Free Republic

President Donald Trump praised his "great keyboard warriors" on Thursday night as pro-Trump meme makers and social media personalities have prepared for the 2020 presidential election. The commander-in-chief said his army of online supporters were "far more brilliant" than anyone working in the advertising industry. Posting on social media, the president said: "Thank you to all of my great Keyboard Warriors. You are better, and far more brilliant, than anyone on Madison Avenue (Ad Agencies). There is nobody like you!" At the time of writing, his late-night tweet has been liked and retweeted more than 150,000 times. Responding to the...

Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt...

This thread summarizes the major-media investigative reporting on the TRUMP-CHINA SCANDAL, a bribery scandal involving Trump's hunt for dirt on Joe Biden in China, his debts to the Chinese government, and his decision to ignore life-saving COVID-19 intel. 1/ We begin with the context: Trump's history of viewing his endeavors as entwined and mutually reinforcing. For instance, despite contest-rigging being a felony, Trump has been accused of picking Miss Universe finalists based on where his businesses are. [SNIP] 23/ We don't have to *wonder* what the connection is between Trump's trade war and Biden—Trump told us in October 2019. In...

Several hospitals in Sweden have reportedly stopped administering chloroquine to coronavirus patients following reports the drug was causing adverse side effects. According to the national paper Expressen, hospitals in the Västra Götaland region are no longer offering the antimalarial medication, with side effects reported to include cramps and the loss of peripheral vision. One of the patients affected was Carl Sydenhag, a 40-year-old Stockholm resident. According to Expressen, Sydenhag was prescribed two tablets of chloroquine to take daily after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on March 23. But instead of making him feel better, the medication produced unpleasant side effects....

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic poses two threats: public health and economic. ... As I write: All schools are closed in all of Italy.All churches are closed (including St. Peter's Basilica).All weddings and funerals are postponed.All restaurants are closed.In fact, all stores except grocery stores and pharmacies are closed.People are urged to work from home unless they work in special designated factories The streets are almost empty. These steps are not an overreaction. The coronavirus is out of control of in Northern Italy. As of 6 p.m. local/1 p.m. EST on March 10, there were 15,113 total cases in Italy, with...

I am living in Italy, where my wife, Callista, is the ambassador to the Holy See.I have watched first-hand as the Italian government has worked hard to contain the coronavirus by imposing strong public health measures to try to get the epidemic under control. These measures will lead to significant economic challenges.As I write: All schools are closed in all of Italy.All churches are closed (including St. Peter's Basilica).All weddings and funerals are postponed.All restaurants are closed.In fact, all stores except grocery stores and pharmacies are closed.People are urged to work from home unless they work in special designated factories...

During the height of tensions with Iran last year, the United States conducted an unprecedented series of war games. Over five months, from May until the end of September, 93 separate military exercises were held, with forces operating continuously in, above and around 29 countries.

In my last column, “Newsweek Hits a New Low,” I wrote about Newsweek’s dishonest description of what I had said on one of my weekly PragerU “Fireside Chats.” A viewer had asked me to respond to a statement Anne Frank made in her epic Holocaust diary. Frank said, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” The Newsweek headline, “Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank,” was simply a lie. In order for readers to appreciate the level of mendacity, I had my entire response transcribed and placed it in the column. A few days later I received...

In my last column, "Newsweek Hits a New Low," I wrote about Newsweek's dishonest description of what I had said on one of my weekly PragerU "Fireside Chats." A viewer had asked me to respond to a statement Anne Frank made in her epic Holocaust diary. Frank said, "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart." The Newsweek headline, "Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank," was simply a lie. In order for readers to appreciate the level of mendacity, I had my entire response transcribed and placed it in the column.A few days later I received a...

Hotter weather thanks to climate change could cause a spike in deaths related to injuries—including suicides, assaults, and drownings—according to a study. One expert described the problem to Newsweek as the looming "hidden public health burden" of global warming. Deaths by suicides, assaults, transport accidents, drownings and falls were forecast to be on the up if temperatures rose on average by 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the authors of the paper published in the journal Nature Medicine found. The researchers analyzed data on deaths and temperatures between 1980 to 2017 in mainland United States, excluding Alaska and...

