Stephen F. Hayes
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and author of two New York Times bestsellers: Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President and The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. He is a regular Fox All Stars panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier.
Before joining The Weekly Standard, Hayes was a senior writer for National Journal's Hotline. He also served for six years as Director of the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University. His work has appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, Salon, National Review, and Reason. He has been a commentator on CNN, The McLaughlin Group, the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, and C-SPAN.
A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and DePauw University, Hayes was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.
Stories by Stephen F. Hayes
Is Reince Ready to Jump Off the Trump Train?
The RNC chairman has been privately critical of Trump for a long time.
12:21 PM, Aug 03, 2016
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been increasingly alarmed by the erratic behavior of the party's presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and has communicated his concerns to Trump campaign leadership in a series of tense conversations over the past two weeks, according to sources familiar with the back and forth. The New York Times reported Tuesday that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is "furious" that Donald Trump is refusing to endorse Paul Ryan, a close friend and longtime p Read more
Trump's Pivot to Normality Isn't Coming
Here's a list of his lies and unfair attacks since accepting the GOP nomination.
6:31 AM, Aug 01, 2016
As the 2016 Republican National Convention began, GOP chairman Reince Priebus spoke with confidence about the coming transformation of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. "He knows the pivot is important," Priebus said. "He has been better and I think he's going to be great moving forward." Priebus was hardly alone. Republican leaders have been saying the same thing for months now, elevating hope over reality as they pretend that Trump might suddenly become rational and responsible, curious and co Read more
The Truth About Interrogation
The enhanced techniques work.
Nov 24, 2014
The Central Intelligence Agency repeatedly tortured suspected terrorists, regularly lied about it to Congress and the White House, and, for all the pain and trouble this caused the agency and the United States, didn’t end up extracting a single piece of valuable information not readily available by other means. That, at least, is the conclusion of the forthcoming Feinstein report, a long and, in certain quarters, much-anticipated review of the CIA’s detainee and interrogation programs during the Read more
Trump's New Motto: America Second?
The GOP nominee encourages foreign interference in an American election.
2:41 PM, Jul 27, 2016
Philadelphia America second. Donald Trump, Republican nominee for president, running on protecting American sovereignty and putting "America First", called Wednesday for a foreign power to intervene in the U.S. presidential election with the hope of damaging his opponent. The extraordinary comments set Trump campaign and Republican Party staffers scrambling behind the scenes to devise an explanation and prompted Trump's running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, to release a statement distancing Read more
Trump's Curious Habit of Denigrating Fellow Republicans
He'd fit right in at the Democratic convention.
8:39 AM, Jul 27, 2016
Philadelphia Donald Trump, who last week accepted the presidential nomination of the Republican party, suggested in an interview Tuesday with Bill O'Reilly that Republicans don't like to help people. Trump made the claim during a discussion of the minimum wage, in which he said he'd both maintain the minimum wage and would raise it to $10 per hour. Trump, on the federal minimum wage: "I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people. And I know it's not very Republican to say, but Read more
Donald Trump Is Crazy, and So Is the GOP for Embracing Him
The Republican nominee opens his mouth and removes all doubt.
11:41 PM, Jul 22, 2016
Cleveland Yes, Donald Trump is crazy. And, yes, the Republican party owns his insanity. Fewer than twelve hours after Republicans rallied in support of his nomination for the presidency, Trump once again implied that Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz’s father, was involved in the JFK assassination. At a press availability during an event to thank campaign volunteers Friday morning, Trump revived suggestions that the elder Cruz was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's assassin, and that they two were Read more
Al Qaeda in Iran
Aug 01, 2016
Last week, President Barack Obama’s administration dismissed reports of Iranian support for al Qaeda as the product of fevered minds. Claims of collaboration between the Islamic regime and the terrorist organization are little more than "baseless conspiracy theories," an Obama administration official told The Weekly Standard. "Anyone who thinks Iran was or is in bed with al Qaeda doesn't know much about either." That group of ignoramuses apparently includes the Obama administration's top officia Read more
Cruz Makes a Principled, Righteous Gamble
A stand for constitutional conservatism in the age of Trump.
8:16 AM, Jul 21, 2016
Cleveland In a moment that perfectly captures the insanity of the 2016 Republican contest and exposes the deep rot of modern American politics, Ted Cruz was booed by Republican delegates and criticized by political analysts for refusing to endorse Donald Trump, a man who had mocked the looks of his wife and repeatedly suggested his father had helped Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Twenty-three minutes on the third night of the 2016 Republican National Convention re Read more
Farce or Debacle? Day One At the Republican Convention
The Trump show should be going better than it is.
