Free Republic

Evangelist leader Franklin Graham called the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump an "unjust inquisition," and claimed the Christian Bible directs Americans to pray for the president. Graham, the president of Samaritan's Purse and his late father's Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, quoted the Bible Friday in a plea for Americans to purchase a "Pray for 45" T-shirt being sold through his organization's website. Earlier this week, Graham urged Christians to pray for God to give Trump "wisdom and protection" just hours after the House voted in favor of impeachment procedures. The pro-Trump evangelical and his daughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, both promoted...

CNN host Victor Blackwell abruptly ended a Saturday panel about Republicans' impeachment strategy plans after a guest insisted on "debunked conspiracies" about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The discussion aimed at identifying the Republican Party's strategies for countering the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump derailed when former GOP South Carolina Lieutenant Governor André Bauer continued to berate the panel with accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden. Blackwell asked Bauer and CNN political commentator Tara Setmayer to respond to Trump acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and several senators' admitting a Ukraine quid pro quo took place. But the...

In the tweet confirming he switched his official residency from New York to Florida, President Trump said, “Despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state.” As if on cue, those leaders instantly proved his point. “Good riddance,” thundered Gov. Cuomo. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” chimed in Mayor de Blasio. Their sneering hostility is yet another example of how Cuomo and de Blasio are failing to take advantage of having...

President Barack Obama’s first act as a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2009 — nine months after he took the oath of office — was to try to wriggle out of accepting it. “The morning the prize was announced, his staff investigated whether anyone had failed to travel to Oslo to receive their prize,” writes Nobel insider Geir Lundestad in “The World’s Most Prestigious Prize” (Oxford), out this month. Apparently, the president was among the 61 percent of Americans who believed he didn’t deserve it. “It is true, Obama did not do much before winning,” Lundestad, 74, a member of...

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Why it matters: Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that. If Facebook were to ban — or even limit — ads, it could upend Trump’s fundraising and re-election plan, GOP officials tell Axios. Trump relies heavily — much more so than Democrats — on targeted Facebook ads to shape views and raise money. Red flag: Kara Swisher, of Recode, the super plugged-in tech writer, predicted on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Mark Zuckerberg...

A new book claims to shed light on President Trump's relationship with North Korea and what former President Obama said that Trump could expect when he entered office. Author Doug Wead interviewed Trump on the issue and was able to read some of the personal letters exchanged between the president and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un. "Kim is fascinated by Donald Trump. He sees him as a unique figure on the stage of world history. And he wants to make history with him," Wead claims in his book "Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency."The...

Like a Christmas wish list, the Navy wants a fleet of 355 ships. It just can’t afford it. “Will we get to 355 ships?” asked Admiral Robert Burke, the Navy’s Vice Chief of Naval Operations, at a recent conference. “I think with today’s fiscal situation, where the Navy’s top line is right now, we can keep around 305 to 310 ships whole, properly manned, properly maintained, properly equipped, and properly ready.” The $205.6 billion for Fiscal Year 2020 that the Navy has requested – bigger than the economies of the majority of nations on Earth – would seem to be...

The more concrete the testimony in the impeachment inquiry, the more solidly Republicans are sticking with President Donald Trump. Witness after witness in closed-door House hearings is corroborating the core facts that Democrats say make a strong case against the president. Trump pressured Ukraine, an American ally, for an investigation of Joe Biden, his family and the Democrats. At the same time, the Trump administration withheld military assistance for the young democracy as it confronted Russian aggression.

The Constitution is quite clear: The president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Democrats are speeding toward the impeachment of President Trump with this standard barely a pebble in their path. The Constitution does not permit impeachment because the House finds the president loud, dislikes his policies or simply regards him with uncontrollable, pathological, stammer-inducing hatred. Nonetheless, Democrats despise Trump and are determined to impeach him, no matter what. Still, the question remains: How, exactly, is Trump even accused of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and...

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday suggested he could sign a long-awaited trade agreement with China in the farm state of Iowa, which has been hard hit by tariffs in a nearly 16-month trade war between the world’s largest economies. Trump said on Friday evening that negotiations about a “phase one” agreement were going well and he hoped to sign the deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping at a U.S. location when work on the agreement was completed. “We’re looking at a different couple of locations. It could even be in Iowa,” he told reporters at the White House. “We’re...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said Friday that President Trump’s decision to switch his primary residence from New York to Florida was likely a move to avoid releasing his tax returns. “My guess is that he was advised by his lawyers that it would help his case not to release his taxes to the Manhattan District Attorney if he could say he was no longer a resident of the state of New York,” Cuomo told MSNBC. “I could see it as a legal tactic, and the timing is coincidental.” Cuomo added that since many people from New York and...