U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) claimed Thursday that President Donald Trump could be to blame for the fatal crash of a Ukraine passenger jet in Iran on Wednesday, due to "collateral damage" caused by his "provocative" killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Speier made the remarks during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on the Thursday edition of his show The Situation Room. The congresswoman confirmed that she had heard classified details concerning the claim by U.S. officials that the plane was accidentally brought down by an Iranian anti-aircraft missile strike. She insisted Trump would be responsible for the crash...

Since his arrest last July -- he was accused of helping to plan the post-election uprisings -- Kian's family and friends have made countless appeals for clemency to the Iranian government, written letters to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pleading his innocence, and signed dozens of petitions. All to no avail. I've come now to realize that the regime probably thinks we're obtuse. Indeed, they know better than anyone that Kian is an innocent man. As the expression goes in Persian, "da'va sar-e een neest," i.e. that's not what this fight is about.

If decent people working in mainstream American media want to know why many Americans do not trust them and are willing to use the term "fake news" to describe the mainstream media, I offer one of the most glaring examples of a lie in my lifetime. Last week, Newsweek headlined the following: "Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank: 'I Don't Get My Wisdom From Teenagers.'" Now, imagine how that must have struck any reader not familiar with the "conservative radio host" or with what he actually said. "Ridicule Anne Frank" -- what kind of terrible human being would do that?...

Scientists have developed a method that allows them to identify so-called climate change "fingerprints" in daily weather observations - and it found consistent evidence of global warming every day since late March 2012. Using climate models and statistical learning techniques, a team of researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland were able to identify climate change's "fingerprint" in global daily mean temperatures, which had been calculated from measurements collected in locations across the world. The researchers highlighted that while local daily mean temperatures might fluctuate significantly year-on-year, global daily mean measurements show a consistent trend towards global warming. They say their...

Donald Trump is considered to be the most-admired man by more Americans this year than in his first two years in office, tying with Barack Obama as the most admired men in the country, with 18 percent of respondents of a new poll naming either the current or former president as top on their list. The new Gallup poll released Monday shows that admiration for Trump has increased in 2019, despite the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's report and the president's impeachment in the House of Representatives. In 2017, the president was the second-most admired man, chosen by 14...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accused U.S. forces of stealing the country's oil and working with terrorists to maintain their positions there, as he tries to restore his authoritarian rule over the war-torn nation. Assad—who is backed by Russia and Iran—told state news agency SANA that Syrians must unite to make America's position in the country untenable. It has been a turbulent end to 2019 for U.S. forces in Syria. There were some 2,000 soldiers stationed in the country until October, when President Donald Trump abruptly ordered American troops out of position in the northeast of the country, where they...

It might not be worth the effort to deconstruct articles appearing in a magazine that sold for $1, but still–when I saw this Newsweek cover on InstaPundit, I was curious. I was curious because I am a frequent reader of Fars News, which is conventionally described as the “semi-official” voice of Iran’s mullahs. One of Fars’s most insistent themes is that the United States and Israel are allied with ISIS, and that Iran stands alone in fighting the terrorist group. This article is one of hundreds of instances of this fantasy, peddled shamelessly by Fars News on behalf of Iran’s...

Historians may look back and mark this week as a remarkable turning point in the Trump presidency. While the liberal media was mesmerized by the dull Judiciary Committee meetings (so boring that at least one Democrat was caught watching a golf match while seated in the committee), big things were happening. However, they are the kind of big things which the adversarial media has a hard time covering intelligently. In fact, several of the big events of this past week will further discredit the news media and force it even more toward the defensive. (Already, more than half of Americans...

CNN host Victor Blackwell abruptly ended a Saturday panel about Republicans' impeachment strategy plans after a guest insisted on "debunked conspiracies" about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. The discussion aimed at identifying the Republican Party's strategies for countering the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump derailed when former GOP South Carolina Lieutenant Governor André Bauer continued to berate the panel with accusations against Joe and Hunter Biden. Blackwell asked Bauer and CNN political commentator Tara Setmayer to respond to Trump acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and several senators' admitting a Ukraine quid pro quo took place. But the...

Journalist Tareq Haddad said on Saturday that he had resigned from his position at Newsweek because the outlet "suppressed" details -- potentially "inconvenient" to the U.S. government -- surrounding a chemical weapons watchdog's report on the 2018 attack in Syria. "Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason," Haddad tweeted, referring to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Haddad's tweet came as the OPCW defended itself amid concerns about its reporting on the April 7, 2018, chemical weapons attack in Syria --...