Free Republic

It’s never good for a sitting president heading into reelection to be compared to Jimmy Carter. In 1980, with the country in an economic and diplomatic crisis, the beleaguered former president took on Ronald Reagan, then considered a weak challenger, and won only six states. Now as 2020 nears, President Trump is finding himself constantly behind Democrats in reelection polls and the latest has compared the Republican to Carter. “Perhaps the closest analogy to Trump in terms of approval ratings is Jimmy Carter, whose average approval rating for his term was 45 percent,” said a survey from the Wason Center...

From adding judges to... foreign policy,... trade,... immigration,... defense spending, and China, Trump added several more achievements he will tout when he hosts his next campaign rally, standing in front of a 2020 “Promises Kept” sign........."It was one of his best weeks yet," said a key White House adviser.......“There is one world where the mainstream media is covering impeachment, but there is another world where Trump is racking up a myriad of accomplishments! Added to the list of accomplishments this week: -An agreement on a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal. -A new budget including more than $1.3 billion for a border...

President Trump has ratched up his claim that the Obama White House spied on his 2016 campaign, charging in a new book that it was a “treasonous” act by the former Democratic president. “What they did was treasonous, OK? It was treasonous,” he told author Doug Wead for his upcoming book, "Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency." “The interesting thing out of all of this is that we caught them spying on the election. They were spying on my campaign. So you know? What is that all about?” said Trump. “I have never ever said this,...

Nearly 1-in-4 foreign-born immigrants in the United States are here illegally, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. An estimated 10.5 million are “unauthorized immigrants,” said the analysis from Pew Research Center. ---Maps and Charts in the Article---

The Heritage Foundation, the nation’s top conservative think tank, just broke a fundraising record to fight the growing wave of socialism and act on a new strategic plan to expand its policy influence on Capitol Hill and inside the administration. The Washington-based institution told Secrets that the 250 who attended the Annual Leadership Conference in Orange County, Calif., last weekend donated $14.2 million, the most ever at the conference. Donors said that they were growing concerned about the Democrats’ lurch further Left to back an agenda conservatives view as socialist and are eager for Heritage to challenge and even block...

Complaints from media critics of the Trump administration prompted a leading hostage rights group to withdraw its historic “Freedom Award” to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his, and President Trump’s, successful efforts to free political prisoners around the world. The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, named for the journalist beheaded in 2014 by ISIS forces, had announced that at its dinner Tuesday night at the National Press Club Pompeo would receive the “2019 Foley American Hostage Freedom Award.” The award was to recognize Pompeo and the administration’s focus on freeing Americans held prisoners around the world, a campaign that...

... At Rasmussen Reports, which was the most accurate 2016 pollster, questions on Trump often see a spike in those who check "don't know." Francis Coombs, Rasmussen managing editor, said, "In most surveys, you generally get 4 or 5 percent who say they are undecided, but if you ask about a controversial issue, particularly one involving Trump, that figure often jumps to the high teens — 17 percent or 18 percent. That tells me that a lot of those people agree with the president but just aren't going to say it out loud."

The Trump administration’s often overlooked list of achievements has surpassed those of former President Reagan at this time and more than doubled since the last tally of accomplishments after his first year in office, giving President Trump a solid platform to run for reelection on. As Trump nears the two-year mark of his historic election and conducts political rallies around the country during which he talks up his wins in hopes it will energize Republican voters, the administration has counted up 289 accomplishments in 18 categories, capped by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. They include 173...

Sign up for Washington Secrets Should President Trump need a model to use to track down leakers inside his administration like the “anonymous” insider who challenged his authority in a New York Times op-ed, he need go no further back than the Obama administration that prosecuted leakers and shutout the media. According to reports at the time from even New York Times journalists, no administration was tougher on leakers and punishing to the media than Obama’s, a saga reinforced by reporters who have called Trump’s team more forthcoming. Criticism of Obama’s attacks on the media and leakers did not just...

Confident talk in Washington that swaggering Republicans will fatten their majority in the Senate to a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the fall elections is shifting to nail-biting whispers the Democrats could take charge and install Sen. Chuck Schumer as leader. Already fretting odds that the House will turn Democratic and that potential Speaker Nancy Pelosi will open impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a path to a Democratic Senate is beginning to emerge based on historical statistics and the anti-Trump sentiment in some areas of the country. Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato...

