Free Republic

She’s new on the job as White House Press Secretary but Stephanie Grisham has already created headlines of her own. Reporters on the scene of President Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claimed that Grisham was bruised up during a confrontation with North Korean guards. Grisham suffered bruises when a scuffle broke out Sunday between North Korean security guards and members of the media trying to get close to President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as they shook hands at the Demilitarized Zone, the Associated Press reported.The new press secretary was reportedly pushing back...

The candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary put aside their squabbles on Sunday - sort of - to focus on a common enemy: President Trump. From former Vice President Joe Biden to former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, the Democratic hopefuls derided Trump’s third meeting with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un – accusing the president of everything from “coddling” dictators to posing for a photo opportunity. “President Trump’s coddling of dictators at the expense of American national security and interests is one of the most dangerous ways that he’s diminishing us on the world stage...

When President Trump sent a Twitter invitation on Friday to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to meet at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone separating the Koreas — “just to shake his hand and say Hello(?)!” — both men had much to gain, and more to lose. If Mr. Kim did not attend, even though his side had seemed intrigued, it would have embarrassed Mr. Trump and opened him up to more criticism for his unpredictable diplomacy. It would also have compounded the dramatic failure of their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, which Mr. Trump abruptly called off in February. . ....

When Truman took office after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, he knew relatively nothing about the grand strategy of World War II. No one had told him anything about the ongoing atomic bomb project...But for the next seven-plus years, Truman shocked the country. Over the objections of many in his Cabinet, he ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. Over the objections of most of the State Department, he recognized the new state of Israel. Over the objections of the Roosevelt holdovers, he broke with wartime ally the Soviet Union and crafted the foundations of Cold War communist...

North Korea’s tyrant ordered his death after he was accused of planning a coup. Kim had a giant fish tank built inside Ryongsong Residence, .....The victim’s arms and torso were cut open with knives before he was thrown into the tank. it's unclear whether the general was killed by the fish, died from his wounds or drowned. The researchers are believed to have come up with several execution methods designed to scare potential plotters. It's believed they got the idea from the1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me,.... Kim’s aquarium is filled with several hundred piranhas imported from...

The Islamic Republic of Iran is involved in the illicit procurement of technology for weapons of mass destruction, the German intelligence agency for the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern wrote in its May report. In the 206-page report, that was reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the intelligence agents wrote: “The fight against the illegal proliferation of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction and the materials needed for their manufacture, as well as the corresponding delivery systems [e.g. rockets], including the necessary knowledge, in cooperation with other authorities, is also the responsibility of counterintelligence.” The intelligence report continued, “From these...

... “From 2006 to 2016 North Korea steadily increased the size of the events, from somewhere around 1 kiloton up to around 20 kilotons. The very early events looked like they didn’t work very well, because they were unusually small. And then in one year they jumped up to 250-ish kilotons,” said Thorne Lay, a seismologist at the University of California Santa Cruz and an author of the AGU study. “The scary thing is that this was such a big device.” ...

America’s enemies are on notice: The president is no longer an eloquent pushover professor-president but a ruthless real estate developer and television network brawler-president whose principle weapons are blunt candor and walking away from the table. Trump is responding to both his domestic political opponents and America’s actual enemies with the same tactics: blunt, repetitive messaging and use of the walk-off. He is sometimes rude, often full of unnecessary slashes, but always direct. (It often seems as if Trump answers more questions from reporters in a walk to the helicopter than President Barack Obama did in formal press conferences.) And...

SEOUL — A South Korean newspaper reported Friday that North Korea executed a senior envoy involved in nuclear negotiations with the U.S. as well as four other high-level officials. But as ever with North Korea, a country that closely guards its secrets, there are reasons to be cautious about the purported purge. NBC News was not immediately able to independently verify the report. Kim Jong Un's regime also hasn't used its propaganda services to comment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the report during a visit to Germany Friday.

“We are now entering into a period of great power rivalry. The outcome is unclear, but it is critical that we stabilize the system.” That was the warning on Thursday from Singapore’s Heng Swee Keat, the man set to be the city-state’s next prime minister. China’s rapid ascent over the past decade, he said, has caused a clear shift in global politics, and those changes need to be addressed. The Singaporean deputy prime minister’s sentiment was echoed by other political figures and experts gathered in Tokyo for a conference on the future of the region. At the event, which was...

