Free Republic

Washington, D.C. has more leaks than a Viking River Cruise with a hull fashioned out of Swiss cheese. To his chagrin, our 45th President Donald J. Trump discovered that…starkly and early-on. But every U.S. President in the past century came to realize—some sooner, some later—that weasels within the Executive Branch or within our permanent Washington “establishment” exist for little more than to leak secrets to favorable media.The Bay of Pigs failure under JFK..the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era…leaks within the Nixon White House during Watergate…the Benghazi tragedy presided over by Hillary “What difference at this point does it make”...

It was a moment to behold. The reporter was of magnificent stock. Her name is Nancy Cordes and she was ready to face off with Jen Psaki over the practice of throwing around patronage jobs to the kids of Joe Biden’s pals. “Can you describe what safeguards the administration has in place to make sure that the children of top officials don’t get preferential treatment in hiring?” It was perfectly executed and surely Psaki would have to spill the beans and admit defeat. But the red headed daughter of Connecticut is nothing if not audacious and pushed a fleet of...

You know it’s bad when CNN is complaining about Joe Biden. Joe Biden largely avoided the press for his entire 8-day trip overseas. Biden visited 3 countries for his first foreign trip and his handlers would not let him answer impromptu questions from the press. Joe Biden’s aides aggressively screamed at reporters and shooed them away after every meeting or presser.

Dr. Biden wore a jacket that read “Love” on the back. And the media received the signal and went right into full tongue-bath mode. What a change from the last first lady who wore a “Let the children all die” coat or something. We could spend all day talking about the difference in coverage of the two first ladies, but we won’t. Needless to say, the White House Press Corps is here for the “Love” jacket. If their work product looks identical to the work product of the White House communications staff that is because it is. The days of...

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany schooled a reporter about Obamagate on Friday. The smug reporter asked the press secretary to name the specific elements of the crime that members of the Obama administration may have committed. After first acknowledging the lack of journalistic curiosity on the subject by the mainstream media, McEnany went through a list of possible crimes. "The Steele Dossier, funded by the Democratic National Committee, ... was used to obtain FISA warrants to listen in on conversations of people within the Trump campaign. There was the unmasking the identity of Michael Flynn, and we know that...

When Kayleigh McEnany was named as the new White House press secretary, replacing Stephanie Grisham, she looked to be a good choice. It’s proven to be true and the White House correspondents don’t quite know how to handle that.McEnany is being tested by the press. She held the first White House press briefing on May 1 and since then has done two more. That’s three in the span of eight days, which is three more than her predecessor held. During the first one, she was asked by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason if she promises not to lie to them....

After failing to censor President Trump's press conferences, media are working on a new plan of pressuring him to remove himself from his press conferences. For years, the media complained that President Donald Trump wasnÂ’t holding enough press conferences. Now, as the mediaÂ’s poor performance in his daily coronavirus press conferences is on worldwide display, theyÂ’re begging him to leave his own press conferences, and leave them alone to craft their anti-Trump storylines. When March polls showed Trump receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the media receiving their traditionally low marks for it, many...

Freedom of the press isn’t something we can take for granted and in the White House briefing room, it doesn’t even exist anymore. One America’s Pearson Sharp explains how the biased Press Corps is trying to shut down news organizations like OAN for not pushing their left-wing narrative.

It's been six months since the heckling stopped. Six months since the last White House press briefing.... The media loved Donald Trump for decades—when he was an accessible real estate mogul and author, when he was a reality TV star, and whenever they needed a pithy quote about anything. But from the day he announced his run for the presidency as a Republican they’ve smeared him, heckled him and tried to ruin him. Trump has tried dealing with the national media in various ways, including returning their heckles from the stages of his massive rallies. They just go on distorting...

A White House reporter for CNN was disinvited from a Rose Garden photo opportunity Wednesday after having called out questions to President Trump in an earlier Oval Office meeting about former personal attorney Michael Cohen tape-recording him. According toCNN, when the Rose Garden photo-op was announced, Kaitlan Collins was told by Bill Shine, the White House deputy chief of staff for communications, and chief spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders that she could not come. “They said ‘You are disinvited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today,’” Ms. Collins said. Ms. Collins had earlier served as the White House “pool...

