Mike Huckabee

Michelle Obama is in the news again.

It doesn't surprise us --- one of my writers has said for two years that the former First Lady would be on the ticket for 2020 --- but Michelle O is starting to take a higher profile now that doubts are being expressed more publicly about Joe Biden’s mental decline. We know that even if he makes it across the finish line to Election Day and (shudder) wins, the new VP will be taking his place soon in the Oval Office. Biden won’t be able to find the Oval Office, or tell an oval from a rectangle.

Putting Michelle –- or someone, but probably her –- in at the last minute was likely the plan all along. She’s black, she’s female, she's famous, there won't be much time to take a hard look, and for many Democrats and possibly independents, she puts an appealing and, yes, moderate face on the increasingly radical Democrat Party, a friendly image that they very badly need now. She’s been voted the Most Admired Woman in America, and even Most Admired worldwide! But Michelle Obama is NOT in the mainstream.

Watch, though, how she can take a leftist goal like income redistribution and skillfully finesse it to make it seem downright middle-of-the-road. Wednesday, in her new podcast (yes, she has a new podcast), she did just that in a conversation with Michele Norris. She called coronavirus an opportunity to think about “how wealth is distributed” to lower-income essential workers.

Read the transcript, and you’ll see how she lays the groundwork for “thinking” about wealth in a different way. “...We have to think about that [being essential],” she says, “in terms of how wealth is distributed.” As she goes on about this, it sounds so reasonable, so thoughtful, so compassionate, until you realize that the solution to this, in the mind of anyone on the left, will be a monstrous government program involving large-scale bureaucratically-calibrated income redistribution, with more pages of regulations than in Obamacare (which is a good real-world example of what I’m talking about).

Michelle even helps us understand why nothing in the budget is ever cut. “...All the things that we look to cut were put in place in response to some crisis.” I see. That’s why, once we have a government program, we can NEVER cut it. The crisis never goes away, so we always have to keep it as-is (or bigger).

More: “...We actually have power; we can...change so much of what we do, we can sacrifice a little more...we can shift priorities, and not just in our own lives, ‘cause IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST DO IT IN YOUR OWN LIFE IF YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO DO IT IN OUR BROADER POLICY.” (Emphasis mine.) In other words, out of compassion, we have to force everyone to do what we would have them do. This kind of thinking can be used to rationalize all kinds of control and taken to tremendous lengths. Goodbye freedom.

"It’s in our country’s DNA to step up,” she says. But she warns that this is “always with great opposition, because you’re asking people to sacrifice, to give up things that, that they think they deserve, that they’re entitled to, for the sake of the greater good.”

See how she subtly suggests that the “opposition” is against personal sacrifice and the greater good? Why, some people are just selfish, that’s what they are, thinking they deserve things. We’ll decide who deserves things! And to do that, we’ll have to force everyone into a “broader policy.”

Beware. Someone with this kind of skill, teamed with the more pushy radicals like AOC and "the Squad," could take control of just about everything in your life. Trump 2020!

Mike Huckabee

Some Presidential endorsements are starting to come in, and they practically tell the story of this epic contest all by themselves. Police unions that normally back Democrats are lining up for Trump. The American Postal Workers’ Union’s national executive board voted to endorse Biden, which should really fill you with confidence in the trustworthiness of mail-in ballots. And most impressive of all, Joe Biden just picked up the coveted endorsement of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA.

Party leader Bob Avakian says Biden and the Democrats are still “representatives and instruments of this exploitative, oppressive, and literally murderous system of capitalism-imperialism,” but communists must vote for Biden because it’s imperative to remove the “Trump/Pence regime.” Or maybe he looked at a list of Joe’s campaign advisors and realized it contained a treasure trove of “useful idiots.”

Well, I think that should tell you who to vote for. In fact, since Democrats claimed to be so outraged over a false claim that Trump was a puppet of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, I assume they’ll now want to put their anti-communist concerns to good work by voting to reelect him instead of the candidate openly endorsed by the head Communist Revolutionary.

Mike Huckabee

Here’s an important education story that I can’t find anywhere in the mainstream media:

Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul introduced the SCHOOL (Support Children Having Open Opportunities for Learning) Act. Since teachers’ unions are refusing to let schools reopen but expect taxpayers to keep funding them anyway, Paul’s bill would reallocate federal education funds directly to parents. Parents would get their own tax money back to use to educate their children however they see fit, whether in public schools, private schools or for supplies, tutoring and other expenses of home-schooling.

This is such a great idea that the media will surely try to bury it, as will Democrats, who depend heavily on teachers’ unions to get them reelected. I’m sure it will be assailed, just as school choice and vouchers are, as an assault on our sacred public school system.

Sorry, but I’ve studied theology, and I see nothing sacred about any governmental “system.” I think the public school system is a great and noble idea, and I have nothing but respect for the many dedicated teachers who are a part of it and who give their all (and sometimes spend their own paychecks on supplies the schools won’t provide.)

But the devil’s bargain between the union leaders and the Democratic Party has perverted that system. Our sole focus should be on how to provide the most effective learning experience for every student. Instead, we see failing schools kept open, students forced into them at detriment to their futures, political indoctrination substituted for real history and civics, and incompetent teachers protected, as if their job security were more important than our children’s futures. Just as with any other government system, I support the public school system as long as it works. When it starts doing more harm than good, then like a broken-down car, you either need to fix the problems or trade it in on something new that will get you where you need to go.

Mike Huckabee

If you’ve read my newsletter for a while, you won’t be surprised that I put the term “fact-checkers” in quotes. That’s because many “fact-checkers” these days don’t check facts so much as reinforce leftist opinions by citing biased sources to brand anyone who disagrees with them as being misinformed or a liar. We know this because what we do is check actual facts. For instance, if a story claims that a prominent person said something outrageous, we track down the original quote in context, in its entirety. Sometimes, that means we correct or don’t use a story from a conservative news source. But most often, it means we correct a liberal news source. Or sometimes, a so-called “fact-checker.”

The bias of “fact-checkers” is something that many conservatives have come to hold as conventional wisdom, but now, Sharyl Attkisson of Real Clear Investigations has taken a deep dive into their backgrounds and dug up solid evidence that all those assurances of non-partisan objectivity are anything but factual.

The study confirmed that media “fact-checkers” (surprise!) lean left. The claim of objective fact-checking is largely “illusory” and amounts to a “circular feedback loop of verification” in which “like-minded journalists or often Silicon Valley gatekeepers” rely on a small group of partisan news sources and political activists to control narratives and shape and censor information. One obvious example: for monitoring media bias, the far-left activist group Media Matters is treated as a trustworthy, reliable source for “fact-checkers” such as NewsGuard, while the conservative Media Research Center is ignored.

Facebook uses the World Health Organization as a source to fight “disinformation” about the coronavirus, even though we know the WHO has engaged in multiple incidents of spreading misinformation itself. Facebook also claims that members of its new oversight board “were chosen for their expertise and diversity” and “must not have actual or perceived conflicts of interest that could compromise their independent judgment and decision-making.” Yet 18 of the 20 have ties to George Soros’ far-left Open Society Foundations, while none have taken conservative stances on any controversial issue.

Google’s “fact-checking” group First Draft was not only started by the extremely liberal parent company, but it’s also supported by liberal nonprofits, including the Soros groups, and it routinely cites biased news sources to discredit non-leftist views. Its digital director frequently tweets and retweets “anti-American rhetoric and progressive positions.” First Draft even referred readers to an article that pushed the false claim that President Trump encouraged people literally to drink bleach.

This study simply confirms what anyone who’s been paying attention already knows: a great deal of today’s so-called “fact-checking” is just leftist advocacy in camouflage. This is why we have to spend so much time here fact-checking the “fact-checkers.”

Mike Huckabee

From James (with slight editing):

The only bad thing about President Trump's [agenda] is that the Democrats keep finding ways to...lie about it to the nation...They don't ‘mislead’ the people of this country –- they create intentional falsehoods and present them as fact. Then, if someone is foolish enough to repudiate their lies, that individual is destroyed in public, shamed, and labeled as a vile character.

Sir, I understand that you and some on FOX News present the truth in his defense, but how are we to combat this constant barrage of lies? Sometimes I lose hope. And people I have known for years have begun to spew this unsubstantiated drivel as gospel. When I ask them for corroboration, they look at me like I'm a fool and shake their heads and refer me to the nightly news. I might quote you or Fox News in response, and they laugh, because "everybody" knows those are not reliable sources.

...How can an individual battle a horde of sanctimonious [media] mouthpieces for a radical, insidious faction bent on usurping our rights?

Maybe I am asking too much of you, but I know you have many contacts who could help us in this quest. Will you reach out to them, bring their voices to the rescue, and lift our spirits before this most integral election of the age?

We hear too many voices from the Left. It is time for us to start hearing a barrage of voices from the Right, to reinforce our belief in a just cause. Without a chorus, the voice of "Truth" will be lost under the clatter and mumbling from the balcony.

From the Gov:

You voice the frustration and worry of millions of Americans. It often feels as though WE’RE the ones stuck in the balcony, high up in the nosebleed seats, while the leftist narrative takes center stage and the prime orchestra seating as well. Our message gets crushed. What to do?

First, some historical perspective. The left has always done this. I’m old enough to barely remember the infamous LBJ anti-Goldwater campaign ad with the little girl playing with a daisy as the atomic bomb goes off, painting Goldwater as a warmonger. That ad was largely credited for Goldwater’s spectacular loss, and Lyndon Johnson, ironically, went on to dramatically escalate the Vietnam War.

The lies intensified when Reagan got into office. And the left has never stopped with the outrageous whoppers, whether it’s a paid ad showing “Paul Ryan” literally throwing a wheelchair-bound granny over a cliff --- in case you didn’t see this, I am not exaggerating --- or the media right now trying to make us fear Trump will refuse to leave office if he loses. They never, never stop lying. And now they use so-called “fact-checkers,” who are themselves typically anti-Trump, to try to make it look as if WE are lying.

I’m sure the worst part of this is seeing people you know buying into the lies and becoming “pod people." They mindlessly tar FOX News as “faux news” when FNC, aside from clearly-designated opinion shows, has been shown statistically to be far more balanced than the major left-leaning outlets. If you’ve suffered through segments with certain DNC-connected FOX News contributors, you know FOX isn't all that conservative. But people have been trained --- yes, trained --- to automatically discount anything from FOX News.

It’s gotten so bad, we can’t let the left get away with it any longer. This is no time to be “shamed” or intimidated into silence. Some tips: Be sure you have the facts on your side when you make a point, and then if someone says you’re wrong, calmly tell them why you’re not.

Be polite, but don’t back down even if someone calls you names, even “racist.” Just tell them: they have no more right to their judgment calls than you do to yours. Name-calling is a pathetic way of saying they have nothing else. Also, you don’t have to stay on the defensive; put it on them to back up what they say.

As for me, believe me, I do what I can. And tell your “pod” friends that they may disagree with the opinions expressed on MikeHuckabee.com, but I doubt anyone has a better record than we do on getting facts right. They should try reading it. They might not like our conclusions, but they can’t say our information is incorrect. Come to think of it, this recent piece in which we answered the accusations of a leftist reader might help you talk to the “pods.”

