Free Republic

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...

Former President Donald Trump issued a severe smackdown to his Republican haters in a statement on Sunday, characterizing them as talentless fools.Calling out George Will, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, and others by name, the former president said that nobody should listen to such “foolish (stupid!) people”: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 ability to speak, or Rich Lowry, who has destroyed the once wonderful...

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...

The Atlantic last week hosted a conference titled “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” at the University of Chicago, where I’m a student. Barack Obama, Amy Klobuchar, Anne Applebaum, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ben Smith, Brian Stelter, and other boldface names studded the program, alongside many lesser-known members of the prestige press. They would gather, as a news release put it, to explore “the organized spread of disinformation and strategies to respond to it.” The Atlantic gabfest was billed as a space for rigorous dialogue, where the light of truth would scatter the darkness of disinformation. But the dialogue and criticism, it...

This week, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP) and The Atlantic magazine hosted a “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference, and we have to hand it to IOP Director David Axlerod for bringing in true experts on the subject. The conference featured some of America’s greatest purveyors of disinformation, such as Barack Obama, Brian Stelter, Anne Applebaum, and a few token conservatives, including Jonah Goldberg and Adam Kinzinger. The media, government, and academia elites speaking at the conference weren’t expecting to be challenged as they self-righteously spewed more lies—but our team at the Chicago Thinker was prepared...

Jonah Goldberg, a longtime conservative (lol) political journalist and cable news pundit, is joining CNN, the network confirmed on Monday.

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...

Tucker Carlson’s three-part series, Patriot Purge, which aired on Fox Nation in November, stirred controversy, ruffled feathers inside Fox News, and reportedly “troubled” Lachlan Murdoch.Lachlan Murdoch, who serves as the CEO of Fox Corp., is the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox Corp.As Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison reported on Thursday, “Lachlan Murdoch was troubled by the incendiary trailer for the series, according to people who spoke with him. Yet the series continued to air on Fox Nation, which further lent Carlson an air of untouchability inside Fox.”Ellison’s report noted that when Brian Nick, a spokesman for Lachlan...

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...

Following the departures of Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes from Fox News, a new report says the network has seen a significant level of an internal dispute over the conspiracy theories espoused by Tucker Carlson. New York Times media columnist Ben Smith reported on Sunday that Goldberg and Hayes walked out because of Patriot Purge, Carlson’s 3-part Fox Nation docuseries about the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Fact-checkers and media commentators have been tearing Patriot Purge to shreds for boosting known propagandists and advancing unsubstantiated claims about January 6th. NPR’s David Folkenflik reported on this development new details that had...

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...

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...

The first thing to know about the “Let’s go Brandon” thing is: It’s funny. Or at least, it started out funny. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s how it started. In September, largely or even entirely in response to the Biden administration’s botched handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, crowds at various sporting events started chanting, “F— Joe Biden!” That’s not funny or appropriate. But maybe understandable, given how badly he botched the pullout. On Oct. 2, NASCAR driver Brandon Brown won a big race. While he was being interviewed by a reporter, the crowd could...

Ever since I joined the public conversation as a conservative writer, I’ve been called a fascist and a Nazi by smug, liberal know-nothings, sublimely confident of the truth of their ill-informed prejudices.So wrote Jonah Goldberg, in response to slander, in his George W. Bush-era Liberal Fascism. Goldberg has recently engaged in some sublimely-confident slanders of his own, scorning Trump-supporting Republican Party because of “its descent into asininity.” He anticipates Trump’s return as the party’s nominee in 2024, and the only way to head off that nightmare is another Democratic presidency that will protract the catastrophic progressive transformation of the country...

I have always been — and remain — a skeptic of third parties, because they punish the party they have the most in common with. The historian Richard Hofstadter famously quipped that “Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.” But in this scenario, that’s a feature, not a bug. The point is to cause the GOP some pain for its descent into asininity. Giving conservatives turned off by both the Democrats and the Trumpified GOP a way to vote their conscience in the general election would put political pressure on Republican candidates to curtail their Trump...

The NeverTrumpers at The Dispatch actually tried to pass off a George Soros-funded group attacking The American Conservative Union as “nonpartisan.” Dispatch staff writer Andrew Egger wrote a propaganda piece promoting how “federal investigators are currently looking into possible criminal campaign-finance misdeeds at ACU during [Chairman Matt] Schlapp’s tenure.” Egger said the investigation followed complaints alleging campaign finance violations against the ACU, Teneseee State Senator Brian Kelsey (R-District 31) and others by the “nonpartisan watchdog organization, the Campaign Legal Center [CLC]” in 2017. Here’s the problem: calling CLC nonpartisan is ridiculous. CLC has been funded with at least $12,782,400 from...

Maybe President Biden should handle COVID-19 the way he’s handled Afghanistan. It’s a strange thought, given how badly he botched the US withdrawal. But at least Afghanistan Joe had a clear idea about what we needed to do. COVID Joe has no such exit strategy. He’s making it up as he goes. SNIP Biden relishes this fight. He’s already achieved one of his goals — to change the subject from handing Afghanistan to the Taliban in time for the anniversary of 9/11. But the other political calculation is that he doesn’t need the support of people ideologically (and foolishly) opposed...

Sen. Joseph McCarthy liked to insist he had evidence of Communists in the government, but he couldn’t show you the names right now. The number of Communist infiltrators on his secret list changed from speech to speech. Listening to President Trump’s legal team claim over and over again that they have voluminous evidence that the election was stolen, it occurred to me that we’re in a kind of repeat McCarthy era. Only this time, to borrow from that old-school Communist Karl Marx, history is repeating itself not as tragedy but as farce. Take Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who...