Free Republic

Trump considered replacing Pete Hegseth with Ron Desnatos as Defense Secretary: President-elect Donald Trump is considering replacing Pete Hegseth, his controversial pick to lead the Pentagon, with one-time 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, people familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal Tuesday. The move comes as Hegseth, a 44-year-old Army veteran and former Fox News personality, faces increasing scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement. Trump is reportedly weighing Ron DeSantis as secretary of defense. REUTERS Trump is reportedly weighing Ron DeSantis as secretary of defense. REUTERS Pete Hegseth has become embattled with controversy and...

onald Trump II is a brave new world, and look no further than his strange choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Only months ago Mr. Trump was calling the Kennedy family scion a “liberal lunatic,” yet now he wants to hand RFK Jr. the power to “make America healthy again.” Good luck making sense of this nomination.

Does anybody in politics understand tax policy these days? The Biden-Harris Democrats want to raise tax rates to Thomas Piketty French socialist levels. Republicans want to cut taxes, but they want to do so for specific groups to buy their votes. They’ve all lost the growth plot. Mr. Trump’s tax fumbling is especially disappointing because his 2017 cut in tax rates was the policy foundation for the strong pre-pandemic U.S. economy. But so far in this campaign he’s proposing hugely expensive tax cuts for different voting groups that won’t do much for growth. We’ve written about his promise not to...

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dug in this weekend for what is expected to be a bitter and personal race between the two for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Mr. Trump revved up supporters Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington—an event Mr. DeSantis skipped—while the governor appeared before Republican groups in Texas and gave a speech Sunday afternoon at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. The two will then descend on Iowa, which holds the first GOP nominating contest. Mr. Trump has already launched his campaign; Mr. DeSantis, the front-runner among the...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leads former President Trump by 14 points in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary match-up, according to a new poll. The Wall Street Journal survey released on Wednesday found that DeSantis leads Trump among likely Republican voters, 52 percent to 38 percent. DeSantis also has an advantage in his approval rating, with 84 percent of Republicans surveyed having a favorable view of him. By comparison, 71 percent said they have a favorable view of Trump. DeSantis’s name recognition also appears strong, as only about 10 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they did not know...

We’re still waiting for the final results of the 2022 election. But it’s clear that Democrats decisively beat both expectations and the elections’s “fundamentals”—the incumbent party’s usual midterm losses, President Biden’s low approval rating, high inflation, voter negativity on the economy and the state of the country. Republicans look set to take back the House but only by a modest margin. And the Senate will remain in Democratic hands, albeit narrowly. The Democrats’ relatively good night is attributable, above all, to their secret weapon: Donald Trump. Mr. Trump’s ability to push Republican voters into picking bad, frequently incompetent candidates with...