Free Republic

Do you know what Obama did in South Africa? You're not going to believe it. It's the biggest disgrace in the history of the U.S. presidency. But the mainstream media won't say a word- it's a total blackout. This is (as Obama would say) a "teachable moment." Ninety-plus percent of President TrumpÂ’s coverage by the U.S. mainstream media is negative. Terribly negative. Horribly negative. Remarkably negative. That same media adores and idolizes former President Obama. The difference in the way they are treated is remarkable. Remember it was Obama who first separated illegal alien parents from children. The media said...

"Join me on Team '18," Barack Obama wrote in a recent fundraising email from his old political group, Organizing for Action. "Every election, every ballot measure, every conversation between now and November ... it all matters." It wasn't much, but the email was one of Obama's few public, political, overtly partisan appeals as the Democratic Party approaches midterm elections that could stop President Trump's agenda and boost Democratic prospects going into 2020. To have an ex-president who remains highly popular with his party sitting on the sidelines cannot be what Democrats hoped. There are reports that Obama plans to campaign...

The human animal seems hard-wired for tribalism, and the ties that bind are shaped by our compelling need to group together, obeying calls for loyalties and exclusions. Some groupings not only contribute to the gratifications of bonding, whether in family, clubs, choirs or loyalty to sports teams, but also provide the glue that holds a community together. But tribes become the "factions" that former President George Washington warned against in his Farewell Address, heightening differences and rivalries that the Founding Fathers hoped to dilute through checks and balances in the three branches of government. In the age of the internet,...

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, an Obama administration appointee, is scheduled to deliver a report this week on DOJ and FBI abuses during the 2016 campaign cycle. Remember: His last investigation of FBI misconduct advised a criminal referral for fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who allegedly lied to federal investigators. McCabe and at least a half-dozen other FBI employees quit, retired, were fired or were reassigned as a result of fallout from the politicization of the FBI. Yet, as Barack Obama left office, his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, strangely boasted that the Obama administration "has...

Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory. “What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine. He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.” SNIP--- Mr. Rhodes describes the reaction of foreign leaders. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of...

If the Justice Department and FBI are, as we've been told incessantly over the past year, not merely patriots but consummate professionals incapable of being distracted by partisanship or petty Washington intrigues, why are Donald Trump's antagonists freaking out over the fact that an inspector general will assess whether political motivation tainted an investigation into the president's campaign? The American people should get a full accounting of what transpired during 2016. Isn't that what we've been hearing since the election? You believe President Trump is corrupt. We get it. But surely anyone who alleges to be concerned about the sanctity...

"F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims," read the headline on a lengthy New York Times story May 18. "The Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016," read a story in the May 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal. So much for those who dismissed charges of Obama administration infiltration of Donald Trump's campaign as paranoid fantasy. Defenders of the Obama intelligence and law enforcement apparat have had to fall back on the argument that this infiltration was...

This is a story of priorities and hypocrisy, brought to us by a president who saved the Union and was murdered for it, and a president whose policies and malevolence damaged both the nation and the world, and who is being rewarded for it. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation is in trouble. It is auctioning off non-Lincoln related artifacts in an effort to pay back a loan that is coming due. You see, the Lincoln Library doesn’t make a lot of money or attract enough major donors to operate. This is odd, considering President Lincoln is a “favorite” president...

RUSH: I now know who the spy is. I know now know who the FBI was running in the Trump campaign. I don’t think I’m gonna give you the name of the spy, but I’m gonna tell you everything the spy has done. It is the most amazing story. It is a story of entrapment. When you hear this, it’s gonna infuriate you. You’re gonna realize how utterly phony this entire investigation of Donald Trump is. It’s phonier than you even realize now. And there is a CliffsNotes version of this, and there is the intricate detailed version of this....

RUSH: I have spent considerable time detailing and explaining how the Obama administration spied on domestic opponents of the Iran deal and that that was the forerunner of the attempt to spy on Trump transition and campaign people, and how the Obama administration used a new alliance between intelligence community people and media to advance the mythology and lies about the Iran deal. And when they saw how easy it was to compromise the media in pushing the phony Iran deal narrative of the Obama administration, that essentially became the trial run for what we are going through now with...

