Free Republic

Former Massachusetts governor William F. Weld, who is challenging President Trump as a Republican candidate in 2020, blasted the president for his attacks on democratic institutions and for stoking nationalist rhetoric as Trump seeks money for a wall along the Mexican border. “It’s part of his strategy to try to get everybody upset, and divide the country and persuade us that we shouldn’t be patriots who love our own country and our own people,” Weld said. Instead, “we should be nationalists who hate everybody else,” Weld said. Weld made the remarks during an appearance on WCVB-TV’s “On The Record” with...

Democrats "can foresee" the possibility of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump following the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Speaking on the Sunday political talk shows, the chairmen of three key House investigatory committees sounded open to the possibility of bringing impeachment proceedings against the president. "I can foresee that possibly coming," House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, adding that he is "not there yet" on impeachment. The report itself, Cummings said, provides Congress with an investigatory "roadmap," he said. "I think [Mueller] basically said to us as a Congress,...

Of all the questions that will be answered by the 2020 election, one matters above the others: Is Trumpism a temporary aberration or a long-term phenomenon? Put another way: Will the changes brought about by Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party fade away, or will they become entrenched? Trump’s reelection seems implausible to many people, as implausible as his election did before November 2016. But despite the scandals and chaos of his presidency, and despite his party’s midterm losses, he approaches 2020 with two factors in his favor. One is incumbency: Since 1980, voters have only once denied an incumbent...

President Trump normally seems to relish the idea that he and the media are foils. He's gone so far as to call some outlets the "enemy of the people," but he still stops and talks with them as often as he can. But, apparently, First Lady Melania Trump can convince him not to. On Thursday, as the president crossed the White House's South Lawn shortly after the public release of the redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on 2016 Russian election interference and the Trump campaign's conduct surrounding the meddling, he walked right past a "mob of reporters."...

Jim Messina, campaign manager for former President Barack Obama's successful re-election campaign, predicted that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would be unable to counter President Trump's economic messaging and would therefore lose in a 2020 electoral matchup. "Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues," Messina said during the Powerhouse Politics podcast this week. Messina contended that swing voters were "incredibly focused on the economy" and that winners of the last five presidential elections were those candidates who were able to "win" the economic argument with swing...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday became the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to make a full-throated call for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report. Mueller, who investigated whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election and whether the president tried to interfere with the inquiry, found no evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and made no verdict on obstruction of justice. Mueller did find, however, that Trump made numerous attempts to interfere with the investigation but was largely...

Newly arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs to “answer for what he has done,” Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state weighed in on Assange while at a speaking event with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Assange was arrested earlier Thursday at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and the US has charged him with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. WikiLeaks’ publication of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers during the 2016 election season hurt Clinton’s presidential campaign....

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Sunday Dreamers, children of immigrants brought into the country illegally, should get legal status. "Well, it's been put in place by President Obama and I believe we have a responsibility to fulfill what is a presidential pledge and commitment. So that's in the past. I would provide legal status for those Dreamers in the country," Romney said on NBC's "Meet the Press," referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shields these individuals from deportation. "That's something the president's put on the table. I think we should get that job done, and hope,...

In his magnum opus work, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” published in 1936, John Maynard Keynes made famous the reference to “animal spirits” – those things that relate to the instincts and emotions that can drive human behavior. Keynes wrote of them in the context of economics. The passage which has become the stuff of economic legend reads: “Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits – a spontaneous urge to action...

Donald Trump’s presidency has been anything but predictable. It’s a continuous roller coaster and no one can really know what might follow, but underneath all the noise, the commander-in-chief has actually done a better job than many might have thought. Yes, the presidency has been controversial with Trump often angrily-tweeting from behind his phone, but has he worked enough to get re-elected as Democrats gear up to remove the businessman-turned-politician out of the White House? With a successful midterm election from the Democratic Party, one might think the president holds a bleak chance of regaining office, however, things might not...

