Free Republic

CNN’s Jake Tapper delivered a blockbuster report about the United States’ ongoing military operation in Iran after a private interview with President Donald Trump on Monday. Anchor Kate Bolduan paused an interview with John Bolton to allow Tapper to call in before asking her colleague about his conversation with the president. “I just got off the phone with President Trump. It was a nine-minute phone interview, and we talked just about the war in Iran. I’m going to share some of it with you right now. The president said, quote, ‘We’re knocking the crap out of them. I think it’s...

Candace Owens announced on Monday that her show would be back on the air beginning Wednesday with a new “investigative series” targeting Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, eliciting an abundance of horrified reactions. The teaser trailer for the series shared by Owens on X begins with news coverage about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but quickly transitions to clips of its subject, as well as critical commentary about her, “Zionists,” and Israel. There’s even a implication that the Turning Point USA CEO is implicated in a Romanian human trafficking scandal. The series is titled “Bride of Charlie,”...

President Donald Trump raged over some disappointing economic news shortly before his Commerce Department delivered it to the public on Friday morning. “The Democrat Shutdown cost the U.S.A. at least two points in GDP. That’s why they are doing it, in mini form, again. No Shutdowns!” declared the president in a 7:50 a.m. Truth Social post. “Also, LOWER INTEREST RATES. ‘Two Late’ Powell is the WORST!!!,” he added. Less than an hour later, his administration announced that the United States’ GDP grew at an annualized rate of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The 43-day government shutdown last fall...

A new report from City Journal‘s Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo takes readers inside all that is alleged about Nick Fuentes’s involvement in the Ali Alexander-underage photos scandal. Fuentes and Alexander, both of whom are far-right activists, have a longstanding relationship, and the latter is perhaps best known for having allegedly solicited nude photos from two underage boys, including a 15-year-old. According to Thorpe and Rufo, Fuentes allegedly knew about Alexander’s proclivities before Milo Yiannopoulos, another far-right activist, publicized them in 2023. From Thorpe and Rufo’s report: On a livestream in 2017, Fuentes said there was “abundant evidence” that Alexander...

President Donald Trump declared that The New York Times must “pay a price” on Thursday after the Gray Lady and Siena University released a new poll suggesting that just 40% of registered voters approve of him. In a write-up about the survey, the Times’ chief political analyst Nate Cohn observed that “The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even...

<p>President Donald Trump scolded America’s cattle ranchers in a Wednesday Truth Social rant that saw him declare that they’d be in dire straits without him.</p><p>Trump has faced criticism over his suggestion that the United States might buy more beef from Argentina.</p>

“It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future. I negotiated this Deal with Lip-Bu Tan, the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company,” wrote Trump on Truth Social. “The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars. This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to...

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro ruthlessly mocked Tucker Carlson on Tuesday over his professed concern that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities could lead to World War III. “President [Donald] Trump was never, ever going to get us into a nation-building project in Iran. That was never-, have you met President Trump? Have you watched him for the last 10 years?” asked Shapiro rhetorically to kick off his rant. “What unbelievable lack of faith it shows in President Trump for people to suggest that Trump, of all people, was going to get us in to World War III on a...

Retired U.S. Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis predicted that President Donald Trump would order a military strike on Iran in the coming days during an appearance on CNN Thursday morning. After beings asked about the “factors” that might be “going into the president’s thinking” as he mulls his options, Stavridis weighed in. “I think all presidents begin with pros and cons. The pro is pretty obvious here. U.S. has the ability, using these big, bunker-busting bombs we’re talking about constantly, in all probability to take out definitively the beating heart of the Iranian nuclear program at...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come a long way since 2018. When she first arrived on the political scene by beating out not just an incumbent, but a member of her party’s leadership in a Democratic primary contest, she was a rebel — an avatar of insurgent impulses within her coalition. And, among Republicans, something of a joke. Now, she’s the Democratic Party’s most popular elected official. A Yale University poll released this week found that among Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez boasts the single highest net favorability rating of all the party’s many potential 2028 presidential candidates — a sky-high 62%. In addition, 41%...

