Mike Huckabee

If you listen to the Democrats and their media stenographers, you’d think that the only reason anyone would not vote Republican is that they must be a greedy racist. That little bit of overused slander may be wearing out its welcome as the Democrats’ massive failures of policy are now too obvious and painful even for many of their longtime supporters to ignore.

Latest taker of the Red Pill: Victor Jimenez. He was not only a Democrat but the lead public information officer for liberal Washington, DC, Mayor Murial Bowser’s office for community affairs.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/12/02/watch-former-d-c-mayor-spox-tells-tucker-why-he-left-dem-party-and-voted-for-youngkin-n485383

Jimenez told Tucker Carlson that his conversion started with voting for Republican Glenn Youngkin for Virginia Governor, and he’s now switched parties. The reason: “Biden turned me into a Republican” and “destroyed the economy.”

Wait, I can hear the Democrats saying, are you sure he’s not just a white supremacist racist? Actually, he’s of Dominican background. One of his chief concerns is that Biden’s open borders are letting people stream into the US with guns, drugs and criminal records and harm Hispanic communities. Even good people who just want jobs are undermining the wages of Hispanic American families. He said people can feel the rise in crime and violence, and “everything is crumbling for the Democrats.” He predicted that Youngkin’s victory was the beginning of the end, and more will come in 2022.

Interestingly, he said he knows he’s going against the narrative because Democrats expect him to be a Democrat by default. Funny, I would think that assuming someone has to think and vote a certain way just because of his race would be…racist.

The Democrats can pound the “racist” straw man all they want, but their real problem is that so many Americans are being exposed to the same thing that converted this public information officer: too much public information.

Mike Huckabee

In 2018, The New York Times and the Washington Post were honored with the coveted Pulitzer Prize for 20 articles described as “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the public’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”

The award was for their coverage of Trump-Russia "collusion," based on Christopher Steele’s thoroughly discredited “dossier,” and now that the story has been exposed as a lie, these “news” outlets should have to give it back.

Here's OUR description of their work (are you listening, Pulitzer committee?): deeply flawed, badly sourced yet relentlessly reported fake news that defied the public interest by furthering the public’s misunderstanding, by lying about Russian "collusion" with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.

Real journalist Aaron Mate at RealClearInvestigations has written a fabulous article on these publications’ completely inadequate attempts at “fixing” some of their mistakes/lies, offering detailed suggestions for how they really could correct what they wrote. It’s called “Five Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ Corrections We Need From the Media Now –- Just For Starters.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/11/24/five_trump-russia_collusion_corrections_we_need_from_the_media_now_-_just_for_starters_804205.html

It’s been FIVE YEARS since BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” peddled by Michael Sussmann, now under indictment by Special Counsel John Durham for failing to tell the FBI that he was Hillary’s attorney when he gave them the story. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, is charged with lying as well. Sara Fischer at Axios has called this reporting “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history” and says the media’s response to its own fake reporting has been “tepid.” She points out that Axios did not publish the “dossier” or any original reporting based on its contents, as it was not verified. Thank you, Axios.

(Note: Also, in all these years, the Huckabee team has never had to retract or correct anything we’ve said about Trump and Russia.)

https://www.axios.com/steele-dossier-discredited-media-corrections-buzzfeed-washington-post-6b762a0b-64a9-4259-8697-298e2f04fb3e.html

Fischer does give WAPO credit for allowing their media critic, Eric Wemple, to write about the mistakes they and other media outlets made in covering the Russia “collusion” story. In contrast, BuzzFeed still has the “dossier” posted, with a note added that “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Nice of them to at least say that, five years later.

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s then-editor-in-chief, told Axios, “My view on the logic of publishing hasn’t changed.” He’s now a columnist for The New York Times.

Some outlets didn’t respond to Fischer’s calls about this. David Corn, in a comment to Wemple, revealed his continuing denial of reality: “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.” What??

After the federal indictment of Danchenko, WAPO quietly re-edited a dozen stories related to Steele and the “dossier,” In a couple of cases –- stories written by Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamberger –- this involved removal of entire sections, changing headlines, and adding lengthier editor’s notes. But, as the RealClearInvestigations article points out, the editors never explain how the mistakes happened or offer names of the anonymous sources who deceived “them and the public over months and years.”

Helderman and Hamberger are two of the dozen-plus reporters who now share the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction---I mean, for Reporting. Neither WAPO or the NYT has given any indication that they might return the award, even though, as Mate points out, “the Post’s and the Times’ reporting has the same problem as the Steele document that these same outlets are now distancing themselves from: a reliance on anonymous, deceptive, and almost certainly partisan sources for claims that proved to be false.” (Note: I’d remove the “almost” –- the sources were certainly partisan.)

It took seemingly forever for WAPO to address this at all, as the “dossier” has been discredited since April 2019, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his FBI team failed to verify any of its contents. That didn’t matter; most of the media still aggressively pushed the Trump-Russia narrative. Some, like David Corn, will never really give it up.

After BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” WAPO and the NYT were joined by other outlets in a media frenzy. Mate cites particularly outrageous stories that ran in the New Yorker (a “fawning” profile of Steele), McClatchy (Mueller had "evidence" Trump attorney Michael Cohen had been to Prague), and The Guardian (Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy). BuzzFeed stayed in the act, too, with a false story that Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress. All fake, fake, fake.

To add juice to the argument that WAPO and the NYT should return their Pulitzer, Mate documents five specific stories “containing false or misleading claims, and thereby due for retraction or correction, that were either among the Post and Times’ winning entries, or other work of reporters who shared that prize.” These outright falsehoods can be shown to be wrong with information that has “long been in the public domain,” he says.

FALSEHOOD #1: Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia and lied about it. We’ve covered the real story in detail here, throughout Flynn’s long ordeal of personal destruction. WAPO did not tell the truth in February of 2017 when they added their own spin and plenty of mind-reading to their report on Flynn’s phone call with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Both WAPO and the NYT continued the deception in articles from May of 2020 about the transcripts.

FALSEHOOD #2: Trump officials had repeated contacts with Russian officials. This fake story, written by three members of the NYT Pulitzer-winning team, came out the day after Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February of 2017. Debunked.

FALSEHOOD #3: George Papadopoulos’ “night of heavy drinking” with Australian envoy Alexander Downer in which he supposedly said the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary. This fake story was reported in December of 2017, a couple of months after it was revealed that Marc Elias of the Clinton-funded law firm Perkins Coie paid for the “dossier.” (Yes, this was uncovered that soon, by House Republicans led by Devin Nunes.) Their characterization of this conversation turned out to be false, as documented by declassified FBI recordings.

FALSEHOOD #4: Russia’s “sweeping interference campaign” posed a national security threat. Read the details in Mate’s article and you will see this story was a complete crock. To be fair, Mueller sensationalized this, too, as the body of his report fails miserably to live up to the headline.

FALSEHOOD #5: The DOJ never fully examined Trump’s ties to Russia. Reporters tried to “explain” why Mueller hadn’t found anything on Trump by saying Attorney General Barr and deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had handcuffed him. More fakeness. Even Peter Strzok later contradicted this.

Caution: reading through Mate’s article will raise your blood pressure, with example after example of this steaming load of Pulitzer-winning “journalism.” This utter waste of the public’s and the government’s time was created out of essentially nothing to damage Trump and his presidency as much as possible. It was all made up.

So, New York Times and Washington Post: GIVE THE PULITZER BACK NOW.

Mike Huckabee

We’ve received many letters in response to yesterday's story on the Salvation Army. (A follow-up story ran today.) Here are few that called out for responses.

From Larry (excerpt):

Love your show and your website, have for a long time. Just want to express a concern about people falling in the trap of using racist terms that are promoted by the left. You used one of the most racist terms in your article when you said " people of color." ...White is a color, it's just not one the racist democrats like.

It's just one of many things that non-Democrats fall prey to because they don't stop to think about a word before they just accept it and start using it.

As I said, we've always thought you were, and still are, one of the smartest people in the public eye that speaks for Conservatives and Christians. Best wishes.

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Larry, and for your kind words. We’re really sensitive to the language and how leftists try to shape it, and are glad to see you are, too. Keep in mind that commentaries include quotations, and these are run in quotation marks exactly as they were originally stated. The commentary you refer to included lengthy excerpts from a CRT-based publication, and that’s the term they used. I wouldn’t soften or censor what someone else said unless it was vulgar or otherwise over-the-line offensive.

We all have different ideas on how to use language respectfully to refer to race, and it continues to evolve. Personally, I’m baffled as to why leftists like the abbreviation “POC” for “people of color,” because it also stands for something offensive. But, again, I and my staff didn't use either of these; we were just quoting someone else.

From Jane (excerpt):

I am of heavy Irish descent. In fact I am Irish Catholic, which is amongst the Irish the most discriminated against, including by our own government (my grandfather was only allowed to work for the government if he professed himself to be an orange man)...I guess the existence of Irish slaves in the colonies (who were considered to be less valuable than the black slaves) is an inconvenient truth to yet another position that the Democrats take in order to control people. So, are there any non-woke charities out there that we can donate gently used items to?

