Free Republic

Top Republicans joined with President Obama and other Democrats Tuesday in sharply condemning Donald Trump’s reaction to the nightclub massacre in Orlando, decrying his anti-Muslim rhetoric and his questioning of Obama’s allegiances as divisive and out of step with America’s values. Trump — who just a week ago signaled an intent to snap his campaign into a more measured tone for the general election — showed no sign of backing down from his suggestions that Obama was somehow connected to or sympathetic with terrorists, telling the Associated Press that the president “continues to prioritize our enemy” over Americans. In separate...

Looking ahead to what the dynamic between them will be now, aides to the president and new speaker point to their collaboration on getting trade fast-track through Congress last summer as a model. People in both offices note that the two leaders helped produce a bill with bipartisan support and tea-party opposition that the president eagerly signed. They’re a lot less eager to talk about what happened behind-the-scenes to get there: significant collaboration between the president's staff in the West Wing and Ryan's staff on the Ways and Means Committee, along with several direct phone calls the White House still...

Eager to start campaigning for re-election next year, President Barack Obama isn’t waiting for the Republican Party to nominate a rival. He's running against Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Obama professes to like Ryan, the 41-year-old chairman of the House Budget Committee. But in increasingly personal and pointed terms, Obama is attacking Ryan as the face of a Republican Party that he says would use the government's debt crisis to turn America in a radical new direction. He's doing it for two key reasons. Obama wants to shift the public focus away from own contribution to the nation's skyrocketing debt —...