Free Republic

The GOP operative who admitted reaching out to Russian hackers for Hillary Clinton’s emails killed himself days after opening up to a reporter. Peter Smith told the Wall Street Journal in May that he reached out to people he believed were affiliated with the Kremlin to find messages from the Democrat’s private server. The Journal report from late last month, which showed that he had claimed to be working with future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, said Smith died about 10 days after the conversation.

The firm behind the salacious and unsubstantiated Trump dossier is refusing to to cooperate with the Senate Judiciary Committee's request to provide documentation or respond to questions sent from the committee in March about the clients who paid for the dossier that launched the investigation into the administration and its alleged Russian connections. The Republican Chairman of the committee, Senator Charles Grassley, warned Fusion GPS, the firm that compiled the dossier, in March about its obligation "to provide details on the history of the dossier" including the clients who paid for it. The committee also wanted information on Christopher Steele,...

ICYMI: WSJ Editorial: “Trump’s Defining Speech” “The White House description of Donald Trump’s speech Thursday in Warsaw was simply, ‘Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland.’ In truth, Mr. Trump’s remarks were directed at the people of the world. Six months into his first term of office, Mr. Trump finally offered the core of what could become a governing philosophy. It is a determined and affirmative defense of the Western tradition.” Trump’s Defining Speech Editorial Wall Street Journal July 7, 2017 The White House description of Donald Trump’s speech Thursday in Warsaw was simply, “Remarks by President Trump...

So the WSJ et al who have spent the better part of the last 18 months blocking anything positive about Trump, now want Twitter to block Trump?! The Wall Street Journal took to Twitter over the weekend to coyly ask: “When President Trump blocks Twitter followers, does it violate the Constitution?” What else are WSJ journalists drinking in their all-day coffee break caramel infused frappés and lattés?

- Publisher says Google visitors dropped after hardening paywall - Google says ‘first click free’ good for users and publishers After blocking Google users from reading free articles in February, the Wall Street Journal’s subscription business soared, with a fourfold increase in the rate of visitors converting into paying customers. But there was a trade-off: Traffic from Google plummeted 44 percent. -snip- The reason: Google search results are based on an algorithm that scans the internet for free content. After the Journal’s free articles went behind a paywall, Google’s bot only saw the first few paragraphs and started ranking them...

The liberal network shows were all busy Sunday morning pushing accusations and speculation about President Trump and his adviser Jared Kushner. Their discussion was drive by more anonymous sources telling The Washington Post that Kushner tried to set up a backchannel discussion between Trump and the Russians to talk about Syria. CNN even accused the action of being “treasonous.” The hysteria was also present on NBC’s Meet the Press, but theirs was shattered by The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel after she introduced facts to the discussion. “I think we are having a discussion that is absolutely divorced from reality...

- But was her son, Scut, involved? What about his toady, Grover Dill?: Speaking of stories you can’t find, a former Obama official named Evelyn Farkas told Mika Brzezenzski (or however you spell that name) on MSNBC early in March that she and many other Obama officials had indeed participated in an organized effort to circulate raw surveillance intelligence involving members of the Trump Transition Team, and had gladly shared the intel with members of the fake news media, unmasking some American citizens in the process. She told this all to MSNBC gladly, and in a manner that made it...

President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has reportedly told the FBI that he is willing to testify about the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, according to a Wall Street Journal report. ADVERTISEMENT Flynn resigned in February, after it was reported that he misled White House staff on his interactions with Russia and had discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak ahead of President Trump's inauguration. The Journal reported, citing officials familiar with the matter, that the FBI and the House and Senate Intelligence committees that are investigating Russia's attempts to interfere...

White House Back-Pedals on Claim Obama Wiretapped Trump’s Phones Sean Spicer says president used word ‘wiretapped’ in quotes to mean surveillance. By Ted Mann March 13, 2017. White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday back-pedaled on President Donald Trump’s claims that his phone line was ordered tapped by then-President Barack Obama, an allegation of illegality that Mr. Trump recently made on Twitter without providing any evidence. In an animated question-and-answer session with reporters during his regular briefing, Mr. Spicer suggested Mr. Trump had been speaking broadly when he posted

WASHINGTON—At the request of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, language critical of a global climate deal was struck from an executive order that Mr. Trump is planning to sign soon, according to multiple people familiar with the move. Mr. Trump is expected to sign within days at least two executive orders that will begin the process of trying to dismantle former President Barack Obama’s climate and environmental regulations. Mr. Kushner, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, and Ms. Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier...

