Free Republic

I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump. He should do it only under two conditions. Otherwise, he’s giving Trump unfair advantages.

While Florida might not be the most important swing state come November’s presidential election, it is the largest. Simply put, it is near impossible for President Donald Trump to win a second term without Florida though the Democratic candidate, presumably former Vice President Joe Biden, could build an electoral college majority without the Sunshine State. Politicians from the Sunshine State always garner some buzz as potential vice presidential candidates but, in the 175 years of statehood, no Florida politician has ever been included on a major ticket. Of course, that could change this year since Trump moved from New York...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who once wrote an entire column about a Paris cabbie who didnÂ’t talk to him, wants you to know that he went down to the southern border, looked around, and concluded somethingÂ’s not quite right down there.To be fair, FriedmanÂ’s recent op-ed on the border crisis represents probably one of the most intrepid reporting trips heÂ’s ever done. Instead of just jotting down random things he saw in the airport, Friedman actually toured the port of entry at San Ysidro and had Border Patrol drive him out to where the border fencing ends,...

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman had some choice words for Rep. Ilhan Omar after the recently elected congresswoman has displayed antisemitic rhetoric during her short tenure in Congress via her comments about Israel and big money in politics. Friedman said Rep. Omar had a "perfect" opportunity to be a bridge builder between Muslims and Jews but instead has opted to be a "bridge destroyer" because she has not offered "constructive" criticism. "Ilhan Omar represents, I believe, the largest Jewish community in the whole upper Midwest...She also represents a Somali immigrant community that have come to our city and...

In case you haven’t noticed, long-established political parties across the democratic world are blowing up, with Britain’s Labour Party just the latest to fracture. Could America’s parties be next?

The nation is deeply divided, with each side seeing the other as “the enemy.” I began my journalism career covering a civil war in Lebanon. I never thought I’d end my career covering a civil war in America. We may not be there yet, but if we don’t turn around now, we will surely get where we’re going — which was best described by Senator Jeff Flake on Monday: “Tribalism is ruining us. It is tearing our country apart. It is no way for sane adults to act.” Sure, we’ve experienced bouts of intense social strife since the American Civil...

When American astronaut Neil Armstrong, a devout Christian, visited Israel after his trip to the moon, he was taken on a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem by Israeli archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov. When they got to the Hulda Gate, which is at the top of the stairs leading to the Temple Mount, Armstrong asked Ben-Dov whether Jesus had stepped anywhere around there. “I told him, ‘Look, Jesus was a Jew,'” recalled Ben-Dov. “These are the steps that lead to the Temple, so he must have walked here many times.” Armstrong then asked if these were the original steps, and...

Sept. 3 (AP) — President Donald Trump stopped his motorcade in Manhattan today, jumped out of his limousine and shot a man on Fifth Avenue who was shouting anti-Trump epithets. The shooting was recorded by the White House press pool as well as by dozens of bystanders with cellphones and by security cameras in the area. When asked for his reaction, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We will need more information than is available at this point.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said through pursed lips that he “was not going to comment on every up and down with this...

One of the hardest things to accept for all of us who want Donald Trump to be a one-term president is the fact that some things are true even if Donald Trump believes them! And one of those things is that we have a real trade problem with China. Imports of Chinese goods alone equal two-thirds of the global U.S. trade deficit today. But while Trump’s gut instinct is right, he’s so ignorant about the facts, he’s so easily swayed by the last person he talked to or by ill-considered promises to his base, he’s so weirdly obsessed with protecting...

One of Rush Limbaugh’s classic maxims is that when it comes to liberals’ demands for investigations, it’s not the nature of the evidence; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters. Thomas Friedman provided a perfect illustration of Rush’s rule on today’s Meet the Press. Discussing the notion that the Trump campaign might have colluded with the Russians regarding the 2016 election, Friedman said “I agree: there is no evidence, which is why we need a special prosecutor or an independent commission to get to the bottom of it.” View the video here.

