Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump is on the hook for damages in E. Jean Carroll’s upcoming trial accusing him of defaming her by claiming she made up her sexual abuse allegations against him, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Trump’s 2019 claim that the 79-year-old “Ask E. Jean” advice columnist had concocted the abuse charges “to get publicity” was a lie made with “actual malice,” Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote. Kaplan in his ruling cited a Manhattan federal jury’s May verdict finding Trump, 77, liable for sexual abuse and defamation — and ordering him to pay $5 million in damages —...

A New York state judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump's bid to delay a scheduled Oct. 2 trial in state Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud lawsuit accusing him, family members and his business of overvaluing assets by billions of dollars. Trump and the other defendants had said the trial should be "briefly" delayed until three weeks after Justice Arthur Engoron ruled on both sides' requests for summary judgments, which seek victory on various legal issues without the need for a trial. In a Tuesday night court filing, Trump accused James of "callous disregard" of a June 27 appeals court...

Ann Coulter escalated her war of words with Donald Trump, branding the former president a “gigantic p—y” after he referred to the conservative commentator as a “has-been” and a “stone cold loser.” “Trump begged me to come to Bedminster this week, I said only if I could record a substack with him, but the GIGANTIC P—Y is too afraid of me, so instead he did this,” Coulter wrote in a post on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter. *** The firebrand conservative media personality records a video interview show called “Unsafe” that she publishes on subscription-based Substack,...

Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH) said Tuesday on “CNN Primetime” that former President Donald Trump can not win the presidential election in November 2024, and he will “crush the Republican ticket going down.” When asked to react to the Georgia indictment, Sununu said, “I’m not a lawyer. I will say, this is incredibly similar to the federal indictment that Jack Smith is doing out of DOJ. Other than, as you brought up, now 18 people involved. That’s a much bigger swath of individuals. Something that I think republicans need to take note of, this is a grand jury in a very...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sat down with "Special Report" on Monday for a wide-ranging interview, offering insight into whether former President Donald Trump can win in a general election. DeSantis said he doesn’t believe Trump can win in 2024 because there are "too many voters who just aren't going to vote for him going forward." "I saw it in Florida in my re-election. You know, I won the first time by less than a percent, second time by ‘20. Why did people vote against me in ‘18 but then voted for me in ‘22? The number one reason they gave...

The filings also show that Pence has earned big sums on the speaking circuit, collecting a total of $3.4 million for 32 speeches between January 2022 and the end of April this year. Pence announced his candidacy for the White House in early June. The most lucrative engagement: A $550,000 honorarium for a February 2022 appearance at a world summit underwritten by the Universal Peace Federation in Seoul, South Korea. The group was established by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon – the Korean evangelist and businessman who founded the Unification Church – and his wife, Hak Ja Han. According...

Presidential candidate Mike Pence made a pilgrimage to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and affirm Pence’s position that the unilateral power of the Ukraine government needs to be supported.Mike Pence then presents himself as the arbiter of what it means to be a republican with a Twitter message saying, “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win this war in Ukraine, and it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty. There is no room in our party for apologists for Putin. There...

Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)More Two years after autocratically condemning those who refused to wear facial masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologised for his tone-deaf comments. “Screw your freedom,” Schwarzenegger declared during an interview with retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and CNN senior global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga, labelling those who adamantly challenged the government’s draconian measures as “schmucks.” The Hollywood star went on, “There are still people that live in denial. There are still people that don’t believe in...

Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered his harshest rebuke yet of former President Donald Trump over the weekend for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Pence made the comments while speaking at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner, a white-tie event thrown by Washington, D.C. journalists and attended by high-profile Beltway figures. The exclusive soiree is known for politicians poking fun at each other and members of the D.C. press corps taking part in skits. This year featured speeches from Pence, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. The former vice president used the platform...

Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) said Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World” that he was seriously considering running for president in 2024. On the 2024 presidential election, anchor Neil Cavuto said, “There’s talk that you will be among those candidates. Is that true?” Hogan said, “I’m certainly giving it serious consideration. We’ve been really successful 30 miles outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but dysfunction. I got them to cut taxing eight years in a row, and I had the biggest economic turnaround in America. But we’re taking a close look at it.”

