Free Republic

Eleven minutes into the June 27 presidential debate, CNN anchor Dana Bash slipped a note to her colleague Jake Tapper after President Biden gave a rambling, incoherent answer. “He just lost the election,” she wrote. The event at the network’s Atlanta studios — recounted in Tapper’s and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” — turned out to be the most consequential presidential debate in history. Negative reaction to Biden’s alarmingly disastrous performance led him to abandon his campaign three weeks later and Vice President Kamala Harris...

I don't believe Ashley Allison. I don't believe that anyone with the minutest modicum of intelligence or integrity could believe Jasmine Crockett when she denied that in calling Greg Abbott "Governor Hot Wheels," she was referring to the paraplegic Republican Governor of Texas being confined to a wheelchair for decades. And yet, that's what Allison, a CNN contributor and former Obama and Biden aide, said on Tuesday's CNN NewsNight. If CNN had any integrity of its own, they'd never have back on its air someone who so blatantly lied, and lied in respect of a despicable mocking of a disabled...

McDonald’s released a statement Sunday admitting it has no record of Kamala Harris ever working there, as she has repeatedly claimed. This deepening scandal, which social media has dubbed Stolen McValor, finally got the spotlight it deserved Sunday when former President Trump spent some time making French fries and working the drive-thru at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. It was a win-win for the man now widely seen as the 2024 frontrunner. He had the opportunity to show off his charming side and ability to connect with everyday people while pointing to what looks more and more like a shameless lie in...

On Wednesday night, as Townhall has been covering, Vice President Kamala Harris had her interview with Fox News' Bret Baier. It ended up being a disaster for her and her campaign, with Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the Republican nominee for vice president, certainly having some thoughts about how Harris performed. Harris bombed so badly that immediately after, Vance quipped over X that Democrats "should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden." To my Democratic friends: maybe you should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden. — JD Vance (@JDVance) October 16, 2024 Vance also spoke to "Fox & Friends," where...

During an interview with WGAL News 8 on Monday, 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) responded to voters who say they think the economy was better during the Trump administration and liked his tax cuts by stating that Trump “left with 10 million people out of work, 9 million jobs closed, and we were in the middle of the global pandemic. I don’t think people want to go back to tens of thousands of Americans dying, businesses shut. Donald Trump brags about that. The reason people weren’t using gas was that they couldn’t leave their house...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Harris-Walz Campaign Senior Adviser and Senior Spokesperson Adrienne Elrod stated that the “economy was good, for Trump, at the beginning, because of President Barack Obama’s economy.” But, at the end of Trump’s term, “when the pandemic happened, President Biden had to come in and clean it up. Otherwise, we were heading toward a recession.” Elrod said, “Trump likes to go out there and talk about how great the economy was, but…that economy was good, for Trump, at the beginning, because of President Barack Obama’s economy. And then, at the end, when the...

Much has already been written about Tuesday night’s debate between the two Vice Presidential hopefuls. Tim Walz has had a long love affair with China. Below I will address his attempt to excuse his lie during the debate about being in China during the Tiananmen Square “protests.” Not only did he try to minimize the lie, but he attempted to pass off the murder of innocents as “democracy protests,” without mentioning that his Chinese friends used tanks to massacre innocent, non-violent protesters so that others would get the message.

Vice President Kamala Harris is facing widespread ridicule over a past statement wherein she claimed her grandmother would travel to rural Indian villages with a “bullhorn” to advocate for abortion access among local women. During a keynote speech at the Madeleine K. Albright Luncheon in 2017, Harris, who was a newly elected Senator from California at the time, began by sharing a story of her personal background and how her grandmother championed “reproductive healthcare” in India. Harris relayed that she comes from “a long line of tough, trailblazing and phenomenal women,” recalling how her grandmother would visit villages armed with...

Another damning indictment against “habitual liar” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz came courtesy of four veterans who served with the vice presidential nominee ahead of a premiere slamming the “coward.” If the Democratic Party thought that concerns about their vice presidential nominee allegedly committing stolen valor could be swept under the rug, radio host Megyn Kelly had an interview to prove how wrong they were. Ahead of the Monday debut of a discussion with Minnesota National Guard veterans, the commentator teased impressions of Walz that raised the question, “What are you gonna do at the national level?” As Kelly posited, “Why...

Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s story about why he first decided to get involved in political campaigns contradicts public records and statements reviewed by the Washington Examiner.Walz, who previously had a career as a social studies teacher, has long repeated a story about how he and two of his students were refused entry to a reelection rally for former President George W. Bush in 2004, saying that the incident was ultimately what inspired him to get involved in politics, according to the Examiner. However, Walz himself was not refused entry, according to a source who spoke anonymously with the...

Vice President Kamala Harris insisted that she did not support a fracking ban, even though in 2019 she strongly backed a nationwide ban on it. “I made it clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I would not ban fracking,” she told CNN in an interview Thursday night. But before she dropped her bid for president in 2019 and joined President Biden’s ticket, Ms. Harris said in a CNN town hall, “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.” When asked whether her...

Just like claims that he served in war, or retired as a command sergeant major, the story Walz tells about reenlisting is not true.When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was introduced as Kamala Harris’ running mate, the campaign presented him as a bonified patriot, a career National Guardsman who retired as a command sergeant major after 24 years of faithful service to his country, including a deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.Walz enlisted two days after his 17th birthday in April 1981. As Walz tells it, when the planes hit the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, the attack compelled...

[Catholic Caucus] The Magisterium of Francis Illuminates Saint PaulIn the light of the Magisterium of Pope Francis, Aldo Maria Valli (AldoMariaValli-it, 8 August) has updated Saint Paul's speech on the Areopagus in Athens, which in its original version is rigid and narrow-minded and does not correspond to the gigantic progress in theology after the Second Vatican Council. Here is the new version:Then Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: 'Athenians, I see that you are very religious in everything. As I passed by and looked at your monuments, I also found an altar with the inscription 'To an...

Vice President Kamala Harris had nothing but “praise” for her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz when questioned about his service in the National Guard Thursday. Harris, 59, was asked by a reporter to respond to criticism that Walz “deserted his own troops, deserted his own colleagues” when he opted to retire from the Minnesota National Guard in May 2005, as his battalion was preparing to deploy to the Iraq warzone. “Listen, I praise anyone who has presented themselves to serve our country,” Harris said. “And I think that we all should.” Walz, 60, served 24 years in the Minnesota...

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), is “right down the middle.” Pelosi said, “Tim Walz is wonderful. And she had many good choices among the six and certainly among the two. I’m a big fan of Gov. Shapiro. Tim Walz I know very well. He served in the House. To characterize him as left is so unreal. … He’s right down the middle. He’s a heartland-of-America Democrat. And he was the chair of our Veterans Affairs Committee, and I don’t want...

House Republicans passed a resolution Thursday criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ record on immigration as attacks on her work have ramped up since she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee—referring to her as the Biden administration’s “border czar”—but their criticisms misinterpret the actual task Harris was given on immigration, which is more narrowly focused on why people immigrate in the first place.

CNN senior fact checker Daniel Dale said on Thursday that the media incorrectly labeled Vice President Kamala Harris the “border czar.” Media outlets rushed to erase their own reporting to downplay Harris’ role in managing the border crisis by saying she is solely responsible for addressing “root causes” in Latin American countries. Dale continued with this recent trend by saying the media wrongfully portrayed Harris as the “border czar.”

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Wednesday that President Biden remains sharp as a tack and “absolutely” could serve another four-year term — stunning journalists at her first briefing since Biden dropped his re-election campaign over concerns about his mental acuity. “Look, he didn’t step down from campaigning or from running because he didn’t believe he can serve in a second term. That is not why,” Jean-Pierre claimed to the incredulity of the press corps. The press secretary said the 81-year-old president’s decision to drop out Sunday and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, was in the...

President Biden is slated to hold a press conference Thursday evening at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. The high-stakes moment comes as Biden faces mounting calls from fellow Democrats to step aside in the presidential race and amid scrutiny from the news media over his past health disclosures. The rare solo press conference from Biden will close out the NATO summit, where the president has hosted world leaders this week. Biden’s standing in the presidential race against former President Trump has largely overshadowed this week’s summit. The event is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. EDT.

Framed on a wall in my office is a copy of my first opinion column, published by The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 11, 1987. Until then, I had been a wire-service reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., and, before that, a sports writer in Boston, but had never written opinion. When given the chance by the Morning News, I jumped on a subject that had piqued my curiosity: A senator for Delaware running for president had brazenly stolen a speech by a Welsh Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom and, when caught, paid the price by humiliatingly dropping...