Free Republic

Major League Baseball doesn’t market its individual players as much as leagues like the NBA and NFL, so a lot of people might not have heard of Mike Trout. But he’s been arguably the best player in baseball for over five years, and now he’s the highest-paid athlete in the country. Trout, 27, is set to sign a contract extension that will pay him a total of over $430 million until he’s 39 years old. Born in New Jersey, Trout was picked by the Angels in the first round in 2009. He was AL rookie of the year in 2012...

Whenever I open my mouth about the outrageous bias of our national news media, liberal journalists always seem to jump at the opportunity to prove me right. When I went on “Fox and Friends” Monday to talk about the Jussie Smollett hoax, for instance, I pointed out how ridiculous it was for the actor to claim he was attacked by two men in MAGA hats on the streets of Chicago. I made a joke about how no one wore MAGA hats in downtown Chicago because they would get shot in “two seconds.” No one watching the segment could possibly have...

They did it. Brazil went and pulled the trigger: its voters elected conservative Jair Messias Bolsonaro, colloquially known as Tropical Trump for his open admiration of President Trump and his comparable agenda. The margin was huge: 55-44 over his socialist rival. The press, of course, is aghast. These journalists are all using headlines with terms like "far-right" and "fascist" to describe him, something they never did when real fascists and far leftists, such as Hugo Chávez, got elected. Yes, Bolsonaro talks out of turn – you can see a collection of politically correct and sometimes just bad things he's said,...

TUCSON, Arizona -- It was a sad showing for a 6-year-old boy's birthday party in Arizona. Teddy's mom says they invited 32 of his classmates to a pizza party for his birthday in Tucson Sunday afternoon. But no one showed up at Peter Piper Pizza restaurant. Social media was flooded with messages of support, and Teddy's story caught the attention of some big names in the sports world. The Phoenix Suns invited Teddy to come watch Wednesday night's game against the Lakers. The Suns tweeted, "How about we celebrate with thousands at our place! Tickets to Wednesday's #SunsVSLakers game are...

Thousands of pounds of relief supplies for Puerto Rico, sent after Hurrican Maria decimated the island, have been found rotting in a state elections warehouse, according to the New York Times. The supplies were supposed to have been distributed by the national guard. The Hill: The Times noted that local radio station, Radio Isla, published a video showing cases of items such as beans, Tylenol and water covered in rat and lizard droppings. According to the Times, the Puerto Rico elections commission offices were used as a collection center for donations from private entities and nonprofit groups after the island...

If the US is about to engage in a trade war with China, the Middle Kingdom has just signaled that it wants that conflict to be a limited war by exempting a major US export to China, crude oil. The Wall Street Journal reported: As China made good on its threat to impose 25% tariffs on $16 billion worth of U.S. imports, one big-ticket item originally on its hit list was conspicuously missing: crude oil. Oil had been one of a slate of targets China listed in June for tariffs to counter those the Trump administration threatened on Chinese imports....

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, isn’t the only one with secretly recorded audio of the president. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell The Daily Beast that Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the infamous former Apprentice star who followed Trump to the White House, secretly recorded conversations with the president—conversations she has since leveraged while shopping her forthcoming “tell-all” book, bluntly titled UNHINGED.For months, it has been rumored that Manigault had clandestinely recorded on her smartphone “tapes” of unspecified private discussions she had in the West Wing. Audio actually does exist, and even stars Manigault’s former boss....

The conveniently timed indictments of 12 more Russians by Deputy A.G. (or should we just face reality and ditch the word "deputy"?) Rosenstein, who will never see the inside of an American courtroom, probably includes the Russian who "hacked" into John Podesta's email account secured with the password "password." Rosenstein was no doubt pleased with himself to announce that 12 Russian spies were caught – er, spying, on President Obama's watch, by the way, but neglected to include one small detail in his announcement – namely, that DNC chair Donna Brazile and most of the Obama hierarchy let them do...

Chicago alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa penned an op-ed for NBC that encapsulates the reasons why Democrats will be unable to capitalize this November on the relative unpopularity of Republicans in the Midwest, given the Dems' turn to the hard left. Rosa is described as "Queer, Latinx and a democratic socialist" – whatever that means. In political terms, it means he would be a gone goose if he ran for Congress in the vast majority of districts anywhere in the Midwest. But Rosa doesn't see it that way. In fact, he believes that Midwesterners would embrace a socialist candidate and are "not...

