Free Republic

In 2015, Donald Trump burst on the scene with a megaphone, a populist message, an army of grassroots supporters — and not much else. If he runs for the Republican nomination again, as seems likely, it will be different. Early in his first presidential campaign, he had to be grateful for every small crumb of support from Republican officialdom — an endorsement from then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Now, Trump is a former president of United States who looms incredibly large over his party. He and his loyalists have forged a new establishment —...

After a tight race, incumbent Representative Peter Meijer lost to Trump loyalist John Gibbs in Michigan’s GOP primary contest for the state’s third congressional district on Tuesday. Gibbs garnered 53 percent of the vote to Meijer’s 47 percent as of around midnight on Wednesday, ABC News reported.

Last week Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) voiced the commonly held belief that the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country was wrongly decided — yet popular Twitter personalities twisted his words to tell a more sinister story. Yet that is an oversimplification of the senator’s comments on the subject on his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1548340766920978434?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1548465411481432065%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fnews%2Fprogressives-twist-ted-cruzs-obergefell-criticism-beyond-recognition%2F Cruz, asked what the argument would be for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, replied that the decision, like Roe v. Wade, “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history.” “Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states,” he...

If the Florida governor can get past Donald Trump in 2024, he will prove something important about himself. Ron DeSantis has a Donald Trump problem. How he solves it -- if he can -- will be the first test of an important aspect of presidential character. Let us assume -- as is widely assumed, but as yet unannounced -- that DeSantis would like to run for president in 2024. Many across the Republican spectrum would like to see him do so. The trick is that DeSantis needs to wrest the Republican nomination away from Trump, either by defeating him or,...

On the homepage today, Rich writes that “for the good of the country, Biden shouldn’t run again.” The same is true of Donald Trump. In my view, there are many, many reasons for this — not least that Trump permanently disqualified himself from consideration with his behavior after the 2020 election. But, whether or not you agree with me about that, you can surely grasp that, as a political matter, Donald Trump is a spent force? Yesterday’s New York Times poll sent shockwaves through the political world. It found that President Biden’s approval rating is at 33 percent; that “more...

p>Former President Donald Trump criticized three nominally conservative pundits as well as National Review magazine on Sunday following their recent dismissive pieces of the former president. Trump excoriated Peggy Noonan, columnist for The Wall Street Journal and former speech writer for President Ronald Reagan; Rich Lowry, editor of National Review; and George Will, columnist for the Washington Post."I listen to all of these foolish (stupid!) people, often living in a bygone era, like the weak and frail RINO, Peggy Noonan, who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his...

It seems to me that the Secret Service and the commentariat are misfiring in their claimed contradictions of Cassidy Hutchinson. If there is a proper target of criticism (and that’s not clear at this point), it is the House January 6 committee, not the witness. In the course of her riveting testimony Tuesday (which I described in a column posted last night), [cut] We shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that anyone is lying. But we should be provided with all of the relevant testimony. And, contrary to the committee’s practice, there should be probing cross-examination so we can get to...

Things will not be the same after this. Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, provided compelling testimony Tuesday that former president Donald Trump is singularly culpable for the Capitol riot. [cut] Instead of trying to stop it, he willfully exacerbated the problem — and would apparently have made it worse still if the Secret Service had not been courageously insubordinate. That’s what we learned today. Things will not be the same after this. Note: The original version of this column incorrectly stated that, on January 6, 2021, President Trump and his Secret...

Former President Donald Trump issued a severe smackdown to his Republican haters in a statement on Sunday, characterizing them as talentless fools.Calling out George Will, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, and others by name, the former president said that nobody should listen to such “foolish (stupid!) people”:I listen to all of these foolish (stupid!) people, often living in a bygone era, like the weak and frail RINO, Peggy Noonan, who did much less for Ronald Reagan than she claims, and who actually said bad things about him and his ability to speak, or Rich Lowry, who has destroyed the once wonderful...

The crux of Robinson’s post: “On Primary Day in Georgia, Kemp gets 74% and Perdue gets 22%. Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes. Ever. It doesn’t happen. Obvious fraud.” But the thing that Robinson claims never happens actually happens with regularity. Aaron Blake points to a 2009 study that “found that about 1 in 10 Senate incumbents took less than 75 percent of the vote in their primaries. Many faced token or no opposition, but it does happen — very regularly.” . . . Marjorie Taylor Greene carried 70 percent of her district at the...

