Free Republic

The White House’s suspicions over the motives of besieged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe go back at least to the first months of President Trump’s presidency. The doubts revolved around a since-debunked February 2017 New York Times story that reported that U.S. intelligence owned numerous intercepts and phone records of Trump campaign officials communicating with Russian intelligence. As recounted in his new book, “Media Madness,” Fox News reporter Howard Kurtz wrote that then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was conducting an intelligence meeting when Mr. McCabe called him aside.

A new book on the media’s relationship with the Trump White House has revealed a FBI operation to specifically set up a senior member of the Trump administration in a move that eventually led to the original claims of obstruction of justice against the president.According to the book, “Media Madness,” by Howard Kurtz, then deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe called White House chief of staff Reince Priebus shortly after the release of a fake news report in the New York Times to ask to speak to him privately, telling him that “everything” in the article was “bullsh*t” and not to...

The FBI’s top brass initiated conversations with a White House official that were quickly leaked to CNN, according to a new book. Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe asked to speak privately with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus following a February 2017 intelligence briefing. The scene is described in “Media Madness,” Howard Kurtz’s new book on the press and its relationship with the Trump administration. McCabe said he asked for the meeting to tell Priebus that “everything” in a New York Times story ... was “bullsh-t.” ... McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this...

Fox News analyst Howard Kurtz argues that press misjudgment has upended coverage of the White House and boosted the president's agenda in this exclusive excerpt from his new book, 'Media Madness.' On Jan. 8, 2017, days before Donald Trump was to assume the crushing burdens of the presidency, he faced a very different kind of problem: Meryl Streep. The iconic actress slammed him in her speech accepting the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, attacking him for, among other things, having allegedly mocked a disabled New York Times reporter during the campaign. The next morning, Hope Hicks,...

The crusade to find some scandal — any scandal — to sink 2016 Republican presidential frontrunner Scott Walker officially jumped the shark on Monday when a deeply concerned American suggested that the Wisconsin governor’s spokeswomen are problematically attractive. Isthmus, an alternative weekly newspaper out of Madison, raised the allegation in Tell All, a regular advice column. “Dear Tell All,” troubled reader Kate Mallet wrote, “I can’t help noticing that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker picks beautiful young women to be the spokespeople for his administration and his campaigns.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin hadn't been back home in Alaska for a full day and her staff had begun fielding requests Thursday for postelection interviews, including from Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and others. "The intensity of all the interest is amazing. Everyone wants to talk to her," he said. Aides to McCain and Palin, meanwhile, responded to reports of tension between the two sides over the Republican Party's purchase of more than $150,000 worth of clothing for Palin and her family, and accusations that Palin was ill-prepared for her role. Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser,...

It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff,...