...