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David Keene

David Keene

keene123@washingtontimes.com

Editor at Large — David Keene, a trusted adviser to presidents, a longtime champion of personal liberty and one of conservatism’s most respected voices, is the former opinion editor of The Washington Times. An author, columnist and fixture on national television, Mr. Keene has championed conservative causes for more than five decades while offering advice to Republican presidents and countless candidates. He additionally served as chairman of the American Conservative Union and president of the National Rifle Association.
To read his obituary, please CLICK HERE

Columns by David Keene

National Guardsmen arrive at Barrio Obrero in Santurce to distribute water and food among those affected by the passage of Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2017. Puerto Rico's nonvoting representative in the U.S. Congress said Sunday that Hurricane Maria's destruction has set the island back decades, even as authorities worked to assess the extent of the damage. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

Puerto Rico recovery is addressed by Trump

They're hoping for "deja vu all over again," as Yogi Berra might have said. Liberals looking for a silver bullet to take down a president they can't stand are hoping they've found it in the administration's response to Hurricane Maria. After all, they found one in President George W. Bush's perceived bungling of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort in 2005 and used it to almost terminally undermine his popularity.

September 27, 2017
Democrat Thumb on the Scale Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Donald Trump gets trashed in biased surveys

How soon they forget. Heartened by a stream of poll data suggesting that the public is less than enamored with his performance as president, Donald Trump's critics who've been taken in by polls before seem to think they have the man on the ropes.

September 25, 2017
Duplicitous Durbin Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Democrats try to impose a ‘religious test’

The attempted Senate mugging of Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett by Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin was ugly and may have amounted to an attempt to impose an unconstitutional "religious test" on a judicial nominee seeking Senate confirmation, but said more about the muggers than their intended victim.

September 18, 2017

Making the best of a bad nuclear hand

That so many of the nation's leading Democrats believe President Trump poses a greater threat to world peace than the mad dog leader of a nuclearized North Korea says more about them than either the president or Kim Jong-un.

August 30, 2017
D.C. Isolated Under Glass Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

The unobstructed view from flyover country

As summer winds down, District-area schools are reopening and those who escaped the heat of Washington to vacation outside the Beltway are returning to their desks, one can only hope that the time they spent outside the D.C. bubble gave them some insight into the parochialism of thinking here.

August 29, 2017
Smoking Gun Flash Drive Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Russia hack of DNC will be proved to be untrue

California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's recent three-hour meeting with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange as reported earlier this week by The Hill may prove interesting in light of the allegations of several former high-ranking U.S. intelligence analysts that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked by the Russians or anyone else prior to last fall's presidential election.

August 20, 2017
Illustration on the challenge for Trump posed by North Korea by Nancy Ohanian/Tribune Content Agency

Donald Trump must deal with Obama’s nuclear accord

That so many of the nation's leading Democrats believe President Trump poses a greater threat to world peace than the mad dog leader of a nuclearized North Korea says more about them than either the president or Kim Jong-un.

August 14, 2017
Illustration on the deteriorating Venezuela situation by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Venezuela may collapse

As U.S. policymakers fret about Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and North Korea, far too little attention is being paid to the powder keg to the south of us that may be about to blow. Once-prosperous Venezuela has been coming apart for years, but the roundly condemned Constituent Assembly election engineered by presidential strongman Nicolas Maduro lit the fuse that could ignite a civil war in his country. With a Sunday attack by uniformed insurgents on a military base, the internecine battle may have already begun.

August 7, 2017
Illustration on foul language by the administration in the White House by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Donald Trump runs danger of following Nixon’s path

It was 1974. Richard Nixon was in the White House fighting for his political life and James L. Buckley, who had been elected to the Senate on the Conservative Party line in New York four years before was privately wondering whether he could in good conscience continue to support a president who he believed had betrayed his principles, the presidency and the nation. As the Watergate revelations built, Democrats were demanding the president's head, but most Republicans were still nervously defending their president.

