Free Republic

“Our next guest needs no introduction,” Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) told the crowd gathered in the atrium of the National Portrait Gallery on Thursday night. “A former first lady …” Excited murmurs start growing in the audience gathered to celebrate the museum’s newest exhibition, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” ahead of next year’s 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. A younger girl turns to her friend. “Oh, my God. … Do you?” “A former secretary of state,” the Democratic congresswoman from California continues. “Hillary?” another guest excitedly whispers, eyes widening. Then Matsui hits the nail on the head:...

President Donald Trump on Friday called for the New York Times and the Washington Post to have their Pulitzer prizes rescinded for their coverage of the special counsel's Russia investigation. “So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post got a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage (100% NEGATIVE and FAKE!) of Collusion with Russia - And there was No Collusion! So, they were either duped or corrupt? In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!” Trump tweeted. Trump has lashed out at the media in recent days after a synopsis of special counsel Robert...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been mocked with another billboard after zero senators voted for her socialist Green New Deal this week. The Job Creators Network scorched Ocasio-Cortez with two gigantic billboards in New York City after the Senate voted down the Green New Deal bill,

Race was front and center on Wednesday night during a meeting coordinated to garner support for just one black candidate in Savannah’s mayoral election. With signs stating “Black press only” on the doors of the church where the meeting was held, white reporters were barred from entry, while black reporters for at least two television stations were permitted inside. The event was coordinated by the Rev. Clarence Teddy Williams, owner of the consulting firm, The Trigon Group, who declined to discuss the entry policy. Former Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson declined to comment before going inside, as did Chatham County Commissioner...

An adviser to failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Wednesday evening ripped former Vice President Joe Biden for his “entitlement” for wanting Abrams “to save his ass” in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. In a BuzzFeed report that details the blowback from Abrams’ supporters that even surprised Abrams after various outlets reported that Biden was considering naming Abrams as his vice presidential pick when he announces his candidacy, an Abrams adviser told the outlet that the stories were “particularly exploitative” because “Biden couldn’t be bothered to endorse Stacey in the gubernatorial primary.” “Now he wants her to save his...

Even as the New Zealand government was condemning the Erdogan regime for using mosque shooting footage in its election rallies, the Washington Post decided to give the Islamist tyrant a platform. It was the second time in six months that The Post had given Erdogan a platform. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has prisons full of political dissidents. He has silenced the media and has tortured opponents. His brutal Islamist regime has been described as the world’s biggest jailor of journalists. It’s been estimated that a third of the world’s imprisoned journalists have been locked up by his regime. But that didn’t...

was first elected to the Senate in November 1974, just three months after President Richard M. Nixon resigned. Congress and the nation were both shaped and scarred by the Watergate scandal, by the strain it placed on our democratic institutions, and the mistrust in government that ensued. Those years serve as a reminder that a democracy hidden from the people is no democracy at all. The parallels between then and now are many. In both sagas, a politically motivated theft — one a burglary, the other a hacking — led to an investigation described by the president as a “witch...

Very little was surprising about the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation. For one thing, it wasn’t surprising that Robert S. Mueller III’s probe prompted great commotion — a federal investigation involving a sitting president is a momentous event, and concluding it, a historic moment. And most, but not all, of the details in the attorney general’s letter of “principal conclusions” were unsurprising as well. Let’s start with question of “collusion.” It was never precisely clear what that nonlegal concept meant. If it means what Mueller reasonably took it to mean — an “agreement,” “tacit or express,” with the Russians...

If you are hoping for an industrywide reckoning in the press following the implosion of the Russian collusion news cycle, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Media executives are not just unashamed of how their employees have covered this story for the last two years, they are proud of them. CNN President Jeff Zucker, for example, has defended his network’s disastrously flawed coverage of the allegations that President Trump conspired with the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election, by claiming his reporters are not investigators. This is not a paraphrase.

President Trump has made a lot of ill-advised nominations. But perhaps no single choice could inflict more long-term damage than the one he announced Friday: Stephen Moore, Trump’s pick to join the Federal Reserve Board. Moore’s many economic claims over the years have revealed him to be, shall we say, easily confused. A decade ago, as the Fed was battling deflation (that is, price declines ) during the financial crisis, Moore preposterously fearmongered that hyperinflation (that is, out-of-control price increases ) was nigh: Americans could soon be carting “wheelbarrows full” of cash a la Weimar Germany. Moore has also repeatedly...

