Free Republic

Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader, according to American officials. Details of the plan to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emerged on Sunday night after Mr Trump warned Iran not to target American interests and car bombs rocked Tehran, the Iranian capital. The White House has made clear it is intent on limiting Israel’s actions to degrading Iran’s nuclear weapons programme and does not want a wider regional war. World leaders were due to meet in Calgary, Canada, on Monday at a G7 summit where conflict in the Middle East is expected to dominate the agenda....

Cyril Ramaphosa must have prepped for an awkward meeting. After all, just a week earlier the Trump administration chartered a Boeing 767 to fly 59 Afrikaner farmers out of his country so they could claim refugee status amid allegations that the white population faced a genocide. But he may not have reckoned with Donald Trump’s sense of theatre. “Turn the lights down and just put this on,” he directed his aides in the Oval Office. “It’s right behind you.” Ministers, reporters, two of the greatest golfers of all time, and the world’s richest man craned their necks to watch as...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will become the first world leader to visit the White House on Tuesday when he holds meetings with President Donald Trump. A senior administration official confirmed the trip, but stressed that it was a 'working meeting' without the ceremony of an 'official visit.' DailyMail.com understands that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also due to visit in February, along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is also expected soon. Netanyahu's place at the top of the list lays down a marker for Trump's priorities in office, as he eyes the next step in a...

One of Google's billionaire founders is the latest tech giant to cozy up to Donald Trump, dining with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago home on Thursday night, according to multiple sources. It is a remarkable turnaround for Sergey Brin, who described Trump's 2016 win as 'deeply offensive.' But it shows how the online aristocracy is having to set aside their worries to grapple with a new reality. Details of his visit emerged hours after Facebook's parent company Meta and Amazon revealed they were giving $1million to Trump's inauguration fund. All of them are playing catch-up as Elon Musk, the richest...

For a while, Donald Trump's transition kept up a record-setting pace with top Cabinet picks being named against a backdrop of calm consensus. But the knives are now out, with advisers leaking against each other to the press amid the scramble to parachute allies into plum jobs. 'Winning helped make everything better for a bit but this is still politics and there are always scores to settle and axes to grind,' said a source familiar with the workings of Trump's inner circle. In the most widely publicized example, Axios was tipped that Tesla founder Elon Musk and Trump legal adviser...

Donald Trump used his social media platform to falsely accuse Liz Cheney of destroying evidence gathered by the congressional January 6 investigation, saying she was guilty of 'extreme sabotage.' It is not the first time he has made the claim and suggested it is all part of denying him the testimony, video footage and documents he needs to defend himself in criminal trials. Cheney, one of his biggest critics inside the Republican Party, quickly hit back, posting a link to online materials collected by the investigation. The former president is due to go on trial in March in Washington, D.C.,...

Hunter Biden has told friends that he might have to flee the country if Donald Trump is reelected, after already enduring months of deeply personal political attacks and mounting legal woes. Republicans have put him front and center of their efforts to say his father acted corruptly when he was vice president. And he could face almost 20 years in prison if convicted of three felony and six misdemeanor charges brought last week. The result is an 81-year-old father desperately worried about the welfare of a son who has battled drink and drugs, and a son who fears more attacks...

President Donald Trump will today say he plans to expand his travel ban to include people from the Palestinian territory of Gaza in the wake of the Hamas terror attack on Israel. In a speech in Clive, Iowa, he will also say Americans have been disgusted by anti-Israel protests on college campuses and will promise to deport resident aliens with 'jihadist sympathies.' 'I banned refugees from Syria, I banned refugees from Somalia, and from all the most dangerous places in the world—and in my second term, we are going to expand each and every ban to keep America safe,' he...

If you've read RedState for any length of time, you know one of the things we are most known for is our hard-hitting commentary on press bias. Whether you come for the facts or the snark, we do our best to deliver insight into how the far-left twists narratives to push their political desires. That's what makes this next story so surprising. According to Politico, Donald Trump's campaign team wined and dined with top left-wing reporters on Tuesday night in preparation for the GOP primary debate (the former president will not be attending). SPOTTED IN MILWAUKEE — Team Trump wining...

Last week brought yet another campaign reset for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a DailyMail.com poll found his support in the crucial early state of Iowa had crashed by nine percent. But stop to ask the actual men and women who will take part in the first contest to choose the Republican nominee next year and they will tell you to ignore the headlines and that there is a long, long way to go. 'I think that Trump is in the lead now, but Trump's gonna say something dumb and make a mistake, and people are gonna turn to Ron,'...

