Mike Huckabee

Our “Homeland Security Secretary” Alejandro Mayorkas offers nothing but blame-shifting for our open border and the surge of illegal immigration. And as for what happened to those 42 illegal border crossers who were on the terror watch list, he has no clue.

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2022/04/29/ben-shapiro-gets-to-the-heart-of-why-lefties-are-losing-it-over-elon-musks-accurate-perspective-on-left-vs-right/

But under his “leadership” (this Administration is definitely to blame for the supply shortage of quotation marks), we now have a “Ministry of Truth”-style Disinformation Czarina to do what’s really important for domestic security: monitor Americans’ free speech in case they say something that challenges this Administration’s narratives. That might signal that they’re a potential violent threat that needs to be visited by a federal agency with lots and lots of guns.

I’m glad to see that the announcement of this shockingly unconstitutional speech-suppression board has been met with outrage, ridicule, condemnation and demands that it be killed immediately from critics across the political spectrum. Only the most diehard Biden apologists are trying to defend it.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/free-speech-concerns-dhs-disinformation-board-lawmakers-critics

It doesn’t help that the woman chosen as head hall monitor of our speech appears to be such a leftwing looney tune, and I mean that literally: she sings looney leftwing tunes on Twitter.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/04/29/jen-psaki-vouches-for-mary-poppins-of-disinformation-nina-jankowiczs-expertise/

Yes, that’s our new speech overlord Nina Jankowisc singing a cringeworthy parody of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” (Keep reading next week when our writer Laura Ainsworth, who is a professional song parodist, is thinking of penning a rebuttal.) Yes, she’s not only a leftist who spreads “disinformation” with a bulldozer when it comes from the Democrats…

https://www.westernjournal.com/woman-leading-bidens-ministry-truth-spread-lie-dismissing-hunters-laptop/

…she’s also a narcissistic musical theater kid. Who wouldn’t want one of those policing everything you say?

I’ll bet she was a big fan of the TV show “Glee,” which makes sense if you read this lengthy but fascinating article arguing that the rabid online “Glee” fan community was ground zero for the entire epidemic of wokeness, crybullies and “critical theory” identity politics that’s metastasized to every corner of American life.

https://humanevents.com/2022/01/04/hollywood-consultant-admits-glee-started-the-wokeness-epidemic/

Remember when we were told we had to elect Biden so that the “adults would be back in charge”? What we got instead is Grandpa Simpson incompetently babysitting while Bart destroys the house and Lisa annoys us with politically correct nagging and musical interludes.

But a warning: don’t let the appalling choice of office head become the story. That will give them an opening simply to replace her and keep the office. Even if she were the most sober-sided, moderate bureaucrat imaginable, the problem isn’t one individual’s personality, it’s the entire idea of a federal office to monitor and suppress American citizens’ speech. I wish Ms Jankowicz all the best in her musical theater career, but the office she’s about to assume needs to be exterminated now before it has a chance to take root.

Kenneth Allard

If you missed last week’s raucous congressional testimony by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, then you passed up television at its finest, the most compelling telecast since Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Republican Congressmen shouted angrily at the witness and at each other as Democratic chairmen furiously hammered for order. While mostly ignoring it, the complicit mainstream press later explained away the frequent shouts of “Traitor!” and Resign!” by insisting that the Republican minority was grandstanding to heighten their slander of the hapless DHS secretary.

To be perfectly fair, Mr. Mayorkas conclusively demonstrated that he may be the only person in the nation who knows less about our borders than Kamala Harris, our reigning Vice President and National Embarrassment. Watching him, it was hard to understand how someone could be so consistently wrong, beginning with his assertion that DHS had “competently managed” the migratory hordes now rushing the border. Nor has he ever recanted his spurious September charges that mounted Border Patrolmen were using their reins to whip helpless migrants rather than to control their horses. Isn’t it the first responsibility of any leader, but especially a Cabinet Secretary, to back up his people while performing difficult and hazardous duties?

Since old books can often produce new ideas, my well-thumbed dictionary always comes through. There, just after the listings for “bed-pan” and “Beelzebub” was the perfect description of Alejandro Mayorkas: “Befuddled: to fuddle or confuse the mind of a person or to stupefy with liquor. Befuddlement (n.)” If that seems a little harsh, then remember that Mr. Mayorkas has apparently never grasped that the most essential function of borders is to keep foreigners out while protecting citizen’s lives and property; but instead of opposing immigration flows, he conceives the DHS function as merely managing them. Precisely that same naivete governs his responses to terrorism since he had no idea what happened to those 42 aliens on the terrorist watch list who were unlucky enough to have been apprehended since Biden took office. Well, where are they now, Mr. Secretary, in jail or released with cell phones, ankle bracelets and our best wishes? Oh wait, you’re befuddled, so please excuse me for asking.

Future historians may well debate this question underlying American destiny: Did we lose our national IQ after we elected Joe Biden? Or did we elect Joe because we had already Gone Stupid, the downstream consequence of having spurned our national values while reducing our educational system to Third World levels? Either way: soon we may hear Jen Psaki’s Farewell and Final Sophistry before joining MSNBC. “Our Republican friends seem to have missed an impressive benefit of these so-called border surges. Many of these new migrants are better educated and harder-working than their native American counter-parts!” Sad to say, Jen the Glib might even be right.

While the Biden administration and Democrats in general often ignore its provisions, the U. S. Constitution is very specific about border security. Article 4, Section 4 stipulates that, “The United State shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican (i.e., representative) Form of Government, and shall protect each of them from invasion…” If Trump-enacted COVID restrictions are lifted by May 23rd, current estimates are that the flood of illegals could reach over 18, 000 people per day, an invasion that even befuddled Secretary Mayorkas admits would strain limited DHS resources.

Texans prefer plain speaking to Washington double-speak so it was not surprising that Allen Castleberry, Sheriff of Kimble County Texas (not far from the overrun border) recently took the extraordinary step of using his Facebook account to post a stark warning:

The Kimble County Sheriff’s Office…(has) received information through several intelligence sources that a profound increase in illegal immigration entries and human smuggling activities are expected …in the coming months…There are reports that hundreds of thousands of people are staging throughout Central and South America, from Mexico to Brazil…(We) expect a very large increase in illegal immigration and human smuggling attempts that will inevitably impact Kimble County. Additionally, the international criminal gang…MS-13, has been taking full advantage of the wave of illegal immigration….

Since sheriffs are the only elected leaders in law enforcement, Sheriff Castleberry told me he wanted to make sure his Kimble County citizens knew what might lie ahead. I do too: Remember that the invasion striking us in Texas today will hit your neighborhoods tomorrow or next week. So protect yourself, your home, your families and your communities by any legal means available.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff writer

All right, I have to say it. A line has been crossed, and this cannot stand.

It was crossed by a strange woman we had mercifully never heard of before, Nina Jankowicz, and it’s not the line you’re thinking of, the one that has to do with trashing the First Amendment, although she (along with the horrid administration that hired her) has crossed that one, too.

No, the line she crossed was in creating that truly terrifying Julie Andrews-style song parody of “Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.” As someone who is, myself, a song parodist who has performed her share of Julie Andrews song parodies, and who has deep respect for Julie Andrews, I simply can’t abide a song associated with her being used as an anthem in praise of government power. The words that come to mind upon hearing this (bleep) are not long at all; in fact, most of them have just four letters.

On the other hand, one thing about this parody is eerily appropriate: It’s a song that was sung by a NANNY. Now we have the GOVERNMENT expecting to be our nanny, telling us what to believe as fact and how to talk to each other about it –- if we’re allowed to talk about it at all. We have to follow nanny's rules and behave. We have to tidy up the nursery. We’ve had elements of the “nanny state” for a long time, increasingly so, but this board is the absolute worst to come along.

As I'd like to think Mary Poppins herself might express it, the idea of having the government as our nanny is “practically putrid in every way.” There’s no amount of sugar that will help this medicine go down.

So let's tell them to go fly a kite.

As for my own parodies, most of them have been recorded for radio stations that could then claim “intellectual property” rights in perpetuity, so unfortunately I can’t share them here. But it has even been said that if Julie Andrews and 'Weird' Al Yankovich had a child, it would be me. I take that as high praise. And I don’t enjoy seeing Weird Al’s name sullied by being mentioned in the same breath as Jankowicz’s. Because their last names are similar, some have even jested that she might be related to him. I’m a huge fan of Weird Al –- even got to meet and talk with him –- and I’m sure he’s the last person who would want his name associated with government censorship.

You’ve probably seen the Jankowicz parody because it’s been played over and over –- even by FOX News, perhaps to scare the life out of those of us who care about free speech. (It worked.) I’m not going to link to it here because it might cause side effects: nausea, vomiting, headache, high blood pressure, stroke, night terrors. It’s not that she can’t sing; she sings well and obviously has done some musical theatre, which she should definitely go back to, fancy degrees or not. No, the horrifying part is the ferocity of her zealousness, which comes through in every note and facial expression.

I’m a little concerned right now that so much focus is on Jankowicz that the discussion will become about HER, as opposed to the very existence of the (shudder) “Disinformation Governance Board.” Perhaps in talking about her now, I’m actually contributing to that. So I’ll make it clear: it’s not enough to get a different director for this board; the whole thing must be scrapped immediately, and anyone who was trying to sneak it in has got to go.

Since I do love to write parody lyrics, I thought it would be fun to write some alternate lyrics myself to “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" that told the REAL story of what the government is trying to do with its assault on so-called “disinformation.” In case you want to sing along, I’ve put the downbeats in capital letters. Here we go!

SUPER-PLAN-FOR-CENSORSHIP-TO-FIGHT-DISINFORMATION

Laura Ainsworth c 2022

CHORUS:

(Our…) SU-per-plan-for-censorship-to-FIGHT-disinformation

THAT’S our way to take control and MON-itor the nation

WE are here to moderate your EV-ry conversation

SU-per-plan-for-censorhip-to-FIGHT-disinformation!

---

UM-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-lie!

UM-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-lie!

---

VERSE:

We’ll SEE that you’re afraid to speak a-BOUT Election fraud

Don’t TALK of Hunter’s laptop, that is CER-tainly outlawed

Don’t QUIB-ble when we say to get a-NOTH-er booster shot

You’re NOT advised to criticize, ‘cause THIS is what we’ve got:

---

CHORUS:

(Our) SU-per-plan-for-censorship-to-FIGHT-disinformation

IF you're a conservative, we'll BLOCK communication

WHEN you contradict us, you’ll be FA-cing litigation!

SU-per-plan-for-censorship-to-FIGHT-disinformation

---

UM-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-lie!

UM-diddle-iddle-iddle-um-diddle-lie!

---

Just TRAV-el all around the world and YOU will plainly see

That WHAT we do is modeled on the MOD-ern CCP

In OR-well’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it’s WHAT they had to do

So HERE’S a Min-is-try Of Truth for TWEN-ty twenty-two!

---

(Our) SU-per-plan-for-censorship-to-FIGHT-disinformation

WE have been awaiting this with SUCH anticipation

WHAT we do to language will re-MIND you of castration

SU-per-plan-for-censorship-to FIGHT-disinformation!!!

UPDATE:

Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the Department of Homeland Security, went on the Sunday shows to try to minimize the power of his new board, the “Disinformation Governance Board,” and the woman chosen to head it, Nina Jankowicz. She had, in her words, “let the cat out of the bag” about what she would be doing, and he’d apparently chosen to get ahead of the story by mentioning it to a congressional committee. Free speech advocates were shocked.

So on Sunday, he went on CNN to do damage control, saying that Jankowicz was “eminently qualified” and “a renowned expert in the field of disinformation.” He told Dana Bash that “the board does not have operational ability or authority.”

He went on FOX News Sunday to say that he had no reservations about Jankowicz’s objectivity. “There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views and they’re incredibly dedicated to mission,” he said. “We’re not the opinion police.”

https://nypost.com/2022/05/01/mayorkas-says-disinformation-board-wont-track-us-citizens/

Never mind that this woman has already revealed herself to be a crazed political hack. Talk about being incredibly dedicated to mission! To cite just one of numerous examples, this “renowned expert” believed the Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation, either from Russia or “a Trump campaign product.” The fact that someone like her was chosen for that job tells us all we need to know.

To downplay this, Jankowicz has reportedly removed her TikTok account from public view.

https://thepostmillennial.com/nina-jankowicz-the-white-houses-new-ministry-of-truth-czar-has-privated-her-own-tik-tok-account

As for Mayorkas, when he defends the board and Jankowicz, remember that this is the same man who, as head of Homeland Security, maintains that the border is under control. He told outrageous lies about the condition of the border in his testimony last week. The truth about the border is the opposite of what he said, so when he claims his new board is not the opinion police...well, there's good reason to believe the opposite is true. He has destroyed whatever credibility he might have had, and NOTHING he says about this board –- or anything else –- can be believed.

Ironically, he himself is a fountain of disinformation.

Mayorkas also said he could have picked someone from either side of the aisle to head this board. Two problems with that:

1) He didn’t.

2) A real conservative wouldn’t TAKE the job of running a government “disinformation” board.