Finally, you say you want your spirit lifted? Well, let me tell you that I believe conservatism is quietly making headway right now, largely because the far-left, after gaining control of the Democrat Party, has finally shown itself to be what it is, which is to say full-out, batwing crazy communist. Also, millions won’t talk about this, but they are dismayed by the new fanatical religion of anti-“racism” and will not stand for being labeled as racist by people who are themselves obsessed with race. If that weren’t enough, they’ve seen how leftists run cities --- into the ground. They SEE the shocking destruction and anarchy and want it stopped.

They will turn out in force on Election Day. Of course, we can take nothing for granted and must make it an INCONTESTABLE LANDSLIDE to make up for whatever voter fraud there is, and there may be a lot this time. So tell everyone you know who’s not a leftist “pod” person how important it is to vote to keep the crazies from running (ruining) America. And vote in person!

Mike Huckabee

Imagine if President Trump had written an op-ed or gone on TV with a message to those who might be subpoenaed by, say, Adam Schiff or Jerrold Nadler: REFUSE TO COOPERATE.

Can you even imagine the fevered cries of “Obstruction!!”? Of course, in the chess game that was the phony “Trump/Russia” investigation, they managed to set it up so that virtually anything Trump said or did, even it it was well within his authority as President, could be viewed as obstruction of justice.

But Andrew Weissmann, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s infamous “pit bull” whose specialty is withholding exculpatory evidence, has quite arguably obstructed justice himself. Here’s the story from Daniel Chaitin in THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER.

In an op-ed in THE NEW YORK TIMES (where else?), he and co-author Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel, urged Justice Department officials to consider not cooperating with two investigations being overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr. There’s the wide-ranging John Durham investigation, and also the John Bash investigation into all that unmasking of American citizens. (Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was one of those unmasked, but there were many more.)

The reason Weissmann and Goodman are making a stink is that they don’t want either of the reports to come out before the election. So they maintain that putting it out before the election would be political --- an attempt to interfere with the election. But I say that keeping a completed report under wraps until AFTER the election would be political --- a calculated attempt to interfere with the election by keeping voters in the dark. Likewise, interfering with the investigation so that the report can’t be completed in time would be political. Sounds like obstruction to me.

"What can be done if Mr. Barr seeks to take actions in service of the President’s political ambitions?” they wrote. “...Employees who witness or are asked to participate in such political actions –- who all swore an oath to the Constitution and must obey Department policies –- can refuse, report and, if necessary, resign. Other models include speaking with Congress under subpoena or resigning and then communicating directly to the public. Reputable organizations are at the ready to advise whistle-blowers about the risks and benefits of pursuing these paths."

They’re probably talking about that same law firm that protected the “anonymous” whistleblower that kicked off Trump’s impeachment. How conveeeeenient. Of course, if Barr does anything at all that happens to benefit Trump, it must have been done “in service to the President’s political ambitions.”

One big take-away from Weissmann’s behavior is that he must think these investigations found some really, really bad stuff.

By the way, if you’re interested in a book not to buy, Weissmann has a book coming out in September, purported to explain why the Mueller team could have “done more” in their Russia investigation. Well, let’s see...according to Sidney Powell, they sure could have “done more” to get exculpatory documents to defense attorneys! A lot more.

Mike Huckabee

A new Gallup poll found that 61% of black Americans want the police to maintain the same amount of time they currently spend in their communities. Another 20% of blacks want the police to spend MORE time in their communities. Only 19% want the police to spend less time in their communities.

A large majority of blacks think that we need police reform, and 37% aren’t confident that they’d be treated with courtesy and respect if they interacted with the police. But that doesn’t mean they want the police to go away. In short, they think there are problems, but you don’t solve them by doing away with the police and leaving citizens to the mercy of gangs and criminals and the protective abilities of unarmed social workers.

To put it in even fewer words: unlike a leftist city council, they’re not nuts.

Mike Huckabee

There was a massive explosion in Beirut this week that killed at least 135 people, injured 5,000 more and caused devastating damage that’s left up to 300,000 people homeless. Investigators have been trying to ascertain if it was an attack, a hidden weapons cache or what? Now, it appears that it might have been due to Russian fertilizer.

A Russian ship called the MV Rhosus that was carrying agricultural fertilizer with 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate came into port in Beirut in 2013. It had technical and financial problems, was abandoned by its owners, and the crew sent back to Russia. It’s been there for years, despite multiple warnings from the customs director to the judiciary that it was a “floating bomb,” warnings that were apparently ignored. So the explosion wasn’t due to a deadly action by a foreign government, but deadly inaction by Lebanon’s own government. And yet some people still insist that we need to entrust every important aspect of our lives to the care and efficiency of government bureaucrats.

Mike Huckabee

All the underemployed liberal arts majors who wanted to play “social justice warrior” might start rethinking that decision after hearing this news: The FBI has opened more than 300 domestic terrorist investigations since the rioting began following George Floyd’s death. That doesn’t include investigations of violent crime and civil rights violations. Consequences are back.

That news was revealed Tuesday during the opening of a Senate hearing titled, "The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble: Protecting Speech by Stopping Anarchist Violence.” It’s chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz, who said these violent rioters’ actions "are profoundly racist. The rioters...destroy minority communities, minority businesses and minority lives across this country. This shouldn't be complicated: peaceful protests must be protected. Riots must be stopped."

Cruz kicked off the hearings with some shocking video of what’s been allowed to rage on over the past couple of months in major American cities. You can see it here, if you dare:

Democratic Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono declared that the hearings should be called, "The right of the people peaceably to assemble without being beaten up by unidentifiable federal agents." That’s repeating a piece of fake news that the federal agents sent to Portland were not identified. In fact, they had their agency and number on their uniforms, they just didn’t have their names because those “peaceful protesters” were hunting down their families online and threatening them.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley also claimed that protesters in Portland were “holding flowers, dancing, chanting" and calling for equal justice when federal agents emerged and attacked them with “military-grade tear gas" and other tools. Sen. Merkley has a bright future as a screenwriter if they ever reboot the “Billy Jack” franchise, but that doesn’t sound like the video we’ve seen actually coming out of Portland. As Sen. Lindsay Graham pointed out, if the feds hadn’t intervened, those peaceful flower children would have burned down the federal courthouse.

Throughout the hearing, Democrats attempted to blame the violence on overreaction by law enforcement and white nationalist groups posing as far-left radicals. The hearing ended with some political theater as Hirono dramatically walked out, accusing Cruz of refusing to listen and saying, “How many times have I had to say that we all should be denouncing violent extremists of every stripe?”

Cruz asked if that included Antifa. After she stormed out, he noted that “throughout her remarks she still did not say a negative word about Antifa nor has any Democrat here." I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that.

Mike Huckabee

MEDIA-WORSHIP OF CHRISTOPHER STEELE LIKE A BAD JOKE NOW

The rug has been pulled out from under those who insisted for years that Christopher Steele was some brilliant British super-sleuth who had the goods on Donald Trump. He turned out to be pretty sorry at intelligence-gathering, and even his fiction appears to have been gleaned from others more creative than he.

As Mollie Hemingway reminds us in THE FEDERALIST, Steele was supposed to have a “vast network of credible and well-connected sources spread throughout Europe,” but he really didn’t.

In the media, Steele was reverently described as “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence.” Whew, that sounds impressive. Before he was even identified, MOTHER JONES described him as maybe the foremost expert in Russia matters in the world! Ooh, big stuff. They said he “spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and...now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on corporate clients.” HA, that “U.S. firm” turned out to be Fusion GPS, the dirty oppo research company working for Hillary and the Democratic National Committee. Not quite so impressive now, is he?

As we’ve reported, Steele got all his information from his “primary sub-source,” identified as Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, who was a staffer at the leftist think-tank (make that “think”-tank) the Brookings Institute. Recall that the Brookings Institute was at that time headed by longtime Clinton ally Strobe Talbott. (Again, when it comes to lies and corruption, all roads lead back to Hillary.) Danchenko picked up nothing that was actually documented; instead, he depended on what Hemingway describes as “rumors, drunken gossip, and outright brainstorming, conjecture and speculation.”

Hearsay based on hearsay was conveyed to Steele, who, in his admitted desperation to keep Trump out of the White House, dramatically overstated it.

No one ever had any reason to believe any of this, other than that they just wanted to. They thought they could turn Trump’s image into that of some evil Manchurian candidate and keep him away from power. That’s why the media grabbed onto the outrageously fake story with both hands and wouldn’t let go. As Hemingway reminds us, Adam Goldman of THE NEW YORK TIMES actually won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting the false “Russia collusion” narrative. (I will add that he should humbly return it, as the award is as fake as the story.)

When the narrative turned out to be bunk, Goldman and his colleague Charlie Savage got together and turned on a dime to make their story more about the unmasking of Danchenko as Steele’s source. (Hemingway provides the link to this.) Clever, these media hacks. They gave no evidence that Danchenko had been promised anonymity, though he was promised immunity for speaking with the FBI. Late in their story, they do admit problems with the dossier --- what else can they do? --- while simultaneously glossing over them.

The Horowitz report, which came out last December, strongly criticized FBI investigators for mischaracterizing the Steele dossier and the results of the Danchenko interview to the FISA court, just to keep renewing their warrant to spy on Carter Page (and thus the Trump campaign, and thus Trump.)

As Hemingway reminds us, revisionists have tried to say that the “dossier” didn’t actually come out until after the election. But that timeline isn’t right; we know that it --- and other so-called “dossiers” designed to damage Trump --- were kicking around during the summer of 2016. Steele himself admitted in a British court (he was being sued by executives of Alfa bank) that he was meeting with media and law enforcement people about the “dossier” prior to the election, as he wanted it weaponized and used against Trump.

Steele even told a State Department official, Kathleen Kavalec, that it was his goal to get the story around before the election; she provided notes about that to the FBI investigators, so they knew good and well. And Michael Isikoff’s September 2016 story about Carter Page being a Russian asset was taken right from the “dossier.”

Other media outlets, mostly on the left but even THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, inflated Steele’s resume and mystique. They really should be embarrassed now; I wonder how many of them are. Read Mollie’s entire piece; it’s quite entertaining. In fact, some of it is a real laff riot, as when she quotes NYT reporter Scott Shane as saying in January of 2017, “If all the information in the dossier is false, it is a very sophisticated fabrication.” Hahahahaha. That sounds so ridiculous now.

Come on, it was a pile of stinking, unverifiable garbage that many of us could tell was fake from the start. You in the media were taken for a ride, and you’d buy the ticket again if it meant you could hurt President Trump.

Mike Huckabee

A story exploded onto the media Wednesday that for the first time, Facebook and Twitter had banned President Trump from tweeting because of a video clip of him talking about reopening schools in which he said children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus, which the sites branded as “misinformation.”

That was actually due to sloppy reporting by the Washington Post, which confused President Trump’s personal Twitter account with his campaign account, which is where the clip actually was posted.

As to whether either social media platform had any business censoring Trump’s comment, that’s an entirely different and legitimate question. A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign said the President was merely "stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus," and the ban was “another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth.

