Free Republic

In his new book, Donald Trump threatens billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with prison. Save America, set to be published next week, includes a photograph of Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House. Underneath the photo, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me” and “bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.” Trump went on to pin some of his election conspiracies on Zuckerberg, and gave him a serious warning. “He told me...

Jealousy is a heck of a drug. It can, for example, make a reporter say -- with a straight face -- one of the richest men in the world is 'simply not very good at anything.' Coming from a publication like The New Republic, that's both laughable and ironic: Behind all of Elon Musk’s bloviating and attention-seeking is a small man who is simply not very good at anything. https://t.co/KNEvksGxLV — The New Republic (@newrepublic) August 24, 2024 Why do they say Musk isn't good at anything? Well: Not so long ago, Musk was seen by many as a good...

We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face. Today, we at The New Republic think we can...

The New Republic has received massive backlash for using a cover image of Donald Trump as Hitler for a piece that argues America will be plunged into fascism if he wins the election.We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, , he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would...

The House speaker’s comments wrecked one of the far right’s most ridiculous, reprehensible tropes.It was a remarkable moment: After introducing a package of bills that includes military aid to Ukraine, Mike Johnson flatly told reporters on Wednesday that enabling Ukraine to defend itself is in the best interests of America and the world. This surprised a lot of people who had wrongly assumed the House speaker was effectively functioning as a stooge for Vladimir Putin—and Donald Trump—and would thus slow-walk Ukraine aid to death before ever allowing a vote on it.Johnson’s new stance has attracted a good deal of positive...

Fox News is amplifying a racist conspiracy on the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse. Because of course it is. At about 1:40 a.m. EST on Tuesday, a 1,000-foot cargo ship careened past large concrete obstacles ahead of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, colliding with one of its structural pillars and toppling it into the Patapsco River. Mere hours later, conservatives were already hurling their racist conspiracy theories against the wall to see what sticks. In an early morning broadcast, Fox Business attempted to tie the horrific situation—which was deemed a developing mass casualty event by the Baltimore City Fire Department—to...

NBC raised eyebrows Friday when it announced that former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel will join the network as an on-air contributor. McDaniel, who stepped down from the RNC at the start of this month, will provide conservative political analysis on NBC and its affiliate MSNBC. She makes her on-air debut on Sunday. NBC News political coverage chief Carrie Budoff Brown explained that McDaniel was chosen because she can provide “an insider’s perspective on national politics and the future of the Republican Party.” That insider knowledge is apparently enough for NBC to overlook the rest of McDaniel’s history. Although...

Ron DeSantis’s struggles on the campaign trail have eroded his influence back home in Florida, and even once-close allies are revolting against his control. DeSantis was crowned early on as the natural successor to Donald Trump: A demagogic culture warrior, but younger and more disciplined—he was a figure who could appeal, in theory, both to MAGA diehards and Trump skeptics. When he launched his campaign, he was fresh off a series of victories at home. The Republican-controlled Florida state legislature had helped him pass multiple draconian measures limiting LGBTQ rights, educational freedom, and abortion access. While candidates backed by Trump...

The Big Lie, as it quickly became known, was that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election. He’s still out there peddling this nonsense, and a lot of people still believe it, though thankfully, they constitute a clear minority of voters. But now there’s a new lie being peddled. Call it Big Lie Two. Trump has been hawking this one for a while too, but it has been, to my mind, oddly little remarked-upon. That needs to change: Big Lie Two is more (Excerpt) ...

The case against Ron DeSantis from a Democrat’s perspective is straightforward and uncomplicated. For one thing, he’s a Republican. And not just any Republican: DeSantis has been one of the most odious and destructive governors in America since January 2019. He has been a vocal opponent not just of efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic but of the vaccine that did more to control it than anything else; his anti-vaccine advocacy has also spurred on anti-vaccine activists’ assault on safe, protective measures to control diseases like mumps and polio. He has relentlessly attacked his state’s LGBTQ population, signing draconian bills...

The Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced on Sunday that they will guarantee all deposits that were still held at the ill-fated Silicon Valley Bank when it collapsed last Friday. This is probably a good thing. SVB was the sixteenth-largest bank in the United States, with tens of billions in holdings still trapped behind its crumbling walls. Vaporizing that much money might have had dire implications for other parts of the American financial system—and for thousands of innocent customers who believed their money to be safe within SVB’s coffers. The actions these government entities have...