Mike Huckabee

The Biden “Justice” Department is asking Congress for a $2.63 billion increase in its budget, supposedly to help cities deal with the huge jump in crime and murder rates. Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland tried to convince the Senate Appropriations Committee that the money was justified, but Republican Sen. John Kennedy grilled him like a cheap steak on that.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gop-sen-kennedy-destroys-ag-merrick-garland-biden-admins-response-spike-crime-rate/

Kennedy started by saying he believes this DOJ is losing on crime, drugs, immigration and Chinese espionage, and demanded to know whether they would use this money to fund procedures that we know work, like to “stop and frisk” known gang members. Of course, Garland couldn’t endorse that because it’s been demonized as racist, so he tried to wiggle out of saying what the money was actually for.

Garland said there is no federal “one solution fits all” for state and local law enforcement, and that he believes local officials know what works best, while “We provide our technical expertise.” Click the link for video of the entertaining exchange.

Just a few points: if state and local leaders in blue areas (because that’s where the crime surge is, and we all know why) know “what works best,” then why is what they’re doing obviously not working at all? In fact, the local leftist prosecutors’ policies are making crime exponentially worse. If the DOJ can’t even tell them that hogtying police while providing a revolving door to criminals is their problem, then what “technical expertise” do they have that’s worth spit, much less an extra $2.63 billion of our money?

Here, I’ll tell those localities how to solve their crime problem: “Start arresting criminals, and once you do, keep them in jail!” That’s all the “technical expertise” they need, and I just saved the taxpayers $2.63 billion. You’re welcome.

Mike Huckabee

Look for a detailed update tomorrow on John Durham’s special counsel investigation and the Michael Sussmann trial. In the meantime, here’s a piece of not entirely unexpected news: The presiding judge, Christopher Cooper, has ruled Hillary’s tweet, which says that “Donald Trump has a secret server...it was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank.,” and a follow-up tweet linking to a four-paragraph missive from her campaign, are inadmissible as evidence.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/judge-wont-let-clinton-collusion-tweet-be-admitted-in-sussmann-trial

The judge excluded this as “hearsay” and said it’s “likely duplicative of other evidence” related to demonstrating the attorney-client relationship. Recall that Sussmann faces one charge of lying to the FBI about that attorney-client relationship; specifically, whether or not it was the reason for his visit.

As Jerry Dunleavy at the Washington Examiner explains, “The special counsel argued the tweet is not inadmissible hearsay “because it is not being offered for its truth ---emphasizing that the prosecutors actually believe its claims were false.” In other words, if they were actually trying to prove the Alfa Bank scheme was true, Hillary’s tweet about that would be inadmissible hearsay. But they want to use the tweet to help prove something else: the attorney-client relationship between Hillary For America and Michael Sussmann.

But the defense still claimed that the tweet “plainly is being offered for the truth” by prosecutors. As I’ve reminded my readers many times, I’m not a lawyer, but for the life of me, I can’t see how that makes sense. Durham knows the tweet is false, and do we all at this point.

Oh, and pardon our cynicism, but we laughed out loud at the transparent attempt to protect Hillary that was made by Sussmann’s team: “There is a real danger that if the tweet were admitted, the jury would believe that Hillary Clinton herself was part of the Special Counsel’s uncharged conspiracy and that she had a direct interest or involvement in Mr. Sussmann’s efforts. Drawing the candidate herself into this matter in this way would be unfair to Mr. Sussmann.”

Get my smelling salts! Lawd, lawd, we wouldn’t want anyone having the impression that HILLARY was involved. Still, the judge, an Obama appointee with a stack of rather shocking Democrat connections and conflicts of interest, bought the defense’s “hearsay” argument.

But now, for the good stuff. I’ll have more at length about it later, but for now, read the account at ZeroHedge of what has just been revealed in this case by the sight of some documents that didn’t quite remain under seal when they got attached to another legal filing of Durham’s. While much of the material pertaining to this case has been seen in heavily redacted form, this story includes links to some unredacted communications that show how extensively Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Frietsch peddled the Trump Russia hoax. They coordinated with multiple journalists, producers and media outlets to get that story out. They were on a mission to spread what they knew to be fake anti-Trump garbage far and wide, and now we have a better idea of their phenomenal dedication.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/russia-hoax-durham-staffer-accidentally-exposes-emails-revealing-coordination-between

TechnoFog examines some of these communications and shows how they blow a hole in the defense’s attorney-client privilege argument, as they have nothing to do with obtaining legal advice. Even if they did, or if lawyers were copied (they weren’t), this little army of hoaxers lost their “privilege” when these messages went out to the media.

https://technofog.substack.com/p/durhams-latest-he-has-hundreds-of?s=w

Tomorrow we’ll have a report on Wednesday’s federal court appearance by Durham’s team and Sussmann’s defense team. The trial is scheduled to start May 16.

Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, we mentioned that Hunter Biden business partner Eric Schwerin didn’t just visit the White House 19 times; he had another 8 confabs for a total of 27. But what we didn’t know then about those later visits is perhaps even more significant.

According to visitor logs obtained by FOX News, two of the other eight visits –- all in 2016, the last year of the Obama administration –- were with the then-Vice President’s chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, who went on to be President Biden’s White House counsel and assistant to the President.

But if Breitbart News is correct, Ricchetti also happens to be...(drum roll, please)...a former president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter and Schwerin's firm.

What??

We’ve tried to verify this amazing statement but have found no mention of it anywhere else. Of course, for all we know, it’s been expunged, as when Wikipedia recently took down its entry for Rosemont Seneca entirely. (Someone at Wikipedia actually told the Post that “keeping it around” ran the risk of the page becoming “a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.” I’m serious.) The Post managed to resurrect the brief entry, which mentions Hunter, Devon Archer and Chris Heinz but does not include Ricchetti.

Wikipedia does have an entry for Ricchetti, which lays out his extensive career in lobbying and in the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. We found out that before joining VP Biden in 2012, he was on the board of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and that he'd had his own pricey lobbying firm, Ricchetti Inc. This entry doesn’t mention Rosemont Seneca, either, but, unfortunately, in this day when information can just be dropped down the memory hole, we never know when we’re being lied to by omission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ricchetti

We did more digging and found a worthwhile Politico article about Ricchetti, “The Man Plotting Biden in 2016,” from the days when Biden was contemplating getting into the presidential race against Hillary. (It was written in September of 2015, long before then-FBI Director Comey let Hillary skate in his July 5, 2016, “no reasonable prosecutor” speech.) Lots of history on Ricchetti, but no mention of Hunter or Rosemont Seneca.

The NY Post speaks of Schwerin as the president of Rosemont Seneca, at least in 2010. But Breitbart describes Ricchetti as “the president of the investment firm Schwerin and Hunter managed, Rosemont Seneca Partners.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/23/wikipedia-deletes-entry-for-hunter-biden-firm-rosemont-seneca-partners/

So, we’d like to know how closely, if at all, Ricchetti was involved in Rosemont Seneca. It’s already absurd for the President to maintain he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings. How much more ridiculous will that be if it turns out that even his long-long-longtime top aide and counsel had been the president of his son’s business? Under those circumstances, if Biden still didn’t know anything about Hunter’s exploits, he had to be even more out to lunch than he is today, and that hardly seems possible.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/26/hunter-biden-business-partner-visited-white-house/

We’ll leave that question for now. The Daily Mail story has an intriguing timeline for Schwerin’s visits between 2009 and 2015. On November 17, 2010, he had an in-person meeting with VP Biden himself. Read on, and the article also offers a good refresher on the whole laptop story.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10757307/Hunter-Bidens-business-partner-27-VISITS-White-House-Joe-VP.html

We do know for sure about another Rosemont Seneca connection in the White House. According to the Daily Mail, Schwerin met with another assistant in Biden’s office, Anne Marie Person, who had previously worked at there.

When asked about Schwerin’s trips to the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed them as “visits from more than 10 years ago.” She's not very good at math, as the last ones were in 2016, and most voters are not so dismissive. As Breitbart News reports, a Harris poll taken Monday says that:

58 percent believe Joe Biden played a role in his family’s business

60 percent say Hunter was selling “influence and access” to his father

67 percent say President Biden should be impeached if he “secretly participated and facilitated” in the family’s business

It was great to hear from Elon Musk that Twitter’s deep-six-ing of the laptop story before the 2016 election was “inappropriate,” but polls such as this one show that it was way beyond that –- nothing less than election interference.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/25/poll-majority-joe-biden-involved-hunters-corruption-impeachable-offense/

“Look, nobody on the left is going to admit that you now have a corrupt family with a lying President, even though it’s patently obvious,” said Newt Gingrich Wednesday night on INGRAHAM ANGLE. Joe Biden did not put $800,000 into paying his son’s legal bills with no knowledge. There weren’t 27 different occasions where business associates of Hunter Biden were in the Obama White House. This isn’t just Joe Biden --- it’s also Barack Obama.” He doesn’t believe that there were 27 of these visits and “Obama didn’t notice it was on the schedule.”

Gingrich brought up another scandal: the “millions and millions” of dollars given by the CCP to the University of Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden had established “a little school” (the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, which opened in February 2018). This apparently has been under wraps, and the university has denied soliciting or receiving foreign money, though the Post reports that “records show” they’ve received millions in anonymous Chinese gifts. This story in the New York Post is a must-read, as it opens up a whole new area of shade in Biden family finances.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/54m-in-chinese-gifts-donated-to-upenn-home-of-biden-center/

The Bidens were vacuuming up money from China, Russia and Ukraine. ‘It’s amazing to look at the footprints around the world,” Gingrich said, “as the Biden family business –- and that’s really what it was...it’s not just about Hunter Biden, but it’s about the current President of the United States, who I think clearly has lied to the country over and over and over about this issue.”

It’s preposterous to think that father and son didn’t talk about business when Hunter was along on Air Force Two, headed to China. “They want to tell us that on a 14- or 16-hour flight, Joe never said, ‘Gee, Hunter, what are you doing over here? How’s the business going?’

“They think we are SO STUPID, and they are so confident that they’ll be protected by the elite media and...by the Justice Department,” he said. I would add that for a long time, that’s exactly what happened. Even Bill Barr kept quiet when he knew Biden had lied about the laptop during the debates.

“It’s amazing to me,” Gingrich said, “that you could have this blatant level of, literally, taking foreign money in an illegal way, by the Vice President of the United States and his family, who are running a family business...It’s clearly the exploitation of his public office in order to enrich the family.”

He called this “a study in corruption.” It was the Clintons, by the way, who showed how this can done. Gingrich theorizes that the Bidens saw Bill and Hillary enriching themselves through their Clinton Family Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, and thought, “Why not us?”

Mike Huckabee

Have you wondered what Elon Musk might have to say about social media’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story just ahead of the 2020 election? You know, the story that polls show might have swung the election to Donald Trump if voters had known about it?

Wonder no more.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-musk-weighs-in-on-twitter-censoring-hunter-biden-laptop-story-during-2020-election

On Tuesday, Musk tweeted what I’d still call a bit of an understatement, but on target: “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

Twitter’s excuse to the FEC had been that U.S. intel officials had shared “rumors” that this story came from hacked material. I think we all should know by now that it’s a bad idea to automatically believe U.S. intel officials about anything. And there was never any evidence that information in the NY Post’s reporting came from a hack. That apparently didn’t matter at the time to the twits at Twitter.

Last year, though, then-CEO Jack Dorsey –- who has just come out in favor of Musk’s anti-censorship strategy –- told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that censoring the story through their “quick interpretation” had been a “mistake.” And maybe he does regret this, now that the damage has been done. Still, it’s inexcusable that social media prevented people from sharing that story, even privately. How dare they do that.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland was questioned before the Senate Committee on Appropriations about the federal investigation into Hunter’s finances. He said “there will not be interference” but declined to say whether or not he had been briefed on the investigation. He gave the standard answer that he wouldn’t be commenting on an ongoing investigation. Here’s the link to The Epoch Times’ “premium” story, but I’ll comment below.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/attorney-general-tight-lipped-on-hunter-biden-investigation_4428109.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagarty asked Garland how the public could be confident that there would be no interference “of any political or improper kind” in the investigation. The attorney general answered, “Because we put a Trump appointee in charge of the investigation. And because you have me as attorney general, who’s committed to the independence of the DOJ from any influence from the White House.”

I suppose time will tell on that last part. (However, we know this wasn't the case concerning parents who were targeted by the DOJ as "domestic terrorists.") It’s true that U.S. Attorney David Weiss was appointed by Trump -- even if he's still there only because he was already in charge of the investigation when Biden took office and Biden couldn't ask for his resignation, as is customary for U.S. attorneys when a new President comes in. If the U.S. attorney tasked with examining the younger Biden’s financial wrongdoings had been appointed by the elder Biden, one hopes THAT, at least, would be an unassailable reason for appointing a special counsel.

But that's not the case, and when Sen. Hagarty asked Garland about whether or not he might appoint a special counsel, Garland was noncommittal, saying, “It depends on the circumstances.” At another point in the questioning, in an answer to Indiana Senator Mike Braun, Garland said, “The question is an internal DOJ matter. I don’t want to make judgments, but I’m comfortable with the Attorney from Delaware continuing.”

