Free Republic

Sen. Jeff Flake on Sunday did not rule out launching a Republican primary challenge to President Trump in 2020 and said he does hope a GOP alternative to Mr. Trump emerges for the next presidential election.

Donald Trump's strategy for keeping power is to build up his coalition of America's white working class and the nation's ownership class. It's a curious coalition, to say the least. But if Democrats don't respond to it, it could protect Mr. Trump from impeachment and even re-elect him. It just might create a permanent Republican majority around an axis of white resentment and great wealth. Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans competed over the middle class. They battled over soccer moms and suburban "swing" voters. Since then the middle class has shrunk while the working class has grown, and vast...

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone pledged to have someone lined up to challenge Vice President Mike Pence should he run for president in 2020. During an interview Friday with Big League Politics, a right-wing news website, Stone suggested that President Trump may not ultimately run for re-election if his first term is adequately successful and denounced the possibility of a 2020 ticket with Pence and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. "I guarantee you I will have a candidate challenge Mike Pence," said while speaking on the "Howley Reports" show. Stone derided Pence as a "establishment Republican quisling"...

It’s often said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. In the case of President Donald Trump and the media, there really are two sides to this coin. Whenever Trump uses provocative and at times deliberately offensive terminology ― maybe it’s “shithole” or “rapists” or more recently “animals” ― an all too familiar cycle plays out like a rerun of a bad reality-TV show. First, you must remember that Trump is the emotional equivalent of a 5-year-old. Like a child, his actions are driven by positive reinforcement. When Trump talks tough on immigration,...

Glenn Beck, the staunch Never-Trump radio host and founder of The Blaze, announced on Friday that he is supporting President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election bid. TheBlaze ✔ @theblaze .@glennbeck has heard ENOUGH from the mainstream media. It's time to acknowledge everything @realDonaldTrump has done for America. 2:20 PM - May 18, 2018 2,192 1,409 people are talking about this Beck said his decision to finally support the President came after watching the “dishonest and corrupt” media mischaracterized Trump’s comments, in which he described MS-13 gang members as “animals,” on Thursday. “Media, if you can get me, Glenn Beck, to do...

Well, someone finally said it: Liberals, you’re not as smart as you think—and you’re helping Donald J. Trump win a second term. Gerard Alexander, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, wrote this in The New York Times and he might have to change his name after this. He aptly noted how a) cultural centers are dominated by progressives; b) how they’re causing a backlash against liberalism; and c) how their inability to see that they are causing it will lead to a Trump victory in the next presidential election. The professor noted how the Left is overly...

Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s communications adviser Jason Miller proclaimed that both Michigan and New Mexico were in play. In both states, Miller said, internal polls showed a “dead heat,” and he predicted that campaigning in both places would spike. In Michigan, of course, that prediction was borne out. Trump won the state by the skin of his teeth, 11,000 votes. In New Mexico, though, he got blown out, losing by eight percentage points. This story seems pertinent now because of another prediction by another Trump campaign staff member focused on a different election. According to Axios,...

Division in a political party can be a blessing or a curse. And sometimes, it can be both. In the Democratic Party's struggle to retake the House of Representatives in November 2018, division is a very good thing indeed. But whether it will remain so as the party tries to defeat President Trump's presumed bid for re-election in 2020 is another matter entirely. First, the good news for Dems: Less than six months out from the midterm elections, lack of consensus about the future direction of the party allows the Democrats to adapt to regional and ideological differences in the...

Cities across the country are turning down the opportunity to host the 2020 Republican National Convention, where President Trump is expected to be nominated for a second term. The cities that have rejected hosting duties insist Trump and today’s divisive politics are not factors in their decisions. They instead cite high security costs and disruptions in the normal flow of business and traffic. But Trump is almost certainly a factor in some cities’ decisions to opt out. “Most of the cities that have turned down the RNC are Democratic cities,” said Evan Siegfried, a New York-based Republican strategist. “Their leaders...

Nearly two years after the election of President Donald Trump, a comforting, yet dangerous, fantasy pervades liberal thought about the 2016 race: That Hillary Clinton not only could’ve won, had she made modestly different choices and that, by all rights, nearly any other Democrat could’ve beaten Trump. As New York Times reporter Amy Chozick (echoing numerous other pundits) describes it in her new book about the campaign, it should have been a cakewalk — the “most winnable” race ever This is a comforting thought for Democrats in the Trump era, because it means that, if they merely run a different...

