Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's defense failed him at the opening of his Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had one job. He just had to collect 51 votes for the trial rules he had written, in close consultation with White House officials, to deliver Trump an acquittal quickly, quietly and with as few surprises as possible. He couldn't do it. Fellow Republicans balked at his plan so late in the game — moments before the start of the trial — that he had to order up handwritten changes sought by Democrats just to secure...

Ron Reagan Goes Scorched Earth On 'Traitor' Trump: My Dad Wouldn't Have Voted For Him Ronald Reagan’s son lacerated Donald Trump in a scathing interview with The Daily Beast published Friday, saying his late father never would have voted for Trump. “He would have been embarrassed and ashamed that a president of the United States was as incompetent and traitorous as the man occupying the White House now,” said Ron Reagan, 61. “He’s a disgrace to the office of the presidency.” Reagan, speaking to the Beast from Italy, where he lives half the year, said if his father were alive...

If decent people working in mainstream American media want to know why many Americans do not trust them and are willing to use the term "fake news" to describe the mainstream media, I offer one of the most glaring examples of a lie in my lifetime. Last week, Newsweek headlined the following: "Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank: 'I Don't Get My Wisdom From Teenagers.'" Now, imagine how that must have struck any reader not familiar with the "conservative radio host" or with what he actually said. "Ridicule Anne Frank" -- what kind of terrible human being would do that?...

ornographic magazine Hustler sent Christmas cards to members of Congress over the holidays that depicted a cartoon of President Trump being shot dead. The card showed the smiling shooter holding a smoking handgun up in the air as onlookers smiled and cheered over Trump's bleeding corpse. The back of the card shows the shooter with a speech bubble next to him that reads: "I just shot Donald Trump on Fifth Avenue and no one arrested me." The line is a reference to Trump's comment during the 2016 presidential campaign, in which he bragged that "I could stand in the middle...

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe apologized to an FBI investigator after changing his story regarding a leak to the media in October 2016, according to documents released Tuesday. McCabe was interviewed May 9, 2017, the same day James Comey was fired as FBI director, regarding two separate leaks to the media. During the interview, FBI agents also asked McCabe whether he knew how FBI information wound up in an Oct. 23, 2016, Wall Street Journal article about an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. McCabe said during that sit-down he did not know how the Journal story came about, but...

If you’re a law enforcement official who has more allegiance to ideology than to the law or to the country, where does that get you? For former FBI analyst Mark Tolson, the answer is jail — however briefly. Tolson is best-known — if he’s known at all — as the man who broke into a pro-Trump operative’s email account in October 2018, took screen-shots of some of the messages, then sent images to a reporter and offered the reporter the password, according to Politico. The unnamed member of the media turned down the opportunity. Tolson, 60, said he did it...

A former Navy SEAL accused of war crimes by his colleagues denounced videos on Friday depicting their confessions painting him as “evil” and out of control. The New York Times published video segments of Naval Criminal Investigative Service interviews with Special Operators 1st Class Craig Miller, Joshua Vriens, and Corey Scott on Friday, wherein they alleged Gallagher shot at civilians and killed an injured ISIS fighter. Gallagher and his lawyer, Tim Parlatore, told the Washington Examiner the videos have been taken out of context and are an attempt to relitigate Gallagher’s case in the court of public opinion. “My first...

British ex-spy Christopher Steele spread other accusations against President Trump not included in his well-publicized election dossier, according to the Justice Department’s recent report on FBI misconduct. The report by Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz shows at least three little-noticed Steele assertions that went to Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau’s Trump probe headquarters. And like 13 of his dossier’s accusations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, those three didn’t pan out either. The three allegations had to do with supposed Trump campaign cash from Moscow via Azerbaijan, a Russian intelligence officer, and a purported intervention by Russian...

Christianity Today officially jumped the shark when they called for the impeachment of President Trump.  Why were they not advocating for the same thing during the Obama years? When I voted for Donald Trump, my vote was not for a Sunday School Teacher but rather for the person who would keep my wife, family, and nation safe.  We had a Sunday School teacher named Jimmy Carter as President and yet were much better off as a nation under Ronald Reagan, a divorced man (albeit an evangelical Christian himself).  Would I like a Sunday School teacher?  Absolutely but as president, I...

Eric Holder and Wapo threaten U.S. Attorney John Durham for looking into spygate We’ve all heard the joke. A thuggish looking guy walks into a business he is trying to shakedown and says, “Nice little store you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Wink, wink. The message is crystal clear; do what the bully wants or else something really bad is going to happen. This scene has now played out in real life. In a so-called “news” article in the Washington Post recently, “Experts fear Durham’s Reputation at Risk in FBI Probe,” the newsletter for...