From the Gov:

Thank you, Jane, for a history lesson that most people never receive. This is why it does no good for some groups to do a personal accounting of the accumulated grievances that were done to their ancestors. An ideology based on past victimhood poisons the present. As for non-woke charities, I’m sure there are still quite a few, and it’s always good to start close to home.

From Dale:

I am really disappointed that Huckabee would write something that can be damaging to the Salvation Army. They have already recanted and removed those Guides which could be wrongly construed. I will be canceling my daily Huckabee Newsletter because of this!!

From the Gov:

Dale, I hope you’ll stay. Actually, if you see the update today, the SA is “reviewing” those guides but has not recanted. Perhaps they will, and I’ll update the story if they do. But so far, they’ve blamed readers for believing they’ve promoted damaging ideas they actually HAVE promoted. This poison has turned some once-laudable organizations into something very different in 2021.

I did not specifically call for a boycott of the SA, and will not. But it would be a failure on my part not to report on what’s happening to major charities in the U.S. That’s the only way they’re going to be brought back to sanity.

Finally, this from Duncan:

News flash, woke people!!! EVERYONE has 'unconscious bias' about someone or something. If you claim to be completely conscious you better notify the Dalai Llama. He might have some advice for you to help you cope with total enlightenment.

It does behoove all of us to be aware of the possibility that we may be unaware of our faults. On the other hand, let's not let fear(s) paralyze us to living and growing. The most simple and central tenant of Christianity, ‘Treat thy neighbor as you would be treated,' pretty much says it all.

Thanks Governor for your ongoing clear common-sense publications. Keep it going!

From the Gov:

Thanks, Duncan. You have indeed said it all, so you get the last word.

Mike Huckabee

Sunday on “Face the Nation,” I think Dr. Anthony Fauci might have finally reached his “A Face in the Crowd” moment. In that classic movie, Andy Griffith plays a “man of the people” drunk on his own power who falls from public grace after an open microphone reveals what an arrogant, power-mad demagogue he really is. In Fauci’s case, he knew the mic was on, he (as always) sought out the camera, but he still revealed in shockingly clear terms that he’s suffering from a terminal case of galloping egomania.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rand-paul-blasts-fauci-astounding-alarming-represent-science

When asked about the justifiable criticism of him by such Senators as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul for denying under oath that his NIH funded gain-of-function research when it was later revealed that it had, Fauci scoffed that it was just “noise.” As for Cruz pointing out that lying to Congress is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, Fauci laughed and asked, "What happened on January 6th, Senator?

For the record, Ted Cruz had nothing to do with January 6th, but the lies about gain-of-function research came directly from Dr. Fauci’s mouth. And he wasn’t wearing three masks at the time, so we all heard it clearly.

But then came the really telling moment, when Fauci tried to dismiss any criticism of him as invalid by declaring, “They’re really criticizing science, because I represent science. They’re dangerous.”

Cruz responded bluntly, blasting Fauci not only for being an "unelected technocrat who has distorted science and facts in order to exercise authoritarian control over millions of Americans" and for “ad hominem insults parroting Democratic talking points,” but also for his jaw-dropping hubris in declaring that any questioning of him is dangerous because he is the living embodiment of “science.” As I’ve had to remind people countless times over recent years, science is the process of asking questions and developing evidence that points to the truth, even if it disproves what everyone believed up to that point. This is why anyone who says, “The science is settled!” is actually admitting that they don’t know jack squat about what science is.

But now, we all know what science is. Dr. Fauci is “Science!” If he says it, it cannot be questioned! Too bad there’s no vaccine to prevent his head from swelling up bigger than a Macy’s Parade balloon. Frankly, I’m at the point where I’d put more faith in Mr. Wizard than in Dr. “Science.”

I’ll give the last word to Sen. Paul, who unlike Fauci is a doctor who’s actually treated patients:

"It’s astounding and alarming that a public health bureaucrat would even think to claim such a thing, especially one who has worked so hard to ignore the science of natural immunity."

Mike Huckabee

Last week, the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a great op-ed that coined the term “kamikaze Democrats” to describe House Democrats who let Nancy Pelosi bully them into voting for a massive, destructive, inflationary boondoggle bill that can’t even muster enough support to pass a Democrat Senate. The WSJ predicts that, just as she did with Obamacare, Pelosi has set up her fellow party members for slaughter in the next election.

That editorial was behind a paywall, but now you can read it at the NRCC’s website. And you should.

https://www.nrcc.org/2021/11/23/wsj-the-kamikaze-democrats/

I expect Democrats to cry that “kamikaze Democrats” is racist in a futile attempt to keep that perfect term from sticking.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, her office denied a claim that she and her husband bought a $25 million mansion in Florida. But if that bill dies in the Senate, and the tax cuts for blue state millionaires die with it, she might want to look hard at moving to Florida. After all, everyone else in San Francisco who can afford a U-Haul truck is moving to either Florida or Texas, and she definitely wouldn’t fit in in Texas.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, stock markets tanked hard amid fears of more travel restrictions and lockdowns after a new COVID-19 variant was found in South Africa. It’s also popped up in Belgium, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel, but not in the US yet.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-omicron-variant-no-cases-identified-yet-in-us-cdc

It’s been dubbed the Omicron variant (interestingly, the next letter in the Greek alphabet after the recent Nu variant is “Xi,” but since that’s also the name of the President of China, I guess it would be too politically incorrect to say that the China virus now has a Xi variant.)

Despite the panic mongers, there’s as yet no evidence that this variant is any more dangerous than what’s already circulating, or that it won’t be stopped by current vaccines and natural immunity. And Novavax says it’s already got a vaccine in trials that could be ready for manufacture in a few weeks.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/novavax-testing-vaccine-that-targets-new-covid-19-variant-2021-11-26/

This isn’t even unexpected: all viruses mutate as the potential host population dwindles; they usually become more transmissible but less dangerous. And South Africa has a very low vaccination rate, so this doesn’t mean the Xi (sorry, Omicron) variant can evade the vaccines. It hasn’t even been determined yet if this strain was responsible for the recent leap in cases in South Africa. Yahoo News has a good article explaining what we know about it so far, and considering all the hysteria, we actually know surprisingly little for certain.

https://news.yahoo.com/explainer-covid-variant-south-africa-111307372.html

Sure, this could be a new and terrifying threat, or it could be a last gasp of this disease that peters out in a couple of weeks. Pardon me if I decline to panic because I’ve lived through enough panics from our politicians and “health experts” who didn’t really understand what they were dealing with and who wanted to impose draconian policies that only made matters worse. For the first time in history, they quarantined the healthy while exposing the vulnerable to the disease in nursing homes; forced people to stay indoors (where the disease spreads easiest); and arguably caused more damage to more people’s mental, physical and economic health than the disease did.

In response to the new variant, President Biden met for a whole half hour Friday with his top medical advisors, who still include Dr. Anthony Fauci for some reason. I was willing to defer to Dr. Fauci early on, but he’s contradicted himself, pushed false narratives and put self-aggrandizement ahead of public safety too many times. I don’t understand why many people still think his prescriptions are handed down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Our health officials and media have attacked, censored and tried to de-license actual doctors who are in the field treating COVID patients if what they report contradicts St. Fauci, a DC health bureaucrat who hasn’t treated a patient since he completed his residency in 1968.

And speaking of people who’ve been in Washington too long, President “I Will Shut Down The Virus,” not travel or the economy, announced that he was placing new travel restrictions on South Africa.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-announces-new-travel-restrictions-response-new-covid-variant/

Funny how Trump’s shutting down travel from China was racism, but Biden shutting down travel from the predominantly black nation of South Africa is just prudent health policy.

Please note that I’m not saying he shouldn’t shut down travel from South Africa. I’m just saying that while he’s doing it, he should also publicly apologize to Trump for slandering him and being a big hypocrite. Since he also pushed for “global vaccination” without thanking Trump for overseeing the rapid development of vaccines he badmouthed before he started taking credit for them, he might throw in an apology for that, too. (This is why I couldn’t be a modern Democrat: my memory stretches back farther than yesterday.)

Unfortunately, hypocrisy, dishonesty and political opportunism are three Washington epidemics for which we’ve never been able to find a vaccine.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

One of the many things that separate humans from animals is that we are supposedly capable of learning from the mistakes of others. Going by that yardstick, I have to assume that leftist DA’s who insist on letting criminals out of jail over and over, even as it continues to yield tragic results all around them, are about as smart as chimps in suits. Now, it's already happened again.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-city-parolee-shoots-boy-neck-guns

How many times do we have to hear some grieving person say, “This shouldn’t have happened” before the people responsible for it happening actually stop letting it happen?

On that subject, the Biden White House is standing by its stance to end cash bail, claiming that whether a suspect is released from jail should depend not on how much bail they can afford but how much of a threat they pose to society.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-end-cash-bail-waukesha-parade-attack

I might be willing to entertain that argument if any of these people could show me any evidence that they are at all capable of determining how much of a threat individual suspects pose. The Waukesha D.A. couldn’t even tell that the thug with a yard-long record of violent crimes who was just arrested for trying to run over his girlfriend shouldn’t be turned loose.