“I think our internal deliberations have to stay within the Department,” he said. And that’s really all the information the committee got out of Garland.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/garland-question-hunter-biden-investigation-special-counsel

Meanwhile, the U.K. Daily Mail has done some blockbuster reporting on Hunter Biden’s finances. Their analysis of the President’s financial records show that he has $5.2 million in income that is “unexplained.” According to their report, the missing millions, combined with messages on Hunter’s laptop, suggest that Joe Biden would indeed have had a 10 percent share in Hunter’s deal with a Chinese energy company.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10728521/Financial-records-reveal-Joe-Biden-5-2million-unexplained-income.html

In fact, emails reveal that Joe –- who was then between gigs as Vice President and President –- agreed to pay Hunter’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills “in the short term.” This was to be “as Hunter transitions in his career.” The list of items to be covered included $28,382 in legal fees for the “restructuring” of Hunter’s joint venture with the CCP-controlled Bank of China. The total amount spent on “restructuring” this deal was apparently $68,933.41, beginning in September 2016.

Would Joe Biden have agreed to pay these legal bills for Hunter without even knowing what they were for? How does that square with his repeated claim that he knew nothing about his son’s foreign business dealings?

As the Daily Mail points out, no conclusive evidence has yet emerged that Joe Biden profited from any of Hunter’s business deals. The federal investigation in Delaware is sorting all that out. But what they’ve seen raises “troubling questions” about where an “unexplained” $5,180,071 came from. The rest of "dad's" income appears to have some from speaking fees and a book deal for his memoir, PROMISE ME, DAD.

A report by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson shows that $5 million in wire transfers from Hunter’s Chinese partners was sent to a company controlled by Hunter. An additional $1 million was sent by Patrick Ho, an executive with Chinese energy company CEFC, as a retainer for Hunter to represent him in a DOJ bribery case. As The Epoch Times reports, there’s an audio recording in which Hunter refers to Ho as “the f***ing spy chief of China.”

Here’s what The Right Scoop had to say…

https://therightscoop.com/bombshell-emails-reveal-joe-biden-paid-legal-bills-for-one-of-hunters-deals-with-communist-china/

Tying all of this together is a great opinion piece from Jordan Boyd at The Federalist, condemning the media for helping Joe Biden maintain his now-obvious lie about not knowing anything about Hunter’s overseas business deals.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/25/biden-dodged-blame-for-lying-about-foreign-dealings-for-years-because-corporate-media-let-him/

Finally, the propagandist “encyclopedia” Wikipedia has deleted the entire entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners, Hunter Biden’s investment firm. As George Orwell would say, it was dropped right down the memory hole. Fortunately, some people who care about the truth still have long memories. (It’s hard to forget that Hunter’s business partner Eric Schwerin visited the White House 19 times, and later, as we’ve just learned, at least 8 additional times.) In the words of NY Post reporter Miranda Devine, the author of LAPTOP FROM HELL who broke the story right before the 2020 election but was shut down by the leftwing media, “This is unsustainable for the White House.”

Mike Huckabee

Monday, Elon Musk clinched his hard-fought and brilliantly strategized plan to buy Twitter. His first tweet was very encouraging, and let’s hope he keeps to this path:

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/breaking-musk-releases-first-statement-twitter-takeover-reveals-future-company/

And here’s more good news: we’ll soon be able to see just how much slanted censoring was really going on, and the outgoing leftist termites won’t be able to cover their tracks or plant digital landmines before they’re shown to the door.

https://www.westernjournal.com/wont-able-hide-twitter-source-code-locked-musk-takeover/

Surprisingly, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey seems to be a-okay with Musk buying Twitter. If this is a hint to his real feelings, maybe he secretly hated Twitter’s woke board and its Stalinist staff of leftist censors in footie pajamas just as much as everyone else did.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-issues-surprising-statement-about-elon-musk-buying-company

Musk might want to unlock Twitter, but judging from the unhinged reactions of the leftists who had been using it as a bludgeon to pummel political opponents, they’ll need to be locked into rubber rooms for a while. Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted a great line in response to all their rage and caterwauling: “Elon Musk now literally owns the libs.”

Glenn Greenwald also had some sharp comments about all the whining from people who are suddenly alarmed that a “billionaire controls a social media platform,” unlike all the other media platforms owned by billionaires, some of which the whiners work for.

https://instapundit.com/517221/

I especially loved all the hysterical threats to pack up their snark and leave Twitter, as if it can’t survive without a handful of leftist loudmouths filling it with idiotic political ideas, threats, censorship, name-calling and childish tantrums. My response: Yes, please leave. Not that I believe they really will, but if they did, it would make it even more pleasant for all the mature adults who will be rejoining Twitter now.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/babylon-bee-others-return-twitter-after-musk-buys

(Incidentally, former President Trump said he will not be rejoining Twitter, but will stay on his own new platform, Truth Social.)

Here’s an example of some of the worst, most race-baiting hysteria, courtesy of MSNBC and Joy Reid, not surprisingly. Money quote: that Musk thinks free speech means white men can say “whatever the hell they want.” Actually, free speech means anyone can say whatever they want. (Warning, don’t read if you have high blood pressure):

https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-analyst-elon-musk-free-speech-white-men

Funny that most of these bawling babies went to college, but they’re just now learning their first lesson in capitalism: a public company can be purchased. Also, its board has a fiduciary duty to make decisions in the best interests of shareholders, not the radical political views of a tiny minority of users.

If they are serious about leaving, I’d offer them the same advice they sneeringly gave to conservatives who were banned from Twitter for wrongthink: “Start your own social media platform!” There already are a number of alternatives, including Parler, Gab and Trump’s new platform, Truth Social. Unfortunately, those also allow the thing leftists hate even more than correct pronoun usage: freedom of speech. Maybe they could go back to Facebook, until Musk buys that.

Or they could do as Donald Trump did and raise the money to start their own platform, just for people like them: whining, immature, self-centered brats who think they know everything and throw temper tantrums if anyone dares to question them. I even have a suggested name for their new social media home: “Romper Room.”

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

We’ve entered a bizarre new world, or maybe it’s a sign of the Apocalypse, but lately, some federal judges have actually been the best recourse for conservatives to stop the leftist destruction of America. Latest example: Monday, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued a temporary restraining order, blocking President Biden from lifting the Title 42 restrictions on illegal immigrants.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/25/trump-appointed-judge-expected-block-biden-ending-title-42-border/

Title 42 allows for expedited deportations due to the COVID health emergency. Biden vowed to lift it next month, which set the stage for a massive influx of up to 30,000 illegal immigrants a day. Republicans, border state Governors, and even some Democrat office holders are pressing him to reconsider, since they could see the disaster coming from months away. There’s also no rational basis for it, since this Administration claims the pandemic is still such a threat that they can’t allow Americans to breathe on a plane without a mask on, yet it’s so over that we can let tens of thousands of unvetted and likely unvaccinated people from who knows where coming pouring over the border.

This judicial order (should the Biden White House actually obey it) will only last until a higher court rules, but let’s hope the higher court also acts in the interests of America. As this story notes, Biden should take this as a welcome escape route from his own bad decision and rescind it, but it’s clear that once he makes up his mind to do something incredibly destructive, there’s no dissuading him.

This judge just did America a favor by temporarily taking the car keys away from Grandpa before he could drive the family wagon through the front window of Piggly-Wiggly again. If Biden were smart, he’d stop arguing for the keys back and be thankful. But I’d bet he won’t.

Mike Huckabee

Last week, we brought you details of the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax and financial affairs, along with the story about a letter from 16 congressional Republicans to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding a briefing on that investigation as part of fulfilling their oversight duties.

Now, the update: Miranda Devine, who broke the laptop story in the New York Post and wrote LAPTOP FROM HELL, has co-written with Jon Levine a report saying that Hunter’s closest Rosemont Seneca partner, Eric Schwerin, visited the Obama White House 19 times, according to visitor logs. On November 17, 2010, around the time Hunter took a downward slide and checked into rehab, Schwerin even had a sit-down meeting with the Vice President in the West Wing.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/23/joe-biden-met-with-hunter-biden-business-partner-at-the-white-house/

Recall that Joe Biden has repeatedly maintained that he knew nothing about his son’s business affairs. But according to Devine, the visits recorded in the logs correspond closely to “key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China.”

Devine cites several striking examples of this; here’s just one: In August of 2011, the Vice President went to China for three days of top-level meetings, including with future President Xi Jinping. Just a few days later, Schweriin was in the White House for a meeting with Kellen Suber, Biden’s executive assistant.

Judging from correspondence on Hunter’s laptop, Schwerin appears to have been the Biden business associate with the most intimate access to Hunter’s personal finances.

Evan Ryan, VP Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and his public liaison, was apparently the White House conduit for Hunter and his Rosemont Seneca colleagues. She married Tony Blinken, who is now President Biden’s Secretary of State, and she got an appointment from Joe as well, as White House Cabinet Secretary.

Devine called attention to a July 6, 2010, memo we recently discussed, with the subject line, “JRB Future Memo.” (JRB could only be “Joseph Robinette Biden.”) It was Schwerin who wrote that memo, saying to Hunter: Your Dad just called me (about his mortgage)...He could use some positive news about his future earnings potential.”

Peter Schweizer, author of “RED HANDED: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win,” along with Devine, appeared with Maria Bartiromo on FOX News Sunday to add to the update.

House investigators intend to call Hunter to testify before Congress if (when!) they retake the House this fall, he said. Meanwhile, the federal investigation in Delaware awaits responses from its subpoena in December for “all documents, emails, or communications created, provided, produced, and/or filed by [Hunter] Biden, regarding Biden’s income, expenses, assets, debts, obligations, and financial transactions, including, but not limited to, all payments made to or from Biden, whether directly or through third parties, and all personal and business expenditures by Biden.” In other words, they're following the money.

According to Devine, the investigation has broadened from tax violations to include potential money laundering and violations of lobbying laws. Devine reported that the grand jury is “making good progress,” holding interviews with Hunter’s “business partners and also his former lovers.” She said they’re asking witnesses who “the big guy” is.

Recall that “the big guy” is mentioned in an email from James Gilliar (subject line: “Expectations”) to Tony Bobulinski and others, including Hunter, that breaks down the percentages of money going to various individuals. Whoever the big guy was, the “expectation” according to this memo was that he would get 10 percent. Former business associate Tony Bobulinski said in an interview with Tucker Carlson just a few days before the 2020 election that “the big guy” was definitely Joe Biden, but that story was suppressed.

Speaking of James Gilliar, we found some excellent reporting on him from Breitbart News that might have been missed the first time around. It concerns Hunter's negotiations with Chinese energy company CEFC. (The breakdown above is for that deal.) Devine has alleged that Joe Biden attended at least one of their meetings with chairman Ye Jianming.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/12/01/emails-hunter-biden-is-true-sheikh-of-washington/

Obviously, what started out as a story about Hunter Biden is now about President Biden. “He’s the center of it,” Schweizer said. “He’s the planet around which the moons in the family, Hunter Biden and James Biden, revolve.” He does have a concern with the issue of statute of limitations, he said, as this grand jury was convened in 2018. COVID intervened, he explained, and they lost “about a year and a half.” He hopes we’ll hear something from them very soon. (Note: you'd think a statute of limitations might be eased if grand juries can't even convene due to an emergency.)

“I don’t know if Miranda shares this opinion,” he said, “but I think they’ve got him dead to rights on tax evasion, and I think the money laundering and other charges are equally very troublesome from Team Biden. And their nightmare scenario is that there’s a trial. They want a deal, even if Hunter goes to jail for a little bit.” A trial would highlight the role Joe Biden played in all of this, he said.

Barring a plea from Hunter, AG Garland would have to decide whether or not to go to trial. Devine pointed out that Garland has already been “burned” by the controversy over investigating parents protesting CRT in their kids’ classrooms, and suggests he might have “no appetite for ruining his reputation further by being seen to be covering up for the Biden family.” She thinks he might just “let justice take its course.” Hope she’s right.

Hunter repaid his overdue taxes in 2021, even though it took huge loan –- at least $1 million, possibly double that, according to Devine –- from a "generous benefactor" in California to do it. She said his defense is going to be that he was a drug addict and didn’t know what he was doing, but that he is now clean.

But whatever happens to Hunter personally, the Democrat establishment “appears to be turning on Joe Biden,” according to Schweizer, largely because he’s polling so dismally. “I’m sure there are certain elements now that would just as soon that he leave the stage at some point,” he said, adding that this is true even if it makes Kamala Harris President.

The Secret Service, unbelievably, has said it has NO visitation logs of those who met with Biden at his home in Delaware –- and he spends over a quarter of his time there.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/no-records-kept-of-bidens-meetings-in-delaware-report

Schweizer has cited numerous instances of off-the-books meetings between Biden personally and various Chinese officials in the White House; he knows about them through references in emails and social media posts from 2011. Curiously, the logs show only meetings with other White House officials, not with the President.

“This is a pattern,” Schweizer said. “When political figures are trying to hide who they’re meeting with...that, to me, is a hugely important avenue to show what’s really going on in this scheme.”