WASHINGTON — About 90 minutes after President Trump held a controversial telephone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in July, the White House budget office ordered the Pentagon to suspend all military aid that Congress had allocated to Ukraine, according to emails released by the Pentagon late Friday. A budget official, Michael Duffey, also told the Pentagon to keep quiet about the aid freeze because of the “sensitive nature of the request,” according to a message dated July 25. An earlier email that Mr. Duffey sent to the Pentagon comptroller suggested that Mr. Trump began asking aides about $250...

When The Washington Post infamously posted the motto "Democracy Dies in Darkness" on its masthead after Donald Trump was elected, it was implicit -- The Post will deny it -- that Trump is the enemy of democracy, and of "light" or transparency. So it was sadly poetic that after the House Democrats rammed through such an incredibly partisan impeachment vote -- without a single Republican voting aye -- Washington Post reporter Rachael Bade posted a photograph on Twitter of her and her colleagues celebrating with beers. Bade tweeted: "Merry Impeachmas from the WaPo team! @pkcapitol is buying." After it became...

‘So wrong in so many ways” is how Gordon Wood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution, characterized the New York Times’s “1619 Project.” James McPherson, dean of Civil War historians and another Pulitzer winner, said the Times presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” Even more surprising than the criticism from these generally liberal historians was where the interviews appeared: on the World Socialist Web Site, run by the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party. The “1619 Project” was launched in August with a 100-page spread in the Times’s Sunday magazine. It intends to “reframe...

The nation's leading newspapers have asserted their role as the most important "independent fact-checkers" in politics. So why do they fail to fact-check their own interviewees? On Twitter, Jeryl Bier noted The New York Times had to add an embarrassing correction to a two-month old story on Friday. Reporter Trip Gabriel did an entire story on a Trump voter iin Erie, Pennsylvania changing his mind....except records showed the man never voted. The original story on October 7 began: "Mark Graham, a real estate appraiser in this faded manufacturing hub, sat with friends at a gym named FitnessU on the morning...

The signers are law professors and other academics from universities across the country, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan and many others. The open letter was published online Friday by the nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy.

When it comes to Twitter, Chris Evans has no problem sharing his feelings on the state of the union. In fact, the Avengers alum has more 13 million followers and his tweets tend to incite as much engagement as the president of the United States, who just happens to be one of the erstwhile Captain America’s favorite targets. Evans, who played Cap in 11 films (including four cameos) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe dating back to 2012, is known for getting political on the platform — in addition to President Donald Trump, Evans has been outspoken about former Ku Klux...

More snark against our wonderful and beautiful First Lady from the usual Big Mike worshipping fashion police.

President Donald Trump mocked Newsweek after they reported Thursday he spent Thanksgiving golfing and tweeting. In fact, the president was secretly traveling to Afghanistan to visit deployed American troops. “I thought Newsweek was out of business?” Trump wrote on Twitter, sharing a screenshot of the article and photos of him with the troops in Afghanistan posted by his son Donald Trump Jr. I thought Newsweek was out of business? https://t.co/3ro4eSJloo — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2019 “Fake news gonna fake!” Trump Jr. wrote. The Newsweek story, first published at 10:16 a.m., was later updated to reflect the president’s...

Billionaire "news" media mogul Michael Bloomberg is running for president. How will his Bloomberg News empire cover this? Bloomberg News posted an article touting how much trouble President Donald Trump is in. It lustily listed all his scandals: "Lawmakers and prosecutors are looking at whether he abused the powers of the presidency, obstructed an investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign, engaged in fraudulent business practices, violated the emoluments clauses of the Constitution and defamed women by saying they lied about alleged sexual assaults." That's how they cover Trump. How will they cover Bloomberg? Get ready. Bloomberg has a...

Media bias at its worst: Reuters removes story, instead of correcting it, after realizing they had falsely blamed Trump for something that Obama did Reuters recently reported the following. And please keep in mind that I am quoting the article in its entirety:Story on U.N. study on child detentions withdrawnNovember 18, 2019GENEVA (Reuters) – A Nov. 18 story headlined “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention -U.N. study” is withdrawn. The United Nations issued a statement on Nov. 19 saying the number was not current but was for the year 2015. No replacement story will be issued.Why did Reuters...