Free Republic

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday that he disagreed with then-President Trump’s decision to shut down the economy at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. DeSantis appeared on conservative podcast Ruthless, where he claimed that one of his biggest regrets in office is not speaking out “much louder” against the initial COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.

Those remarks weren’t just vintage Trump braggadocio. They’re likely also smart politics, as they provide an opening to win back some suburban voters that fled from him toward Biden in 2020. Sixty-seven percent of suburban residents were vaccinated as of August, according to a late summer NBC News poll. That was below the 79 percent of urban residents who got the vaccine, but well above the 52 percent of rural residents, where support for Trump runs deep. Even Biden gave credit to the Trump administration for the development of the Covid vaccine and for getting a booster shot.It’s unclear that...

While America had been rocked by riots and assassinations when I was a kid, the first big political development in America that shocked me was the election of Ronald Reagan. He was a boob, a Hollywood actor, not even a very good one. At the time, just out of college, I did not really understand the darker forces that were behind his election—the racism and greed, the anti-government ideology that was really just a formula to enable the richest among us to make more and the most racist states to chart their own course.

The unimaginable has occurred. Kyle Rittenhouse, the admitted killer of two men and maimer of a third, has been acquitted on all counts. On Aug. 25, 2020, Rittenhouse armed himself with a borrowed AR-15-style assault rifle loaded with full metal jacket armor-penetrating ammunition and marched into downtown Kenosha, Wis., during a third night of protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. Blake was left partly paralyzed after a white police officer shot him seven times in the back outside an apartment complex in Kenosha two days before.

Protesters filled streets around the world after George Floyd’s killing. For some, the scars of that summer run deep. Rickia Young, a 29-year-old nurse’s aide, clearly remembers the moment police officers swarmed her car in West Philadelphia last year. She heard one window shatter, then another. Not only was she worried for her own safety, but Young said she feared for her toddler son’s life. Young is among many Americans who say they were severely injured by police in the turbulent months after George Floyd’s death on Memorial Day 2020. Amid what has been called the broadest protests in U.S....

After announcing on Friday that he would not seek reelection to Congress in 2022, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Sunday he, Rep. Liz Cheney and "a few others" are the only House Republicans "telling the truth" about the 2020 election and its aftermath. "You can fight to try to tell the truth, you can fight against the cancer in the Republican Party of lies of conspiracy of dishonesty," Kinzinger told ABC "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos exclusively in his first interview since the announcement. "There are about 190 people in the Republican Party that aren't going to say a word,...

Idon’t know about you, but I’ve had it “up to here” with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. For the good of the Republic, we should all chip in and buy them a one-way ticket back to West Virginia and Arizona. And keep them there. In fact, the most insane rumor floating around Washington this week was that Manchin might leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican. Are you kidding? He’s never been a Democrat, and neither has Kyrsten Sinema. They’re not team players. Each of them is in it only for themselves. And each of them is willing to...

A group of anti-Trump Republicans on Thursday endorsed a slate of Democrats and centrist Republicans in the 2022 midterms to fight against the former president’s hold on the party. The Renew America Movement (RAM) announced it is backing a slew of lawmakers running for reelection. The group was founded by a group of moderates within the GOP after the Jan. 6 insurrection, which was fueled by then-President Trump’s lies about the election being stolen in November. “There is an urgent effort by Republicans and former Republicans to stem the tide of anti-democratic and lie-based Republican leaders in congress before it’s...

The investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the September incident with Border Patrol agents on horseback has yet to conclude despite initial assurances from the Biden administration that it would take "days." "The investigation is ongoing. The Department is committed to a thorough, independent, and objective process. We are also committed to transparency and will release the results of the investigation once it is complete," a spokesperson for DHS wrote in a Saturday email, according to The Washington Examiner. Photographs went viral in September depicting horse patrol agents deterring Haitian migrants attempting to cross into the United...

