Free Republic

On the third day of the new war with Iran, and after years of building a political reputation grounded in opposition to foreign intervention, Vice President JD Vance broke his silence: He supports the strikes and believes the latest adventure abroad is not only prudent but consistent with his and President Trump’s promises not to risk American lives for regime change.The difference between this conflict and the Global War on Terror, Vance told Jesse Watters of Fox News, was that Trump “is not going to let his country go to war unless there is a clearly defined objective.” The stated...

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump denies that Israel dragged the US into war with Iran, insisting that if anything, the opposite could be true and that he felt Iran was going to attack first. Trump was asked by a reporter in the Oval Office, “Did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did Netanyahu pull the United States into this war?” “No, I might have forced their hands. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they [the Iranians] were going to attack first,” Trump claims in response, during...

CNN’s Jake Tapper delivered a blockbuster report about the United States’ ongoing military operation in Iran after a private interview with President Donald Trump on Monday. Anchor Kate Bolduan paused an interview with John Bolton to allow Tapper to call in before asking her colleague about his conversation with the president. “I just got off the phone with President Trump. It was a nine-minute phone interview, and we talked just about the war in Iran. I’m going to share some of it with you right now. The president said, quote, ‘We’re knocking the crap out of them. I think it’s...

WATCH: In a Facebook Live stream, Sinclair-owned CBS Austin multimedia journalist Vinny Martorano refuses his bosses' order to spin and downplay the rally in support of the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran. In the video, Martorano is seemingly practicing for a live shot and noting that people were "celebrating the attack. He's then hand a phone: CREW MEMBER: [Hands him a phone] MARTORANO: What does that mean? CREW MEMBER: It means they don't want us to focus on this. MARTORANO: [Shrugs] All right. [Hands the phone back] Well, I am. RALLY CHANTS: Thank you Trump! Thank you Trump! Thank you Trump!...

No senior Trump administration officials or cabinet members appeared on the Sunday show television circuit a day after the US and Israel began a major military operation in Iran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The absence of any Trump officials was noteworthy because many administration officials recognize the steep task they have in explaining the reasoning behind and the overall objective of the Iranian attacks to the American public. The major TV networks requested representatives from the Trump administration for interviews. Such requests are standard practice but are considered especially important right now.

Clearly, the “Saturday Night Live” writing team had a lot of work to do on Saturday, as they opened the show with a sketch about President Trump’s early morning attack on Iran. In the Feb. 28 cold open, Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) gives a press conference about the military action. “It’s me, Donald Trump, FIFA Peace Prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker,” he began. “Remember that? I launched this attack after me and my board of peace…we were bored of peace. As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for...

In the wake of Iranian Supreme Leader Aylatollah Khamenei coming down with a killer headache after getting a U.S. warhead on his forehead, on Saturday, The Washington Post published one of their infamous glowing remembrances of Islamic terrorists. The paper fondly remembered the brutal Islamic dictator as a “avuncular figure” with an “easy smile” and love for “Persian poetry.” Readers might remember when The Post fluffed up the former leader of ISIS as an “austere religious scholar”; well, they're back at it again with Khamenei in their obituary titled: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is dead at 86.” The...

You’ve heard of Optimist International, the global service organization. If there were a “Pessimist International,” MS NOW military analyst Barry McCaffrey could be kicked out of it — for being too darn negative. Caution is warranted when predicting U.S. success in foreign military operations. Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq remain sobering reminders. But appearing on MS NOW’s continuing Iran coverage last night, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey — Bill Clinton’s former drug czar — took pessimism to new heights. In roughly two minutes, McCaffrey declared success in key American objectives in Iran “unlikely” four separate times — and added a “not likely”...

MAGA-aligned billionaires Larry Ellison and his son David have dramatically won a bidding war for CNN’s parent company—and are now on track to turn it Trumpy. Their Paramount Skydance company suddenly has won its bidding war against Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery after upping its bad and the younger Ellison attending Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. The move comes two days after Paramount Skydance revised its offer for the media conglomerate which also owns HBO, and is Hollywood’s biggest movie make, from $30 per share to $31 per share. Once the deal goes through CNN is widely...

The Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray spoke out Wednesday after massive layoffs recently rocked the outlet. "I'd say the reality is that the Post had been facing some decline for quite some time," Murray told Semafor media editor Max Tani at the Restoring Trust in Media Summit in Washington, D.C. "The data really demonstrated that." Murray added that the Post had been on a five-year trajectory of "losing revenues" and seeing subscriptions "wane." He said the outlet invested in editing resources and "some areas of coverage" during the coronavirus pandemic in an attempt to adjust to the "new level...