Some of you might suspect (for some crazy reason probably having to do with your ignorance, racism and homophobia) that these pro-Obamacare "town hall" meetings simultaneously popping up all over the country are somehow being organized by paid agitators. That's dangerously Neanderthalic thinking, my friends. It's a good thing that the j-school geniuses of the Wall Street Journal are here to set you straight with this just-the-facts headline: "America's Rowdy Town Halls: More Organic Than Organized" Bam! That's some real talk, yo! How you like that, haterz? And it's not just the headline. They did their research, bitches. See, they...

SNIP to the meat: The President routinely describes reporting he dislikes as FAKE NEWS. The Administration calls the press “the opposition party,” ridicules news organizations it doesn’t like as business failures, and calls for journalists to be fired. Mr. Trump has called for rewriting libel laws in order to more easily sue the press. This isn’t unprecedented in U.S. history, though you might have to go back to the Administration of John Adams to see something quite like it. And so far the rhetorical salvos haven’t been matched by legal or regulatory action. Maybe they never will be. But the...

We need to make America great again, and for that Donald Trump might be our man. For all the anxiety the White House has caused, brewing constitutional crises at home and anger abroad, Mr. Trump has opened a path to reunify this politically divided nation. A “team of rivals” that transcends party lines, composed of eminent men and women, could rein in the administration. This bipartisan group, preferably endorsed by past U.S. presidents, would be made up of former cabinet members and heads of independent federal agencies. Inspired by the British Shadow Cabinet, it would be structured to mirror the...

The ridiculous scope of the undermining anti-Trump media narrative is growing exponentially more stupid as the content of their “stories” never match the alarmist headlines they are attempting. The latest example from Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is so over-the-top ridiculous, even the Office of the Director of National Intelligence rebuked it publicly. The Wall Street Journal leads with a headline: “Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns”… (there might be a paywall, so we’ll screen grab the lead)

Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker told his reporters Monday the paper would not abandon objectivity in its coverage of President Donald Trump, and directed them to find work somewhere else if they want to adopt a more oppositional tone. “It’s a little irritating when I read that we have been soft on Donald Trump,” he told his reporters and editors, a source at the newsroom meeting told The New York Times. Baker held the meeting ostensibly to have a casual conversation on the editorial direction of the paper, but it was held on the heels of reports...

The Trump administration is exploring ways to break Russia’s military and diplomatic alliance with Iran in a bid to both end the Syrian conflict and bolster the fight against Islamic State, said senior administration, European and Arab officials involved in the policy discussions. The emerging strategy seeks to reconcile President Donald Trump’s seemingly contradictory vows to improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to aggressively challenge the military presence of Iran—one of Moscow’s most critical allies—in the Middle East, these officials say. A senior administration official said the White House doesn’t have any illusions about Russia or see Mr....

NEW YORK—President-elect Donald Trump said that, after conferring with President Barack Obama, he would consider leaving in place certain parts of the Affordable Care Act, an indication of possible compromise after a campaign in which he pledged repeatedly to repeal the 2010 health law. In his first interview since his election earlier this week, Mr. Trump said one priority was moving “quickly” on the president’s signature health initiative, which he argued has become so unworkable and expensive that “you can’t use it.” Yet, Mr. Trump also showed a willingness to preserve at least two provisions of the health law after...

Attorney General Lynch abdicated her duty in the Clinton probes. Fewer than three of 10 Americans trust government to do the right thing always or most of the time, Gallup reports, and the years since 2007 are “the longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years.” The details emerging about the multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton explain a lot about this ebbing public confidence in institutions such as the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. *** Start with Attorney General Loretta Lynch. A cavalcade of former Justice heavyweights are now assailing FBI director James Comey...

Even the Wall Street Journal is now fed up with the biased media coverage of the 2016 Presidential election as revealed by a scathing article written by Kimberly Strassel, a member of their editorial board. As Strassel points out, it's almost impossible to turn on the TV without hearing about Trump's "lewd" comments while coverage of Hillary "uniformly ignores the flurry of bombshells" inherent in the various WikiLeaks, FOIA releases and FBI interviews. If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now...

VAN BUREN, Ark.--To any reporter, it was the kind of story that doesn't come along often in a career--an alleged 1978 sexual assault involving William Jefferson Clinton, then attorney general of Arkansas. From the viewpoint of Juanita Broaddrick, it has been a trial and concern ever since reports began emerging in the 1992 presidential campaign, through the Paula Jones...