Mike Huckabee

The International Olympic Committee has issued a new ruling that allows nations to send any athlete who claims to “identify” as female to compete in all women’s sports, effectively spelling the end of women’s Olympic sports.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/24/new-olympic-committee-rules-essentially-end-womens-sports/

This is the same policy that the Biden Administration is pushing on schools and destroying girls’ sports, and after he won office largely thanks to women’s votes. It’s one of many examples of how this Administration prioritizes LGBTQ++++ rights over women’s rights.

Do you know what else this Administration prioritizes over women’s rights? Placating China, which has launched a crackdown on the #MeToo movement and is targeting and silencing not just tennis star Peng Shuai but many other women who’ve dared to expose powerful men who sexually abused them.

https://whdh.com/news/its-not-just-peng-china-is-cracking-down-on-metoo-movement/

I think this cartoon sums it up chillingly well.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/487273/

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Congratulations to President Biden for finally getting a couple of things right. Monday, he angered “progressives” such as Elizabeth Warren by renominating Trump appointee Jerome Powell to another term as Federal Reserve Chair. Lael Brainard, whom the leftists wanted in charge, was nominated for Vice Chair.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-sparks-anger-left-reappointing-trump-nominee-key-position/

In a statement, Biden said, “I’m confident that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard’s focus on keeping inflation low, prices stable and delivering full employment will make our economy stronger than ever before.”

Warren railed that Powell was a “dangerous” choice because he wouldn’t prioritize such burning issues as “climate mitigation.” Most financial analysts breathed a sigh of relief, however, since they’d rather see the Fed concentrate on reducing inflation and keeping the economy and the dollar healthy, rather than trying to change the weather.

The other move by Biden that suggests he caught a fleeting grip on reality was his decision to release 50 million gallons of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices, a move also being taken by other nations.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-strategic-petroleum-reserve-release-gas-price-spike

Don’t get me wrong: this is hardly a long-term solution. It’s only about a three-day supply for America. It won’t solve the problem of how to get a steady supply to fill our needs when the President and his Party are waging war on our domestic fuel industry. And as Joe Cunningham at Redstate.com suggests, they see this as just a mollifying stopgap while they force Americans to “transition” to unreliable and expensive green energy sources that can’t meet demand.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/11/23/the-biden-administration-prepares-to-make-the-oil-crisis-worse-on-purpose-n480453

And former President Trump slammed the move because the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is supposed to be for national emergencies, not temporary relief from the bad consequences of your own stupid policies.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/11/23/trump-slams-biden-for-tapping-the-strategic-oil-reserve-n2599532

Many others agreed.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/11/23/biden-to-release-oil-from-strategic-reserve-n2599531

But at least Biden did show signs of understanding, even if only for a day, that there is a relationship between the supply of oil and gas and the price of oil and gas. It may be a small victory, but I’ll take miracles wherever I can find them these days.

Mike Huckabee

When we talk here about so-called fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact, we typically put quotations around the word “fact.” That’s because when it comes to politics, these websites often select their “facts” carefully, leaving out or shading information that is inconvenient, and sometimes even manufacturing it as needed –- all while accusing others of doing just that –- to “debunk” a claim and support a different narrative. When they can’t make that happen, they’ll sometimes borrow a skill often used in court or on the debate stage: change the original assertion so they can argue against their preferred one instead.

The people who work this way are not fact-checkers but advocates, or, to use the vernacular, hacks.

PolitiFact, created in 2008 to cover that year’s presidential election, became part of the Poynter Institute in 2018. The Poynter Institute trains journalists –- yes, believe it or not, they get training! –- and we would venture to say that the state of journalism today does not speak well of their performance in this area. The line between news reporting and opinion writing is now as meaningless as the border between Mexico and Texas.

The Poynter Institute also includes the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which is “dedicated to bringing together fact-checkers worldwide.”

https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/

More than 60 fact-checking organizations on six continents participate in IFCN’s work and sharing of “best practices,” and more than 30 organizations have passed the vetting process to become signatories to its Code of Principles for Fact-Checkers. Given some of the fact-checks we’ve seen from PolitiFact, that is indeed a scary thought.

Oh, but wait –- they’ve won the Pulitzer. Yes, and so did The New York Times and the Washington Post for their wildly inaccurate coverage of Trump-Russian “collusion” fantasies. I guess if those newspapers can win a Pulitzer for their misreporting and the Academy Award for Best Original Song can go to “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp,” then this bunch can have a Pulitzer, too.

“Each year, Poynter trains over 100,000 journalists from more than 70 countries in person and online...in virtually every country in the world.” That should keep you up at night. They’re very proud of their reputation, they say. A few of the news organizations that hire Poynter include National Public Radio, NBC News, Newsweek, and the Washington Post.

Click on “Support for Content & Training to Strengthen Media Literacy,” and you’ll find such groups as The Democracy Fund, Facebook (“Helping MediaWise and PolitiFact in the fight against mis- and disinformation to help people sort fact from fiction online”), Google, Microsoft, and TikTok (“Helping PolitiFact continue to fact-check elected officials and hold government officials accountable”).

https://www.poynter.org/poynter-thought-leader/

“Founded in 1975,” their website says, “Poynter is an inspirational place but also a practical one, connecting the varied crafts of journalism to its higher mission and purpose. From person-to-person coaching and intensive hands-on seminars to interactive online courses and media reporting, Poynter helps journalists sharpen skills and elevate storytelling throughout their careers.” They “explore the intersection of journalism, technology and the public interest.”

The reason why we wanted to examine this is that Dan Bongino called attention to a so-called fact-check from Politifact that is really quite shameful, supposedly debunking something President Trump said in a media briefing on August 31, 2020, soon after Kyle Rittenhouse was arrested for killing two and injuring one in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Their verdict: “Trump paints false picture of Kyle Rittenhouse shootings ahead of Kenosha visit.”

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/01/donald-trump/trump-paints-false-picture-kyle-rittenhouse-shooti/

Trump had said the video showed Rittenhouse “was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like...fell, and then they very violently attacked him.”

Now, if you watched the trial this month, you saw that video over and over, many times. It showed that Rittenhouse was trying to get away from them, fell, and then they very violently attacked him.

Yes, PolitiFact said, Rittenhouse “tripped and fell as a group of people pursued him on the night he allegedly killed two protesters and injured a third.” But, they said, Trump left out “vital context”: that “Rittenhouse ran away after PROSECUTORS SAY [emphasis mine] he had already shot and killed someone.”

“The President correctly describes some minor details about that night,” PolitiFact said. “But, overall, his comments grossly mischaracterize what happened –- leaving out that by the time of the events he described, prosecutors say Rittenhouse had already shot and killed a man.”

What??

PolitiFact also concluded that since Rittenhouse had already been arrested and charged with homicide, Trump was wrong to say the matter was “under investigation.” Note: an incident doesn’t stop being investigated just because charges have been filed.

“Rittenhouse did fall as a crowd followed him, but Trump’s comments leave an incendiary and false picture,” PolitiFact said. “By the time he fell, according to criminal charges, Rittenhouse had already shot and killed one man that night. We rate [Trump’s] claim FALSE.”

Well, because they accepted as true the prosecutor’s version of events, which turned out to be false, we rate PolitiFact’s fact-checking FALSE, and it’s not the first time. How wonderful that the Poynter Institute is training fact-checkers all over the world, with the help of Facebook and TikTok.

Derek Hunter at Townhall has a great opinion piece --- notice we say “opinion” --- about the outrageous media misconduct concerning the Rittenhouse case.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/11/21/a-special-kind-of-stupid-media-and-the-kyle-rittenhouse-case-n2599418

As a palate-cleanser, we’d like to show you a case in which a conservative site got the fact-checking right in debunking a story, even though that story might have fed a more conservative narrative.

https://www.conservativereview.com/fact-check-was-a-woman-kicked-out-of-a-hockey-game-for-wearing-a-lets-go-brandon-shirt

A video on Facebook had showed what appeared to be a woman being kicked out of a Wichita Thunder hockey game on November 5 for wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt.

“Check Your Fact” at Conservative Review looked into this and learned that the woman was escorted out of the arena by security after “she was using extremely profane language and gestures toward our staff and those around her,” according to a statement from the team. She was part of a group who were all wearing “Brandon” shirts, and she was the only one who had to leave.

This fact-check was objective, reasonable, non-political, “just the facts.” Maybe contributor Mecca Fowler, who wrote it, should be the one training all those legions of fact-checkers around the world, This example shows that at least somebody knows how to do it right.

Mike Huckabee

I’ve written before about the perilous situation for Christians in Nigeria, where radical militia groups are targeting them for terrorist violence, displacement, forced conversions and marriages, and other atrocities. This is being done as the government turns a blind eye and silences Christian leaders and journalists who try to expose the truth by cracking down on free speech and jailing them on trumped-up charges.

Yet the Epoch Times reports that the Biden State Department inexplicably removed Nigeria from its list of “countries of particular concern” in advance of Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Nigeria to sign a $2.1 billion assistance agreement.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/blinkens-africa-tour-includes-heart-to-heart-with-embattled-nigerian-pastor_4116398.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

The State Department claims the money will support health care, education, agriculture, and good governance. But local Christians fear it will help prop up the oppressive government and fuel more violence against them.