I just wrote about a study showing the leftwing bias of the “fact-checkers” such sites rely on.

But I’ll toss this in, too: According to the CDC, the number of children in the US under age 15 who have died of COVID-19 is 42 out of 135,579 as of July 25th. That represents 0.03% of all virus deaths, and only 0.3% of all deaths in that age group. Eighty percent of COVID-19 deaths are among the elderly, and people under 45 account for less than 3%. COVID-19 is not even among the 10 leading causes of deaths of children school-age and younger. So while it must be taken very seriously, and obviously, all children are not immune to it, saying they’re “almost immune” doesn’t sound like it’s that far off the mark to me.

Incidentally, those numbers come from a must-read article by Heritage.org with a number of surprising facts and debunked popular claims about COVID-19. For instance, it is not the leading cause of death in America right now, the US does not have the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world, and Florida’s deaths-per-million rate is far from equaling that of New York (by 327 to 1,685.) Listen to the media long enough, and you’ll be like the old Firesign Theater album: “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”

Mike Huckabee

Most reporters covering the White House have a severe illness --- not COVID-19, but Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS. The main symptom of TDS, at least as it manifests itself at Trump’s press briefings, is the inability to resist the urge to correct him with fake information, typically DNC talking points.

On Wednesday, during President Trump’s press briefing, it happened again. Someone tried to correct the President as he was answering a question on mail-in balloting. The reporter chimed in, “There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.” The President, knowing a Democrat talking point when he hears one, called her out on that, saying, “Oh, really? Well, then, you’re reading a different newspaper than me.” Gotta love it.

Let’s try THE NEW YORK TIMES. Thanks to Dan Bongino for calling attention to this piece from the NYT from just a month before the 2012 election –- significantly, long before Trump called attention to the problem –- called “Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises.” Note that this article was talking mostly about absentee voting, which still has more controls than widespread mail-in voting.

Using a primary election as an example, this piece illustrated how easy it is to make a ballot NOT COUNT, just by comparing signatures and deciding the “r’s” don’t match. Lather, rinse, repeat, for as many times as you need votes.

At the time this article was written in late 2012, the use of absentee ballots and other forms of mail-in balloting had tripled since 1980 and accounted for almost 20 percent of all voting.

According to the NYT story, statistics showed that votes cast by mail were less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth. Twice more mail-in votes were rejected than in-person votes.

There’s something called the “margin of litigation” that allows election lawyers to challenge results with the possibility of changing the outcome. We’ve seen that if election results fall within that margin, there absolutely will be a challenge. If you recall the Florida results after the Bush-Gore election, you know what a ridiculous mess it turned into, with election judges trying to second-guess and accept or reject ballots on the basis of how their chads were hanging. Anyone who thinks wishful thinking and subjective analysis didn’t enter into that judgment is living in a fantasy world. That counts as fraud in my book.

Keep in mind, this was in THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Voting by mail is now common enough and problematic enough that election experts say there have been multiple elections in which no one can say with confidence which candidate was the deserved winner.”

The NYT even cited as an example the 2008 election that made Al Franken a U.S. Senator from Minnesota. (Recall that his win was what ended up giving Obamacare the Senate vote. Elections mean things.) Franken won by a mere 312 votes after 12,000 absentee ballots (about 4 percent of those) had been rejected.

In general, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to vote absentee; ironically, this might help explain the NYT’s willingness to criticize it. (To be fair, it might also have something to do with the push by Republicans in the past for absentee voting.) But widespread voting-by-mail has much less oversight than the process that is normally gone through to vote absentee. Some states are just wildly sending out mail-in ballots. Again this is from THE NEW YORK TIMES: “There is general consensus that voting by mail, whatever its impact, is more easily abused than other forms.”

Absentee voting was not meant to be the main way to vote. It’s for people who know they’re going to be away or otherwise unable to come in and vote on Election Day. In a normal election year, early in-person voting accommodates many of those people, and absentee voting takes care of the rest. I don’t think most people have thought seriously about what it would be like if virtually EVERYONE voted by mail. I agree with Bongino that it would be “an apocalyptic disaster.” (I haven’t even mentioned that the American Postal Workers Union has endorsed Biden. That in itself justifies a lack of confidence in the mail-in process.)

Even with the number of people who would normally vote absentee, the idea that “every vote counts” is naive. The only way we can counteract this problem is with a LANDSLIDE victory for President Trump and Republicans down the line.

I've previously linked to the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database of proven examples of voter fraud from across the country, and in case you didn’t see it or would like to review it in this context, here it is again.

Voter fraud is hard to prove –- better to head it off than try to do something about it afterwards. Though this accounting is not all-inclusive and is limited to proven, not just suspected, cases, it gives an idea of the scope of the problem. In their words, “preventing, deterring and prosecuting election fraud is essential to protecting the integrity of our voting process. Reforms intended to ensure such integrity do not disenfranchise voters and, in fact, protect their right to vote.”

Bongino also had a story from the NEW YORK POST from just two days ago (August 4), with the headline “25 percent of ballots in Brooklyn June primaries invalid.” They’re trying to deal with the mess; here’s an updated story from later that day.

Election Day has always been a day for Americans to celebrate. There’s a certain ritual involved in going to the polls THAT DAY and exercising our right. Even early voting diminishes that a little, I think, and it also encourages people to vote without knowing as much about the candidates as they might if they had waited. Then there's absentee voting, an alternative when one simply cannot go to the polls. (This year, that would include the elderly and others at high risk.) But large-scale mail-in voting is an unnecessary invitation to fraud and must not happen.

Think of the generations of Americans who have risked their lives –- given their lives –- to preserve our precious freedom and our right to vote. In light of that, the VERY LEAST that freedom-loving Americans can do is put on a doggone mask, go to the polls, keep the proper distance, and VOTE, for crying out loud. They’ll have hand sanitizer there, promise.

Mike Huckabee

You remember back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton thought she was a shoo-in for President, and Trump might question the validity of her win, and she expressed shock, outrage and horror that anyone would be so selfish and unpatriotic as to refuse to accept the results of a US Presidential election…then she lost, and she’s spent the past three years doing precisely that, along with millions of her fellow “Resistance” sore losers.

Now, it’s déjà vu all over again as the same never-Trumpers who’ve spent every moment since 2016 refusing to accept that Hillary lost are floating nightmare conspiracy theories that Trump might refuse to accept that he lost to Biden and leave the White House (to be fair, there were also some crackpot theories on the right that Obama would refuse to leave the White House.)

This kind of paranoia and refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power and the verdict of the people in elections is something new and extremely destructive in the history of the United States. It’s a large part of what’s led us to a period that may be the most divisive since the Civil War. And there’s growing concern that if Trump is reelected, it will actually get even worse (like Portland everywhere.)

To test that, a bi-partisan anti-Trump organization called the Transition Integrity Project (Ha!) secretly gathered 100 "former high-ranking government officials, senior political campaigners, nationally prominent journalists and communications professionals, social movement leaders, and experts on politics, national security, democratic reform, election law, and media." Together, they war-gamed various election scenarios to try to figure out what the reactions would be.

These scenarios ranged from Biden winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral College to a narrow Trump win but with claims of some Biden ballots being destroyed. In the end, there was only one scenario in which a candidate won a clear victory and the losing side refused to accept it, and that loser was Biden.

The moral I draw from this (aside from "be VERY prepared") is that Trump’s victory needs to be so overwhelming in both the popular vote and the Electoral College that there can be no disputing it. That won’t stop the left from disputing it anyway, because they may not believe in God, but they think they have a Divine right to rule us. It will, however, send them a signal that they’re outnumbered so maybe they'll finally develop a little introspection and realize it’s time to grow up, end their three-year-plus tantrum and start thinking about why so many people think they shouldn’t be within 100 miles of the levers of power.

Nah, that'll never happen! But at least they can comfort themselves that Trump won't run for a third term.

Or maybe he WILL!...

Mike Huckabee

Many Trump supporters are frustrated that the President seemed unprepared for some of the tough questions about the US coronavirus response in his Axios interview with Jonathan Swan. So he might want to take a cue from Matt Margolis at PJ Media, who has some advice for him on how to explain it in clearer terms.

Margolis points out that in comparing the US negatively to Germany and South Korea in terms of deaths per million, Swan cherry-picked two nations but left out a lot of others. In fact, the US is not #1 in deaths per million, but tenth.

Also, the US isn’t a small, homogenous nation with one all-powerful central government; it’s a collection of 50 states that the federal government can only offer aid and advice to as they make their own local decisions, and with Constitutional rights for individuals that must be accommodated (even if they are trampled in some blue states.) Because of that, many of the COVID-19 deaths have been in a small handful of Northeastern blue states. If you lifted New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and DC out and lumped them together as if they were a nation, they would lead the world in deaths per 100,000, while the entire remaining states together would come in 18th.

Liberal media outlets would like us to believe that Trump is somehow responsible for the bad decisions made by local Democratic officials, like forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients. Trump didn’t run the New York State or City response to the virus, but he did insure that the predicted deadly shortages of ventilators and hospital rooms (remember that scare story?) never materialized.

If Swan wants to know who was in charge of the response in New York, maybe he should interview New York City’s Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. Wait, I’m sorry: she’s now the former Health Commissioner. She just resigned and blasted Mayor DeBlasio on her way out the door. She wrote, “I leave my post today with deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the health department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been.” There had been longstanding conflicts between her and DeBlasio, who said he needs team players: “It had been clear in recent days that it was time for a change. We need an atmosphere of unity. We need an atmosphere of common purpose.” (Can you imagine the media's reaction if Dr. Fauci had resigned and blasted Trump, and he replied that he needed team players?)

Please note that I’m not even going to comment on which side is right here. I may think that DeBlasio has done a terrible job, but that doesn’t mean that he should have done whatever Dr. Barbot said. Way back in April, when there were reports of dust-ups between Trump and Fauci, I said I wouldn’t be surprised, since they both have different jobs. Fauci has only the health issue to deal with, and if he thinks we could prevent even only COVID-19 death by shutting down the economy for two years, he might think it’s worth it. But Trump is more like a general overseeing a battlefield: he has to consider all the ramifications and unintended consequences; he can’t focus solely on one platoon if it’s going to cost him the war in the long run.

We have pandemics all the time (remember swine flu in 2009?), but we can’t shut down the world for a year or more until we develop a vaccine for all of them. Maybe DeBlasio thought he was protecting both New York’s health and its economy. He simply failed on both counts.

Mike Huckabee

Susan Rice is the latest to be cited in the media as the current frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s running mate. He has committed to choosing a woman, and he's pretty well obligated to choose a woman of color as well. Naturally, the leftist media are obsessed with who it will be.

Folks, it’s all theatrics. Kamala Harris won't be it; Val Demings won't be it. And neither will Susan Rice, though she does have suitable Obama connections. Precisely none of the women mentioned as candidates for the #2 spot in recent weeks can help Biden win, and, more importantly, given the circumstances, none of them can be envisioned as President of the United States, because we all know that Biden, if he's still even the candidate on Election Day and (shudder) wins, will be replaced practically on the spot. Rice, with her foreign policy credentials, might have a little more gravitas than the others –- it wouldn’t take much to stand out in that crowd –- but she still has way too many problems.

