Free Republic

The Russian woman who was indicted on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Moscow reportedly socialized with an associate of then-candidate Donald Trump's during the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign. Citing documents and testimony that was provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and later described to the newspaper, The Washington Post reported Friday that Maria Butina had many interactions with former Trump campaign aide, J.D. Gordon, over email. Gordon served as the Trump campaign's director of national security for six months until departing in August 2016 for a role on Trump's transition team. The Post reported...

The idea of democracy is that voters will compare the candidates and select the better on the merits of their respective campaigns. But what if the outcome reflects better use of technology, independent of the merits? In 2012, Democrats celebrated the Obama campaign’s smarter use technology that helped lead to victory. But in 2018, the shoe was on the other foot, as the Trump campaign is being hailed for nimbler use of technology, specifically the “test, learn, adapt” approach that exemplifies Agile management. The Trump Campaign On Facebook In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Trump campaign spent about 50%...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg congratulated President Trump after his election victory in 2016 in a private, previously unreported phone call, according to a BuzzFeed News article published Thursday. While many CEOs, including IBM’s Ginni Rometty, publicly congratulated Trump after his Election Day victory, few of them provided services that played such a pivotal role in Trump’s campaign operations. Facebook also considered the campaign an "innovator" when it came to marketing on its platform, according to internal documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. According to the memos and presentations, Facebook ultimately took advertising methods used by the Trump campaign and used it...

Facebook’s reticence to publicly weigh in on the Trump campaign’s use of its ad platform has rankled some within the former campaign. "I believe Facebook was a great platform for the president," Trump 2016 campaign digital director Brad Parscale, who is now serving as Trump's 2020 campaign manager, told BuzzFeed News. "I'm completely disappointed that Facebook won't step up and announce to the world how well we used the platform and that we changed the way Facebook advertising will work in the future." So far, any praise for the Trump campaign’s use of the platform has been made in private....

For over a year and a half, Rush Limbaugh has been saying "the only person who can separate Trump from his voters is himself." I know---because he mentioned it on air---that only recently did he read "The Great Revolt" by Salena Zito and Brad Todd, but he had certainly accurately stated the views of most of the people they interviewed. Salena Zito was one of the very few reporters in the 2016 election who captured the mood of the country that the rest of the media missed. She did this largely because instead of staying with the press gaggle---as did...

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that found Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to help President Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton is "a sound intelligence product." The newly released, unclassified 7-page report -- whose conclusions the Republican-led committee previewed in May -- put to rest some questions that had arisen about the integrity of the assessment and the political agenda of the agencies that authored it. "The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason...

Barring a zombie apocalypse, alien invasion or Hillary being indicted for her crimes by the Obama-run DOJ (which is about as likely as the first two), Donald Trump is not going to be the next president. Even if Hillary’s horrible cough turns out to be a symptom of some fatal disease, Trump still won’t be elected because whoever her vice president turns out to be will still beat him.

Trump 62% Hillary 32% in Rockbridge County (Lexington), VA. http://politi.co/1N880ai

During the heat of the 2016 presidential elections, officials within the Obama administration, including cabinet-level officials who answered to Obama directly, extensively spied on the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump. Both the Department of Justice inspector general and the House intelligence committee are currently probing the actions of the Obama officials and their motivations. So far, at least five different ways that the officials spied on the Trump campaign have been uncovered. During the heat of the 2016 presidential elections, officials within the Obama administration, including cabinet-level officials who answered to Obama directly, extensively spied on the campaign of then-candidate...

Hat Tip To Larry Schweikart and REX ( Emperor Rex )!!!!

Mitt Romney made no secret of his criticism of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, but until now, he had not publicly revealed who he voted for: his wife, Ann. "I wrote in the name of a person who I admire deeply, who I think would be an excellent president," the Utah US Senate candidate told the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards Wednesday. Romney said he realized his vote "wasn't going to go anywhere, but nonetheless felt that I was putting in a very solid name."

On March 16, 2016, I posted on www.freerepublic.com that Trump would easily win enough delegates for the nomination, estimating he would finish with 1,300 (at a time when Nate Silver’s vaunted 538 and the Hill still said Trump would “fall more than 100 delegates short of 1,237.” In reality, Trump had 1,400 delegates at the Republican Convention. Why does this matter? It matters greatly as more and more evidence of Deep State/FBI spying on the Trump campaign emerges. It matters even more because in May 2017, Senator Ron Paul said that “we have several sources telling us that mambers of...

Donald Trump's strategy for keeping power is to build up his coalition of America's white working class and the nation's ownership class. It's a curious coalition, to say the least. But if Democrats don't respond to it, it could protect Mr. Trump from impeachment and even re-elect him. It just might create a permanent Republican majority around an axis of white resentment and great wealth. Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans competed over the middle class. They battled over soccer moms and suburban "swing" voters. Since then the middle class has shrunk while the working class has grown, and vast...

Last night, Michael Caputo, the former Trump campaign aide who has been forced to sell his house to pay legal bills arising out of the Mueller probe, let slip a bombshell: he was approached by at least one other government informant who was attempting to be planted into the campaign. Appearing on The Ingraham Angle along with Carter Page, he made the stunning charge eight minutes into the interview embedded below:

s Trump won primary after primary in 2016, a rattled John Brennan started claiming to colleagues at the CIA that Estonia’s intelligence agency had alerted him to an intercepted phone call suggesting Putin was pouring money into the Trump campaign. The tip was bogus, but Brennan bit on it with opportunistic relish. Out of Brennan’s alarmist chatter about the bogus tip came an extraordinary leak to the BBC: that Brennan had used it, along with later half-baked tips from British intelligence, as the justification to form a multi-agency spy operation (given the Orwellian designation of an “inter-agency taskforce”) on the...

Former Attorney General Eric ‘Fast and Furious’ Holder lashed out at Trump on Monday after the President called on the DOJ to investigate the FBI’s infiltration of his 2016 campaign.

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he will “demand” this week that the Justice Department open an investigation into whether the FBI infiltrated his presidential campaign for political purposes and whether any demands or requests for such action originated with the Obama administration. Trump tweeted: “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!” The Justice Department declined to comment. […] Trump did...

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked the Justice Department's inspector general Sunday to review whether there was improper politically motivated surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016. Rosenstein made the request shortly after a tweet from President Trump saying that he would "officially" ask "that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes." In a statement, Rosenstein said: “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action." The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has...

President Donald J. Trump announced via Twitter that he will officially order the Department of Justice to investigate whether or not President Obama's Department of Justice or the FBI infiltrated his 2016 presidential campaign for political purposes. This announcement comes after the New York Times and Washington Post confirmed a story first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation's Chuck Ross that a Cambridge professor had been used by the American government to gain access into Trump's presidential campaign. From Chuck Ross:"A top-secret CIA and FBI source who spied on two Trump campaign advisers and initiated contact with a third was all...

Donald J. Trump ‏ Verified account @realDonaldTrump 6m6 minutes ago More I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!