Mike Huckabee

I’m sure I angered some Democrats recently by asking if the Party had become pro-death. I didn’t mean that lightly or as just a partisan jab. I have honestly become alarmed at how radical factions have so taken over the Party that it seems the toll of human life is secondary to imposing their policies.

Stop and ask yourself, how many people have died because of the imposition of leftist policies that have led to riots; wars; skyrocketing murder rates; incredibly dangerous illegal immigration made even worse by coyotes and gangs; deadly drugs like fentanyl pouring across the border; the botched Afghanistan pullout; famines and deaths caused by energy and food shortages created by their radical green policies (not here yet, but give it time); and new abortion laws that are erasing the line between killing babies in the womb and outright infanticide of post-birth children. Dare to say any of this and the “party of compassion” attacks you for criticizing them while ignoring the victims of its tragically misguided views.

Well, it now appears that another death has occurred at the border that will be harder for Biden & Co. to ignore. A search resumed at dawn Saturday for a Texas National Guard soldier who is believed to have drowned in the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass.

https://www.westernjournal.com/texas-national-guard-soldier-border-officials-confirm-heroic-final-feat/

He reportedly dived in to save a migrant woman who started drowning as she attempted to cross the river from Mexico. The woman was saved, but the soldier disappeared in the deep, muddy water. Officials say the river is more dangerous than it looks, and migrants drown there as often as twice a week.

https://www.newsweek.com/search-texas-soldier-feared-drowned-during-rescue-called-off-night-1700290

That’s just one of the many ways in which migrants die, lured here by Biden’s open borders policy. How long has it been since you’ve seen anyone in the news even mention these deaths? Did you know that a couple of people drown every week just in that one spot while crossing the border illegally? If the latest victim hadn’t been a heroic Guardsman, would they have even bothered to cover it?

This is why I don’t want to hear another word about how, if you don’t support Democrat policies, you have no compassion. I think the very lowest bar for compassion is caring at all whether your policies are actually killing people.

Mike Huckabee

Here’s today’s link to continually-updated Russia-Ukraine stories from Fox News:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-zelenskyy-live

Weekend developments: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were in Kyiv for a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. Afterward, Blinken said, “The strategy that we’ve put in place — massive support for Ukraine, massive pressure against Russia, solidarity with more than 30 countries engaged in these efforts — is having real results. When it comes to Russia’s war aims, Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding. Russia has sought as its principal aim to totally subjugate Ukraine, to take away its sovereignty, to take away its independence. That has failed.” Nevertheless, Putin shows no signs of ending his military assault on eastern Ukraine, and he reportedly aims to take control of southern Ukraine.

While it’s debatable whether Russia is actually losing, it isn’t winning the swift and overwhelming victory that Putin apparently thought it would. Why? Lawrence Person has some fascinating data and theories on that, and it’s a lesson Americans can learn some lessons from.

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=51256

Russia spends 5% of its GDP on defense and 20% of the nation’s industrial jobs are in arms manufacturing. Yet some of their missiles turned out to have a 60% failure rate, their planes are being shot down, their tanks are stuck in the mud, and their soldiers not only don’t have enough ammo, they don’t even have decent food. What’s the problem? The rotten thing that ruins everything it touches: socialism!

Instead of embracing free market capitalism and cutting deals with private companies for weapons and supplies, Russia relies on state monopolies that are staggeringly corrupt and incompetent and have no incentives to do better. Read the full article. It will make it clear why Russia’s military looks so fearsome in parades but gets its rump kicked by Ukrainian volunteers with personal small firearms. You’ll understand why the term “Potemkin village” – a phony façade created to fool onlookers into thinking things are going better than they really are – originated in Russia.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Former President Obama is taking heat over a speech for which he should’ve worn a mask and maybe nobody would’ve noticed that he was talking out of both sides of his mouth.

He began with a defense of free speech, claiming he was pretty close to a First Amendment “absolutist.” Then came the “but…” But because of social media spreading harmful “disinformation,” Big Tech needs to regulate speech more. And “content moderation” doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t prevent the distribution of “clearly dangerous content.” Which is why the federal government needs to get involved by creating a “regulatory structure” to ensure Internet speech platforms are “following certain safety standards that we as a country – not just them – have agreed are necessary for the greater good.” Funny, I don't recall being asked if I thought the federal government regulating speech was necessary for the greater good. Were you?

https://www.theblaze.com/news/obama-promptly-gets-called-out-for-demanding-govt-intervention-over-harmful-online-content-after-promoting-free-speech

So to recap: he’s a “free speech absolutist,” except he thinks that Big Tech should monitor and censor speech and the federal government should have laws regulating speech to make sure they’re censoring it the way he thinks they should be – for our own good, of course.

Obama does have a point: people who tell gigantic lies can cause great harm. Like when you take away millions of peoples’ health insurance coverage while assuring them it will be replaced with something that allows them to keep their doctor if they like their doctor. I remember that being declared “Lie of the Year.” Yet irresponsible media companies broadcast it as if it were true.

And then there were the Trump years, which was the golden age of fake news, when trust in the government was poisoned by the media credulously repeating the Russia collusion hoax, the “very fine people” hoax, the “all Mexicans are rapists and criminals” hoax, the Nick Sandmann hoax, the Jussie Smollett hoax, etc. etc.

So maybe Obama has a point: we need federal regulation to ride herd on media outlets that fill the public square with dangerous lies.

Or we could zealously protect freedom of speech so that these unrepentant liars could be called out in the public square and everyone would simply learn not to listen to them anymore. I like that solution better, and it's already well under way.

Mike Huckabee

What happens when an irresistible force like “Too big to fail” meets an immovable object like the ironclad law, “Get woke, go broke”? It appears that what’s happening is that some of the most powerful entertainment megacorps are cracking up due to self-inflicted wounds caused by putting leftist virtue signaling ahead of serving their core customer base. Cases in point: Netflix and Disney, two companies that got very woke, very arrogant and are having a very bad week/year.

Wednesday, Netflix suffered a 35.1% drop in its stock price, the worst since 2004, after announcing that instead of the expected first quarter subscriber increase, it lost 200,000 subscribers. Including Wednesday, Netflix’s stock is down 62% for the year.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-stock-price-plunges-premarket-after-subscriber-loss-11650449002

Netflix’s plunge dragged down other large streaming services, including Disney, which dropped by 5.6%.

Of course, there are a number of contributing factors. People are going back to work after the pandemic (Note to Washington: the pandemic is OVER!) and not streaming Netflix all day. There’s rising competition. Netflix just raised its prices at a time when Americans are cutting expenses due to high inflation. All of these things give them cover to ignore a cancer they’d rather pretend doesn’t exist, but Elon Musk, as usual, dared to voice the unspeakable truth on Twitter: “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.”

And he’s right: Netflix used to provide fun movies to distract us from the problems of the world. Now, they concentrate more on creating “original” programming (I have to put "original" in quotation marks) that pushes woke messages and undermines traditional moral values. It was admirable that they actually refused to “cancel” Dave Chappelle for daring to tell jokes about radical LGBTQ activists, but they still knuckled under by vowing to spend millions on shows pushing their message. In fact, they’ve squandered tons of money on woke message shows that hardly anyone is watching.

And Robert Spencer at PJ Media reminds us of some of Netflix’s recent brilliant programming decisions, from a documentary narrated by Barack Obama (can you imagine them asking Trump to narrate a show?) to a cartoon series that attacked Christians in a vulgar fashion to the execrable “Cuties,” which was basically an attempt to mainstream kiddie porn.

https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2022/04/20/elon-musk-says-woke-mind-virus-is-making-netflix-unwatchable-and-subscribers-are-fleeing-in-droves-n1591406

And they wonder why people refuse to pay to pipe this sewage into their living rooms?

Meanwhile, Disney has its own set of self-created problems. Wednesday, Florida’s Senate voted to end the self-governing status Disney has enjoyed since Walt Disney World was built. It’s expected to pass the House, and Gov. Ron DeSantis will likely sign it, since he already called for it.

While popular with most on the right, some are protesting that it’s anti-free speech to punish Disney for taking political stands. Others, however, say the reason is unimportant; that kind of crony capitalism should’ve ended long ago anyway.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/04/20/ron-desantis-latest-battle-sparks-open-civil-war-on-the-right-n552936

Personally, I think they should be viewed as two separate issues. No, Disney shouldn’t have such a sweetheart deal. And yes, both Florida political leaders and parents are justifiably outraged. Disney isn’t just “taking a political position.” They’re diving headfirst into leftist political activism. They’re also destroying their nearly century-old reputation as a creator of safe, wholesome family entertainment in favor of pushing inappropriate sexual messages and LGBTQ propaganda onto small children.

If the current CEO thinks that mollifying the loudest, most radical activists on his staff is more important than maintaining the company’s reputation and customer base, then it deserves to drop in stock value and lose business. And he deserves to be replaced. There are already whispers of that happening. Couldn’t happen fast enough, if you happen to be a Disney stockholder.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/as-disney-flails-hollywood-weighs-a-possible-bob-iger-comeback/

By the way, if Netflix and Disney would rather go into the grooming and indoctrination business than provide family-friendly entertainment, there are any number of other companies ready and willing to fill the void. Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire recently announced a $100 million investment in creating children's entertainment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/31/daily-wire-kids/

Here’s another new channel that “Full House” star Candace Cameron Bure is helping to launch.

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/04/20/amid-the-fight-over-family-entertainment-christian-candace-cameron-takes-on-a-new-job-n553512

And our pop culture guru Pat Reeder listed some others recently, which I’ll repost below. So it’s not as if we’ll run out of anything to watch if we don’t have Netflix or Disney:

From Pat: If you’re looking for Christian-oriented programming for the whole family, first stop would be TBN, where we do the “Huckabee” show. With that shameless plug out of the way, there are also lots of other great shows on TBN. They even have a 24-hour free streaming service of programs for kids ages 2-12. It’s called Smile of a Child TV, and you can sign up here:

https://smileofachildtv.org

Some other popular Christian streaming services that offer movies, family-friendly TV series and kids programming are Pureflix (https://www.pureflix.com), Minno (https://www.gominno.com), Faith Life TV (https://faithlifetv.com), Up Faith & Family (https://uptv.com) and the Dove Channel (https://www.dovechannel.com.) If you’re just looking to stream movies, there’s Christian Cinema (https://www.christiancinema.com) and Vid Angel, which offers regular movies with the objectionable material edited out, the way broadcast TV does -- or used to (https://www.vidangel.com.)

If you have an Amazon Prime membership for free shipping, it includes all sorts of other benefits, including free streaming of music and thousands of movies and TV shows. And if you have any cable service with Turner Classic Movies, you can get the TCM app for your Firebox, Roku, etc., and stream a constantly-changing assortment of classic films from the days when Hollywood made movies instead of political speeches.

YouTube is owned by Google, which I hate to support, but if you’re willing to sit through brief commercials, you can watch it for free. There are now hundreds of full-length movies on YouTube, as well as episodes of older TV shows and classic cartoons, where Bugs Bunny in a dress is the closest you'll get to gender politics messages.

Or you could just watch old sitcoms on Hulu. But you should know it’s owned by Disney.

Mike Huckabee

This week, top Pentagon official Preston Dunlap, the founding chief architect officer of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force since 2019, announced his resignation. In doing so, he released a frightening warning about the state of readiness of the US Defense Department.

https://www.westernjournal.com/chief-architect-space-force-resigns-3-years-issues-big-warning-defending-country/

He described the US government as the world's largest bureaucracy in which people were more concerned with defending their turf than defending America, and competing with each other instead of China. He said on his first day of work at creating what should be a branch of the armed forces on the cutting edge of technology, he instead found a dinosaur:

“I arrived to find no budget, no authority, no alignment of vision, no people, no computers, no networks, a leaky ceiling, even a broken curtain.” He said that as he was writing his resignation, “I received notification that the phone lines are down at the Pentagon IT help desk. Phone lines are down? It’s 2022, folks.”

And in what I assume is preaching to the choir here, he added, “By the time the Government manages to produce something, it’s too often obsolete; no business would ever survive this way, nor should it.”

I hear a lot of complaints about letting billionaires like Elon Musk take over space technology. But when you consider Washington’s recent track record, I fear that if the current government brain trust had been in charge of NASA in the ‘60s, they not only wouldn’t have made it to the moon, they’d still be arguing over whether any lifeforms we might find on Mars are diverse enough.

Mike Huckabee

There are very few stories that pop up and go through so many twists and turns in so short a time as the Washington Post’s attempt to dox the creator of Libs of TikTok. Follow me closely, and I’ll attempt to bring you up to speed as quickly as possible.

Libs of TikTok is a Twitter account that makes the left look dangerous and ridiculous, not by attacking them or spreading “disinformation,” but by simply reposting things they put onto social media themselves. It’s enraged the left because it’s started being noticed by influential people, like conservative reporters and parents who are shocked to see teachers openly bragging about flying their freak flags in the faces of first graders.