For one thing –- not that it would matter to hard-core Democrat party hacks and rabid anti-Trumpers –- she’s a liar of great repute. By that I don’t mean little lies here and there, tiny fibs that might be rationalized as necessary for national security, but huge politically-charged whoppers told repeatedly on national TV and even under oath. I’m still enough of an optimist to think that this would matter to the independent voters, the folks in the middle, the thoughtful “swing” voters that Biden or any challenger would need to sway.

Of course, we all know that Rice lied her head off about the cause of the 2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed. She went on five different Sunday shows and told the same fake story about an anti-Islam YouTube video setting off protests that turned violent. Hillary told the same story. We all know it was fabricated to cover up the fact that it was a terrorist attack. American personnel were not given the protection they needed and deserved, help was not provided once the attack was underway, and our people ended up dead. But Rice did her political duty. From then on, we knew what she was made of.

That was just the first. Later on, we found out that Rice had written a curious “note to self” on the very last day of the Obama administration --- just as Trump was being sworn in, in fact. It was a “memo to the file” about the meeting she'd attended (aside: WITH JOE BIDEN) in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017, to say that Obama had told them everything having to do with the “Russia” investigation had to be done “by the book.” I think she mentioned that five times. This is what you call a “CYA” memo. She was “C”-ing Obama’s “A.”

Later, she covered her own “A,” too. She had her lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, who also happens to have been PRESIDENT OBAMA’S WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL, write a letter to Sens. Grassley, Graham, Feinstein and Whitehouse, saying, “While serving as National Security Advisor, Ambassador Rice was not briefed on the existence of any FBI investigation into allegations of collusion between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, and she later learned of the fact of this investigation from Director Comey’s subsequent testimony.”

Oh, really?? Comey didn’t testify until March 20, 2017, but Rice was present at the January 5 Oval Office meeting that dealt with exactly that –- in particular, with the investigation into Michael Flynn.

And it gets worse. She also denied this under oath. On September 8, 2017, she gave sworn testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (then chaired by Republican Devin Nunes) that she knew nothing about the FBI’s “Russia” investigation while she was at the White House. Apparently anticipating some difficult questioning from Republicans, she arrived with two attorneys from Latham & Watkins (Ruemmler’s firm). Ironically, it was a couple of questions from Democrats that tripped her up.

Adam Schiff: “Director Comey testified that, in July of last year [2016], he began a counterintelligence investigation into people associated with the Trump campaign and what contacts they may have had with Russia. That investigative responsibility, wasn’t part of your portfolio, I take it?”

Rice: “No, not at all.”

Schiff: “And would Director Comey brief you on the progress of his investigation?”

Rice: “No. I think it’s important for everybody to understand: We were not informed by Director Comey or the attorney general that there was an active investigation of anybody in the Trump orbit...In the Obama White House, we maintained scrupulously the firewall between the people in the White House and contacts with Justice about potential or actual criminal matters. The only communication that was sanctioned in that vein was between the White House counsel and the Justice Department or the FBI.”

She goes on: “And Director Comey did not volunteer to us, not only then but for the duration of his administration, that there was an active investigation of anybody in the Trump orbit...I learned about it formally in the public domain after I left office.”

And later…

Eric Swalwell: “Is it fair to say that, as the national security adviser, you were not read in on active, ongoing investigations that the Department of Justice or the FBI were conducting?”

Rice: “Absolutely, that’s the case. Those were law enforcement matters...”

EDITORIAL COMMENT: Who is she kidding?

According to the Horowitz report, testimony from Comey differs markedly from that of Rice. Comey said the Obama team knew about the FBI’s investigation in detail, almost from the start. He said Rice was one of the people he had told (along with Obama) about “Crossfire Hurricane” in the summer of 2016. And, of course, her presence at the January 5 meeting shows she had to have been aware of the Michael Flynn case.

So, it appears that Biden’s current frontrunner for the VP slot has lied quite brazenly under oath. She'd had plenty of practice before then, too. Leftists won’t care one bit, but I don’t think swing voters will want to put someone in office who more appropriately belongs in jail. We knew Hillary belonged in jail; notice she didn't win in 2016.

This excellent article from RealClear Investigations details all of Rice's lies.

Mike Huckabee

READER COMMENT REPLY FROM THE GOVERNOR

Robert Berger

07/31/2020 03:45 PM

Governor Huckabee, with all due respect, look who's talking. President Trump did not even have the decency to attend the funeral of the late, great John Lewis. Of course, this is typical of him.

And yes, despite what he and his defenders say, Trump IS a vicious racist. And do you have to bring up the irrelevant fact that Bull Connor was a Democrat? Such racist bigots are no longer found in this party. However, the racism of the Republicans is now much more subtle. Republican social and economic policies have done nothing but grievous harm to blacks and other minorities in America for decades; for example, making it extremely difficult for them to vote and suppressing so many of their votes by failing to count them.

Constantly eviscerating and abolishing essential government programs to help the poor.

GOP refusal to raise the minimum wage, thus keeping millions of Americans helplessly mired poverty. Refusing to make health care, college, food, and housing affordable. And so on.

And on top of this, GOP politicians have the sheer unmitigated gall to accuse the struggling poor of being "lazy bums " who want to "sponge off the government " while it allegedly takes hard-earned money form honest Americans who do work.

John Wilson spent his life fighting these destructive GOP policies. Trump is only making them worse.

* * *

Robert, I want to thank you for listing so many false Democratic political narratives in one post. During an election year, we’re going to be hearing all of this repeated ad nauseam, so it’s helpful to be able to shoot them all down in one spot. Everyone, please bookmark this post so you can refer back to it and save me having to repeat myself.

I don’t know who John Wilson is, but I’m going to assume that’s just a typo and you meant John Lewis. Also, I can only imagine the media meltdown if Trump had attended that funeral. He would’ve been accused of hijacking the funeral to score cheap political points (“Cough! Obama! Cough!”) His choice was between “How dare he show up there?!” and “How dare he not show up there?!” All things considered, I think he made the most respectful choice.

As to your other points, I’ll go through and reply to them one-by-one…

1. You say, “Yes, despite what he and his defenders say, Trump IS a vicious racist.” I notice that you immediately moved on without offering a single scrap of proof. This is par for the course. I consider racism to be a grievous sin, and “racist” is one of the worst things you can call someone. That word should never be thrown around lightly, which unfortunately is happening today. The Trump narrative is based on viciously fake news stories, like claiming he called all Mexicans rapists and murderers (he was talking about MS-13 gang members) or that there were "fine people" on the side of white supremacists (he was referring to some people who oppose removing Confederate statues, and he said neo-Nazies and white nationalists "should be condemned totally.")

As we’ve reported here before, a tabloid reporter whose job was to cover Trump before he entered politics said that while he was desperate for any dirt, he never heard any claims of Trump being a racist until the day he announced he was running for President as a Republican, and then he suddenly became the BIGGEST RACIST EVER!! He revealed that he did get a number of stories about Trump performing secret acts of generosity, like paying the bills of unfortunate people he saw in the media. But the tabloids weren’t interested in positive stories, and Trump didn’t publicize them. However, here’s one that made the news.

Note that the same Democrats who tell you Trump is a racist also claimed throughout the 2016 Convention that he had never done anything to help anyone else, another lie that also became Democrat/media conventional “wisdom.”

Here’s a list of awards presented to the pre-political Trump for his support of black, Jewish and youth organizations.

And here’s the Rev. Jesse Jackson praising Trump for his support of the Rainbow Coalition’s project to help minority businesses:  Jackson called Trump a “friend” who embraced “the under-served communities.”

He’s continued to be their friend by signing sentencing reform that Democrats promised for years and never delivered; creating opportunity zones to encourage businesses to bring jobs, goods and services to poor minority communities; and building an economy that resulted in rising wages and record-low minority unemployment, until the Chinese unleashed a virus on the world that Democrats want to blame him for. As I've said before, if he's a racist, he's really bad at it.

2. “And do you have to bring up the irrelevant fact that Bull Connor was a Democrat?” I mentioned that Bull Connor was a Democrat (and not just a Democrat, but a delegate to the 1948 Convention, where he led a walkout of the Alabama delegation over a proposed civil rights plank) because the Democrats would like modern Americans not to know that. It’s for the same reason they demanded everyone stop saying “China virus” or “Wuhan virus” – so that Nancy Pelosi could eventually start calling it the “Trump virus.” It’s a cynical attempt to rewrite history so that the misled can be manipulated for political purposes. We don’t allow that around these parts.

3. “Such racist bigots are no longer found in the Party.” The modern Democratic Party is all about dividing and judging people by skin color, a complete repudiation of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s dream. And I don’t just mean reverse racism against white people. Watch some of the videos online of those white “peaceful protesters” supported by Democrat Mayors, screaming disgusting racist insults into the faces of black police officers and any black people who dare to express different opinions, and even physically assaulting them. Take a look at what this black Marine vet encountered in Portland and tell me how it differs from the angry bigots civil rights activists dealt with in the ‘60s.

4. “Republican social and economic policies have done nothing but grievous harm to blacks and other minorities in America for decades.” Odd, I thought that cities where the black and minority communities were suffering from crime, gangs, filthy and decaying neighborhoods and terrible schools, like Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore, have been run entirely by Democrats for decades. Chicago hasn’t had a Republican Mayor since 1931. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s death kicked off all the protests, both the city and state are solidly Democrat. There’s not a single Republican even on the city council.

5. “…making it extremely difficult for them to vote and suppressing so many of their votes by failing to count them.” Again, an assertion with no proof. Republicans believe in voter ID because we want all elections to be honest and trustworthy. I’m all for everyone voting who is legally eligible. But every fake vote cast isn’t just a score in a political game. It cancels out a legitimate vote, denying that voter his or her most fundamental right to have a say in determining our government. When I see stories like this…

…I don’t care what party the miscreants represent, I want the book thrown at them.

For the record, surveys show majorities of all demographics back voter ID laws (a 2016 Gallup poll found 80% support overall, including 77% of non-whites and even 63% of Democrats.) Where such laws have been instituted, measures have been taken to make it as easy as possible to comply, including offering free state IDs. The argument that black people are somehow incapable of obtaining a simple ID is one of the most condescendingly racist narratives in circulation today.

As for voter suppression, that’s a convenient excuse for barring even the most rudimentary efforts to insure a clean election, from voter to ID to purging dead people off the voting rolls. The queen of the narrative is Stacey Abrams, who’s claimed for the past two years that she’s the rightful Governor of Georgia, deprived of office by voter suppression. Yet 1.3 million more Georgians voted in that midterm election than in the previous midterm election. If Republicans suppressed the vote, they sure did a lousy job of it.

6. “Constantly eviscerating and abolishing essential government programs to help the poor.” Like what? As Ronald Reagan said, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. Democrats love to accuse Republicans of slashing one program or another (Social Security the prime example), yet spending always increases. Merely suggesting a reduction in the rate of increase gets you accused of “slashing” the budget, even if it would still rise more than the rate of inflation.

If you mean things like requiring able-bodied people with no family obligations to work in exchange for welfare, then “guilty.” The government shouldn’t make it easier and more lucrative to be on the dole than to work. Even the Scandinavian nations Bernie Sanders wants to emulate began cutting their cushy safety nets after they realized people had started feeling entitled, using them as hammocks and losing their work ethic.

