Free Republic

A North Korean delegation led by the cabinet minister for international trade is visiting Iran, the North’s official media says in a rare public report of an exchange between the two countries believed to have secret military ties. The minister for external economic relations, Yun Jong Ho, left Pyongyang on Tuesday by air leading a ministry delegation to visit Iran, the North’s KCNA news agency says. It gives no other detail. North Korea and Iran have long been suspected of cooperating on ballistic missile programs, possibly exchanging technical expertise and components that went into their manufacture.

AIN’T EASY BEING GREENE — Turns out it wasn’t a momentary lapse of judgment: DONALD TRUMP yesterday evening defended Speaker MIKE JOHNSON for the second time in as many weeks amid a swirl of speculation about his future atop the House GOP. After spending the day holed up in a Manhattan courtroom (more on that in a second), the former president told Real America’s Voice radio host John Fredericks that Johnson is “trying very hard” and “a very good person.” “Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump said, extending Johnson some grace and echoing the speaker’s own...

Come to think of it, the GOP’s federal bill is also pretty moderate.Abortion on demand, for any reason, until birth, funded by taxpayers.That’s the modern left’s position on the issue. Democrats are so dug into their extremism that they can’t even support bills that compel “doctors” to keep babies who survive a homicide attempt alive.Perhaps most American voters don’t care enough. Maybe most voters aren’t even aware of the modern left’s radicalism. The political media might be plagued by partisan mediocrity, but when it comes to abortion, they have demonstrated an unmatched competency in misleading the public.This week, Donald Trump...

Documents for Donald Trump's $175 million bond in his New York civil fraud case were rejected by a court because a current financial statement was not included. On Wednesday, a message on the New York State Supreme Court's electronic filing system showed Trump's "Bond/Undertaking" had been "returned for correction."New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled in February against Trump; his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump; and others associated with the Trump Organization. They were accused in a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James of inflating the former president's net worth and the...

Unless you are deeply immersed in politics, you likely missed a major development over the last three weeks: Since his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden has seen a marked reversal of his fortunes. Indeed, since Biden addressed the nation in early March, polling shows that Biden is gaining ground, as former President Donald Trump now leads Biden by only one percentage point according to the RealClearPolitics polling average — Trump’s smallest lead since January. In the Quinnipiac poll released last week, Biden led by three points, 48 percent to 45 percent, bringing the total to 12 national...

Gov. Kristi Noem is facing legal action after her latest endorsement caused an online furor that now risks taking a bite out of her standing in South Dakota at a time when she’s rumored to be among the front-runners on Donald Trump’s vice presidential shortlist.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday raised concerns about efforts to ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok in the U.S., saying it would only serve to empower Meta ’s Facebook platform. “Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” *** Acknowledging his concerns around national security and data privacy over TikTok, Trump said, “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the platform. “There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who...

Just before former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina suspended her presidential campaign Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump insulted his former rival — as well as her supporters — before inviting them to support him. "Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%, according to the polls." After cheering his Super Tuesday performance, Trump invited Haley's supporters to join him in "the greatest movement in the history of our Nation" to defeat President...

The safest branch of war by far... "Ukrainians deceived Turkish sponsors by inventing a fake Turkic battalion as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine ▪️A mercenary from Kazakhstan fighting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Zhasulan Duisembin, told the truth about the fake Turkic battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine “Turan”, which promised to “destroy the imperial regime of Kadyrov and Putin.” Its formation was announced in the fall of 2022. ▪️Duisembin said that in reality there is no battalion - an unnamed influential person in Ukraine simply deceived sponsors from Turkey, playing on their nationalist feelings. “They...

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he was surprised by a lack of sharp questions from U.S. television host Tucker Carlson in an interview that made headlines around the world last week. Putin told a Russian TV interviewer, Pavel Zarubin, that he had wanted Carlson to behave more aggressively, which would have given him the right to reply just as pointedly. "To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions. I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way," Putin said...

Tucker Carlson says he went “from amused to legitimately angry” at U.S. political leaders during a recent trip to a Moscow grocery store, where the independent conservative journalist and his crew guessed that a cart full of food would cost about the equivalent of $400 in American dollars – and it came in around a hundred bucks. “Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil,’ and seeing what things cost and how they live, it will radicalize you against our leaders,” Carlson said in the video shot on-site as he shopped for eggs, bread, wine and other staples....