Brad Thor, a bestselling author, said last week that he plans to challenge President Trump in 2020, "if no conservative steps up." Thor, a conservative who has voiced criticism of Trump, made the announcement in a series of Tweets. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, however, Thor has not filed to run for president.

Mansour asked Cruz, “Would you be supportive of President Trump if he ran for reelection in 2020?” Cruz replied, “I certainly assume so. I was supportive of and campaigned for President Trump in 2016, and I am very encouraged with the substantive policy victories we are getting, whether it is an historic tax cut bill, whether it is regulatory reform that’s unleashing jobs, whether it is repealing the Obamacare individual mandate — which I led the fight to do in the United States Senate — whether it is nominating and confirming strong constitutionalists to the courts. On all of those...

during a Tuesday interview with SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on Breitbart News Tonight. Mansour asked Cruz, “Would you be supportive of President Trump if he ran for reelection in 2020?” Cruz replied, “I certainly assume so. I was supportive of and campaigned for President Trump in 2016, and I am very encouraged with the substantive policy victories we are getting, whether it is an historic tax cut bill, whether it is regulatory reform that’s unleashing jobs, whether it is repealing the Obamacare individual mandate — which I led the fight to do in the United States Senate...

Out of the blocks early, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday vowed to support President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election bid. The show of solidarity from the South Carolina Republican comes as many other members of the GOP are waiting to weigh in on their party leader. Graham, who has butted heads with the president in the past and also faced him as a 2016 GOP presidential primary challenger, fired off two tweets stating his support for the sitting president. In the post, Graham tagged Trump, an active social media user, when he tweeted: "As to the 2020 presidential race, I...

ormer Republican Party Chairman and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus is already predicting that President Trump will win re-election. What’s more, he believes that none of the Democrats now scrambling for the nomination will get it. “My guess is that we don’t know who this candidate will be in 2020. If I had to guess, it’s someone none of us are thinking about,” he told students at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service Tuesday night. “The president is going to run again. It won’t be easy but unless the Democrats come up with something better that...

President Trump said Tuesday he will use the military to guard the border with Mexico against a “caravan” of illegal immigrants approaching the U.S. “We are going to be guarding our border with our military. That’s a big step,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

Twitter is hiding a tweet from the official Drudge Report account that features President Trump’s 2020 campaign slogan, “Keep America Great.” .@Twitter censors @realDonaldTrump’s 2020 campaign slogan as “sensitive material” ὄ @DRUDGE_REPORT @dcexaminer pic.twitter.com/suK0lgBeIb — Amanda House (@AmandaLeeHouse) March 11, 2018 When Twitter users navigate to the page of the Drudge Report with their “sensitive content” filter enabled, they are unable to see the Drudge Report’s full tweet. For new Twitter users, the “sensitive content” filter is enabled automatically and has to manually switched off. Instructions on how to do this can be found at the bottom of this piece....

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is retiring at the end of his term but he may not be giving up on politics altogether. The staunch critic of President Trump said Thursday during a speech at the National Press Club that he may take on the commander in chief in 2020. "It's not in my plan to run for president, but I am not ruling it out. Somebody needs to stand up for traditional Republicanism," Flake said. "Somebody needs to raise that, for nothing else than to give people hope that that decent party will be back. We'll get through this." He...

Billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel predicts that Donald Trump will get a second term in 2020. “I think that if he runs again, he will get re-elected,” Thiel said at an event hosted by the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. Thiel also expects that it’s “probably the case” that the Democrats will do “quite well” in the midterm elections this fall. “The question about 2020 is a much trickier one,” Thiel said. “It’s really one of — is there anything that was learned from Hillary Clinton’s defeat?” He added that he thinks there’s a “vague parallel”...

[ FULL TITLE ] [ Former Clinton Adviser Philippe Reines Reacts to Trump Rally: ‘I Understand Why He May Win Again in 2020’ ] Jesse Watters’ Fox News show reacted to President Donald Trump’s marathon rally in Pennsylvania Saturday night, and Philippe Reines — a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton — speculated about his 2020 chances. Reines first noted that he didn’t enjoy the speech — which was very reminiscent of Trump’s 2016 campaign speeches — as much as fellow panelist David Bossie (a former Trump staffer.) “I thought boy, does Donald Trump know how to keep an audience...