Free Republic

Michael Bloomberg’s plan to field a massive shadow political party could significantly undercut key financial and organizational advantages President Trump might otherwise enjoy against his Democratic challenger. The former New York City mayor is investing hundreds of millions on a ground game and digital operation as part of his long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination. But Bloomberg, 77, is promising to put his campaign to work for whoever wins the party’s 2020 nod, immediately bridging a huge resource gap with Trump the Democratic National Committee is too depleted to handle. Federal law prohibits Bloomberg’s organization from coordinating with, or being...

McCabe's actions prove that the Russia probe was always tainted and that many in the FBI and DOJ aren’t public servants, but rather incompetent attention-seekers. If Washington, D.C. were a better place, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe would be swiftly run out of town. He was fired last year for lying to the FBI’s inspector general at least four times regarding serious questions about multiple abuses that occurred while McCabe sat in a powerful and unelected office. These abuses included working with former FBI director James Comey to set up former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus for...

A new excerpt from former White House communications staffer Cliff Sims' new memoir emerged in Vanity Fair, and this one focused on a very special member of President Trump's Team of Vipers: Kellyanne Conway. Sims doesn't appear to be a fan: As I watched Kellyanne in operation over our time in the White House, my view of her sharpened. It became hard to look long at her without getting the sense that she was a cartoon villain brought to life. Her agenda — which was her survival over all others, including the president — became more and more transparent. [Cliff...

President Trump's absence for the second year in a row from the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner may end up being the least controversial thing about Saturday night's gathering of the White House press corps. Chatter online among journalists and some in the administration's orbit after the event was full of criticism for comedian Michelle Wolf, who was the evening's headliner; criticism and soul-searching about the annual event itself; and an effort by former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to pressure the leadership of the White House Correspondents' Association into answering for Wolf's vulgar, personal jabs leveled primarily at...

Nearly a week since U.S. President Donald Trump fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul advised against appointing former U.N. Ambassador and White House Chief of Staff John Bolton. Trump’s first choice, retired Navy special forces officer Robert Harward, who served under Defense Secretary John Mattis, turned down the position last week and reports say the White House has ruled out former CIA Director David Petraeus, who was ousted as the nation’s top spy amid a scandal over his sharing confidential documents with his mistress. Flynn resigned last week amid questions on whether he discussed sanctions with...

Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Preiebus appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press today with Chuck Todd. to discuss his time in the White Huse and current events surrounding President Donald J. Trump and the FBI. Priebus disputed media reports alleging that the president wanted special counsel Robert Mueller fired for handling of the Russian investigation into whether or not election interference occurred. CHUCK TODD: All right. Let me start right on an issue that happened near the end of your tenure as White House chief of staff. Washington Post reported late last month the following, "Trump's ire at...

The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book. Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story ... was “bullsh-t.” ... McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this...

Michael Wolff has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them. Among the sources he taped, I'm told, are Bannon and former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh. So that's going to make it harder for officials to deny embarrassing or revealing quotes attributed to them in "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," out Tuesday. In some cases, the officials thought they were talking off the record. But what are they going to do now? Although the White House yesterday portrayed Wolff as a poseur, he spent hours at...

On the afternoon of November 8, 2016, Kellyanne Conway settled into her glass office at Trump Tower. Right up until the last weeks of the race, the campaign headquarters had remained a listless place. All that seemed to distinguish it from a corporate back office were a few posters with right-wing slogans. Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat. Donald Trump would lose the election — of this she was sure — but he would quite possibly hold the defeat to under six points. That...

McCabe has spent the past year popping up in the news for all the wrong reasons. In February 2016 he was promoted to deputy director and assumed oversight of the Hillary Emailgate investigation — after his wife had received nearly $700,000 from Democratic groups for a failed run for Virginia state senate. This past February he got caught talking to then-chief of staff Reince Priebus about an allegedly bogus Russiagate story in the NYT, a no-no since DOJ investigations are supposed to be independent of politics. His latest news cameo was (apparently) in the infamous text in August 2016 from...