In time-honored “kill the messenger” form, liberal politicians and media figures aren’t angry at the people who expose their lunacy to the world, they’re angry at the Twitter account for shining a brighter spotlight on it. The account has already been suspended a couple of times by Twitter (even though, again, it simply retweets posts from leftist accounts that weren’t suspended – you couldn’t cut the hypocrisy with a chainsaw.)

So this week, in an attempt to intimidate the anonymous private citizen behind the Libs of TikTok account into silence, Washington Post “tech reporter” (i.e., blogger) Taylor Lorenz ran an article that was a thinly disguised attempt to dox her – that is, to reveal details of her identity so that unhinged leftists could threaten her and her family, demand she be fired, and all the other loathsome things online leftist mobs have become notorious for. Lorenz even went to the home of the woman’s relatives.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/04/wapo-taylor-lorenz-wants-to-expose-the-woman-behind-libs-of-tiktok-harasses-her-relatives/

This rightly ignited major blowback, especially since Lorenz herself had recently been literally crying in a TV interview about how people’s mean tweets to her were “horrifying” and amounted to harassment of women.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-taylor-lorenz-libs-of-tiktok

Instead of apologizing for this outrageous breach of ethics, WaPo defended it, in the process telling outright lies, like claiming the creator’s identity was already public knowledge and that they didn’t publish any private details about her (it wasn’t and they did.) Quickly removing it after being called on it didn’t change the reality.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/04/19/washington-post-digs-an-even-deeper-hole-in-response-to-backlash-against-taylor-lorenz-n552713

All this journalistic malpractice and bullying got the attention of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who asked some uncomfortable questions of WaPo about the source of the private information they used to try to dox the site creator. Carlson connected their source to a German-based intelligence operation that he said is trying to “silence and intimidate an American citizen,” and asked if that’s legal and if Lorenz is registered as a foreign agent.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/04/19/tucker-carlson-trounces-the-wapo-over-libs-of-tik-tok-doxxing-as-only-he-can-reveals-disturbing-info-n552792

Libs of TikTok’s creator said she’s been forced to flee her residence because of the doxing and threats, but she refuses to be intimidated into silence, and she’s garnered even greater attention and support. So it appears that an attempt to bully another conservative has blown up in WaPo’s face like one of Wile E. Coyote’s Acme Roadrunner Missiles.

Putting a cherry on top, the CEO of the satirical site The Babylon Bee (which has also been suspended by Twitter for running humorous pieces that were too truthful) announced that he’s struck a deal with the creator of Libs of TikTok to “turn her heroic, high-risk work into a career.”

So a cancel culture leftist set out to silence someone for exposing the truth about the left, inadvertently exposed the ugly truth about herself and her employer, and it all ends up with her intended victim getting a career, a big boost of attention, and an even bigger public platform.

Who says stories these days never have happy endings?

By the way, I would like to point out to WaPo and all the other liberal media outlets that I’ve been reporting and making fun of the insane things leftists say and do for over a decade. So if they’d like to give me some free publicity, my name is Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee

This might be the calm before the storm for the Hunter Biden laptop story. Discussion seems to be moving from the contents –- we’ve got the idea and need to take repeated showers with antibacterial soap –- to the significance of those contents. On Wednesday, The Hill reported that Biden has told Obama he intends to run again in 2024. But on the same day, Townhall ran a piece by Oliver North and David Goetsch entitled “Biden’s Family Scandal: Never Underestimate the Power of Blackmail.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/olivernorthanddavidgoetsch/2022/04/19/bidens-family-scandal-never-underestimate-the-power-of-blackmail-n2606021

Not long ago, we went to Andrew C. McCarthy’s book BALL OF COLLUSION to look at the corruption in Ukraine, the so-called influence peddling in which so many on both sides of the aisle engage. The context was Paul Manafort and how he ever became Trump’s campaign chairman, but this is the same environment where the “Biden family business” thrived. And just as Manafort became politically vulnerable because of his activities and connections, so did the Bidens. That can especially be said of the patriarch, Joe Biden, who had by far the most to lose. The chorus is growing that this scandal isn’t about Hunter, but about the President.

That’s precisely the point made in the Townhall piece. “All Hunter ever peddled to China, Russia and Ukraine was access to his father,” it says. “Hunter not only compromised his father but set him up for blackmail.”

Amazingly, the two enemies President Biden is having to face down in 2022, Russia and China, happen to be the very nations in which he is eminently blackmail-able.

Ah, but you might say that neither Russia nor China has released anything on him. That must mean there's nothing else.

Au contraire. Blackmail is like revenge –- best served cold. Meanwhile, the blackmailer holds on to whatever he has so he can hold the threat of using it over his victim. In the meantime, he WANTS his stooge to remain where he is. The victim knows that if his blackmailers are displeased, they’ll “release the Kraken.”

And since what we already know is so bad –- assuming that Joe was “the Big Guy” and the plan was to give him a 10 percent cut of the action –- one might imagine that “the Kraken” is exponentially worse. (Or, as Biden might say, “expodentially.”)

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/12/16/lol-supercut-of-biden-saying-expodentially-over-and-over-n1541988

The Chinese, especially, are masters of blackmail. Joe Biden might swear up and down that he never profited from his family’s business dealings, but the authors of this piece pose a provocative question: “How did a lifelong politician who often claimed to be ‘the poorest man in the United States Senate’ suddenly become a multimillionaire on the Vice President’s salary, which in 2017 was $230,700?”

(Aside: That question is right up there with, “How did a couple of grifters from Arkansas go from being ‘dead broke’ to flying high in the wealth stratosphere, seemingly protected from any legal consequences of their actions?” I digress.)

Also recall the email that refers to Joe wanting to talk to Hunter “about his [Joe’s] future earnings potential.” We’ll ask again: Why would he be asking his son about that?

As FBI Director Chris Wray said in 2020, “China uses a diverse range of sophisticated techniques, everything from cyber intrusions to corrupting trusted insiders” to get what it wants. He went on to say that blackmail is one of their favorite tactics.

That’s one reason why it was so shocking to learn that California Rep. Eric Swalwell had had a close relationship with a Chinese agent, “Fang Fang,” that started even when he in his first political job, on a city council. Playing the long game, she helped groom him for higher office. Finally, she realized her cover was blown and high-tailed it back to China.

Congress didn’t take that revelation seriously enough –- might some of them be compromised, too? Swalwell takes a lower profile for now, but he’s still around and, amazingly, still has his seat on the HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, where he once investigated President Trump over bogus ties to Russia.

Moving on...As reported by Jason Chaffetz on FOX News Sunday, a group of 16 GOP legislators is calling on the “Justice” Department to brief Congress on the federal investigation into the President’s son, telling Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter, “It is imperative that the Department of Justice brief Congress on the nature of Mr. Weiss’s investigation into Hunter Biden. Congress has a constitutional obligation to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch an a moral obligation to examine if the President of the United States or any senior official in his administration is ethically compromised or injured.”

Chaffetz asked his guest, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, what U.S. District Attorney David Weiss, head of the Delaware investigation into Hunter’s taxes that was made public in December 2020 (note: AFTER the election), might use as an excuse not to brief Congress. “The only excuse they might have,” Biggs said, “is that they don’t want to give us the information.” Yes, it’s typical for them to say they don’t comment on ongoing investigations. But, as Biggs said, 51 former intel officials signed a now-infamous letter saying the laptop had “classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation. They didn’t seem to mind talking about THAT, even when what they were saying wasn’t true.

“That was to suppress this for the election in 2020,” Biggs said. “...If they’re not going to give us information, it does continue to look like the cover-up that we suspect it to be.” He’s concerned that not only might Joe Biden and his family be compromised, but “quite frankly, certain folks and assets within DOJ” might be as well.

What Congress needs, Chaffetz said, is “information about the flow of money.” Biggs, a member of the House Oversight Committee, said they’ll keep pushing. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, is also committed to doing so.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, who also appeared on the show, took a take-charge stance and announced that Republicans in Congress are not waiting for the “Justice” Department to appoint a special counsel. They have a copy of the laptop’s hard drive and will just start their own investigation, thank-you-very-much. They don’t have subpoena power, though, unless (until!) they retake Congress.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/we-have-the-laptop-republican-investigator-hunter-biden-treasure-trove/ar-AAWj899

Mr. Weiss is a Trump appointee. Ironically, Biden couldn’t request his resignation, as is customary in a new administration, because Weiss already headed the ongoing investigation. (This isn’t Ukraine, after all.)

In late February, law professor Jonathan Turley commented on Weiss and the investigation going on in Delaware. Weiss apparently has called numerous witnesses to testify about Hunter’s lavish lifestyle. Turley’s biggest question is the scope of the investigation, saying the uncertainty surrounding that is the reason increasingly being cited for the need to appoint a special counsel, which Merrick Garland still refuses to do, “despite the clear basis for such an appointment.” Turley’s piece is a must-read…

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/02/23/word-to-the-weiss-why-the-delaware-u-s-attorney-still-calling-people-before-the-grand-jury-to-testify-on-hunter-biden/

Oh, and wouldn't want to forget this:

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/poll-trafalgar-biden-china/2022/04/19/id/1066292/

Mike Huckabee

Monday, a federal judge in Florida struck down the national mask mandate on airplanes and other mass transit, finding that while the CDC’s intentions might have been laudable, it overstepped its powers, failed to justify its decision, and did not follow proper rule-making procedures.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-health-business-travel-tampa-3408cc825582126fbda5fbedd3a49dd3

While the Biden White House urged people to keep wearing masks anyway (I get the impression Joe wears one in the shower), Uber, Amtrak, multiple airlines and airports immediately began rescinding their mask requirements and telling passengers that they could free their faces.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/covid-mask-mandate-uber-amtrak-airlines-requirements

And to quote Monty Python, “There was much rejoicing.”

https://www.toddstarnes.com/politics/liberation-day-passengers-cheer-flight-attendants-weep-for-joy/

Of course, not everyone is happy to once again breathe the safe, heavily-filtered air of freedom. Some people are screaming at the sky and demanding the ruling be appealed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pissed-liberals-revolt-after-trump-appointed-judge-lifts-mask-mandate

They’ve become so deeply invested in COVID dogma that telling them they don’t have to wear a mask is like telling a devout Muslim to take off her burqa. The Japanese have even coined a term for this condition: “mask dependency.” They claim they’re on the side of science. But are they really?

https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2022/04/19/mask-mandate-is-history-what-will-the-flight-attendant-masknazis-do-n552273

I’ve never understood why these people demand that everybody else wear a mask. If they truly believe that masks block the virus, then isn’t the one they’re wearing protection enough? They claim they want to prevent the spread of the disease to others, but from the way they’re constantly screaming at, insulting and threatening those who disagree with them, and wishing mass death on them, I find it hard to believe they’re all that altruistic.

Here’s the bottom line on masks: as uncomfortable and inconvenient as they are, I wouldn’t mind wearing one if I thought it was actually doing any good. We followed the suggested protocols at the time and asked our TV studio audience to wear them, which I swear is the only reason you couldn’t hear them laughing uproariously at my jokes.

But we now have plenty of data showing that mask mandates have had terrible adverse effects on children while making virtually no difference in the spread of COVID. The cloth masks most people wear don’t block the transmission of an extremely microscopic airborne virus. Not to mention that most people, especially children, don’t follow the strict rules for handling masks, which ends up making them less sanitary than going maskless.

If you have any friends who are melting down at the thought of taking off their masks, you might want to share this article by John Tierney at City Journal.

https://www.city-journal.org/the-failed-covid-policy-of-mask-mandates

It contains a lot of data, including a chart comparing the COVID spread rates in states with and without mask mandates. They’re virtually identical. So were the cumulative death rates over the course of the pandemic, except that the death rate was slightly lower in states without mask mandates.

To cite specific states, the media praised Rhode Island in the summer of 2020 for reaching a 96% mask compliance rate. It quickly went on to experience one of the worst COVID surges in America. The media savaged Florida and Iowa as “reckless and delusional” and accused them of not caring if people die for refusing or ending mask mandates. Their COVID death rates turned out to be lower than the national average.

Tierney also cites a book by data analyst Ian Miller called “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates,” which “documents how mask mandates were implemented without scientific justification, how they failed around the world, and how public officials and journalists have kept making fools of themselves by pretending otherwise.” Might be good to have a copy of that to loan to your friends. But be sure to sanitize it for their protection.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

One of the few things you can count on in this ever-changing world is that Democrats will never admit that their policies don’t work. Whenever they get into power, mess things up, and their poll ratings plummet (with the steepness of the drop always mysteriously corresponding to the amount of power they wield), it’s always because there’s a problem with their “messaging.” The poor dumb rubes just haven’t heard how great things are going, really. And media bias against Democrats is always such an insurmountable problem for them.

Seven years ago, I wrote the book “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy” to warn liberal elites how out of touch with most Americans they were, and they still haven’t figured it out. But then, why would they listen to me when they could take their cues from AOC and Joy Reid?

