Free Republic

When Americans were experiencing inflation and shortages during the Biden presidency, there was an internet meme going around that juxtaposed a paltry egg with the iconic 2019 image of a grinning Donald Trump, welcoming the national championship–winning Clemson Tigers to the White House, spreading his arms to display a massive bounty of burgers piled in front of him. The underlying message behind that joke became a central part of the 2024 campaign: Under Trump, Americans had plenty; under Biden-Harris, they had less. Yet bizarrely, the man who for decades has been a symbol of unapologetic American excess is now defending...

“I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. . . . We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.” — Jimmy Carter, the “malaise speech,” July 1979 “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” — Bernie Sanders, May 2015 “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.” — Scott Bessent, March 2025. “[China] made a...

... In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Garcia to America from El Salvador so that his claims can be adjudicated. (He currently sits there under an agreement negotiated by the Trump administration with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for the use of his notoriously brutal mega-prisons to house potential deportees.) This weekend the Trump administration refused, claiming, on stunningly disingenuous logic, that because Garcia had been dumped quickly into El Salvador he was now beyond American jurisdiction. (“He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.”) Why not...

Last Wednesday, standing at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the United States threw the world’s economy into turmoil. Having declared that America’s trade deficit represented a bona fide “emergency,” President Trump revealed a completely rewritten federal tariff regime. The result of these alterations was an increase in protectionist barriers that exceeded even the infamous Smoot-Hawley law in its scope. For two days, the stock market responded to this move by diving sharply downward. Monday morning, after a false report that the president was planning to endorse a 90-day pause in implementation, there was a...

Predictably enough, the Ukrainian government has objected to its exclusion from the peace talks Trump administration officials held with their Russian counterparts this week in Riyadh and, for its trouble, is getting slammed by what is supposed to be its ally, the United States. In breathtaking remarks to reporters, President Trump poured contempt on Ukraine for its frustration. “But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine. “You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a...

Donald Trump nominated Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), an unqualified toady, to the nation’s top law-enforcement office. And, in the blink of an eye, Gaetz resigned from the House to, apparently, force the shutdown of an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, obstruction, and other unsavory conduct — misconduct allegations over which Gaetz narrowly escaped being indicted by the same Justice Department Trump would have him lead. To be sure, Gaetz was not charged. He has denied any wrongdoing. And allegations, even colorable ones, are not evidence. Nevertheless, the standards of fitness for an office of...

The price of an $80 pair of blue jeans spiking to $90 or even $96. A pair of $90 gym shoes rising to $116. A $1,500 mid-tier couch rising to over $1,600. The rising costs of these three household items may seem like examples of Bidenomics at work over the last four years. But if that’s what you’re thinking, think again. These are the kinds of price increases American consumers can expect if President-elect Donald Trump proceeds with some of the tariff proposals he floated on the campaign trail this year, according to a new report from the National Retail...

On the menu today: The cover piece in the newest issue of National Review has Ron DeSantis fans grumbling that it’s far too early for such a gloomy assessment of his campaign because not a single vote has been cast yet. Fine, but to believe that DeSantis has a shot of winning Iowa, we need to believe that his support is at least 15 percentage points higher than his highest numbers in recent polling and that Donald Trump’s support is at least 15 percentage points lower than his lowest numbers in recent polling. (If you simply take DeSantis’s best number...

John Davidson asks at the Federalist, “Does DeSantis Know What Time It Is? Didn’t Sound Like It In That NBC Interview.” Responding to DeSantis’s assertion that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and was in large part responsible for allowing Covid-driven rules changes that helped Democrats collect a lot of mail-in votes, this is Davidson’s thesis: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have lost his way, unable to articulate a clear position on the most important issue of the primaries, which is what happened in 2020. . . . No issue is more important for DeSantis (and the entire GOP...

Elections are supposed to be about the future, but Donald Trump is stuck in the past. He is dead set on running for president in 2024 by campaigning on the very worst part of his record. In his much-hyped return to the mainstream media, a CNN town hall on May 11, Trump doubled down on his claims that millions of fraudulent votes were the cause of his defeat in 2020. He said he had no regrets about his behavior before and during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and that he does not owe Mike Pence an apology for...

We are only 20 months away from the next Presidential election, and at this stage, the Republican party should be starting to whittle down its field of contenders. Yet here we are with most of the people expected to run still sitting it out, silent. It’s true that Nikki Haley has started her campaign, as have a few outriders like Vivek Ramaswamy, to whom I wish much luck. But the serving or former officials who should have started their campaigns by now are still sitting it out. Leaving the ground open for Trump to do stunts like his Ohio trip...

Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his...

Perhaps Republicans Could Learn Something HereI despise the term RINO — Republican in Name Only. It splits the Republican Party year after year, and its persistence hands the Democrats power in Congress they would not otherwise be able to earn. I never hear the term DINO — Democrat in Name Only — because the Democrats are too smart for that. Within the Democratic Party are avowed socialists (Bernie Sanders) together with senators and representatives who represent Montana, Arizona, and other generally red states — states that have long traditions of independence and free-market values. In other words, the Democratic Party...

The crux of Robinson’s post: “On Primary Day in Georgia, Kemp gets 74% and Perdue gets 22%. Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes. Ever. It doesn’t happen. Obvious fraud.” But the thing that Robinson claims never happens actually happens with regularity. Aaron Blake points to a 2009 study that “found that about 1 in 10 Senate incumbents took less than 75 percent of the vote in their primaries. Many faced token or no opposition, but it does happen — very regularly.” . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene carried 70 percent of her district at the...

This isn’t just illiberal, it’s irrational. What Goldberg said was factually incorrect, yes. But so what? Figures on political TV shows say stupid and historically illiterate things every day — including about the Nazis — and nothing much happens to them as a result. What, exactly, was different about this one? Is warmed-over critical theory prohibited now? And why does anyone care? ABC’s president explained that the suspension was a product of Goldberg’s “hurtful comments.” But who, specifically, was “hurt”? The View is a talk show, and a particularly stupid one to boot. Is there anyone in the world who...

Dear Never Trumpers: The Cruise Is Over How a generation of "conservative" intellectuals finally turned into Democrats A lot has happened since my well known essay "The Collapse of the Never Trumpers" appeared in 2018 — and none of it has been good for that tribe of pundits or their garden gnome leader, Bill Kristol. In fact, most of them have seen their careers collapse so spectacularly that only Michael Avenatti could really understand. George Will has semi-retired to a life of boring students to death as a commencement speaker at small colleges. Jonah Goldberg and Steven Hayes used to...

As cable television broadcast the scenes of Trump supporters breaking past police lines and even smashing their way into the Capitol on January 6, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., texted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff: “He’s got to condemn this sh** ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” A little later, Don Jr. texted again: “We need an Oval office address. He [then-president Trump] has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.” It’s that last statement that reveals the whole truth of January 6 for Trump’s supporters. Donald Trump’s...

there are reasons to believe Trump’s dominance is exaggerated and that it is slowly degrading, such that by the time the 2024 Republican primaries roll around, he’ll be challengeable and beatable if he runs. [cut] Trump’s media footprint is much reduced. Data from SocialFlow shows engagement with Trump stories plummeting in March of this year and it took another jag down in August and September. As for Trump’s polling numbers, Republicans might tell pollsters they want him to run again as a way to stick a finger in the eye of the media or as a general statement of warm...

I took a beating on Twitter Thursday night for making what I thought was a commonsense observation that President Trump should be negotiating favorable terms for resignation "if there are 20 GOP senators who’d vote to impeach." In our current climate, this was taken as a call for Trump’s impeachment. But it wasn’t a value judgment. It was a mathematical calculation. As it happens, I do think the president has committed an impeachable offense, making a reckless speech that incited a throng on the mall, which foreseeably included an insurrectionist mob. These rioters ended up overwhelming security forces and storming...

These are dark days in the history of the United States, and no one is feeling them more intensely than Mike Pence. On Wednesday, the vice president admirably turned aside the president’s high-intensity demands that he shred the Constitution. Trump was pushing Pence to usurp the states’ power over the disposition of their electoral votes — in effect, to claim dictatorial power to reverse President-elect Biden’s victory. Pence’s fidelity to his constitutional oath so enraged Trump that the president publicly rebuked him even as an insurrectionist mob was descending on the Capitol. Press reports indicate that the rioters, upon overwhelming...