Free Republic

An unpopular president finds his path to reelection untenable. Forced out, he hands the reins over to a vice president whose previous try at the party nomination ended in defeat. His polarizing opponent looks to ride a wave of national discontent and end a brutal war, but won’t tell anyone what that plan is. This scenario describes both the elections in 1968 and 2024. Add to it the presence of a Robert Kennedy and significant third-party support and the similarities are downright eerie. More than that, however, 1968 provides both hope and warnings to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Just...

Black voters who attended Donald Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last weekend said that the former president “is for everybody” and that their beliefs are based on “morals,” not “skin color.” Speaking with Fox News reporters at Trump’s first campaign rally since the assassination attempt against him in Pennsylvania, Anthony from Kalamazoo said Democrats “take us for granted.” “When we speak, they don’t listen,” he added. While Biden won 87 percent of the black vote in 2020 compared to Trump’s 12 percent, the Democrats’ hold on minority voters has been slipping. A recent CBS News/YouGov poll revealed that Biden’s...

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has joined other Democrats in attempting to goad former President Trump into debating Vice President Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, in the coming weeks, suggesting Trump is “afraid” of his new rival. Trump’s team has said the 78-year-old former president will not agree to debate at this time because of the rapidly evolving campaign landscape. President Biden, 81, dropped his reelection bid less than a week ago and quickly endorsed Harris, 59, to take his spot at the top of the Democratic ticket. Buttigieg, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, suggested there...

Stricter COVID-19 restrictions could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the states that refused to institute them, though efforts to close nursing homes and schools likely caused more harm than good, a new study has found. Between 118,000 and 248,000 more Americans would have survived the pandemic if all states had followed some restrictions practiced in Northeastern states, according to findings published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The most effective responses were mask mandates and vaccine requirements, the JAMA study found. “COVID-19 restrictions saved lives,” the researchers wrote. “The death toll was probably...

Democratic strategist James Carville said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that Democrats were too “giddy” over Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid. Carville said, “I have to be the skunk at the garden party. This is too triumphalist, ok? This is everybody’s giddy. I look at the coverage and it’s great.” He continued, “Get ready. They’re coming. All right? And it’s good. Everybody should feel good and liberated and everything else. But if we don’t win the election we haven’t done anything.” He added, “They are coming at us, and they are going to...

Convicted and imprisoned former Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized for a “myriad of health conditions” and has tested positive for Covid-19 and double pneumonia, a representative said. Weinstein was taken to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, his representative and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld said. New York Corrections Department records also show that Weinstein, 72, is at Bellevue. Weinstein was taken to the hospital to be treated for the "conditions that he is still afflicted with on a daily basis such as diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, fluid on his heart and lungs, and various other conditions,"...

Vice President Harris leads former President Trump by 6 points in New Hampshire ahead of their expected November match-up, two separate surveys found. According to a poll released Thursday by the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center, Harris, who announced her candidacy just this week after President Biden bowed out of the race Sunday, is leading Trump in the Granite State 49 percent to 43 percent. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned 4 percent support, and 3 percent of respondents said they aren’t sure. In a two-way contest between Harris and Trump, her lead increases slightly; 53 percent said...

Former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said in an interview late Thursday that former President Trump’s attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris are “incoherent.” “At a rally in North Carolina, Donald Trump showed in real time how the ground has shifted for Republicans, as he tried out some incoherent attacks on his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, including repeatedly mispronouncing her name and trying out a recycled insult or two,” Steele said while guest-hosting MSNBC’s “The ReidOut.” Steele highlighted a whirlwind week in politics after President Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris. Since then, Harris’s campaign...

E​arth just had its two warmest days in over 80 years, topping a record set just one year ago. T​he back-to-back records: On Sunday, globally averaged temperatures over the planet's oceans and land masses reached 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). T​hat was 0.01 degrees Celsius above the previous warmest day for the planet set on July 6, 2023, in the ERA5 dataset dating to 1940, according to C3S. T​hen Monday, the planet's average temperature ticked up to 17.15 degrees Celsius, leapfrogging Sunday's record.

Former Trump administration communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that if former President Donald Trump keeps calling Vice President Kamala Harris, he will increase her voter base. Scaramucci said, “The sexism and the attacks that worked in 2016 that frankly Baby Boomer voters are used to is not something that the Generation X or Z have a taste for. President Trump can’t land a punch yet. He’s trying to find something that’s going to land on Vice President Harris, but I’ll tell you what, you want to call her dumb as a rock or DEI candidate, if...

Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports” that Vice President Kamala Harris represented the “mainstream” and added that she was the “American dream.” Tur said, “They’re going to go after her as a progressive Californian, somebody who’s out of touch with the rest of the country. How does she combat that, senator?” Boxer said, “First of all, she’s been vice president for almost four years. She’s represented the whole country. Second of all, I got the same thing when I ran. Oh, you’re too liberal, too short, to this. You vote this way. I used...

President Biden’s decision to step aside as the expected Democratic nominee in November has “nothing to do with his health,” his top spokesperson said Wednesday ahead of his prime-time address to the nation. “It has nothing to do with his health. The president is going to speak to this directly to the American people in prime time,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a briefing. “In his letter he talked about the country, he talked about the party, he talked about the moment we’re in right now,” she continued. “It is not about his health. I can say no,...

Former White House adviser Susan Rice said Tuesday on CNN’s “Situation Room” that it was “extremely offensive and dehumanizing” to say Vice President Harris is a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hire. Host Wolf Blitzer said, “Donald Trump is already slamming her, Kamala Harris, in his words as being ‘dumb as a rock,’ his words. He says she’s dumb as rock, other Republicans are saying she was at diversity hire. What’s your reaction when you hear that?” Rice said, “That is extremely offensive and dehumanizing. Let me tell you what it means when somebody calls a person like me or...

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that it was “hard to find someone better qualified in our history to become president” than Vice President Kamala Harris. Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “Republicans are in full attack mode against the vice president. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett called her a DEI hire. On Monday J.D. Vance claimed that Kamala was not grateful for this country, really trafficking in racial tropes, right, black people should be grateful for being here. Previously he’s even gone so far as to call her one of the childless cat ladies who is miserable with...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid said that “DEI is actually a good thing,” but it’s racist to argue that 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is a DEI hire. After playing video of some Republican criticisms of Harris and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), which included statements that Harris is a DEI hire, Reid said, “I wonder what these two women have in common. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.” Later in the segment, James stated Republicans are “running very scared, and they...

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuedsay that attacks claiming Vice President Harris was hired as part of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is “stupid.” “I would say, two attacks I’ve heard Republicans give that are totally stupid and dumb to do is the DEI attack, okay?” McCarthy said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW.” “The other attack that I would not do is saying that the president has to resign,” he added. “That would be an advantage for Kamala.” Harris is likely to replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, after the incumbent...

Climate alarmists are lamenting July’s warm weather, asserting earth saw its hottest day on record this week and likely “the hottest day in thousands of years.” July 21, which exceeded the old milestone set last July, “very likely stands as the hottest day in thousands of years, based on tree ring records, ice cores and other so-called paleoclimate data,” declares senior climate reporter Andrew Freedman, writing for Axios. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years,” states Carlo Buontempo, director of...

CNN contributor Van Jones said Tuesday on CNN’s “Situation Room” that if the Republican Party attacks Vice President Kamala Harris on race, people will “crawl through broken glass to vote against” them. Jones said, “Here’s reality the Republican Party is going to have to resist its worst impulses to make this a racial, gender trash truck of insult and innuendo against this candidate. I don’t want to hear it. She checked a box by winning at the local level. I voted for her the local level in San Francisco when she was my district attorney, voted for her when she...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that hearing Democrats publicly state their concerns that President Joe Biden couldn’t serve another four years in office “made me sick,” “It made me sick the way people were so quickly going and airing their concerns publicly, when they had the White House’s phone number.” Commentator Mike Barnicle asked, “The sitting President of the United States is a man known — noted for his compassion, his decency, his empathy, and, above all, his character. So, my question to you, were you at all surprised at the level of...

President Joe Biden is not yesterday’s man, or even the day-before-yesterday’s man. That will be the core message when he addresses the nation on Wednesday night barely three days after he exited the 2024 race for the White House and allowed Vice President Kamala Harris to be anointed as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. It is only the fourth Oval Office address of his presidency overall – and could well be his last – as he seeks to retain any symbol of relevancy in his last months of office. Multiple reports say the octogenarian is desperate to defy a “lame...