From the very beginning, the Moscow Metro was designed as an instrument of propaganda as well as transportation. Its grandiose stations were not only a projection of the power of the regime but also designed as a promise of sorts, a glimpse for the Soviet people of the heaven on earth that communism would (one day) deliver. It was perhaps thus appropriate that some of its marble was said (probably accurately) to have come from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been blown up on Stalin’s orders just a year or two before work on the metro began...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed he 'didn't get complete satisfaction' from his interview with Tucker Carlson as the fired Fox News host failed to challenge him. Putin, 71, appeared on Russian state TV Wednesday, sitting down for an exchange with propagandist Pavel Zarubin. 'To be honest, I thought he would be more aggressive and ask tough questions,' the autocrat said of 54-year-old Carlson. 'And I wasn’t just ready for that, I wanted it, because it would have given me the opportunity to respond sharply in kind, which, in my opinion, would have added certain specificity to our conversation. But...

House Republicans have moved quickly and strongly to the right, embracing the most extreme positions on cultural issues (including abortion, gay and trans rights, and guns) and isolationism on foreign policy and national security. snip The House now has a long list of extreme ideologues, ranging from Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona to Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Troy Nehls of Texas, Bob Good of Virginia, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who don’t care if government works at all. In fact, they are content with gridlock, as they pander to the needs of former...

And so it begins. Nine months still to go before the next US presidential election and already the Republican party favourite and former President Donald Trump is sending eyebrows and blood pressure skywards in Nato capitals with his provocative statements. And yet they will delight many of his supporters. Suggesting at a rally in South Carolina that he would "encourage" aggressors (for example Russia) "to do whatever the hell they want" with Nato countries that fail to pay their dues has prompted an immediate condemnation from the White House. A spokesman called the comment "appalling and unhinged", saying it was...

Internal turmoil is roiling the Michigan GOP as it looks to retake a key 2024 battleground that’s shown signs of moving away from President Biden. A Decision Desk HQ/The Hill average of polls out of the Great Lakes State shows former President Trump several points ahead of Biden after the Democrat flipped Michigan blue in the 2020 election. Concerns are also growing that the state’s sizable Arab American population won’t turn out for Biden amid anger over the war in Gaza. But the Michigan GOP is facing its own setbacks. Republicans there voted this month to oust the controversial Kristina...

Volodymyr Zelensky fears that Western aid for Ukraine could be diverted to Israel. The Ukrainian president made his first visit to NATO's headquarters in Brussels since Russia invaded his country in February 2022 as he looks to shore up support for the war-torn nation following Hamas' attack on Israel. When asked if Kyiv was concerned that aid could go to Israel, Zelensky said: "Of course, everybody's afraid.

The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions against 19 tankers that transported Russian oil under the flags of Liberia and Panama. SOURCE: US Department of Treasury DETAILS: It is noted that sanctions are imposed in connection with the violation of the restriction on oil prices. 18 tankers fly the flag of Liberia, and one sails under the flag of Panama. Two companies own the tankers: Hennesea Holdings Limited (UAE) and Cielo Marine Ltd (Hong Kong). It is known that the shipping firm Hennesea Holdings Limited (Hennesea), which is headquartered in the United...

Trump on Wednesday attacked Dawn Engoron, the wife of the judge, Arthur Engoron, and the judge’s clerk, on his social media platform Truth Social. He called Dawn Engoron a “Trump hating wife” and said that she and Arthur Engoron’s law clerk had “taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me, my family, and the Republican Party”. On Thursday, the gag order against him, which had been paused two weeks ago, was reinstated, but it did not stop Trump lashing out further. The order only specifies comments about members of Judge Engoron’s staff, not his...

The latest New York Times poll showing former President Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of the six swing states sent Democrats into paroxysms. But there are troublesome facts about both candidates buried in the crosstabs of that poll that Peter Schweizer drills down on in his most recent podcast episode, and they don’t even touch on the abortion issue that seemed to dominate this week’s elections in Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere.