Free Republic

The “Never Trump” movement has a new ally: hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in 2017 after serving 11 days as communications director in President Donald Trump’s White House. Anti-Trump pundit and veteran Republican operative Bill Kristol confirmed to CNBC in a few brief text messages that he has spoken to Scaramucci since the SkyBridge Capital founder had a public falling out with Trump this summer. Asked whether he has spoken to Scaramucci about trying to find another presidential candidate to replace Trump on the top of the GOP ticket next year, Kristol said: “Yup.”

The “Never Trump” movement has a new ally: hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in 2017 after serving 11 days as communications director in President Donald Trump’s White House. Anti-Trump pundit and veteran Republican operative Bill Kristol confirmed to CNBC in a few brief text messages that he has spoken to Scaramucci since the SkyBridge Capital founder had a public falling out with Trump this summer. Asked whether he has spoken to Scaramucci about trying to find another presidential candidate to replace Trump on the top of the GOP ticket next year, Kristol said: “Yup.” But Kristol, who...

Friday on MSNBC, political commentator Bill Kristol called Republicans “cowardly” for not condemning President Donald Trump for his attacks on the so-called “The Squad,” made up of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

The president has once again (but even more obviously than usual) made clear his unapologetic bigotry, nativism and racism. Are GOP leaders, donors and voters still fine with re-nominating Donald Trump for president? Do they really believe the Republican Party can do no better? 10:41 AM · Jul 14, 2019 ·

Never Trumper Bill Kristol mocked Rudy Giuliani on Sunday for dropping out of a 2000 Senate race against Hillary Clinton after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Kristol tweeted this on Sunday night, so he has had plenty of time to realize his mistake, if he indeed made a mistake in not knowing about Giuliani’s 2000 cancer diagnosis. We all make mistakes, but by now Kristol knows this and has still not amended his tweet, so there is just no question Kristol deliberately mocked Giuliani for having cancer.

To the organizers of Jexodus, the movement to lure Jews away from the Democratic Party and over to the GOP, I have good news and bad news. The good news: There is a Jexodus! Jews, including many prominent intellectuals, have been bolting their longtime party en masse. The bad news: The party they are leaving is the GOP. Ever since the GOP rolled over and became the Party of Trump, normally stalwart Republican Jews have made it clear they can no longer abide what their party has become. The list includes Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bill Kristol, David Frum, David...

There is a lesson from scandal of moonwalking Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) being photographed in either in a KKK hood and sheet or blackface in his medical school yearbook. In 2017 Northam decisively defeated Ed Gillespie for governor 54 to 45. (As an aside, Bill Kristol backed Northam.) In that race, the Democrats played the race card for all it was worth, while Gillespie was as hapless as a deer in the headlights. This should not be a surprise. Democrats do what Democrats do -- play to win at any cost. And establishment Republicans do what establishment Republicans do --...

Shortened title. Full title: Former Weekly Standard staffers find new home at The Bulwark, a conservative site unafraid to take on Trump A handful of writers and editors who worked at The Weekly Standard, the now-defunct conservative magazine that was deeply critical of President Donald Trump until its sudden demise in December, have a new home. Starting Monday, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of The Weekly Standard, and Charlie Sykes, the former talk radio host and conservative commentator, will beef up The Bulwark, a conservative website that has until now served as an aggregator for Kristol's non-profit group, the Defending Democracy...

The Weekly Standard was a worthwhile publication. Unfortunately its rebirth as The Bulwark is set to be a good deal uglier with a radical leftist funder notorious for his backing of terrorist propaganda and anti-Semitism. A handful of writers and editors who worked at The Weekly Standard, the now-defunct conservative magazine that was deeply critical of President Donald Trump until its sudden demise in December, have a new home. Starting Monday, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of The Weekly Standard, and Charlie Sykes, the former talk radio host and conservative commentator, will beef up The Bulwark, a conservative website that has...

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East. GOOD! What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half? Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads. “Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!” yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director. “Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,” said...