7. “GOP refusal to raise the minimum wage, this keeping millions of Americans helplessly mired (in) poverty.” As someone who grew up poor, if I thought simply raising the minimum wage would end poverty, I’d be on the front lines demanding it. But it’s the sort of simplistic idea that comes from people who have never run a business, just studied “economics” from a liberal professor (Here’s how well that works: https://youtu.be/uSLscJ2cY04 ).

Simply ordering businesses that pay the minimum wage to raise or even double it violates the most basic law of supply and demand: forcibly pricing labor at more than it’s worth. Many of these employers are small businesses with tiny profit margins whose owners might put in 60 or 70 hours a week and make less than minimum wage themselves. If they raise prices enough to cover the new labor costs, they drive away their customers. Their only choice is to cut staff (thanks, Democrats!), and those who do keep their jobs soon discover the raise doesn’t help because prices go up all over to cover the new labor costs. Many businesses don’t survive at all.

After San Francisco voted to double the minimum wage, there was a story about a longtime liberal bookstore that went out of business. The patrons were shocked to learn there was a connection between their vote to raise the minimum wage and losing their favorite hangout. Liberal Seattle restaurant critics were baffled at why all the little bistros they loved were closing down. In New York, the place where AOC used to bartend went out of business because of the minimum wage hike she advocated and all her former co-workers lost their jobs. Too bad, I was hoping she’d return to work there soon.

Minimum wage jobs aren’t meant to support a family, they’re for young people just starting out who need experience more than pay or people who need a little extra part time income, or a starting job you’ll soon be promoted out of. If an experienced adult can’t find anything other than a minimum wage job, that’s a symptom of bad anti-business, low-growth policies, like high taxes, overregulation and illegal immigrant labor undercutting wages. The kind of Obama policies that Trump reversed, leading to record low unemployment and naturally rising wages for the first time in years. Biden wants to take us back to the days when the government thought it was helping you by destroying your job with a mandatory minimum wage hike. Again to quote Reagan, the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

8. “Refusing to make health care, college, food and housing affordable.” The major reason most of those things cost what they do is government subsidies, mandates, taxes, regulations and interference in the marketplace, all Democratic hallmarks. Do you have any idea how much complying with Medicare costs doctors and how much time they spend dealing with paperwork instead of seeing patients? Before all the government, insurance and Medicare involvement, doctors never charged $50 for a Band-Aid.

The more money the government is willing to spend to subsidize college costs, (surprise!) the higher those costs go. And try comparing the prices of food, housing or fuel in California or New York to those in Texas or Florida. Liberal policies make everything more expensive, and then the politicians raise taxes to help people pay for the things they made more expensive that will now get even more expensive because of the high taxes and on and on in a never-ending vicious circle.

9. “GOP politicians have the sheer unmitigated gall to accuse the struggling poor of being ‘lazy bums’ who want to ‘sponge off the government.’” I don’t do that, and I don’t know anyone who does, but if anyone actually does, they’re wrong. I’ve been the “struggling poor,” and I know better. That sounds like the kind of creaky, old fake stereotype of Republicans you get from only watching liberal media outlets or reruns of "All In The Family." I suggest you broaden your news sources. I do believe, though, because I actually read and watch liberal news sources, that this sort of canard is repeated because the left hopes to fool the poor into voting against policies that would help lift them out of poverty and in favor of policies that will keep them struggling and dependent on government.

I might as well make it a hat trick and finish this off with a third Reagan quote: Republicans don’t measure compassion by how many people are getting a government handout. We measure it by how many people no longer need a government handout.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

AN OPEN LETTER TO MISS MANNERS (Judith Martin)

Dear Miss Manners,

Please let me preface this letter by saying I am a longtime fan of your column, as I am distressed by the lack of courtesy in today’s society and always appreciate your witty replies. You may or may not be aware that I have even affectionately parodied your column with “Miss Mannerly,” here on this very website. That said, here is the original, very thoughtful letter you received and your answer ("Clarifying racism for a white man") that has prompted my missive to you:

I do agree with you that talking about what racism is (or is not) is a semantic discussion. We currently have two “working” definitions of racism being used simultaneously, and we also have many people far too willing to throw around the “r-word.” Under one (the “classic”) definition, anyone of any race can be racist; it means the notion that people of another race are inferior to you and don’t deserve the same treatment as people of your own race. Under the other (the “evolved”) definition, only a white person can be racist, and, in part because he has lived his entire life with racial privilege by virtue of being white, he cannot be considered the victim of racism, either. Add nuance to taste, and stir.

The man who wrote to you, a self-described white male, told you he’d been informed that he would be viewed as racist for bringing up examples of how he personally was abused, targeted with racial epithets, and even lightly hit by a car while living in a mostly non-white country where he was in a racial minority.

The man was obviously trying to show empathy for others who have been treated badly because of their race. But because he is white, his view was considered unwelcome. They told him that the treatment he received was not out of racism, but “rather out of resentment for white people’s history of cruelty and injustice towards others.”

In your answer, you essentially agreed with his friends, saying that even though the treatment he had experienced had been “horrid and unfair,” it was not the same as “the experience of most marginalized groups” because it never took away his basic rights and equality. (Not having been in whatever country this was and experienced what he went through, I don’t know if that is necessarily true. As a woman, I could easily name countries that would take away MY basic rights and equality.)

You made what you called the "key" distinction between “retaliatory” bias and “inherent” bias. With all due respect, being on the receiving end of “retaliatory” bias for something one’s ancestors, as opposed to oneself, did is, to me, as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. I would make the case that it is also extremely racist.

You said his argument makes this gentleman look naive. I am hardly naive, and I agree with him.

If the treatment this man received was “...out of resentment for white people’s history of cruelty and injustice towards others,” I’m sorry, but that was still racism. The man himself had done nothing to anyone; he was being judged –- judged –- by the color of his skin. The argument being used to defend that, which you helped further, is a rationalization for racist behavior. One may agree with that rationalization or disagree as I do, but a rationalization it is.

One problem we have right now is that we’re all encouraged to be having “conversations” about race, but these “conversations” all have to be very carefully articulated in certain ways in order to avoid charges of racism. The man who wrote you obviously is not a racist, but he must speak in exactly the "right" way in order to avoid a minefield. The slightest deviation is heresy. I’m sorry, but that is not real conversation, Miss Manners. It is control. A real conversation is a two-way street, with give and take, and people try to understand each other. I don’t see that happening with this subject. To create a “safe space” for others --- even his own partner --- this person’s thoughtful view is being shut down.

Thank you, Miss Manners, for your attention. Though you are correct in saying this gentleman risks alienating some people –- that they might challenge his point and perhaps call him naive and even racist –- simply telling him to “stop” is to inhibit honest, heartfelt conversation. I, for one, am willing to (very politely) have that conversation, and if someone wants to wrongly accuse me of racism, that is the person who needs to learn some common courtesy –- and some common sense.

Mike Huckabee

Thursday brought the sad news of the death of a friend, Herman Cain.

After a highly successful career as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, this brilliant entrepreneur spent the following years as a radio talk show host and a Presidential candidate, but always he was a tireless advocate for free enterprise, for opportunity for all, and for an America that gave people opportunities to dream big and do big.

I became closely acquainted with Herman Cain in 2007 during my campaign for President in the GOP Primary. Herman was one of the national leaders of the Fair Tax movement, and the Fair Tax was a centerpiece of my campaign. We spent time together throughout the campaign in advocacy for the Fair Tax.

After the campaign and when I became a contributor for Fox News, I would regularly invite Herman on my show to talk free enterprise, conservative values, and of course, the Fair Tax.

In 2012, Herman launched his own campaign for President. Feeling that the country might not be able to fully understand the Fair Tax, he created a “Step One” toward the Fair Tax in his simple but profound 9-9-9 plan. The simplicity of the plan caught on, and Herman was like the evangelist in a crusade, brilliantly explaining that a tax fixed and finite is more fair. I was able to spend time with him on the campaign trail and one of my favorite memories is playing bass for a band that accompanied Herman in singing his beloved Gospel music.

He had a great sense of humor and was the eternal optimist. I loved just being around him as his vivacious spirit was truly contagious.

I’ve hated all that the Chinese Virus has done to the world, but I’m especially angry that this awful virus took the life of a great American, a kind gentleman, and my friend, Herman Cain.

At this link, some prominent people from the political world pay their respects.

Mike Huckabee

It turned out to be a good thing that Attorney General Bill Barr released his opening statement in advance of his appearance before Jerrold Nadler's House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, as that statement was just about the only way he had to express an opinion or offer any information at all.

In fact, he could have just submitted it and not even appeared, as Team Nadler had obviously huddled beforehand and decided not to let him answer their questions.

Their strategy was to berate him, throw an incriminating question at him, and, as soon as he began speaking, interrupt with the parliamentary phrase “Reclaiming my time,” intended to make him stop. When ranking Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio requested that they quit cutting Barr off, Nadler responded, “What you want is irrelevant. Irrelevant to the rules.”

While attempting to smear Barr as someone who acts politically, they turned their own hearing into the worst political spectacle since impeachment. (Once again, Democrats do the very thing they accuse others of doing.) The level of hate in that room was turned up to 10 –- for fans of Spinal Tap, 11 –- and it reminded me, uncomfortably, of the Antifa burn-it-all-down show currently playing in an American city near you. It was that nasty. Here’s an example of how it went down.

Here’s a more amusing take, as we could all use a laugh.

In the most bizarre, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink moment of all, Barr was implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide.

I get the impression the Democrats must start every day with a Two Minutes Hate against both Trump and Barr. They likely hate (and fear) Barr as much as they do Trump himself, as Barr has no doubt seen every bit of classified material that incriminates them in scandal. He KNOWS. They know he knows. And he knows they know he knows.

Chairman Nadler showed a similar lack of respect to his Republican colleagues, telling them they couldn’t even have water during the hearing. In retrospect, that might have been a good thing, because he refused even a five-minute bathroom break when Barr finally, politely, asked for one. He received no break for lunch or for...anything else.

Barr did get a few chances to express himself, such as when he said, “What makes me concerned for the country is that it’s the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our great political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attack on federal courts.” Amazingly, he managed to call the Democratic Party “one of our great political parties” without revealing a trace of sarcasm, which would probably have been impossible for me to do.

Weirdly, Democrats keep trying to insist the protest has been “peaceful” when Barr sees it as decidedly not. No doubt you’ve seen video from Seattle, Portland and Atlanta; what do YOU think it is? Any sane person would agree with Barr. It has been a bloody freak show, and the violence needed to be shut down with the first brick thrown.

The always colorful and thoughtful Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana appeared Tuesday night on Shannon Bream’s FOX NEWS show, where he expressed disgust. He said he had to turn the hearing off after watching “bits and pieces” of it, because, he said, “It was triggering my gag reflex.” Rather than being a hearing, he said, it was “an attempted persecution" --- one he thought the American people would see through.

"I think the point that some of my Democratic colleagues seemed to be trying to make was that the attorney general is out of control. But what they really mean is that he’s out of THEIR control.”

