Free Republic

An instructor at Donald Trump's Trump Entrepreneur Initiative—originally known as Trump University—once offered advice about how illegal immigrants can purchase homes in the United States. Real estate agent Tina Merritt wrote a blog post for the Trump Blog in April 2010 titled "Can an Illegal Immigrant Buy a Home in the United States?" Merritt explained that the answer was "yes." Here's an excerpt from the archived blog post: First of all, you do not have to have a social security number to buy or sell a home in the U.S. Some mortgage lenders require one; however, there is not...

Donald Trump had by far his worst debate of the 2016 campaign on Thursday. He was defensive and vulgar, evasive and condescending, rude and imperious. He moved drastically to the center on immigration, repudiating his position on H-1B visas on stage and saying “everything is negotiable,” including the border wall and the fate of illegal immigrants already in the United States. He defended his calls for expansive torture and the killing of civilians related to terrorists, saying the military “will do what I tell them” even if his orders contradict the law. He dismissed his opponents as “little Marco” and...

... [I]s it actually the case that people who proclaim themselves so loudly and so often to be winners actually succeed the most? My research into business leaders suggests they don’t. On the contrary, it suggests that such bombast is one of a slew of behaviors embraced by spectacularly unsuccessful business executives. Unfortunately, many of these habits are part and parcel of the Trump leadership playbook. For my book "Why Smart Executives Fail," I interviewed some 200 people at 50 companies to learn why some people in business don't merely lose, but lose big. I discovered an interesting pattern: Spectacularly...

Donald Trump is threatening a third party run — again. So what else is new? At a town hall meeting in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Trump objected to being booed at the GOP debate in Greenville on Saturday night after having accused former President George W. Bush of lying about WMDs in Iraq as well as blaming him for the attacks of September 11, 2001. Trump ranted, “The RNC better get its act together because, you know, I signed a pledge. The pledge isn’t being honored by the RNC. I signed a pledge, but it’s a double-edged pledge. As far...

One of the most iconic living quarters in the history of mankind, the yurt is most closely associated with the nomadic peoples of central Asia. Herodotus, the father of history himself, was the first to describe yurts in the written word. According to him, yurts were the primary domiciles of the Scythians, who rode horses and lived in a nomadic fashion near the Black Sea from 600BC-300AD. The Ger Nomadic Mongolian families called their homes “gers.” Their dwellings were made up of same-sized orange mesh-like walls that curved around the center of the tent. Each yurt had 3-5 walls and...

Thomas Sowell: Ted, rather than Trump, 'has the intellect to understand' what's at stake...

Monday on his radio show, conservative talk show host Mark Levin took aim at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for his attacks on former President George W. Bush during last Saturday night’s debate on CBS.

On the surface, there's not much in common between New Hampshire GOP primary winner Donald Trump and Democratic primary winner Bernie Sanders. Trump is a billionaire businessman; Sanders is a career politician. Trump's personal favorability is the lowest of all candidates on either side; Sanders' is the highest. But the impulse that drove New Hampshire voters to the polls for Sanders is the same as the impulse that drove them to the polls for Trump: the desire for a powerful authority figure to fix everything using the power of government. In fact, before the New Hampshire primary, CNN reported, "Because...

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson tells Jake Tapper he is "not getting any pressure" to suspend his campaign despite dismal results in N.H. and is confident to win South Carolina.

Our Framers would despair about the winners of the nation's first presidential primaries in New Hampshire. Though polar opposites with very different ideological starting points, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would have set the Framers' hair - or wigs - on fire. They designed the Constitution to moderate the people at home while preparing a president to act quickly to counter emergencies, crises, and war abroad. Instead, the Republicans have a demagogue and the Democrats have an economic radical who promise swift, extreme change. The men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a new constitution designed it...

...he will reap the benefits on March 1. Almost one-quarter of the available delegates are up for grabs that day, mostly in primaries in the Deep South. That already favors Cruz, not least because his home state of Texas offers the most delegates, but Rubio's slide will help him even more. In all of those Southern states but one, candidates must reach either 15 or 20 percent of the vote to receive any delegates at all, as we noted last week. Rubio was already only pulling about 10 percent several of those states. With his standing weakened and the so-called...

