Free Republic

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has chosen a finance director for his prospective presidential campaign, two sources close to DeSantis said on Thursday. Lauren Lofstrom, who served as finance director for Texas Senator Ted Cruz during his 2016 presidential campaign, is joining DeSantis' political operation and has begun meeting with the governor's allies to discuss fundraising strategies, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Others who have joined DeSantis' political operation include Jason Johnson, who served as Cruz's chief strategist in 2016, the sources said.

President Donald Trump suggested in a new interview that former first lady Barbara Bush had a right to be "nasty" to him after his long-running criticisms of her sons. "I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be. Look what I did to her sons," Trump told The Washington Times in an Oval Office interview Thursday. Trump was responding to anecdotes in a new biography of Barbara Bush by Susan Page, who writes that at the time of her death, the former first lady no longer considered herself a Republican due to Trump's rise. During the...

President Trump said in an interview Thursday that he wasn’t surprised Barbara Bush is quoted dissing him in a new book — because he campaigned so harshly against the former first lady’s children. “I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be,” he told the Washington Times in an interview. “Look what I did to her sons,” he added. Trump was responding to a question about a new biography of Barbara Bush, published after she died, that reveals the former first lady was extremely critical of him going back to the 1990s. The biography, “The Matriarch:...

A news website funded by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer says it contracted the firm to research 'multiple candidates' Matthew Continetti, the editor of the neoconservative website Washington Free Beacon, wrote in a letter posted online just after 7 p.m. on Friday that the Free Beacon hired Fusion GPS during the Republican primary to do research on Republican candidates. That research kicked off what became known as the “dossier” used to smear Donald Trump. The Washington Free Beacon is funded by New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who backed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the Republican primary, and was vigorously...

GIVE IT BACK, PAUL! THE CONSERVATIVE NEWS OUTLET WASHINGTON FREE BEACON WAS ORIGINAL FUNDER OF ANTI-TRUMP OPPO RESEARCH WITH FUSION GPS The Free Beacon informed House Intelligence officials on Friday that the news organization was the original funder for the anti-Trump Fusion GPS opposition research.Political operative Roger Stone said Thursday, as reported on The Gateway Pundit, that Paul Singer was the conservative billionaire behind the “Trump Dossier.”The Washington Free Beacon is funded by conservative Paul Singer who was an anti-Trumper and Marco Rubio supporter. Singer reportedly donated $2.5 million to the Marco Rubio campaign.Paul Singer is also a top Paul Ryan...

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by a major Republican donor, was the first to hire the firm that conducted opposition research on Donald J. Trump — including a salacious dossier describing ties between Mr. Trump and the Russian government — website representatives told the House Intelligence Committee on Friday. According to people briefed on the conversation, the website hired the firm, Fusion GPS, in October 2015 to unearth damaging information about several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump. But The Free Beacon told the firm to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr....

The sordid fabricated story of the Donald Trump "golden showers" "dossier," put out there by Beltway smear professionals is being chipped away by congressional hearings, and the Democratic perpetrators of it and their media allies, doesn't look good.  Fusion GPS, a left-wing opposition research firm that specializes in smears, took the cash from someone in the matter, and news got out that the existence of the file came about at the bequest of one big fat-cat Republican donor – who subsequently changed his mind and withdrew support. There is one problem.  There doesn't seem to be a GOP fat-cat donor....

Ted Cruz was once one of Donald Trump’s most vocal critics. Now he's one of the president-elect's most important Senate allies. Ted Cruz met with Donald Trump exactly one week after Election Day. As it turned out, Cruz’s tete-a-tete with the president-elect he had spurned from the stage of the Republican National Convention just months before wasn’t the most consequential meeting he would have that day. After his talk with Trump, the Texas senator and his chief of staff, David Polyansky, then sat down with his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who sounded him out about his interest in filling the...

President-elect Donald Trump will meet with two former GOP Primary rivals, Carly Fiorina and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, on Monday in New York City at Trump Tower, according to his transition team. Fiorina, who briefly ran as Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) running mate during the Primary, has been a Trump critic, suggesting weeks before the election that he should “step aside” and allow his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, to head the Republican ticket after the Washington Post published audio of Trump making lewd remarks about women with Billy Bush. “Donald Trump does not represent me or my...

Now that the election is in the past, and we now have the insight of looking back, do you think any of the other Republican candidates running for congress could have won the general election against Hillary? If so, which other candidate(s) do you think also would have defeated Hillary, and which important swing states that Trump won or lost do you think they would pick up?

For many years, the biggest name in Michigan Republican politics has been DeVos. With billions of dollars in Amway wealth, the family has long backed conservative causes across the country, including school choice. The DeVos family backed Romney in 2012. Its support may have been crucial for him as he squeaked past Rick Santorum by three points to notch a crucial win before Super Tuesday. On Feb. 25, the family picked its horse in the 2016 GOP primary: Marco Rubio... DeVos: As the field has continued to narrow, after Gov. [Jeb] Bush exited the race, we felt it appropriate and...

With all the news today about Trump being magnanimous to former rivals, here's a reminder of how great it was to see Trump crush the RINO establishment on the way to the nomination. His takedowns of Jeb were truly jaw dropping. Politics has never seen a public beatdown such as Trump put on his rivals. Enjoy.

WARNING: Some strong Language Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzkBfTfiXS0 WARNING: Hilarious Moments of Trump Trolling the DNC, the RNC, and the people who ran against him.

Okay the election is over and all is well but now I have to ask the question: Could any other Republican besides Donald Trump have beaten Hillary in the election? Personally I don't think so. Jake Novak of CNBC wrote that Trump was essentially a third party candidate who was endorsed by the Republicans. Many Democrat voters in the Rust Belt which was key to victory voted not for a Republican but for Trump who himself repudiated by many/most of the Republican establishment. When I look back at the other Republican candidates, I see no one who would have been...

"I get asked on a regular basis, 'Boy, why aren't you running this year?' I ask myself that a lot too. But I did that once," Romney said. He made self-deprecating jokes about his loss to President Barack Obama in 2012, borrowing a line from Democrat Walter Mondale, who lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election: "All my life I wanted to run for president in the worst way, and that's what I did." He laughed about how much fun he had running in the 2012 race, encouraging the audience at an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber...

It’s been a rough election cycle for forecasting guru Nate Silver and his website FiveThirtyEight. Silver became a household name after he almost perfectly predicted the results of the 2008 and 2012 general elections, and his esteem was such that to some people he had removed almost all the suspense from elections. Then Trump happened. Nate Silver and his colleagues at FiveThirtyEight were extremely dismissive of Trump’s chances even after he rose to the top of the polls in the summer of 2015, and they repeatedly said as much. But ultimately, Trump proved to be a “black swan” event that...

Democracy can be ugly. And what Republicans like McCain and Ryan have had so much trouble accepting is that the voters in the primaries flocked to Trump. . It doesn't matter who had the best chances to win the general election. Even if Trump is a long shot to win the election, (and he probably won't be for long; look for the polls to steady themselves in another week or so), he can now present himself as the true man of the people no Republican presidential candidate has been able to be or even look like since Ronald Reagan. The...

In a live post-debate "Kelly File," Frank Luntz talked to a focus group of Republican voters. The group expressed their dissatisfaction with the performance of Donald Trump. Overall, Luntz noted that the majority of the group had a positive view of Trump going in, but that was not the case by the end of the two-hour debate. Luntz said that his reaction meters showed a very negative response to Trump refusing to rule out a third-party run. When asked which candidates surprised them, the voters pointed to Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson.

I knew it would come.

After his infamous snub at the RNC Convention Senator Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump today for president.