Free Republic

President Trump thought Ukraine's surprise drone attack over the weekend was "strong" and "badass," sources who discussed it with him tell Axios, but he's also concerned it will make his ceasefire mission even harder. -snip- He has been surprisingly mum in public when it comes to his personal feelings about Ukraine's attack. In private, though, he marveled at the operation. Behind the scenes: "Pretty strong," Trump told one confidant, who relayed his remarks to Axios. "He thought it was badass," a second source said of Trump's reaction. One Trump adviser said: "From an international perspective, you've got a chihuahua inflicting...

The Trump administration says it ignored a Saturday court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling didn't apply, two senior officials tell Axios. Why it matters: The administration's decision to defy a federal judge's order is exceedingly rare and highly controversial. "Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis," national security attorney Mark S. Zaid, a Trump critic, wrote on X, adding that Trump could ultimately get impeached. The White House welcomes that fight. "This is headed...

Florida's next attorney general could be the ex-congressman who almost became President Trump's U.S. attorney general: Matt Gaetz. Why it matters: Despite the intense controversy he generated before withdrawing his nomination to be in Trump's Cabinet, Gaetz still has strong name ID and is well-liked enough among Florida's GOP base to be a formidable candidate. In a hypothetical primary matchup against Attorney General James Uthmeier, Gaetz was favored 39%-21%, according to a recent survey of likely Republican voters by Tony Fabrizio, one of the nation's top pollsters who works for Donald Trump and several GOP clients. Zoom in: There's already...

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky angered Donald Trump so much during the peace talks with Russia that Trump was on the verge of withdrawing American military support from Ukraine, three U.S. officials familiar with the discussions tell Axios. -snip- The deal Trump appears to be negotiating could be highly controversial. Based on their public and private statements, Trump's team is expected to pressure Zelensky into giving up Crimea (which Putin seized in 2014) portions of eastern Ukraine and the Azov Coast (occupied in Russia's 2022 invasion).

Two former Politico reporters spoke candidly about efforts made by their bosses to either slow-walk or completely quash their reporting on the Biden family during their time at the news outlet. Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri, now journalists for Axios and Puck respectively, reflected on their time at Politico on Palmeri's "Somebody's Gotta Win" podcast. Caputo called out Politico's "ill-fated headline" downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election. "I mean, Politico, my former employer, and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors," Caputo said in the exchange, which was shared Thursday on YouTube. "I...

On the menu today: No, the news isn’t in reruns; Donald Trump has been indicted again, this time over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Interestingly, federal prosecutors are pursuing the case in south Florida, which is likely to be much friendlier territory for the former president than Manhattan or Washington, D.C. Are federal prosecutors way too overconfident about their ability to persuade a south Florida jury? Or do they have so much evidence and such a slam-dunk case that they’re confident they can win a conviction, even in the jurisdiction most likely to be sympathetic to Trump? [cut] The most...

Republican politicians and associated committees are sending out desperate fundraising emails begging the GOP faithful to help save America by getting behind Herschel Walker in his Dec. 6 runoff against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia. But what’s not immediately clear to recipients is how little of that money is going to Walker's campaign: just a dime for every dollar given by small donors. Walker’s campaign, which has trailed Warnock’s in fundraising throughout the election, is asking fellow Republicans to stop their fundraising practices — or at least to start sharing more with the candidate. "We need everyone focused on...

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters softened his tone and scrubbed his website's policy page of tough abortion restrictions Thursday as his party reels from the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In an ad posted to Twitter on Thursday, Masters sought to portray his opponent, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, as the extremist on the issue while describing his own views as "commonsense." "Look, I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion," he said. "And most Americans agree with that. That would just put us on par with other civilized nations." (Late-term abortions are extremely rare, according...

When it finally dawned on Donald Trump in the twilight of his presidency that he wouldn’t be living in the White House for another four years, he had a problem: he had barely packed and had to move out quickly. West Wing aides and government movers frantically tossed documents and other items into banker boxes that were shipped to a storage room at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida along with other, previously packed records set aside by Trump, sometimes erratically so, according to two sources with knowledge of Trump’s move and records issues.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Before a friendly audience of conservative moms, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday excoriated political opponents of wanting to “sexualize” children and warp kids’ understanding of race and history. The charged campaign rhetoric in remarks to the Moms for Liberty group was usual fare for DeSantis — and a major reason why he’s in the top tier of potential GOP presidential candidates who now sits on an unprecedented $130 million war chest. But the political backdrop was as atypical as unexpected: The day before his speech, one of the national teacher unions that opposes him released a...