Spin, Spin, Spin! The famous Benny Goodman tune was "Sing, Sing, Sing" but one could be forgiven if the Spin tune title comes to mind along with the tune while reading Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's furious and often laughable spin on what is obviously for him a very disappointing Mueller Report. His highly entertaining spin control took place on Sunday in "Six takeaways from Barr’s letter about Mueller’s probe":

“America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach pointed the finger at U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and accused her of blatant anti-Semitism in a public, full-page ad printed in Sunday’s Washington Post just in time for this week’s 2019 American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington DC. Boteach placed Omar’s own anti-Semitic words alongside some of the most anti-Semitic tropes of all time together with a full-length photo of the freshman Congresswoman. He brought along a copy of the attack ad to the AIPAC conference, waving it at anti-AIPAC demonstrators at the Washington Convention Center as they chanted “Shame on you!” at...

AVENATTI then laid out again his threat of harm to Nike, adding that “as soon as this becomes public, I am going to receive calls from all over the country from parents and coaches and friends and all kinds of people – this is always what happens – and they are all going to say I’ve got an email or a text message or – now, 90% of that is going to be bullshit because it’s always bullshit 90% of the time, always, whether it’s R. Kelly or Trump, the list goes on and on – but 10% of it...

Full Title: Trump campaign sends memo to television producers warning about 'credibility' of six Trump critics who it says spread false claims about collusion Trump's re-election campaign sent a memo to television producers on Monday instructing them to "employ basic journalistic standards when booking" six current or former government officials that the campaign said "made outlandish, false claims, without evidence" while on air. The memo names: Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the chair of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency Rep. Adam Schiff,...

So far, so good. President Trump has inflicted immense damage on the rule of law and on our democratic norms, but to date the system — Trump calls it the “deep state,” the rest of us call it constitutional government — has held. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, despite threats, insults and president’s refusal to sit for an interview, completed his work. He racked up 37 indictments, convictions or plea deals (nearly 200 charges) from three Russian companies and other individuals, including the president’s former campaign chief, his former deputy campaign chief, his former national security adviser and his...

Watch in slow motion as Democrats, goaded by the media, conspire to re-elect President Trump: Voters care about the economy and making education and health care affordable. And so Democrats are talking about … abolishing the Electoral College? Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren started the latest distraction at a CNN town hall on Monday. “Get rid of the Electoral College,” she said, neglecting to mention that this has zero chance of occurring in the foreseeable future. The media took it from there. On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Garrett Haake pressed former representative Beto O’Rourke: “Getting rid of the Electoral College: Is that an...

Canadian goaltender Braden Holtby said he will not visit the White House with his Washington Capitals teammates, joining forwards Brett Connolly and Devante Smith-Pelly as players who have declined the invitation to honor the team’s Stanley Cup victory Monday. “I’ve got to stay true to my values, and I’m going to respectfully decline the offer,” Holtby said Friday morning. “In saying that, it’s a tough situation for everyone to be in, to be forced to make a decision of that standing. You’re a team and you want to stick together no matter what, so I hope everyone kind of blows...

I suppose it’s true that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as the Washington Post’s slogan says. But journalism may also die, by morphing into forms that can no longer be described as journalism. Journalism may come to mean a crooked scandal sheet, or high-minded propaganda. Sometimes squalor and self-righteousness are equally disreputable. The Post’s apothegm, somehow off-kilter, with its alliteration and self-importance, was a purposeful bit of branding, designed to claim high ground and to poke a thumb in President Trump’s eye every morning. Such partisan intent detracts from the slogan’s claim to universality. The self-serving implication—the notion that, against the...

President Trump has recently encouraged Jewish Americans to eschew their long-standing affiliation with the Democratic Party — a movement he and others refer to as “Jexodus.” He tweeted out claims that Jews are now leaving the Democrats over the party’s position on Israel. “Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.” Elizabeth Pipko, Jexodus. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019 The president then cited...

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now President Trump’s attorney, shared a misleading video clip on Twitter late Thursday night that has spread on right-wing conspiracy sites claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar took classes on terrorism. In retweeting the video, Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, wrote: “What is she laughing at in recalling her terrorism classes? This represents the future of the Democrat Party? God help us.” A liberal Democrat from Minnesota, Omar is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress last year and the first to wear...