Free Republic

It’s now official: Russia, Russia, Russia really was fake news from the start. There was no factual basis for the FBI to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign. That means there was no need for the appointment of a special counsel and that Robert Mueller should have stayed in retirement. It means the two years of rumors and accusations and the giant cloud of suspicions over the White House produced by Mueller’s headhunters were unfair and unjustified. It also means J. Edgar Hoover can finally rest in peace. James Comey is now revealed to be the dirtiest cop ever to run...

Say this for Rep. Adam Schiff: His imagination is vivid and he has a flair for the dramatic. If only he had more respect for facts and a tighter tether to reality. The California attack dog is, in real life, a frustrated writer of rejected screenplays, and he’s produced another dud in the Democrats’ impeachment report. Released Tuesday, it offers nothing new of significance, but that didn’t stop Schiff from hyping the contents as something akin to the second coming of Richard Nixon.

As of late, The New York Times has cemented itself as the CNN of the newspaper world with a leftist trajectory and near total loss of journalistic integrity. On Monday’s Fox & Friends to discuss this travesty of modern day investigative reporting was former New York Times contributor and current New York Post reporter, Michael Goodwin. As a disclaimer, it should be noted that Goodwin has served as a reporter with the Post for many years and currently writes opinion pieces for Fox News. On the air to discuss his most recent op-ed regarding the collapse of the Times, Goodwin...

Three witnesses, 11 hours of testimony and endless squabbling between Republicans and Democrat Adam Schiff. That’s the bare-bones tally of the first two days of public impeachment hearings. Along the way, patient viewers learned many things, some interesting but none decisive. So we don’t know the final score, but we do know the big loser. America, in a landslide. Make that a mudslide.

If Schiff, the zealous California chair of the intelligence panel, has a compelling vision about how to persuade the public that the president committed crimes or anything approaching crimes involving Ukraine, it escapes me. The first day of hearings and the first witnesses should have at least been able to produce facts and tantalizing hints that would leave viewers wanting more. Instead, the performances of acting Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor and State Department official George Kent left the impression there is little or nothing more to want. Everything to come likely will offer only more detail about the things we...

In the tweet confirming he switched his official residency from New York to Florida, President Trump said, “Despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year, I have been treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state.” As if on cue, those leaders instantly proved his point. “Good riddance,” thundered Gov. Cuomo. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” chimed in Mayor de Blasio. Their sneering hostility is yet another example of how Cuomo and de Blasio are failing to take advantage of having...

One way or another, Nancy Pelosi will go down in history. Let’s hope she doesn’t take America with her. The speaker’s decision to go all in on impeachment is fraught with danger and could have fateful consequences far beyond Donald Trump’s presidency. With only about a year to go until the 2020 election, Pelosi has thrown her full weight behind the effort to undo the results of 2016. This is a historic mistake, one that could tear America apart. Based on the evidence the House has made public, impeaching Trump is a meritless, reckless assault on democracy.

It would be understandable if President Trump wakes up troubled these days by four words bouncing around his head: “Loose lips sink ships.”Understandable — and advisable. The World War II warning against careless talk carries a personal meaning for the beleaguered president. ­Beset by a hostile media and a ruthless opposition party, Trump now must be careful about every word he says, privately and publicly.The walls, including in the White House, have ears.That was demonstrated in spades last week, most dramatically by the allegations from a CIA officer that Trump used a phone call with the president of Ukraine to solicit foreign...

And the winner is … Donald Trump. The Democrats’ third presidential debate was a long-winded, platitude-filled disaster where no single candidate could claim a clear victory. Instead, the seven men and three women took turns displaying why they are all probably unelectable. Start with Joe Biden’s incoherence. The nominal front-runner, the former vice president had a 40-year reputation for never shutting up. Now he can’t manage to finish a sentence without interrupting himself. Nearly all his efforts to make a point were swamped by a sudden change of direction mid-sentence, and then another change a few words later as a...

And the winner is … Donald Trump. The Democrats’ third presidential debate was a long-winded, platitude-filled disaster where no single candidate could claim a clear victory. Instead, the seven men and three women took turns displaying why they are all probably unelectable. Start with Joe Biden’s incoherence. The nominal front-runner, the former vice president had a 40-year reputation for never shutting up. Now he can’t manage to finish a sentence without interrupting himself. Nearly all his efforts to make a point were swamped by a sudden change of direction mid-sentence, and then another change a few words later as a...