If Senate Republicans seem conservative now, just wait until next year. The 2022 midterms could usher in a wave of full-spectrum MAGA supporters who would turn the GOP conference an even deeper shade of red — and make the Senate a lot more like the fractious House. In the five states where Republican senators are retiring, the primary election fields to succeed them are crowded with Donald Trump supporters who have made loyalty to the former president a cornerstone of their campaigns. The three top candidates to succeed Sen. Richard Burr in North Carolina have all denounced his vote to...

Rep. Alcee Hastings was 84 years old and battling pancreatic cancer. He was nearing his third decade in Congress. But he just couldn’t quit his House seat. So he ran again last November and won his South Florida-based district, only to die in April. His death created a vacancy that made House Democrats’ already slim majority even smaller — and now his seat will remain vacant until January, thanks to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who aimed to keep the solidly Democratic seat unoccupied for as long as possible by scheduling the special election nine months after Hastings’ death.

No Republican political family has been as tormented by Donald Trump as the Bush dynasty. Now Trump has one more opportunity to twist the knife, as George P. Bush — the last remaining Bush in public office — prepares to launch a primary challenge Wednesday against Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton. In what’s expected to be a brutal contest pitting the Bush family scion against a scandal-plagued incumbent, Trump’s endorsement will go a long way toward determining the winner. The former president remains popular with the Texas Republican base — so popular that Bush, Jeb Bush’s son and currently...

"The big lie" is perhaps the liberal media's favorite phrase nowadays. Shorthand, of course, for saying it's a lie to claim that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by fraud. So if the MSM hates lies, you'd think they'd welcome the truth. But seems like they only want "truth" that fits their liberal narrative. Speaking inconvenient truths can get you "in trouble." Take Florida-based Politico reporter Marc Caputo, appearing on today's Morning Joe to discuss the election law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed yesterday. Caputo prefaced his remarks by saying: "I guess I’m going to say something that is going...

Joe Biden doesn’t occupy a political office, isn’t a great orator and is basically stuck in his house. It’s not much of a platform for projecting leadership during the coronavirus crisis. That was laid bare Monday as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee gave his first coronavirus shadow briefing webcast. Biden’s been outgunned by President Donald Trump and outshone by some of the nation’s governors, among them New York’s Andrew Cuomo, whose crisis response efforts are drawing rave reviews. The former vice president was staid and somber, even as his remarks were marred by a few minor real-time snafus and slip-ups....

Joe Biden is a BILLION points ahead of Bernie Sanders in the polls! Okay, that is a bit of exaggeration but it somewhat reflects the Biden hype the mainstream media has been reporting recently about the 2020 campaign. However, the big question is if Biden is so far above his primary opponents in the polls then why is the turnout of his campaign crowds so small?That is the question that Marc Caputo and Natasha Korecki of Politico tried to answer on Tuesday primarily by relaying lame excuses provided by Team Biden:

PITTSBURGH — In his first official event as a 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden skipped past the primary on Monday and went right to the general election. From the atmospherics of his first campaign rally to the substance of his speech, the former vice president delivered a carefully calibrated message: While his rivals are chasing the Democratic nomination, Biden plans to pursue a mission focused on Donald Trump. “If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” Biden told a packed crowd at the Teamsters Local 249 banquet hall. Biden offered an...

Marc Caputo, the co-author of Politico‘s Florida Playbook, said Friday that the election practices in Broward County, Florida are "nonsensical" as the county faces widespread scrutiny for its handling of ballots in the 2018 midterm elections. Caputo appeared on MSNBC's "MTP Daily," where host Chuck Todd asked the Politico reporter whether he knows how many ballots need to be counted in Broward County. "No, we don't, and in fact, a Miami Herald reporter just tweeted about an hour ago that, ‘Hey, we were told yesterday about all the early in-person votes had been tallied,' and then they found out today,...

One of Dena Minning’s biggest assets in her congressional bid was her boyfriend: incumbent Alan Grayson, who’s leaving the U.S. House to run for U.S. Senate. Now, after Grayson has helped raise her profile and run for his U.S. House seat, he married her over the Memorial Day Weekend and gave her his last name, according to her Monday social-media posts and The Orlando Political Observer. Dena Minning promptly became Dena Grayson on Twitter and Facebook. The largely unknown outsider in the Orlando-area district now has a potent tool in running under the name of the incumbent in a crowded...

Jeb Bush holds a commanding lead over Sen. Marco Rubio among registered Florida Republicans, who have soured on the senator since he announced his presidential bid in April, a new poll shows. In the crowded GOP field, Bush leads the second-place Rubio 28 to 16 percent in their home state, according to Mason Dixon Polling & Research’s survey. In Mason-Dixon’s poll three months ago, Rubio was essentially tied with Bush 31 to 30 percent. Rubio’s 15 percentage-point drop coincides with the rise of Gov. Scott Walker, who’s now in third place with 13 percent – an 11 point increase for...