Free Republic

Newly obtained documents indicate that then-outgoing President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and their administration sought to hamper the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump in significant ways. According to The Daily Signal, which obtained the documents via a Freedom of Information Act request made to the National Security Agency (NSA) two years ago, “show how much the D.C. elites feared” Trump, the Western Journal reported. “In the 217 redacted pages, we see the coalescing of the effort to smear the incoming president as a Russian agent,” the outlet noted further. According to The Daily Signal: “The documents reveal...

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio told a Washington jury on Monday (Apr 3) that Malaysian financier Jho Low revealed his plans to donate up to US$30 million to help US President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection campaign in what prosecutors allege was part of an illegal foreign influence operation. "It was a casual conversation about what party he was in support of," DiCaprio said, telling jurors that Low said he planned on giving "a significant donation" to the Democratic Party that was "somewhere to the tune of US$20-30 million." SNIP The Titanic star took the witness stand in the trial of Prakazrel "Pras"...

Let's begin with the obvious: Ukraine is toast. There is little or no chance that the country will be able to endure, given Russian military superiority. Thus, the Western “strategy,” such as it was, to tempt Ukraine progressively closer to NATO and the EU, all while shielding Ukraine against potential Russian aggression with (mostly idle) threats of “severe economic sanctions,” has failed, and spectacularly so! The key question now is: what penalty will Russia pay for its impertinence, as the West sees it? And how long will it pay? Will sanctions be mild or severe? Will they last weeks, months,...

One week ago today, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion in the government’s criminal case against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. That motion, in requesting the court obtain Sussmann’s waiver of any conflicts of interest held by his lawyers on the record, provided in excruciating detail the factual basis for the purported conflicts. In doing so, it revealed that “enemies of Donald Trump surveilled the internet traffic at Trump Tower, at his New York City apartment building, and later at the executive office of the president of the United States, then fed disinformation about that traffic to...

When President Donald Trump, in October 2019, ordered a successful takedown of top Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Democrats and even the anti-Trump media celebrated the death of the terror leader. But top leaders of the Democratic party still chastised Trump for failing to notify top congressional Democrats of the impending strike. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement: "The House must be briefed on this raid, which the Russians but not top congressional leadership were notified of in advance, and on the administration's overall strategy in the region. Our military and allies deserve strong,...

At a critical point in the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan had enough and cleaned house of his senior political advisors including campaign manager John Sears. One staffer would later recall, “Ronald Reagan would not have come so close in 1976 had he not hired John Sears; and Ronald Reagan would not have won the GOP nomination had he not fired John Sears in 1980.” As it does on so many occasions, history repeats itself. Like Reagan before him, Donald Trump now must clean house if he hopes to make a serious political comeback. Trump’s 2016 win was mostly of his...

There are two gargantuan foreign policy misconceptions in the mainstream media today. The first is that former President Donald Trump was an isolationist, a throw-back to the pre-President Dwight Eisenhower days of Sen. Robert Taft when Republicans believed they could establish a fortress America and blithely let the world go to hell. The second is that President Joe Biden represents a return to the status quo of American foreign policy, with the commander-in-chief making responsible decisions about global matters that reassure our allies and resonate with our adversaries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump was not an isolationist....

The Republican Party is on the cusp of a historic victory in November, provided they don’t give into what is far too often their instinct: self-destruction. No political party ever has been so adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Still, Republicans have all the advantages anyone could imagine – a wildly unpopular president of the other party serving as an anchor on every Democrat up for reelection, an agenda disconnected from the needs, wants, or desires of the general public, and an economy to make Jimmy Carter’s record look desirable. All they have to do is avoid...

Once, during a meeting with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump inside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, we discussed energy policy. I told Trump that if we went all out to produce America's abundant supply of oil, gas and coal, the United States could be energy independent in four years. Trump looked at me from behind his desk and shook his head. "I don't want America to be energy independent. I want America to be energy dominant." There are few issues where Trump and resident Joe Biden have differed more broadly on policy than on energy production. Trump went...

President Trump recently announced plans to launch his own social media platform called “TRUTH Social.” This puts an end to speculation that the former president would launch a social media site or some other digital platform to reach his base. The new platform made a big splash during its announcement, with only invited guests allowed as part of the soft launch. While some are quick to point to the seeming hypocrisy of TRUTH Social’s terms and conditions, the launch of this platform could be a positive development for internet regulations. President Trump’s high profile expulsion from large social media platforms...

