Free Republic

<p>When we think of U.S. Presidents through history, we don’t tend to picture their physical frame so much as recall a collection of historical facts and anecdotes. If you imagine George Washington, for example, is a mental image of his presence in a room the first thing that comes to mind? Or do you recall a story about a cherry tree, or crossing the Delaware? With a few exceptions here and there, the physicality of Presidents has been largely obscured by history. Can you name the tallest president? The shortest? What about the second-tallest or second-shortest? A full list of the height of each President follows, spanning a foot difference from 5 feet, 4 inches tall to 6 feet, 4 inches tall.</p>

President Biden is ranked as the 14th-best U.S. president, according to a new poll of historians. Former President Trump is ranked as the last. The New York Times' Peter Baker joins Morning Joe to discuss.

While presidents have long had disagreements on national policy, many agreed that unchecked immigration to the United States ultimately hurts Americans and those legal immigrants who have already arrived. Five presidents, in particular, have famously warned against mass immigration to the United States — despite their differences on a variety of other issues. In the early 1920s, President Calvin Coolidge (R) drastically reduced annual legal immigration levels to the United States, stabilizing the nation’s population following decades of record-high immigration. Coolidge, in a December 1923 address, said immigration levels must not exceed the ability of Americans to absorb new arrivals...

Coastal Carolina University’s Justin Vaughn, associate professor of political science, and Brandon Rottinghaus, professor of political science at the University of Houston, have released a new poll through the Presidential Greatness Project. Vaughn and Rottinghaus, who are co-directors of the project, conducted the survey in 2015 and 2018 and are releasing new findings in their third survey on Feb. 19, President’s Day 2024. Results are based on nearly 200 responses from scholars across multiple academic disciplines whose work engages presidential politics. The survey shows that while presidential scholars continue to find Abraham Lincoln to be the nation’s greatest, Franklin Delano...

Feb. 19 (UPI) -- A new survey of historians ranks Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history. Trump has touted his poll numbers against President Joe Biden ahead of a potential rematch in November. However, the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, conducted by Qualtrics, has Biden significantly ahead of the former president. The survey was conducted online among more than 500 members of the American Political Science Association, an organization of professionals in the field. Respondents rated Biden at 62.66 on a scale of 100 for overall greatness, good for 14th out of 45 presidents. Abraham Lincoln scored...

Radical-left activist and former politician Nina Turner marked Presidents’ Day, the holiday officially named “Washington’s Birthday,” by attempting to vilify America’s first president and founding father as well as other early U.S. presidents. In a post from Monday, Turner, a one-time Ohio state senator and current Senior fellow at Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, wrote: “Reminder: George Washington owned human beings.” Reminder: George Washington owned human beings. — Nina Turner (@ninaturner) February 19, 2024 In a follow-up post, she insisted “this President’s Day we must remember that 12 of the first 15 Presidents enslaved other human beings.” “We...

He was the greatest American. Don't settle for less.“First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen. He was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate and sincere; uniform, dignified and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him, as were the effects of that example lasting.“To his equals he was condescending; to his inferiors kind; and to the dear object of his affections exemplarily tender: Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue always felt his fostering hand; the purity of his...

During President Barack Obama's eight years in office, it was common to see a variation of the Old Glory flag of the United States where the stars in the blue field were replaced with Obama's face. And yet, it was just as common to see bumper stickers that infamously proclaimed "Obama: One Big *** Mistake America." Clearly, there were those who were fans of the former president just as there were those who opposed him and all of his policies. Today, there are, not surprisingly, those who see him as one of America's greatest presidents and those who view him...

Three of the five former Presidents of the United States have started a new non-governmental organization (NGO) with the explicit purpose of chartering flights to import illegal aliens into the United States. As reported by Just The News, the NGO Miles4Migrants, founded by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, is teaming up with two other organizations, American Express Global Business Travel and Welcome.US, to expand upon a previous effort that focused solely on Afghan refugees following the disastrous withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021. Welcome.US was originally launched for the purpose of bringing in...

The conventional wisdom has long been that this year’s elections would be dominated by typical domestic issues, particularly the economy. But the atrocities carried out by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, the resulting war, and fear of escalation could alter the race. More Americans now say that foreign policy should be a top priority for the U.S. government this year, the Associated Press reports. And President Biden is facing high disapproval rates for his response to events in the Middle East. A Pew survey conducted in late November and early December found that a 41 percent plurality of U.S....

