Free Republic

Live weekly phone interview with NBC Fake News "journalist" the Sleepy Eyed F Chuck Todd.

“Hate” is a dangerously elastic label. And it has long been used to demonize unpopular expression, particularly among people of color. Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and most other major internet distributors took a bold step this week when they all but banned content from Infowars, a website run by the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The tech companies cited their policies against hate speech for their decision, rather than the trafficking in fake news by Infowars. It’s tempting to applaud this move, but we should be wary. While Mr. Jones’s rhetoric is certainly repugnant, mounting pressure from the political left...

President Trump isn't going to be happy. The U.S. trade deficit expanded in June, at its fastest rate since November 2016. Also, $291 billion was added to that gap in the first six months of 2018, compared with $272 billion in the first half of 2017. And wait until he finds out that in spite of the tariffs he imposed on billions of dollars in imports, those imports grew slightly while exports are going down. The administration's stated objectives for imposing tariffs on foreign imports is to reduce the trade deficit by reducing imports and forcing foreign governments to lower...

Vox and ProPublica take aim at President Trump’s heightened concern for gangs in the United States in a recently published video, claiming his harsh characterizations of MS-13 are unfair. The gang, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, numbers in the tens of thousands and is composed primarily of outlaws from El Salvador, Honduras, and other Central American countries. Trump’s hardline stance on crime and border security has made MS-13 a more widely recognized public menace. But instead of acknowledging the rising violent threat that MS-13 poses to the American people, progressive media outlets like Vox and ProPublica are casting the Trump...

The media are furious that President Trump serially decries "fake news." He often rants that journalists who traffic in it are "enemies of the people." Reporters have compared Trump to mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler because of his dislike of the press. Trump may be crude to reporters, but journalists are also not so innocent. They have brought much of the present calumny upon themselves in a variety of ways. The media seem to have little concern that their coverage is biased even though polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe the media intentionally reports fake...

It’s just a few words, “enemy of the people,” but they have sent liberal journalists collectively flailing to their fainting couches. “President Donald Trump has declared journalists enemies of the people,” they scream, “this puts us in physical danger and threatens our democracy!” Of course, none of that is accurate, but does that make them enemies of the people or just liberal hacks? Does it matter? Let me just say at the outset that I don’t believe journalists are enemies of the people. I think most of them are frauds – political activists crusading for progressive causes behind the mask...

WASHINGTON — There are zero second-place finishers serving in Congress and Danny O’Connor, the Democrat in Ohio's high-profile special election Tuesday, finished second. But Democrats say the result is making them feel more bullish than ever about their prospects to flip the House in November. "I have never been more confident that we will take back the House," said Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And O'Connor could still make it Washington, even if he can't close the 1,754 vote deficit against Republican Troy Balderson (thousands of provisional and absentee ballots...

Former New York City Mayor and Trump Attorney Rudy Giuliani joined Sean Hannity on Wednesday night to discuss the endless Mueller witch hunt. Rudy Giuliani told Sean Hannity President Trump will not sit with Mueller in a perjury trap. He then directed his comments to Robert Mueller: “Stop the nonsense! You are trying to trap him because you don’t have a case!” Rudy Giuliani: The real story here is not that this case is going to fizzle. It’s going to BLOW UP on them! The real question is what we talked about before. There’s a lot more to what they...

Tariffs are taxes, which distort investment and limit growth. And like taxes, when tariffs are high they create a political incentive for exemptions and favoritism. Behold the Commerce Department’s new and tortuous process for reviewing exemptions to steel and aluminum tariffs. This is everything Republicans typically claim to hate. *** First, companies must submit a request attesting that their imports aren’t made in the U.S. in “a satisfactory quality” or “sufficient and reasonably available amount.” Companies must state the uses for their steel product, their average annual consumption of the product, as well as the number of days required to...

Full title: ROOSEVELT SENDS REPORTER IRON CROSS; O'Donnell Defends Column Which President Seems to CondemnWASHINGTON, Dec. 18 -- President Roosevelt sent a German Iron Cross today to John O'Donnell, Washington correspondent of The New York Daily News, and Mr. O'Donnell issued a statement saying he was "amazed and bewildered" by the President's action.