With the Dems’ approval ratings now dropping below those of eczema and British cuisine, the Hill newspaper asked them what’s the problem, and as always, it’s that pesky messaging! Americans seem to be in such a grumpy mood, they just don’t appreciate all the great accomplishments of the Biden White House. I’m linking to this because it’s such a perfect example of how they don’t just live in an echo chamber, but as Kurt Schlichter put it, an “echo vault, totally impenetrable from the outside and, at the same time, totally inescapable.”

https://thehill.com/news/administration/3265878-democrats-blame-messaging-for-their-political-problems/

Being a poor, ignorant peasant, you might not be able to name those copious Biden accomplishments, so the Dems listed a few: “…the coronavirus relief bill passed in March, a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the recent confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. They also highlight an economy that continues to create jobs, and the improving state of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Wow, where to start? Well, the massive deficit spending bills are a major contributor to the current record-breaking inflation, and Democrats want more of those. Yes, wages are rising, but inflation is outpacing the rise, so workers are actually falling behind on pay and going into credit card debt. As I’ve mentioned many times before, we’re not dumb enough to believe that letting people return to their old jobs that the government shut down is “creating jobs.” Besides, Americans voting with their moving vans know that the real job creation is in red states where Governors are doing the opposite of what Biden wants, sometimes in defiance of his orders and lawsuits.

COVID-19 is going away because of vaccines developed under Trump and Omicron exploding the level of natural immunity (something the Democrats spent over a year denying exists.) The Brown confirmation is very exciting to people who care about nothing but race and gender (even though she can’t define what a “woman” is), but I think most Americans don’t care what color or sex a judge is, they just want one who doesn’t go easy on repeat criminals, particularly pedophiles.

There is only one honest sentence in this entire article, and it comes from an unnamed Democratic strategist: “We’ve done a f—ing horrible job and sometimes I think we deserve to lose big in November.”

But naturally, he meant a horrible job of “messaging,” and telling the public how great a job they’ve really been doing. I suggest they put modesty aside and just start telling the voters that they don’t appreciate how great they really have it. See how that works in November.

Mike Huckabee

Why are some teachers so adamant about teaching inappropriate sexual and gender content to children? Maybe because they’ve given up on teaching them anything else.

For instance, if you thought English teachers were there to teach your kids grammar and literacy, you need to get with the times, square. According to a statement by the National Council of Teachers of English, “The time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Instead, they want kids to delve into the brave new world of digital media literacy. No, that’s not an oxymoron (I took English when kids learned what an oxymoron was.)

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/04/15/english-teachers-association-will-decenter-book-reading-and-essay-writing-as-it-addresses-systemic-inequalities-and-social-justice-n551127

And what sort of Internet content will these “English” teachers focus on in place of great books and essays? I think you can guess from their claim that they’re pursuing “critical media literacy,” and that they “value the use of teaching and learning practices that help to identify and disrupt the inequalities of contemporary life, including structural racism, sexism, consumerism, and economic injustice. Critical pedagogies help learners see themselves as empowered change agents, able to imagine and build a better, more just world.”

I would be happy if they just taught kids that “they” is not a singular pronoun, no matter what you "prefer."

Oh, well, you don’t want your kids to be English majors anyway. You’d rather they get a degree that will land them a good-paying job in a STEM field. So here’s a roundup of how the teaching of college math and science is going

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/04/15/university-orders-professors-to-decolonize-math-think-twice-before-citing-white-or-male-mathematicians-n551065

As Alex Parker of Redstate.com relates, universities are pushing to “decolonize” math and STEM fields, to remove the “whiteness” and Western frame of reference. As one British social sciences professor explains, “The idea behind decolonizing maths is that because everyone should be regarded as equal, the status of their beliefs must also be equal. This judgmental relativism is an inversion of science that is based on what is real rather than making everybody feel included.”

I don’t know about you, but when I get on a plane, I want to know that the engine was designed by someone who learned how to make everyone feel included, and not just a bunch of real stuff about physics and math.

I mentioned it earlier this week, but it bears repeating: There are 7 million good-paying jobs open right now for skilled workers who went to trade school. Walmart is offering up to $110,000 a year as starting pay for truck drivers. That’s twice the starting salary of the average college graduate, and with zero student debt and no leftist brainwashing.

Mike Huckabee

Good morning! Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! I hope you had a safe and joyous Easter. Sorry we have to get back to the news, but remember that the Good News of Easter lives on 365 days a year.

Today's newsletter includes:

• Durham has MORE evidence: Sussmann and CIA
• Russia-Ukraine War Update
• Two mass shootings reveal Democrats anti-life views
• And much more.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13

If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].

2. Durham has MORE evidence: Sussmann and CIA

Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann is scheduled to go to trial on May 16.

SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES host Jason Chaffetz brought this up with Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs of the House Judiciary Committee for a brief discussion of Durham’s case. “I’m not sure that the Clinton campaign folks or the Democrat Party wants to see this go trial, and air their dirty laundry even further,” Biggs said.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/durham-stripping-bare-incestuous-relationship-in-clinton-campaign-lawyer-case-chaffetz

That’s surely one reason why Sussmann’s attorneys, of the DNC-connected law firm Latham and Watkins, have been trying so hard to get evidence excluded from the trial as “immaterial” to the case. It makes their clients and friends look very, very bad.

Chaffetz ran out of time before they could discuss what the screen graphic said: “Durham: CIA concluded data from Clinton lawyer alleging Trump-Russia connection was “not technically possible.” So we’ll get to that today.

First, in case you missed our Sussmann update over the weekend, featuring the judge’s latest ruling on materiality (in favor of Durham), here’s a link to that:

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=C53E24F8-12B8-40CD-8B56-00F5B14B56CF

The Epoch Times has an update on Durham’s latest filing. It’s a “premium” article, so here's the link but also a summary and comments below.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-clinton-campaign-lawyer-made-false-statements-to-second-government-agency-durham_

Durham had already included in his filings that Sussmann, on September 19, 2016, met with FBI general counsel James Baker and lied to him about why he was there. He was actually representing clients Hillary for America –- Durham has the billing records –- and tech executive Rodney Joffe but said he was not representing clients, instead coming forward on his own, out of his sense of duty. (Good grief; that outrageous whopper is getting harder and harder to stomach every day.) The FBI later determined his Alfa Bank story was not supported by the facts. But in a new filing on Friday, Durham says that several months later, on February 9, 2017 –- after Trump was President, I would note –- Sussmann brought another fake Trump-Russia story to the CIA and lied again.

Here's the document, a CIA memorandum from that meeting, that Durham wants admitted into evidence at trial.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21615492-cia-memorandum

From the memo, we learn that Sussmann had already “reached out” to the CIA general counsel, in mid-December, but had had no response though she’d said she’d be in touch “after some coordination with the FBI.” Not to be dissuaded –- he was a man on a mission –- he had reached out again.

“Mr. Sussmann advised that he was not representing a particular client and the information he was volunteering to us was not privileged,” the memo states. “His contacts wished to provide information to the USG [U.S. government] through Mr. Sussmann, preferring anonymity citing a potential threat from the Russian Intelligence Services.”

[Editorial aside: !!!!!!!]

“Mr. Sussmann said that he believed his contacts were acting in good faith and out of a sense of loyalty to the USG...He was up-front in disclosing that his law firm was active in supporting several democratic causes and office holders including both the DNC and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but that such work was unrelated to his reasons for contacting the CIA. He merely wanted to pass along information that he thought would be of interest to the USG and then let the CIA and FBI validate the information and take whatever actions they believed were necessary.”

Read on in the filing about how he presents the story itself, and it's hard not to just be angry. This was a bogus story he had facilitated, yet he’s presenting it to the CIA as a discovery by courageous people who are coming forward at “some personal risk” and “under threat by Russian Intelligence Services.” The implication is that this information is so sensitive, they’re risking their very lives. What they (including him) should be risking for what they did is a long time behind bars.

Sussmann apparently couldn't even keep his stories straight. He spoke with another CIA employee in January, who also wrote a memo: “Sussmann said that he represents a CLIENT who does not want to be known, but who had some interesting information about the presence and activity of a unique Russian-made phone around President Trump.” (Of course, that story was bogus as well.)

In a section of that memo about “the client,” it seems to be describing Rodney Joffe: “Sussmann would not provide client’s identity and was not sure if he would reveal himself...the client is an engineer with a number of patents, and is most likely a contractor [as] Sussmann claimed the client had very sensitive access to various projects.”

“Sussmann also said that the client is a Republican,” according to the memo. What an odd thing to say. Perhaps another lie? If Joffe is a Republican, he’s a Republican the way Liz Cheney is a Republican.

“...[Sussmann] claimed his client did not want to provide this to the FBI, as he knows that the FBI did not have resources to deal with these issues, or perhaps since Sussmann is openly a Democrat and openly told [redacted] that he does lots of work with DNC, did not trust the FBI.”

“Sussmann said that...if there is no interest...[his client] would most likely go to New York Times.”

Sussmann’s lawyers are trying to keep the further evidence of his lies out of court, saying their client’s statement to the CIA “cannot possibly be part of the charged offense (concerning a single, different statement), and it was not made contemporaneously with the charged crime.” As I like to remind my readers, I am not an attorney, but it seems that Sussmann has lied so much, he could just be charged with those other lies, too. Bring on all the evidence!

His lawyers also point out that what he told the CIA wasn’t to help Hillary become President, because “the election was long since over.” You bet it was over –- by then, Sussmann was trying to unseat a SITTING President.

If you care to read their filing, you’ll see how desperately they’re trying to keep this evidence of Sussmann’s additional lying out of the courtroom.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21615495-sussman-filing

The CIA later found that Sussmann’s story about the Trump-Russia connection was “not technically plausible” and...(wouldn't this be criminal?)...“user-created.” Of course, special counsel Robert Mueller never found “illegal or criminal coordination” with Russia, either.

Durham’s filing also reveals he’s seeking immunity for someone who worked at Fusion GPS, identity not given. Another witness, “Researcher – 2,” who is David Dagon of Georgia Tech, was granted immunity even before Sussmann was indicted. Durham said he’d immunized “Researcher – 2” because five others involved in the plot had invoked their Fifth Amendment rights.

Here's a helpful analysis from Nick Arama at RedState.com. Highly recommended...

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/16/latest-durham-filing-shows-the-net-is-tightening-people-are-flipping-n551196

Sussmann’s attorneys are seeking immunity for Joffe, but Durham’s filing reveals he’s a subject of the investigation and “played a critical leadership role in assembling and submitting the allegations at issue,” so, no immunity for him. The defense is also trying to keep the Steele “dossier” out, but Durham said that evidence is “highly probative” because it establishes Sussmann “represented and worked for the Clinton campaign with its broader opposition research efforts.”

"The fact that FBI headquarters received on the same date both sets of information involving the same political campaign (Clinton campaign), the same law firm [Perkins Coie], and the same investigative firm [Fusion GPS] makes Steele's involvement in these matters relevant." You bet it does.

3. Russia-Ukraine War Update

Here is today’s link to the Fox News continuous feed of Russia-Ukraine bulletins.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-updates-04-18-2022

Latest developments: The pointless violence drags on, with Russia firing several missiles at the city of Lviv. The missiles hit three warehouses and a car tire service center (strategic targets all), and killed seven people and injured 11 others. Ukraine’s military has liberated several towns near the city of Kharkiv. Russia surrounded Mariupol and gave Ukrainians there a deadline to surrender, they refused, and it’s since passed.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “The situation in Mariupol is both dire militarily and heartbreaking. The city doesn’t exist anymore. The remainder of the Ukrainian army and large group of civilians are basically encircled by the Russian forces.”

And Russia’s former foreign minister said he believes that despite his nuclear threats, Putin is “barking” with “no way to bite.” He believes Putin would use nuclear weapons only in very specific circumstances, such as if Russia faced an existential threat, like NATO troops coming to Moscow, or if he were facing an "overwhelming military defeat" in Donbas. But he said the problem in figuring out what Putin would do is that he’s not making rational decisions because he’s operating in a fictional universe, but it’s not clear just how much of the “universe of fiction” the Kremlin puts out that Putin actually believes.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/foreign-minister-putin-nuclear-weapons-existential-threat

4. Two mass shootings reveal Democrats anti-life views

By Mike Huckabee

Over the weekend, South Carolina was the site of two mass shootings, one in a mall and the other in a restaurant. A total of at least 18 people suffered gunshot wounds, although thank God, there were no reported fatalities.

https://nypost.com/2022/04/17/nine-injured-at-south-carolina-restaurant-shooting/

Incredibly, one of the suspected mall shooters was released by a judge on $25,000 bail and allowed to wear an ankle monitor so he could go to work! I can’t imagine any of his co-workers showing up today.

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2022/04/18/judge-sets-25k-bail-for-south-carolina-mall-shooting-suspect-and-lets-him-go-back-to-work-n551746

This type of blasé attitude about violence and crime leads me to ask an uncomfortable question.

We know that there is no longer any place in the Democratic Party for someone who is pro-life. The radical abortion wing drives out anyone who dares to question the current push to allow unfettered abortions up to and even beyond birth (that used to be called “infanticide.”) Never mind that only 13% of Americans think abortion should be allowed in the third trimester. Blue state leaders seem to be competing to see who can make it easier to kill babies in the womb, or even recently out of it, with Colorado currently grabbing the lead in that grisly race.

https://www.westernjournal.com/co-gov-marks-christs-resurrection-death-giving-death-sentence-babies-across-state/

My question, however, is not whether any Party leaders are pro-life, but whether they’ve actually gone so far as to become the pro-death party? If you think that’s outrageous, ask yourself: how many people have died because Democrats came to power, and they don’t seem to care about anything other than how it might affect their polling?