Trump is arguing that presidents, even after their term is over, are absolutely immune from criminal prosecutions arising out of their acts in office. Thursday afternoon in a Washington, D.C., federal court, former President Donald Trump filed a motion to dismiss the case pending against him there for his alleged actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election. The motion cites presidential immunity as a ground to dismiss the case in its entirety. The motion persuasively argues that the D.C. case should be dismissed, and if past practice is any guide all proceedings could and should be stayed while this...

Former president Donald Trump is facing ninety-one criminal charges as he seeks to win back the White House in 2024. The indictments are the latest battle in a roughly six-year crusade against Trump that first sought to remove him from power through the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, then with espionage charges and impeachments, and that now aims to block him from becoming president again. The mantra we hear from those in politics and media who support these efforts is that nobody is above the law.But there’s an entire class of people above the law. Or who at least act like they’re above...

When asked to name the United States president who has done the best job over the past 40 years, a majority of Democrats name Barack Obama. Republicans, by contrast, are divided between a president who served in the 1980s – Ronald Reagan – and one who is currently running to return to office, Donald Trump. About four-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (41%) say Reagan has done the best job as president over the past 40 years. Slightly fewer (37%) say Trump has done the best job, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in July.

During an interview with MSNBC on Friday aired on Friday’s broadcast of “The 11th Hour,” President Joe Biden responded to his polling numbers by stating that his numbers are the same as every president who won re-election, people have only heard “negative news” for the past three years, and “much of what we were able to do only is going to come into play now.” Host Stephanie Ruhle asked, “You’re talking about real, practical solutions, when you reference insulin, that you’ve come up with. Why do you think you don’t get more credit for it? Why do you think your...

Three of the five living former presidents have joined forces with American Express Global Business Travel and Welcome.US to create a non-governmental organization (NGO) that will fly illegal aliens to any desired destination in the United States. Just The News reports that the new NGO, Miles4Migrants, was created by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Welcome.US was a pre-existing NGO funded by far-left billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, originally created to provide logistical assistance to the roughly 85,000 Afghan refugees that were brought into the United States after the collapse of Afghanistan, which...

“Until Bill Clinton … there had not been coverage of any infidelity on the part of a sitting president in the mainstream press,” says Alison Dagnes, JFK’s affairs stayed out of the press not necessarily because journalists wanted to protect him, but because they just didn’t consider such things to be news.... But despite the fact that no one wrote about it at the time, most Americans are by now aware that JFK slept around. Many even suspect JFK slept with Marilyn Monroe... though there’s still no evidence of that. He did, however, have verifiable affairs with many other known...

The American presidency is one of the strangest jobs in the world. Politicians aspire to it. The media focuses obsessively on the person who holds it and those who want to win it. Millions of books and articles have been written about it. And yet, most of the people who’ve held the job really weren’t that good. There are a few truly great presidents, some pretty good ones and a handful of complete disasters. But most can be summed up, as the Simpsons famously once did, as the “adequate, forgettable, occasionally regrettable, caretaker presidents of the U.S.A.” In fairness, the...

This President’s Day, The College Fix remembers the presidential victims of cancel culture on college campuses. The Fix has compiled examples of campus cancel culture attacking presidential monuments, statues, building names and supporters. This data was collected from The Fix’s Campus Cancel Culture Database, which “chronicles and quantifies cancel culture’s influence on higher education, tracking its targets and noting its successes and failures.” Mary Grabar, author of “Debunking The 1619 Project,” explained to The Fix that “there has been so much focus on the sins of our past leaders that anyone who comes up short of meeting the woke standards...

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are hosting back-to-back conferences about disinformation in the days following Donald Trump's 'big announcement.' Bush, 76, will host his The Struggle for Freedom conference in Dallas on November 16, while Obama's democracy conference will be held in New York City on the 17th. Trump's big announcement - largely rumored to be his 2024 presidential campaign announcement - is set for Tuesday. Organizers said the conferences were not planned together, but will focus on the rising threats from authoritarianism and disinformation.

You may think it's funny that President Biden carries around a cheat card that tells him exactly what to do and when to do it. As it turns out, this is a common technique used by several presidents throughout our nation's great history. We bet you feel silly now, don't you? Here are a few examples of presidential cheat cards through the years: Thomas Jefferson: YOU do not have sexual relations with THAT slave. William Henry Harrison: YOU wear YOUR overcoat or YOU die. Millard Fillmore: Nobody remembers who YOU are. Abraham Lincoln: YOU don't forget to look behind YOURSELF...