Free Republic

Reporting from Washington — For decades, Republican doctrine has viewed Russia as a power to mistrust. But in Donald Trump’s GOP, Moscow’s sins seem to matter less. The platform written at the GOP convention in Cleveland this week eliminated references to arming Ukraine in its fight with Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has supported separatists in eastern Ukraine.Those represent sharp departures from U.S. policy and recent GOP positions and sparked immediate concerns that Trump would abandon treaty commitments to allies. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is not attending the convention in his home state, was among...

The last time (and maybe the first time) most Americans heard of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president was at the center of a scandal that would lead to the impeachment of then-President Trump. Trump in 2019 threatened to hold up weapons deliveries to Ukraine — caught even then in a simmering war with Russian proxies — unless Zelensky helped him dig up political dirt on rival Joe Biden. Today, the shadow of that scandal lingers. How much did Trump’s toying with Ukraine, cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and, ultimately, Trump’s acquittal on charges of abuse of power and...

Donald Trump's hyperbolic rhetoric about Mexico apparently has claimed a victim. Mexico abruptly replaced its low-profile ambassador to Washington with an experienced, well-traveled diplomat and put a public relations expert into its Foreign Ministry’s top spot for American affairs. {snip} Named to replace him is Carlos Manuel Sada Solana, who has been consul general in Los Angeles for three years and previously served at Mexican consulates in New York, Chicago, Toronto and San Antonio. A Mexican Foreign Ministry statement announcing the changes emphasized Sada’s “broad experience … protecting the rights of Mexicans in North America, as well as defending the...