Free Republic

In an appearance Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said the news that Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, had been granted immunity for grand jury testimony is a “deadly” development for Trump. “You don’t give Mark Meadows immunity unless the evidence he has is unimpeachable,” Christie said. “I want all Republican voters to understand this. What’s going to be happening in March? He’s going to be sitting in a courtroom in Washington, D.C., with Mark Meadows 20 feet away from him saying he committed crimes in front of me on...

Tucker Carlson released the first episode of “Tucker on Twitter” Tuesday night, opening with a casual “hey, it’s Tucker Carlson” -snip- Carlson—who said that “in journalism, curiosity is the greatest crime”—cited a widely reported claim by an Air Force veteran that the U.S. government had recovered proof of UFOs, including an intact aircraft of “non-human origin.” Carlson said of the story that “UFOs are actually real” and “in a normal country this news would qualify as a bombshell—the story of the millennium.” Carlson noted that The New York Times had several stories on Ukraine, Donald Trump, trans people and climate...

The New York Times’ Washington Correspondent Maggie Haberman reports that former President Donald Trump is telling “a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated” as president by August. In a message posted to Twitter sharing a CNN report on Trump supporters and QAnon believers anticipating a coup that would restore Trump to the White House, Haberman noted “that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information.” Haberman says “it isn’t happening in a vacuum” but seems to be part of a strategy by Trump to counter the possibility of an indictment. “He...

In local TV, nobody likes a landslide. Close races are more intriguing to cover for the newsroom, and they are far, far more lucrative for the sales department. An analysis by the Cincinnati Business Courier concludes the runaway win on Election Night by Ohio Governor John Kasich cost two Scripps stations, Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS and Cincinnati ABC affiliate WCPO $10 million in lost revenue: “Political spending is about the footprint and the competitiveness of each individual race,” Scripps CFO Tim Wesolowski said during a conference call for Scripps executives to talk to investors and analysts about the company’s third-quarter...

Rep. Michele Bachmann made history tonight–not just for being the first representative of the Tea Party to give a State of the Union response, but also for flatly refusing to look America in the eye. Bachmann, who came equipped with charts and Iwo Jima photos, began her speech looking slightly off camera. As Bachmann spoke, viewers–including the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann–took to Twitter to ask a simple question: “what’s she looking at?” As Olbermann tweeted, “Why isn’t Rep. Bachmann LOOKING AT THE DAMNED CAMERA?” He added later, “Seriously, somebody at the Tea Party needs to run on the stage,...