Mike Huckabee

Angry parents are scoring some victories against the left using schools to indoctrinate children. In Fairfax, Virginia, the superintendent who gutted merit-based standards and did away with the entrance exam to get into the nation’s top high school (leading to a huge drop in acceptance of Asian-American students) has resigned after two groups of parents sued for anti-Asian discrimination.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/superintendent-who-eliminated-entrance-exam-at-nations-top-high-school-to-resign/

After getting a tidal wave of negative feedback, the Biden Department of Education reeled back some of its plans to impose "America's racist" history lessons and reaffirmed parents’ right to have a say in local school curricula.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/07/18/biden-doe-ditches-prioritizing-critical-theories-in-a-grant-program-after-comment-period-n1462721

And in Russell County, Virginia, the school board voted unanimously to reject the state board of education’s transgender policies that would force schools to accept whatever a student claims his/her/xir gender to be, regardless of the student’s biology. State officials claim the local board is in violation of the law. But the Founding Freedoms Law Center, which is challenging them in court, says it’s the state policies that are legally problematic and that infringe on numerous fundamental rights of parents, teachers and students.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/07/18/virginia-school-board-rejects-states-radical-transgender-policies-n1462682

Bottom line: fighting back against the leftist takeover of schools is working, so keep it up. To quote the late Nancy Reagan, “Just say no!”

Mike Huckabee

Former President Trump put out a statement criticizing the way President Biden is handling convincing Americans to get vaccinated against COVID. Because of the media’s prime directive that Trump is always wrong and to blame for all bad things, this is being spun as Trump promoting the anti-vaccination movement, which he wasn’t at all (you can read his statement here for yourself):

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/18/trump-blasts-biden-on-vaccines-and-the-media-quickly-lies-about-what-trump-said-n412750

As noted, why would Trump, who got the vaccine himself, urged Americans to take it, and rightly takes credit for getting it developed so quickly, back the anti-vaccination movement?

The big story about the lagging vaccination numbers is just how much Democrats themselves have had to do with them. Most of their arguments are based on mockery and condescension rather than facts, and that works with some people, but it’s backfiring big time at convincing people to get vaccinated. To begin with, the idea that the “vaccine hesitant” are a bunch of dumb, anti-science Trump voters is not only insulting, it’s patently false.

A Kaiser poll in May found that only 20% of those hesitant to get vaccinated were Republicans, with 19% being Republican-leaning Independents. 41% were Democrats or Democrat-leaning Independents, and 20% pure Independents or undesignated. So reluctance to get vaccinated spans the political spectrum and might even lean slightly Democrat.

And who’s to blame for that? Biden and Kamala Harris might want to check out the nearest mirror. The press pretends to forget (and Biden probably has forgotten), but Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Cuomo and other top Democrats spent much of the 2020 election campaign casting suspicions on any vaccine developed under Trump (see the media’s prime directive, above.) Harris said flat-out that she would refuse to take it. Here are a couple of strolls down Memory Lane…

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/why-do-some-mistrust-the-vaccines.php

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/07/18/vaccine-skepticism-is-the-fault-of-anti-trump-democrats-n1462675

That first link up above to Redstate.com also includes a video montage of Biden and Harris throwing shade at vaccines. Of course, that was before they got elected. Then they got the vaccines even before taking office and immediately began taking credit for them. They also began sending other mixed messages, like continuing wearing masks and social distancing even after getting vaccinated, and flip-flopping on issues like the effectiveness of facemasks.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trumps-surgeon-general-sounds-warning-biden-making-massive-mistake/

Other attempts to force/convince people to get the jab, from threatening them with loss of rights to sending government reps to our doors to offering $1 million lottery jackpots, have also predictably backfired. The first two simply reinforce the idea that this is more about increasing government power than public health, and the third…well, when you offer someone one miiiiiillion dollars to inject something into their body, you have to expect the reaction to be, “Keep that stuff away from me!”

Incidentally, if only rightwing Republicans are unvaccinated, why is there a surge in cases in Los Angeles? Is that a hotbed of Trump supporters?

Full disclosure: I got the vaccine because having previous lung issues and having lost friends to COVID, I thought it was the best choice for me. But I wouldn’t force it on anyone else. I try to present accurate information and let people make up their own minds. And despite the media narrative, it seems that’s exactly what people are doing.

A study by MIT found that many vaccine hesitant people made decisions that were highly informed, scientifically literate and sophisticated. They examined the date carefully and arrived at the conclusion that because of their age, health status or locations, the risk wasn’t sufficient. The government could try countering that respectfully with fact-based counter-arguments, but it’s easier to assume they’re just morons and treat them as such with orders, bribes and threats of punishment.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/07/17/mit-study-vaccine-hesitancy-is-highly-informed-scientifically-literate-and-sophisticated-n1462591

Unfortunately, the people in charge now have played politics with this disease so much, and they’ve declared their claims to be absolute truth that may not be questioned (only to see that get reversed over and over again…here’s the latest example)…

https://nypost.com/2021/07/17/top-biden-officials-now-believe-covid-lab-leak-theory-report/

…that they’ve flushed their credibility down the porcelain convenience. Like anything else that goes down there, once it’s gone, it’s awfully hard to retrieve.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

White House press secretary Jen Psaki not only revealed that the Administration is colluding with Facebook to ban people who spread what they decide is “misinformation,” but she doubled down by claiming that if you’re banned from one social media platform, you should be banned from all of them. Note to college students who like to call everyone they dislike a “fascist”: this is actual fascism.

https://www.westernjournal.com/literal-fascism-eyes-psaki-says-banned-platforms-banned-one/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Unfortunately for this plan, unless Biden is able to impose actual fascism, he can’t prevent private companies from doing whatever they want, like welcoming all the customers that dumb social media platforms turn away because they care more about promoting leftist political agendas than serving customers and making money. I doubt that Parler, Rumble, MeWe and all the other alternative outlets that are popping up like weeds to challenge the Big Tech monopolies will be quite so willing to turn away millions of customers because Joe Biden doesn’t like what they’re saying.