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet accidentally admitted to the whole wide world that for two years his far-left newspaper was “built” around spreading a hoax. When I say “accidentally,” what I mean is that he likely didn’t know he was being secretly recorded and that his remarks would be made public. He also admitted the Times’ staff is loaded with left-wingers “who cheer us when we take on Donald Trump, but they jeer at us when we take on Joe Biden.” Yeah, there’s a real shocker. Slate somehow got a hold of a recording of a company-wide meeting...

In a [leaked] transcript of the newspaper’s crisis town-hall meeting, executive editor Dean Baquet grapples with a restive staff and outside scrutiny. ... In the 75 minutes of the meeting—which Slate obtained a recording of, and of which a lightly condensed and edited transcript appears below—Baquet and the paper’s other leadership tried to resolve a tumultuous week for the paper, one marked by a reader revolt against a front-page headline and a separate Twitter meltdown by Jonathan Weisman, a top editor in the Washington bureau. On Tuesday, the Times announced it was demoting Weisman from deputy editor because of his...

Fox News contributor Michael Goodwin believes The New York Times "has created a monster" by giving its readers a steady diet of anti-Trump headlines over the past three years. On "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, Goodwin discussed his new column in the New York Post, where he argues that the Times has changed more than any other news organization in recent years. Goodwin wrote, "The mandate of opinion-free news coverage was tossed overboard during the heated 2016 presidential election, and the paper now displays its bias on every page. The quaint motto is still there, but these days the Times doesn’t...

The circus is coming to town and the carnival barkers are working up a sweat trying to spark interest. So far, ticket sales are slow. Robert Mueller is slated to appear in Washington’s Big Tent Wednesday when he testifies to two House committees. The former special counsel threw a wet blanket on expectations by vowing he wouldn’t say anything beyond what’s in his report, but the hype machine still promises a sensational show. Naturally, the anti-Trump media are doing their best to pump oxygen into the dead-of-summer event, with NBC News running this screaming headline on a setup article: “Mueller...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Saturday hit parts of President Trump’s deal with Mexico on stopping migrant flows after he threatened to slap tariffs on the country -- saying that Trump was engaged in “threats and temper tantrums.” “President Trump undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world by recklessly threatening to impose tariffs on our close friend and neighbor to the south,” she said in a statement. “Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy,” she said Trump announced Friday that the U.S. and Mexico had reached a deal, after he had previously threatened to...

If Pelosi’s friends are right that she is not a crazy, she needs to act like it. If she believes impeachment is wrong for the country as well as her party, she must say it clearly and stop trying to have it both ways. She could also set an example of doing her day job by dealing with border problems and other pressing national issues. Otherwise, she is playing with a fire that will prove easy to start and impossible to stop.

Over the next two days, the 75th anniversary of D-Day will be marked with solemn salutes for the undaunted courage of individual soldiers and sailors and the inspired leadership that assembled the armada that liberated Europe. President Trump will take part in ceremonies in England and then in Normandy, France, where the German bunkers, bomb craters and the vast American cemetery stand in silent testament to the great alliance that came ashore and defeated Hitler. Indeed it was great, perhaps the greatest wartime alliance in history, but could it be done again? If, God forbid, another Hitler were carving up...

Looking for some great weekend reading? Look no further than the transcript of the CBS News interview with Attorney General William Barr. Calling it a bombshell doesn’t do it justice. The interview is chock-full of one explosive comment after another about special counsel Robert Mueller, the media and Barr’s own investigation of the investigators. Here are some nuclear-grade examples of what the AG has to say: “So it was bogus, this whole idea that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.” “It’s hard to read some of the [FBI] texts and not feel that there was gross bias...

Andrew McCabe is a national disgrace. He was part of the most corrupt and most partisan leadership team in FBI history and was fired for being dishonest under oath. And yet, America owes him a big thank-you. McCabe, you see, has reminded us once again that there really is a powerful deep state, and that there has not been a full accounting of rampant FBI misconduct during the presidential campaign of 2016. There is also still too much we don’t know about the role top aides to then-President Barack Obama and higher-ups in the Justice Department played in spying on...

How many times have we heard a politician, opinion blatherskite, news reader or random friend say that “so and so leaving” means that there is no longer an adult in the room with President Donald J. Trump. In the last week or so, that has been blown out of the water. We, those of us with common sense, knew it was never true. Dems have proven now that Trump “IS” the adult in the room. Nancy Pelosi was proud of how her charges behaved. And, the left says that Nancy is the adult in the room: Nancy Pelosi Nope. Just...