Tom Friedman’s frothing hyperventilation on CNN this morning epitomizes the Dem/MSM hysteria over the Sessions/Russians flap. Friedman claimed: “A lot of evidence” that Jeff Sessions “perjured himself.” The failure of more Republicans to be up in arms about the matter “one of the most shameful things I have seen in almost 30 years being in Washington, DC.” In a nifty bit of saying something by claiming not to say it, in describing the seriousness of the matter, Friedman mentions 9/11 and Pearl Harbor while claiming not to compare them, at least in terms of “lives lost.” View the video here.

When it comes to assessing the presidential race, I prefer to listen to the spies. They tend to be brutally unsentimental, see through the nonsense and cut to the cold, hard bottom line. And right now, two of the world’s foremost former spymasters are sending uncoded messages about what it will mean for America and the Western alliance if Donald Trump is elected president. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce former C.I.A. Director Robert Gates and his longtime nemesis and former K.G.B. agent, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Putin is voting Trump. Gates is not. In an essay in The Wall...

Simply put, capitalism strives for the ceiling, and socialism provides a secure floor. Narrowly-defined socialism all but eliminates obscene wealth, while cherished notions of capitalism disingenuously suggest that anyone can become rich through hard work and drive. Proponents of capitalism regard taxation as confiscation, yet they’re willing to pay through the nose for things that are guaranteed to citizens of socialist countries who enjoy tangible benefits from their higher tax rates. Socialism and poverty EDITOR: Columnist Thomas Friedman isn’t wrong to urge Hillary Clinton “to inject some capitalism into her economic plan.” But in making his case, he offers a...

We get that Barack Obama can view American from Iran's perspective. What we're worried about is whether he can view Iran from American's perspective . . . Ronald Reagan: "My idea of American policy toward the Soviet Union is simple, and some would say simplistic. It is this: we win and they lose." Thomas Friedman on Barack Obama: "He actually knows what America looks like from the outside in. And he can actually see America even to some point from the Iranian perspective." So who will history record as being more effective in countering America's adversaries? The "simplistic" Ronald Reagan,...

“I think the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” said Obama. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” While the president’s remarks were mostly overlooked by the U.S. and Western media, the comments received headline coverage in news outlets run by Iran and by the Hezbollah jihadist organization. Obama sat down Saturday with Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who asked about “protecting our Sunni Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia.” Obama explained he thinks “that our friends in the region, our traditional Sunni states, have some very real external threats, but they...

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has repeatedly claimed that Israel controls Washington, is warning that if Israel's prime minister addresses Congress next month, "anti-Semites will claim Israel controls Washington." Does Friedman really believe that? Or is he cynically using Jewish fears of anti-Semitism to stir opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? In an emotion-laden February 4 column, Friedman mustered every argument in his arsenal against the invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. It would be "churlish," "reckless," and even "dangerous," Friedman thundered. He revealed that he has "polled many of [his] non-Jewish...

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this? When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions...

Holy Mustache, Batman! How can you tell when Thomas Friedman has given up and stopped bothering? Is there even a way to tell when a man who tried to turn global flattening into a thing has just given up?Friedman just wrote an article half of which consists of Batman quotes. The rest is his usual mix of random drivel, references to Fukuyama and staged wisdom. ItÂ’s why Orit Perlov, an Israeli expert on Arab social networks, keeps telling me that since I canÂ’t visit the Islamic State, which is known as ISIS, and interview its leaders, the next best...

In light of the first case of Ebola in the United States emerging earlier this week after Thomas Duncan traveled to and from the country of Liberia to attend a funeral (and then knowing he was infected, lied on a medical form before hopping on a flight back), many people are asking why flight bans or restrictions to Ebola stricken countries have not been put in place. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest essentially argued that because America has the ability to treat the disease, that it is unnecessary to implement travel restrictions in order to prevent it from...

They don't hand out master's degrees in revisionist history, but if they did, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman might deserve one. Obama is mired in a geopolitical mess of his own making, from the Ukraine to the ISIS menace, yet Friedman's decided to argue that Obama shouldn't be harshly judged. His era is much more complicated than Reagan's, you see. "I'll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president," he claimed. Reagan's era was defined by a capitalist-communist competition between "two organized superpowers," while Obama's era centers on a puzzling conflict "between...