Free Republic

Biden’s Catholic Praetorian Guard Cardinal Cupich and company didn’t want him criticized on inauguration day.Franciscardinal Cupich The Biden presidency is already exposing fissures within the Church. On inauguration day, his Catholic apologists bathed him in praise and took bitter issue with Archbishop José Gomez for daring to criticize his anti-Catholic stances. Gomez, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, issued a tame statement, offering prayers and good wishes while noting, “Our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils.” But that was too much for Cardinal Blase Cupich, who declared Gomez’s statement “ill-considered.”Other members of the...

Memo to MAGA and all its myriad fellow-travelers: Maybe Death of a Salesman as presented by Leni Riefenstahl just wasn’t the show Americans were dying to tune into this season. And, while we’re at it, maybe turning your party over to Generalissimo Walter Mitty, his hideous scheming spawn, and the studio audience from Hee-Haw was not just absolutely aces as a political strategy. Think on it, Cletus. I know this whole thing still sounds like your idea of a good time — how’s that working out for you? Let me refresh your memory: On the day Donald Trump was sworn...

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday accused President Trump of provoking the violent crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “The last time the Senate convened, we had just reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty. The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, marking the first convening of the full Senate since the attack. McConnell’s statements carry significance ahead of an anticipated Senate impeachment trial. The GOP leader has told colleagues he hasn’t...

John Weaver — the co-founder of the anti-Trump super PAC Lincoln Project — addressed the “inappropriate” sexually charged messages that he has been sending to men, stating that he is gay. “The truth is that I’m gay. And that I have a wife and two kids who I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place,” said Weaver in a statement to Axios on Friday. “To the men I made uncomfortable through my messages that I viewed as consensual mutual conversations at the time: I am truly sorry,” he added. “They were inappropriate and...

<p>Last Tuesday night, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the number three Republican in the House, announced that she would support impeachment by issuing a blistering attack on President Donald Trump’s role in instigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.</p>

Former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said Friday on ABC’s “The View” that all the Republican senators who forwarded President Donald Trump’s claims there was “wide-scale voter fraud” in the 2020 presidential election knew it was a “big lie.” Co-host Sunny Hostin asked, “Senator Flake, the Capitol riots were the result of the false election fraud claims that you’ve said Republicans never really believed, but pushed for, quote, ‘rank opportunism.’ Do you think Republican senators like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz bear some responsibility for inciting the insurrection? Should they be expelled in your view, held accountable somehow?”

To the QAnon community, and others involved in storming the Capitol: The Deep State is real, but it’s not what you think. The Deep State you worry about is mostly made up; a fiction, a lie, a product of active imaginations, grifter manipulations, and the internet. I’m telling you this now because storming the Capitol building has drawn the attention of the real Deep State — the national security bureaucracy — and it’s important you understand what that means. You attacked America. Maybe you think it was justified — as a response to a stolen election, or a cabal of...

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...

The safety and security of the 2020 presidential election has been verified over and over, including by the top Republicans in the country. President Trump’s own attorney general confirmed that there was no fraud that would have changed the outcome, and former Trump administration top cybersecurity official Chris Krebs called it “the most secure election in American history.” A great deal of attention has—for good reason—been paid to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed suit in an attempt to strip millions of Americans in four states of their vote. And Paxton was joined by attorneys general in 18 states...

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” that it was time for Republican lawmakers to accept President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and not try to “disturb the certification of the Electoral College.” Cuomo said, “What do you say to members of your party who are in Congress who are even contemplating doing something on January 6th to disturb the certification of the Electoral College?” Christie said, “Chris, you know, whenever anybody loses an election, party, an individual, there’s great disappointment, but elections have consequences. And this one was clearly won by president-elect...

Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his electoral defeat is alarming, but unsurprising. It is Mr. Trump’s character to reject even reality itself when it conflicts with his ego. More alarming is the long list of state and national Republican leaders cravenly falling in line behind his desperate efforts to topple American democracy. On Friday, the Supreme Court rejected a Texas lawsuit to overturn the election, a legal challenge that was as frivolous as it was anti-constitutional. Yet more than 60 percent of House Republicans signed a supporting brief, joining 18 Republican attorneys general who filed their own and embraced entirely...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday told Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that it’s too early to stop fighting to overturn the election after the longtime Kentucky senator congratulated Joe Biden following the Electoral College vote. “Mitch, 75,000,000 VOTES, a record for a sitting President (by a lot),” Trump wrote to McConnell, underscoring the amount of support he has from Americans. It’s “too soon to give up,” Trump continued. The “Republican Party must finally learn to fight,” he said. “People are angry!” The remarks were shared alongside a Daily Mail article about Republicans turning on McConnell after he made his...

One day after the Electoral College affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, said in an interview that he acknowledged Biden as the president-elect and believed the election was legitimate. At the same time, Johnson plans to hold a Senate hearing Wednesday on election “irregularities,” saying there are “legitimate questions” about the way the election was administrated in Wisconsin and other states.

Those disappointed in the outcome of this election and of the Texas suit should not lose sight of the constitutional values that will last far beyond any one lawsuit and any one election.On Friday, the Supreme Court denied Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint challenging the presidential election results in four states. The court’s order explained that leave to file was denied “for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution” because Texas had not “demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”This was the right result for...

We are being manipulated ... by Donald J Trump!ONLY the president can use the BSA to reveal the source / person(s) who ordered a halt to counting in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Detroit, and Milwaukee on election night. Whomever ordered that stop counting command which resutled in the observers being expelled and the counting resumed without licit oversight is the key to this seditious defrauding of American voters.Withholding that key piece of information from the American people who have supported Donald Trump is manipulating US rather than including us in the truth as a basis for our opposition tot he defrauding....

Is Ivanka Trump Setting a Clever Trap to Take Out NeverTrumper Marco Rubio? Ivanka and her husband Jared are leaving the “NYC” life behind and setting up permanent shop in Florida, near her father. Ivanka and Jared will be moving to a part of Florida that’s very prestigious…the area they’re looking to move to is nicknamed “billionaire bunker.” It’s near Miami Beach and the couple are reportedly looking to buy a massive and beautiful home owned by Spanish singer Julio Iglesias. But it’s not the house that is the main focus of the Florida move – it’s what Ivanka is...

If significant numbers of Republican voters choose to not participate in the January 5 runoff elections for both Senate seats, and that leads to victories by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, that will do nothing for Donald Trump, Trump’s legacy as president, the Republican Party, and the cause of conservatism. It will, however, do a lot for Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, who would instantly become major power brokers in the Republican Party. They could take their “your vote was stolen by rigged machines” conspiracy-theory schtick to any state in the union and hold don’t-get-out-the-vote rallies for any race, telling...

Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The Trump Presidential Campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair. But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the Campaign “doesn’t plead fraud. . . . [T]his is not a fraud case.” Instead, it objects that Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more. This case is not about whether...

Max Boot, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, in his latest op-ed Monday warned of what he fears will be President Donald Trump’s legacy for the GOP. Boot wrote of his hope that Trump’s “outrageous” bid to overturn the 2020 election would be “the last gasp of a pathetic presidency in its dying days” but also of his worry “it might represent only a middle chapter in the Republican Party’s transformation” into an authoritarian party. Boot, a vocal critic of Trump, noted how even before Trump’s arrival on the political stage, “Republicans had shown their willingness to use any...

President Donald Trump’s confidant former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday that the president should end his legal fights challenging the results of the election and concede to president-elect Joe Biden. “Listen, I’ve been a supporter of the president, I voted for him twice but elections have consequences and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen,” Christie explained on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”