Free Republic

Q. How do you know that Liz Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris is entirely unlikely to shift the election in any detectable way?A. When a CNN liberal admits that its impact will likely be limited to "one lady in Wisconsin."Those were the surprising words of legal analyst Elliot Williams, who served for eight years in the Obama administration, on today's CNN This Morning. His remark earned a round of laughter on the panel, though former Biden aide Meghan Hays suggested that "One lady might decide this entire election!"GOP strategist Matt Gorman was in rare form. Responding to Trump calling Cheney...

Q. When is an October Surprise not an October surprise? A. When it's aimed at Donald Trump. Just ask Morning Joe. On today's episode, Jonathan Lemire and Katty Kay agreed: Nope, Jack Smith's new filing in his election interference case against Trump was not an October Surprise. Lemire's first argument was particularly lame: Okay, yeah, the filing came in October. But it came at the beginning of October, not like Jim Comey's letter regarding the Hillary Clinton private email server probe that came about one week before the 2016 election. This -- we kid you not -- "much further out."...

Mark Halperin used to be a top political journalist at ABC, MSNBC, and Bloomberg News. Now his "Morning Meetings" and 2Ways on Zoom and YouTube are the best source I've discovered for intelligent, well-sourced, fair takes on the election. [snip] The YouTube of his post-debate 2Way is available here. Excerpts of Halperin's comments: "Without a doubt, a total mismatch [in favor of Vance.]" Abortion and J6 are tough issues for Republicans, but Vance "handled them as well as I've heard any Republican handle them." "[Vance] was obviously extremely well prepared, but didn't seem rehearsed." Walz' answer about lying about being...

Don't be fooled by David Frum's rather reserved academic mien. The CNN regular is as rabid a Trump/JD Vance hater as anyone on the liberal media's Team Kamala. In recent times, we have caught Frum calling Vance a "racist, corrupt" Trump with better hair and a law degree. And comparing Trump to psychopathic mass murderer Charles Manson. Frum was back at his incendiary attacks on today's CNN This Morning. The topic was the appropriateness of Trump calling Kamala Harris mentally impaired and disabled. Frum suggested that instead of making personal insults about Harris, Trump should speak about his plans. Frum's...

After Joe Biden's disastrous debate in June, Joe Scarborough was among the first to try to push him out of the race. On the very next day's Morning Joe, Scarborough disagreed with David Plouffe's position that Dems should wait several days before deciding whether to boot Biden. Instead, Scarborough voiced the fear that Trump would win the election "unless things change." Translation: don't let the door hit you on the way out, Joe! But on today's Morning Joe, Scarborough expressed a form of buyer's remorse over the Dems' defenestration of Biden and his replacement by Kamala Harris on the top...

As our Tim Graham observed back in 2020: "Washington Post scribe Robin Givhan is supposed to do fashion writing, but it's always smarter to see her as a political columnist who uses fashion as an inspiration." In her current column, the closest senior critic at-large Givhan comes to fashion is to condescendingly describe Mark Robinson's "well-fed physique draped in a so-so suit." But the thrust of her screed is purely political: mocking what she—five times—describes as the Christian "God people" who continue to support Robinson and Trump, despite the candidates' shortcomings. Get the rest of the story and view the...

There's one thing you must say for Vivek Ramaswamy: he's unafraid to go into the center of controversy. Ramaswamy waded into the pro-Hamas fray in Chicago outside the Democrat convention. And appearing on today's CNN This Morning, Ramaswamy described his experiences in holding a town hall in Springfield, Ohio in the midst of the controversy over Haitian immigration there. [snip] Hunt tried to get Ramaswamy to say that Trump's recent comments about Haitians eating pets have led to the outbreak of tensions. She also cited Laura Loomer's comments that if Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry. Ramaswamy...

[snip] Frum sees Harris as the candidate now pulling away. Frum was, in essence, predicting a Kamala victory. And he wondered what lesson the Trump campaign, and by extension Republicans at large, would learn from the loss. Would they conclude that Trump lost because he was older and didn't work hard enough, and that the party simply needs to find a younger, harder-working version of Trump? Or will they realize that, according to Frum: "[Trump's] kind of authoritarian, racist, corrupt style of politics doesn't work. It doesn't work in North Carolina. It doesn't work for Donald Trump. And it doesn't...

A guest on Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, Goodwin, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown, somehow managed to make a connection between post-Dobbs laws limiting abortions and slavery and Jim Crow laws, specifically including those restricting the ability of African-Americans to play checkers and chess. Co-host Michael Steele—who surely professed pro-life views back when he was running for and serving as RNC Chairman—teed up Goodwin, saying that the driving force behind the new laws is a Republican desire to control women. Goodwin took that a giant step further, claiming that "cruelty is the point behind all of this. I've...