Democrat hate speech targeting deplorables has always worked -- on their own voters. Libeling Republicans as racist, homophobic morons has kept Democrat voters in line. President Trump laughs at their insults, and just gets stronger. Suddenly, one more Trump success. The Democrat line is breaking. Our minorities are breaking free. President Trump’s off the charts achievements on jobs and security are improving the lives of every single Democrat identity voting bloc. A small, but increasingly significant number are noticing. With his MAGA gains on the economy and foreign affairs, President Trump is slowly chipping away at the Democrat Party’s foundations....

They'll Always Have Twitter and MSNBC For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered...

Two New York Times writers have offered evidence that the actions of the Russians and former director James Comey may not have been so crucial to the defeat of Hillary Clinton after all, calling into question the raison d’etre of the Mueller investigation. First, Charlie Savage on June 28, commenting on the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, noted that Donald Trump promised to name conservatives to the high court. Savage then acknowledged, "Court-focused voters helped deliver Mr. Trump's narrow victory over Hillary Clinton...." (Actually, the win was not "narrow." Trump got 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227.) ***SNIP***Political...

Primary defeat of fourth-ranking House Democrat a portent of the radical left takeover of the Democratic Party The architecture of the 20th century Democratic Party is slowly dissolving before our eyes, as identity politics and socialism replace the old center-left coalition. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28 year-old Bernie Sanders organizer and endorsee of the Democratic Socialists of America, resoundingly defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, a ten-term incumbent who hadn’t faced a primary opponent in 14 years, and who spent at least ten times as much money in the race.Ocasio-Cortez will almost certainly win election to the House in November, running in a...

Am I missing something, or is the "fringe wing" of the Democratic Party (its now dominant wing) trying to take itself, and with it the whole party, off an electoral cliff? After reading the news over the last couple weeks, let me see if I have this straight: Leftist Democrats – who in the Hate Trump era are the Democratic Party – seem want to make certain that everyone in America knows their party's two core beliefs: 1. The United States has absolutely no right to defend its southern border. None. Any attempt to do so, to enforce the nation's...

How delicious is it that the face of the Democratic Party is that lovely duo, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi? They are the gift that keeps on giving. So deluded as to why Trump won, they seem to think their particular brand of madness that includes the public shaming of anyone and everyone in the Trump administration is going to win back the House and Senate for their party. It is by now undeniable that the hate-Trump left has gone stark-raving mad. Its members have lost all semblance of sanity, decorum, and class. With Mad Maxine Waters leading the way,...

In their latest attempt to swing this fall’s election toward the Democrats, the left now wants us to focus on “the children.” They haven’t really thought this through. Liberals the world over should work hard to avoid any debate that significantly involves the lives and wellbeing of children. Most anyone armed with even the slightest bit of the truth when it comes to liberalism and “the children” can easily quiet the left in virtually any debate that involves children or the family. The first bit of truth that any liberal should have to answer for when it comes to children...

Now according to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is looking to eliminate a lot of duplication of programs by combining the Departments of Education and Labor.***Snip***Looks good on paper. But the impetus of the bureaucracy to aggrandize itself by expanding, rather than shrinking their departments may doom the well meaning effort to failure. The initial 1980 budget for the Department of Education was about $6 billion. The 2019 budget request from Trump is about $62 billion, down from the $68 billion spent in the last Obama budget. What started as an effort to reform government ended up creating...

Under heavy fire from press stories telling half the truth, President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to address family separation of illegal immigrants that will almost certainly be overruled in court. To untangle the mess of misinformation that has come out over the past few days, we must review the legal history and motivations of the people involved. At that point, the upcoming events in this debate will become somewhat predictable. To start, there are obvious reasons why apprehended illegal immigrants are entitled to due process, including trials and appeals, prior to deportation. This can be a lengthy process...

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen called on Congress to change laws she said force the government to separate immigrant children from parents who cross the U.S. border unlawfully and called Democrats who say the Trump administration is using the controversy for political leverage “very cowardly.” Nielsen both defended President Donald Trump’s family separation policy at a White House briefing on Monday and maintained that it wasn’t his creation, but rather a consequence of the government’s prosecution of immigrants apprehended illegally crossing the border. "So I want to be clear on a couple of other things," Nielsen said. "The vast majority,...

Full Title:Andrew McCabe wants grant of immunity in exchange for congressional testimony on handling of Hillary email investigation Already the subject of a criminal referral by the DOJ Inspector General, Andrew McCabe is asking for an official grant of immunity in exchange for testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Senator Chuck Grassley. The alterative would be that he takes the Fifth Amendment when quizzed, a very bad look for the former number two official in the FBI. Yet that is what looks like will happen. I can only hope that this would take place in open session, so...