Former national security adviser John Bolton says he will run for the Republican presidential nomination, according to "Good Morning Britain." "Donald Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton has told us that he will run for US President in a bid to stop his former boss from getting the nomination," the British television show tweeted Friday morning. In a report introducing a Friday interview with Bolton, the show said: "John Bolton has exclusively told 'Good Morning Britain' he wants to become the next president of the United States."

Maryland's outgoing Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is laying the groundwork to challenge former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Trump was first to officially jump into the 2024 race - doing so last Tuesday from Mar-a-Lago, a week after his party suffered a disappointing midterm result. But Hogan - from the moderate, anti-MAGA wing of the party - visited the key early caucus and swing state of Nevada last weekend, to address the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference. The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday that he's also set up a series of meetings with donors and grassroots activists after Thanksgiving....

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan said he is a "never-again Trumper" less than a week after former President Donald Trump announced a third White House run. In his assessment of Republicans' weak performance in the midterm elections, he pointed to what he called the "Trump factor" and highlighted the difference in the performance of Trump-backed candidates versus non-Trump Republicans. "It's pretty clear with Trump we lose. So I don't mean this personally. It's just evidence. We lost the House in '18. We lost the presidency in '20, we lost the Senate in '20, and now, in 2022, we should have...

Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday that Americans want leadership that reflects the “civility and respect” that they show each other every day. Pence, widely thought to be eying a 2024 White House bid, said on “Fox & Friends” that people have come up to him to say that they want to see the policies of the Trump administration but also have a “genuine desire for leadership that could unite the country around our highest ideals.” “I’m out of politics now. And once you — once you get out of politics, and we moved back to Indiana is,...

Amore might be the loneliest Republican in Massachusetts. He's a moderate running in a party dominated by pro-Trump conservatives. And he's the only statewide Republican candidate who called for Trump's impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Most of the Republicans running for statewide office in Massachusetts embrace Trump and his conservative positions. So do many Republican voters, who reject the moderate Republicanism of Gov. Charlie Baker and derisively call him and Amore RINOs, or Republicans In Name Only. "I got a hate-mail yesterday about how I’m 'Rino-scum' because Charlie Baker made me his only endorsement," Amore said, while campaigning on...

Four Senate Republicans failed to show up to vote on an amendment that would have defunded President Biden’s remaining vaccine mandates, thus ensuring its failure. The Senate voted on Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) amendment to the continuing resolution (CR), which would defund Biden’s remaining vaccine mandates. The measure failed 46-47, with Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Richard Burr (R-NC) failing to show up, depriving Senate Republicans a potential majority to pass the amendment to the CR. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) set the vote threshold to a majority, and it remains possible that...

Former President Donald Trump, while endorsing a handful of Michigan politicians on Monday, said the state “needs a new legislature.” Trump released statements Monday endorsing three Republicans for office in 2022, Mike Detmer and John Gibbs -- who are both challenging other Republicans -- as well as Rachelle Smit, a small-town clerk in Allegan County. In his endorsement of Smit, who is the current township clerk for Martin, in southwest Michigan, Trump said “Michigan needs a new legislature. The cowards there now are too spineless to investigate Election Fraud." Smit plans to run for the Michigan House of Representatives in...

On Wednesday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said that former President Donald Trump was “inciting violent extremism” by meeting with the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a police officer during the Capitol riot on January 6. Wallace, a former spokesman for George W. Bush, made her comments on her show “Deadline.” Wallace said Trump was “sympathizing, once again, with the ‘insurrectionists’ about the death of Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt and potentially threatening Capitol police officers.”

In the excerpt, Boehner didn't hold back when assessing his new colleagues, saying that when he tried to offer the freshmen lawmakers guidance about being in Congress, his advice "went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn't have brains that got in the way." Boehner also assigned some blame to conservative media outlets, especially Fox News, in incentivizing flashiness and outrage over substance, which he said made it harder for him to govern his caucus effectively. By 2013, Boehner wrote, "the chaos caucus in the House had built up their own power base thanks...

Following GOP frontrunner Donald Trump's call for a temporary pause on Muslim migration, Congressional GOP leaders refused to say whether the omnibus bill would fund President Obama's resettlement of Muslim refugees, and whether the omnibus would allow Obama to continue distributing the same large number of visas and green cards to Muslim migrants. The leadership offices of Roy Blunt, Luke Messer, Kevin McCarthy, and Steve Scalise all claimed that they were not familiar with the appropriations process and the bill's contents. The leadership offices of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John Barrasso, John Thune, and John Cornyn did...