Free Republic

AIN’T EASY BEING GREENE — Turns out it wasn’t a momentary lapse of judgment: DONALD TRUMP yesterday evening defended Speaker MIKE JOHNSON for the second time in as many weeks amid a swirl of speculation about his future atop the House GOP. After spending the day holed up in a Manhattan courtroom (more on that in a second), the former president told Real America’s Voice radio host John Fredericks that Johnson is “trying very hard” and “a very good person.” “Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump said, extending Johnson some grace and echoing the speaker’s own...

For generations, American politics has been defined by the outsize influence of Christian conservatives, so much so that the intersection of religion and politics is often treated as the sole province of white evangelicals. And for generations, promises of a rising “religious left” have come and gone without any lasting political imprint. But to look at America’s religious left at this moment is to see something genuinely different. Places of worship are participating in demonstrations for civil rights larger than any protest movement in American history. Democrats like the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden—political leaders whose faith isn’t just...

Come to think of it, the GOP’s federal bill is also pretty moderate.Abortion on demand, for any reason, until birth, funded by taxpayers.That’s the modern left’s position on the issue. Democrats are so dug into their extremism that they can’t even support bills that compel “doctors” to keep babies who survive a homicide attempt alive.Perhaps most American voters don’t care enough. Maybe most voters aren’t even aware of the modern left’s radicalism. The political media might be plagued by partisan mediocrity, but when it comes to abortion, they have demonstrated an unmatched competency in misleading the public.This week, Donald Trump...

Former First Lady Melania Trump is helping the homosexual ‘conservative’ group Log Cabin Republicans kick off its ‘Road to Victory’ campaign at her and her husband’s Florida resort home on April 20. ... PALM BEACH, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — After an extended absence from public view, former First Lady Melania Trump is reportedly set to return to the campaign trail for her husband starting with a fundraiser for homosexual “conservative” group Log Cabin Republicans at her and husband Donald’s resort home of Mar-a-Lago. The news puts to rest unsubstantiated rumors that Mrs. Trump was distancing herself from the former president’s 2024...

Conservative groups backing former president Donald Trump in his re-election bid say they are "deeply disappointed" with his official position on abortion unveiled Monday, but it won't deter their support in November. The former president and presumptive GOP nominee in a video posted on Truth Social Monday morning said he cemented his position on the controversial issue, saying that abortion access should be a states’ issue and didn’t endorse a national, federal limitation – like a 15-week ban. Pro-life interest groups who have endorsed Trump expressed disappointment at his announcement, but it appears unlikely to sway their support in consideration...

The popular opinion among many on both sides of the aisle about why the 2022 red wave turned into a red trickle is that the overturning of Roe vs. Wade ruined it for the Republicans. To the surprise of no one who's been reading me for a while, I don't agree with the popular opinion. It was 40 years ago this spring that I first volunteered on a Republican campaign. I've seen a few elections. I cannot stress enough how one should never underestimate the ability of the GOP to blow an election simply because the party doesn't execute the...

[snip] It may be true that a remnant of the old constitution — the old American nation — remains alive in the hearts of some portion of the American people. But if so, it is now battered and bloody, struggling for breath as the new constitution seeks to finish it off once and for all. Perhaps this is the best way to describe the true cause and nature of the existential political and cultural clash that has riven the American body-politic and continues to grow fiercer by the day: it is indeed, as Joe Biden has put it, a final...

First Lady Jill Biden said Wednesday on “CBS Mornings” that she believed it is “obvious” that President Joe Biden will win the November presidential election. Co-host Gayle King asked, “How is the campaign going?” Biden said, “My gosh, it’s going great. I have been traveling every day that I’m not in the classroom. People are excited. And I really feel like, you know, people know the choice this election, they can choose chaos or choose, you know, steady, wisdom, experience.” King said, “Is there not a part of you that’s a little worried?”

The past several years, I have heard and/or read of how bad a businessman President Donald Trump is and has been during his life. I went online to look for examples and it seems the stories that he is a bad businessman are from leftist outlets - CNN, NPR, MSNBC, the New Yorker, NYT, and so on. (Side note - does Forbes swing to the left?) So I need assistance from my fellow Freepers and from Freeperland. Is there an unbiased source of information concerning President Trump's wealth, how he obtained it, how he has grown his wealth, etc? Thank...

Nikki “Birdbrain” Haley is very bad for the Republican Party and, indeed, our Country. Her False Statements, Derogatory Comments, and Humiliating Public Loss, is demeaning to True American Patriots. Her anger should be aimed at her Third Rate Political Consultants and, more importantly, Crooked Joe Biden and those that are destroying our Country - NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SAVE IT. I knew Nikki well, she was average at best, is not the one to take on World Leaders, and she never did. That was up to me, and that is why they respected the United States. When I ran...