North Carolina’s lieutenant governor is facing mounting calls for his resignation after he was caught on video calling transgender people “filth.” The video, which was first posted Wednesday by Right Wing Watch, showed the first-term Republican making the comments during a speech at Asbury Baptist Church in June. “There’s no reason anybody, anywhere in America should be telling children about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Mark Robinson said in the video, which has gone viral. “Yes, I called it filth.” The comments were condemned by the White House this week. “These words are repugnant and offensive,” said Andrew Bates,...

Stephanie Grisham, White House press secretary to first lady Melania Trump, is out with a book that paints a deeply unflattering picture of Donald Trump — a man with a “terrifying” temper who ogled a young aide and tried to impress dictators while president, she writes. Grisham describes Melania as a Marie Antoinette figure who refused to condemn the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Trump's supporters stormed the building to halt certification of 2020 election results. Grisham writes she texted Melania Trump as the scene unfolded. “Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the...

Former President Donald Trump endorsed a former news anchor for Arizona governor just hours after she tweeted at South Dakota’s governor to add him to Mount Rushmore. Kari Lake, a former journalist for Fox 10 News in Phoenix, has risen to prominence by attacking the media, railing against vaccine mandates, and echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud during the 2020 election — Trump narrowly lost the state to President Joe Biden by just over 10,000 votes. …

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly told former President Trump, "You f'd up your presidency" earlier this year when attempting to advise him to accept that he lost the 2020 presidential election. This apparent bit of hard truth from the South Carolina Republican was shared on Sunday by renowned Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward while he was discussing his new book, "Peril," on NBC's "Meet the Press." Host Chuck Todd asked Woodward and co-author and fellow Post reporter Robert Costa how they would characterize the attitude Graham and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had towards Trump's refusal to...

The US is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.... The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt: First, Trump will be the Rep. candidate for president in 2024...He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is...

There have been 673,472 deaths in the United States due to the Chinese coronavirus, more than the combined numbers of American military lives lost during battle in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. As of Sunday afternoon, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine reported 42,050,638 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 673,472 deaths.

...The latest example of Trump's shadow presidency came Wednesday, when The Washington Post reported that Trump had spoken with several of the family members of those killed by a suicide bomber in the final days of American military involvement in Afghanistan.... ..."Trump has criticized the way the Afghanistan withdrawal was handled...Trump has been briefed recently by former officials, including former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo...Trump even sent out a statement -- via his Save America PAC... ,,,It's hard to overstate what a break that sort of behavior is from the way past presidents have comported themselves...

U.S. used to rally behind a president when bad things happened abroad. Not any more. What happened in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, was an American president’s worst nightmare — especially when that president already had an approval rating hovering at just 30%, thanks to a lousy economy. An angry mob riled by that year’s Islamist revolution overran the U.S. Embassy in the Iranian capital, and by nightfall more than 50 Americans had been taken hostage. For a nation still reeling from its failure in the Vietnam War that ended just four years earlier, the Iranian hostage crisis made the...

President Biden’s job approval rating is on the downslope. As of Friday morning he was at 45.8 percent approval and 48.5 percent disapproval — from a high of 54 percent approval, 41 percent disapproval at the end of his first 100 days. There is a laundry list of reasons for this. Not only is the United States still in the grip of a pandemic, but also the Delta variant of the coronavirus has led to record infections and deaths in Florida, Texas and other states with relatively low vaccination rates (and where officials have taken a stand against mitigation efforts)....

Donald Trump wouldn't say whether he agrees with the Supreme Court ruling upholding a new Texas heartbeat law that bans abortion after six weeks – or when a fetal heartbeat can be detected. ... When asked if he supported the new ruling, Trump dodged the question – instead taking credit for a series of conservative rulings due to his appointment of three Supreme Court justices during his four years in office.

Analysis: Only Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger seem to see that they can serve both the country and the Republican Party. If Republicans won't defend the Capitol, the Constitution or even themselves, it's hard to see how they can claim to stand for anyone — or anything — else. That's what Tuesday's hearing was really about — for the Democrats, for the police who testified and for the two Republicans who said serving their party and the country aren't mutually exclusive goals. McCarthy, facing a similar choice, has decided to follow Trump rather than the truth.