Free Republic

NEW YORK -- The digital media conglomerate Starboard said Friday it purchased the conservative social media site Parler and will temporarily take down the app as it undergoes a “strategic assessment.” The deal came months after another acquisition agreement with rapper Kanye West, legally known as Ye, collapsed in November. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by either company. Parler said the deal was concluded on April 7. Parler caters to right-wing, far right and libertarian voices and fashions itself as a platform with fewer rules in support of free speech. It was briefly booted off the internet...

Is this the right time for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to run for president ? Potential candidates calculate odds, take polls, and count dollars to determine whether they should run. But it’s often not an easy decision; timing is the biggest conundrum in politics. DeSantis once seemed to have a glide path to the Republican Party's presidential nomination. His strong popularity among Republicans nationwide, together with his big reelection win and former President Donald Trump’s flubbing the midterm elections, put him in the driver’s seat. But now that the nomination is hitched to the wild uncertainties of indictments, some DeSantis...

An outside review of ballot printing mishaps in Maricopa County during the 2022 midterm elections that caused long lines and vote tabulation delays in critical Arizona races blamed the headaches on printer failures and paper ballot thickness. Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix area, contains 60% of Arizona’s voters and has been a hotbed for election denialism in the last two cycles. Former President Donald Trump alleged widespread fraud in Maricopa County tipped the state to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while failed 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has cited Maricopa County election woes in her...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — He may have been expelled Thursday evening, but Justin Jones is back in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The ousted legislator was reappointed to his former seat in the 52nd District in Nashville by the Metro Council Monday afternoon, two business days after he was officially expelled from the House for breaking decorum rules on the House floor March 30. Jones faced expulsion along with fellow Democrats Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Pearson of Memphis. Johnson survived the expulsion vote by one, but Pearson was ousted as well Thursday. The move was met with national...

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - Fox News said on Sunday it has reached a settlement with a Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, ending a defamation case in which Khalil said he was falsely accused on air of helping to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election against Donald Trump. Khalil had filed a defamation suit against the news outlet and former host Lou Dobbs, arguing in filings that they had fabricated claims he and other Venezuelans were involved in "orchestrating a non-existent scheme to rig or fix the election" against the former Republican president. A short letter sent to U.S. District Judge...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has chosen a finance director for his prospective presidential campaign, two sources close to DeSantis said on Thursday. Lauren Lofstrom, who served as finance director for Texas Senator Ted Cruz during his 2016 presidential campaign, is joining DeSantis' political operation and has begun meeting with the governor's allies to discuss fundraising strategies, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Others who have joined DeSantis' political operation include Jason Johnson, who served as Cruz's chief strategist in 2016, the sources said.

Former President Donald Trump was arraigned in New York on Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, but the largest blow to his hopes of reclaiming the White House might have occurred nearly 1,000 miles away in Wisconsin, where liberals secured a majority on the state's Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years. Hours after Trump became the first American president to face felony charges, Judge Janet Protasiewicz claimed victory over former Justice Dan Kelly, a major Trump supporter and one of the Wisconsin Republicans central to the former president's attempts to throw out the results...

So I just saw the Trump commercial re: Desantis. He accuses Desantis of wanting to cut Medicare funding among other things. All dark and foreboding in black and white (of course). And here's my favorite part: "Desantis even voted to raise the retirement age to 70"!! Anyone even halfway responsible who looks at the Social Security trust fund numbers knows the retirement age will have to be lifted. Americans are living longer. There's no other option. Well, there is one other option -- raising SS taxes and/or raising or eliminating the income cap. Both Democrat solutions. Of course Trump has...

Republican 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley raised $11 million in the first six weeks of her campaign, according to a report on Wednesday — only slightly more than former President Donald Trump took in over five days since his indictment. Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, ​told Fox News that the contributions reflected the strength of her grassroots support, as she received 70,000 separate donations from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Her campaign noted that 67,000 of those donations were under $200. ​Haley, who launched her presidential run on Feb. 14​,...

Tuesday, April 4, 2023: Join the RSBN broadcast team LIVE from New York City as President Donald J. Trump is expected to surrender himself to New York prosecutors after being indicted by a grand jury last week. Protests against and rallies in support of Trump are expected and RSBN will bring you wall-to-wall coverage of the entire day's events.

A Maricopa County judge may soon allow Kari Lake to attempt to prove one of the most far-fetched claims she made in her lawsuit challenging her November loss against Gov. Katie Hobbs: That bad actors forged signatures on tens of thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes, and the county failed to follow state law when approving them.Lake’s claim, which the Arizona Supreme Court remanded to the trial court last week, is the losing GOP gubernatorial candidate’s last chance to prove her election should be overturned. She has spent the last several months on a money-making media tour based on the false...

The Drudge Report, Matt Drudge’s right-leaning news aggregator ran a headline on Friday declaring former President Donald Trump threatened Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg in a Thursday Truth Social post, which Trump deleted on Friday afternoon.

The federal judge presiding over E. Jean Carroll's civil rape and defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump ruled Thursday he'll use an anonymous jury in the case, noting Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about the justice system. "It bears mention that Mr. Trump repeatedly has attacked courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of New York said in his decision. He also said he'll refuse to allow jurors' names to become public, adding, "If jurors’ identities were disclosed, there would be a strong likelihood of unwanted...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not making any presidential campaign announcements before the end of his state's legislative session, but he is sure talking like he will be throwing his hat in the 2024 GOP presidential primary race. And, he told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Thursday night, you can forget about him working with former President Donald Trump. "I think I'm probably more of an executive guy," DeSantis told "Eric Bolling The Balance." "I think that you want to be able to do things. That's part of the reason I got into this job is because we have action....

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...

Mike Pompeo is openly casting doubt on the conservative bonafides of his one-time boss, former President Donald Trump, ahead of a potential face-off in 2024. During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Pompeo talked about how a conservative president is needed to tackle the nation’s budget deficit and debt after years of neglect, including during the Trump administration. Anchor Shannon Bream then asked Pompeo if he was saying Trump was not a “true conservative leader,” using her guest’s words to describe the kind of president he argued is necessary to attain fiscal responsibility. Fox's Shannon Bream: "Are you saying that...

Through both his private-sector career and his time in politics, Donald Trump has earned a reputation for thinking big (or “big league”). While not all of The Donald’s visionary ideas have come to pass, the 45th president doesn’t let that deter him from continuing to push the envelope, taking things with an “aim for the moon so you land among the stars” attitude. With the 2024 election amping up and a likely primary challenge from popular Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on the horizon, Trump finds himself faced with the need to draft a platform that will not only distinguish him...

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...

Donald Trump was a great if imperfect president. By the third year of his presidency, the country was flourishing. The economy was roaring, jobs were up, incomes were up, gas prices were down, and America & Americans were doing fairly well. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the election. The swamp struck back via Covid and the George Floyd protests. Neither of those was of Trump’s making, but both were utilized by Democrats to steal the election. The Democrats didn’t create Covid or put Floyd in the morgue, but they used the lockdowns and the riots...

Donald Trump left his supporters on the edge of their seats when he touted a 'major announcement' just weeks after he revealed his run for president again in 2024. Speculation swirled that it could be the announcement of a rally after a pause since the midterms or a move that could upend the Republican primaries. Despite the anticipation, it turned out to be a line of his own digital trading cards, costing $99 each and featuring him in various poses - including Superman and as a cowboy with a hunting rifle. 'They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!' Trump...