On the international side, we have the soldiers who died in a terrorist attack during Biden’s botched Afghanistan pullout, and all our Afghan allies who were left behind at the mercy of the Taliban (and no, I don’t believe that would have happened if Trump were still in office.) Add in all the Ukrainians who have been killed in the devastating invasion that I don’t believe Putin would have launched if Trump were still in office (you’ll notice he waited until after Trump left and Biden signaled his weakness and fecklessness in Afghanistan.)

But those are hypotheticals. Let’s look at how many people have been killed or injured as a direct result of Democrat policies right here in the US. Like Biden’s open border that’s allowed in repeat criminals, drug gangs and huge amounts of deadly drugs like fentanyl. Not to mention terrorists.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-patrol-people-terrorist-database-southern-border-2021-cbp-data

Consider how many illegal aliens with violent criminal records have been let in and shielded from deportation. Look at the skyrocketing crime and murder rates that coincidentally happen to all be in blue cities with “progressive” DA’s and city leaders, who have defunded the police and refuse to keep criminals in jail.

They have no rational justification for these deliberately deadly policies, only fuzzy euphemisms to try to cover up the bloodstains. They release career criminals to prey on the public again and again and call it “bail reform,” which is like calling partial birth abortion “reproductive justice” (which they also do.)

Even some Democrats are starting to catch on to the deadly consequences of “progressive” policies. New York City Mayor Eric Adams noted that while everyone was talking about the subway shooter, they ignored over a dozen incidents of gun violence just between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

https://www.westernjournal.com/powerful-mayor-turns-blm-thought-black-lives-mattered/

Adams said, “Where are all those who stated black lives matter? Then go do an analysis of who was killed or shot last night. I was up all night speaking to my commanders in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The victims were black. Many of the shooters were black. Why are 16, 17, 18-year-olds out on our streets armed with guns at 12:00 or 1:00 a.m.? If black lives matter, then the thousands of people I saw on the street when [George] Floyd was murdered should be on the streets right now stating that the lives of these black children that are dying every night matter. We can’t be hypocrites.”

Oh but some people can be. When Adams called for fighting the violence by bringing back a plainclothes officer unit that his predecessor DeBlasio disbanded, BLM co-Founder Hawk Newsome raged that they would “take to the streets”: “There will be riots. There will be fire, and there will be bloodshed because we believe in defending our people.”

So he’s threatening riots, arson and bloodshed to protect black people from…not being shot? If that’s not a “pro-death” position, what is?

Kevin Downey Jr. at PJ Media made a related observation that the left’s tactic of dividing Americans by telling some groups that they’re helpless victims of other groups who hate and oppress them has become the driving force behind a number of horrific crimes of rage, from the subway shooting to the guy who ran over 62 people in a parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/15/blinded-me-with-violence-how-the-left-fosters-hate-crime-then-plays-the-victim-n1590085

As Downey puts it, they’re creating an atmosphere that fosters hate crimes, then playing the victim when the people who listen to them commit one. That's using death to gain political advantage. And it's absolutely sickening.

5. Income Tax Deadline Day

By Mike Huckabee

Reminder: Today is Income Tax deadline day, bumped from April 15th because of a local DC holiday. I hope you got all your forms filled out in time and won’t be sweating over them today (or tonight.)

Just FYI: The American Action Forum estimates that this year, complying with all the rules and regulations involved in filing income taxes will cost businesses and individuals 6.5 billion hours and a record $210 billion. That's not the taxes, just the compliance costs!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/tax-preparation-costs-nation-6-5-billion-hours-210-billion

Once November passes, and (I hope) the voters send record numbers of Republicans to Congress, remember those numbers and quote them when you tell your new Congress members to scrap this insane, burdensome, economy-crippling, corruption-enabling tax system, and replace it with one that you can fill out on a postcard:

https://fairtax.org/

6. Absurd idea

Once again proving that George Orwell perfectly predicted today’s world, here’s another example of his observation that there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them:

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/04/17/yale-psychiatrist-calls-verbal-assault-just-as-detrimental-as-physical-violence-n551754

In an article titled, “Should Will Smith’s Slap Be Condemned More Harshly Than Chris Rock’s Words?,” Yale psychologist Dr. Amanda Calhoun argues that words “can be just as detrimental as physical violence.” Claiming that words may lead to depression and even suicide, she writes, “Should a physical assault always be judged more harshly than a verbal assault, no matter the context? I don’t think so.”

This is part of a concerted effort by leftist elites to convince us that freedom of speech is dangerous, so we need “experts” to “moderate” what we say. We might say something that’s “dangerous” or worse, “wrong,” in that it challenges their opinion, which they’ve defined as objective truth. It’s funny that their arguments against free speech are actually the greatest arguments in favor of it.

As for whether words hurt as badly as physical violence, maybe we should ask Chris Rock which hurt worse: Will Smith yelling at him, or Will Smith slapping him across the face. I notice that nobody who pushes this nonsense ever says, “Wait, don’t call me an idiot! Punch me in the face instead. That would hurt less.”

7. Give up the New York Times

True to form, on Good Friday, the New York Times ran an editorial calling on people to “Give up God.” My suggestion would be to give up the New York Times. But I’ll also link you to an excellent response to this latest attack on God from the newspaper of broken record.

https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2022/04/18/from-times-is-god-dead-in-1966-to-the-new-york-times-call-to-give-up-god-today-n2605986

Mike Huckabee

If you’re among the handful of people who were actually watching the Oscars before your friends called to say, “Turn it on, they’re slapping each other,” you heard the hosts mock what they call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill (it actually doesn’t even mention the word “gay”) The three hosts all sang out, “Gay, gay, gay!” to show how you just can’t stop woke Hollywood movie stars from saying, “Gay.”

Unless you’re China, then you can stop them quite easily. In a staggering example of Hollywood hypocrisy, Variety reports that in the new Harry Potter offshoot movie, “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” two lines referring to a gay relationship between the characters were cut out to appease the Chinese censors.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/13/hollywood-hypocrisy-we-say-gay-unless-china-doesnt-want-us-to-n549860

Warners released a statement reading, “As a studio, we’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors.”

Guy Benson of Townhall.com translated that showbiz baloney into plain English:

“Hollywood to Florida: ‘We say GAY!’

Hollywood to China: ‘We will certainly not say “gay” – thank you for your censorship notes, please give us money.’”

So they respect China's "culture" that denies gay people's existence, but not Florida's culture, where parents have the right to prevent their small children from being exposed to inappropriate sexual messages.

That’s Hollywood in 2022: they’ll boycott American states for protecting kids from porn or for not letting men into women’s bathrooms, but they’ll happily ignore Chinese genocide and censorship. Their respect for local customs and norms appears to depend entirely on the size of the profit margin.

Mike Huckabee

You’ve got to hand it to leftist California legislators: they are endlessly creative when it comes to thinking up schemes to try to legislate reality away. Here’s the latest, and it’s a doozy:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10709547/California-proposes-four-day-work-week-companies-500-employees-forcing-overtime.html

In a proposal that would affect 2600 companies and about one-fifth of the state’s workforce, they want to help people cope with leftist-caused inflation by reducing the standard work week from 40 to 32 hours and from five to four days for companies with over 500 employees. That way, anyone who works more than 32 hours would be paid time-and-a-half for overtime. Those working over 12 hours a day or over eight hours on a seventh day would get double pay. In effect, it would force employers to raise wages by an average of 25 percent. It also bars employers from lowering wages to compensate for the government-mandated raise.

There’s also a move by House Democrats to pass a similar national bill. The chair of the Progressive Caucus, far-left Rep. Pramila Jayapal, declared, “It is past time that we put people and communities over corporations and their profits — finally prioritizing the health, well-being, and basic human dignity of the working class rather than their employers' bottom line. The 32-hour work week would go a long way toward finally righting that balance.”

However, the California Chamber of Commerce calls the bill a “job killer.” California companies are already struggling to survive the inflation, supply chain crisis, outrageous gas prices, COVID restrictions and high taxes “progressives” have wrought, and they can’t afford a 25% hike in labor costs. They’ll have to lay off workers, go out of business or join the ongoing stampede to other states. Minimum wage workers who depend on working extra hours to make ends meet won’t be allowed to work more than 32 hours a week. It’s a perfect example of why President Reagan said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

But I will give the “progressives” this: the workers they claim to be “helping” will be able to spend a lot more time with their families once they’re unemployed. However, if they really want to help both employers and employees, I suggest that “progressive” legislators cut their own work week to zero hours.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

President Biden made a speech in Iowa Tuesday, and the best thing you could say about it is that the bird poop that appeared to land on his lapel was probably just corn.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/12/bird-appears-to-poop-on-biden-in-iowa-and-that-was-the-high-point-n549416

Nevertheless, it did give us this hilarious headline from Matt Margolis at PJ Media: “Patriotic Bird Poops on Biden; Speaks for Entire Nation.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/04/12/watch-patriotic-bird-poops-on-biden-speaks-for-entire-nation-n1589208

As for everything else he said, from blaming 70% of our rampant inflation (a four-decade high 8.5% in March) on Vladimir Putin to his plan to lower gas prices, it was all 100% certified pigeon droppings.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/12/bird-appears-to-poop-on-biden-in-iowa-and-that-was-the-high-point-n549416

Not even one of the most prominent Democrat Senators is buying the White House’s fable that prices have been rising for over a year because Putin invaded Ukraine six weeks ago.

https://www.westernjournal.com/joe-manchin-torches-bidens-putin-price-hike-inflation-excuse-scathing-statement/

But Biden outdid himself with his announcement that he plans to ease high gas prices by letting 15% ethanol gas be sold from June to September, when it’s normally banned. There are so many crazy things in that plan that it’s hard to list them all. First, the real reason gas prices are so high is that Biden started from day one in office waging war on America’s domestic oil and gas industries, all in the name of fighting climate change. He exhibited the usual leftist logical fallacy of attacking a necessary commodity without having a feasible alternative.

Now, he proposes to lower those prices not by taking his boot off the neck of oil and gas producers, but by selling gas with higher amounts of ethanol, a corn-based alcohol. But that’s normally banned in summer under the Clean Air Act because it’s more volatile in hot weather and is believed to create more ozone and smog. (When Trump tried to make it available year-‘round, environmentalists successfully sued to block it.)

It also gets lower mileage, so you have to burn more of it to go the same distance, not only requiring the burning of more fuel, but negating any cost savings for drivers. In addition, many believe it damages your car’s engine. Plus, only about 2300 out of America’s 150,000 gas stations even have pumps for it. And even if you do find it and use it, the price is only about 10 cents a gallon lower.

Finally, at a time of looming food shortages, Biden proposes to use even more of our corn crop as a bad replacement for the gas he could produce simply by letting the oil and gas industry produce gas! The director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment said, “Turning more food into fuel at a time of looming global food shortages is as reprehensible as it is stupid.”

https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/12/joe-biden-ethanol-gasoline-inflation-russia/

So maybe a bird didn’t poop on Biden. But if it did, it would be the best review this speech got.

Mike Huckabee

If you wonder why so many Twitter twits are panicking at the idea of Elon Musk buying the company and bringing back free speech, here are just a couple of the most recent examples of how Big Tech companies have become addicted to censoring speech. Claiming they’re fighting “disinformation” or “dangerous” rhetoric is just a fig leaf to cover their irresistible urge to censor any opinion or even unassailable fact that undermines leftist narratives.

First, meet social influencers Cole and Savannah LaBrant, a popular Christian couple with over 10 million Instagram followers and 13 million YouTube subscribers. They made a documentary on abortion. It doesn’t vilify anyone: it just talks to pro-life doctors, a doctor who stopped doing abortions, and women who opted not to get abortions, and tells their stories and the truth about what abortion really is (hint: it’s not “reproductive justice” or some other fuzzy euphemism.) It also talks about Embrace Grace, a non-profit that helps women in crisis pregnancies.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/instagram-removes-pro-life-video-posted-by-influencer-labrant-family-while-they-face-intense-backlash-from-fans

After getting some angry complaints from the pro-abortion crowd, Instagram removed the video. YouTube allowed it to stay up, but demonetized it, even though all ad revenues go to local pregnancy centers.

Now, exhibit B (and a headache that this newsletter deals with regularly): Issues & Insights conducts regular polls with the TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics (TIPP.) TIPP has been the most accurate pollster in the last five presidential elections. In March, the I&I/TIPP poll found that nearly two-thirds of America’s registered voters said they believe that decisions about COVID restrictions are driven by politics and not science. Majorities of almost every political, ideological and identity group agreed.

Yet Google’s AdSense stripped ads from the article, claiming it contained “dangerous or derogatory content,” and had to be “fixed” if they wanted ad revenue back. I&I requested a review, but Google rejected the request.

