Free Republic

Plenty of presidents have been called dictators by their political opponents, but none until now has been publicly accused of being a “fascist” by his own handpicked advisers.When former President Donald J. Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said the other day that his old boss “falls into the general definition of fascist,” Mr. Trump let loose with the insults, assailing his onetime right hand as a “total degenerate,” a “LOWLIFE” and a “bad General.”What Mr. Trump did not do, at least at first, was actually deny that he was or aspired to be a fascist.Any other politician might consider...

When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a convicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward. Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for...

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris. The performance, 17 days before the election in a critical battleground state, added to the impression of the Republican nominee as increasingly unfiltered and undisciplined. It comes as some of Mr. Trump’s allies and aides worry that Mr. Trump’s temperament and crass style are alienating undecided voters. It was unclear if the outbursts and insults were an expression of his frustration as the...

Throughout American history, business leaders have been able to assume that an American president of either party would uphold the rule of law, defend property rights and respect the independence of the courts. Implicit in that assumption is a fundamental belief that the country’s ethos meant their enterprises and the U.S. economy could thrive, no matter who won. They could keep their distance from the rough-and-tumble of campaign politics. No matter who won, they could pursue long-term plans and investments with confidence in America’s political stability. In this election, American business leaders cannot afford to stand passive and silent. Donald...

The Trump campaign has consistently pointed to unauthorized immigration as the cause of a series of problems it says plagues the country. That is rarely actually the case.To former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, the root cause of many of the issues in the United States is simple. Be it gun violence, high housing costs, long wait times at emergency rooms or an impending depletion of disaster relief funding, Mr. Trump and Senator JD Vance have offered the same diagnosis: All are because of unauthorized immigration. “The mass migration invasion has crushed wages, crashed school systems —...

The New York Times published an analysis Friday in which it claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “gone rogue” by killing terrorists who had killed Israeli citizens, rather than acquiescing. The story, by Steven Erlanger, is just one of many stories that appeared Friday in the center-left media — both in Israel and the United States — accusing Netanyahu of chasing victory at the price of a ceasefire-hostage deal. Erlanger, citing “analysts,” wrote: The assassinations of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures abroad have now sharply raised the risks of a larger regional war as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah...

Donald Trump and JD Vance are cobbling together a core constituency that includes millions of voters who are both culturally conservative and financially hard-pressed. Trump’s selection of Vance reflects his determination to focus on incorporating middle- and lower-income, predominantly but not exclusively white men and women who often did not graduate from college, into the base of the Republican Party. To do so, Trump and Vance are taking their side on matters ranging from diversity to abortion to immigration to trade policy, promising protection from pretty much everything they don’t like about America today. The 2024 Republican Platform provides evidence...

It’s always a good idea to pay attention to Nancy Pelosi and to judge where things are going by which direction she’s nudging them in, but that was especially true over the past few weeks. When she started sending President Biden signals that he should reconsider his candidacy, I felt almost certain that he’d eventually do so, because she was both giving other Democrats permission to break ranks with him and letting him and his allies know the extent and inevitability of the rebellion.And I realized that Vice President Kamala Harris wouldn’t face any competition for the Democratic nomination when...

Late on Sunday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris summoned a small clutch of her closest advisers and allies to the Naval Observatory, where she lives and works, with little notice and even less information. President Biden had informed Ms. Harris earlier that morning that he was withdrawing from the race. The vice president had assembled her team so that the exact moment Mr. Biden formally quit, at 1:46 p.m. — one minute after the president had informed his own senior staff — they were ready to go. Time was of the essence. A sprawling call list of the most important...

Former President Donald J. Trump’s penchant for fabrication and hyperbole has long been a core tenet of his bombastic persona and political messaging. Two campaigns, one term in the Oval Office and eight years later, Mr. Trump has loosened his grasp on the facts even more.A comparison of his addresses before the Republican National Convention in 2016 and 2024 demonstrates how his relationship to the truth has changed, offering a glimpse of how he will likely cast himself on the campaign trail as he seeks to reclaim the White House.In 2016, when he accepted the nomination after a bitter primary...

Before last week’s Republican convention, Donald Trump seemed to be moving away from the populism that characterized his 2016 campaign. “This time around, the former president isn’t even pretending to stand up to corporate power,” Rogé Karma observed in The Atlantic. “He’s defending big business, cozying up to billionaires, and wooing C.E.O.s.”When Mr. Trump named Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, though, pundits quickly concluded that he was doubling down on populism. Mr. Vance has been a leading critic of Reagan-Bush policy orthodoxy in the G.O.P., has expressed skepticism of further corporate tax cuts and has even...

Donald J. Trump and his political team spent nearly two years tailoring a campaign to defeat an old white male president who is conspicuously frail and who most Americans had told pollsters they doubted could handle another four-year term.Suddenly, Mr. Trump faces a starkly different opponent: a vice president who is a Black woman, nearly 20 years younger, and who brings her own strengths and weaknesses but who adds new uncertainty into what had been a remarkably static race.Allies of Ms. Harris have already telegraphed that she will run a campaign framed around a “prosecutor versus felon” theme, highlighting her...