Free Republic

Eleven minutes into the June 27 presidential debate, CNN anchor Dana Bash slipped a note to her colleague Jake Tapper after President Biden gave a rambling, incoherent answer. "He just lost the election," she wrote The event at the network's Atlanta studios — recounted in Tapper's and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson's new book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" — turned out to be the most consequential presidential debate in history

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are seemingly at odds amid a U.S. truce with Houthis in Yemen and the President seeking to peacefully negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran without plunging the United States into another endless war. According to Axios, Trump met with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in private on Thursday to discuss upcoming nuclear talks with Iran and Israel’s Gaza campaign. Dremer also met with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates on...

Chuck Todd scoffed at the premise that the media failed to adequately cover the decline of former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election. Speaking with Chris Cillizza on his Substack channel Monday, Todd — the former moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press — rejected the idea that media outlets dropped the ball and did not question whether Biden’s cognitive function was sufficient to run the country for another four years. “This is not a media failure,” Todd said. “This was a failure of the Democratic party. And the virtue signaling that some people have done to try to...

The FBI's arrest of a Wisconsin judge shocked the establishment. But it's exactly the kind of escalation the MAGA base has been agitating for. "This is not the time for summer soldiers or sunshine patriots," MAGA podcaster Jack Posobiec told Axios, invoking founding father Thomas Paine. Why it matters: Friday's arrest of Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan, on charges of obstructing an immigration arrest, is a stunning escalation of President Trump's battles with political opponents.

The U.S. expects Ukraine's response Wednesday to a peace framework that includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and unofficial recognition of Russian control of nearly all areas occupied since the 2022 invasion, sources with direct knowledge of the proposal tell Axios. -snip- What Russia gets under Trump's proposal "De jure" U.S. recognition of Russian control in Crimea. "De-facto recognition" of the Russia's occupation of nearly all of Luhansk oblast and the occupied portions of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. A promise that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. The text notes that Ukraine could become part...

... What to watch: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he is staying neutral, rather than banding with leadership to back his Texas colleague. "Both John and Ken are friends of mine," Cruz told reporters on Wednesday. "I have worked closely with both of them. I respect them both and I trust the voters of Texas to make that decision."

"We're going to give them a stipend, we're going to give them some money and a plane ticket, and then we're going to work with them if they're good," Trump told Fox Noticias' Rachel Campos-Duffy. "We're going to work with them to get them back as quickly as we can." While Trump said details are still being planned for the program, he wants to make it "comfortable" for people. "We want our great people to stay," he said.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are cozier than ever, despite White House concerns about their relationship. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night that Lewandowski is now working as a 'special government employee' under Noem at the Department of Homeland Security. Lewandowski had initially wanted to serve as Noem's chief of staff, but President Donald Trump and his top advisers reportedly felt 'uncomfortable' with the optics of such a placement. The president and Lewandowski settled on him becoming a special government employee to DHS so the pair would be more removed...

File this one under "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." The liberal media has been leading the charge against the Trump tariffs. So what happens when Trump heeds the warning signs and pulls back? Does the MSM applaud his statesmanship, his courage in changing course given changed circumstances? C'mon—of course not. This is the liberal media, after all. Get the rest of the story and view the video here. Thus, on today's Morning Joe, Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei, purporting to explain Trump's change of direction, declared: "Make no mistake: he panicked."

President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff will lead the U.S. delegation for nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday in Oman, two sources familiar with the plan tell Axios. -snip- So far, there have only been negotiations about the negotiations — which don't yet seem to be resolved. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, whom Iranian press reports say will be Iran's chief negotiator, insisted the talks would be "indirect" — with Omani mediators passing messages between the sides. Trump insisted the talks would be "direct." Two U.S. officials told Axios that is indeed the plan. Whatever the format, the stakes are clear....

The formula used by the Trump administration to levy reciprocal tariffs contains a serious math error that over-inflates the impact by about a factor of four, economists at the American Enterprise Institute said. Why it matters: The conservative think tank says the error led to tariff rates massively higher than they should have been to achieve the goals the administration sought.

The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson decided to co-author a book about what had led the Democratic party to defeat, with a focus on former President Joe Biden. The deeply sourced reporters found what they call a “cover-up” of the former president’s “serious decline.” The resulting book, titled “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” is coming out on May 20. The book’s publisher, Penguin Press, announced the project on Wednesday. “What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run...

VIDEO

One of the surprises out of Wednesday's big tariffs announcement was that the Trump administration used a surprisingly simplistic approach to calculating these much-hyped reciprocal tariffs. Why it matters: This was not a finely tuned set of import taxes calibrated to exert pressure on trading partners to adjust specific policies with which the U.S. has grievances. Rather, it was some simple arithmetic, based on overall trade data, that became the justification for the most sweeping U.S. duties in generations — a trade-weighted 22.5% tariff, per the Yale Budget Lab, up from around 2.4% last year. It implies fewer off-ramps for...

President Donald Trump has fired several members of his National Security Council team. DailyMail.com confirmed an Axios report released Thursday morning. The dismissals come after National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat where top administration officials were discussing an attack on the Houthis in Yemen. Trump has publicly supported Waltz, a former Florida congressman, in the aftermath of Signalgate, despite some White House insiders labeling him a 'f***ing idiot.' However The New York Times reported Thursday morning that far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office on Wednesday and pressed...

One country that did not feature on Donald Trump's list of tariffs on US trade partners was Russia. US outlet Axios quoted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as saying this was because existing US sanctions on Russia "preclude any meaningful trade" and noting that Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were also not included. However, nations with even less trade with the US - such as Syria, which exported $11m of products last year according to UN data quoted by Trading Economics - were on the list. The US imposed large-scale sanctions on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine...

Top Democrats tell us their party is in its deepest hole in nearly 50 years — and they fear things could actually get worse:

The Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn't apply, two senior officials tell Axios. Why it matters: The administration's decision to defy a federal judge's order is exceedingly rare and highly controversial. "Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis," national security attorney Mark S. Zaid, a Trump critic, wrote on X, adding that Trump could ultimately get impeached. The White House welcomes that fight. "This is headed...

President Trump said Monday he will "lead the charge" to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) for his refusal to support Republicans' government funding bill.

Florida's next attorney general could be the ex-congressman who almost became President Trump's U.S. attorney general: Matt Gaetz. Why it matters: Despite the intense controversy he generated before withdrawing his nomination to be in Trump's Cabinet, Gaetz still has strong name ID and is well-liked enough among Florida's GOP base to be a formidable candidate. In a hypothetical primary matchup against Attorney General James Uthmeier, Gaetz was favored 39%-21%, according to a recent survey of likely Republican voters by Tony Fabrizio, one of the nation's top pollsters who works for Donald Trump and several GOP clients. Zoom in: There's already...