President Trump’s economic architect, who is promoting the phrase “MAGANOMICS,” believes that the impact of the 2017 tax cuts has yet to hit and when it does “things could get even better.” Budget chief Mick Mulvaney told an economic group,... “I actually think things could get even better because I don’t think you’ve seen the full impact of the tax bill into the overall economy.” Many economists, previewing the release of the second quarter growth figure Friday, are predicting it will top 4 percent. “Everything is moving in the right direction, moving toward a healthy American economy again,” he told...

The centrist Bipartisan Policy Center on Tuesday released a Luntz Global survey that revealed a conservative shift in the public’s view of immigration reform. Key findings directly from the report: ..Americans support the construction of a border wall, they also believe that technology and personnel, as well as border barriers, are critical to improving the nation’s border security. ..Voters strongly believe that people living illegally in the United States should have a path to legal status, but it shouldn’t be ‘for free.’ ..Concerns were highest over immigrants competing with U.S. citizens for government benefits and lower on job competition. ..Nearly...

Confidence that African Americans, Asians and Hispanics have in their personal finances improving over the next four years should be enough to help GOP leaders retain control of Congress in the midterm elections and reelect President Trump, according to a new survey. While generally not fans of the president, the three key groups have a good feeling about their future and that should temper their concerns at the polls, said the survey from Zogby Analytics. “Even though President Trump receives little support from these groups, things might be going just good enough economically that he can scrap enough support from...

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 2016 presidential runner up, raised more than $1 million this week off an appeal critical of President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the U.S.-Mexico border and now she is giving it to pro-immigrant and pro-asylum groups protesting the president. In an email, she also urged supporters to hold or attend protest rallies against Trump. Her email said: Since I reached out to ask this community to step up and support the groups working to protect and reunite families that have been separated at the border, you’ve raised more than $1 million dollars that will be split between...

The Trump administration is showing no signs of slowing its slashing of Obama-era regulations, beating their plans to cut two for every new rule and saving more than double what was hoped for, according to a new report. “The Trump administration is making substantial deregulatory progress,” said a new report from American Action Forum....The administration is prioritizing deregulation, and it is set 'to double' its goals of a two-for-one deregulatory-to-regulatory ratio and $686.6 million in net savings,” said the report from forum experts Dan Bosch, director of regulatory policy, and Dan Goldbeck, a senior analyst. When he came to office,...

This week’s White House Report Card finds that President Trump had another eventful week with several victories and, of course, more controversy over the Russia probe. He fulfilled two major campaign promises, shifting the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and he went even further than former President Reagan's pledge to conservatives in curbing taxpayer funding of clinics that provide abortion. Along the way his team won Senate support for Gina Haspel, the first woman approved to run the CIA, used his new legal team headed by Rudy Giuliani to muck up the Russia probe, broke bread with Democrats on...

The companies have credited the tax changes for plans to offer bonuses of up to $3,000, increases in retirement plans, wage hikes and even adoption benefits. The tax watchdog group Americans for Tax Reform, headed by Grover Norquist, has been keeping the most updated list of companies offering benefits and told Secrets that it had crossed the 250 mark. ....What’s more, many more companies are offering employee benefits but are just now passing along their information

Americans see more political bias in news than ever, and nearly seven-in-10 blame media owners for influencing the ways stories are reported, according to the latest failing report card on the nation’s news business. According to “American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy,” a new report from Gallup and the Knight Foundation, the percentage of Americans who see a great deal of political bias in stories has nearly doubled since 1989. Currently, 45 percent see “a great deal” of political bias, said the report, according to an analysis by the Nieman Lab. Maybe worse, said Nieman: “Less than half of Americans...

The Environmental Protection Agency, seen by President Trump as a bloated bureaucratic whale, is on schedule to fulfill his promise to cut its staff nearly in half by the end of his first term, according to officials. The EPA Tuesday provided to Secrets its first year staff cutting results which show that the agency is below levels last seen during former President Reagan’s administration. And if just those slated to retire by early 2021 leave, Administrator Scott Pruitt and his team will have reduced a staff of nearly 15,000, to below 8,000, or a cut of 47 percent. “We’re proud...

President Trump became the first national leader to call for protecting the U.S electric and communications grid against an electromagnetic attack like one practiced in North Korea. Deep in his new national security strategy released this week, he made good on a campaign promise to move quickly to make the fixes that proponents have long called for. Two of the chief advocates, William R. Graham and Peter Vincent Pry, executives of the nation’s first Congressional EMP Commission, said in a statement, “President Trump understands, even if everyone in his administration does not, that ‘strategic stability’ and ‘longstanding strategic relationships with...