One would have thought that once President Obama left office his charade of never doing anything illegal or having a smidgen of corruption would be exposed. Yet nearly 18 months later, he has found new enablers to continue his destructive policies that have no basis in law. This past week reiterated that situation. As I have defined before, once Obama lost the majorities in the House and Senate in January 2011, he did not abandon his desire to fundamentally remake our country. He just adopted a new strategy. With the help of political appointees who were true believers and career...

Former president Barack Obama is a man who exhibits selective outrage based upon how a tragedy can benefit advancing the utopian vision.  If an event includes changing "the world as it is" into the world Obama thinks it "should be," the former president will commend whomever he has to. With that in mind, recently, via a piece written for Time magazine entitled "Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin, David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez and Alex Wind," Obama praised the five Parkland student-activists who made Time's 100 Most Influential People list.The former president wrote, "America's response to mass shootings has long followed a predictable pattern."  Obama's article...

Former President Barack Obama (I love the adjective preceding his title) made some comments at the recent Global Opinion Leaders Summit in Japan that I can't let slide, so please forgive me. "It used to be that the two political parties in the United States would disagree but there was a common base line of facts and a set of norms in terms of political behavior that were followed. ... You could have a disagreement, but basic things got done. ... And some of the reason for that is ... it used to be that in the United States, there...

Former President Barack Obama says he aspires to create "a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas" who will pick up the baton in what he describes as the "relay race that is human progress." At a conference in Japan on Sunday, the former president spoke about how he hopes the Obama Foundation, a nonprofit formed in January 2014, will help achieve his post-presidential aims. "After I left office, what I realized is that the Obama Foundation could potentially create a platform for young, up-and-coming leaders, both in the United States and all around the world to come together, meet...

Former President Barack Obama talked about his future plans for his post-presidency life at a conference Sunday in Japan, addressing how he might shape "a million" new, young leaders in his mold. The wide-ranging discussion repeatedly touched on the Obama Foundation's efforts to engage the digital space to help young people in the U.S. and across the world get connected. "If I could do that effectively, then -- you know -- I would create a hundred or a thousand or a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas," Obama said. "Or, the next group of people who could take that...

RUSH: I want you to hear a couple sound bites from 2015. There was an event called the Personal Democracy Forum, and a woman named Carol Davidsen spoke. She was a high-ranking Obama campaign official in 2012. She was at Rentrak [Corporation], the Vice President of Political Technology. I want you to just listen to this. She is describing what we talked about yesterday. When Obama and the Democrats were basically Hoovering every bit of data Facebook had, they were praised! The New York Times… We had a great caller reminded me of this yesterday. In June of 2013, the...

RUSH: Auntie Maxine, who’s the queen of the resistance. She was on a TV show called Washington Watch with Roland Martin. It’s on some network called TV One. And he said to Maxine, “The reality is like anything else, you’d better get what you can while he’s there, because look, come 2016…” They’re talking about Obama, and they’re talking about African-Americans and other minorities. “Hey, you better reach in and grab everything you can while Obama’s there, because after 2016, Obama’s gone.” Now, if I may make a brief departure here, in less than a year, Donald Trump has done...

RUSH: When we left the program yesterday, the bridge at Florida International University had collapsed only moments ago. There was still some confusion being reported. The way it was being reported, I thought the bridge was open. The bridge wasn’t open. The span had been put in place on Saturday. The bridge not supposed to open ’til early next year. At any rate, the left has already found a way to politicize this. The left has already found a way to incorporate the name Donald Trump into the assignation or the assignment of blame. When, in fact, the culprit here...

Why are people with foreign policy experience on North Korea and elsewhere referred to as "experts" when they so often fail to achieve their goals? The media, Democrats, and supposed experts on North Korea are wringing their hands about President Trump's planned meeting with the North Korean dictator. They say that Trump doesn't know what he is doing and that people at the State Department that have expertise are gone. I always have trouble with all the people who are called experts because they have had so little success at what they supposedly are expert about. For the last 25...

Upon hearing that former President Barack Obama recently boasted that he had a scandal-free administration, my first thought after regaining my faculties was: How can I possibly cram all the evidence refuting this in a little bitty column? Then I read that what he actually said was, "We didn't have a scandal that embarrassed us." At first blush, that sounds better, right? Because I assume he doesn't mean he's incapable of being embarrassed. After a little more thought, though, it occurred to me that this construction just highlights the real reason he has apparently deluded himself into thinking he served...