Please note that the poll didn’t declare that politics rather than science rules COVID decisions. That would be a statement of opinion. Instead, it stated the hard fact that a majority of registered voters surveyed believe that. I&I pointed out that, ironically, an earlier poll found that by a 59-29% margin, Americans disapprove of social media suspending users for expressing opposing views on COVID. The only group that approved of such censorship was Democrats (44-42%.) Liberals were evenly split at 43-43%. All other groups strongly disapproved.

When these sites first began violating their obligation to be neutral platforms to maintain their federal protection against lawsuits, they claimed it was necessary to stop “dangerous” extreme speech, like the promotion of terrorism or Nazism. Do you see anything “dangerous” in the examples above?

They’ve redefined "dangerous speech" as anything that might be dangerous to the far-left “progressive” political agenda, which can mean anything from a solid fact to an intelligent, informed opinion. They have become the real danger to society; and if they have no respect for the law that grants them immunity from lawsuits, then it’s high time that law got revoked and let the lawsuits flow like mighty rivers.

It’s either that, or Elon Musk might have to buy all of them.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/04/12/elon-musk-has-twitter-employees-hyperventilating-after-his-latest-move-n549475

Laura Ainsworth, Staff writer

I waited a long time to comment on the big slap-down at the Academy Awards. For one thing, I like to have the last word, and maybe by waiting this long, I can actually have it. For another, there’s a lot to be said for the information-gathering phase preceding any expression of opinion –- it’s a phase many people skip –- and I processed a LOT of information. For example, I now know more about Will and Jada’s supposedly open marriage than anyone not getting paid $200 an hour should know, no matter how much Jada seemed to want to gab about it on video. Perhaps someday, if God is merciful, it will vanish from my brain cells to make room for something more worthwhile, which is to say just about anything else.

As far as I’m concerned, the Academy Awards have been ruined, but not by this literal slap in the face. I can’t remember exactly when it was during the past decade that I totally lost interest in what had always been a fun yearly tradition. But it’s no fun to watch an almost unimaginably successful but apparently broken man experiencing a public emotional meltdown, committing violence and bellowing the f-word from the audience on live TV. Now people will busily disagree about whether or not his punishment is appropriate, but it hardly matters. The Oscars were already wrecked.

The insular Hollywood community has always held little mystique for me. Celebrity means essentially nothing; some of the most talented people I know will never live in mansions or be household names. The sanctimonious and ill-informed politics of Hollywood have been extremely hard to take in recent years, but I think it was the “Oscars so white” brouhaha a few years back that finally did it, as the woke-left’s raging obsession with diversity got to be just too much. In a huge overcompensation, the race and gender quotas that are now built into Hollywood film projects and the awards that honor them have taken the focus away from fine artistic achievement in film. (And, sorry, but I don’t think you have to BE a (fill in the blank) to PLAY one. It’s called acting.) So goodbye, Oscars; I just don’t like what you’ve become. I feel like starting another #MeToo movement, as in, “Abandoning the Oscars? ME, TOO!”

I’m saying all this as a huge film buff, an actor myself and a member –- wait, the membership might have lapsed –- of the Dallas chapter of Women In Film. Deserving people should be recognized and rewarded for their talent and their work, period. These days, we’re lucky to see great films made by anyone. If they happen to check a few boxes, fine.

My personal taste runs to old movies, especially screwball comedies (not generally considered Oscar material) and black-and-white film noirs (ditto) featuring detectives in suits with fedoras, bad women with .22s in their rhinestone evening bags, and a total absence of cell phones, GPS and security cameras (which would make all these plots impossible). Most of my favorite movies were made before I was born, and the occasional modern remake typically pales in comparison to the original.

All of the above “backstory” is included as “exposition” for why I didn’t bother to tune in for the Academy Awards this year, I saw “the slap” later that night, on the news, and heard the criticism of Chris Rock for cracking a joke about the health condition (alopecia –- hair loss) suffered by Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. How dare he!

I won’t get into the marital issues that Will Smith and his wife are dealing with, other than to say to Will, “Get thee to a counselor,” and I don’t mean the one he and Jada have been seeing together. For Will to have done the shocking thing he did, he must be going through a terrible time in his life. At the same time, that doesn’t excuse him.

What I really want to say relates more to Chris Rock and his joke. As someone who’s been writing humor for more years than I care to divulge, I know that Chris –- a truly great standup –- would have known better than to joke about someone’s medical condition, at the Academy Awards no less. (As blunt as Ricky Gervais can be, I don’t think even he would do that.) Chris surely just thought she’d had her head shaved, either for the style or for a role. I myself had assumed she was just rocking the latest fashion trend among black women.

That’s because a week or so earlier, I was at the hair salon and happened to pick up the March issue of ELLE. It had a feature called “Black Women Cutting Their Hair Short Is Not Just a Style Trend.” Yes, it’s a trend among stylish black women, the article says, but it’s also about freedom and confidence. And right up there at the top left is a picture of Jada Pinkett Smith, looking fabulous and very glam with her confident smile and shaved head.

https://www.elle.com/beauty/hair/a39264372/black-women-buzzcut-not-a-trend/

The article goes on to talk about how much effort black women have traditionally put into their “crowning glory,” with wigs, weaves, processing, etc., and many are deciding to let go of all that. “’Hair carries a lot of power and energy,’ says Carla Gentry, PINKETT SMITH’S LONGTIME STYLIST [emphasis mine]. ‘Sometimes cutting it off offers a new start, and you might need that.’”

The piece goes on to quote Pinkett Smith from last fall, saying that she “was ready for this kind of expression and release.” Once the hair was gone, she said, she felt “more connected” to herself. In other words, losing her hair was an empowering thing. A positive thing.

In fact, Will and Jada’s daughter Willow –- known, ironically, for her music video “Whip My Hair” –-had HER head shaved the same week, onstage, as part of another music video of the same song. “I’m always shaving my head at monumental times in my life,” she explains, “when things are really changing. And this is one of those moments.” So, it can even be a mother-daughter thing.

https://www.prevention.com/beauty/hair/a37065810/willow-smith-shaved-head-concert/

Way down in the ELLE article, it mentions that Jada had been dealing with alopecia, “a condition that can cause patchy hair loss.” It says she’d had a post on Instagram that “implied it had influenced her decision to adopt a crop.” I never saw that Instagram post, and I’ll bet Chris Rock didn’t, either. And if she did mention the alopecia any other times, I didn’t see those, and I’ll bet Chris Rock didn’t, either. I only saw the article about how great and empowering it was when black women cut off their hair.

Chris did nothing wrong and handled the incident and the aftermath with class. It was just a silly joke about somebody’s shaved head. And if shaving one’s head is so all-fired empowering for a woman, then that woman should smile graciously and accept the little joke, and the moment should pass. As for Jada, she seems to be doing all right.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/jada-pinkett-smith-stuns-gold-191400851.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

That’s about all I have. I hope this is the last word.

Mike Huckabee

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its March update to the Consumer Price Index, the rate of inflation for a group of goods and services most Americans buy, from eggs and milk to cell phones and gasoline. And from the Democrats’ and the media’s (same thing) desperate attempts to pre-spin the number, you could tell they knew it would be mind-boggling.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/04/11/msnbc-panics-about-midterms-as-inflation-looks-to-get-even-worse-n548693

And it was: inflation rose to 8.5% in March, up from 7.9% in February, marking the biggest year-to-year inflation rise in 40 years.

https://redstate.com/tladuke/2022/04/12/breaking-inflation-rockets-up-to-8-5-percent-in-march-while-biden-claims-it-is-putins-fault-n549121

Deanna Fisher at the Victory Girls blog shows how the push is already on to spin the blame away from Biden/Democrat policies and onto Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, even though prices have been rising since the moment Biden took office.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/psaki-inflation-report-will-be-bad-please-blame-putin/

Maybe they have no faith in the intelligence of the American voters (they did get into office, after all), but nobody is buying that fish tale. Anyone over the age of five can remember when gas was less than $2 a gallon, and we all remember that Biden’s very first action in office was a series of executive orders shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline project and targeting both the fossil fuel industry and border security for destruction. And nobody with a brain larger than a salamander’s believes Jen Psaki’s claims that they want Republicans’ suggestions on how to solve high gas prices and the immigration crisis. We all know the solutions are simple: "Reverse the things you did to deliberately cause those crises."

The public’s resistance to being gaslighted is clear in two new polls by ABC and CBS News. The ABC poll found Biden’s approval rating farther underwater than the Titanic on every issue except handling COVID (on inflation, it’s 29% approval to 69% disapproval.) And 55% of Republicans are “very enthusiastic” about voting in November, compared to 35% of Democrats.

The CBS poll showed that Americans rank the economy, inflation, crime and immigration among their top concerns, and Biden’s approval ratings on all of those issues are under 40% (on inflation, it’s a pathetic 31%.) That poll also found that only 8% said higher prices have had no effect on their families. 26% say they’re an inconvenience, and 66% say rising prices are difficult or a hardship.

Ronald Reagan won a massive, 44-state victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980 (Reagan even won Massachusetts) by asking voters a simple question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” In today’s fast-paced world, everything has speeded up. It’s taken Joe Biden and a Democrat Congress less than 16 months to rev the Misery Index up higher than Carter could in four years. Americans don’t even have to ask themselves if they’re better off now than they were 16 months ago. The answer to that slaps them in the face every time they go to the grocery store or the gas station.

So is it any wonder that the Democrats are trying to find something, anything, else to blame for the predictably dismal results of their own policies?

Mike Huckabee

Last night, Tucker Carlson on Fox News covered one of the most horrifying and least reported stories of the day: the Chinese government’s brutal COVID lockdown in Shanghai.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/04/11/tucker-carlson-exposes-the-shocking-hell-on-earth-in-shanghai-n549081

I have to warn you that this is genuinely disturbing: a report on people being locked into their homes with no way to get food, screaming in anguish that they’re starving, as government goons confiscate and slaughter their pets in the streets while dissenters are beaten and dragged off to “quarantine” centers. All the while, drones fly around, broadcasting the message that people must “resist their souls’ urge for freedom.” I’m sure that idea is very popular with a lot of people in Silicon Valley these days.

All of this is to enforce draconian lockdown policies that experience has proven do not work. Here’s the latest evidence: a study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity compared the results of COVID policies in all 50 states. They assessed the effects on disease mortality, the states’ economies and children’s education.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-covid-debate-is-over-new-york-was-wrong-florida-was-right/ar-AAW7utg

The states that fared the best - Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Montana, South Dakota and Florida – all have Republican Governors, as do 13 of the top 15 states. The media and some public health officials savaged them for refusing to impose stringent lockdowns and relying on their citizens to act responsibly. They were accused of setting the stage for mass deaths. But the study found no correlation between stringent restrictions on travel, employment or dining and lower death rates. And "states with strict lockdowns had virtually no better performance in COVID death rates than states that remained mostly open for business."

Meanwhile, the deep-blue states of New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois were ranked the worst on dealing with COVID, performing “poorly on every measure.” They had high death rates, high unemployment, significant GDP losses and their schools were shut down longer than almost all other states. A CUP spokesman said, "Shutting down their economies and schools was by far the biggest mistake Governors and state officials made during COVID, particularly in blue states."

And yet, every time we hear of a new variant, they fire up the talk about more lockdowns, restrictions and mandates. They claim to be on the side of science, yet they keep doing the same thing that doesn’t work and expecting a different result. That’s what a real scientist, Albert Einstein, called the definition of insanity.

Mike Huckabee

Another day, another piece of “Russian disinformation” about Hunter Biden’s laptop is belatedly confirmed to be true by the media. Monday, Yahoo News issued a report by Michael Isikoff and Zach Dorfman confirming that Biden knew he was working with people who were high up in Chinese intelligence circles.

https://www.westernjournal.com/yahoo-confirms-huge-hunter-biden-story-weapon-sales-africa-chinese-intel-1m-retainer/

Hunter and James Biden (the President’s brother) formed a business partnership with Ye Jianming, an energy tycoon who had past links to China’s People’s Liberation Army, and Patrick Ho, who was arrested by the FBI in 2017 over “an audacious plot to dole out millions of dollars in bribes to African leaders in exchange for major energy contracts that appeared to advance Chinese government interests.” Yahoo reports that Ho’s first call after being arrested was to James Biden to ask him to get him a lawyer.

The report also says that Hunter’s notorious laptop contained a recording of a conversation in which Hunter described Ho as “literally the (bleeping) spy chief of China.”

There’s much more at the link, and it may have many Biden voters channeling Adam Sandler and saying, "Once again, things that could've been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!!!” Or in this case, before Election Day 2020.

A lot more Biden-China connections are also coming out, like this report from the Blaze:

https://www.theblaze.com/news/china-hunter-biden-center-penn

And Miranda Divine, who wrote the book “Laptop From Hell,” has more about how alarm bells are starting to ring in top Democrat circles as they realize that the story they thought was buried is rising from the grave and may devour Joe Biden and them all.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/china-hunter-biden-center-penn

We’ll have some more commentary on this later in the week, but a normal human with a moral compass and a non-cast iron stomach can only deal with so much Hunter Biden in any one day.