Click the link to read more and hear from the Rev. Joseph Hayab, the brave chairman of the Kaduna state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria, who, along with four other representatives of Nigerian civil society, met with Blinken privately and warned him, “Our government is full of lies, and to make sure the world does not get the truth of what is happening in Nigeria, they are against free speech.”

Hayab said he’s baffled by Bliken removing Nigeria from the "nations of concern" list and saying things are improving there “because Christians in Nigeria and others suffering persecution feel like they cannot rely on the U.S. government to help them. That is like telling a sick man in the hospital to go home to die.”

Sadly, a lot of people around the world are learning that they can’t rely on this Administration to help them, or even to make sane, humane foreign policy decisions. Maybe they believe that helping to enrich the oppressive Nigerian government will convince them to end religious oppression. How is that working out with China?

Mike Huckabee

As irresponsible politicians, activists, celebrities and “journalists” continue trying to gin up riots over the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict while repeating debunked lies about the case, one of the more aggravating clichés to me is their claim that in our “racist system,” a young black man who shot someone would never be acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

https://www.westernjournal.com/black-man-acquitted-self-defense-day-rittenhouse-busts-myth-unjust-justice-system/

I guess they were so preoccupied ranting angrily and ignorantly that they failed to notice that on the exact same day that Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury of his peers, a verdict came in on the case of Andrew Coffee IV in Gifford, Florida (note: a red state.) Coffee was charged with the murder of his girlfriend Alteria Woods and the attempted murder of four sheriff’s deputies after they staged a raid of his home in the middle of the night. Police claim they announced their presence, but Coffee claimed he was asleep, he thought a flash-bang set off by deputies was gunfire by home invaders, and he grabbed his gun and fired. Deputies returned fire.

Coffee’s attorneys argued that he believed he was acting in self-defense, and the jury agreed, acquitting him on five of the six charges. He was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a gun, but that was hard to argue with. Unlike Rittenhouse, who, despite the many false claims of his critics, did have a legal right to carry the gun and didn’t take it across state lines (Jesse Watters made the good point that liberals don’t seem to care at all about our national borders, but they seem obsessed with the sanctity of the Wisconsin state line.)

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/486902/

So there’s an example of how the legal system in America really operates, when it operates fairly and isn’t tainted by politics and mob threats. Anyone, regardless of race, can assert their right to fire a gun in self-defense (in this case, even at police officers), and if a jury of his fellow citizens who examine all the testimony and evidence agrees, then he’s acquitted. You can agree or disagree with any particular trial outcome, but don’t attack the system unless you can come up with a better one.

Mike Huckabee

As of this writing on Friday morning, the House just passed the massive $1.75 trillion “Build Back Bankruptcy” bill, 220-213.

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/spending-bill-vote

I’ll spare you all the usual balloon juice from Nancy Pelosi about the wondrous, historic things it will do for Americans once the people who voted for it find out what’s actually in it, because now it goes back to the Senate where the real fight recommences. The Dems have tortured the term “reconciliation bill” to try to turn a massive piece of transformative leftwing government bloat into a simple budget bill that isn’t subject to a filibuster. The parliamentarian should have shut that garbage down from day one. Now, we have to rely on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to protect America. If it does pass in some form, it will go back to the House again.

While House Democrats voting to spend trillions we don’t have and greatly expand government power was never really in doubt, there were a couple of interesting side notes to the vote. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy deserves a golden box of Sucrets as an award for his record-setting 8-hour, 32-minute speech, ripping this monstrosity to shreds.

He called it “the single most reckless and irresponsible spending bill in our nation’s history,” one that will worsen inflation, harm the long term economy and introduce a large degree of socialism into America. He also called the Democrats “out of touch” with the needs and wishes of ordinary Americans, adding, "Never in American history has so much been spent at one time. Never in American history will so many taxes be raised and so much borrowing be needed to pay for all this reckless spending."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/mccarthy-biden-spending-bill-most-reckless-legislation-us-history

All of that is true, and of course, the Democrats voted for it anyway. But while you can’t talk sense into some people, you can accomplish what McCarthy did: he talked so long that the Democrats went home, blocking them from passing this in the dead of night, as they usually do with unpopular, radical spending bills, and forcing them to vote on record in the bright light of morning when everyone was watching. That will make it much easier to remember this day when you go into the polling places next November.

Some other interesting gamesmanship came from the report on the cost of the bill from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats loudly touted an early leak claiming the CBO found that the bill would reduce the deficit. But it turned out that was just about the part that raises taxes. When the full CBO report came out and said it would add $367 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, not counting the potential revenues from a sure-to-be-wildly-popular IRS crackdown on taxpayers, the Dems turned on a dime and started dismissing the CBO’s assessment as meaningless.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/cbo-biden-spending-bill-add-367b-deficit-irs-tax-enforcement-plan

The CBO was rightly skeptical of claims that all the new taxes and IRS crackdowns in the bill would raise taxes enough to pay for it, or that much of the cost would be offset by eliminating waste and fraud. Rich people can always find ways to avoid high taxes, and those are usually ways that involve pulling income out of productive, job-creating investments which depresses economic growth so that tax revenues fall across the board.

As for “eliminating waste and fraud,” that’s hilarious! How many times have politicians dangled that one in front of us over the years, like Lucy fooling Charlie Brown into trying to kick that football one more time (he should’ve kicked Lucy instead, the way we should kick politicians out of office who promise to eliminate waste and fraud and then go to DC and vote for more of it.)

Is there anyone dumb enough to believe that Democrats will pay for trillions in new spending by “eliminating waste and fraud”? I hear that these days, when you join the Democratic Party, you get a membership card, an autographed picture of AOC and a T-Shirt that says “I (Heart) Waste and Fraud.”

Mike Huckabee

So much of my newsletter is devoted to correcting false “news” that only later is acknowledged as such that I should change its name to the “I Told You So Daily.” Here’s yet another example:

While the liberal media went into a self-righteous frenzy over horse patrol border agents allegedly cracking whips at Haitian illegal immigrants, we told you that there was literally nothing to that story. The agents don’t carry whips. Those were reins, and photos taken from a different angle showed that they were nowhere near the migrants. It was a giant nothingburger, hold the meat.

Of course, those inconvenient facts didn’t stop the media frenzy (they even gave it a scandal name: “Whipgate”), or activists declaring the border agents to be racist monsters and demanding they be fired and jailed, or the Biden DHS calling on the Inspector General’s Office to conduct a “thorough, independent and objective investigation.” We were told this would take about a week.

Well, that was two months ago. So…what happened? Turns out the IG’s office, which apparently cares more about facts than hissy fits by CNN anchors, declined to investigate. We’re now being told that Customs and Borders Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility will conduct an investigation with no deadline announced for its conclusions.

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2021/11/16/theres-a-major-update-on-whipgate-and-its-pretty-embarrassing-for-dhs/

Let me put this in plain English: a lot of liberals are trying to get down off their high horses and back away, slowly and quietly enough that nobody notices and everyone eventually forgets they ever brought this up.

Mike Huckabee

The Washington Post has added editors' notes to 14 stories dating back over several years to correct its false reporting on the Trump/Russiagate “scandal” that has now been revealed to be a politically-motivated hoax (FYI: we don’t have to do that because we smelled a politically-motivated hoax from day one.)

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-corrections-steele-dossier

I would call that “a good start,” but it’s not even that. It’s just a start. A good start would be issuing an abject apology for misleading readers and undermining Trump’s Presidency, then firing all the reporters who fell for that garbage, and returning the bogus (and no doubt also politically-motivated) Pulitzer Prize the paper won for it.

Speaking of that, I’ll link again to this article by Julie Kelly at American Greatness, demanding the same thing.?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/15/retract-every-russian-collusion-story-and-fire-everyone-who-wrote-them/

And in addition to the corrections, apologies and firings over Russiagate and every other hoax they’ve pushed in recent years, if media outlets ever want to start stitching their shredded reputations back together, they should all immediately cease acting like Biden PR agents and DNC groupies and start behaving like actual reporters again. I know they didn’t learn how in “journalism” school or on the job, but maybe they could watch a few old movies on TCM and learn how.

Mike Huckabee

On the heels of a new report from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz saying the “Justice” Department has a problem with public trust and the perception that they are partisan –- surprise! –- the FBI has just taken actions in Mesa County, Colorado, that reinforce that view.

In what is likely the most outrageous and underreported story of the week, the FBI conducted simultaneous early-morning raids Tuesday on at least four people, including Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters –- an outspoken critic of the 2020 election –- and three of her associates. These heavy-handed raids against nonviolent people involved armed agents in combat militia-style gear, the use of handcuffs, and, in at least one case, a battering ram.

One reason for the media’s hesitance to cover this might be that it emerged via the TV channel of “My Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who is generally seen in the media as having cooties and absolutely will not be taken seriously no matter how valid a story he breaks. He did interviews with two of the women, Peters and “America’s Mom” Sheronna Bishop. Lindell already knew both of them, as they had participated in his on-air election integrity symposium in August and had reportedly even flown in on his private plane.