Ted Cruz won last week's Iowa caucuses, exceeding expectations and capturing an impressive 27 percent of the vote. Donald Trump took second place, while Marco Rubio took third. What happened next?...

When Huck Finn asked Tom Sawyer what a Moslem is, Tom said a Moslem is someone who is not a Presbyterian, which is true, but not the whole truth. Donald Trump says he is a Presbyterian ("I drink my little wine . . . and have my little cracker"), which apparently was not good enough for enough of Iowa's evangelical Christians. One person who left Iowa having earned the nation's gratitude is Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.). He campaigned with three Republican aspirants (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina) in order to advance this year's most urgent task, which is...

Politics is a full-contact sport, but it’s not OK to hit below the belt. Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio spent last week blaming frontrunner Sen. Ted Cruz for a problem that originated from Team Carson’s own disorganization—even after media records and Iowa exit poll data cleared Cruz. Before you vote in your primary, you deserve the truth...

It is a mantra that has been repeated so many times it has become de facto reality in the minds of those who watch Marco Rubio's Super PAC, aka Fox News. "Marco Rubio is the most electable candidate and we absolutely must defeat Hillary. He's the one!," we are told incessantly by the smart "conservatives." Asserting one candidate is more electable than another is always a fool's errand. After all, this frantic concern of electability is what got us the nominations of Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Moreover, with the most radical and unappealing pair of Democrat candidates...

Our buddy Rick Shaftan just forwarded us the latest spot that his messaging shop has put together for the pro-Ted Cruz Courageous Conservatives PAC, and it’s really something. It frames the GOP race for the folks in New Hampshire as a three-way contest – with Marco Rubio as the lightweight, Donald Trump as the deadweight and Cruz as the heavyweight. And its critique of Rubio and Trump – namely, that while Rubio is likable he doesn’t have a whole lot of accomplishments on his resume signifying his fitness to be president (Rubio probably has more than the ad gives him...

Not defeat, but rather how one responds to it, determines “winners” and “losers.” Winners say, “Congratulations.” Losers affirm their designation by barking, “You cheated.” Donald Trump, after uncharacteristic graciousness in defeat Monday night, emerged as himself by accusing Ted Cruz of stealing the Iowa caucuses from him. At least Al Gore could claim he won the popular vote. The Donald lost convincingly to a man down five in the polls entering the contest. But he’s convinced he didn’t lose. Trump, using his preferred means of discourse, tweeted: “The State of Iowa should disqualify Ted Cruz from the most recent election...

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is already looking ahead to forming his top White House team and is considering one of his sons as the head of the Interior Department. In an interview with Petersen's Hunting, he offered both his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, as the cabinet secretary because they are hunters and anglers and members of key conservation and Second Amendment groups. In the interview with editor Mike Schoby, Trump said that "ideally" he wants an outdoorsman to run the agency that manages federal land. "Ideally yes, they'd be better at it," said Trump. In the interview with...

For those of you who haven’t had time to research the details of the recent brouhaha between Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, here’s a quick rundown of the facts. Monday, February 1 – Carson’s campaign announced that he would be delivering his post-caucus speech before the caucus results came in and then would immediately fly not to New Hampshire but rather to his home in Florida. This is how campaigns usually signal their candidate is about to drop out of the race. Monday, February 1, 6:29 p.m. – Marco Rubio supporter Conrad Close tweeted, “Rubio campaign pushing the narrative hard...

Donald Trump's performance in this year's Iowa caucuses was identical to Pat Buchanan's in 1996: second place, enjoying the support of approximately one in four Republican caucus-goers. Trump's campaign, like Buchanan's, is powered by the resentment and anxiety of the white working class. Trump is this year's celebrity mascot for the Buchanan boys. The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency. So they construct for themselves a story in which they have been victimized by elites and a political system based...