Free Republic

By Sam Stein 03/15/2024 Mike Pence said on Friday that he would not endorse Donald Trump for president in 2024, breaking with the man who tapped him as vice president only to make him the target of an angry mob for his refusal to help with efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” Pence told Fox News.

Ukraine is on its way to being able to “stand on its own feet” militarily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday, noting that more than 20 other countries have pledged to maintain their own military and financial aid to the country even if the U.S. were to withdraw its support under a different president. Blinken for the first time directly addressed the possibility that former President Donald Trump could win the November election and back away from commitments to Ukraine. Trump’s public comments have varied between criticizing U.S. backing for Ukraine’s defense and supporting it, while his running mate,...

Paul Ryan, one of the most prominent national Republicans in Wisconsin history, is also notable as one of leading Republicans to reject the GOP’s current standard bearer, former President Donald Trump. Ryan, of Janesville, represented Wisconsin’s First Congressional District for 20 years and served as speaker from 2015 to 2019, when, after three years of clashing with Trump, he did not seek re-election. (He currently serves in a number of corporate roles.) In a 30-minute interview with Milwaukee Magazine in late May, Ryan shared his views on Trump’s rematch with President Joe Biden, the state of the GOP, national affairs...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says Joe Biden is a “good guy,” breaking with former President Trump’s repeated efforts to villainize the president as the corrupt mastermind behind schemes to steal elections and persecute political opponents. But McConnell, who has endorsed Trump, says there are plenty of compelling policy reasons to oust Biden from office, and has laid out a road map for Trump to use at Thursday’s debate and on the campaign trail to attack Biden’s record in office. “I know Joe Biden pretty well. He’s a good guy; I like him personally,” McConnell told an audience in...

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton said Thursday on CNN’s “Newsnight” that advocates for a second Trump term were “deceiving people” on his foreign policy. Host Abby Phillip asked, “Former President Trump said in an interview tonight he once again praised Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader. And this comes right after Vladimir Putin and Kim just struck this week a defense deal. I wonder, what does the alliance between Kim and Putin look like if Trump is elected again? He seems to constantly want to butter up this dictator. Bolton said, “Well, the Putin-Kim meeting in Korea was...

BREAKING: Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton urges Republicans to abandon him as their presidential candidate now that's he's officially a convicted felon. This is absolutely brutal for MAGA... "Well, I think it's gonna be a big mistake for the party, for the country to nominate Donald Trump," Bold said during an appearance on CNN. "Precisely because he may well win this election. I'm not going to vote for Biden either, but I think if there's any chance left to get somebody else to replace Trump, which is highly unlikely to be sure, this ought to signal it...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said he laughs at the term “America first,” an increasingly common phrase heard in the Republican Party regarding U.S. foreign policy that he finds “disorienting.” Romney said during an interview with MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle” earlier this week that growing isolationism in the GOP is “unimaginable” considering its past leaders, like former Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Romney argued the term, popularized by former President Trump, “flows” in from talk radio and TV, where “outrageous” things are embraced by the party’s...

Should Russia succeed in its war on Ukraine, the United States will likely have to intervene with more than just money - but also with troops, said U.S. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries. "We cannot allow Ukraine to fall, because if it does, there is a significant possibility that America will have to intervene in the conflict — not just with our money, but with our troops," he told CBS News.

@justinamash The Antisemitism Awareness Act is flagrantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment, and the members of Congress who vote for it are shamelessly violating their oath to support and defend the Constitution. @justinamash The First Amendment exists to prohibit the government from abridging speech that others disagree with or find disagreeable, as well as speech that others hate or find hateful. @justinamash “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that military aid to Ukraine was not charity, adding that it created jobs in the United States. Host Kristen Welker said, “I want to ask you about your legacy. You said just this week that you often feel like the only Reagan Republican left. As you prepare to step down from your leadership position this year, what are your greatest concerns about the future of the Republican Party?”

@RepThomasMassie There’s a bipartisan effort in Congress to equate criticism of the secular state of Israel to violence toward Jewish people in America. The latter is illegal and the former is protected speech, but if a false equivalency is established, it will be forbidden to criticize Israel.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell distanced himself from other Republican lawmakers who have called for the National Guard to be sent in to break up the antisemitic riots and demonstrations that have taken over multiple university campuses throughout the US over the last week and a half. “What needs to happen, at least at the beginning, is these university presidents need to get control of the situation, allow free speech, and push back against antisemitism,” McConnell told Margaret Brennan on the CBS 'Face the Nation' program. “I thought that was largely gone in this country, but we’ve seen a number...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) turned off Instagram mentions on his official government account after a social media uproar over his passage of Ukraine aid. Instagram users can no longer mention the leader of the so-called “People’s House” in posts on the popular app, a change that limits users’ ability to engage with Johnson’s official account. The setting is unusual for politicians, particularly on Capitol Hill, who generally maximize their engagement with the people they serve. Notably, Johnson joins Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in turning off his mentions.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blamed Tucker Carlson for turning some Republicans against the idea of providing military aid for Ukraine by demonizing the war-torn country. The top Republican in the Senate argued that Carlson’s outspoken stance against US support for Ukraine was one of the primary reasons why approving more than $60 billion in emergency spending for the former Soviet state took so long to achieve. “I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which was interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell said during...

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) raged at Republicans lawmakers on the House floor for opposing an aid package to Ukraine before Saturday’s vote. The House passed a $61 billion aid bill for Ukraine amid the country’s current war with Russia. Lawmakers also passed other bills providing assistance to Taiwan and other U.S. allies. Hardline conservative lawmakers opposed the bipartisan legislation by arguing the money should have gone towards security at the U.S. southern border. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) worked with Democratic lawmakers to bring the aid bills to the floor and ensured it’s passage. Connolly responded to those complaints by noting...

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump did not have any idea what to do in the Middle East. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Former President Trump last night at a rally in Pennsylvania, Shanksville, said that none of this would have happened if he had been president. Take a listen to what he said.”

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that former President Donald Trump had “simple-minded ideas about how the world works.” Bolton said, “I think it’s important to understand, and this is especially important for Trump critics to understand, he doesn’t have a philosophy. He doesn’t think in policy terms, as that’s conventionally understood in Washington. He thinks in anecdotal, ad hoc, transactional terms, seeing through the prism of how does this benefit Donald Trump.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) will not vote for his own party’s nominee for president, he said Tuesday. The establishment politician’s statement that he will not vote for Donald Trump comes days after the former president locked up the party’s nomination. Young had indicated earlier he would not endorse Trump, but Tuesday is the first time he admitted publicly he will not even vote for his party’s standard bearer. “At some point, principled conservatives need to incentivize our party, the Republican Party, to nominate somebody that principled conservatives can actually believe in,” Young told a local Indiana outlet. “Stated differently, I’m...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Thursday again pressed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to take up the Senate-passed national security spending package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, despite Johnson’s message to GOP senators this week that he’s moving in a different direction. McConnell didn’t express much interest in waiting weeks or maybe months for the House to come up with an alternative proposal to help Ukraine. “The chilling reality here is abundantly clear. Withholding critical weapons has not helped manage [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s escalation. It has only emboldened him,” McConnell warned on the Senate floor. That alternative...

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) blamed former President Trump and conservative media host Tucker Carlson for the rise in anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the House, dubbing the pair the leaders of a “pro-Putin faction” of the Republican Party. Ukraine aid has languished in the House for months as Republicans refuse to pass foreign spending without major border security reforms. Jeffries called on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring a Senate bill to the floor once again on Sunday.