Free Republic

The disgraced Jonah Goldberg’s latest act of liberal fascism involves him lying about Donald Trump on CNN and then claiming it was Donald Trump who made him lie. Not-So-Little Lord Fauntleroy grows more pathetic and self-loathing by the day. We all know what former President Trump said about Liz Cheney on Thursday. There was nothing ambiguous about what he said or what he meant: Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war...

Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg thinks Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “increasingly repugnant rhetoric” as the 2024 election enters its home stretch may actually be a deliberate ploy. And Goldberg suggested how it could pay off for the former president in the race against Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump isn’t normally thought of as a consensus-builder, but in one sense that’s exactly what he is. Many of Trump’s most ardent fans and foes alike believe he is the leader of a political movement with a clear and defined set of principles and goals. They disagree only on whether that agenda is good or bad.The tendency to cast Trump as a tool of the ideological right serves the purposes of both sides. The right needs to believe Trump is a warrior for its causes to justify its support for him, and the left wants to believe the same...

We’re nowhere near slam-dunk territory on this, but it’s something to watch. For Democrats, it could be an area that could produce another episode of politically induced heartburn. Jonah Goldberg is a notable anti-Trump commentator. He has been a vocal critic of the former president, though he’s returned to his classic roots amid the chaos on our college campuses. Still, while Biden has been disappointing for some Republicans who might have crossed party lines in 2020, Goldberg’s tweet about the rumblings he’s heard from within the Never Trump wing is interesting: Fwiw. I’ve heard from a LOT of reliably anti-Trump...

I’m all for raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but my favorite thing in the world is watching the smug fascists in the Never Trump movement deal with failure and despair. Oh, Jonah “Fauntleroy” Goldberg’s having a bad day? In the Nolte household, that piece of news ranks right up there with cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. “‘Never Trumpers’ are close to giving up hope,” reads the Hill headline. Knowing Never Trumpers are giving up hope means you can keep your bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. It gets better, so much better… “Former President Trump is...

Sometimes revealing a communist is a little like taking off a Band-Aid. You’ve got to pick at the edges a little bit until you can get enough gripped to rip it off.It has been a decade since Jonah Goldberg and I had our back-and-forth editorial debate about “modern republicanism.” [He lost both a massive number of readers and credibility.] In the years since, we are both exactly the same people; the only difference is – his mask has completely dropped and he’s no longer pretending.In this brutally perfect appearance on his new network gig, CNN, Jonah Goldberg, the pontificating pustule...

Former National Review columnist and unhinged Never-Trumper Jonah Goldberg recently claimed that small donors in the Republican primary were a problem “for democracy” and are “just venting their spleen” rather than acting strategically. The pompous neocon told “Inside Politics” host Dana Bash, “Small donors in Iowa are more important as an indicator of grassroots support than anything else. But I also think we’re dealing with a time where there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of cheering and self-congratulations about the rise of small donors a decade ago.” He then added, “Now small donors are one of the biggest...

Is the GOP becoming a dysfunctional chatroom? In economics, Gresham’s law on currency markets holds that “bad money drives out good.” That principle also applies to the comment sections on online sites. In comments sections — including such mega-versions like Twitter — the nastiest commenters post more, and more obnoxiously, than the decent ones until, eventually, the decent folk just decide not to hang out anymore. The only remedy for this is comment moderation, where grown-ups in charge try to thwart the trolls lest they lose their more valuable customers. In Tim Miller’s book, “Why We Did It,” the former...

“The tapes are the real man — mean, vindictive, panicky, striking first in anticipation of being struck, trying to lift his own friable self-esteem by shoving others down,” Gary Wills wrote of Richard Nixon in the 2017 preface to his book, “Nixon Agonistes.” Wills added, perhaps unfairly, that “Nixon’s real tragedy is that he never had the stature to be a tragic hero. He is the stuff of sad (almost heartbreaking) comedy.” The passage comes to mind as we close out Donald Trump’s annus horribilis, during which he supplanted Nixon as the saddest figure in post-presidential politics. The Jan. 6...