The screencap says it all. That's Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, literally pointing her finger [as she repeatedly did] at Republican Scott Jennings on today's CNN This Morning. The subject was antisemitism, and Jennings was quadruple-teamed, with the three panelists plus host Kasie Hunt arguing that right-wing antisemitism is more of a problem than the left-wing version. Far-left activist Maya Wiley summed up the Democrat argument this way: "We cannot compare organized white, extremism -- I'm saying this as white supremacy, neo-Nazism -- and equate that to kids on a college campus struggling with very difficult issues."Funny...

Joe and Hillary: a love story. Who knew? [snip] Scarborough then broke out an early Valentine, saying: "It really has always been disconcerting to my conservative friends, how much I, I, I loved you from the start."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Kasie Hunt said this on today's episode of CNN This Morning, the show she hosts, regarding the suspect in the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump: "We obviously don't know very much at this point about a potential motive here. And we may never know about that."Hunt could look up a CNN article entitled: "Man detained in apparent assassination attempt on Trump criticized former president on social media" contains the following [all caps in the original]: "In an April post on X tagging President Biden’s presidential account, he wrote that Biden’s campaign should be: 'called something like KADAF. Keep America...

Former President Donald Trump has explained his decision not to debate Vice President Kamala Harris for a second time saying that he clearly won their first debate. He used the metaphor of a defeated boxer who immediately demands a rematch to prove that Harris, who has called for a second debate, lost it. But on Friday's Morning Joe, the exclusively liberal panel tried to turn the tables on Trump, breaking out a string of boxing metaphors to assert that their candidate won the debate instead - and beat Trump badly. Co-host Willie Geist also found humor it: “I think the...

David Frum did stop short of banging his fists or stamping his feet. But on today's CNN This Morning, the Trump-detesting Canadian could not contain his frustration at the prospect that, thanks to the "probably stupid" rules of the Constitution, Trump could win the election with an Electoral College majority despite losing the popular vote count. Frum was responding to a statement by Edward-Isaac Dovere that some in the Kamala camp believe that if the election were held today, she would lose. Frum began by claiming: "We need to be more specific about what we mean by 'lose." Depends on...

If it had been up to Kasie Hunt, host of CNN This Morning, the rest of today's show could have been ditched, replaced by a non-stop loop of Trump making his claim, during last night's debate, that migrants are eating the pets of residents of Springfield, Ohio. She cited leftist late-night jester Stephen Colbert, and smirked at Trump "spouting baseless allegations about migrants eating pets." After playing it once, Hunt begged a show director: "Can we, can we just, Jimmy in the control room, can we play the pets bite one more time? Can we just watch that one more...

What's happened to Willie Geist? He used to be a relatively sane balance to the rabid liberal partisanship of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. But in recent times, he has been going increasingly hard left. On today's Morning Joe, Willie called Kari Lake the "residue" of Trump, and called NC GOP guv candidate Mark Robinson "crazy."The "residue?" That's tantamount to calling Kari Lake a lingering stain. Serious question: Could Joe and Mika be getting ready to hang up the spurs, and does Willie want to establish his liberal street cred to take over the show?

On today's Morning Joe, a furious Mika Brzezinski accused the so-called "mainstream" media of "sanewashing" Trump -- never confronting him with his alleged affronts to democracy as described by Dick Cheney in his statement explaining why he, like his daughter Liz, will be voting for Kamala Harris. [snip] Scarborough wondered whether Trump's lead is due to all the "disinformation" that is leading almost half of Americans to support Trump. That led to this answer from an angry Mika: MIKA: Well, it's a mixture of that and a lot of other things, including, I think, the mainstream media that claims to...

On CNN This Morning, CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny uttered a very cynical "why not?" on the question of whether Joe Biden should pardon Hunter. The show had played the clip of Biden flatly telling ABC's David Muir that he would not pardon his son. But hey! That was then, when Biden was running for president. And this is now, with Biden out of the race. So, yeah, "why not?" Biden breaking his promise would give a new meaning to a favorite line of his: "On my word as a Biden." Zeleny used the tried-and-true MSM dodge of...

If this had been a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight.... On today's CNN This Morning, Republican communications strategist Erin Perrine demolished Dem Brad Woodhouse. [snip] And finally, the climactic Round 3. Woodhouse, already wobbly on his feet, clung to the "four-and-a-half minute standing ovation" that Democrats gave Biden at the DNC.Perrine delivered her knockout blow: "After they took him out back like Old Yeller."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Q. What do you call Hamas murdering six hostages, including an American? A. A political "headache" for Biden-Harris. That's according to CNN regular Toluse Olorunnipa, also the Washington Post's chief White House correspondent. Olorunnipa won a Pulitzer Prize as co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Olorunnipa also fretted that the continuing murder of American hostages would make it harder for Harris to claim the mantle of Commander-in-Chief. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.