Free Republic

CNN host Dana Bash said Friday on “The Situation Room” that during a phone conversation, President Donald Trump said the hardline negotiators he was dealing with in Iran were killed in Israel’s military strike. Bash said, “Well, my first question, it was a very brief conversation, but my first question was about the secretary of state’s remarks last night. His statement, which you mentioned in the open to the show, which explicitly said that the U.S. was notified about the Israeli strikes shortly before they happened, certainly warned Iran not to retaliate against U.S. assets. But the boilerplate language that...

On Thursday afternoon California time, I boarded a flight with my children and began the next phase of a temporary move to Washington, DC, where we will be while our fire-ravaged neighborhood is rebuilt. I checked the news before we boarded, and while there had been rumors all day that Israel might attack Iran, there was no news about it by the time we took off. There was also no WiFi on the flight — a rarity — so I sat down to write my weekly column offline. I was concerned about the skepticism I perceived, especially on the American...

Recently indicted Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) claimed Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight” that “Republicans have sold their soul for Donald Trump.” Discussing Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) being forcibly removed from a press conference, McIver said, “It was disgraceful. I mean, to see it honestly brought tears to my eyes. someone had dropped it in a chat to me. I watched the whole video and just the idea of how they were handling him with no regard, just throwing him on the floor, his hands up. I mean, it just brought back just a time that you don’t want to be...

Several European leaders urged Israel and Iran to de-escalate after Jerusalem launched a “pre-emptive” strike on Iranian military leaders and facilities over night. Iran’s Ayatollah has vowed “harsh punishment” in revenge after Israel launched targeted strikes overnight and launched a flight of suicide bomb drones, but European leaders urged both sides to stay their hands and engage in diplomacy. The United Kingdom, which has given Israel the cold shoulder in many respects since the new left-wing government took power last year rushed to assert it was “not involved in what happened overnight” and said its goal is to “prevent escalation”....

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Briefing,” host Jen Psaki stated that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is doing “sort of the opposite” of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in that Newsom “doesn’t want the National Guard to be intervening in these protests” and that protests in San Antonio have been peaceful. Psaki said, “This is the scene in San Antonio, Texas right now. Hundreds of people holding signs, playing music, cheering, and chanting, peacefully protesting ICE raids in their community. In response to organizers planning that San Antonio rally, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he would deploy the...

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attacked a bus full of aid workers with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) on Wednesday, killing at least five local Palestinians who worked with the group. Several members of the group may also have been taken hostage. In a statement, GHF said: Tonight, at approximately 10 p.m. Gaza time, a bus carrying more than two-dozen members of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation team, local Palestinians working side-by-side with the U.S. GHF team to deliver critical aid, were brutally attacked by Hamas. At the time of the attack, our team was en route to one of our...

Pop star Katy Perry claimed that illegal migrants are being “hunted like criminals in their ancestral home,” implying that the land of California and Los Angeles belongs to them. In a series of Instagram Stories on Tuesday, Perry promoted a message that said illegal migrants are the descendants of those who built California. “Los Angeles has lived under three flags: Spain, Mexico, and the United States. That land has seen borders shift, power, change, hands, and yet the people, especially the brown and indigenous people, have always been there. Planting roots, building lives, raising families,” the message said. “And now,...

Chicago’s radical, progressive, Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson told the media on Wednesday that the Trump administration is “what our country would look like had the Confederacy won.” The race-obsessed, left-wing mayor railed against the Trump administration after hundreds of protesters flooded the streets of the Windy City in opposition to the president’s lawful immigration enforcement policies. Johnson by turns called Trump a “terrorist” and a “racist” in his comments to the press. The mayor with the single worst approval rating in the entire country also reminded the media that he recently said that Trump’s immigration policy is “what terrorism looks...

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) claimed Wednesday on CNN’s “News Central” that President Donald Trump caused the Los Angeles immigration unrest. Waters said, “The backup plan is the President of the United States should do what he didn’t do when we were invaded in the Capitol. When they had the insurrection that he led, he should get on the phone and talk to the local police, he should talk to the people that he’s had deployed there. And he has a responsibility in all of this. He started this. There should be no violence. He should not continue to support violence.”...

“From L.A. to Rafah, there is one common oppressor — Death to the colonial empire,” warned Isra Hirsi, daughter of Minnesota “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, in a viral Instagram post praising anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles while linking U.S. immigration enforcement with the Gaza conflict, and casting both the U.S. and Israel as colonial powers to be violently dismantled.

