Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday said he believed many of President Trump’s tweets have “coarsened discussion,” but praised the president for having “a backbone." “So many of us are so sick and tired of Republicans that roll over and whimper when encountering the slightest resistance. And I think probably the best characteristic about the president is he’s got a backbone. And he will fight,” Cruz told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, when asked how the president has changed the Republican Party. “Now I will say ... I wish his tone and some of the things he said were...

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in an interview on Monday called ESPN’s suspension of reporter Adrian Wojnarowski a distraction from the NBA's relationship with China and said he would support a Senate subpoena of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Hawley said Wojnarowski, who was suspended by ESPN after he responded to an email from Hawley’s press office with an expletive, should be reinstated. The real concern, Hawley said, was that the NBA, which is allowing preapproved messages for players to wear on the back of their jerseys in response to player involvement in...

Dennis Prager interviews Julie Kelly about her important new book just released today, July 7, 2020. 18 minute audio. Ironic to find it on Hugh Hewitt's website considering his past attempts to damage Trump.

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas may be planning to retire soon, according to rumors in the media Wednesday.Robert Costa reported in the Washington Post that the Trump administration was preparing for the possible retirement of Justice Clarence Thomas: Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative appointed by George H.W. Bush, is privately seen by Trump’s aides as the most likely to retire this year. While Thomas has not given any indication of doing so, the White House and Senate Republicans are quietly preparing for a possible opening, according to a White House official and two outside Trump political advisers who spoke on the...

The ORIGINAL NEVER TRUMPER Hue Hewitt Now Promoting IT IS OK to kneel for the NATIONAL ANTHEM because it does NOT mean what it use to. Turn off Hugh Hewitt!!

Even if the aging influence of the Commission on Presidential Debates somehow holds up, voting in many states will be underway before President Trump faces off against former vice president Joe BidenBut Trump would be crazy to accept the commission’s schedule or its role in setting formats and moderators. (SNIP) It would be odd for Trump to agree to debate Biden under the authority of a commission deeply biased toward Beltway group think, no matter how confident he is that the former vice president lacks the energy to go two hours against him. But why walk into three ambushes? (SNIP)...

NBC News anchor Chuck Todd said Democratic leaders could take blame for holding up billions of dollars in coronavirus relief just hours before a small business loan program ran out of cash. "The side that looks like they're holding up money, I think, is bad politics," Todd told radio host Hugh Hewitt, in remarks flagged by HotAir...."I think that small business money issue is something that's more front and center with the public than the issue of reimbursing the states," he said....

SNIP Sessions, who was the first — and for a long time only — senator to endorse Trump in 2016, left the Senate to become Trump’s attorney general in February 2017. He had held the Senate seat for 20 years. But his relationship with the president quickly turned sour after he recused himself from a decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump after it was revealed that Sessions did not disclose a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Nevertheless, Sessions said Tuesday he doesn’t have any regrets. “No, you don’t regret things like that,” Sessions said when asked...

Senator Ted Cruz joined me this morning to discuss the looming impeachment trial:Audio:01-14hhs-cruzTranscript:

There are three paths before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) when it comes to any articles of impeachment the House of Representatives eventually sends the Senate’s way. One is short: a quick dismissal by the Senate of the House charges. One is long: an extensive trial that would let the president and his defenders expose wrongdoing by Democrats and their ”permanent bureaucracy” allies. The third — the only approach that is obviously wrong but that may also be the most likely outcome — would be a far more limited trial that would serve only to reward Democrats for their...

The Republican Party risks exile for longer than it has endured in the modern era if, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of actual “high crimes and misdemeanors,” it deserts President Trump during the campaign to remove him from office. Democrats are pursuing impeachment because they obviously fear that they cannot defeat him at the ballot box in 2020. The advantage of talking with radio listeners — and not merely lecturing readers or tweeting at followers or opponents — is that you hear from people who aren’t among the Manhattan-D.C. media elites who overwhelmingly hate Trump. First, no quid pro...