North Korea executed Kim Hyok Chol, its special envoy to the United States, and foreign ministry officials who carried out working-level negotiations for the second U.S.-North Korea summit in February, holding them responsible for its collapse, a South Korean newspaper reported on Friday. Kim Yong Chol, a senior official who had been U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s counterpart in the run-up to the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, is also said to have been subjected to forced labor and ideological education, the Chosun Ilbo reported. The North Korean leader...

It was revealed recently that North Korea is sitting on approximately $6 trillion worth of natural resources, which the country lacks the technology or expertise to extract. The impoverished nation is quite literally sitting on a goldmine, a significant portion of which is made up of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not - as you would expect - exceptionally rare, but are generally found in small trace quantities underground. What is rare is to find them in high concentrations, which is exactly what experts believe is present beneath the soil of North Korea. Not only are these resources...

Former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden on Tuesday said comments made by President Trump while in Japan siding with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un are “beneath the dignity of the office.” “To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former vice president speaks for itself,” Biden’s campaign said in a statement. “And it’s part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions — whether taking Putin’s word at face value in Helsinki or exchanging ‘love letters’ with Kim...

Whoopi Goldberg led off today’s episode of The View by saying, “So, the guy in the White House…” She then paused and added, “Mmm-hmm.” And it was on. She proceeded to recap President Donald Trump’s weekend visit to Japan and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s recent missile tests. But Goldberg noted how the latter didn’t seem to faze POTUS, who instead made a meal of Kim dissing Dem White House hopeful Joe Biden. A clip was shown of Trump “agreeing” with Kim’s assessment of the former U.S, vice president as “a low IQ individual,” and then the co-hosts started in....

Tuesday, CNN national security analyst James Clapper weighed in on President Donald Trump brushing off North Korea’s missile tests. Clapper, a former National Intelligence director, said Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” that Trump showed he “badly” wants a deal with North Korea, but is only encouraging Kim Jong-un to “stretch the envelope further” by showing his hand.

Time Magazine columnist Ian Bremmer apologized Monday for fabricating a quote from President Donald Trump about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that went viral the day before. “My tweet yesterday about Trump preferring Kim Jong Un to Biden as President was meant in jest,” Bremmer tweeted Monday. “The President correctly quoted me as saying it was a ‘completely ludicrous’ statement. I should have been clearer. My apologies.” Bremmer’s apology comes after he tweeted a quote attributed to the president alleging he said, “Kim Jong Un is smarter and would make a better President than Sleepy Joe Biden.” Many people...

teven Rattner, "car czar" and counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, cites three different modelers in his N.Y. Times commentary, "Trump’s Formidable 2020 Tailwind." The big picture: Trump wins all three modelers. Economists predict that the tailwind is large. Ray Fair, a professor at Yale, "found that the growth rates of gross domestic product and inflation have been the two most important economic predictors — but he also found that incumbency was also an important determinant of presidential election outcomes." "Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has looked at 12 models, and Mr. Trump wins...

The economy invariably ranks among the top issues on the minds of voters in presidential elections. At the moment, it appears to offer President Trump a meaningful tailwind. But how big is that tailwind? Fortunately, economists have worked hard to develop models for predicting election outcomes, and according to one of the best of these, it should be quite large. One of the first — and perhaps still the best — of these models was created by Ray Fair, a professor at Yale. He found that the growth rates of gross domestic product and inflation have been the two most...

Take this for what it's worth... From The Hill: President Trump on Monday sounded an optimistic note about future negotiations with Iran, saying at a press conference in Japan that he's not looking for regime change despite increasing tensions between the two countries. "I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, 'no nuclear weapons,'" Trump said during a press conference in Japan. [...]"I think we'll make a deal," Trump said Monday. "I think Iran, again I think Iran has tremendous economic potential. and I look forward to letting them get back to the stage...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has labeled Joe Biden a "fool of low IQ" and an "imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being" after the Democratic presidential hopeful during a recent speech called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a tyrant.