9:18 AM, Jul 19, 2016
Cleveland This ought to be Donald Trump's strength. A modern political convention is a show—a glitzy, four-day party thrown by the nominee to elevate his brand and celebrate his greatness. Even his critics would have to concede: Nobody puts on a show and nobody celebrates himself quite as well as Donald Trump. And yet the opening of the Republican convention being held to nominate him was, depending on your view, either a farce or a debacle. One major objective of the gathering here is to attemp Read more
In Cleveland, Mike Lee Ponders Conservatism's Future With or Without the GOP
Plus, if the GOP is Van Halen, who is Sammy Hagar?
2:10 PM, Jul 18, 2016
Cleveland In his short time in the U.S. Senate, Utah Republican Mike Lee has distinguished himself as a policy innovator and a constitutional conservative who actually knows the Constitution. He has written two books, given a series of speeches outlining a substantive conservative policy agenda, and, last week, pushed the Republican National Committee to adopt reforms that would empower the conservative grassroots. He is widely recognized as one of the intellectual leaders of his party, and of C Read more
Top Intel Official: Al Qaeda Worked on WMD in Iran
New evidence of the bin Laden-Iran connection.
10:47 PM, Jul 12, 2016
Al Qaeda operatives based in Iran worked on chemical and biological weapons, according to a letter written to Osama bin Laden that is described in a new book by a top former U.S. intelligence official. The letter was captured by a U.S. military sensitive site exploitation team during the raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad headquarters in May 2011. It is described in Field of Fight , out Tuesday from Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Michael Led Read more
Towards a Republican Party Platform of Principle
11:58 AM, Jul 11, 2016
In Cleveland Monday morning, Boyd Matheson, the former chief of staff to Utah senator Mike Lee, made an interesting pitch to Republicans on the party's platform committee: a shorter, more meaningful GOP platform. Rather than a party platform that takes up tens of thousands of words and attempts to settle nearly every policy dispute that Republicans might have, Matheson proposed a shorter platform and one focused on core principles. Abraham Lincoln's 1860 platform was just 1200 words—a succinct b Read more
Trump Is Clueless on Saddam and Terror
The Donald's opinion vs. Iraqi regime documents.
11:48 AM, Jul 06, 2016
Donald Trump praised Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for his handling of terrorists at a Tuesday campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Right? He was a bad guy, really bad guy," Trump said. "But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights—they didn't talk, they were a terrorist, it was over." Trump has made similar claims in the past. And on this, as with so many other things, Trump is…confused. It's wort Read more
Trump Says GOP Rivals Who Break Pledge Should be Barred From Seeking Office
After saying he would break the exact same pledge.
5:41 PM, Jun 30, 2016
It's two weeks from the start of the GOP convention in Cleveland, a time in which a traditional party nominee would be consolidating his base of support and seeking to broaden his appeal. So, what's Donald Trump doing? Attacking the GOP-friendly Chamber of Commerce; boasting about the "unbelievable" support he's getting from women which he says is now "up to 32 or 33" percent; and literally calling for any former rivals who refuse to endorse him to be barred from elective office. Some of that is Read more
Obama Did Not Ask for an Intel Brief the Day After the Benghazi Attack
And other revelations from the House Select Committee's report.
5:05 AM, Jun 28, 2016
Among the many revelations that will emerge from the voluminous majority report of the Benghazi Select Committee when it is released Tuesday is this one: Barack Obama skipped his daily intelligence briefing one day after the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012. The president's briefer handed a written copy of the presidential daily briefing to a White House usher and then briefed Jack Lew, who was then serving as White House chief of staff. But Obama, who sometimes avails himself of the oral Read more
The Benghazi Lie in Black and White
The administration's public and private timelines of what happened are very different.
5:00 AM, Jun 28, 2016
The final majority report of the Benghazi Select Committee is set to be released later Tuesday morning. Representatives Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo have signed onto the official majority document and authored a supplemental, 51-page "additional views" report of their own. Among the most interesting aspects of their "additional views" is a timeline that contrasts the story top Obama administration officials were telling in public with the very different story some of those same officials were shar Read more
An al Qaeda Veteran Released From Gitmo Has Gone Missing
The result of the Obama administration's lowest moment.
8:22 PM, Jun 26, 2016
A veteran al Qaeda fighter, and an expert in document forgery who has decades of experience helping jihadists travel internationally without detection, has gone missing after being released from the detention facility at Guantanamo. The Obama administration released the former detainee, Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, in December 2014 to Uruguay, despite the fact that U.S. military and intelligence professionals had declared him a “high risk" detainee—one who was likely to return to terrorism if fre Read more
Ignoring Reality
Jul 04, 2016
At 2:35 a.m. on June 12, Omar Mateen called 911 from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. For 30 minutes he'd been on a killing rampage and he wanted the world to know why. He spoke for less than a minute. "In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent," he began. "Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God." And then he announced: "I wanna let you know, I'm in Orlando and I did the shootings." The dispatcher asked for his name. "My name is—I pledge of allegi Read more
NYTimes Blames Republicans, Not Radical Islam, for Orlando Terror Attack
Seriously.