Last week, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the schedule of 2020 presidential debates. President Trump should quickly dismiss that schedule as unacceptable and announce that if any debates will be held at all in 2020, it will be only after extensive, direct negotiations between him and the eventual nominee of the Democratic Party and their respective designated representatives. And those negotiations should begin from a premise that the Republicans will no longer play by the biased rules of a deeply unbalanced Manhattan-Beltway media elite. Explicitly articulating this declaration of intent now, along with the possibility that, as in 1968...

The Trump administration was very close to launching major military strikes on the nation of Iran last week. At the very last minute though, the president pulled back, and thank goodness he did. Instead of being praised for the best decisions he has made so far as president, Trump has come under attack for that. On the right, radio show host, Hugh Hewitt accused the president of being a weakling for not launching a trillion-dollar war over a broken robot. Hugh Hewitt, radio show host: Let's go to what the president did yesterday. I've been very critical of it this...

Hugh Hewitt kicked off his radio show on Friday by thanking his guest, former Maryland Congressman John Delaney, for "saving his blue cross." His health care. Unlike some of his leftist opponents, Delaney does not endorse the Medicare for All plan, which would kick 250 million Americans off of their private insurance plans and give government the reins. "The American people want choices," Delaney protested. "And they ought to have them. It's also about economics, as you know." Other moderates agree. Delaney's fellow presidential contender Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) was able to tell Sanders face-to-face last night at the 2020...

America’s enemies are on notice: The president is no longer an eloquent pushover professor-president but a ruthless real estate developer and television network brawler-president whose principle weapons are blunt candor and walking away from the table. Trump is responding to both his domestic political opponents and America’s actual enemies with the same tactics: blunt, repetitive messaging and use of the walk-off. He is sometimes rude, often full of unnecessary slashes, but always direct. (It often seems as if Trump answers more questions from reporters in a walk to the helicopter than President Barack Obama did in formal press conferences.) And...

Appearing Friday on The Hugh Hewitt Show, 2020 Democrat White House contender and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg said events bearing President Thomas Jefferson’s name should be renamed, calling it the “right thing to do.” (VIDEO LINK) Buttigieg on Renaming Things Named After Thomas Jefferson: 'It's the Right Thing to Do' ....HUGH HEWITT: Let’s go to policy now. A very blunt question because you talk about going to every Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Indiana when you were running statewide. Should Jefferson-Jackson dinners be renamed everywhere because both were holders of slaves? MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG: Yeah, we’re doing that in Indiana. I...

The Senate is set to escalate a long simmering fight over President Trump's judicial nominees. Republicans are poised to confirm a pick for the influential circuit courts next week without the support of either of the nominee's home-state senators—a first for the Trump era. Eric Miller is the first appeals judge to get a vote on the Senate floor this year, and the 31st of Trump’s presidency. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) set up an initial vote on his Ninth Circuit nomination for Monday evening. “The judicial train is running in the committee and it will soon hit the floor,”...

Sen. Chuck Grassley said expects special counsel Robert Mueller will release a report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election “within a month.” "Within a month, if we see it," the Iowa Republican said while speaking to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and his "political operation" was behind the leaking of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford "from the very beginning." @@ SEN. TOM COTTON (R-ARKANSAS): Hugh, I believe the Schumer political operation was behind this from the very beginning. We learned last week that a woman named Monica McLean was Ms. Ford’s roommate, and she was one of the so-called beach friends who encouraged Ms. Ford to go to Dianne Feinstein and the partisan Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. Well, it just turns...

...But some seem to welcome a slide in that direction. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” tweeted Ian Millhiser, justice editor at ThinkProgress. “Because it is both wrong & supremely dangerous,” replied Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett. “When one side denies the legitimacy of good faith disagreement over policy — as well as over constitutional principle — the other side will eventually reciprocate. Neither a constitutional republic nor a democracy can survive that.” Princeton’s much-admired political theorist...