This week, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released a poll surveying Americans' feelings about their political opponents. According to the poll, 80% of Biden voters and 84% of Trump voters believed that elected officials of the opposite party present a "clear and present danger to American democracy"; 78% of Biden voters believed that the Republican Party wanted to eliminate the influence of "progressive values" in American life, while 87% of Trump voters believed that the Democrats wanted to eliminate "traditional values"; 75% of Biden voters and 78% of Trump voters believed that the opposing party's supporters were a...

"First you win the argument, then you win the vote." That advice from Margaret Thatcher has been ignored by resident Joe Biden and Democratic Party leaders to their detriment. Democrats, aided by former President Donald Trump's denigration of Georgia's electoral system, which gifted them the state's two Senate seats, were gifted by voters with the narrowest of legislative majorities: 51 to 50 in the Senate and 220 to 212 (with three current vacancies) in the House. Biden himself won the crucial three swing states by just 42,918 popular votes. Incautiously, Democrats plunged into policymaking without making anything like cognizable policy...

It's the biggest political hoax since Titus Oates's allegations of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate King Charles II in 1678. Oates's charge of a Jesuit conspiracy swept through London and led to the execution of four innocent men before Oates was proved a fraud. The full consequences of the great political hoax of our time – the charge that former President Donald Trump was colluding with Russia – are not yet fully apparent. Yet they are surely serious. We have heard from many Democrats and those in media that Trump's claims that he actually won the 2020 presidential election tend...

There’s an appetite to deregulate suppressors and make the process to obtain them easier. What explains this push, and why now? Why didn’t Republicans pull the trigger when they controlled all branches of government during the 114th Congress? Passing legislation under a Democratic-controlled Congress, even with slim majorities, is unlikely. And don’t count on President Biden, a gun rights foe, to sign any bill into law. While efforts may not succeed today, the future of suppressor deregulation isn’t out of sight yet. The Industry SpeaksThe push for suppressor deregulation isn’t new. It’s always been a top priority for the firearms...

The Federal Election Commission recently rejected a claim by the Republican National Committee and ruled that Twitter didn't violate campaign finance laws when it prevented users from sharing New York Post articles on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. The New York Times falsely claimed it was "unsubstantiated." Liberal outlets often try to ignore conservative journalism, refusing to recognize facts and substance that they fear are damaging to Democrats. The closer the election gets, the more hypersensitive their censoring instincts become. They repeated Democrat claims of "Russian misinformation" and moved on. This never happens to Bob Woodward, the...

resident Joe Biden was right in his speech to the nation about our withdrawal from Afghanistan, that a long legacy of American involvement there preceded him. But across the board, in domestic as well as foreign policy, any new president inherits realities that precede him. The issue confronting every president is what principles and policies will he put in place to deal with these existing realities that will define his administration. Most clear now is that America's withdrawal from Afghanistan is surrounded by a perception of confusion, weakness and humiliation. For anyone who believes that our nation should be a...

To many in America, the West coast and the East coast seem to be the only regions that matter. There’s California, New York and Washington, DC. Why bother with flyover America? But as I traveled across America, I realized that it is flyover country that truly makes America great and provides its solid ground of values and patriotism. When my son accepted a call to Edenton First Baptist Church in Southwestern Ohio, we had to use Google to find it. Edenton doesn’t have any businesses, just a few homes, Stonelick Lake, and my son’s church. Just weeks before, there was...

So, a criminal with a warrant who resists arrest meets up with an incompetent government employee who can’t tell a Glock from a taser, then there are Democrat riots, and what’s the result? You must be disarmed. If you’re looking for logical logic, keep on looking. If you understand the logic of power, you came to the right place. Facts don’t matter. Evidence is racist. 2+2=4 means you’re a transphobe. This is about power, people. Their power over you. Understand that you can’t reason your way out of this. We’re not going to explain to our enemies why it’s inefficient,...

Political hell broke loose when America learned, just as the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah was about to commence, that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- a decades-long liberal lion of the Supreme Court and erstwhile feminist trailblazer -- had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. In a presidential election year already marked by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic unleashed upon the world by a geopolitical archfoe, a once-in-a-lifetime pansocietal conversation about race, and unprecedented political rancor fanning the flames of a grieving nation's cold civil war, the passing of "RBG" has upended anew the battle lines for November. Within hours of Ginsburg's passing, Senate...

The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic will be debated, analyzed, and investigated for decades. It’s also unlikely the critique of President Trump and his administration is fair, given the already highly politicized coverage in most media outlets. Congress is getting into the action too by starting to call upon administration officials to testify and requesting documents and reports relating to the federal government’s efforts to combat the deadly virus. This effort appears to be an attempt to win political points for the Democrats leading up to the election. There are many unintended consequences of partisan fishing expeditions, but...