Exactly!

He went on: “Bill Barr is guided by the rule of law, and he doesn’t do anyone’s bidding. He calls it like he sees it. I thought that he was, for the most part, his usual unflappable self. And he’s tough; you’ve got to be tough to be in that job. He’s tough as a pine knot, and I respect that about him as well.”

Since Barr didn’t get to talk much about the true nature of these “peaceful” protests, I’ll link to this excellent commentary from Victor Davis Hanson, who ends on an optimistic note that the American public will recognize what this is and push back forcefully on Election Day.

Finally, a couple of tweets to wrap up the day. Byron York tweeted: “Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton speaking to Attorney General Bill Barr, in a line that sums up today’s Judiciary Committee appearance: “You’ll have a chance to comment after your testimony is over today.”

And this caution, from Greg Gutfeld: “In that hearing you witnessed people whose salaries you pay, accuse a man of murder and treason – then refuse to let him speak or defend himself. You think the unbending mob on the street is worse? No, this is. And it’s coming for you.”

We’ll be ready. As Sen. Kennedy said, “The American people are not morons.”

Mike Huckabee

The violence and lawlessness continue in blue cities around America, so much so that I don’t have time nor space to recount it all. Here’s just a taste…

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that much of what we’re hearing from the media and the Democratic politicians covering for the rioters is an attempt to deny reality that’s crossed into self-delusion. It’s as if they’ve all become that MSNBC reporter who famously declared that the protests were “mostly peaceful” as he was broadcasting from in front of a burning building.

For instance, Rep. Jerrold Nadler can see all sorts of things that aren’t really there, like “Russian collusion” or an impeachable offense in a Presidential courtesy call. But he apparently can’t see a violent riot in front of his face. Journalist Austen Fleccas asked Nadler on video if he would disavow the violence and riots by Antifa in Portland right now. Nadler’s response:

“That… that… that… that’s a myth that’s spreading only in Washington, DC.”

I wonder if he also thinks the violent protests in Washington, DC, were a myth?

I’m sure Rep. Nadler is among the willfully deaf, dumb and blind crowd who insist that the rioters in places like Portland are “peaceful protesters” being bludgeoned and tear-gassed for no reason by federal fascist goons – who wouldn’t even have to be there if the Mayor of Portland hadn’t let the rioting go on for nearly 60 days now, including assaults on federal officers and repeated attempts to destroy the federal courthouse.

Fortunately, some people are tired of playing along with this dream world. That includes a number of black Americans who are fed up with how a legitimate protest following the death of George Floyd has been hijacked by young, white, anti-American radicals who are only making race relations worse and black neighborhoods more dangerous.

The president of the Portland chapter of the NAACP complained that the protests have lost focus and turned into “a spectacle, a debacle.” Another local black leader complained that they’ve been taken over by violent, “mostly white anarchists,” noting that most black people don’t even live downtown, and their problems, like the need for better schools, are far away and being ignored.

And here is today’s MUST-READ story.

Gabe Johnson is a 48-year-old black Marine veteran who lives in downtown Portland, near the riot scene but far enough away that he assumed from media reports that they were just “peaceful protesters,” with maybe a few typically angry young punks thrown in. Then last weekend, when he was kept awake by the sound of explosions and tear gas started coming in through his A/C vent, he stood up and declared that somebody had to do something.

He thinks of the American flag as a symbol of unity among all people, so the next day, he went to the protest site, hung a couple of flags on a fence and tried to engage protesters in a peaceful dialogue about how to bring people back together. It didn’t go well. They called him the worst kind of racist names, and ripped down his flags and stomped on them. When an older black man grabbed one of his flags and handed it back to him, a "peaceful protester" punched him in the face and ran.

Johnson said he dealt with terrorists overseas and he sees the same tactics being used in Portland: “They’ve got spotters with cameras that will follow you around, and they’ve got their thugs. Those are the guys with the baseball bats. They have people that will intimidate you in Black Lives Matter attire.”

He also noticed a lot of out-of-state license plates and said 99% of the people he did talk to didn’t live in Portland. Johnson says that what he learned is that Antifa has attached itself to the Black Lives Matter movement and taken it over, and the claims that the protests are largely peaceful and the federal officers started the violence are lies.

He said, “It’s beyond me how they can sit there and say that they’re not causing damage or rioting. It’s a riot, and it’s real, and when you are on the front line and you’re looking back into that crowd, it is an angry mob that is built on doing as much destruction as possible.”

He also stressed that he is not a conservative or a Trump supporter, but he is a patriot. And having seen what’s going on with his own eyes, he now believes that Portland Police should use any means necessary, including force, to stop it.

In short, these people have declared war on America. They were just smart enough to pick cities with leaders who were dumb enough not to realize when someone is waging war on them. But the residents are finally figuring it out.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

Suddenly, we are bidding farewell to some celebrities whom it seemed had been around forever and would go on forever.

Olivia DeHavilland, one of the last surviving veterans of Hollywood’s Golden Age, died Sunday at her home in Paris at 104. Last year, she was photographed riding her bicycle at 103. She noted the irony that she was the last living cast member of “Gone With The Wind” when her character of Melanie was so fragile that she was the only one who died in the film.

In addition to “Gone With The Wind,” her five-decade movie career included “The Adventures of Robin Hood” with Errol Flynn (the first big-budget feature in three-strip Technicolor, a year before “The Wizard of Oz”) and “The Heiress,” for which she won the Best Actress Oscar three years after winning it for “To Each His Own,” scoring two wins out of five career nominations. (One was for “The Snake Pit,”also the premise of one of my favorite obscure jokes, when after escaping being thrown into a pit of snakes, Bullwinkle the moose leans over the edge and says, “Goodbye, Olivia!”)

She also made history in a couple of other ways. In 1943, fed up with being forced to take mediocre roles, she sued Warner Brothers and won. The case resulted in a ban on long-term studio contracts that automatically renewed without the actors’ consent, which became known as “the DeHavilland Law.” And in the days when communists were trying to stealthily take power in Hollywood and called anyone who opposed them “fascists” (sound familiar?), she bravely threw out a pro-commie speech written for her by Dalton Trumbo and gave her own speech, denouncing communism. Read the full story here, it will make you respect her even more:

Also, on Saturday, Regis Philbin died at home of natural causes a month before his 89th birthday. He first came to national attention as the announcer/sidekick on Joey Bishop’s late night show that challenged (barely) Johnny Carson. From there, it was on to “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” “Regis & Kathie Lee,” “Regis & Kelly” and countless other shows and talk show appearances.

Coincidentally, Regis died just a few weeks after the passing of longtime TV host Hugh Downs at 99.

Both Regis and Hugh made record albums: “An Evening With Hugh Downs” (1959) and four LPs by Regis, from “It’s Time For Regis” (1968) to 2009’s “Just You. Just Me” with his wife Joy. “The Regis Philbin Christmas Album” (2005) features Donald Trump on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and an animated Trump appears in the Claymation video: https://youtu.be/U03Q83nl8-4

Regis also broke Downs’ Guinness World Record for the most hours spent on network TV (15,188). Regis was on national TV for about 17,000 hours. That would take being on TV for two hours a day five days a week, 52 weeks a year, for over 30 years. Blogger Mark Evanier recalls meeting Regis once at a Hollywood benefit about 10 years ago, where he happily talked, shook hands and posed for photos with everyone who asked. When Evanier told him that David Letterman must really love him to have him on so often, he replied:

"That's because I'm always available! Someone cancels, it's 'Call Regis!' and I'm there like a trained cocker spaniel! But you know what they say…showing up is 90% of everything! I may not be the funniest guy on TV but I'm really good at showing up."

Regis kept showing up for over 50 years, and we were always glad to see him. TV won’t be the same without him.

Actor John Saxon has also died at 83. Some of his most famous roles included the movies “Enter The Dragon” with Bruce Lee (Saxon was a martial artist himself), “Joe Kidd” and “Raid on Entebbe,” as well as TV roles on “Dynasty” and “Falcon Crest.”

Finally, British singer/guitarist Peter Green died Saturday in his sleep at 73. If you remember when Fleetwood Mac was a blues-rock band, that was under Green. He co-founded Fleetwood Mac but left in 1971, before it morphed into a pop-rock mega-group. Green was considered one of the best British blues guitarists ever. Even B.B. King said he had “the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”

Mike Huckabee

There’s been a huge development related to the story we brought you a few days ago about Peter Strzok’s plan to use President Trump’s first official intelligence briefing to spy on him in January of 2017. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Thursday declassified a memo that details the specifics of an earlier briefing, with then-candidate Trump, in August of 2016. That briefing must have made Strzok very happy, because one can see from this new memo that they were already using such meetings to spy on Trump when he was still a candidate.

In fact, they filed the memo in several very interesting places mostly unrelated to the stated purpose of the briefing: under “Crossfire Hurricane,” code name for the “Trump/Russia” investigation; under “Crossfire Razor,” code name for the investigation of Michael Flynn; under “FARA,” the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and also under the vaguely titled “Russia Sensitive Investigative Matter.”

As reported by John Solomon, the memo shows that agent Joe Pientka attempted to gather evidence against both Trump and Flynn, not just briefing the candidate but also writing down the questions Trump asked during the meeting and scrutinizing the demeanor of attendee Flynn as well.

Recall that Strzok wrote later in an email to his boss Bill Priestap that he was “angry” (his word) he’d been left out of the loop ahead of the January 2017 briefing, as he planned to use it to further his investigation and wanted to offer input beforehand. In other words, this was far more than just an intelligence briefing; it was a set-up to play "gotcha" with the newly-inaugurated President, and his colleagues knew it. Unbelievable.

But true. As for the earlier briefing of then-candidate Trump, a source told FOX NEWS that “...the briefing was used as ‘a cover to listen for any remarks’ by Trump or others about the Russian federation.” See the report by Brooke Singman and Gregg Re here.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/source-says-fbi-agent-used-2016-briefing-on-election-interference-as-cover-to-question-trump-team

This intelligence briefing, held August 17, 2016, was supposedly to brief candidate Trump on foreign election interference. But according to the typewritten notes of FBI agent Joe Pientka, the agent “actively listened” for what was said on certain topics, particularly the Russian federation, using his 13-minute briefing for “cover” to monitor both Donald Trump and Michael Flynn.

The briefing was held at the FBI’s New York Field Office. Also in attendance was Trump campaign adviser and former candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. (As far as we know, all this is news to him.)

It was Pientka’s duty as the one giving the briefing to “warn and tell the candidates what they needed to watch out for.” Yet even with their supposed evidence about the Russians targeting the Trump campaign, Pientka did not tell Trump and/or Flynn that this was happening.

Interestingly, the document written by Pientka and supplied to FOX NEWS shows that it was approved by both Peter Strzok and Kevin Clinesmith. Clinesmith, you’ll recall, is the subject of a criminal referral –- so far the only one we know of –- for altering a document to say that Carter Page had not worked as our own asset for the CIA when he actually had done just that. (Page’s work with the CIA would have been exculpatory evidence for him, but somehow they ‘forgot’ to mention it in the FISA application to spy on him, altered evidence of it, and accused Page of being a Russian agent instead.)

