Free Republic

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO - Before Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and other prominent conservatives started talking about their city, the volunteers and leadership at St. Vincent de Paul - a Catholic social services nonprofit serving the broader community and Haitian immigrants - never felt the need for the state's Department of Public Safety to visit their welcome center, to brief the staff on emergency and worst-case-scenario protocols. That all changed earlier this month, according to Casey Rollins, executive director of the Springfield District Council of St. Vincent de Paul. On Thursday, when Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine visited their building, he brought...

Donald Trump’s comments on Wednesday questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is Black were not an off-the-cuff expression of racism, but part of a broader campaign strategy that Trump and many of his key lieutenants plan to make a heavy focus of their final three-month sprint to retake the White House.Asked on Wednesday about Republicans accusing Harris of being a “DEI hire” or “DEI candidate,” Trump responded by questioning Harris’ racial identity. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened...

After a year of getting roundly humiliated by Donald Trump and failing to unseat him as the leader of the Republican Party, Ron DeSantis finally dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump’s bid to reclaim the White House. But while the former president publicly retired his “DeSanctimonious” nickname, Trump has privately made clear over the past two weeks that he’s not ready to let go of his grudge against the Florida governor and former ally. One of the sources, who has spoken to the ex-president about this topic recently, bluntly characterizes Trump’s attitude on DeSantis’ future as wanting to...

Donald Trump wanted to pull the United States out of NATO during his first term, but was repeatedly talked out of it by senior administration officials. For a possible second term in the White House, the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner is already discussing how he could actually get it done, if his demands aren’t met by NATO. He and his policy-wonk allies are also gaming out how he could dramatically wind down American involvement to merely a “standby” position in NATO, in Trump’s own words. When the former president has privately discussed the United States’ role in the transatlantic military...

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation appears to be zeroing in on Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-theory-obsessed lawyer who was a key figure in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On Monday, Bernie Kerik — a longtime Rudy Giuliani associate and a Trump ally who worked on the Giuliani-led legal team challenging Trump’s 2020 defeat — sat with special counsel investigators for a roughly four-and-a-half-hour interview, according to his lawyer Tim Parlatore. (Parlatore previously served as a top attorney to Trump.) “Based on the contents of their questions, and my understanding of criminal law, the main individual who was discussed...

IN HIS FINAL days in the White House, Donald Trump told top advisers he needed to preserve certain Russia-related documents to keep his enemies from destroying them. The documents related to the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and alleged collusion with Trump’s campaign. At the end of his presidency, Trump and his team pushed to declassify these so-called “Russiagate” documents, believing they would expose a “Deep State” plot against him. According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation and another source briefed on the matter, Trump told several people working in and outside the White House that...

Donald Trump in recent months has been telling confidants that he may launch his 2024 presidential campaign early — and that he’s considering launching it in Florida to stick it to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump has kicked around staging a large, flashy launch rally (with fireworks, of course) that would announce his White House bid before the 2022 midterm elections, according to three sources familiar with the matter. People who’ve spoken to Trump say that one reason he’s eying the Sunshine State is to assert his dominance over an ascendant DeSantis, who — if they both run in 2024 —...

To his rally-goers, Donald Trump openly craves a 2020 showdown with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), salivating at the prospect of getting to run against an elderly, self-declared democratic socialist. But in private, his view of a potential run against the senator is a lot more complex and less swaggeringly self-assured. Those around the president say he’s been of two minds when the topic of facing Sanders in 2020 comes up. While he sees the senator as a vulnerable opponent, he also has offered begrudging respect for his political acumen. Trump will—sometimes unprompted—bring up Sanders’ own working-class support, and acknowledge that...

The far-left Daily Beast spread the fake news Wednesday that a “white nationalist” had been a guest at the White House. After informing readers that the leader of “a white nationalist group … visited the White House on Wednesday,” the Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer then claimed he had been a White House guest. According to the Beast’s “three sources,” who are supposedly “familiar with how the Trump White House operates,” readers are told that the only way this white nationalist could have had his picture taken “directly in front of the White House’s south front” is if...

Omarosa Manigault is no longer at the Trump White House, but she was apparently a trainwreck, she secretly recorded conversations, including in the Situation Room, and has accused President Trump of being mental diminished because of this soda habit. In truth, liberals would eat this up. I’m sure a few are, but the source is Omarosa. That’s the issue. Even liberal outlets, like Slate, along with a host of media figures unfriendly to the president have torched Omarosa’s credibility. Yet, here we are with the racism stuff again. Omarosa has accused Trump of being racistand apparently there’s an infamous tape,...

On Saturday, the National Policy Institute, a white-supremacist (though its adherents would prefer "race realists" or something more sanitized) think tank led by Richard Spencer, hosted its conference in the atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building. It's a building that’s just a pebble's throw away from the White House (current home of the first black president of the United States, and the house that Donald Trump, a noted birther and a white-nationalist-supported incoming leader of the free world, is about to redecorate), and also a quick walking distance from Trump's newly opened hotel in DC. The conference, headlined by leading...

Trump's most passionate worshipper thinks he was sent from Heaven, and has blanketed her social media accounts with pro-Trump, anti-establishment messages. “I’M HISPANIC AND I VOTE FOR MR. TRUMP! VOTE FOR MR. TRUMP! YES, MR. TRUMP! WE LOVE YOU! WE LOVE YOU ALL THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE!” That was the resounding, loud endorsement given by Myriam Witcher, a devout Trump fan who was invited on-stage by the Republican presidential frontrunner during a Las Vegas rally on Thursday. Witcher, a Colombian immigrant, was picked out of the crowd after Trump spotted her flaunting a copy of the issue of...

".....The reform-minded Trump of decades past is a far more attractive figure than his current incarnation, at least in the eyes of the pro-legalization advocates of today. “Well, I certainly think he had it right in 1990, and what he said then actually seemed to understand the situation,” David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Beast. “My sense is that looking for consistent philosophy or even policies in Donald Trump’s statements is a pretty fruitless exercise.” Boaz also pointed out that Trump recently voiced his support for medical marijuana, and that when asked about...

And the bells chimed for victory at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. The so-called War on Christmas, says overpaid bloviator Bill O’Reilly, has been won by his god-fearing, flag-flourishing side. “We won the war,” the Fox News personality proclaimed last week. “I have to confess, you know, I’m like a guerrilla fighter in the War on Christmas…We did this War on Christmas thing for about 10 years. This is the first year I didn’t get one call or letter saying, ‘This store has said it won’t say [“Merry Christmas”].’” Hallelujah.