If former President Donald Trump is trying to make it look like he isn't bothered by Ron DeSantis, his Truth Social feed this weekend told a very different story. Over the weekend, Trump's Truth Social profile was filled with post after post about DeSantis, the governor of Florida and Trump's main rival in the GOP. On Saturday, Trump kicked off his DeSantis-posting spree of at least 10 posts, by Insider's count. The first was to insult DeSantis by writing that he thought it was "totally inappropriate to use the word 'meatball' as a moniker for Ron" — in the process...

Donald Trump was a great if imperfect president. By the third year of his presidency, the country was flourishing. The economy was roaring, jobs were up, incomes were up, gas prices were down, and America & Americans were doing fairly well. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election. The swamp struck back via Covid and the George Floyd protests. Neither of those was of Trump’s making, but both were utilized by Democrats to steal the election. The Democrats didn’t create Covid or put Floyd in the morgue, but they used the lockdowns and the riots...

The Trump administration has finalized a roll back of Obama-era regulations for oil trains. The rules, which date back to 2015, required railroads carrying crude oil or other flammable liquids to outfit their trains with more responsive electronic braking systems. The rules came in response to concerns about explosions and spills from mile-long trains of crude and ethanol. In the Northwest, those trains move along the Columbia River and through cities to coastal refineries. The U.S. Department of Transportation, which has been working on rescinding the rules since last December, said in statement this week that its analysis showed the...

Politics aside, if you study the data trends, the 13 “Keys to the White House, ” created by analyst and historian Allan J. Lichtman, have demonstrated an uncanny knack for calling U.S. presidential elections. There have been a few hiccups, where it called Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000, with Gore winning the popular vote and Bush winning the Electoral College. When a reverse phenomenon occurred in 2016, it correctly called Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016, with Trump winning the Electoral College and Clinton winning the popular vote. The key’s predictions now focus solely on the...

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida prizes preparation and the way it allows him to control his political narrative. But suddenly, he was on the verge of going off message. He had traveled to a Central Florida warehouse this past week to promote a $2 billion tax cut proposal when he was confronted with the inevitable: an especially ugly attack from former President Donald J. Trump that seemed to warrant a strong response. Mr. Trump had insinuated on social media that Mr. DeSantis behaved inappropriately with high school girls while he was a teacher in his early 20s. As a reporter...

<p>Former President Trump’s 2020 election campaign hired an outside research firm to try to prove allegations of voter fraud, but never released the results because the company disputed many of its theories and, according to Four, could not provide any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election was people who are familiar with the matter.</p>

... For too long Washington has refused to think strategically about some of the major foreign policy issues of our time. In the rare instance where Washington’s policymakers do think strategically, the strategies they concoct seem less like realistic attempts at applying state power and more like they were conceived over a game of Risk while under the heavy influence of alcohol. Such is the case with the current American preoccupation in Ukraine. The Russians have invaded Ukraine. They’ve committed their entire society to the war. In the words of popular geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan, this is “Russia’s last war.”...

State of the Union: A Trump ’24 focus on foreign policy restraint is very good news. And we shouldn’t be surprised.Over at Politico, there’s a noteworthy report on some early jockeying in the 2024 GOP primary:Those close to Trump’s campaign operation say he plans to try and paint himself as an anti-war dove amongst the hawks. They believe doing so will resonate with GOP voters who are divided on, but growing wary of, continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.This is a smart political move from 45. “Growing wary” of Ukraine support could prove to be an understatement,...

Trump gave an interview on Thursday to Hugh Hewitt, who repeatedly asked him to spill on what disparaging nicknames he plans to use against those who compete with him in the 2024 Republican primary. When Hewitt floated Glenn Youngkin (R) as a possible bid, Trump referred to the Virginia Governor as a “disappointment,” complaining that he didn’t get enough gratitude from Youngkin or his team even though “I did a lot for him. And he got elected because of me, just like Ron DeSantis. Even more so.” DeSantis is often considered Trump’s biggest potential primary threat, and the former president...

I once asked a senior American official about why he accepted honoraria from the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or the MKO, given the group’s cultlike nature and its lack of popularity inside Iran. His response: Even if the group lied about its support, they said the right things about democracy and regime change, and so he saw no harm in collecting the cash. The regime’s fall, he said, would be a moment of truth: Either the MKO would prove itself right, or its political Ponzi scheme would collapse. The problem with engaging in the MKO’s endorsement-for-cash scheme is the impact it has on...