Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself dressed as pope as the mourning of Pope Francis continues and just days before the conclave to elect his successor is set to begin. Trump’s action drew rebukes from a group representing Catholic bishops in New York and among Italians.The image, shared Friday night on Trump’s Truth Social site and later reposted by the White House on its official X account, raised eyebrows on social media and at the Vatican, which is still in the period of nine days of official mourning following Francis’ death on...

Americans are less likely to see Canada and the U.S. as close allies than they were two years ago, the latest indication that President Donald Trump's tariff threats and talk of taking over a neighboring ally are souring a critical economic and military relationship. The U.S. shift in viewpoint comes primarily from Democrats, though Republicans are less likely to see Canada as America’s ally now too, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. While about 7 in 10 Democrats saw Canada and the U.S. as close allies before Trump returned to office, now...

WASHINGTON (AP) — His group spent nearly $1 million on ads opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s health agencies. He’s delivering speeches urging the president to stand with longstanding foreign allies and lobbying members of Congress while aides write letters and opinion columns. This weekend, he posted an article he penned more than a decade ago on the limits of presidential power after Trump claimed that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Mike Pence is emerging as one of the last Republicans in Washington willing to publicly criticize the new...

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is demanding the immediate release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, saying that if they are not freed before he is sworn into office there will be “HELL TO PAY.”“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth...

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has spent months laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the 2024 election if he loses — just as he did four years ago. At rally after rally, he urges his supporters to deliver a victory “too big to rig,” telling them the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. He has refused to say, repeatedly, whether he will accept the results regardless of the outcome. And he’s claimed cheating is already underway, citing debunked claims or outrageous theories with no basis in reality. “The only thing that can stop us...

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — The man who was killed at a rally for former President Donald Trump was Corey Comperatore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Sunday. Comperatore was a former fire chief from the area who loved his family, Shapiro said. “Corey died a hero. Corey dove on his family to protect them last night,” the governor said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Former White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, who is currently in jail on contempt of Congress charges, is expected to speak at next week’s Republican National Convention just hours after his release.That’s according to two people familiar with the event’s schedule who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details before they were formally announced. Navarro is set to be released from a Miami prison on Wednesday, July 17, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database of current inmates. That would give him just enough time to board a plane and make it to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The video shared by former President Donald Trump features horror movie music and footage of migrants purportedly entering the U.S. from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Shots of men with tattoos and videos of violent crime are set against close-ups of people waving and wrapping themselves in American flags. “They’re coming by the thousands,” Trump says in the video, posted on his social media site. “We will secure our borders. And we will restore sovereignty.” In his speeches and online posts, Trump has ramped up anti-immigrant rhetoric as he seeks the White House a third time,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Joe Biden visited five cities in a multiday trip last week, former President Donald Trump was hardly seen in public, spending most of his time in South Florida. Trump has held just a single public campaign event since he locked up the Republican presidential nomination on March 12: a rally in Ohio funded not by his campaign but by backers of a Senate candidate whom he had endorsed. The events page on his campaign website has had nothing listed. Biden, meanwhile, has been barnstorming the country. After a trip to North Carolina on Tuesday, the...

As Donald Trump was being arraigned in Washington on yet another round of criminal charges, his running mate-turned-rival Mike Pence hurried to capitalize on the news. Pence’s campaign unveiled new T-shirts and baseball caps for sale featuring the phrase “Too Honest” in big red letters — a reference to an episode in the indictment in which the former president called Pence to berate him over his refusal to go along with Trump’s scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “You’re too honest,” Trump allegedly scoffed at his second-in-command on New Year’s Day. Pence’s decision to seize on the...

Last Tuesday, President Trump had lunch with hip-hop mogul Kanye West. That might have produced headlines on its own, but it wasn’t enough. West brought along with him alleged white supremacist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes and now-I’m-gay-now-I’m-not provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Former Trump campaign staffer Karen Giorno provided the transportation.

WARREN, Mich. – Paige Cole is one of the “Anons.” The mother of three from Eastpointe, Michigan, says Joe Biden is a sham president and believes Donald Trump will soon be reinstated to the White House to finish the remainder of Biden’s term. “His whole inauguration was fake. He didn’t have real military people. He had, like, fake badges, fake people. And Trump is actually our president,” she said while waiting in line for his latest rally on Saturday at Macomb Community College. Wearing a pink “Trump 2024” hat and draped in a large “TRUMP WON” flag, Cole — a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered efforts to obstruct its investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, saying “government records were likely concealed and removed” from a storage room even after the former president’s representatives had assured officials that they’d thoroughly searched the property. The FBI also seized 33 boxes containing more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found three classified documents stashed in office drawers, according to a filing that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of stained interactions between Justice...

ATLANTA — Prosecutors in Atlanta on Monday told lawyers for Rudy Giuliani that he’s a target of their criminal investigation into possible illegal attempts by then-President Donald Trump and others to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia, one of Giuliani’s lawyers said Monday. Special prosecutor Nathan Wade alerted Giuliani’s local attorney in Atlanta that the former New York City mayor could face criminal charges, another Giuliani attorney, Bob Costello said. News of the disclosure was first reported by The New York Times. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation last year, and a special grand jury...

After Donald Trump was caught on video bragging about sexually assaulting women, Mike Pence stayed on his ticket. As the coronavirus ravaged the U.S., the then-vice president praised the administration’s response. And after a violent mob threatened his life during an attack on the U.S. Capitol, Pence rejected entreaties to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. But after years of being a subservient sidekick, Pence is beginning to distance himself from Trump as he takes increasingly overt steps toward a White House bid of his own. Last month, Pence called out Trump by name, saying his former...

WASHINGTON (AP) — From the earliest days of his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump aggressively challenged the pillars of Republican foreign policy that defined the party since World War II.He mocked John McCain's capture during the Vietnam War, validated autocrats with his platitudes, questioned longtime military and security alliances and embraced an isolationist worldview. And to the horror of many GOP leaders at the time, it worked, resonating with voters who believed, in part, that a bipartisan establishment in Washington had brokered trade deals that hurt American workers and recklessly stumbled into so-called “forever wars.”But Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine...

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Mike Pence urged Republicans to move on from the 2020 election and declared that "there is no room in this party for apologists for Putin" as he further cemented his break from former President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — From the earliest days of his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump aggressively challenged the pillars of Republican foreign policy that defined the party since World War II. He mocked John McCain's capture during the Vietnam War, validated autocrats with his platitudes, questioned longtime military and security alliances and embraced an isolationist worldview. And to the horror of many GOP leaders at the time, it worked, resonating with voters who believed, in part, that a bipartisan establishment in Washington had brokered trade deals that hurt American workers and recklessly stumbled into so-called “forever wars.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that he somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.” In a speech to a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week to advance the false narrative that, as vice president, he had the unilateral power to prevent President Joe Biden from taking office. “President Trump is wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election.” In a statement Tuesday, Trump said the committee investigating the deadly...

Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his election-year effort to dominate the Republican Party with a Saturday rally in Arizona in which he plans to castigate anyone who dares to question his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, likely including the state’s GOP governor, Doug Ducey. But 2,000 miles to the east in Washington, there are small signs that some Republicans are tiring of the charade. Mike Rounds, the generally unassuming senator from South Dakota, was perhaps the boldest in acknowledging the reality that the election was in fact fair. Instead of being shunned, he was supported...