The first write-up we saw in print media was at conservative WVW Broadcast Network, which told the story of a raid conducted early Tuesday morning at the home of Bishop, a concerned Christian mom who has become an activist on issues such as Critical Race Theory and forced masking in schools. (She’s homeschooling her kids.) When we first read about this, we suspected the raid on her house probably had something to do with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dictate that parents who get angry at school board meetings should be dealt with like domestic terrorists. (Garland denied this policy before Congress, but we now know he was not being truthful.)

https://www.worldviewweekend.com/news/article/americas-first-mom-raided-fbi-october-4th-doj-memorandum-she-fought-against-voter

But the target on her back seems to have more to do with her association with Peters, who is on extremely bad terms with Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. Peters has apparently been under investigation over allegations of leaking election data, and the search warrant authorized confiscation of her phones and cyber devices.

Brannon Howse conducted the TV interview with Peters on Tuesday, with additional guest cybersecurity expert Sean Smith. In the interview, she explains about the four raids carried out that morning on her and “some of her friends,” saying that one of them indeed had involved a battering ram. Apparently that was the raid at Bishop’s house; Bishop has said her front door was broken down.

Peters said at the time of this interview that the affidavit for her search was still sealed and that she didn’t know what the “probable cause” was. Here’s the interview in full.

Exclusive: FBI Raids Home of County Clerk Tina Peters in Attempt to Cover Up Voter Crimes? | Frank Speech the Home of Free Speech

(SIDE NOTE: At about 38:30 in this video, there’s a phenomenal 6-minute clip of several former FBI agents who are appalled at this new abuse-of-force approach by the FBI against non-violent targets such as Roger Stone. One of them said that if he’d been on a S.W.A.T. team and ordered to do that raid at Stone’s house, he would have refused. That’s the kind of FBI agents we need; too bad so many of them are of the generation that's now retiring from the Bureau.)

Anyway, Peters says that since she started looking into the results of the 2020 election in Mesa County --- she claims that 29,000 election records were illegally deleted --- she's been attacked "on every front" and is facing civil litigation and huge legal bills. She says this raid is obviously an intimidation tactic aimed at the larger community.

In Bishop’s interview with Howse, which debuted Thursday on Lindell TV, she says the agents were likewise armed and in combat gear, that they treated her and her daughters roughly and that she was handcuffed for about 30 minutes. (Peters was not handcuffed.) The agents were in Bishop’s house for about three hours.

Bishop is a former campaign manager for conservative Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert. She describes herself as a “very strong supporter” of Peters.

In the interview, she reads from the search warrant, which authorized them to confiscate her phones and other cyber equipment, alleging that she caused "intentional damage of a protected computer" --- "I have no contact with a computer," she says --- "wire fraud" --- "they couldn't explain to me what that even meant" -- and "conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer and/or commit wire fraud." It also listed the names of the others who were being searched, including Peters. She says all she has done is exercise her First Amendment freedom to be an advocate for Peters, whom she claims has "hard evidence" about Colorado officials and Dominion Voting Systems, and that they’re trying to make her go away and be quiet. She says officials who are "running Colorado" are criminalizing free speech.

She says she has made herself completely available to officials and that there was no reason other than intimidation for them to treat her and her family this way.

Here’s the link to her TV interview.

https://home.frankspeech.com/tv/video/exclusive-colorado-mom-becomes-first-parent-have-her-door-broken-down-doj-and-fbi-target

We’ve seen a few reports of the raids in mainstream media, but they focus not on the violation of civil liberties –- since when do Trump supporters have civil liberties? –- but on allegations that Mesa County election results were allegedly leaked to some “QAnon conspiracy theorists.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lauren-boeberts-ex-manager-sherronna-bishop-also-targeted-in-fbi-raid-on-maga-election-clerk-tina-peters

It’s impossible to sort out all the accusations and counter-accusations going on in Mesa County. We just find it interesting that this angle from THE DAILY BEAST doesn’t address the FBI’s intimidating use of force against non-violent targets. The DB also reflexively calls the hypothesis that the 2020 election was stolen “a baseless idea.” That is wrong; it’s not proven, but it’s certainly not baseless.

Another outlet, TALKING POINTS MEMO, describes Peters as “a Trumpy Colorado county clerk already under investigation” and identifies the QAnon personality as Ron Watkins, “a right-wing influencer that many believe to be behind the posts that spurred the QAnon conspiracy theory,” according to reporter Matt Shuham. The armed raids are characterized by a Mesa County spokesperson as “four federally court-authorized operations into potential criminal activity.” All documents related to these “operations” are apparently still sealed.

We can’t say this investigation is being carried out to take focus off what Peters might have FOUND regarding the voting machine data. But we can’t say it isn’t, either.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/feds-raid-home-of-trumpy-colorado-clerk-under-scrutiny-after-election-data-leak

That’s the story so far. We’ll leave you with an outstanding companion piece by Victor Davis Hanson called “Can the FBI Be Salvaged?” that lists many familiar examples of the FBI overstepping, lying, leaking, colluding, hushing-up, setting-up, intimidating, witch-hunting, infiltrating, improperly surveilling, abusing, withholding evidence and more.

He should add these armed raids in Mesa County to his list.

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2021/11/18/can-the-fbi-be-salvaged-n2599279

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Here's a perfect example of a tyrannical leftist politician’s delusions of grandeur: New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that he will magnanimously "allow" people to gather in Times Square for New Year’s Eve, but ONLY if they have “papers” to verify that they are fully vaccinated or have had a negative COVID test in the previous 72 hours.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/show-papers-fully-vaccinated-proof-will-permitted-gather-times-square-new-years-eve-celebration/

I want you to think about that. Have you ever seen Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Have you even been in Times Square on any typical weekend night? It’s like a giant sardine can of humanity. On New Year’s Eve, upwards of 100,000 people will be cramming into a few city blocks. How will they check everyone’s “papers”? Well, New York City Police will have to set up “security checkpoints” and make everyone who enters the area show vaccine documents and a photo ID.

Hold on! A PHOTO ID?! This sounds like a racist attempt to suppress minority participation in New Year’s Eve! Also, after all the police budget cuts under DeBlasio, they don’t even have enough cops to keep New Yorkers from robbing and shooting people, but they have enough to stand around on New Year’s Eve, demanding to see 100,000 sets of "papers" to ensure it’s “safe” for people to stand around outdoors?

Oh, well, at least New Yorkers will have a really good reason to celebrate the arrival of the new year. It means that at long, long last, Bill DeBlasio will finally be leaving office.

Mike Huckabee

Recently, a story from last June out of British Columbia, Canada, made international news. It was revealed that a hospital doctor who’d been treating people made sick by an extreme heat wave became the first to diagnose “climate change” as the cause of a patient’s illness. He was having an asthma attack aggravated by smoke from a wildfire, which the doctor blamed on increasing heat waves caused by climate change. It gave eco-activists more fuel to pour on the fire (sorry!) of their cause.

But in all the media ballyhoo over the “climate change is now officially a pandemic!” narrative, did anyone bother to ask, “Was that diagnosis accurate, or just propaganda disguised as quackery?” Well, someone finally did.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts of the WattsUpWithThat.com climate change site, dug into the science. Since the diagnosis rested on the assumptions that wildfires are much worse now due to more frequent heat waves and higher temperatures caused by global warming, he examined both of those claims.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/08/rebuttal-to-doctor-merritt-climate-change-does-not-affect-human-health-weather-does/

In a study called “Was Global Warming The Cause of the Great Northwest Heatwave? Science Says No,” University of Washington meteorology expert Dr. Cliff Mass wrote that “If global warming was producing extreme heat waves in our region, such as the event last week, there would be a long-term trend towards more extreme high temperatures.” But the records show that there had been “NO INCREASING TREND for more record high temperatures over our region during the past century.”

But what about all the worsening wildfires? We hear a lot about those in California, where state officials insist they’re caused by global warming and not incompetent forest management by leftwing state officials. Watts checked NASA satellite data, which shows a long-term decline in wildfires worldwide, with a 25% decrease of burned land area since 2003.

So if there is no increase in heat waves or wildfires, maybe the patient’s asthma attack wasn’t caused by a climate change apocalypse but by the fact that he has asthma and breathed in smoke from a forest fire, which have been happening in the Pacific Northwest since the dawn of time. It didn’t really require Dr. House to diagnose that.

Dr. Mass noted in his report, “A single event does not reflect climate, only a trend or changes in long-term average do.” I shouldn’t have to tell climate activists this, since it’s what they yell at us every time we make a joke about a global warming conference being canceled due to a blizzard (which happens more often than you’d think.) I suspect that’s really why they started calling it “climate change” instead of “global warming.”

Mike Huckabee

Ever since COVID-19 helped us ring in the New Year of 2020, the approved narrative was that it had come from a wet market in Wuhan, China, though social media didn’t allow mention of Wuhan or China.

