Free Republic

As president, I will restore American strength on the world stage and focus our attention and resources on deterring Xi’s Chinese Communist Party — the greatest economic and security threat facing America today. My goal is straightforward: We win, and they lose. My treasury and commerce secretaries will focus on American interests, not Wall Street’s access to Chinese markets. I will create an Office of Economic Security and Competition to prioritize reshoring and friendshoring critical production, protecting technologies and reducing reliance on adversaries. I will defend American workers and innovators from illicit technology transfer and intellectual-property theft. I will align...

Floyd’s death during a police chokehold on May 25, 2020, ignited nationwide protests to reform police procedures. “It doesn’t get any worse than that,” President Donald Trump said of Floyd’s death. Within three weeks, he signed an executive order establishing an abuse-of-force database and called for improved police practices. Fast forward to Feb. 22, 2024, when Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was bludgeoned to death, allegedly at the hands of an illegal migrant, Jose Ibarra, who is a member of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday he would not consider being Donald Trump’s running mate one day after the former president confirmed the former 2024 rival was on his “short list” — with DeSantis revealing that he was looking at other prospects, including another White House bid in four years. “People were mentioning me [as a potential vice president]. I am not doing that,” DeSantis told Republicans his presidential campaign had recruited to be delegates to this summer’s nominating convention during a thank-you call, audio of which was shared exclusively with The Post. The 45-year-old also went in-depth about who...

The European Union is good at coming up with inoffensive-sounding terminology to talk about unpleasant things. For example, the phrase “strategic autonomy” is a nice way of saying, “We don’t trust the Americans” — and, with Donald Trump leading the polls and boasting about encouraging Vladimir Putin to invade European countries, it is impossible to blame them. It is important to get the context of Trump’s remarks straight: Trump says he told an unidentified NATO counterpart whose country hadn’t met the organization’s target for defense spending, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do...

The purported value of Ivanka Trump’s Park Avenue penthouse came under scrutiny this week during testimony at trial in the New York attorney general’s $250 million civil fraud case against the former president. Donald Bender, a former accountant for Donald Trump at the accounting firm Mazars USA, testified in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday that he saw errors between the value listed for the posh pad on financial documents and its potential sale price. Bender explained from the witness stand that, while he wasn’t in charge of auditing the company financials, he “from time to time” would tell Trump Organization...

New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement marking the first day of her trial agaisnt former President Donald Trump on Monday. Trump will appear before Judge Arthur Engoron in Manhattan on Monday. He faces charges of fraud relating to his business dealings. “For years, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth to enrich himself and cheat the system. We won the foundation of our case last week and proved that his purported net worth has long been rooted in incredible fraud. In this country, there are consequences for this type of persistent fraud, and we look forward to...

This is not the presidential portrait he wanted. A sheriff in Georgia said former President Donald Trump will likely have his mug shot taken if he is hit with a fourth indictment in that state. Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat anticipates authorities will adhere to “normal practices” if Trump receives an indictment for attempting to challenge the 2020 election results in the Peach State. “Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status,” Labat told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. “We’ll have a mug shot ready for you.”

Donald Trump on Sunday vehemently denied directing a staffer to delete security footage at Mar-a-Lago. Special Counsel Jack Smith had lodged three additional charges against the embattled former president Thursday night, including over Trump allegedly telling an underling to have surveillance footage scrubbed after the Justice Department subpoenaed for it last year. “MAR-A-LAGO SECURITY TAPES WERE NOT DELETED. THEY WERE VOLUNTARILY HANDED OVER TO THE THUGS, HEADED UP BY DERANGED JACK SMITH,” Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social. “WE DID NOT EVEN GO TO COURT TO STOP THEM FROM GETTING THESE TAPES. I NEVER TOLD ANYBODY TO DELETE...

“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.”