Next month the most important political book of the year, or perhaps the decade, will be published. It is called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. The author is Jacob Siegel, a journalist for the Tablet. To summarize: shocked by the arrival of Donald Trump in 2016, American government officials, the media, and the technology giants created a system of censoring the public, spying on other opponents, and planting false stories. The media was complicit and will never fully recover. Trump’s rise, Siegel writes, “meant that politics had become war, as it is in many...

President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday is likely to be a test run of the message Republicans will give to voters in November's elections for control of the House and the Senate. The president and his party appear vulnerable, with polls showing much of America distrusts how Trump managed the government in his first year back in office. In addition, the Supreme Court last week struck down one of the chief levers of his economic and foreign policy by ruling he lacked the power to impose many of his sweeping tariffs. Though Trump is expected to focus...

Give me a phone and a list of registered Democrats, and I’ll find you one who thinks Donald Trump's the greatest thing since sliced bread — and Gavin Newsom is the devil incarnate. That’s essentially the level of polling rigor Audie Cornish brought to Tuesday’s edition of CNN This Morning. Discussing issues ahead of the State of the Union address, Cornish said: “We called up one of the people we polled, a Republican voter, Sean from New Mexico. He said: ‘I think people were expecting Trump to provide a bit of relief to their suffering. Grocery prices are just through...

Open Source Intel @Osint613: Reza Pahlavi supporters, labeled thugs by Christiane Amanpour, confronted her on camera, yelling: “Shame on you! You piece of filth! You’re a fake news journalist! You’re a lobbyist for the Islamic Republic! You are the microphone for Ayatollah Khamenei! She’s a propagandist of the Islamic Republic!” (Clip).

On Wednesday’s CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish and her panel managed to recast enforcement of federal civil rights law under Donald Trump as “enforcing ideology,” while a Democratic consultant insisted that DEI “was never a problem” until Trump took office. [snip] Cornish framed the issue this way: “What it means is the actual government now is involved in enforcing a different ideology, so to speak.”No. It means the federal government is enforcing the law. Democratic consultant Antjuan Seawright went further, claiming: “DEI was never a problem until Trump became President of the United States."Seawright also suggested that scaling back...

[snip] With border czar Tom Homan as his guest, Tapper repeatedly attempted to lure him into criticizing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Axios recently reported friction between the two, and Tapper clearly sought to exploit the issue. Tapper began by playing a clip of Noem saying that when it comes to elections, it’s important for DHS to be proactive “to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” Tapper invited Homan to interpret Noem’s statement about “electing the right leaders.” Homan demurred, saying that would be a question for the Secretary. But...

VIDEOWatch carefully the face of Kate Bolduan's face as Matt Egan delivers very positive news about the inflation rate coming down. Happy news! Right? And yet a great SADNESS fell across Kate Bolduan's face. This wasn't how it was supposed to be in her world. Liberal world had been guaranteeing that Trump's tariffs would cause massive inflation due to soaring costs by now with the result that an economic crash would also crash Trump's popularity. That thought might have flickered across Kate's face as the bitter reality of the success of the Trump economy caused poor Kate to suffer extreme...

Former ESPN personality Sarah Spain grumbled on her podcast recently that sitting near “demon” Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Winter Olympics in Italy made her feel “ill.” The “Good Game with Sarah Spain” host described her proximity to the top Trump administration officials – about 20 feet away, according to Spain – as one of the “low lights” of covering the US women’s hockey team as they demolished Czechia at the Milano Cortina games last week. “Twelve minutes into the first period, that area suddenly is awash with large men in suits with...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper said that, after the drawdown of immigration officers in Minnesota, there are “thousands” of officers “who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president.”

About a quarter of “CBS Evening News” staffers eligible for buyouts have chosen the option ahead of impending layoffs under editor in chief Bari Weiss, The Post has learned. Eleven staffers opted for buyouts, which were only offered to non-unionized employees, a source with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday. They include at least six producers out of the show’s total of roughly 20, according to another source, who added: “Seems like people are jumping ship.” “It’s a lot of people,” a CBS insider said. The “Evening News” has over 40 non-unionized staffers, a source said. A CBS News rep...