According to the FOX NEWS source, Pientka was at that time also handling the FBI’s investigation into Flynn. (Recall that Pientka and Strzok were the two agents who went to the White House to interview Flynn just a few days into his new job as Trump’s new national security adviser.) The same source told FOX NEWS that the briefing was used as “a cover to listen for any remarks” by candidate Trump or others about the Russian federation.

Note that these officials were really out to get Flynn at that time; this particular incident of spying may have been just as much about snagging HIM as it was about stopping candidate Trump. With all Flynn knew about the inner workings of the intelligence community, they did NOT want him working with Trump. This concern would no doubt become a desperate one after Trump was elected.

Another senior administration official did not hold back in commenting to FOX NEWS, saying that this document “shows the same cast of virulent characters that spearheaded the Russia hoax and set Trump up from ‘jump.’” They were trying to make good on their promise to keep Trump from winning. It was “a scam briefing from a scam crew of miscreants at the FBI.”

Then-FBI Director James Comey later testified that he had assured President Trump he was not personally under investigation. (Recall that Trump at the time was understandably upset that Comey wouldn’t come out and state it publicly.) But Comey was lying to Trump. The FBI had Trump under an electron microscope, both before and after he was in office.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, on Sean Hannity’s TV show Thursday night, clarified how they conducted that early briefing. “The FBI went to then-candidate Trump...They told him Russia might try to spy on you; what they didn’t tell him is, ‘WE’RE spying on you.” And they did it just 17 days into this investigation. It opens on July 31; August 17, they do this. Thirteen minutes for the ‘defensive briefing,’ the part...you’re supposed to get; and then an hour and 42 minutes where they’re trying to get information and set the [candidate] up.”

Jordan went on to say that this came very shortly after Strzok’s August 8 text to Lisa Page in which he said, “We’ll stop it [Trump’s election],” and his August 15 text to Page about the “insurance policy” discussed in “Andy’s office” (Andrew McCabe). Just two days later, they start implementing that insurance policy.

Gregg Jarrett, also on Hannity’s show, brought up the fact that Pientka has been scrubbed from the FBI website and is now cloistered in the San Fransisco Field Office, where the FBI refuses to make him available after repeated demands by Congress. And who is responsible for that, as well as for the excruciating delays in releasing these memos? Why, that would be current FBI Director Christopher Wray, of course! Every time we have a story that involves slow-walked evidence, we always seem to end up back at Wray’s office door, which is always closed.

Mike Huckabee

Judicial Watch has done it again. We now have even more texts and emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, who were having an affair during the time they were targeting Donald Trump, first as a hated candidate and later as President-elect. These two were texting and emailing each other so much that it’s hard to imagine they ever got any work done, but somehow they managed. At this point, I’ve lost track of the number of communications we’ve seen that relate to abuse of FBI power.

The emails we’re just now seeing –- still heavily redacted, unfortunately –- were written right around the time of Trump’s inauguration, with some concerning a White House intelligence briefing of the new President. Besides including Strzok and Page, these emails were circulated among then-deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap, and others as well. The frantic flurry of communications going on just before and after Trump’s inauguration testifies to the mood among top FBI officials at that time.

I’d say the most interesting email of all is that from Strzok about the White House briefing --- one that could “play into” the FBI’s “investigative strategy.” The exchanges leading up to it, written the night before the inauguration, are heavily redacted (NOTE to FBI Director Wray: these redactions obviously are for the FBI’s own “CYA” and are not acceptable), but then, we see that on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump was sworn in, Strzok forwarded to Lisa Page and another person (name redacted) an email he’d sent earlier that day to Priestap, asking them to “not forward/share.” Strzok had written Priestap in reference to the White House briefing: “...I am angry that Jen [counterintelligence official Jennifer Boone] did not at least cc: me. AS MY BRANCH HAS PENDING INVESTIGATIVE MATTERS THERE, THIS BRIEF MAY PLAY INTO OUR INVESTIGATIVE STRATEGY [emphasis mine], and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing. This is one of the reasons why I raised the issue of lanes/responsibilities that I did when you asked her to handle the WH [White House] detailee interaction.”

Translation: I want to use the White House intelligence briefing of the new President to continue investigating him, and I’m mad because Jen left me out of the loop.

Other emails from this period detailed in the press release relate to Strzok’s assessment of media reports on the Steele “dossier.” We’ve looked at one such memo by Strzok already, the one in which he admits the NEW YORK TIMES report on Trump colluding with Russian agents was false. Much more detail is here in the press release; it’s kind of “into the weeds,” but if you have time to go through it, some of this stuff is quite entertaining.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton (who deserves huge thanks for working for so long to obtain all this evidence), had this to say, in part: “These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office... And, in a continuing outrage, it should be noticed that Wray’s FBI and Barr’s DOJ continue to slow-walk the release of thousands of Page-Strzok emails --- which means the remaining 8,000 pages of records won’t be reviewed and released until 2021-2022!”

This is because the FBI has been processing emails at the rate of only 500 pages per month (!) and has yet to process text messages. Again, this is completely unacceptable, Director Wray. Who knows what is still buried in there? (Answer: maybe Director Wray does.) But right now, we go with what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is tons of incriminating material.

John Solomon at JUST THE NEWS has also written a piece --- highly recommended --- on Strzok’s email about the White House briefing. It goes on to quote some longtime intelligence analysts who can hardly believe this happened. They told Solomon that “...any effort to use official briefings of the President and his White House to spy, investigate or gather information violated the necessary trust for keeping a President apprised of intelligence in a dangerous world.”

Mike Huckabee

I keep telling people that most public political polls are meaningless, and those taken this far from an election are less than meaningless. But the media keep hyping the “Biden’s double-digit lead” angle to make it seem as if the election were over (I find it odd that Americans have had multiple chances over the past four decades to make Joe Biden President, but only now that he’s nearing 80 have they shown the slightest interest in the prospect.)

All this has many Trump supporters worried. Combined with the relentless daily media assault on Trump, the blame heaped on him for a virus unleashed on the world by China that his China-appeasing opponents have done everything in their power to prolong, and the right-on-cue riots and racial division that Democrats desperately need to keep minorities from noticing how much worse they have fared under Democrats for the past half-century-plus, they fear Trump’s chances of reelection are slipping.

The media refuse to report what he says honestly (look at the wild misrepresentation of his Mount Rushmore speech), and he can’t hold his rallies to fire up enthusiasm. I suspect, however, that Trump supporters are a lot more enthusiastic than they’re letting on or than is being reported. A Trump bumper sticker might get your car vandalized, but once inside the voting booth, that might just make people punch that “Trump” button all the harder.

Still, the recent shake-up in Trump’s campaign organization shows that he knows some adjustments are needed. One thing that would help would be for him to get off defense and back on offense. Remind people how he actually kept his campaign promises in 2016 to bring troops home, renegotiate bad trade deals, stand up to China, make our allies keep their commitments, bring our troops home, crush ISIS and enforce immigration laws (when he wasn’t being hamstrung by a million lawsuits and out-of-control federal judges), not to target legal immigrants but to keep illegal immigration from undermining American jobs and wages. He promised to create jobs and boost economic growth, and he did.

Trump promised to cut two regulations for every new one, and as Liz Peek at Fox News notes, he’s actually cut eight. Under Obama/Biden, the Federal Register reached an all-time record 97,110 pages. They added 3,853 new rules, of which 629 were flagged as having notable effects on small businesses. Under Trump, the number of federal regulations is the lowest since the 1970s, resulting in record low unemployment in virtually every demographic group, “and in early 2019, hourly wages rose 3.4 percent over the year before, the highest rate in 10 years.”

Trump built an economy so strong, it took a virtual biological attack by China to cripple it, but even now, it’s already surging back. Trump needs to hammer the point that if you want the economy to expire like a senior citizen in a New York public nursing home, then put Joe Biden and the Democrats, with their quack remedies of huge taxes, more regulations, big government and nonexistent “green jobs” back in power.

Trump also needs to build on his great Mount Rushmore speech that’s been deliberately misconstrued, to remind us again and again that we have been bequeathed a great nation and a Constitution and economic system that are the envy of the world, and Americans of every race, creed and gender can succeed when we follow the path the Founders laid out and work together.

Kurt Schlichter has a must-read column outlining 21 second-term promises that he thinks Trump should make, to outline a positive vision the way he did in 2016. When I say it’s a must-read, that means I hope President Trump reads it, too, since there are some great ideas in here. If voters think about the nation that these ideas could lead to, and compare it to the possible Ghost-of-America’s-Future under Democrats that we can see right now in Portland, Seattle, New York City or Chicago, I can’t imagine how anyone who could pass a cognitive test would want to vote for Biden.

Mike Huckabee

Late last week, we brought you some newly declassified documents showing the FBI was ridiculously well aware there was no evidence of the Trump campaign “colluding” with Russians. Yet they went right on accusing Carter Page of being a Russian agent and kept renewing the application to spy on him as a window into the campaign and the activities of Trump's associates. We know without a doubt that this happened, because we have it in their own words, not just in casual texts but even in official reports.

A couple of additional key documents are expected sometime this week. And we’re hearing the word “indictments” more frequently.

Mark Meadows, in his first interview with Maria Bartiromo on FOX NEWS’ SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES since becoming President Trump’s chief of staff, used that word. “I know I expect indictments from the evidence I’ve seen,” he said.

He referenced the “couple of other documents” that will be coming out and said, “It’s all starting to unravel and, I tell you, it’s time for people to go to jail and people [to be] indicted.”

Something else related to swap-draining will be revealed in a few weeks, and I’m not quite sure what to think about it, not having seen it yet. It’s an HBO documentary actually called THE SWAMP, featuring dedicated swamp-drainer Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz along with Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Colorado Rep. Ken Buck. The producers claim to have had “unfettered access” to them as they covered “a pivotal year in politics, demonstrating the breadth and grip of a system that rewards money-raising above all else, playing Congress on both sides of the aisle.”

The film focuses primarily on these three Republicans, but three Democrats are also interviewed: California Rep. Ro Khanna, Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes, and disgraced former California member of Congress Katie Hill.

It has promised to expose “how the prevalence of lobbyists and special interest groups in Washington can influence policy based on financial contributions and how Congressmembers’ ability to get key committee assignments depends on how much money they are able to bring in, reflecting both their rank and their ability to affect legislation.”

Ben Kew in BREITBART compares this effort to those of BREITBART NEWS senior contributer and president of the Government Accountability Institute Peter Schweizer, whose 2020 book ‘PROFILES IN CORRUPTION: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite’ takes a look at how Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and (oh, yes) Joe Biden “cashed in” through corruption and special interests.

Until THE SWAMP debuts on August 4, it’s impossible to know how good a job it does of exposing the corruption within the government. There’s just so much of it, they could turn it into a long-running documentary series without addressing it all. And considering “the swamp” has long been in cahoots with so many in the media, it’s easy to be skeptical about the objectivity of any such production. The directors, Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme, also produced the 2017 Netflix documentary GET ME ROGER STONE.