But in recent months we’ve learned plenty about Chinese gain-of-function research into dangerous bat viruses, commissioned and funded by none other than the National Institutes of Health, and we know it’s very likely the source of the pandemic. Steve Hilton, on his FOX NEWS show “The Next Revolution,” reported Sunday night that even the LOS ANGELES TIMES had to report that “...there is no clear sign of an intermediate host. Of the 80,000 animal samples tested in China, none have contained the virus’ genetic material or antibodies to it.”

As recently as August of this year, the LA TIMES was still pushing the “wet market” idea. Business columnist (not doctor) Michael Hiltzik actually said the “lab leak” explanation was driven by politics, not science.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-26/lab-leak-theory-origin-covid-19

As a side note, “fact”-checkers also tried to discredit the story about beagles being used in cruel experiments funded under Dr. Fauci’s leadership at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but we found this was happening.

Now, Hilton points to a new story offering more specifics about surreptitious bat studies at the Wuhan lab. In September, 900 pages of documentation from this research was released in response to a FOIA request a year ago by THE INTERCEPT, leading Rutgers University professor Dr. Richard Ebright to say,“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new-details-emerge-about-coronavirus-research-at-chinese-lab/

“POTENTIAL PANDEMIC PATHOGEN ENHANCEMENT”? Think about what that is, and one can only conclude that it is evil.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, said, “This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic."

If the NIH commissioned gain-of-function research, it did so, Hilton said, “in direct contravention of the rules that were in place in both the Obama and Trump administrations. Hilton has been calling for months for a real investigation of this funding, as the one way to perhaps show Fauci accountable.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group consisting of Republicans Roger Marshall of Kansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Democrats Dianne Feinstein of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, introduced legislation establishing a “9/11-style” Covid Origins Commission to determine how the pandemic really started. Sen. Marshall told Hilton that it was important to make this investigation bipartisan, without politics involved.

He’s hoping this can be an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act before it comes up for a vote “in three or four weeks.” This is the act that funds the military; in its 60-year history, it’s always been passed.

Marshall told Hilton that he thought it was “a matter of months if not weeks” to get the commission in place. They would have to come up with ten names –- five from Republicans, five from Democrats, all “experts in their specific areas,” he said, but not driven by politics.

There’s a great deal of information that would need to be declassified, Marshall said, and these commissioners would also have the power to subpoena people such as Peter Daszak and others from EcoHealth Alliance and get them in front a grand jury. He thinks that if we start looking at all the DNA sequences having to do with this virus, “we’ll find the grandfather of COVID-19 somewhere buried in Eco Health lab system.”

……………………..

Something else that needs to be looked at critically in the age of COVID: the push for draconian lockdowns that force us all to comply with our political leaders regarding the most personal decisions we make. Those who for decades have been saying we have the right to do what we want with our own body (even if it happens to be our own body and another very small person's, too) are quick to say we must follow orders to have new, practically untested substances injected into our bodies.

To question this is not to be an “anti-vaxxer,” no matter who decides to rewrite the dictionary. It’s to be anti-mandate, which is altogether different.

Now that well over a hundred million people have been exposed to COVID-19 and have presumably obtained some immunity to it --- most likely even stronger than that possessed by a vaccinated person who hasn't been exposed --- one has to wonder why we’re still talking about all the restrictions. Is the idea really to get us used to taking orders “for the public good”? Christopher Bedford at THE FEDERALIST has an interview with FOX NEWS climate expert Mike Bastach. You may ask, what do COVID restrictions have to do with climate? Turns out, quite a bit.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/15/how-covid-lockdowns-handed-global-warming-extremists-the-tools-to-crush-freedom/

As we reported in our commentary on the National Audubon Society and their apparent dismissal of the effect wind turbines have on birds, China has said it will work with the U.S. on cutting carbon emissions. (We said we’d believe it when we see it.) This was the Glasgow Climate Conference, in which (Bedford’s words) “a few thousand clueless, feckless old men flying from all over the planet to babble on about saving the world and maybe even catch a quick nap during the most boring of the mostly boring speeches.”

Now that we’re back to boring meetings that don’t really accomplish much, it might seem as if we’re returning to normal, but we’re not. The way Bedford explains it, our society is at a crossroads: we can continue to pursue individualism, or we can turn to “a more involved government that tries to actively reorder society toward the ‘higher good.’”

And here’s where COVID comes in. British writer/editor Mary Harrington said, “The pandemic state of emergency [shattered] the consensus about individual freedom. Across the developed world, the liberal privileging of individual freedom has been replaced by a de facto acceptance that state power absolutely must be ordered to the common good, up to and including coercive measures when necessary.”

Bedford goes to describe even how this way of thinking is transforming the language, and not in a good way.

He says, “In all societies, there are people who feel entitled to build their own moral universes and compel us to obey their manmade constructs. It’s for the collective good, they say, although suspiciously often 'the collective good' seems to align with giving them the most money and power, status and freedom...”

“COVID was the best thing ever to happen to these people,” he says, and he’s right.

And with COVID fading away, they’ll turn on a dime and make “climate” the new emergency. Consider that if they can essentially trap you in your home and limit your travel to purportedly contain the spread of COVID, they can do the same thing to purportedly keep the temperature from rising. Same for spreading so-called “misinformation” (which very often turns out to be the truth).

We know China won’t keep their promise on fossil fuels. But don’t assume we'll hold China accountable for their toxic emissions. That won’t happen, any more than we’ll hold them accountable for their toxic virus.

Mike Huckabee

Monday, both sides gave their closing arguments to the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. And if the prosecutors weren’t deliberately trying to force a mistrial so they could get a do-over, then there hasn’t been such pure incompetence on display since the Three Stooges tried being plumbers.

Where to begin? Victoria Taft at PJ Media summarized the state’s summation, noting that D.A. Thomas Binger told the jury that “I’m scared” is not a legal justification for self-defense. Actually, it is the exact legal justification for self-defense. He also suggested that Rittenhouse should have fired warning shots. Which, despite Joe Biden’s advice, is clearly illegal.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/11/15/shorter-prosecution-wrap-kyle-rittenhouse-deserved-it-should-have-fired-warning-shot-or-taken-beating-during-kenosha-riot-now-the-jury-decides-n1533069

The very first slide shown to the jurors claimed that Rittenhouse shot three people with a gun he knew he couldn’t legally have. That’s false; it was perfectly legal for him to carry that gun under Wisconsin law, which you’d assume the prosecutors would be vaguely familiar with. Unfortunately for them, the judge knew the law and dismissed the underage weapons charge.

https://www.westernjournal.com/prosecution-caught-lying-closing-argument-kyle-rittenhouse-murder-trial/

Binger told the jury that the BLM rioters that night were “heroes” who stopped an “active shooter.” They were actually starting fires, assaulting police, and they even attacked the very courthouse where the trial was taking place.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2021/11/15/rittenhouse-trial-lead-prosecutor-called-rioting-blm-crowd-heroes-heres-what-those-heroes-were-doing-n2599135

In the most eye-popping display of incompetence, at one point, the prosecutor picked up the rifle and pointed it directly at the jurors with his finger on the trigger. That should be grounds for charging the prosecutor with criminal stupidity. That violates the first rule of gun safety. It doesn’t matter if you “know for certain” that it’s unloaded. You never point a gun at another person (unless, of course, that person is trying to kill you.) Has he never heard the name “Alec Baldwin?”

https://www.westernjournal.com/rittenhouse-prosecutor-violates-gun-safety-points-ar-15-finger-trigger-court-full-people/

Believe it or not, it got even crazier during the rebuttal to the defense’s summation.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/11/16/rittenhouse-prosecutions-rebuttal-argument-was-so-bad-it-made-jaws-drop-n476507

But the utter disregard for facts and accuracy wasn’t restricted to the prosecutors. From the start of this story, the mainstream media have pushed a phony racial narrative that’s made many people believe this was a racist triple murder by a white supremacist. One black Democrat in the Oregon state house even called for giving all black workers the day off to process their trauma if Rittenhouse is acquitted, even though he's not a white supremacist and he claims he fired in self-defense at three attackers, all of them white males. By fanning the racial flames, the media are complicit in setting the stage for more riots if Rittenhouse is acquitted (or knowing leftists, even if he’s not.)

This is why Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says that Rittenhouse should not only be acquitted, he should sue CNN, the New York Times and other liberal media outlets for encouraging vigilantism by continually pushing the false narrative that he’s guilty.

https://www.westernjournal.com/famed-harvard-law-professor-rittenhouse-acquitted-sue-media-vigilante-justice/

He’s not the only one they've put in danger, of course: the judge has received many threats against himself and his family, and Kenosha is bracing for possible riots and street violence.

But wait: don’t we now have a battalion of self-appointed “fact-checkers” to expose such “misinformation”? Well, sort of. As Kylee Zempel at the Federalist reports, sites such as Politifact were bending over backwards to find ways to declare false narratives about the case true and true claims false. The major reason we know this is that the conservative media they usually target risked life and limb to shoot video of the riots.

Zempel says this phony “fact-checking” might mislead and inflame the public, but it serves the greater goal of promoting the leftwing narrative that “guns are bad, and law-abiding citizens are wrong to have firearms to protect themselves from lawless rogues,” which is the prosecution’s entire case.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/15/fact-checkers-had-their-facts-about-rittenhouses-gun-rights-all-wrong/

Tucker Carlson argued that by claiming that “you lose the right to self-defense when you’re the one who brought the gun,” the prosecutors are trying to nullify the right to bear arms. They’re saying that if you carry a legal weapon, you give up the right to use it to protect yourself.