July 31, 2017
In this July 17, 2016, file photo, then-Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort talks to reporters on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

Robert Mueller team shows history of crossing ethical lines

President Trump's advisers and defenders in trying to undermine former FBI Director Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump campaign's alleged pre-election "collusion" with Vladimir Putin's Russia are pointing out that Mr. Mueller and another former FBI director, James Comey, are longtime buddies.

July 25, 2017
Spiro Agnew in 1969 Associated Press photo

Media bias first uncovered by Spiro Agnew

On Nov. 13, 1969, Spiro T. Agnew walked to the podium in Des Moines, Iowa, to deliver perhaps the most famous speech ever by a U.S. vice president. It was, of course, the famous "Des Moines Speech" in which Mr. Agnew for the first time took on broadcast media commentators in a way that must make President Trump green with envy.

July 11, 2017
Illustration on the decline of the FBI by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

FBI cannot be trusted

Can anyone with a modicum of common sense trust the Federal Bureau of investigation? The answer to that question is a resounding "no." The claim that the FBI strives to be above politics is today and has always been absurd.

June 24, 2017
Illustration on vocational education for manufacture by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Apprenticeship programs will spur economy

My father was the president of the Rockford, Illinois Labor Council when I was a kid. He was a machinist at a time when Rockford and Cincinnati were the centers of the nation's machine tool industry. I remember that many of those working as machinists in Rockford back then were Hungarian refugees; skilled machinists who had fled after Soviet tanks had put down their attempt to topple their Communist government in 1956.

June 18, 2017
Illustration on resisting being goaded into a like reaction to attacks on the GOP by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Alexandria attack shows conservatives must not stoop to liberals’ level

Conservatives will be tempted in the days ahead to blame the left's over the top anti-Republican, anti-Trump rhetoric for the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and the others wounded in Alexandria on Wednesday. It will be tempting both because leftist leaders have thrown all decency aside as they vent against those with whom they disagree and because in the hours following the shootings Twitter was awash with messages emanating from the progressive fever swamps celebrating the shootings because Republicans "deserve" whatever they get.

June 15, 2017
Victor Gold The Washington Times

Victor Gold obituary

Victor Gold died quietly last week. His passing was both unexpected and uncharacteristic for in his 88 years no one who knew him or encountered him would have expected him to do anything quietly. Vic was one of a kind; to say that he was passionate about life, his beliefs, football; his friends and life in general hardly begins to describe the man.

June 8, 2017
Protesters from labor and other progressive groups fill the rotunda of the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on Wednesday, May 24, 2017, to demand that Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton veto the bills that passed before the Minnesota Legislature's special session bogged down earlier in the day. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)

Organized labor is in decline

My father was a toolmaker and union organizer who, for many years, headed the Rockford, Ill. Labor Council while my mother was serving five terms as head of the Women's Auxiliary of the United Auto Workers. Dad worked as a machinist and my mother as a waitress and clerk in a local jewelry store until my dad retired and joined a couple of buddies to buy a bar.

May 24, 2017
Illustration on the selection of the next director of the FBI by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Stephen Colbert got cheers for announcing Comey firing

CBS "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert, a major league anti-Trump media star, was taken aback when, upon hearing that FBI Director James Comey had been fired, his audience broke into cheers and wild applause.

May 15, 2017
Illustration on the Patriot Acts dangerous precedents by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

Extra security is a loss for liberty

It was 2001 not long after the twin towers had fallen and the nation's politicians were running scared. George W. Bush was in the White House and John Ashcroft was attorney general.

May 11, 2017
The War on Free Speech Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Campus free speech must be protected

The traditional belief that free speech and unfettered debate underpin a free society is wounded and dying among many in this country. This is particularly true among the students and faculties at the nation's elite colleges and universities and within the ranks of the leftist "progressives" who dominate today's Democratic Party.

May 8, 2017
Illustration on the liberal/media underestimation of President Donald Trump by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Donald Trump still underestimated at 100 days in

Last week has to be counted as President Trump's best since his election and inauguration. It was a week that should have shocked his detractors who have been assuming as a matter of faith that whatever momentary fit of public madness catapulted him into the Oval Office has passed.

May 1, 2017