Pehme appeared with GET ME ROGER STONE director Dylan Bank on MSNBC following Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone. You’ll see from the trailer and from this interview that they aren’t exactly fans of Trump or Stone and certainly painted Stone as a personification of the corruption in Washington. That doesn’t mean their new romp through "the swamp" isn’t accurate –- I don’t want to prejudge that –- but it does give us an idea of what they might and, more importantly, might not be focusing on as they peer into its murky depths. We'll see.

Finally, Sara Carter has a hard-hitting commentary on the news we had last week about the FBI and the need to see justice done.

Carter asks the $64,000 Question: If “senior Obama and law enforcement officials didn’t believe there was evidence to prove a conspiracy, or that one even existed, then WHO IN POWER GAVE THE DIRECTIVE [emphasis mine] to target the Trump campaign and continue investigating beyond the election?”

These people knew it was a lie, yet they harmed America’s national security by feeding their lie to the media: newspapers, social media and cable news outlets around the world. “It was a disinformation campaign unlike anything ever seen in U.S. politics and it was cultivated by former senior intelligence officials with extraordinary power,” Carter rightly says.

I strongly agree with her concern over Barr’s recent statement that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation might not be completed until after the November election. It’s understandable that Barr doesn’t want to be seen as getting in the way of a political process, but holding information back from the public is ALSO a kind of interference, an arguably worse one. That's because in deciding whom to support, voters need and deserve as much information about the candidates and the political parties as they can possibly get. (That’s why I always urge waiting until Election Day to vote; if something comes out at the last minute to cause you to change your mind, it’s too late and your precious vote is wasted.)

So, if Durham has concluded that indictments are called for, Barr needs to move forward. And that report has got to come out, no matter what it reveals. We’ve had investigation after investigation for years now, and it’s time. Long past time, in fact.

Carter says she hasn’t “seen any real results since first publishing stories more than three years ago on the subject.” She says she’s “starting to feel, like most people involved in exposing what has happened, like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.” Judging from letters I receive from readers, she has a great deal of company.

On the bright side, look at what we do already know. Even if indictments aren’t handed down soon, we know there is PROOF that the FBI, with help with some in the DOJ, State Department, CIA and the media, and even some senators and members of Congress perpetrated a fraud to influence the 2016 election and sabotage Trump’s presidency. We even know that Obama and Biden were present at a meeting about at least one aspect of that sabotage, that of framing Michael Flynn.

But that makes it even more frustrating when Durham says his report might not be out before the election. At this point, months of additional delay would be absurd. Those who directed and led the soft coup against the Trump administration must be exposed and indicted, or our legal system is a joke. Or, as Carter put it, “We will no longer be the nation based on the principles of justice and liberty we believe ourselves to be but something altogether different.”

As we near the election, we see leftists trying to MAKE us into something altogether different. Indictments of those who perpetrated this fraud are the appropriate way to push back and show that’s not going to happen.

Mike Huckabee

MORNING EDITION

July 18, 2020 

By Mike Huckabee

NEW DOCUMENTS SHOW NO DOUBT "RUSSIA" WAS A HOAX

Going into the weekend, we’ve got some great new reading material to pass along that blasts to Kingdom Come any pretext of legitimacy concerning the “Trump/Russia” investigation.

As Sen. Lindsay Graham forecast a couple of days ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, has at last obtained a couple of highly significant documents, newly declassified.

The first is a curious typewritten report by Peter Strzok on the accuracy of a NEW YORK TIMES story on the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russia. Written February 14, 2017, his report (as opposed to the story) shows beyond all doubt Strzok’s awareness that there was NO reliable evidence that the Trump campaign had had contact with Russian intelligence, in any form.

How can we be so sure of this? Well, the NYT had reported that “phone records and intercepted calls” showed that Trump campaign officials had contact with members of the Russian intelligence services. But Strozk, in his report, said, “This statement is misleading and inaccurate as written. We have not seen any evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with [intelligence officers]."

As Zachary Evans writes in NATIONAL REVIEW, Strzok wrote this not once, not twice, but three times in his report.

Investigative reporter John Solomon, appearing with Devin Nunes and guest host Tammy Bruce on Friday’s HANNITY, said that “nine substantive errors” were found in that single NYT story and that it should be retracted. (Ha, don’t hold your breath. Not that it matters; the damage was done at the time.) According to Solomon, what we’re now finally able to see proves that the FBI knew for months “that everything they gave to the FISA court was wrong --- EVERYTHING --- and yet they never retracted it and renewed the FISA application two more times.”

Nunes stressed the importance of INDICTMENTS. (I put that in capital letters to stress the importance of indictments myself.) “I’m not too interested in the Durham report,” he said. “I would like to know everything, for the four-plus years, that went on, including even the Mueller investigation, but really what we want is...indictments. We’ve made 14 criminal referrals; we have another investigation that’s ongoing...Also, we have suspected for a very long time that Steele had maybe only two Russians, but we believe [that]...he didn’t really know them. How was it that Steele found these supposed 'Russians' and was able to use them? We’ve asked the FBI and the CIA about these Russians; I’ve said for a long time we’re interested in two Russians –- and...they have yet to allow us access to these two Russians who we now believe are living in the United States.”

All right, Director Wray, what is going on with that? It should be all right for senate and congressional investigators to have access to the whole cast of characters by now, as part of their oversight function of the FBI. What is the holdup at this point? If it's just that this is going to make the FBI look bad, well, sorry, that's not a good enough reason.

Moving on...the other document now available is the 57-page transcript of an interview with Steele’s primary source for the “dossier.” The document still contains some redactions, but as THE DAILY CALLER reports, Sen. Graham says it “indicates the reliability of the dossier was completely destroyed” after the interviews, which were conducted over three days in January 2017.

In other words, over January and February of 2017, the “dossier” –- and, by extension, the investigation based on it –- was shown without a doubt to be an outrageous farce with no evidence to back it up. But the FBI just kept pushing. So, of course, did the Democrats. Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in mid-May!

Incidentally, there had been a hold-up in obtaining this document as well, as can be seen in this earlier report from THE DAILY CALLER, dated June 25.

According to THE DAILY CALLER, the FBI had been “refusing” to supply the document, “saying in response to a public records request that the information is classified and risks identifying a confidential FBI source.” Reading their account, you can see how long and hard the tug-of-war has been to get hold of classified documents that tell the tale of this hoax.

But they're out now --- happy reading!

"HUCKABEE" PREVIEW

Tonight on TBN, we’ll relieve your hot July with another cool new episode of “Huckabee!” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt will tell us what’s being done to protect America’s monuments from history-hating vandals. You’ll meet one of the unsung heroes of the mission to take out Osama Bin Laden, and a Huck’s Hero who overcame his struggles with autism and now helps countless others do the same. I’ll have some serious news commentary, plus plenty of laughs from hilarious stand-up comic Bob Zany. And get ready for a blast from the past as the Zmed Brothers perform their amazing tribute to the Everly Brothers.

It all gets rockin’ tonight at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and the same times on Sunday, only on TBN. To find where you can watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.tbn.org/huckabee and click on the “WATCH” menu at the top. You can also stream previous episodes, highlights and Internet-only “Digital Exclusives,” like extended interviews and extra performances by our musical and comedy guests. It’s all at https://www.tbn.org/huckabee

JOHN LEWIS RIP

Longtime Georgia Representative John Lewis died last night of pancreatic cancer at 80. Even those who disagreed with his political views admired him for his bravery in fighting for civil rights, sometimes at risk of his own life. In 1965, he led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. As the marchers were crossing the Edmond Pettus Bridge, they were met by state troopers, who fractured Lewis’ skull.

Over the course of his life, Lewis went from a segregated school to being the only person who spoke at the Rev. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington who was still alive and in attendance when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first black President. Our prayers and condolences to his family. The article at the link has some extraordinary photos from his history-making life.

Mike Huckabee

Today’s corporations will go to some pretty absurd lengths to appeal to eco-consumers, but Burger King has just raised (or lowered) the bar with a commercial for its new burger made from cows that burp and fart less greenhouse gas than your average bovine. The cows are on a lemongrass diet that reduces methane. The commercial features young viral celebrity/country music yodeler Mason Ramsey extolling in song the virtues of less-flatulent cows.

Now, if only we could get green politicians like AOC to emit less gas.

As long as we’re on the subject, Amazon is also running an inadvertently horrifying eco-ad, as my bird-loving writers Pat and Laura, who rescue homeless parrots, point out. The spot starts with white text on a black background, listing all the ways in which Amazon is going green, such as electric vehicles, to eliminate carbon emissions. This is accompanied only by the lulling, natural sound of birds chirping.

Then at the end of the ad, the text gives way to video of how they plan to accomplish this: with a field full of spinning wind power turbines. Or as Pat and Laura call them, “Bird Cuisinarts.” Those spinning blades dice, slice, chop and slaughter countless birds, as well as bats that are also vital to the eco-system. All to produce a tiny fraction of the clean energy that can be generated by a safe, modern nuclear plant. Enjoy the bird songs while you can.

Mike Huckabee

For all the media figures and politicians were rooting against and trying to block the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients just because President Trump said it might work, take a look at the chart from France in this article. It shows what happened to the case fatality rate between the moment when a bogus study trumpeted by biased media outlets got the drug banned and the moment when the study was retracted and doctors were allowed to prescribe it again.

I think we can now officially classify Trump Derangement Syndrome as a fatal disease, except it doesn’t kill the carrier, it kills other people.

Mike Huckabee

The NYPD Crime Stoppers are offering a $2500 reward for the identity of a man who brutally assaulted police officers with a bat during a protest at the Brooklyn Bridge. Video of him and more information is at this link:

Video also appears to show the “peaceful protesters” receiving a shipment of bats from a car shortly before the protest.

I’ll let you know whether Mayor DeBlasio blames the bat assault on the cops or President Trump. If you think I’m being flippant, note that the leftist Mayor of Portland blames the street violence and graffiti in his city on the Department of Homeland Security Agents there, and he’s demanding that they clean the graffiti off and leave town, even as he refuses to let Trump send in federal troops to end the lawlessness in his own city. I guess he must’ve heard all the talk about DeBlasio being the worst mayor in America and said, “Hold muh latte!”…

In truth, all of this lawlessness, violence and filth is going on in cities run for decades entirely by Democrats. It’s the natural order of things that leftists impose their insane failed policies and make a huge mess. On rare occasions, the people wake up and realize it’s necessary to elect Republicans to clean up the left’s disasters (as Rudy Giuliani did in New York.) But even then, sadly, memories are short. Voters start to think that a clean, successful city runs itself. They forget what it was like, so they think it's safe to put a DeBlasio back in power. And they discover just how quickly it can all slide back into the sewer.

If you want to see what happens when you elect leftists for too long, and then let them institute their own “solutions” to the problems they caused themselves instead of calling in a Republican to fix it, look at this shocking report from San Francisco. First, the city’s leaders let it be taken over by homeless people with crime, mental and addiction problems. Then came COVID-19 (on top of all the other diseases that were coming back from the Middle Ages.) Leftist solution: put the homeless people into the empty hotels. So how is that "fix" working out? The words “disaster” and “pandemonium” in the headline should give you a clue.

I have to warn you, this story requires a strong stomach to read. You probably should also avoid it if you’re prone to spikes in your blood pressure from things that are infuriating.