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“What Really Happened? An Insider’s Perspective on Representing the President and Claims of Election Fraud” – an interview with Professor John Eastman, scholar of Constitutional law and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, moderated by Amber Athey, Washington Editor of Spectator USA and Tony Blankley Senior Fellow with Steamboat Institute: Professor John Eastman was retained as legal counsel by President Trump following the 2020 election to examine possible fraudulent activities that could have influenced the outcome of the election. In this interview, Professor Eastman describes what it was like to be in the Oval Office with President Trump and Vice...

The conservative community lost a sage and distinct voice Saturday evening with Tony Blankley’s passing, and I lost a dear friend who’d been a mentor to me. I came to know Tony when I handled press for then–House Republican Conference chairman Dick Armey and he did the same for then–Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. In the culture of Capitol Hill, press secretaries tend to be competitive (as opposed to legislative staffers, who tend to be collaborative.) Especially in the ’90s, when the old traditional media were dominant, the mentality of most flacks was a zero-sum one. Every inch of coverage another...

John Rossomando Follow John on Twitter Former Gingrich press secretary Tony Blankley tells ConservativeHome USA that the popular desire to elect someone with ideas and substance has fueled the former House speaker’s rise to the top of the polls. “While most of the people who are running for president are pretty well informed and pretty bright people, most just end up in talking points,” Blankley says. “There’s not a lot of depth to their discussion, and I think that Newt’s standing out in the debates as somebody who’s actually thought deeply on these issues, cares about them and who discusses...

It is with great sadness that we must report the loss of our dear friend Tony Blankley. Tony passed away Saturday after a long battle with stomach cancer. Tony was a longtime friend of our parent organization the Media Research Center, serving as one of MRC's DisHonors Awards judges in the past few years. Tony's syndicated column was also published on NewsBusters. Tony was a veteran warrior for the conservative movement having served as a speechwriter for the Reagan administration, as press secretary to Speaker Newt Gingrich, as editorial page editor for the Washington Times from 2002-2007, and as a...

Tony Blankely, a noted conservative author and commentator and former editorial page editor of The Washington Times, died Sunday morning, according to family sources. He was 63 and had been battling stomach cancer. Mr. Blankley was an executive vice president of the Edelman public-relations firm in Washington, a visiting senior fellow in national-security communications at the Heritage Foundation, a syndicated newspaper columnist and an on-air political commentator for CNN, NBC and NPR. He was also a regular weekly guest on “The McLaughlin Group.” Mr. Blankley was editorial page editor of The Times from 2002 to 2007, and from 1990 to...

Candidate has already proved his high office credentials as House speaker Almost all political commentators agree on one thing: The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the past three or four years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. Really, America has been bewildered, shocked and disoriented since Sept. 11, 2001. The economic collapse and the unprecedentedly statist policies of the past three years have just compounded the anxiety. The rise...

Here is video of GOP Strategist Tony Blankley saying there is no need for GOP Chairman Michael Steele to resign in the wake of Steele’s comments that the War in Afghanistan is a “War of Obama’s choosing.” Blankley seems sure Steele will survive this, and will remain chairman of the RNC. He said Bill Kristol has greatly overreacted in calling for Steele to step down. I don’t think so. The GOP has stood strongly for our troops and for the war efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Steele’s comments sounded like he was a Democrat opposing the Iraq War back...

Tony Blankley, Newt Gingrich's press Secretary at the time, tells the CNN Situation Room exactly what Clinton did in the aftermath of the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995. Blankley: "I got the press calls in 1995, I got reporters calling me telling me the White House is saying that our contract with America, and us advocating that, had caused the killing of 160 innocent Americans-I got those calls"...."And he's doing the same thing again."

The Republican Party must break with its long-established cautious instincts and make a bold stand for first principles of freedom and constitutional limitations on government -- from full repeal of Obamacare to rolling back multitrillion-dollar deficits. This is not so much reproach of past Republican conduct as it is recognition of new opportunities. The post-World War II conservative movement was born in the shadows of towering liberalism. As a result, when conservatism intermittently gained political power via the Republican Party, there were practical limits to how much liberalism they could plausibly try to dismantle. I know -- I was there...

