Free Republic

Senate Republicans defeated a series of amendments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to subpoena the Trump administration for Ukraine documents on the opening day of the bitterly fought impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Schumer offered several measures seeking a trove of documents from the White House, the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget that the Trump administration refused to turn over during the House's impeachment inquiry, but the amendments were thwarted one by one on 53-47, party-line votes. At around 7:30 p.m. ET, Schumer introduced his fourth amendment subpoenaing testimony from acting White House chief...

Rumors abound that small groups of Democrat and Republican senators are contemplating a “deal” on senate trial witnesses that end up with Democrats getting their wish to have John Bolton testify in exchange for Republicans calling the scummy Hunter Biden in to soil the Senate chamber. This would be a terrible deal for the President. Yes, there is no real doubt that Joe Biden and his son played a sleazy influence peddling game with the Ukraine while Biden was vice president. Yes, there should be legal consequences for both men, although we can be sure that our utterly corrupt Department...

That’s how the New York Times characterizes the Massachusetts Senator in an editorial today. I would have said “liar,” but why quibble? Whether it’s falsely claiming to be an Indian or falsely claiming she was let go from a teaching job because she was pregnant, Warren’s ability to spin a yarn is undeniable. Ironically, the Times’ characterization of Warren appears in an editorial endorsing her for president. Such must be the bubble the editors inhabit that no one noticed the irony. Bizarrely, the Times endorsed two Democrats — Warren and Amy Klobuchar. The editorial board must be split between pragmatists...

A day before the opening of President Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial, former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign is issuing a pre-emptive strike, sending an unusual open memo to the media warning against disinformation pushed by the president and his defenders. The memo, first obtained by NBC News, is also a shot across the bow of Republican senators as they consider whether to entertain Trump's demands to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, as a witness in the trial. Trump has been "spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory" that "Biden engaged in wrongdoing when he executed official United...

Donald Trump is the only American president to have weaponized foreign and national security policy in an attempt to coerce a foreign country into lying about a rival presidential candidate. This effort by President Trump is the reason he is now the third U.S. president to be impeached. His objective was to pressure the Ukrainian government into spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory: that Vice President Biden engaged in wrongdoing when he executed official United States policy to remove a corrupt prosecutor from office. This theory, which The New Yorker has ​explained​ originated from disgraced “journalist” John Solomon,...

CONCORD, New Hampshire — Bernie Sanders said at a forum in New Hampshire that women still face obstacles when they run for office, describing being a woman as a potential “problem” and noting that anyone who runs for office “brings some negatives” when it comes to appealing to the American electorate. The language instantly re-opened a conflict between supporters of Elizabeth Warren and Sanders over questions about electability, gender, and a private conversation between the two senators where they discussed whether a woman can win in 2020. “Everybody has their own sets of problems,” Sanders said during a forum sponsored...

In an interview with the New York Times' editorial board, former Vice President Joe Biden made his most stringent call yet for cracking down on free speech on the internet. After being asked by the Times about previous comments Biden has made regarding Facebook's refusal to remove negative ads targeting his campaign, the Democratic front-runner attacked both the social media platform and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. "I've never been a fan of Facebook," Biden says. "I've never been a big Zuckerberg fan, I think he's a real problem." Biden and Facebook have been feuding for months, as Reason has previously...

The New York Times endorsed not one, but two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday. The paper’s editorial board gave their blessings to progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren and centrist Amy Klobuchar in a surprise endorsement that split from tradition. The editorial board announced their endorsements toward the end of an episode of “The Weekly,” the Times’ television show that airs on Hulu. In an article posted to the Times’ website soon after the episode aired, the board noted their two endorsements were a “break with convention.” In endorsing Warren, the board wrote her campaign writes seriously about policy,...

Corruption is changing. The old school corruption is where a politician takes a bribe or payoff. These days, the politician doesn't take it themselves, but steers it to an adult child or a best friend. And both political parties are doing it. It's really a question of the kind of leadership we're going to have.  It's impossible for our leaders to respond to what we want — to make good decisions — if a chief motivation is to enrich their families and themselves. When you trace the money, you often find it comes from foreign governments like China and from...

