Free Republic

Veteran reporter Bob Woodward said Monday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that President Donald Trump is “throwing bombs of ignorance” onto the U.S. economy. Woodward said, “He thinks tariffs are good remedy. Well tariffs are a tax on consumers. I mean consumers wind up paying. There may be some benefit but if there was real benefit we’d feel it in the economy now. And we basically have a good economy that he’s meddling with in a way, throwing bombs of ignorance right in the middle of a process that, you know, should be allowed to go on naturally. It’s a shame and...

Legendary Hollywood actor Bill Murray trashed Bob Woodward during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, challenging the author’s work after delving into just a few pages of Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi, Woodward’s 1984 tome chronicling the life of John Belushi. Murray was clearly underwhelmed by Woodward’s attempt to capture the character of his friend and fellow actor Belushi, claiming Woodward’s lackadaisical relationship with the facts could easily have been transposed into his work as a Washington Post reporter in the early 1907s that helped topple U.S. President Richard Nixon via the Watergate scandal..

If you believe the latest Bob Woodward book, the United States has lost civilian control of its military — unless you count Nancy Pelosi who seems to have been in control of everything since she became speaker in 2019 with the single-minded goal of bringing down Donald Trump. Everything has gone downhill since, and most dangerously at the Pentagon where a cohort of woke generals fell under Pelosi’s malign spell. That’s the only way you can ­understand how Gen. Mark Milley could have become so deranged that he cast himself as the hero of a “Seven Days in May”-style fever...

Jack Smith’s top hatchet man, Jay Bratt, abruptly resigned from the Justice Department last week, according to Deep State reporter and fake Trump-Russia dossier peddler Michael Isikoff. Jay Bratt was one of the main prosecutors who spearheaded the Mar-a-Lago raid, he threatened a lawyer defending Trump’s valet driver and admitted the DOJ tampered with evidence. Via Michael Isikoff for SpyTalk: A top Justice Department national security prosecutor has become an early casualty of the incoming Trump administration, abruptly resigning from the department last week before incoming appointees can retaliate against him for his key role in special counsel Jack Smith’s...

Just ahead of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden made clear where the blame lay for Moscow's aggression: His predecessor Barack Obama. A new book by Bob Woodward describes Biden's frustration that his then boss did not take tougher action when Russian forces invaded Crimea almost a decade earlier. 'They f***ed up in 2014,' Biden said to a friend, according to Woodward. 'That’s why we are here.

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said Monday that President-elect Trump appears to be trying to recreate the “imperial presidency” by selecting appointees with little relevant experience to their nominated posts. Woodward criticized Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, in an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” The former White House press secretary-turned-cable host asked him directly whether he thinks the Fox News host was equipped to do the job. “Somebody should get that job who knows the military and has had also management experience,” Woodward said of Hegseth. “From what I read about him, no, he doesn’t.” He...

Once you start digging into the Deep State, what you discover is remarkable continuity when it comes to attacking Republican presidents over the last many decades. One of the happy unintended consequences of the Russia Hoax of 2016 was that it exposed Americans to the mendacity, amorality, and chicanery of our Deep State and Intel Community (“IC”). Another was learning about the Falstaffian character Stefan Halper. Halper’s role in the hoax—the FBI used him to surreptitiously question Page, Papadopoulos, other others—sent me down a rabbit hole leading to Carter, Nixon, and JFK. Stefan Halper was a legacy hire: the nephew...

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section — even as he remains silent over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Bezos — the world’s second richest person with a fortune that Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued at $211 billion as of Monday — is keen on gaining a more ideologically diverse readership by expanding his newspaper’s reach among right-leaning audiences, according to a report in The New York Times. The Amazon founder, meanwhile, has remained silent over the non-endorsement controversy....

Famed Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein blasted Jeff Bezos’ decision to keep the Washington Post neutral in the 2024 presidential race by declining to endorse Kamala Harris for president. “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy,” the pair said in a statement published by CNN Friday. “Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second...

he infamous Washington Post reporters who uncovered Watergate have slammed the paper's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. The Washington Post announced on Friday that it would not back a presidential candidate, marking the first time in 36 years that the left-leaning paper has declined to do so. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein later released a joint statement to CNN in which they expressed their disappointment in the Post's decision.