4:04 PM, Jun 15, 2016
In an editorial embarrassing even by the low standards by which the New York Times editorial page ought to be judged, the editorialists at the paper argue this morning that the real blame for Omar Mateen's massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando lies with…America and Republican politicians. Seriously. Under the headline, "The Corrosive Politics that Threaten LGBT Americans" , the Times laments GOP opposition to gay marriage, "odious" Republicans' efforts to keep transgendered Americans from using Read more
The Man's Not for Changing
Jun 20, 2016
In the aftermath of Donald Trump's bigoted attacks on a federal district judge, one Republican leader after another last week condemned the candidate's remarks and then publicly declared their hope that Trump will change. Senator Bob Corker said Trump has two or three weeks to get his campaign on track: "This is a time for him to pivot and, by the way, I want to encourage that." Senator John Thune said Trump is "going to have to adapt." Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, in an interview on Read more
Trump's Race Problem Is Now the GOP's
5:11 PM, Jun 07, 2016
Donald J. Trump is making "indefensible" and "inexcusable" and "racist" arguments that are "offensive" and "un-American." He must be elected president of the United States. This is the current position of many leaders of the Republican Party. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made that case explicitly in an interview on Fox Business Network Tuesday. "Well, he uttered a series of outrageous and unacceptable statements over the last week, and I addressed them at various points during the week Read more
Runaway Train
May 30, 2016
Yes, it’s a con. In the three weeks since Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee the remains of modern American conservatism have decayed at an alarming rate. Three months ago, most GOP officeholders and conservative opinion leaders understood Trump to be an ignoramus and a boor, a vain reality-television star and a longtime donor to Democrats who had built his candidacy on the kind of progressive populism most of them had spent their careers fighting. Today, many of those same R Read more
President Impervious
Nov 17, 2014
At the end of his opening statement at the traditional postelection presidential press conference, Barack Obama offered this assurance: “I continue to believe we are simply more than just a collection of red and blue states,” he said. “We are the United States.” Those words were a deliberate echo of the memorable keynote address he delivered a decade ago at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. They were powerful then because his passionate delivery suggested he deeply believed them, and beca Read more
Trump's Revealing Interview With Bret Baier
4:09 PM, May 06, 2016
On Thursday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump sat down with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a wide-ranging interview. Baier asked many questions, Trump gave some answers. The entire interview is revealing, in much the way Trump's session with the Washington Post editorial board was revealing. Watch it here: Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com I'd like to highlight two notable exchanges – one on campaign politics and process and the other on substance. Baier asked Trump about hi Read more
Our National Dumpster Fire
May 16, 2016
It was almost as if Donald Trump wanted to give Republican voters one last look at what they would be getting if they chose to nominate him as the head of their party—as if he wanted to show officeholders who would endorse him exactly what they'd have to explain and rationalize over the next six months, wanted to remind conservatives that he doesn't share their worldview and is willing to advance the policies of the radical left if it'll help him win, and wanted to make clear to his boosters in Read more
Donald Trump, Policy Wonk?
Prepare for a huge debacle.
Apr 18, 2016
After several particularly tumultuous weeks in Donald Trump’s always turbulent presidential campaign—a stretch that included a humiliating loss in a key state and credible reports that his campaign is in "disarray"—Trump's paid advisers and his many media boosters seem to agree on the best bet to bring order out of chaos. It's time to get serious. Get ready, they suggest, for Donald Trump, policy wonk. Two days before the Wisconsin primary on April 5, a confident Donald Trump suggested he might Read more
Donald the Menace
Apr 11, 2016
When we last checked in on Donald Trump’s campaign it was still a rolling embarrassment—a near-daily parade of pettiness, ignorance, and farce that was nonetheless en route to an ever-increasing delegate lead. Trump had held an unusual QVC-style postelection press conference in which he displayed phony "Trump products" in order to pretend that his failed businesses hadn't failed; he'd announced that he would serve as his own primary adviser on foreign policy "because I have a very good brain and Read more
When the Time Bomb Doesn't Tick
4:11 PM, Mar 23, 2016
In 2014, a former senior interrogator with the CIA's High Value Detainee interrogation program drafted an article on "the ticking time bomb scenario" and interrogating terrorists. The article was approved by the CIA's Publication Review Board but given the time that lapsed in getting approval, it was never published. The events in Brussels this week make the subject matter highly relevant and we believe the article makes an important contribution to the critical international debate about securi Read more
Believing the Unbelievable
Mar 28, 2016
Here’s the new line from Donald Trump's cheerleaders in the conservative media: A refusal to support Trump is a de facto endorsement of Hillary Clinton. It's an argument they're making out of necessity, not conviction, trying to use peer pressure to achieve the unanimity their previous exhortations failed to produce. First, they asked us to believe Trump was a conservative. But that argument couldn't survive a cursory look at his background, and it falls apart further with nearly every policy pr Read more