Carlson told viewers, “That’s the whole point of this whole proceeding: so the next time BLM sweeps into your town, your neighborhood, your house, to burn and loot and brandish weapons, you had better not try to protect yourself or your family…We will charge you with murder, and while we’re at it, we’ll have the national media call you racist.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/11/15/tucker-carlson-described-the-whole-point-of-the-kyle-rittenhouse-prosecution-and-its-horrifying-n2599151

For those who think he’s being hyperbolic and this is a totally unique case, guess who showed up at the courthouse to support Rittenhouse? Kyle and Patricia McCloskey.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10206845/Hes-politically-prosecuted-McCloskey-support-Kyle-Rittenhouse.html

Mike Huckabee

So, after three indictments and counting, will there be big-time accountability as a result of John Durham’s investigation of the Russia Hoax? It depends on who’s talking.

The NEW YORK POST ran a superb, richly detailed editorial last week that starts by condemning most of the media for their lack of coverage now that the special counsel is finally speaking. Of course, it comes as no surprise that most media are ignoring the story coming out of his grand jury. The POST reveals the whole sordid story of how the media covered the “dossier” that was peddled to them by Christopher Steele and others. For when you have time, this is recommended reading, and also good to pass along to those you know who are just now becoming aware of what we’ve all known for years.

https://nypost.com/2021/11/09/how-the-media-pushed-hillary-clintons-lies-against-trump/?utm_source=twitter_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

The media eagerly pushed a bogus “dossier,” but they avoided revealing the connections between it and Hillary’s campaign or doing anything on their own to try to discredit it, as real journalists would be bound to do. Instead, they lapped it up like a cat with a bowl of cream. For that, THE NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST won the Pulitzer Prize. There might not be jail cells for these “journalists,” but they should at least have to give the Pulitzer back!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/04/donald-trump-pulitzer-prize-board-russia-new-york-times-washington-post

Or make them give it to the NY POST. Here, the POST has clearly outlined the relationships among major players Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko and Charles Dolan. Be glad that a few major news outlets such as the POST are not only reporting what we think of as “old news,” but are doing so in a clear, methodical way that makes the complex simple. We know that one strategy the left uses for cover is to make sure its scandals are too complicated or “inside” for most people to follow. They also delay, delay, delay so that stories BECOME “old news,” and then they say, “Hey, it’s time to move on!” Um, we’ve not moving on from this.

So, the NY POST has indicted the media, not literally in a court of law but as a matter of public shaming. What about actual indictments, the kind that can lead to convictions and jail sentences? I hesitate even to link to the latest commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy, as I think he might have just been in a pessimistic frame of mind last week and will put you in one, too. The theme for his piece might be that “abuse of power is not criminal.” To that we say that, yes, sometimes it isn’t, but sometimes it sure is.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/durham-indictments-collusion-case-direction-andrew-mccarthy

It’s true that what Durham knows and what he can prove in court are two different things. But at this point, Durham doesn’t really have to prove every last word in the "dossier" is false; we’ve already seen enough evidence about this for any reasonable person to conclude it was made up. As for who is responsible at the top for directing this outrageous scheme, we still don’t know everything Durham has. He sure seems to be zeroing in on the Clinton people. So even though McCarthy literally wrote the book on the Russia Hoax (BALL OF COLLUSION; highly recommended), we think he might be trying to forecast too far ahead. There’s more material yet to be declassified, and it might go a long way towards satisfying McCarthy.

In fact, last week, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Maria Bartiromo there were over 1,000 documents from the Durham investigation that haven’t yet been declassified, and some of the intelligence relates directly to criminal activity that could be the basis for “further indictments.” He reminded us that a grand jury is saying that what happened with the Steele “dossier” is criminal in nature, and he anticipates that various people involved in exploiting it will be in legal jeopardy.

Kash Patel, lead investigator for former House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, spoke with Maria this Sunday and specifically implicated Fiona Hill as one who could face criminal charges for lying to Congress in October of 2019 when she said, “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed that dossier. None. I just want to state that.” Heck, she counts herself among Christopher Steele’s close friends and introduced him to Igor Danchenko. She also introduced Danchenko to big-time Clinton ally and Trump-Russia fabulist Charles Dolan, who provided fake stories for the “dossier.”

Fiona Hill serves as the connection between the Steele operation and the Democrat Party, Patel said. “John Durham’s on that case,” he said; “I think we’re gonna get there.”

Patel broke down three areas of criminality that Durham has been looking at, describing them as three points of a triangle and represented by the three criminal indictments that have been handed down so far. Michael Sussmann, at the top of this triangle, represents the indictment of the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, “funneling tens of millions of dollars to perpetuate the biggest fraud in the history of the FBI.” FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith represents one of the bottom two points, representing the FBI’s role in lying to a federal court by doctoring a document about Carter Page to get a warrant under false pretenses. The other point is the indictment of Danchenko, whose own words discredit the phony “dossier.”

“He’s got a long way to go,” Patel says of Durham. But he’s glad to see that Durham is finally getting information from the FBI that had been intentionally withheld from the House Intel Committee.

Former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe appears to have played a central role. “All roads lead to Andy McCabe,” Patel said. Recall that McCabe was caught in three lies by Inspector General Horowitz during the internal investigation and seemed to have skated, but we’ll see. Patel insisted that a mid-level official such as Clinesmith couldn’t have pulled off “the greatest political scandal in history” by himself. It would have been “virtually impossible.” He was directed by his supervisors, and this would not have happened without the deputy director of the FBI knowing about it, and almost certainly colleagues Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as well.

Bartiromo pointed out that “those who abused power are now in power,” notably Jake Sullivan, who was Hillary’s foreign policy adviser and is now President Biden’s national security adviser. Recall that Sullivan is the operative who broke the fake Alfa Bank story, which Hillary herself retweeted and falsely described as a discovery by computer scientists, when it was actually phonied-up by some helpful university techies. And now there he is in the catbird seat –- inside the White House.

Patel sees that “what the American public so desperately need” is accountability. “And I think that’s where this road is going, and [where] John Durham’s taking us,” he said. “So stay tuned; I think we’re only 60 to 70 percent of the way there.”

Former Georgia congressman Doug Collins is quite optimistic as well. He’s got a new book coming out on the whole scandal, called THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR, which comes out this week. We’ll add it to our stack.

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/hillaryclinton-trump-russia-durham/2021/11/14/id/1044594/?ns_mail_uid=f9499f75-6002-4e3d-a92a-60873ae4921d&ns_mail_job=DM275980_11142021&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010101bvtih2

Mike Huckabee

I told you about the man who claimed that activists were secretly photographing the jurors to intimidate them to vote guilty or face retaliation. It’s not clear whether that was true or these stories are related, but the judge announced that someone had been caught secretly recording the jury. The video was deleted.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judge-makes-huge-announcement-rittenhouse-trial-jury-members-filmed/

Rittenhouse did something most lawyers advise against and took the stand in his own defense. That can get you into big trouble if you’re facing a sharp, competent prosecutor. Luckily for him, that’s hardly the case here. This prosecutor actually thought he’d hit on a “Perry Mason” moment by asking Rittenhouse why he was running toward a fire with a fire extinguisher in his hand.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/11/10/we-just-may-have-the-dumbest-moments-in-the-rittenhouse-trial-n473324

The judge blasted the prosecutor for making a “grave constitutional violation” by mentioning Rittenhouse giving up his right to remain silent in front of the jury.

https://www.westernjournal.com/rittenhouse-judge-blasts-prosecution-says-made-grave-constitutional-violation/

Afterward, the prosecution rested its case, and the judge dropped one minor charge of breaking curfew.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judge-drops-charge-kyle-rittenhouse-case-state-rests-case/

Even some liberal commentators are admitting that their certainty that this wasn’t self-defense has been shaken. You can tell the trial is going badly for the prosecution because liberal media outlets are resorting to attacking the judge and calling him a white supremacist (he was appointed by a Democrat) so that if Rittenhouse is acquitted, they can blame it on him being coddled by a racist judge and not on the evidence and testimony.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/11/11/the-talking-points-go-forth-on-the-rittenhouse-trial-as-liberals-struggle-to-cope-n473658

Sadly, a lot of people who actually rely on these people for accurate news (which is like relying on Ben & Jerry for diet tips) may be misinformed enough to riot over the alleged “racist verdict” in a trial that was decided on the evidence and had nothing to do with race (Rittenhouse and all three people shot are white.) And while that might be terrible for America, the cities where it happens, and the people and businesses that will suffer, it will give more video footage to the irresponsible, biased media outlets that lit the fuse that set off the bomb. Is it any wonder polls show Americans trust the media less than almost anyone other than Congress?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx

Mike Huckabee

When the story broke about Project Veritas employees and founder James O’Keefe being raided by the FBI Saturday morning in a purported search for Ashley Biden’s diary, our first question was, “Did they take the electronics?”

