Free Republic

CNN is upset that President Trump accurately labeled the LA rioters “insurrectionists.” President Trump on Monday referred to the LA rioters as “insurrectionists” and “professional agitators.” The rioters launched explosives at a federal detention facility in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend. .... Snip.... CNN’s Dana Bash was peeved that President Trump called rioters who were launching commercial grade explosives at a federal building and assaulting federal agents “insurrectionists.” CNN panelist Stephen Collinson said Trump’s language is dangerous. According to CNN, Trump calling the rioters insurrectionists is much worse than the illegal aliens assaulting law enforcement and burning cars. WATCH:

t’s the new Hunger Games of world politics — the televised Oval Office take-down by President Donald Trump. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was the latest leader to become a MAGA prop Wednesday, as Trump lectured him on false claims that White South African farmers are the victims of a genocide. Foreign leaders now enter the hallowed lair of the US president — who runs press conferences like they’re WWE cage matches — at their peril Trump’s dressings-down are a metaphor for a US foreign policy that is erratic, politicized and awash in conspiracy theories. As Ukraine and Jordan also...

SNIPTrump and his merchant of chaos Elon Musk are pummeling federal agencies, targeting bureaucrats, clawing back spending approved by Congress, buckling the world order and busting trade pacts. SNIPOnce again, Trump is raising questions at a velocity that leaves other branches of government, his opponents and voters struggling to grasp what’s happening and unable to resist.SNIPMusk, wielding vast, mostly invisible power, working deep beneath the hood of the federal government, is especially problematic. He’s not elected or confirmed by Congress and seems accountable to nobody — perhaps not even Trump.And there are multiple and growing signs that institutions like the...

CNN - Donald Trump believes presidents have almost absolute power. In his second term, there will be few political or legal restraints to check him. The president-elect’s sweeping victory over Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly turned the theoretical notion that he will indulge his autocratic instincts into a genuine possibility. When Trump returns to the White House in January as one of the most powerful presidents in history, he’ll be able to take advantage of his own filleting of guardrails during his first presidency, which he continued through legal maneuverings out of office. It’s not guaranteed that just because Trump...

Kamala Harris is responding to Democratic panic about her White House prospects by turning up the heat on Donald Trump. The vice president warned Monday that the ex-president was “unstable,” “unhinged” and out for “unchecked power” as she sent a jolt of urgency though her campaign with 21 days to go. “Watch his rallies. Listen to his words. He tells us who he is, and he tells us what he would do if he is elected president,” Harris told a large crowd in Pennsylvania after a weekend when Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric reached chilling new levels and hinted at the extreme...

Donald Trump got his 78th birthday present a day early — a handshake from his longtime bitter critic, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, encapsulating the Republican Party’s complete submission to its presumptive presidential nominee.

So his devastating loss Friday in a New York fraud case that threatens the empire on which he built his art of the deal mythology encapsulates more than a legal defeat. It offers a character study of the behavior, beliefs and worldview that define the DNA of an irrepressible figure and unchained force who is again tearing at American unity, institutions, democracy and the rule of law as another contentious election looms... In his book, “Never Enough,” author Michael D’Antonio shows how Trump was taught by a demanding father and teachers that he needed to be “a killer” and that...

Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history. Losing one-term presidents almost never mount subsequent successful primary campaigns, much less pull off landslides that demonstrate utter dominance of their party. Trump transformed the GOP in his populist, nationalist, nihilistic image in 2016. By claiming 50% of the vote in the biggest win in caucus history, putting him on course to his third consecutive nomination, he showed that eight years after his outsider presidential victory, the current GOP is entirely his party. “The big night is...

One of Ukraine’s greatest tragedies as it pursues a critical offensive that has, so far, failed to meet its own and Western expectations is that it cannot, by itself, decide its destiny. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government is dependent on a massive pipeline of US and western armaments. And Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose historical obsessions and personal power calculations thrust Ukraine into this horrific war, will also have a great say in if and when it ends. So, while battlefield sacrifices will decide how much seized territory Ukraine recovers, the outcome of the war will also be shaped by outside...

The world just got a hint of a tantalizing but possibly even more dangerous future without Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Western stakes in the Ukraine war rose significantly as a result. A mutinous weekend that saw mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin flagrantly mock the Kremlin before aborting his march on Moscow evoked Russia’s blood-soaked history of revolutions and coups. Meanwhile, efforts by the White House and its foreign allies to find out exactly what was happening underlined the volatile nature of a war that could rewrite the map of Europe and modern history. Ultimately, a civil war that seemed about...