In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, many American leftists — including quite a few members of the Democratic Party — regarded the Soviet Union through a pink-tinted filter of earnestly held ideals. The U.S.S.R. was a “socialist paradise,” a place run by gruff but honest workers who were doing away with the economic and political injustices that plagued the United States. The appeal of this vision was so powerful that many who clung to it had trouble confronting the brutal realities of the Soviet system. True believers dismissed the reports of famines, purges and concentration camps as capitalist propaganda, and...

Rather than saving people money in gas costs, cleaning up the air, or dealing with the climate crisis, the Trump administration announced its plan to roll back automobile fuel efficiency standards -- proposing to freeze the policy in a few short years. Since cars and trucks are the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States, the existing regulations are crucial in the effort to stop the climate crisis. Limiting pollution for cars is also important for human health, because dirty air from cars is bad for all of us. We know the public will lose from this rollback....

Confident talk in Washington that swaggering Republicans will fatten their majority in the Senate to a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the fall elections is shifting to nail-biting whispers the Democrats could take charge and install Sen. Chuck Schumer as leader. Already fretting odds that the House will turn Democratic and that potential Speaker Nancy Pelosi will open impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a path to a Democratic Senate is beginning to emerge based on historical statistics and the anti-Trump sentiment in some areas of the country. Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato...

You'd think this would be catbird-seat time for Bill Clinton... His ideological style of Democrats -- the moderates -- are winning primaries and special elections these days in Congress. And unlike President Obama, Clinton and his presidency are remembered for its prosperity, including all the jobs that were created. Theoretically, that's something Democrats should be able to point to with pride, given all the embarrassment the Obama record presents in stark contrast to President Trump. But somehow, that's not happening. Democrats are moving away from Bill Clinton like a bad smell.

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) What tipped you off, Timmy? – Apple CEO Tim Cook is worried that “humanity is being drained out of music.” It’s not about what you think, but it should be. Tired of all this Winning yet? – Republican Troy Balderson won the special election for Ohio’s 12th district over Democat Danny O’Connor, denying the fake news media another excuse to rev up its “Blue Wave” narrative one more time. The race was very close, with Balderson prevailing by just 1,754 votes out of the 202,000 total votes cast. Absurdly, the two will...

There is a saying attributed to various wise men: “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” Allow me to tempt fate and offer some musings about the 2020 election and America’s democratic future: The Republicans. I will be amazed if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. The water around him is rising fast, and he is likely to be long gone by 2020, either via impeachment or resignation in a deal that spares him prosecution. Trump’s Sunday morning tweet admitted that a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign aides and a Kremlin-linked lawyer was designed to “get information on...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Democrats have now taken us back to the Klan days of the early 1960s – A gang of white Democrats assaulted a black woman in a cafe in Philadelphia Monday morning as she was attempting to have some breakfast. Sound familiar? No, I didn’t make that up – the black woman’s name is Candace Owens, a conservative activist who helped to start the rising #walkaway movement on Twitter. The white Democrats were a bunch of Antifa thugs who found out where Ms. Owens was attempting to dine and literally ran her out...

President Trump’s repeated cries of “fake news” and attacks on journalists as “enemies of the American people” have resonated with his base, with 43 percent of Republicans saying he “should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” The results — suggesting that a plurality of Republicans would have no problem trashing the First Amendment — came from a stunning new poll conducted by Ipsos and reported Tuesday by the Daily Beast. The survey also showed that just 36 percent of GOP voters disagreed with that statement. When asked if Trump should close down specific news organizations,...

CNN has been widely mocked for publishing an opinion piece calling for Americans to thank the media the way members of the military are acknowledged because they are both “protecting our freedoms” and “the stakes have never been higher.” University of Notre Dame management professor Joseph Holt wrote the essay headlined, “The press isn't the enemy, it's the protector,” which was published last week. The widely ridiculed piece is labeled “opinion” and notes “the views expressed here are solely the author's.” Holt defended CNN’s Jim Acosta, who was mocked by Trump supporters at a recent rally. Acosta then asked Press...

A man was found severely injured by Border Patrol agents after he fell from the international border wall behind the Gran Plaza Outlet Mall in Calexico Sunday evening... the man fell from the 30-foot border wall while he attempted to illegally enter the United States... suffered bilateral femur fractures to both legs and a possible back injury. The man was airlifted to a medical center in Palm Springs.