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Redux In America, socialism used to be confined within certain boundaries; that was before last Sunday’s vote.  We are now beginning to enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act stage of our republic’s socialist crisis. At our constitutional founding, the evil of slavery was crudely evaded. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited the abomination north of 36°30' north latitude (about the middle of Missouri), was enacted. But with the western push of the frontier, a new compromise was needed. So the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 decreed that the “popular sovereignty” of each territory should decide whether it would...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats' argument for the health care bill, claiming, "This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country." Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the traditions that are American that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the "right" of all Americans to government-assured health care services. The congressional Democrats claim many other things that a majority of the country believes to be inconsistent with truth and reality. So, considering the rhetorical onslaught that is about to be unleashed on the public, to paraphrase...

Smug sages of mainstream politics shouldn't underestimate her ### "No new ideas." That was the most prominent of the criticisms of Sarah Palin's speech at MSNBC's too-cool-for-school "Morning Joe" on Monday. The more general critique of former Gov. Palin's future was that while she certainly had star power, she could never speak to more than a fraction of even Republicans. The proof of the latter point was made with the evidence that many important Washington Republicans could never support her for more than cheerleader to her marginal people. They also pointed out that she had kept out of races in...

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Völkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to...

The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight-out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08, for the first time, the major media consciously are covering for one candidate for president and consciously are knifing the other. This is no longer journalism; it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly or even halfway honestly presented to...

Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney better hope John McCain isn't banking on Tony Blankley for guidance on his Veep pick. Newt's former press secretary is blah—at best—on all three. Blankley, also the former editorial page editor of the Washington Times and who continues to write a column there, made his remarks on MSNBC's "Race for the White House" this evening as part of a panel reacting to the news that McCain has invited the three governors—past and present—to meet with him over the Memorial Day weekend. ON CRIST DAVID GREGORY: What would Governor Crist bring to McCain's ticket?...

Prince Otto von Bismarck is credited with the sneering remark that "there is a special providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America." Of course, that was in the age of presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, so Bismarck, the greatest statesman of his age, was entitled to look down on the quality of American leadership. One wonders what old "Blood and Iron" would say today if he were looking at the magnificent triumvirate of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. (At least Curly, Moe and Larry were funny when they...

Over a year ago, Congress passed a law to spend over $7 billion to build a fence to secure our Mexican border. Less than two weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced at a news conference that a high-tech "virtual fence" project on part of the U.S. border with Mexico was finally ready for service, and that the technology that was a substitute for an actual physical fence — you know, cement, barbed wire, watch towers, moats. The secretary was very specific. He said: "I have personally witnessed the value of the system, and I have spoken directly to...

Sen. Hillary Clinton has road-tested several versions of attacks on Sen. Barack Obama that don't work. Obviously, and first, don't come out against change and hope — the perennial themes of successful election campaigns. Even my old boss, Ronald Reagan, campaigned for re-election in 1984 in response to the claim that America needed to change on the phrase "We ARE the change" (as well as on the hopeful theme of "morning in America").

As I write this, it is about 15 degrees outside my Virginia farm. Nonetheless, my llamas and sheep, deep in snow, seem perfectly cozy in their winter woolens; the peacocks are in their feathered wintered invulnerability to cold; the horses are in their winter hair and indomitable spirit; my cats, all curled up and sleepy; the dogs, slumbering by the fading embers of the fireplace. The Lord provides for his children. But we Republicans shiver in the cold and brace ourselves for the hard winds yet to come. In the aftermath of Sen. McCain's South Carolina victory, it can only...

In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand. But we are fighting this war with the journalists we have, not the ones we want. However, although the media maintained a virtual radio silence once things started going our way, the public has come to recognize the military success. Typical of recent polling is the Pew Research Center...