Free Republic

Dr. Sebastian Gorka speaks at the International Special Training Centre's Military Assistance Course, Pfullendorf, Germany, May 14, 2015. (Photo by 7th Army Training Command via Flickr) Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka fought back last week against former President George W. Bush’s thinly veiled attacks on President Trump in a recent speech, telling EWTN host Raymond Arroyo that while Bush criticized the current climate of “conspiracy theories” and “bigotry,” it was in fact President Obama who “drove the division” in America. “We just came out of eight years in which the White House drove the division,” Gorka said. “They looked...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XKzAry_uzTw

Jimmy Carter, the liberal 93-year-old former president, surprisingly sided with President Trump when he told The New York Times that the media have been been too hostile on the current commander-in-chief. “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter told The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. The 39th president served one term from 1977 to 1981. Carter added that he thought the media “feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.” The former president also pushed back on accusations of Russian collusion...

As a trained hypnotist and a lifelong student of persuasion, I’m often impressed by how much “work” President Trump gets out of his tweets. Most of them are harmless retweets about whatever is going right, and they tend to be forgettable. The good ones are something entirely different, and many are gems of persuasion. Consider this one: “With Jemele Hill at the mike, it is no wonder ESPN ratings have ‘tanked,’ in fact, tanked so badly it is the talk of the industry!”When Mr. Trump smack-tweets a notable public critic—Ms. Hill has called the president a “white supremacist”—it violates our...

I realize that it must be intensely humiliating for members of the Obama foreign policy team to see President Trump making good on his promise to eliminate ISIS. The rapid fall of the Jihad Caliphate is showing up the bloody fecklessness of the Obama administration, which, after the President ridiculed ISIS as the jayvee, was forced to lamely account for its failure effectively dispatch it. But Marie Harf has gone the extra mile into absurdity in dealing with the shame, actually trying to credit her former boss, President Obama, with the victory. She was, in other words, “harfing.” The Urban...

Interesting.  The Washington Post’s Philip Bump (full disclosure my former CNN colleague) is one of the first - or maybe so far the only - journalist at a mainstream media outlet to get what is seriously disquieting news for the mainstreamers.  Here’s Phil’s headline: Trump’s already largely won his war against the media Phil begins his story this way:  The choice that President Trump asks America to make is a simple one and one that he’s demanded since he jumped into the presidential race. Who are you going to believe, he asks: An industry of people whose jobs depend on...

If Donald Trump thinks there’s nothing wrong with exploiting the presidency for his personal profit, he should read the Constitution. That’s the argument plaintiffs made in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, in the first-ever lawsuit to accuse a president of violating the emoluments clauses — once-obscure constitutional provisions that the nation’s founders adopted to prevent corruption of public officials. The emoluments clauses are based on a simple, sound idea — that the nation’s security and well-being are threatened when those entrusted with acting in the public interest use their office for private gain. Until Jan. 20, there was no...

What do severe cuts to core environmental protections and New Jersey's middle class losing federal tax deductions for local property and state income taxes have in common? What's the common thread between climate programs and Obamacare? These key protections and programs are on the chopping block to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans if the Trump administration and their allies in Congress have their way. Experts with scientific certainty say damage from regular flooding and extreme weather like Harvey, Irma, Irene and Maria will occur with increasing severity and frequency due to human-caused climate change....

Corny Capitalism: This is one campaign promise we wish President Trump would break. But alas, he just told his EPA to give up any thought of cutting back on the federal government's anti-consumer, anti-environment ethanol mandate. Sad. The story begins in 2005, when President Bush approved the Renewable Fuel Standard program as part of an energy bill, which required oil refiners to blend in predetermined amounts of "biofuels" into their gasoline, starting at 4 billion gallons in 2006. A revised version of the RFS, which Bush signed in 2007, expanding the program, requiring ethanol levels to climb steadily to 36...

Karl Rove in a new op-ed slams the challengers former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon is assembling in an effort to unseat almost all the incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2018. "Steve Bannon, the failed presidential adviser and alt-right sympathizer, has declared war on incumbent Republicans, particularly Sen. Mitch McConnell Karl Rove in a new op-ed slams the challengers former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon is assembling in an effort to unseat almost all the incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2018.

