Free Republic

“We will defeat the cult of gender ideology, and we will reassert the timeless truth that God created two genders, male and female,” he said. “We will defend our culture. We will reassert the Judeo-Christian values of our nation’s founding.” But Trump’s actions in 2012 appeared to be in contrast to weekend statements when he overruled the rejection of Jenna Talackova, a transgender beauty queen who entered the Miss Universe Canada competition. Talackova, then 23, was originally denied because she was not born a biological female, according to a past report. She and her lawyer at the time, Gloria Allred,...

Perhaps the most moderate candidate in the field as of this moment is Donald Trump. If you want a Republican who won’t cut spending or start foreign wars, Trump is still your man. Added to this now is clearly a discomfort with the fight over abortion in the post-Roe environment. Trump’s main line of attack against Ron DeSantis is from the left. He’s hitting the Florida governor hard for his past support for reining in Social Security and Medicare. He’s also called the governor’s culture-war clash with Disney “so unnecessary” and “a political stunt,” while not entering the fray in...

Although the landmark 34-count criminal case against former President Donald Trump hinges on his alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, the Manhattan DA’s investigation also deals with a less-familiar name – Karen McDougal. McDougal, a 52-year-old former Playboy Playmate, claims she had an affair with Trump over a decade ago. She also says she was silenced when Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, and the leadership at American Media Inc. paid her for her story in the run-up to the 2016 election — and then buried it. *** In a Feb. 2018 report based on McDougal’s...

The Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Donald Trump centers around allegations the former president orchestrated illegal “catch and kill” payments in a scheme to suppress negative stories about him during the 2016 election that continued while he was in office, according to the indictment against him unsealed Thursday. Trump, 76, is facing a total of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, which each carry a maximum sentence of four years behind bars. Taken together, the ex-president faces a whopping 136 years behind bars, but if convicted at trial and actually sentenced to jail, the time...

Long-held values like patriotism, religion and community involvement are in retreat across America, according to a stunning poll released Monday. The Wall Street Journal/NORC survey found that just 38% of Americans say patriotism is “very important” to them, down from 70% who said the same in 1998. Slightly more Americans (39%) placed the same importance on religion, down from 62% who said faith was “very important” to them 25 years ago. ​The percentage of Americans who said raising children was “very important” fell to 30% in the new poll, down from 59% in 1998.

Former President Donald Trump has reportedly said he wants to be hauled into court in handcuffs if he’s slapped with unprecedented charges in the “hush money” case involving porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump, 76, told advisers of his plan, saying that if he has to go through the ordeal of getting arrested and arraigned, he’d prefer making it a “spectacle,” The Guardian said Wednesday, citing unidentified sources close to him. The ex-president — who’s seeking the Republican nomination for a third White House bid in 2024 — also wants to avoid any special treatment that could make him look weak,...

Former President Donald Trump has not been notified about whether charges will be filed against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his alleged role in facilitating a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, sources told The Post. Sources also told The Post that it is still possible that Bragg decides not to indict the 76-year-old former president. Trump could be indicted as early as Wednesday, although he is not expected to appear in court until next week, law enforcement sources told The Post on Tuesday. According to Fox News, the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence...

A network of bots have been busily singing the praises of former President Donald Trump while targeting his political rivals Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — as well as trolling critics like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to a report on Monday. The fake accounts — estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands — are behind popularizing the suggestion that DeSantis, 44, would be unable to defeat Trump, 76, for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination but would make a good running mate. They also attacked Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations in the...

Former President Trump plans to attack Bush-era Republicans in his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday and urge those in attendance to finish the job of transforming the GOP by backing him for the White House in 2024. Trump is expected to deliver CPAC’s keynote address at roughly 5:30 p.m. in remarks that are expected to last roughly 90 minutes. Trump has been a staple of the annual gathering for years, delivering marquee speeches during and after his presidency. The event, this year in National Harbor, Maryland, is now dominated by his most ardent supporters and he is...

Americans are taking a been-there, done-that approach to the 2024 presidential election. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 58% of voters prefer somebody other than President Biden as their standard-bearer in two years, and 49% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the same about former President Donald Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday. While 44% of Republicans support Trump being their nominee, only 31% of Democrats back a Biden run for re-election.

President Biden would easily beat former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 election matchup — but would lose if he faced off against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a recent poll. In a rematch of the 2020 presidential contest, the 80-year-old Biden would prevail over his 76-year-old predecessor by eight percentage points in the popular vote — 49% to 41% — but would fall to the Sunshine State’s Republican governor by 45% to 42% in a head-to-head contest, the WPA Intelligence survey released Jan. 13 found.

Former President Donald Trump lashed out at evangelicals for not supporting his latest presidential campaign, saying it was a “sign of disloyalty” after he appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices and made their long-held dream of overturning Roe v. Wade possible. Trump, 76, told Real America’s Voice’s “The Water Cooler” Monday that the religious bloc of voters who were key to his 2016 victory have not yet come out to back his 2024 White House bid. “That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump told host David Brody. “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took aim at former President Donald Trump when asked about his reaction to the House Jan. 6 panel’s criminal referral of the former president to the Justice Department on Monday. “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” McConnell told reporters when asked about the House select committee’s findings. The committee, led by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), recommended to the DOJ that Trump, 76, be charged with inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to make...

Decades of writing about politicians has taught me that the successful ones generally do not make big decisions on the fly. If you watch and listen, you can usually spot a deliberative process and defensible reasoning behind their positions. But now comes a major exception: the decision by the Biden administration to throw open our southern border. Two years into this national disaster, I don’t have a clue about why the president and his team are still doing this. What started as a foolish bid to undo everything Donald Trump did has become a permanent policy that undercuts national security...

In attempting to describe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the last four years, the press has reached for a whole host of inapt comparisons: He’s Donald Trump! He’s Scott Walker! He’s Satan! But none of these seem right. Instead — and hear me out! — he may well be Bill Clinton. No, not morally. Despite Donald Trump’s grotesque insinuation that there is something “unflattering” about DeSantis that only he knows about, there’s no indication that Florida’s governor is anything other than an upstanding husband and father.

Former President Donald Trump – who himself has come under fire for Republicans’ lackluster performance in the midterm elections – is blaming Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for the party’s apparent failure to flip the chamber’s majority in its favor. “Mitch McConnell, the Republicans Broken Down Senate Leader, does nothing about this,” Trump on social media Friday night. “He’s too busy spending vast amounts of money on bad Senator Lisa [Murkowski] of Alaska when Kelly [Tshibaka] is FAR better.” Yet Trump’s own spending choices in this year’s midterm elections have also drawn criticism.

DeSilence is golden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his team have ignored Donald Trump’s ongoing rhetorical offensive because they believe the former president is only damaging his own brand, an insider told “There is no upside to rolling around in the mud with Trump at this point,” the DeSantis source said. “Only downside.” DeSantis’ famously pugnacious press team has been mute about Trump’s broadsides, and offered no comment on the escalating feud on Friday. The governor himself was spotted in Daytona Beach, surveying damage caused by Tropical Storm Nicole. Fresh off pummeling Democratic challenger Charlie Crist at the polls this...