CNN — Latest revelations from the special counsel’s probe into ex-President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents deepen a sense that a grave political moment is approaching. An exclusive CNN report that appears to point to a core weakness in Trump’s case is reinforcing the possibility that the 2024 presidential contender is in a heap of legal trouble. Possible evidence that Trump knew that his claims that he could simply declassify material on a whim were false highlight his characteristic belief that laws and codes of presidential behavior do not apply to him. This is a factor that made his...

President Joe Biden’s embarrassment over classified documents found in his former offices is spiraling into a major political crisis that threatens to undermine the case for Donald Trump to be charged for his own hoarding of secret material. The revelation that another set of secret documents dating from Biden’s time as vice president were found at a second location immediately fueled Republican claims that the ex-president is being treated unfairly as he is investigated by a special counsel over classified information found at Mar-a-Lago.... ...Biden’s own sharp criticisms of Trump’s handling of secret intelligence are now coming back to haunt...

The House select committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection long ago dropped the notion of being a narrowly focused quest for the facts as members use their probe to try to defend democracy in its intensifying struggle with Donald Trump. The panel returns to the public eye Thursday after its late-summer break with a televised hearing that sources tell CNN will serve as a pre-midterms warning that the ex-President is a clear and present danger to free elections. But are the American people listening? And do the committee’s efforts to undermine Trump’s cadre of election denier candidates in 2022 and...

(CNN) — Britain's Conservatives just did what America's Republicans never dared to do. They toppled a wrecking ball right-wing populist leader who reeled from one self-created scandal to another and who was accused of flagrantly breaking the law, abusing power and building his political career on an edifice of lies. After weeks of clinging desperately to office, Boris Johnson finally resigned as the ruling Conservative Party's leader Thursday after a rebellion by his own lawmakers. The party will elect a new leader, who, according to the customs of Britain's parliamentary system, will become prime minister. America's Republican Party, however, never...

Behold the amazing powers of Donald Trump! He is not currently in the White House yet he somehow still has the power to ruin the Fourth of July holiday for liberals. One such liberal who is publicly moaning about Trump destroying Independence Day for him is CNN's White House reporter, Stephen Collinson.Collinson vociferously kvetched on Monday in "Americans divided over what US stands for on this July Fourth" that his holiday was ruined by "Trump's violent coup attempt."

Former President Donald Trump conjured a vision of a second term that would function as a tool of personal vengeance, and become even more authoritarian than his first, when he vowed to pardon US Capitol insurrectionists if he runs for the White House again and wins.His pledge at a Texas rally Saturday was accompanied by a call for demonstrations if prosecutors in New York, who are probing Trump's business practices, and those in Georgia, looking into his attempts to reverse his election loss in the state, do anything that he defined as wrong or illegal. The comments underscore Trump's obsession...

(CNN) American democracy -- under a relentless, multi-front assault from pro-Donald Trump Republicans -- is about to show whether it is strong enough to save itself. Such a premise would have been considered absurd through much of history. But since Trump left office after destroying the tradition of peaceful transfers of power in a failed attempt to steal the 2020 election, it has become clear that his insurrectionism was only the first battle in a longer political war as his allies tout ridiculous fantasies about returning him to power to applause and online acclaim. The mechanisms of American institutions that...

(CNN)Donald Trump has no remorse about the deadly violence he incited with his lies about a stolen election in his uprising against the US Congress. This much was clear when the ex-President put the Republican Party on notice on Sunday that he intends to use his hold on its grassroots to try to suppress the vote heading into the presidential election in 2024, in which he hinted he might run. In his first public remarks since leaving the White House, he also dangerously lashed out at Supreme Court justices for failing to intervene to throw him the election he clearly...

The White House is launching a new effort to slow the speeding Democratic impeachment push, but its noncooperation strategy is being constantly thwarted by a daily stream of explosive secrets being spilled behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. Current and former officials are painting an ever more damning picture of a wider than originally perceived scheme by President Donald Trump and his crew to pressure Ukraine that they warned could amount to a trampling of US law. Vice President Mike Pence launched a new effort Tuesday to bolster White House hopes of stalling the House inquiry long enough for Trump...

It seems a crazy idea that any president would actually want to be impeached. But Donald Trump has so subverted Washington logic with his wild, norm-crushing presidency that there is now a serious conversation -- at least among Democrats -- about whether he views the ultimate constitutional crisis as a weapon in his re-election campaign. The possibility is shaping the strategies of Democratic leaders as they weigh the political risks of impeachment and their duty to defend principles of American governance. Many Democrats fear that Trump may be laying an impeachment trap that could consume the House majority, distract them...