Free Republic

The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork ... Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68. If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as...

How Stew Peters parlayed conspiracy theories into viral documentaries and a massive following.On January 5, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted about the unexpected passing of Quentin Williams, a Democratic member of the Connecticut House of Representatives. “Terrible news today of Q Williams sudden death,” he wrote. “I’m sending every good thought I have to his family and friends today.” Most of the replies to Murphy’s tweet echoed the senator’s sentiments; many commented that it was especially sad to lose someone so young—Williams was just 39 when he died. But some of the commenters seemed determined to take the conversation in...

Leave it to the leftist hacks at Mother Jones to wield a George Soros-funded group to wokescold American businesses that donated to those darn 2020 GOP “election deniers.” Mother Jones railed in an Oct. 3 story headlined “Corporate Donors Gave $44 Million to Election Deniers’ Campaigns,” that “even after January 6, corporations gave big money to lawmakers who tried to overturn the election.” The outlet regurgitated propaganda from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and disguised it as “analysis.” “A new analysis shows that the 147 members of what [CREW] dubs the Sedition Caucus—lawmakers who voted against...

WASHINGTON — When John H. Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Donald J. Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a “ deep state” conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him. Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Trump was seeking. The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there...

In a 2021 interview with the Stanford Review, Blake Masters was asked for a historical figure he admired. He chose two. The first was George Washington, possibly the best-known military general, slave owner, and president in American history. “I don’t think people realize how much of a boss this guy was,” Masters explained. The second was Lee Kuan Yew. LKY, as he’s often called, was Singapore’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990 and oversaw its economic miracle. He turned the former British colony into a go-go free market paradise. As it grew, Singapore instituted a far-ranging welfare state. The government...

In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are...

On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson. “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,”...

Ana Navarro told her co-hosts Monday on ABC’s “The View” that FNC’s Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) should be investigated by the Department of Justice for being Russian propagandists. Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “The website, Mother Jones posted a leaked Kremlin war memo instructing Russian state media to play Tucker Carlson clips as much as possible, and Tulsi Gabbard is being accused of spreading Russian false-flag propaganda.”

As the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has progressed, Americans who hope for a successful conviction have begun to focus their attentions on the true villain of the piece: the 75-year-old presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder. Among the many accusations that have been leveled at Schroeder this week are that he is “biased,” that he is “prejudiced,” that he is a secret “conservative,” “right-winger,” or “Trumpist,” that he is a “a gun nut,” that he is a “a racist” or wannabe member of the Klan, that he is the “worst judge in town,” and that he is attempting to parlay this trial...

The nation argued for five years over the infamous “Steele dossier,” the document on which the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. It should have been called the Clinton dossier. Special counsel John Durham this week obtained an indictment of Igor Danchenko, a Russian who provided information for the dossier. ---SNIP--- Never forget the original claim. According to the FBI, Democrats and the media, Mr. Trump harbored secret and nefarious ties with Russia. We knew that because—as Mother Jones explained in a 2016 article that became the reigning story line— Christopher Steele was a “credible...

A review of the data pertaining to the accusations in the phony Steele dossier about a Trump-Russia Bank connection discovered the sources used is most likely the same source the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to investigate the Trump-Alfa Bank connection. This person also just happens to be a radical Hillary Clinton supporter! It’s been more than two years since the 2016 election and Americans still don’t really know the sources for the phony Steele dossier used by the FBI and DOJ to obtain FISA warrants to spy on candidate and then President Trump. This nightmare for President...

Bernie Sanders' record skews way to the left on one issue after another: health care, taxes, campaign finance, international trade, abortion and the Iraq war. Gun control? Not so much. "Bernie Sanders, Gun Nut" was the headline in the liberal online publication Slate. After the Sandy Hook massacre, other progressives called for tough new restrictions on firearms, but Sanders disagreed. "If you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don't think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen," he said. The obvious explanation for this anomaly is that he comes from Vermont, a state...

Kevin Drum is a liberal blogger but is always worth a read. He was with Mother Jones. He now appears to be on his own with his Jabberwocky blog. When liberals mocked Republicans for making the national security case regarding admitting scores of Syrian refugees, Drum said that stance was “absurdly out of touch.” He also said Senate Democrats forced him to side with the National Rifle Association when the Left wanted to push prohibiting those on terror watch lists from buying guns. There are serious constitutional issues with this policy, the least being the lack of due process and...

David Corn of the left-wing website Mother Jones is declaring President Donald Trump “a terrorist leader” after protesters breached the United States Capitol on Wednesday. Following protests at the U.S. Capitol, Corn ran a headline, titled “Donald Trump Is Now a Terrorist Leader,” declaring “This is what Donald Trump has unleashed upon the United States: an unprecedented act of domestic terrorism.” Corn writes in Mother Jones: Trump owned this terrorism. He has whipped up his cultish followers with lies and conspiracy theories. At a rally on Wednesday morning, Trump told his supporters that the 2020 election was a grave crime...

Authorities in Portland, Ore. may be racist in the way they define "riot," according to National Public Radio. The taxpayer-funded media outlet aired a report Thursday in which it claimed that state laws governing riot declarations "have roots in the state's racist history." An accompanying article by Oregon Public Broadcasting's Jonathan Levinson linked to a June interview with Black studies educator and writer Walidah Imarisha, who claimed the state's historically racist laws "absolutely" echo through Oregon's current governance. "Oregon began as a white-only state," Levinson wrote. "While it banned slavery at its founding, the state adopted strict Black exclusionary laws...

On Friday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed a controversial bill that enhances penalties for certain crimes related to political protests and makes it a felony to illegally camp on state property. In Tennessee, a felony conviction automatically revokes an individual’s right to vote. The law also increases penalties for assaulting a first responder, obstructing emergency vehicles, and rioting. The bill follows two months of anti-racism protests in Nashville, during which activists have camped outside the state capitol building in an effort to secure a meeting with Lee. According to the Associated Press, state legislators claimed the law was needed...

Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig, who has offered free legal advice to electors, said this week that 20 Republican electors are considering not voting for Trump. ... But the Republican National Committee, which according to Politico has been keeping tabs on its electors, has found no defectors except for Christopher Suprun, a Texas elector who has publicly announced his intention not to support Trump. ... there's little evidence that these entreaties might result in the kind of large-scale coordination that would be required to deny Trump the presidency.

s Minneapolis burns and President Trump fans the flames with tweets so incendiary that Twitter slapped warning labels on them, reporters and editors have rightly called out his racist rhetoric, all the while using coded language of another kind. From “rioters” to “looters,” newsrooms across the country are turning to headlines and tropes historically used to single out and vilify communities of color protesting police brutality.

Mother Jones is a left wing site and David Corn is a left-wing reporter. As a result, there’s a lot of throat clearing in this piece about how President Trump and his allies are desperately trying to distract everyone by making China into a cartoon villain. But three paragraphs in, Corn turns a corner and admits that, based on a Congressional Research Report released Wednesday, it looks like Trump and his allies have a point. As Corn put it, “the CRS report does not cast the Chinese government in a good light.” He continued, “The report’s judgements are highly...

The acrid smell of charred wood still permeates the air as Sasha Berleman, a fire ecologist, and I walk along a dirt path up through the middle of a canyon in the Bouverie nature preserve in Sonoma Valley. On the left side, the earth is black as tar, and scorch marks as tall as a person scar the trunks of the mature oak trees scattered throughout the field. But on the right side, the ground is tan and brown, and you have to look hard at the still-green oaks to see any evidence of the fire that raged through here...