Most of my fellow members of the mainstream media are of the opinion that last week was a bad one for President Donald Trump. I beg to differ. Last week it was announced that the Weekly Standard was going out of business. It seems there’s no market for a “conservative” publication dedicated to opposing Trump. That’s good news. It’s further proof that - if there’s one thing Trump has done since assuming office - it is solidifying his support among conservatives. As for the “conservatives” who worked in the offices of the Standard until last week, only inside the Beltway...

“Kristol was trying to remake the Republican Party,” Carlson says. A significant part of Kristol’s GOP makeover project was portraying antiwar conservatives as heretics. Carlson recounts, “Years later, writer Philip Weiss described a conversation he had with Kristol in which this [remaking the GOP] became explicit. There are Republicans, Kristol told Weiss, ‘of whom I disapprove so much that I won’t appear with them. That I’ve encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party.’” “’I’d be happy if Ron Paul left and ran as a third party candidate. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was...

Trumpism (if not Trump himself) has given oxygen to some of the ugliest impulses among us. Near the end of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump laid out his theory of a vast globalist conspiracy. “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” Trump said. “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a...

I’ve only been around Phil Anschutz a few times. My impressions on those occasions was that he was a run-of-the-mill arrogant billionaire. He was used to people courting him and he addressed them condescendingly from the lofty height of his own wealth. I’ve never met Ryan McKibben, who runs part of Anschutz’s media group. But stories about him have circulated around Washington over the years. The stories suggest that he is an ordinary corporate bureaucrat — with all the petty vanities and the lack of interest in ideas that go with the type. This week, Anschutz and McKibben murdered The...

When it was announced on Friday that The Weekly Standard would print its last issue after nearly a quarter of a century, I was astonished. Who would ever have guessed that The American Conservative, the upstart anti-war magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell in 2002, would outlast Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes' neoconservative colossus? If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said it was about as likely as the star of Celebrity Apprentice winning the White House on a reactionary populist platform. It's worth saying at the outset that I and millions of other...

The Weekly Standard will be no more. There is no real reason we are witnessing the magazine’s demise other than deep pettiness and a personal desire for bureaucratic revenge on the part of a penny-ante Machiavellian who works for its parent company. There would at least be a larger meaning to the Standard’s end if it were being killed because it was hostile to Donald Trump. But I do not believe that is the case. Rather, I believe the fissures in the conservative movement and the Republican party that have opened up since Trump’s rise provided the company man with...

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "The pathetic and dishonest Weekly Standard, run by failed prognosticator Bill Kristol (who, like many others, never had a clue), is flat broke and out of business. Too bad. May it rest in peace!"

Going all in on attacking President Trump isn’t proving to be a particularly effective business strategy for media outlets.The Weekly Standard, a 28-year old neoconservative institution, is reportedly headed towards dissolution after its founder, Bill Kristol, devoted almost three years of work to attacking the President and his supporters.It’s not just Kristol. The entire world of clickbait Trump-hate seems to be in jeopardy, including sites that cater to the liberal base.The same week that The Weekly Standard’s troubles broke, Vanity Fair dropped a bombshell report about the struggles faced by those hip, millennial-targeted left-wing rags with the cool names...

New York (CNN Business)The Weekly Standard, the magazine that espouses traditional conservatism and which has remained deeply critical of President Donald Trump, will shutter after 23 years, its owner Clarity Media Group announced Friday morning. The magazine will publish its final issue on December 17. * * * Employees were told at an all staff meeting, which CNN obtained an audio recording of, that they would be paid through the end of the year, and that afterward they would receive severance which would range in scale depending on factors like seniority. To receive severance, however, employees would need to sign...

Bill Kristol’s Never Trump magazine — The Weekly Standard — is facing its imminent demise. Perhaps hate didn’t sell too well with Conservatives and Republicans. The owners of the publication, Media DC, say they are going to concentrate on their other outlet instead, The Washington Examiner, Vox reports. A source told Vox reporter Joan Coaston, “This is not about dwindling subscribers. This is about strip-mining TWS for its assets” — namely, the magazine’s subscriber lists. That’s not likely 100 percent truthful. Founded in 1995 by Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard is best known as a publication aimed...