As conservatives increasingly turn to secular culture war outrages to fire up their base, it would seem that God is no longer their co-pilot.If a single image could encapsulate the Trump era, perhaps it is the infamous photo of the former president standing alone on a sidewalk in front of a boarded-up church with a stern expression and a Bible in his hand. The shot was captured in June 2020, shortly after police had used tear gas to clear Black Lives Matter protestors from Lafayette Park outside the White House, where they had gathered to voice their anger about the...

Wyoming is a very conservative state. Forty-six percent of its adults self-identify as conservative, as opposed to moderate or liberal; only Mississippi claims a higher percentage. But in sending incumbent Liz Cheney to her premature retirement in Tuesday’s primary, Wyoming struck a blow against conservatism. Cheney’s defeat is just the latest demonstration that Trumpism now eclipses conservatism as the reigning faith of the Republican party. Compare the 46 percent of Wyoming’s adults who self-identify as conservative to the 57 percent of its adults who are Republican or lean Republican, according to Pew. That makes Wyoming more Republican than conservative; indeed,...

Several journalists erroneously tweeted that Stephen K. Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress in federal court in Washington, DC, on Thursday afternoon — before closing arguments in the trial. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tweeted: “BANNON GUILTY.” His colleague Chris Hayes tweeted “Bannon found guilty,” citing a tweet by CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who was covering a different case. Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace warned others that they were getting the facts wrong: So, too, did Bannon biographer Joshua Green: O’Donnell apologized for spreading the misinformation about the verdict, as did Hayes, taking down their mistaken tweets: Others also apologized:...

For a political press hopelessly addicted to speculation about the next big election, there are precious few data points to obsess over during the first year of a president’s term. New York City elects a mayor during this off-off-year, but it’s an election that’s typically too chaotic and too particular to really tell us much of anything about national trends. New Jersey elects a governor, but the Garden State has become so reliably blue that it hardly registers as a point of interest: Its days of electing gruff Republicans seem to be long gone. And so it must be periwinkle-hued...

The totalitarian-minded education establishment and its extreme left-wing allies are starting to freak out as conservatives abandon futile efforts to “reform” government schools in favor of a mass-exodus strategy. Even powerful union bosses are starting to panic. The trend has been building quietly for years. But it has accelerated rapidly in recent months as a trickle of families fleeing the system became a tidal wave amid face-mask edicts, vaccine mandates, Critical Race Theory, Marxist indoctrination, extreme “sex education,” and other controversies. The first major shoe to drop in response came on September 30, when the fringe left-wing magazine New Republic...

...You’re probably thinking at this juncture that the point of this column is to make fun of red states. No. The point of this column is to denounce them. Their willful anti-science ignorance is going to prolong this pandemic by months (at least) and lead to thousands of needless deaths...Almost worse, though, is how this anti-science fanaticism is perverting the meaning of the concept of freedom. This is dangerous for democracy in ways most people aren’t even thinking about right now.... Incredibly, the right has now established the “principle” that people can engage in potentially harmful action without any expectation...

Are the Democrats ready for grotesque attacks about the senator’s ex-boyfriend Willie Brown?

When the CNN moderators gave Sanders the Trump treatment, the outraged ululations of the Left could be heard from sea to shining sea. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi tweeted, “This is an unusually vile performance by CNN.” The Nation’s Elie Mystal raged, “Jesus Christ I hate these biased questions from the moderators. ‘How would you keep your plan from bankrupting the country?’ JUST ASK THE KOCH BROTHERS TO MODERATE NEXT TIME!” HuffPost’s Zach Carter griped about CNN’s post-debate panel discussion, “CNN’s crew is just straight bashing Sanders post-debate.” The New Republic’s Libby Watson whined, “CNN is truly a terrible influence on...

Not only has the “Phase One” trade deal now been signed by the United States and China, but official texts have now been released. And my initial read indicates that the Trump administration just might have come up with an effective enforcement regime – though success here will depend on U.S. governments (including this one) displaying nerves of steel. At the same time, the enforcement terms raise the question of why the President felt the need to reach this point via a treaty, rather than simply punish China unilaterally for economic transgressions – as his tariffs on hundreds of...