Former President George W. Bush delivered a public repudiation of President Donald Trump’s political identity, suggesting many aspects of the current administration are fueling division in the United States and around the world. The former president defended the ideas of globalism, free trade, and free markets as well as foreign interventionism around the world in a speech at the George W. Bush Institute. “We cannot wish globalism away,” Bush said, noting that the United States must sustain “wise and sustained global engagement” for the future of the country. Bush indirectly accused Trump of fueling dangerous ideologies that threatened the unity...

After eight years in the wilderness, Republicans have a president who will sign nearly anything they put in front of him. You’d think they’d revel in the opportunity to pass legislation they’d been dreaming of codifying in law, but you’d be wrong. Rather than attempt to implement the ideas on which they’d campaigned and won on, they’re staring blankly like a poker player who over-bet with a pair of twos and had his bluff called. But it’s not just elected Republicans; it’s the entire conservative movement that's dropped the ball. After eight years in exile, where are the innovations,...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 23,000 for the first time on Wednesday, driven by a jump in IBM after it hinted at a return to revenue growth. The Dow hit 22,000 on Aug. 2, only 54 trading days earlier and roughly half the time it took the index to move from 21,000 to 22,000. This marks the fourth time this year the Dow has reached a 1,000-point milestone. […] Shares of IBM (IBM.N), which beat expectations on revenue, jumped 8.9 percent and accounted for about 90 points of the day’s 160 point-gain in the blue-chip index. Solid earnings,...

It is an article of faith among many that some of the most patriotic Americans are immigrants. Leaving one's country and culture in search of a better life has a way of clarifying the reasons for making such a consequential choice. The freedoms and opportunities we enjoy as native-born citizens, but can sometimes take for granted, are often even more deeply cherished by new Americans in their adopted homeland. Trading up carries with it a reminder of what one has lived down – and can be all the more meaningful for it. In a similar way, it may also be...

RUSH: You see, it doesn’t get any better than this. I’ve had the phone fully charged for an hour and 18 minutes. It’s been sitting here doing nothing, and it’s only showing five minutes of usage. I mean, that’s ideal. You cannot get any better than that. I see all these people, “I have battery problems!” Well, I need to do a clinic on this. You know, maybe a Fourth Hour on all of this stuff sometime. I mentioned at the top of the program that there are a couple of stories today to talk about how great Trump is...

President Trump dropped 92 spots on Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans in 2017.Trump now sits at No. 248, compared to being ranked No. 156 on the list last year. Forbes estimates the president's net worth to be $3.1 billion, a drop of $600 million since last year. Trump has claimed he worth's $10 billion.The magazine attributed the drop in Trump's fortune to "a tough New York real estate market, particularly for retail locations, a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign."Trump paid $25 million to settle three Trump University fraud lawsuits days before his was sworn in as...

Link only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/trump-travel-ban-blocked-by-u-s-judge-in-hawaii

U.S.-backed forces in Syria are celebrating the defeat of ISIS in its former stronghold of Raqqa. Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces danced and chanted in the streets. Losing Raqqa is a major blow for ISIS as the terror group once called the city its capital.

President Trump said on Tuesday that his choice for drug czar is dropping out of consideration after reports that the nominee pushed legislation that undermined efforts to combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. In a Twitter post on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump said that Representative Tom Marino “is withdrawing his name” for the White House job of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He said Mr. Marino, a Republican from Pennsylvania, was a “fine man and a great Congressman!” Mr. Trump was asked about the future of Mr. Marino’s post on Monday after a joint...

President Trump warned on Tuesday that he would "fight back" after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered a blunt denunciation of nationalist forces that was seen by many as a thinly veiled attack on the president. "People have to careful, because at some point I fight back," Trump told WMAL radio host Chris Plante. "I'm being very nice. I'm being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it won't be pretty." McCain responded to Trump's comments moments later, saying that he has "faced far greater challenges than this," according to CNN.