Free Republic

Forgive us if we missed it, but we don’t recall Donald Trump campaigning to invade Panama and retake its famous canal. But there was the President-elect on the weekend, threatening our Central American ally with punishment if it doesn’t meet his demands. “Our Navy and commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama—I say, very foolishly, by the United States,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Phoenix. “This complete ripoff of our country will immediately stop.”...

GOP backing for former President Donald Trump’s third consecutive White House bid has fallen apart over the past several months, with most Republican voters saying they’d prefer another candidate to carry on his policies in 2024, according to a poll released Tuesday. ​ While 31% of Republican and Republican-leaning independents want Trump, 76, to run again in two years, 61% say they would rather have another GOP standard-bearer, the USA Today/Suffolk University survey found. ​ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 44, is their preferred choice. DeSantis, who cruised to re-election Nov. ​8, leads Trump by 23 percentage points — 56% to...

Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his...

Earlier this month, former President Trump said that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should be impeached if he backs a plan for the debt ceiling to be eliminated over fears that House Republicans could cause the U.S. to default on the nation’s credit. When asked by conservative radio host John Fredericks about chatter surrounding the possibility of Congress effectively eliminating the debt limit, the former president lambasted the idea. On Sunday, following the Democrat’s win and maintaining Senate control, Trump went on the attack. “It’s Mitch McConnell’s fault. Spending money to defeat great Republican candidates instead of backing Blake...

After an accident, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov was rushed to the hospital with multiple head injuries in which he was placed in an induced coma. Karpov was put on a ventilator now, and has been diagnosed with cerebral edema, fractures of the right parietal and right temporal bones, multiple head hematomas, and traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. We will update this report as the news trickles in.

On the cusp of Vladimir Putin’s act of naked aggression against the sovereign country of Ukraine, the most important Republican in the country praised the Russian autocrat for his “genius.” Former President Donald Trump’s comments were another instance of his shockingly favorable and morally bankrupt statements about Vladimir Putin over the years. Asked in a radio interview what had gone wrong that Putin recognized the independence of two Ukrainian breakaway regions on President Biden’s watch, Trump couldn’t muster one remotely appropriate sentiment. He immediately cited “the rigged election” of 2020, an obsession of his that is so all-consuming, it makes...

Face masks are emerging as one of the most powerful weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, with growing evidence that facial coverings help prevent transmission—even if an infected wearer is in close contact with others. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believes the pandemic could be brought under control over the next four to eight weeks if “we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.” His comments, made Tuesday with the Journal of the American Medical Association, followed an editorial he and others wrote there emphasizing “ample evidence” of asymptomatic spread...