Free Republic

There was 6 January 2021, and a violent coup attempt by a president desperately trying to cling to power. Then there was 24 July 2024, and a president explaining why he was giving up the most powerful job in the world. Joe Biden’s address on Wednesday night was a moving piece of political theatre, the start of a farewell tour by “a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings” who entered politics in 1972 and made it all the way to the Oval Office. For diehard Democrats it was a case of: if you have tears, prepare to shed them...

For the first time since Donald Trump was indicted in the spring of 2023, he has lost his grip on the news cycle and — temporarily at least — his message. Instead of commanding morning-to-night media attention, the former president and his allies suddenly find themselves reacting to their opponents. It’s an unfamiliar experience for Trump, who has monopolized America’s televisions, newspapers and smartphones for more than 12 months through indictments, primary victories, 34 felony convictions, an assassination attempt and a Republican National Convention at which he was celebrated as a quasi-religious figure. In the three days since President Joe...

WASHINGTON — In his first memoir, President Joe Biden reflected on what at the time was the most searing moment of his political career. He had withdrawn from his first presidential campaign in disgrace, driven out by charges of plagiarism. Now, some 37 years after that flameout, Biden’s epitaph weighed heavily as he made surely the hardest political decision of his long career in Washington to give up the presidency after just one term and end his bid for reelection. As he sat in isolation with COVID at his Delaware beach house these past few days, hacking and hacked off,...

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris had one great day in her ill-fated 2020 presidential campaign: her first. Then came a rapid collapse. The freshman senator who announced her candidacy in January 2019 before 20,000 cheering supporters in Oakland, Calif. dropped out in December before a single vote had been cast. Now, Harris may get another shot. As the sitting vice president, she would be a leading candidate to succeed Biden if he succumbs to party pressure and exits the race. Other elected officials might step forward to challenge Harris, dividing Democrats and clouding the general election picture ahead of a November...

In short:The Wall Street Journal faces criticism for sacking a journalist who was elected head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. - Chinese state media celebrated Selina Cheng's sacking, calling the Hong Kong media union "a malignant tumour". -What's next?Cheng told the ABC she intended to take legal action against the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong. The Wall Street Journal faces widespread criticism over its decision to sack a Hong Kong journalist who refused to withdraw from the election for a leadership post in the city's largest media union. Selina Cheng, who worked in the Journal's Hong Kong bureau...

MILWAUKEE - For four nights at Donald Trump's nominating convention in Milwaukee, a roster of speakers attempted to give one of the most divisive politicians in recent U.S. history a makeover, describing him as a loving and caring family man whose near-assassination at a rally on Saturday had changed him. That new version of Trump lasted barely half an hour. Then the Trump more familiar to Americans - the bombastic thrower of insults who revels in demonizing his opponents - re-emerged, trampling over the message of unity so painstakingly choreographed by the Republican National Committee this week. In a rambling...

BUTLER, Pa. — Before Saturday, when Butler, Pennsylvania, became the latest stunned backdrop for the nation’s political fury, Mayor Bob Dandoy thought of his town as a place that had learned to work around party lines. A Democrat in a Republican stronghold, he had campaigned on consensus. “I’ve never seen a Republican or Democratic pothole,” Dandoy, 71, a retired high school English teacher, would tell voters. “Or a Republican or Democratic playground. Or a Republican or Democratic fire that the fire department needs to put out.” He was at dinner with his family Saturday when a City Council member texted....

WASHINGTON — In the nearly three weeks since President Joe Biden took the debate stage in Atlanta and plunged his reelection campaign into chaos, his closest consultations have been not with his White House chief of staff, his top communications strategist or even the leader of his campaign. Instead, he is relying on members of his family — a tight-knit clan that includes his son, Hunter, and the first lady, Jill Biden — along with a tiny group of loyalists to steer him through a self-created crisis and quell a rising rebellion against his candidacy from within his own party....

MILWAUKEE — In the hours after a would-be assassin fired a bullet through former President Donald Trump’s ear, Panfilo DiCenzo, a 40-year-old Democratic voter from Pittsburgh, drew a simple conclusion about the political effect of the attack: “It definitely is good for Trump.” At a time when President Joe Biden has been struggling to shore up support with fellow Democrats following a miserable June debate performance and shaky cleanup effort, some professional Democratic political operatives said Saturday’s shooting will end up sealing the incumbent’s electoral fate. “We’re so beyond f---ed,” one longtime Democratic insider said, noting that the image of...

