Free Republic

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being mocked mercilessly over a slew of bizarre social media posts that resurfaced as the Israel-Iran war broke out — including his musings about treating a woman right and even being “naughty&playful” as a school kid. The odd posts date back at least a decade and are in stark contrast to the anti-Israel and war rhetoric that now fills the social media feed of the 86-year-old leader and most senior cleric in the extremist Islamic Republic. In one from 2013, Khamenei recalled his awkward school days. “I went 2school w/a cloak since1st days;it...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei defiantly declared Wednesday that Tehran isn’t frightened by President Trump’s “absurd rhetoric” — as he rejected the United States’ demand to surrender in its war with Israel. “The US President threatens us. With his absurd rhetoric, he demands that the Iranian people surrender to him. They should make threats against those who are afraid of being threatened. The Iranian nation isn’t frightened by such threats,” Khamenei said in a statement on X. He vowed Iran would never back down and that any US strike would have “serious irreparable consequences.” “The US entering in this...

CNN’s famed war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is being mocked for claiming she’s terrified of traveling to the US — and even needs burner phones and other prep “as if I was going to North Korea.” The British-born journalist, who has covered war zones extensively throughout her career, revealed that she spoke to CNN security and carried a burner phone when she traveled to the US last month to give an address at Harvard University. “I must say I was afraid. I’m a foreigner. I don’t have a green card. I’m not an American citizen. I’m fairly prominent, and I literally...

New York City mayoral front-runner Andrew Cuomo vowed to lead the fight against President Trump, but bizarrely pledged to “spend eight years in Washington” in a bid to help Democrats retake the House. The former governor told Politico he planned to wage the national campaign against the Trump administration — even though the president’s second and final term would come to a close in 2028, or three years into the next mayor’s tenure. “I would spend eight years in Washington — go to that US Conference of Mayors, go to the National Governors Association,” Cuomo said as he detailed his...

That’s rich! Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders refused to apologize for chartering private jets to ferry him across the country as part of his campaign to rip the wealthy — snapping, “You think I’m gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United … while 30,000 people are waiting?” Sanders (D-Vt.) defiantly defended his mode of transport after he was widely ridiculed for opting to fly private during his recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour alongside far-left New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “No apologies for that,” Sanders, 83, told Fox News’ “Special Report” late Wednesday when asked about the backlash. “That’s what campaign...

Billionaire Republican megadonor and Home Depot founder Ken Langone has ripped the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs as “bulls–t” — claiming the president has been ill-advised amid the raging trade war. “I don’t understand the Goddamn formula,” Langone, a veteran GOP campaign donor, told the Financial Times on Monday. “I believe he’s been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they’re applying.”

Hollywood star Mel Gibson got home from talking to Joe Rogan about his anger at the Los Angeles wildfires to find his own Malibu home among those “completely toasted.” “I was kind of ill at ease while we were talking because I knew my neighborhood was on fire, so I thought, ‘I wonder if my place is still there,’” the actor, 69, told NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” late Thursday. “The Patriot” actor, who blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his handling of the crisis during his interview with the mega-popular podcaster, said his Malibu property was in “cinders” by the...

A violent Tren de Aragua ringleader wanted over the viral, caught-on-camera break-in in Aurora, Colorado was among the illegal immigrants rounded up in deportation raids in New York City Tuesday, law enforcement sources told The Post. Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, 25, was nabbed when heavily armed DEA agents and Homeland Security officers stormed an Ogden Ave. apartment building in the Bronx in the early hours, the sources said. The gangbanger, who sources described as a ringleader of the vicious Venezuelan prison gang, had a warrant out for a slew of charges — including kidnapping, burglary and menacing. Zambrano-Pacheco was allegedly among the...

Police in San Francisco identified UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, and alerted the FBI four days before his high-profile arrest, a new report says. An officer tipped off the feds after recognizing the 26-year-old’s face in surveillance images put out by the NYPD after Thompson was gunned down last week, sources told the San Francisco Chronicle. Mangione’s face was known to cops in California because he’d been reported missing by his family just weeks earlier on Nov. 18, the sources added.

Police in San Francisco identified UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, and alerted the FBI four days before his high-profile arrest, a new report says. An officer tipped off the feds after recognizing the 26-year-old’s face in surveillance images put out by the NYPD after Thompson was gunned down last week, sources told the San Francisco Chronicle. Mangione’s face was known to cops in California because he’d been reported missing by his family just weeks earlier on Nov. 18, the sources added.

Graphic video Butterball is facing calls for a boycott just days before Thanksgiving after sickening footage of poultry workers allegedly sexually abusing and torturing its turkeys resurfaced on social media. The uproar unfolded after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) activists posted a decades-old clip online over the weekend that allegedly showed the company’s employees abusing live turkeys at a plant in Ozark, Arkansas. The graphic footage, which soon went viral, was captured during an undercover probe in 2006 in which workers were filmed bashing the birds against steel cages and stomping on their heads, the animal rights...