For President Donald Trump, it may prove to be the bounce that never comes. On the afternoon of March 24, the news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller had found no collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russians — a moment for which the president and his allies had been waiting almost two years. But a week later, Trump's average approval rating, according to the Real Clear Politics tracker, had climbed a grand total of one-tenth of one percentage point — to 43.2 percent from 43.1 percent. You could argue, of course, that Americans are reserving judgment. The complete Mueller...

"We're going into the war with some socialists," President Donald Trump told an adoring audience of Republican congressmen this week, sharing his assessment of the coming election and saying he had a new theme for his campaign. "I love the idea of 'Keep America Great' because you know what it says is we've made it great now we're going to keep it great because the socialists will destroy it." Saving the country from fears he's stoking about socialism has become his main strategy to demonize Democrats, and he's seized on the rise of self-described democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, the...

The move by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) immediately paves the way for quicker confirmation of President Donald Trump’s judicial and executive branch picks and comes amid deep GOP frustration with Democratic delays. Future presidents will benefit too, though McConnell and Trump stand to gain inordinately as they seek to fill 130 District Court vacancies over the next 18 months before the 2020 election. The nuclear option — a change of the Senate rules by a simple majority — gained its name because it was seen as an explosive maneuver that would leave political fallout for some time to...

Liberal obsession with the Mueller probe has gifted Trump the moral high ground and electoral momentum. It's over. While Democrats and the familiar clique of the centrist media types quibble like bickering patent lawyers about the fine print, the verdict is in: Donald Trump has indeed been vindicated, exonerated, exculpated - take your disheartening pick. The same band of centrists whining about the need for American "taxpayers" to see all of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report is missing the neon-bright, marquee-sized point: Trump and his 43 million rebar-sturdy supporters have never been preoccupied with the "fine print." They're much more...

<p>He also rejects calls from Trump allies that he step down.</p> <p>Rep. Adam Schiff faced Republican calls for him to resign Monday after the attorney general’s letter summarizing the special counsel’s report on the 2016 election contradicted the Burbank Democrat’s claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.</p>

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Sunday the Democratic House majority is determined to impeach President Trump, regardless of the findings in special counsel Robert Mueller’s now-concluded investigation into Russian election meddling. Lamenting what he called “extremism” on the part of the Democrats, Cruz cited remarks by House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) in an earlier segment on CNN's "State of the Union" that the House’s mandate goes beyond investigating crimes. Cruz added that the House "doesn't care about the basis" for impeachment. When asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether he agreed with Trump’s frequent characterization of Mueller’s investigation as a...

Watch in slow motion as Democrats, goaded by the media, conspire to re-elect President Trump: Voters care about the economy and making education and health care affordable. And so Democrats are talking about … abolishing the Electoral College? Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren started the latest distraction at a CNN town hall on Monday. “Get rid of the Electoral College,” she said, neglecting to mention that this has zero chance of occurring in the foreseeable future. The media took it from there. On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Garrett Haake pressed former representative Beto O’Rourke: “Getting rid of the Electoral College: Is that an...

The House speaker said any briefing must be unclassified so that members of Congress can talk publicly about the findings. Democrats in Congress are gearing up for a fight to ensure that special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings are made public, calling for the release of the full report. On Friday, Mueller submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr, who now has to determine what to do with the conclusions from the 22-month investigation that resulted in charges against 34 people. As a start, he is expected to send lawmakers a summary of the findings as early as Sunday. Democrats...

Gone are the days in American presidential races when a candidate would rise or fall on policy differences. Today, Democrats choosing their candidate for the 2020 race are asking just one question — does the person have what it takes to stay the course and defeat Republican Donald Trump? First, the candidates will have to fight it out among themselves in debates this year, and in party primary voting contests next year, during which they could inflict serious damage on each other and dangerously weaken their candidacy in the general election. So far, 13 have formally declared their candidacy, and...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised the leadership shown by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on the issue of gun control in the wake of the deadly Christchurch mosque shootings by a white supremacist. Ardern announced that, as a result of the far-right terror attack which left 50 people dead and dozens more injured, some critically, New Zealand will ban a swathe of what she called “military-style” weapons and parts that allow other guns to be converted. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and rising star in the party, drew a comparison with the lack of action on gun control in America...