Free Republic

Conservative syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Republican “closet normals on the Hill” want to move beyond former President Donald Trump but are waiting for their voters to do so.Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Do you think that, assuming that Jack Smith does go forward and bring some sort of charges related to this, do you think that will have any impact whatsoever on Trump’s standing among must be members of Congress, Republican officials and voters?”Goldberg said, “Those are different constituencies, to be sure. I think there is a possibility, if not one that I think...

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...

President Trump annihilates RINOs, “losers” and backstabbers in a Save America StatementIn a statement put out today by President Trump, he identifies and absolutely crushes 5 RINOs and backstabbers whom he describes as “shortsighted ‘losers'” who spend their time criticizing him and the America First movement, while providing nothing positive to the Republican Party or to this nation.President Trump’s statement reads: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...

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...

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...