A tiny 2-year-old migrant girl who was picked up at the US border clutching a piece of paper with a name and phone number scrawled on it told cops she was there to find her parents, a tragic video shows. The child from El Salvador, clad in a bright pink jacket, was among a group of more than 200 illegal migrants — including 60 unaccompanied minors — detained after crossing the border into Maverick County, Texas, on Sunday, authorities said. The Texas Department of Public Safety released the footage of the little girl admitting to cops that she was traveling...

A Spirit Airlines plane was raked with gunfire and hit multiple times as it was trying to land in Haiti Monday — leaving at least one flight attendant wounded. The ordeal unfolded at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, the Miami Herald reported, citing sources. The flight attendant was grazed by a bullet when the gunfire erupted. Multiple bullet holes could be seen in the overhead bins and a plane door in the aftermath, footage obtained by local outlet Media Libre Haiti showed. The plane, which was en route from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had to be diverted to an...

An Oxford University student killed himself after becoming a victim of “pervasive cancel culture” over an unproven allegation made by his ex, a UK court has heard. The body of 20-year-old Alexander Rogers was pulled from the River Thames on Jan. 15 — just days after his friends and classmates stopped speaking to him when his former partner aired the unknown allegation, This Is Oxfordshire reported. The unspecified allegation was not reported to authorities or the school, but resulted in Rogers being “ostracized” as part of a “pile-on” effect, a court hearing into his death was told. Dr. Dominique Thompson,...

An Ohio mom has been sentenced to 40 years behind bars after she was caught on camera ambushing her ex-husband and fatally injecting him with a powerful animal tranquilizer during an ugly custody dispute over their kids, federal prosecutors said. Amanda Hovanec, 37, pleaded guilty this week to poisoning 36-year-old Timothy Hovanec when he arrived to drop off their three daughters at her Wapakoneta home in 2022. “She then pulled on his back to bring him to the ground, holding him around the neck until his body went limp and he became unresponsive, lying on the driveway,” prosecutors said. Newly...

Terrifying surveillance video has captured the moment a tourist was suddenly swallowed by a sinkhole while walking down a busy Malaysia street — sending her plummeting some 26 feet below ground and sparking a frantic search for the still-missing woman. Rescue workers have been scrambling around the clock ever since Vijaya Lakshmi, 48, disappeared into the massive sinkhole in the center of Kuala Lumpur ... Chilling CCTV footage showed an unsuspecting Lakshmi, who was visiting from India, strolling along before the sidewalk abruptly gave way beneath her — causing her to drop through the huge square hole. ... At least...

The body of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter was retrieved from the wreckage of the Bayesian superyacht Friday — as Italian authorities reportedly launched a manslaughter probe into what caused the tragedy. Hannah Lynch was the last remaining person still unaccounted for after the yacht sank off the coast of Sicily after being struck by a storm on Monday – sparking a massive search and rescue operation. “The Lynch family is devastated, in shock and is being comforted and supported by family and friends,” a family spokesperson said in confirming her body had been found Friday. “Their thoughts...

A former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul reportedly had her $3.5 million Long Island home raided by the FBI early Tuesday. The feds carried out the pre-dawn search at the five-bedroom property where Linda Sun, one of Hochul’s former deputy chiefs of staff, lives in a gated community in Manhasset, the New York Times reported. The reason for the raid wasn’t immediately clear. Neither Sun, 40, nor her husband, Chris Hu, 41, have been accused of any wrongdoing and no arrests were made, sources told the outlet.

A Harvard University-affiliated teaching hospital is seeking to retract or correct dozens of papers authored by four of its top researchers — including the hospital’s CEO — following a probe into allegations of data falsification. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston has already initiated six retractions to papers and 31 others are in the process of being corrected, the hospital’s research integrity officer, Dr. Barrett Rollins, confirmed to the Harvard Crimson. The corrections follow claims of data falsification leveled against the cancer institute’s CEO, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, chief operating officer Dr. William Hahn, director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program...

Two more Hamas leaders have been killed in targeted airstrikes in Gaza – including the commander who orchestrated one of last week’s heinous deadly assaults on an Israeli kibbutz, Israel’s military said Sunday. Israel Defense Forces claimed they “neutralized” Billal Al Kedra, the commander of the southern Khan Yunis Nukhba forces, in the Gaza Strip late Saturday. The military said Al Kedra was behind the massacre of dozens of innocent Israelis when Hamas terrorists stormed the Kibbutz Nirim community Oct. 7 as part of its sneak attack on Israel. It wasn’t immediately clear how many men, women and children were...