Hunter Biden and his Arkansas baby mama have settled their bitter, years-long paternity battle over the daughter the First Son refuses to meet. Hunter and former flame Lunden Roberts submitted an agreed order to Independence County Circuit Court on Monday afternoon for Circuit Judge Holly Meyer to approve, DailyMail.com has learned. The document will become public within the next 24 hours but with heavy redactions to keep the full financial arrangements of four-year-old Navy Joan Roberts’ upbringing a secret. A New York Post report published last week suggested that Roberts, 32, had signed a deal agreeing to slash the $20,000...

A poll for DailyMail.com lays bare the challenge facing President Joe Biden as he runs for reelection: Almost half of Democrats believe he is too old for the job, and 52 of all voters believe they are worse off since he became president. Republicans have used both as attack lines in their campaigns to unseat Biden. The president has always been gaffe-prone, but now any botched comment is seized on as evidence that the 80-year-old is no longer fit for office. And after presiding over gas prices spikes and a year of rampant inflation, Republicans believe they can beat him...

* Trump, 76, was indicted on fraud charges last night by a Manhattan grand jury * He will travel to New York to be arraigned on Tuesday afternoon * Attorney Joe Tacopina says he won't be handcuffs - but may be perp-walked ************************************************************* After recovering from the 'initial shock' of a grand jury indictment against him, President Trump is now raging about the judge who is expected to preside over the case. Trump, 76, will be arraigned in Manhattan at 2.15pm on Tuesday on an array of business fraud charges relating to 2016 hush money payments to porn star Stormy...

Donald Trump has claimed Manhattan's DA has dropped a criminal probe into a hush money payment to a porn star, a week after claiming he'd be arrested within days. The former president told a small group of reporters aboard his private jet Saturday night that prosecutors would have had no choice but to give up in the face of recent evidence. With an open necked shirt and bottle of Diet Coke by his side, Trump cut a relaxed figure as he traveled back from the first rally of his campaign in Waco, Texas - and grew angry at any suggestion...

Hungary's far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban snubbed Wednesday's meeting in Warsaw with President Joe Biden and the other Bucharest Nine leaders after insisting Donald Trump was the only person who could broker peace with Vladimir Putin. Orban has been an outlier on the war in Ukraine, chiding the European Union for prolonging the conflict and saying in October that only former U.S. President Donald Trump could negotiate a deal between the Ukrainians and Russians to end the conflict. 'This is going to sound brutal, but hope for peace goes by the name of Donald Trump,' Orban said at the time,...

U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to appear before a grand jury, it emerged on Monday, in the latest sign that the prosecutor appointed to investigate former President Donald Trump's is speeding ahead with his probe. Smith remains in Europe where he is recovering from a bicycle accident. However, he has made a string of high-profile moves since being put in charge of federal criminal investigations into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He has issued subpoenas to officials in five states, and brought a string of Trump's closest...

The United States now believes that the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of President Vladimir Putin's Black Sea fleet, was hit by two Ukrainian missiles before sinking, according to a senior U.S. official. The official told reporters on Friday that the vessel had been hit by Neptune anti-ship missiles. Russia claimed that she sank when being towed in stormy seas after a fire triggered explosions in an ammunition store. But the official's account backs Ukraine's Operational Command South which claimed that the Moskva began to sink after being hit by Neptune missiles. Mykhailo Samus, director of a Lviv-based military...

- The Pentagon said Thursday efforts to set up calls with top Russian military officials had been ignored. - It comes as Russian jets operate close to NATO borders with Ukraine increasing chances of a miscalculation. -'We've made multiple attempts here but they have not answered up,' said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. - It means the world's two largest nuclear powers are in the dark about each other's moves. - Kirby also said Ukrainian armed forces had pushed Russian ground forces further back from Kyiv. Multiple attempts by Washington's top military leaders to speak with their Russian counterparts have...

Russian troops in Ukraine lack proper cold weather clothing and some have been taken out of the fight by frostbite, a senior U.S. defense official revealed on Tuesday. The official cited it as another example of how Moscow had failed to adequately prepare for the invasion of Ukraine, along with continuing fuel, ammunition and food shortages. Nearly a month into the war, Russian troops have failed to seize a single major city and their advance has been halted on nearly all fronts by staunch Ukrainian defense. Now Ukrainian forces are preparing to retake captured territory as Russian forces battle declining...

President Joe Biden will use his State of the Union address on Tuesday to say that President Vladimir Putin underestimated NATO and the way the world would rally against his invasion of Ukraine. 'Putin's war was premeditated and unprovoked. He rejected efforts at diplomacy,' he will say, according to excerpts released by the White House.