There’s one thing you gotta give Hollywood actors: they don’t give up, especially when they’re peddling their “agree with me or else” rhetoric. Actor Mark Ruffalo caught up with TMZ over the weekend outside an airport terminal, and the perpetually sleepy thespian couldn’t resist — see what I did there? — to continue to be outspokenly critical of the Trump administration. Ruffalo’s main focus on this occasion was former White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus. For some reason, since Ruffalo and Preibus are both from the same hometown of Kenosha, Wis., Ruffalo believes that despite Preibus being a Republican, he might...

President Donald Trump’s outgoing chief of staff Reince Priebus told Breitbart News Satuday SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam that the president’s “amazing” work during his first few months in office includes signing a record number of bills into law. “I could tick of for an entire 10, 20 minutes that facts of what’s he’s accomplished and the amazing amount of work he’s done,” Priebus said. “The amount of bills he’s signed are more than any president in the last 50 years,” Priebus said. Priebus — whose departure from the White House was announced on Friday night — also said that Trump...

A reporter on Fox News last night compared the leadership style of President Trump to that of the late NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, as if that’s a bad thing. I beg to differ. Yeah, Steinbrenner was a bitch to work for – he fired Billy Martin alone on 3 different occasions – but here’s the record: While he was running the Yankees, they won more games, more division championships, more league championships and more World Series titles than any other team in Major League Baseball during those 38 seasons. Steinbrenner’s record is so impressive that ESPN, in an article...

It’s no secret that President Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci do not much care for each other — and this was BEFORE the The New Yorker piece was published on Thursday. After the November election President Trump asked Anothony Scaramucci to join his Administration. Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of joining President Trump in the White House but Reince Priebus reportedly blocked him from being appointed to a top job within the administration. Late last week President Trump appointed Scaramucci Communications Director despite continued objections from Reince Priebus. Scaramucci was understandably...

According to reporter Ryan Lizza from The New Yorker, Scaramucci wants FBI, DOJ to investigate Reince Priebus for leaking his Financial disclosure! In case there's any ambiguity in his tweet I can confirm that Scaramucci wants the FBI to investigate Reince for leaking. — Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 27, 2017 Yes https://t.co/CtX0W8h7hp — Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 27, 2017 **UPDATE** According to National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar, Ryan Lizza reported Scaramucci has ALREADY reported Reince to the FBI over the leak. .@RyanLizza reports on CNN that Mooch already contacted the FBI about Reince // not just a threat (as he said...

WASHINGTON ― Some of the Trump administration’s nominees have pushed back against the government’s ethics requirements with “a ferocity we’ve not previously seen,” Walter Shaub, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, told a top White House lawyer in an email this week. Shaub was responding to Reince Priebus, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, who, when asked on Fox News Wednesday why the White House has been slow to fill key positions, claimed that many nominees were “sitting and waiting for OGE.” “That’s not the case,” Shaub wrote in an email sent to Stefan Passantino, the White...

A former spokesman for the Department of Justice says that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus must resign in the wake of revelations that he had called the FBI to ask them to publicly deny a story about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence officials. Appearing on Chris Hayes’s show on MSNBC, ex-DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller said that anyone in the Obama administration would have been fired instantly for doing anything close to what Priebus did.

The liberal media took Senator John McCain’s warning of a dictator Donald Trump during Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC and ran with it as the biggest story of the day, seeming to use it as a vindication of their smears since day one. “Is that over the top? Or is there a concern,” ABC’s Jon Karl inquired to Senator Rand Paul on This Week. While on CBS’s Face the Nation, moderator John Dickerson worried that Trump supporters would take it upon themselves and violently “act” against the “enemy” press. Karl’s statement was actually more pointed and seemed to suggest...

Dear Reince: The name “Reince Priebus” sounds like the moniker of some Star Wars villain, and coincidentally you need to get in touch with your inner Darth Vader. You’re flirting with failure. The President may be publicly applauding you for the moment, but his supporters are developing grave doubts about your ability to deliver the Death Star on time and under budget. Remember, Vader was the Emperor’s chief of staff, his hatchet man, his hammer. But Vader’s success came from actual successes; sure, he had a messy personal life but he got stuff done. You need to get stuff done....

Just wondering.