Free Republic

Trump's Free Fall: Media made him, and they will destroy him by Daniel Clark While Donald Trump is busy formulating the official excuse for his likely defeat, his loyalists are blaming conservative magazines, supporters of his primary opponents, and anyone else who hasn't demonstrated sufficient fealty to their hero. They might stop to consider that Trump himself has employed a campaign strategy that all but assured his destruction once he secured the nomination. Former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone, who is reportedly still a very close confidante, explained in a January interview with Politico that his candidate had "totally committed...

The candidates for president and their big-money allies have spent more than $682 million through the end of January, according to federal disclosures. But money hasn't bought success. There’s one area where Donald Trump is badly trailing the field — spending ― and that makes his resounding wins in South Carolina and New Hampshire all the more frustrating to his Republicans he’s trouncing and worrisome to the party leaders trying to block him from winning the nomination. According to a POLITICO analysis of reports filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission, through the end of January the campaign of the...

First it was the summer of Donald Trump. Then it became fall, and now winter, and still Trump sits atop the Republican polls and dominates every news cycle. For his campaign, that constant exposure essentially translates to free money. That's according to a Bloomberg analysis, which found Trump has enjoyed the equivalent of as much as $23.4 million in free media this year from ABC, NBC and CBS alone. Bloomberg arrived at this figure by looking at the total time Trump has spent on those networks and the average cost of a national ad. "There's really no precedent for the...

Yesterday in Tashkent there was a demonstration in remembrance of the dead during the weekend events in Andijan. Only a few Uzbek human rights activists with carnations and about 30 Russian journalists showed up for the meeting. The main question they all had was: Why does nobody react to the tragic events in Andijan? Kommersant’s special correspondent Mikhail ZYGAR’ got his own answer for the question. As strange as it seems, the Tashkent population is aware of what happened in Andijan, or, more likely, they can guess. The local media reported only President Karimov’s description of the events, but it...