Vice President JD Vance criticized the judgment of his boss, President Donald Trump, in a leaked group chat in which Vance and several other senior Trump administration officials discussed the possibility of American military strikes against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen. On Monday, The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had accidentally been added to a Signal group chat in which the Principals Committee – the heads of the top American national security agencies — debated how and whether to strike the Houthis earlier this month. At one point, after National Security Advisor Mike Waltz informed the group that they...

Former Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) called Elon Musk a “thief” and a “Nazi” during a fiery CNN segment Thursday night. After Joe Borelli, the ex-Republican leader on the New York City Council, argued that much of the discontent at Republican congressmen’s town hall events were protests organized by Democrats, Bowman interrupted to insist that “that’s not true.” “That’s not true. And this shows, again, the American people do not trust Elon Musk,” began Bowman. “And Elon Musk is incompetent in his position. And how do we know? Because they fired tens of thousands of people, it was challenged in...

President-elect Donald Trump fawned over Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) after a recent meeting between the two, calling him a “fascinating man” who he “couldn’t be more impressed” by. CBS News reported late last week that Fetterman was set to become the first Democratic senator to meet Trump since his triumph in November’s presidential election. “I think that one, he’s the president, or he will be officially…and I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper,” said...

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson fawned over Darryl Cooper, whom he described as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” during a recent interview in which Cooper identified Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War Two and appeared to argue that the Holocaust was an accident. Cooper’s claims followed Carlson’s profession to be “highly distressed by the uses to which the myths about World War Two have been put in the context of modern foreign policy — particularly the war in Ukraine.” “You know, Churchill’s the good guy, Neville Chamberlain’s the bad guy....

A new round of polls from Morning Consult and Bloomberg News suggests that Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is beating or tied with former President Donald Trump in every major swing state. According to the survey of 4,962 registered voters conducted between August 23 and 27, Harris leads by 2 points in Georgia and North Carolina, 3 points in Michigan, 4 points in Nevada and Pennsylvania, a whopping 8 points in Wisconsin, and tied with Trump in Arizona.

“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong but when they are weak,” declared Ronald Reagan at the 1980 Republican National Convention. “It is then that tyrants are tempted,” he added, summing up his conviction that peace could only be secured through strength. Until Donald Trump followed in Reagan’s footsteps as the GOP’s standard-bearer, this formulation was axiomatic on the American right. But Trump’s careless rhetoric — which often flirted with isolationism and flattered America’s sworn enemies in Moscow and Pyongyang — emboldened the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. In an op-ed endorsing...

Only two questions mattered going into Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate. Number one: Would any one viable candidate stand out among the crowd? Number two: If the answer to the first was “Yes,” would our champion distinguish themselves by acting as the absent Donald Trump’s proxy or by setting up a favorable contrast with the frontrunner? Trump’s decision to sit out the first forum of the 2024 primary season has been cast as a cautious, cowardly decision. It was undoubtedly the latter, but despite the illusion of political safety, the choice also came with considerable risks. If another candidate was...

Longshot presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has accused his prospective Republican rivals of parroting him, but Ramaswamy himself has made an intentional effort to conceal his own biography, even paying a Wikipedia editor to remove potentially politically damaging details about his past from his page.

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) voiced the commonly held belief that the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was wrongly decided — yet popular Twitter personalities twisted his words to tell a more sinister story. Yet that is an oversimplification of the senator’s comments on the subject on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1548340766920978434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1548465411481432065%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fnews%2Fprogressives-twist-ted-cruzs-obergefell-criticism-beyond-recognition%2F Cruz, asked what the argument would be for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, replied that the decision, like Roe v. Wade, “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history.” “Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” he...

An old video circulating on social media shows Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warning that even just “close contact” with those already afflicted with AIDS could result in infection. In the context of a conversation about childhood infections, Fauci speculates that “if the close contact of a child is a household contact, perhaps there will be a certain number of cases of individuals who are just living with and in close contact with someone with AIDS, or at risk of AIDS ----SNIP--- The clip was posted in response to Chasten Buttigieg, the...