Boycotted by Hollywood, boycotted by House Democrats, plotted against by anti-Trump activists to disrupt your inaugural and now this: The U.S. “Press Corps” issues a threat to the incoming President. Here’s the gist of it:YANTBOM!!As with most stompy foot tantrums this one goes on and on: All of this, of course, is your choice and, in a way, your right. While the Constitution protects the freedom of the press, it doesn’t dictate how the president must honor that; regular press conferences aren’t enshrined in the document.And we have no problem with that if we like our shepherd.But while you have every...

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT ELECT: In these final days before your inauguration, we thought it might be helpful to clarify how we see the relationship between your administration and the American press corps. It will come as no surprise to you that we see the relationship as strained. Reports over the last few days that your press secretary is considering pulling news media offices out of the White House are the latest in a pattern of behavior that has persisted throughout the campaign: You’ve banned news organizations from covering you. You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and...

How much more clarity is needed than the one that finally decrees mainstream media’s presence in the on-site White House press corps is not a birthright? That the Trump administration may invite talk show radio hosts and bloggers into official White House briefings has spawned a new visible minority, the NIOBEs (Not in OUR Backyard Elites). Not along ago the snobs, the White House media elite are now festering NIOBEs. It becomes joyfully hilarious to think of the possible results from radio talk show hosts and bloggers infiltrating the ranks of the snooty latté sippers in the press corps.

You few, you proud, you journalists who inform Americans about their nation and the world; you inheritors of the glorious tradition of a free and vital press—may I turn the tables and ask you a few questions? Will any of you Obama cheerleaders ask the “Leader of the Free World” why he was so wrong and Romney was so right about the geopolitical challenge that Putin’s Russia poses to America? Will you all apologize to Sarah Palin for y’all mocking her when she suggested Obama’s weakness might encourage Putin to invade Ukraine? Ya, know, since she was so right...

Few ceremonies at the White House over the last five years have eluded the lens of Pete Souza, President Obama’s chief photographer and almost constant companion. One that did was Mr. Souza’s wedding, which was held last month in the Rose Garden with the president among 35 friends and family members on hand. Permitting a private citizen to use the Rose Garden for a personal event is extraordinarily unusual, and it attests to the deep ties the president and his photographer have forged, as Mr. Souza has shadowed Mr. Obama on virtually every day of his presidency. Now, though, Mr....

It may be time for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to make a career change—again. At least that’s what many in Washington are saying, according to Mediaite columnist Joe Concha. The former journalist seems to have lost his patience with the White House press corps, Concha wrote Wednesday, pointing to three incidents in the past few weeks where Carney has become combative with seasoned reporters during the daily briefings. …

It’s difficult to imagine that he was surprised by the outcome. But the White House response that ensued after Author and Journalist Bob Woodward dared to question and criticize the President should be an eye-opener to the world. And the fact that America’s beltway media culture has essentially “sided” with the President and seems quite comfortable with the White House hostility is a very telling sign. Consider the relationship between the presidency and the press over the course of American history. Believe it or not, the White House has been home to lots of outlandish and at times illegal...

I don't always agree with Slate's Dave Weigel, but his withering piece on the willful obsolescence of the White House press corps came to mind today as President Obama fielded questions about the sequester.  Obama's initial remarks were filled with inaccuracies, misplaced blame and tendentious arguments -- but that's par for the course. The "question" and "answer" session was far more aggravating.  Let's review the transcript and recount just a few reasons why: (1) The president twice made glaringly misleading or false claims about deficit reduction pertaining to the 2011 Budget Control Act:   We’ve already cut $2.5 trillion in...

You know that old saying that there are no dumb questions? It's not true. I know. As a journalist, I've asked my share of stupid questions. Yet even in the context of my own shortcomings, I do not understand what the White House press corps is thinking during what passes for a news conference in the Obama White House. Consider Monday's news conference. The last presser of President Barack Obama's first term spanned 53 minutes. Seven reporters asked questions -- after Obama called on them as if according to script. In his fashion, Obama answered a couple. There's a law...

Obama doesn't like being shouted at, because the sound waves rupture his thin skin. I don't see the use of shouting questions at him anyway. He's not hard of hearing, he's tone deaf. Questions directed at him should address that more than anything... Mr. President, how much of the strategic oil reserves you want released will go to gassing up Air Force One for the First Lady's vacations? Would you consider Libya the mother of all sand traps? We know the First Lady wants us to eat healthier so there can be more of the good stuff for her, but...