It once again has become necessary that Mr. Jonah Goldberg, scholar, humorist, rationalist, and exemplar of moral consistency, bring to heel a rabidly partisan right-winger (Yearning for a Banana Republic). The burden is thrust upon him by a benighted epoch. "What an amazingly stupid time this is," laments Jonah. The immediate evidence of the era's stupidity is the enhanced partisanship for Donald Trump voiced by conservatives, after the FBI's raid on his estate at Mar-a-Lago. Apparently in reaction to the search, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, along with others, renewed his support for Trump's candidacy in 2024. He identified the...

In overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court delivered the right’s biggest single victory ever, and it may spell the end of the conservative movement as we’ve known it. It was Ronald Reagan who popularized the notion that the conservative movement rested on a fusionist “three-legged stool.” In theory, the three legs were free market economics, national defense and social conservatism. In practice, free market economics meant low taxes and pro-business policies. National defense meant anticommunism and, briefly, the war on terror. Social conservatism covered a lot of territory but the enduring core was opposition to Roe and abortion. Like...

p>Former President Donald Trump criticized three nominally conservative pundits as well as National Review magazine on Sunday following their recent dismissive pieces of the former president. Trump excoriated Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan; Rich Lowry, editor of National Review; and George Will, columnist for the Washington Post."I listen to all of these foolish (stupid!) people, often living in a bygone era, like the weak and frail RINO, Peggy Noonan, who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his...

One of the silver linings of the very large dark cloud of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the clarity it provides. This is, broadly speaking a contest between good guys and bad guys.A lot of people who fancy themselves foreign policy realists roll their eyes at talk about “good guys” versus “bad guys.” The world is made up of nation-states with interests and those states act rationally on their interests. Good and bad ain’t got nothing to do with it.I’ve never bought this argument, on either analytical or moral terms.Yes, nations have interests, but the way they define their...

The next day saw a discussion with Dispatch editor Jonah Goldberg, who also waved away the Hunter Biden laptop story, which he later stated on Twitter that he did not believe “on it’s face.” Goldberg’s flippant attitude and smug gatekeeping was a perfect example of how so many pundits and thinkers are now more interested in hearing what each other have to say and bathing in self-satisfied pontifications rather than in serving their audiences. But the ultimate irony is that former President Barack Obama was a special guest, appearing onstage alongside Jeffrey Goldberg. Breitbart reporter Charlie Spiering later summed up...

Stephen Hayes, a conservative journalist and and commentator who left Fox News last year over the company's publication of a controversial documentary about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is joining NBC News. Hayes, CEO of the political news and commentary website The Dispatch, will join NBC as a contributor and political analyst and is slated to appear on “Meet The Press” this Sunday, the network announced on Friday. "I’ve known and worked with Steve Hayes on and off for nearly 25 years. He is a principled reporter and analyst who always puts truth and facts above...

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

Fox News commentators Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes have quit the network, upset over a documentary about Jan. 6 that was produced by Tucker Carlson. “With the release of ‘Patriot Purge,’ we felt we could no longer ‘do right as we see it’ and remain at Fox News. So we resigned,” they wrote in a joint post at The Dispatch, where both work. “Patriot Purge” is a documentary series from Carlson about what took place on Jan. 6, when protesters and rioters breached the U.S. Capitol in Washington, interrupting a joint session of Congress that was certifying electoral votes. A...

The trailer for Tucker Carlson’s special about the Jan. 6 mob at the Capitol landed online on Oct. 27, and that night Jonah Goldberg sent a text to his business partner, Stephen Hayes: “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.” The full special, “Patriot Purge,” appeared on Fox’s online subscription streaming service days later. And last week, the two men, both paid Fox News contributors, finalized their resignations from the network. “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead...

Famous never Trumpers Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit as contributors for Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s January 6 documentary suggesting that the Capitol Hill riot may have in part been sparked by the FBI. In late October, as Carlson’s documentary hit the subscription service Fox Nation, Jonah Goldberg sent a text to Stephen Hayes wondering if he should quit the network. “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.” Speaking with the New York Times, Hayes and Goldberg said they...

Some great news. Two RINOs who are Fox News contributors just quit from Fox News. They quit because Tucker Carlson released a documentary exposing what really happened on Jan 6th. The two RINOs are Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. From The New York Times: The trailer for Tucker Carlson’s special about the Jan. 6 mob at the Capitol landed online on Oct. 27, and that night Jonah Goldberg sent a text to his business partner, Stephen Hayes: “I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.” “I’m game,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how...