Sure enough, the diary search seems to have been a pretext, at least in part, to take the electronics.

The FBI found privileged communications between Project Veritas and their attorney from several years ago, with PV asking for legal opinions regarding their journalistic activities. It seems the Bureau leaked these to THE NEW YORK TIMES, which apparently is illegal –- yes, even when the FBI does it, but since when have they cared? –- and the NYT reported on it, which as far as we know also is illegal.

Oh, and it gets shadier. The NYT happens to be in litigation with Project Veritas or a story they did in 2020 about a PV video alleging voter fraud in Minnesota. Wonder if they saw any attorney-client communications about that?

https://thelibertydaily.com/criminal-collusion-fbi-illegally-leaked-privileged-project-veritas-communications-and-the-ny-times-illegally-reported-on-them/

Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti wrote a piece for Thursday’s NYT called “Project Veritas and the Line Between Journalism and Political Spying,” which they say shows “how the conservative group worked with lawyers to gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices could go before running afoul of federal laws.”

So, let me get this straight. Reporters discuss with their attorneys on how to get information for their stories without breaking the law. Stop the presses!!

Ironically, the one who might have run afoul of the law is THE NEW YORK TIMES, as it has written about communications covered by attorney-client privilege. The materials are a series of memos written several years ago by Project Veritas attorney Benjamin Barr about how to do things such as mask identity and infiltrate groups without breaking federal law. This is actually the style of undercover reporting that investigative journalists used to do all the time; you know this if you watched 60 MINUTES and other prime time news shows in their long-ago heyday.

“The documents give new insight into the workings of the group,” the NYT story says, “at a time when it faces potential legal peril in the diary investigation –- and has signaled that its defense will rely in part on casting itself as a journalistic organization protected by the First Amendment.”

Note to the NYT: Project Veritas is a journalistic organization protected by the First Amendment.

And being a journalistic organization, they chose not to do a story on Ashley Biden’s diary because they couldn’t confirm it was hers. NATIONAL FILE published 112 pages of it, in October 2020, but Project Veritas left it alone.

“Most news organizations consult regularly with lawyers,” the NYT story says, “but some of Project Veritas’ questions for its legal team demonstrate an interest in using tactics that test the boundaries of legality and are outside of mainstream reporting techniques.”

So, whatever they thought they might need to do to get a story, they were running by their attorneys first to make sure it was LEGAL and didn’t interfere with national security. Hey, NYT (and FBI), there is nothing wrong with “demonstrating an interest.” And according to James O’Keefe and his lawyer Paul Calli, who appeared in an interview with Sean Hannity, they DID nothing wrong. This would imply denial of one of the allegations in the search warrant, transporting stolen goods [the diary] across state lines.

“Mr. O’Keefe likes to describe himself as a crusading journalist exposing wrongdoing, targeting liberal groups and Democrat politicians,” says the NYT.

Note to the NYT: That’s exactly what O'Keefe is. And thank God for that, as the mainstream media aren’t interested in doing the job. They show a remarkable lack of curiosity, especially when it comes to wrongdoings within their own party.

In their story, Goldman and Mazzetti admit that they passed along some of these Project Veritas memos to Bill Grueskin, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, formerly with the WALL STREET JOURNAL and BLOOMBERG NEWS. He said that these memos provided “pretty good advice” but that “the undercover nature of Project Veritas’ work was more problematic.”

Did this expert think it might be “problematic” that he was reading privileged attorney-client legal advice?

“Every newsroom I’ve ever worked in has basically said undercover journalism was unacceptable,” Grueskin said. On the contrary, we used to see a lot of this type of sting, with shaky undercover cameras inside purses and such. That was long before cameras were virtually everywhere, as they are now. Why do I get the feeling that the real objection to Project Veritas is not their tactics but their targets?

Project Veritas issued a statement saying it “stands behind these legal memos and is proud of the exhaustive work it does to ensure each of its journalism investigations complies with all applicable laws” and that their work “reflects Project Veritas’ dedication to the First Amendment, which protects the right to gather information, including about those in power.”

James O’Keefe got himself an outstanding attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, and she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s FOX NEWS show Thursday evening with a shocking story about how the FBI conducted their raid. She said they showed up at his door with “a battering ram,” “threw him out into the hallway,” put him “in handcuffs” and “took his phones.”

She said he had a lot of privileged information on his phones, including communication with “by my count, four dozen different lawyers over the years.” She can’t say with certainty how these NYT reporters got the information, but “can say that they got it in a way that is illegal and unethical.

She described this as a situation in which either the U.S. Attorney’s office or the FBI was tipping off the NYT to each of the raids on Project Veritas’ current and former employees. “We know that because minutes after these raids occurred, we got calls from THE NEW YORK TIMES,” she said. She described the story they ran as “a hit piece.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this low from THE NEW YORK TIMES before, to publish people’s private legal communications,” she said. She then said what we'd concluded independently: “All it proves is that Project Veritas is an honest and thoughtful journalistic organization that sought legal advice” before running with their stories. We would add that perhaps THE NEW YORK TIMES could do a better job of that.

Finally, the FBI may have found a treasure trove of private stuff on those phones besides the attorney-client material. Dhillon said there was confidential source information, “including sources in the Biden administration and in corporate America.” There was also donor information, which is protected by the First Amendment. So why did the FBI take those phones? Still think all they were after was that diary?

On Thursday, Project Veritas was able to get a federal judge to order the FBI and the Southern District of New York to stop looking at the phones. But that sure sounds like locking the barn door after the horse is gone.

Mike Huckabee

With tens of millions of Americans having already had COVID-19, a lot of people question why the CDC refuses even to discuss a natural immunity exception to vaccine mandates. The agency claims that vaccination boosts immunity even for those who’ve already had COVID, but that relies on one study from Kentucky that’s contradicted by other studies.

But the agency is now coming under new criticism after admitting in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request that it doesn’t have a single case on record of an unvaccinated person who previously had COVID spreading the disease to anyone else.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/11/11/the-cdc-gives-the-entire-game-away-on-covid-19-natural-immunity-n474019

As the linked article notes, “fact-checkers” are already rushing to stem the damage by insisting that this is not proof that people with natural immunity don’t spread COVID, just that the CDC isn’t keeping such records. That’s true, but it also obscures the important point.

The bombshell news here is that the CDC, which Americans are told to depend on as a reliable source for all the latest information on COVID, hasn’t even bothered to gather any data on one of the most important and contentious issues: the relative effectiveness of natural immunity. If they had, they might reach the conclusion that recovered people don’t need “vaccine passports” or to comply with vaccine mandates. This revelation makes them look more concerned with pushing an agenda than with amassing the most accurate data and being transparent about it. It only feeds the skepticism of those who already distrust the CDC. They’re not going to convince more people to get a shot in the arm by continually shooting themselves in the foot.

By the way, if you want to know more about the various studies and the arguments for and against natural immunity, this recent video by a professor of pharmacology summarizes it all pretty objectively.

https://youtu.be/Lz7fZOfPf8M

Mike Huckabee

This might be the most important article you’ll read all week.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/british-muslim-cia-operative-and-author-i-posed-daniel-greenfield/

The Democrats, news media, social media, Big Tech and other allies of the left have been far too successful in clamping down on free speech by conservatives. By accusing people who question their views and narratives of spreading “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech” or whatever other negative buzzwords they can apply to non-leftist views, they’ve succeeded in censoring anyone who questions shady election procedures; discusses the origin or medical treatments for COVID or any problems with the vaccines or mask mandates; or criticizes BLM, Antifa, Critical Race Theory or schools that push any of it. Next, they’re going to make it verboten to question apocalyptic climate change claims.

And who is behind much of this push to destroy free speech and silence any voices that dissent from leftist orthodoxy? Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield has been digging into the background and organization of one of the leftwing cable channels’ favorite pompous talking heads, British leftist Imran Ahmed of the far-too-influential “Center for Countering Digital Hate.” And how legit is that? As Greenfield puts it, if you liked the dubious Brit material in the Steele Dossier, "you'll love the Center for Countering Digital Hate."

This is the group whose claims about rightwing “hate speech” and “disinformation” are cited by Senate Democrats and Big Tech in their endless quest to criminalize conservative speech. Read what Greenfield has unearthed about the sleazy background and secretive funding, staff and even address of this organization that’s being granted more power over Americans’ speech than the First Amendment. Learn how their next mission, one they’re already succeeding at, is to get Big Tech to censor any skepticism of the movement to confiscate and redistribute the world’s wealth in the name of “climate change.”

And speaking of climate change, see if you don’t feel a sudden chill at reading this quote from Ahmed:

“We can’t suppress anyone’s opinion or their ability to express their opinion, but what we can do is create costs for their speech."

In short, make Americans so afraid of what it might cost them to speak their minds that they censor themselves. Imposing “costs” on speech is by definition the antithesis of free speech.

Read it all, and then demand to know why American media outlets and social media companies are handing over power over our speech to this shady, censorious propagandist? Americans fought a Revolution so that we could express our thoughts freely without fear of retribution from a pompous tyrant with a British accent. Why are we allowing one to take that fundamental right away from us now?