The typically mild-mannered and tight-lipped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately laced into former President Donald Trump and sobbed during the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, an upcoming book claims. McConnell (R-Ky.), 82, slammed Trump, 78, as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” a “narcissist” and a “despicable human being” behind closed doors toward the end of his administration, according to a preview of the book “The Price of Power” from the Associated Press.“It’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump’s White House departure, McConnell told associates in confidence, per the AP. “[Trump’s conduct] only...

Tapper served up an opportunity for Johnson to characterize Trump as a Russian stooge. He did the exact opposite. CNN talking head Jake Tapper gave former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson an opportunity this week to help the American media establishment advance its latest Trump-Russia smear. Johnson, whose time as prime minister and foreign secretary overlapped Trump's first four years in the White House, not only proved unwilling to cosign the narrative but highlighted President Donald Trump's historic efforts to keep Russia in check — something the Biden-Harris administration has alternatively had difficulty with. Johnson went on CNN to promote...

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and retired Gen. Mark Milley has called former President Trump “a total fascist” and believes he is the most dangerous person to the U.S., according to excerpts from the forthcoming Bob Woodward book. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” Milley told Woodward for the book War, which was previewed by The Guardian. “A fascist to the core.” Milley, who was...

So much outrage (including from Vice President and Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris) about the claim in Bob Woodward’s upcoming book that Donald Trump during his presidency sent some test kits to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at the height of the Covid pandemic when they were scarce in the United States. And about the famed journalist’s report that the former president called Putin seven times since the former left the Oval Office in January, 2021. (See, e.g., here.)And so little about by far the biggest outrage described in War (if true, of course – as with the above revelations): that...

The Kremlin confirmed that former President Trump while in office sent Russian President Vladimir Putin COVID-19 testing devices during the height of the pandemic, as was revealed in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward, Bloomberg reported. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the tests had been sent but he also denied the book’s claims that the two leaders had spoken by phone several times since Trump left office, Bloomberg reported. “We also sent equipment at the beginning of the pandemic,” Peskov said in a written response to the news site when asked about the book. “But about the...

Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book “War.”In the famed Watergate reporter’s latest book, Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many...

Longtime Washington Post editor and Watergate reporter Bob Woodward shared serious concerns about President Biden’s dismal debate performance — and likened the president’s fumbling to a “political hydrogen bomb.” “I think the answer here is in reporting, in seeking very aggressively, an explanation — what happened here?” Woodward, 81, told MSNBC’s Air Melber on Friday. Woodward said Biden’s debating was “so bad, so awful” that the American people had a right to know what was going on.

Judge Aileen Cannon unsealed a trove of documents Monday that appear to reveal a coordinated effort within the Biden administration to target Donald Trump with political prosecution after he left office. Special Counsel Jack Smith and other federal prosecutors in President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Trump in June 2023 for allegedly mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home. The indictment followed an unprecedented raid on a former president’s home the prior summer. President Biden also retained classified documents after leaving the vice presidency. Yet he was not charged because prosecutors say they believed he would “present himself to...

Judge Aileen Cannon on Wednesday unsealed more records related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump. The newly unsealed documents detail allegations that Jack Smith’s prosecutor Jay Bratt threatened Stanley Woodward, an attorney for Trump’s valet driver Walt Nauta. Jay Bratt tried to bribe Stanley Woodward and threatened him with a sinking judicial nomination if he didn’t get Walt Nauta to testify against Trump. “Upon Mr. Woodward’s arrival at Main Justice, he was led to a conference room where Mr. Bratt awaited with what appeared to be a folder containing information about Mr. Woodward. Mr. Bratt thereupon told Mr....

The conspiracy between a corrupt set of bureaucracies (including the Justice Department, the IRS, and the intelligence community) and an equally corrupt and enabling elite media is astonishing. The Durham Report is just one more confirmation of the devastating level of dishonesty and manipulation which have characterized the last few years.Some analysts believe the open corruption can be traced back to Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal, in which she clearly stonewalled conservative organizations from getting tax status. When she was found to be in contempt of Congress, the Obama Justice Department spent two years ignoring the congressional contempt charge...