As the Wall Street Journal relates in an editorial published Monday evening, a dispute has arisen over the counting of mail-in ballots in the closely contested Republican primary election in Pennsylvania between David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz. The candidates seek the party’s nod to run against ailing Democratic nominee, John Fetterman, for the seat now occupied by retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey.Clearly, the ballots should be counted. [cut]As Politico reports, the Third Circuit ruled that hundreds of undated mail-in votes should be counted because they were received on time. The court has not yet issued its formal opinion explaining...

Until a few days ago, few people outside the offices of National Review knew that the revered conservative magazine’s publisher is a homosexual, “married” to a man. “The publisher of the most important conservative magazine of the last 60 years, National Review, is gay-married?” wrote The Stream’s Peter Wolfgang, who broke the story. “Garrett Bewkes, the man overseeing the magazine once edited by William F. Buckley, has a husband.” “He’s been the publisher for five years. How did this happen? And what does it mean for the conservative movement and the Republican party?” Wolfgang asked. “I suspect a lot of...

The Delaware computer repairman who alerted authorities to the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop sued on Tuesday Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, CNN, the Daily Beast and Politico, claiming that he suffered financial and reputational damage after they alleged that the leak was Russian disinformation.Business owner John Paul Mac Isaac filed for the suit, he told the New York Post, because his livelihood was significantly disrupted by tech platforms, mainstream media, and Delaware locals after he turned in the laptop, which would eventually become the subject of a federal investigation. “After fighting to reveal the truth, all I want now is...

I despise the institution of independent prosecutor, or “special counsel” as the current iteration is known in federal regulation. I am thus sympathetic to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s insistence, in Senate testimony on Tuesday, that the Biden investigation — which the administration disingenuously minimizes as if it implicated only the president’s son, Hunter — is in the capable hands of the Biden Justice Department, with no need to appoint a special counsel.

House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff are refusing to upload the contents of Hunter Biden’s recovered laptop in a searchable format into the congressional record, according to a new report. Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) first moved to enter the laptop — which the younger Biden allegedly left with a Delaware repair shop — during a March 29 hearing. Though the committee chairman, Representative Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), initially planned to object to the request, he allowed the laptop to be entered into the record. Now, staffers appointed by Nadler are saying they cannot upload the laptop due to technological limitations,...

I would oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of her judicial philosophy, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week. I address that in a separate post. For now, I want to discuss the claim by Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) that Judge Jackson is appallingly soft on child-pornography offenders. The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery. Senator Hawley is a bright guy, but if he ever handled a child-pornography case in the brief time he spent as a practicing lawyer before he sought public office, that is not apparent. Nor does it appear, from the admittedly...

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat opened the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, brushing away attacks from Republicans who claimed she had been too lenient on “child porn offenders.” Committee chair Dick Durbin referred to the allegation in his opening remarks, rebutting it as he cited an unlikely source: Andrew McCarthy, a conservative former prosecutor and National Review columnist. In a series of tweets last week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he had discovered an “alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.” "In every single child porn...

“People who spend a lot of time in front of Fox News or MSNBC,” writes Kevin Williamson in National Review Online (NRO), “are not in the main what you’d call happy and well-adjusted people.” Williamson is one of the bright young writers of NR and NRO, presided over by Rich Lowry (or is it Richard now?) who have made National Review increasingly irrelevant to modern American conservatism. Williamson’s estimation of Fox News viewers resembles Hillary Clinton’s description of populist conservatives as “deplorables” and Barack Obama’s snide remark about those voters who cling to their religion and guns. Bill Buckley (who...

On the cusp of Vladimir Putin’s act of naked aggression against the sovereign country of Ukraine, the most important Republican in the country praised the Russian autocrat for his “genius.” Former President Donald Trump’s comments were another instance of his shockingly favorable and morally bankrupt statements about Vladimir Putin over the years. Asked in a radio interview what had gone wrong that Putin recognized the independence of two Ukrainian breakaway regions on President Biden’s watch, Trump couldn’t muster one remotely appropriate sentiment. He immediately cited “the rigged election” of 2020, an obsession of his that is so all-consuming, it makes...

Jonah Goldberg, a longtime conservative (lol) political journalist and cable news pundit, is joining CNN, the network confirmed on Monday.