Following the House adopting a resolution confirming a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump conspiring with the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a new CNN poll finds that U.S. citizens are split along partisan lines on if the inquiry should move forward. According to Friday’s poll, 49% of Americans indicated that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 47% indicated that he should not be impeached. Of that number, 82% of Democrats support removing Trump from office, while 13% are against it. Eighteen percent of Republicans back removing Trump, while 82% oppose it. Independents...

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- With about a year to go before the U.S. presidential election, Roy Mikolaj, a 53-year-old resident of the U.S. Midwest state of Ohio, already knows who will have his support in 2020 -- Donald Trump. Mikolaj is a registered Democrat. But in the previous election in 2016, he was one of the workers in the declining industrial area known as the "Rust Belt" who voted for Trump, a trend that propelled the Republican nominee to the White House after he campaigned to bring jobs back from U.S. trade partners such as China, Japan and Mexico. Following Trump's...

President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday that he and his family would make Palm Beach, Florida, their permanent residence, parting ways with New York. Perhaps the biggest upside to moving to the Sunshine State is that it’s one of seven states that don’t levy personal income taxes. Florida also has no estate tax. New York, a high-tax state, could contest the move.

Of all the projects real estate mogul Donald Trump wanted to build, here’s one that nobody saw. According to his long-time personal pastor, Paula White-Cain, Trump, in 2006 was taking steps to build a glass cathedral. “He wanted to build a house of God,” she told us. “He said, ‘Let’s do this, let’s build this before we’re too old,’” said White-Cain told Secrets. Trump had an architect in place and was eager to have her take charge of the church, but White-Cain said the timing wasn’t right for her. At the time, her ministry was on nine TV networks, and...

A private association is putting out a call for volunteers, armed or unarmed, to provide outdoor security for Trump supporters traveling to the president’s campaign rally Friday night in Tupelo, Mississippi. The group “Oath Keepers,” which calls itself nonpartisan, said in a notice on its website that it needs help “keeping the rally attendees safe” after a recent Trump rally in Minneapolis at which some of the president’s supporters were harassed and assaulted on their way to and from the arena. “We generally use both armed and unarmed volunteers in our security operations, so if you have a CCW [carrying...

Donald Trump has been pictured with a group of faith leaders praying for him and the result is an instant meme classic. On the same day that the House passed a resolution to formalise its impeachment inquiry, Trump clearly decided he was in need of some spiritual assistance. The Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, told Fox News: It was abundantly clear, he's totally unfazed by this. Everybody felt this way. This isn't actually about Donald Trump. It's about the agenda that he's put forward, the success he's had in advancing the agenda. The reverend went...

Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg says she wouldn’t want to meet with President Trump even if given the opportunity. “I don’t understand why I would do that,” Thunberg told Ellen DeGeneres in an interview that airs Friday on the “Ellen” show. “I don’t see what I could tell him that he hasn’t already heard. And I just think it would be a waste of time, really.” Thunberg was in Los Angeles Friday for a protest rally by students opposed to new fossil-fuel production. She has drawn the ire of Trump, whose administration rolled back Obama-era environmental protections and withdrew...

An edited movie clip featuring Donald Trump killing representations of the press and his political enemies recently shocked social media. But violent memes are nothing new in the MAGA community. Over the weekend of October 10 through 12, a group of about a thousand Donald Trump supporters convened in Miami for the American Priority Festival and Conference. The purpose was ostensibly to “support free speech” and “highlight American culture.” This would be accomplished, at least in part, through speeches by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Dinesh D’Souza, and Donald Trump Jr. It turned out to also involve watching garish depictions of the...

On Friday morning, the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” looked back on how the impeachment inquiry into President Trump is going, labeling the GOP shameless in its handling of the situation. “We’ve heard grave warnings this week about wild conspiracies profiting off the presidency and the one person in Washington turning the country upside-down,” said Mika Brzezinski. “Only those warnings weren’t about President Trump. They weren’t at President Trump and they weren’t coming from the Democrats.” After rolling clips of Republicans criticizing the impeachment inquiry and officials involved in it, Brzezinski suggested “that could be called ‘the art of projection.'”...