He's the establishment candidate. It would be in our interest if he wins the nomination and takes his November loss 'like a man'. The left will really go crazy for accepting such a loss. So the result would be a far(ther) leftist in 2024 just like McGovern was in 72' That way they won't learn their lesson like they did when Clinton was nominated. They'll learn only if Bernie or Warren takes the party down in flames THIS year.

As we reported earlier, Joe Biden told Politico that he might consider two of his former competitors as his running mate if he were to win the Democratic nomination for president. Former Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would consider former presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro to be a running mate or a member of his Cabinet if he is elected president.

Warren has lied about being an American Indian, about sending her kids to private school, and even being fired from a teacher position for being pregnant. And now she's lying about Bernie Sanders. Tuesday night’s CNN debate was a set-up. And that’s not some internet fever dream, it’s an observation shared by reporters from Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post to Fox News and The Daily Caller. Even late-night comedy picked up on the game.The trap was set the day before, when the hosts of the debate published a story claiming that in 2018, during a private meeting between Sens....

Bernie Sanders supporters are known for their steadfast loyalty to the socialist Vermont Senator, and some are promising to sit at home on Election Day if Joe Biden becomes the party’s nominee. These supporters warn that nominating another establishment candidate will ensure Trump’s reelection because they’ll sit it out.Sanders’ supporters feel he “isn't getting his due though he's proven to have staying power in public opinion and fundraising, even after suffering a heart attack last October,” reports the Washington Examiner. “As of last week, he leads a tight four-horse race in Iowa ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb....

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton has advice for Democratic voters faced with an unsettled field of presidential contenders: pick a winner. “This is an election that will have such profound impact, so take your vote seriously,” Clinton said. “And for Democratic voters, try to vote for the person you think is most likely to win. Because at the end of the day, that is what will matter — and not just in the popular vote, but the electoral college.”

Unless a heretofore hidden tape turns up, we'll never know for sure who is lying about the 2018 meeting between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in which she alleges he told her a woman couldn't beat President Trump. But consider this: who's been sinking in the polls and needed to shake things up? Who leaked the alleged conversation to the media? And above all, who has an established reputation as a serial dissimulator on everything from being a Native American, to getting fired because she was pregnant, to sending her kids to public school? I mean, her nickname is Lieawatha,...

TAMPA, Florida — Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News exclusively that “the American people have a right to know” when it comes to the wide-scale corruption of his predecessor, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Biden’s family members. Pence’s comments came during an interview with Breitbart News on a campaign swing through Tampa and Orlando, Florida, on which Breitbart News joined him on Air Force Two and on the President Donald Trump re-election campaign bus. Pence was asked to respond to the news that President Trump had moments earlier tweeted out a link to a Breitbart News story on...

Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even U.S. taxpayer dollars. The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves no less than five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and...

Long before Hunter Biden capitalized on his father’s last name to land a gig with a Ukrainian company, the then-vice president’s younger brother touted his family connections to promote his business, according to a report. When Joe Biden became veep, his brother Frank Biden used his DC ties to help secure a series of contracts from Florida officials for a fledgling charter school venture he was asked to lead, ABC News reported. As a result, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company over a five-year period, according to the report. In media interviews at the time, Frank...

Bernie Sanders supporters are warning that a lack of enthusiasm for Joe Biden could bring about the same result that nominating another establishment Democrat did four years ago: electing Donald Trump. Sanders backers fret the socialist Vermont senator, 78, is being consistently ignored and underestimated by Beltway insiders and a Washington-based press corps — the same bunch, in their view, who failed to predict Trump's 2016 White House win and were sure Hillary Clinton, who beat Sanders for the Democratic nomination, would easily prevail. They're particularly steamed Sanders, a socialist who has been in Congress since 1991, isn't getting his...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has been steadily climbing in popularity this year and is now tied with former Vice President Joe Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination among registered voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos national poll. The online poll, released Thursday, shows that 20% of registered Democrats and independents said they would back Sanders over 11 other candidates to run in the general election against President Donald Trump, an increase of 2 percentage points from a similar poll that ran last week. Another 19% supported Biden, 12% said they would vote for Senator Elizabeth Warren,...