WASHINGTON — The shots rang out at 6:10 p.m. Former President Donald Trump clutched his right ear as blood spurted out, then ducked for cover as supporters screamed and Secret Service agents raced to surround and protect him. Within moments, someone shouted “shooter down,” and the agents, agitated but in control, began moving Trump offstage to safety. “Wait, wait, wait, wait,” he called out, then made a point of pumping his fist at the crowd and seemed to defiantly shout, “Fight! Fight!” The crowd roared and responded with chants of “USA! USA!” For the first time in more than four...

Former President Donald Trump hawks $59.99 Bibles with the same words he uses to win the votes of evangelical Christians. He sells swatches of the suit he wore in a mug shot while also raising money for his campaign by calling himself a “political prisoner.” He describes Truth Social, his refuge for those banned on other social media sites — and his best chance to substantially increase his wealth — as a bulwark against liberal companies out to silence Christians and conservatives. As he seeks to reclaim the presidency, Trump has reprised the pitchman role from his reality TV days,...

Ancient philosophers and tragedians would have understood the human folly—from the media, the president, and his party—that led to last week’s debate debacle. A day before Thursday’s presidential debate, the New York Times ran a front-page story in its print edition railing against the posting of unflattering videos of Joe Biden. Among the president’s many “adversaries,” observed the Times, was the “distorted, online version of himself, a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.” Such voter concerns were misguided, according to the Times and its sources. Former Illinois representative...

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race. But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump. Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden...

President Joe Biden’s allies on Sunday defended the commander in chief and blasted a special counsel report that questioned the president’s age and mental fitness as containing “gratuitous, unnecessary and inaccurate personal remarks.” Mitch Landrieu, a former senior adviser to Biden who is now a national co-chair of his re-election campaign, told NBC News' “Meet the Press” that “this kind of sense that he’s not ready for this job is just a bucket of B.S. It’s so deep [that] your boots will get stuck under.” Landrieu added that as a longtime adviser to Biden, he can testify to his mental...

TOKYO/SEOUL, June 28 (Reuters) - While the first U.S. presidential debate of the 2024 race dwelled little on foreign policy, a shaky performance by President Joe Biden will have America's allies steeling for the return of Donald Trump, analysts say. Biden's supporters had hoped the debate would erase worries that he was too old to serve, but several lawmakers, analysts and investors said the event had given Trump a boost. "Mr. Trump didn't win but Mr. Biden might have imploded," said Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat and now research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, a think...

More Americans may think President Joe Biden tried to sit on a nonexistent chair the other day than know the boring truth that there was, in fact, a chair. The chair-that-was-there was just one of many quick video clips the conservative media ecosystem willed into virality over the past two weeks, leaving fact-checkers and Biden’s team with little chance to catch up. The Republican National Committee, major conservative media outlets and right-wing influencers have succeeded in blasting out videos that they claim show “proof” of Biden’s wandering off, freezing up or even filling his pants with a substance commonly represented...

BEIRUT (AP) — He is among the very last survivors of his Gaza family, a clan so close they knew without thinking how blood and marriage bound them across generations and city blocks. Then, branch by branch, 173 of Youssef Salem’s relatives were killed in Israeli airstrikes in a matter of days in December. By spring that toll had risen to 270. Bones and flesh strewn over the ruins of family homes. Blond curls of a young cousin peeking through bricks. Unrecognizable bodies piled on a donkey cart. Lines of burial shrouds. These images are what survivors are left with...

In Deir Al-Balah, a city in the Gaza Strip, Marwa Al-Hasanat has found a way to bring some joy to her community amid the destruction and hardship of war in the form of a roadside bookstore. Al-Hasanat, 22, a lifelong lover of books inspired by her grandfather who authored three of his own on the Arabic language, started an online bookstore in June 2022 called Marwa.Book. But since the war began on Oct. 7, Al-Hasanat has not been able to purchase books to sell online from Gaza City, where she used to get her supply. The intermittent internet connection throughout...

WASHINGTON — In President Joe Biden’s telling, he was a teenage civil rights activist, a former trucker, the first in his family to go college and the nephew of a cannibalism victim. All of these claims stretch the truth or are downright false. But Biden persists in telling personal tales with rhetorical flourishes and factual liberty when he works a room or regales an audience. They are a way to connect with voters, emphasize his “middle-class Joe” persona and charm his audience. Despite Biden’s penchant for exaggerating details when recounting episodes from his life, these autobiographical embellishments differ in scale...

A Gaza journalist was holding three hostages in his home with his family before he was killed by Israeli commandos during a rescue operation on Saturday, according to the Israeli military. Abdallah Aljamal, who also worked as a spokesman for the Hamas-run labor ministry, was killed when special forces soldiers stormed his home in central Gaza and rescued hostages, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andri Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 …