ESPN sportstalker Stephen A. Smith continues to delve into political discussions, this time addressing himself to California’s left-wing Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom with the warning that the riots in L.A. will likely sink the governor’s 2028 presidential ambitions. In fact, on Monday, Smith said he thinks these insurrectionist riots are just “the latest derailment for the Democratic Party,” Fox News reported. California’s governor is long known to harbor illusions of becoming president. He has been circling a run for the White House at least since 2018. But to date, he has shied away from pulling the trigger and throwing his...

Tuesday on CNN’s “News Central,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) claimed President Donald Trump was “unlawfully” escalating the situation in Los Angeles. Padilla said, “I think what’s also important to remind ourselves of is it didn’t have to get to this point. This is absolutely a crisis that has been made intentionally by Donald Trump, beginning with the increasingly aggressive and theatrical immigration enforcement activities, the ICE raids in elementary schools and houses of worship, please, to him looking or creating any opportunity to further and further escalate. ” He continued, “The federalization of National Guard troops is not only unnecessary,...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intercepted the Madleen, a boat carrying pro-Palestinian activists, including climate activist Greta Thunberg, who were trying to land in Gaza but were detained Monday local time without incident. The Israeli foreign ministry shared video of the activists on the boat, as IDF soldiers handed out sandwiches. The foreign ministry dubbed the boat the “selfie yacht,” mocking the passengers as useful idiots for Hamas. Thunberg made a nearly seamless transition from a youthful career in radical climate change activism to radical anti-Israel activism, becoming a fellow traveler with antisemitic groups, keffiyeh and all.

On Saturday on MSNBC’s “Velshi,” one of President Donald Trump’s former lawyers, Michael Cohen, said Tesla CEO Elon Musk will lose in his feud with the president. Cohen said, “Elon said that he’s the one that delivered the election. I’m not so sure we can say that, but he certainly didn’t hurt.” He continued, “You know where Elon Musk is making a mistake? The feud should not have gone on the way that it did. And I say that because while Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the...

Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” chief political correspondent Dana Bash detailed her morning phone conversation with President Donald Trump. Co-host Wolf Blitzer asked, “You had a chance to speak with the president this morning. How did that go?” Bash said, “Well, look, the headline in our conversation about Elon Musk is that the president says that he has no plans to speak with Musk, and he said that he thinks that Musk has got a problem. So the reason why that is the question right now is maybe, perhaps very obvious but behind the scenes, the push is on...

Thursday on CNN’s “The Arena,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said that Tesla CEO Elon Musk “suddenly got a big dose of truth serum” while commenting on his disagreement with President Donald Trump. Host Kasie Hunt said, “What we are seeing play out right now between the President of the United States and the richest man in the world is unlike anything I think we’ve seen in politics.” Van Hollen said, “You’re absolutely right. It’s as if Elon Musk suddenly got a big dose of truth serum, and he’s letting it all pour out. And it is, I think, going...

President Donald Trump shared on Wednesday that he wants the debt limit “scrapped,” which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also called for. Trump issued a statement on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. “I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING. The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe,” he wrote. “It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World,” he...

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” he was suing New Jersey’s acting Attorney General Alina Habba and a Department of Homeland Security special agent on allegations of false arrest at an ICE detention facility in Newark because it was “egregious” and “authoritarian. Baraka said, “You know, putting out information even before I was, you know, processed that I was a criminal. I did something wrong. I disobeyed the law. I’m not above the law. and ultimately, I didn’t break any law, right, I was cuffed or fingerprinted, took pictures of twice, once there and once in...

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) criticized his own party for failing to “handle the border appropriately” and said that thousands of illegal aliens allowed in under the Biden administration was “unacceptable.” During a discussion with Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) at the Senate Project, which was co-hosted by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, Fetterman cast support behind President Donald Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill and the “roughly $150 billion” that would be go towards securing the United States southern border, focusing on illegal immigration, the Hill reported. “If I had to find something in that, the...

MADRID (AP) – Spain has cancelled a deal for anti-tank missile systems that were to be manufactured in Madrid by a subsidiary of an Israeli company, in a bid to move away from Israeli military technology, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday. The decision will affect the license for 168 SPIKE LR2 anti-tank missile systems with an estimated value of 285 million euros ($325 million). The systems would have been developed in Spain by Pap Tecnos, a Madrid-based subsidiary of Israel´s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to local press. “The goal is clear…a total disconnection from Israeli technology,” government spokesperson Pilar...