Along those lines, GETTR, a new social media platform co-created by former Trump spokesman Jason Miller, has added 1.5 million users in record time before most Republicans have even heard of it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/gettr-explodes-passing-1-5-million-users-in-just-11-days

Ironically, if you could be banned from the media for dispensing misinformation, Jen Psaki would be out of a job.

Mike Huckabee

A new poll by Bright Line Watch and You Gov found that a shockingly large number of Americans would be okay with their state seceding from the United States to form a union with more like-minded states.

https://www.westernjournal.com/shock-poll-staggering-number-americans-want-say-ok-secession/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

It’s interesting how easily people flip-flop on the idea of secession. For instance, liberals want to tear down statues of Confederate soldiers because they were treasonous traitors for trying to secede. Then, when Trump was elected, some liberals seriously argued that California should secede. But when some conservative counties wanted to secede from California, secession became unthinkable again.

Of course, as the story notes, this wasn’t a carefully thought-out response (they didn’t phrase it as, “Would you like to have a civil war?”), but the answers are still disturbing for what they tell us about the fractious times in which we live.

Sadly, the left has done a very good job of attacking patriotism and undermining national unity, miseducating young people about America’s history and ideals, abusing government power and turning Americans against each other to advance their political goals. Social media has also had a cancerous effect on national unity and identity, allowing people to live inside bubbles of group-think where they never engage civilly with anyone who disagrees with them and hide behind the anonymity of screen names to threaten and demonize others.

This is why, more than ever, parents need to take back control of schools, so that young generations can again learn why America is such a great nation, and why truly oppressed people risk their lives to come here and wave American flags when they demonstrate for freedom.

That history should also include lessons about the most trying times, like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, when Americans put aside all their bickering and stood together because an attack on any of us is an attack on all of us. Teach them that when the Twin Towers fell in New York City, Texans stood in line to donate blood, and nobody gave a thought to whether their red state blood might be saving a blue state resident. We were all Americans then. We still are. We just need to be reminded more often, without having to suffer a national tragedy to have it brought home to us.

Mike Huckabee

Things that might get me banned for reporting: A study in Israel found that out of 7,700 new cases of COVID in the latest wave, 72 (less than 1%) were people who had the disease and got reinfected. About 3,000, or 40%, were people who had been vaccinated (it’s not clear which vaccine they got.)

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762

When you factor in that 835,792 Israelis have had COVID and recovered and nearly 5.1 million have been vaccinated, that means that vaccinated people were 6.72 times more likely to get infected than people with natural immunity.

Of course, this still means that only a little over three thousand out of nearly 6 million people who were either vaccinated or previously infected got it, so that’s still awfully low. But it doesn’t sound like a very solid argument for forcing people who’ve already had it to get vaccinated.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, a federal judge ruled in favor of Texas and eight other red states in ending Obama’s DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.) It’s the program that prevents the deportations of illegal immigrants who were brought here as children. Currently, there are about 650,000 people enrolled, and while the judge didn’t remove protections from them, he said there can be no more applicants.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-daca-bombshell-judge-strikes-program-unconstitutional-suspends-applications/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

The ruling stunned Democrats and their media handmaidens, but it shouldn’t have. I’ve been writing for years about why DACA is unconstitutional. Even Obama himself said he didn’t have the power to do it before he went ahead and did it anyway. Since then, it’s been treated as untouchable holy writ, despite the fact that it was plainly unconstitutional and even its creator said so.

While critics will wail about the cruelty and unfairness of the ruling, how you feel about the law is irrelevant. As Governor of Arkansas, I saw no point in sending people who had been brought here as children, raised as Americans and gone to school on the taxpayers’ dime to be deported to where they couldn’t even speak the language just as they were about to become productive taxpayers. But the judge was only doing his job of upholding the Constitution. He made it clear that if Congress wants to create DACA, then Congress has to do it. Creating immigration laws is their job, not the President's.

Ironically, they could have done so years ago. This article talks about how President Trump unsuccessfully tried to undo Obama’s unconstitutional version of DACA and was thwarted by courts with far less regard for the Constitution. He actually wanted to pass a legitimate form of DACA, but Democrats in Congress were so furious that they lost the 2016 election, they refused to work with Trump even on things they wanted, like DACA or infrastructure spending. Now, what they call “infrastructure” and Obama’s version of DACA are both in jeopardy because they childishly ignored the rules, demanded more than was reasonable and just wanted to attack.

Why am I reminded of this Aesop fable?...

http://read.gov/aesop/026.html

Mike Huckabee

Biden’s VP Kamala Harris, put in charge of border security, allowed a massive surge of illegal immigration to go on for 140 days before telling Guatemalans not to come to the US. His Secretary of State took only 2 days to tell Cubans who might try to flee here from brutal communist oppression not to come to the US. And while the Administration is tying the hands of ICE and the Border Patrol, they're sending in the Coast Guard to block any Cubans from getting here.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-admin-took-2-days-tell-cubans-keep-kamala-waited-140-days-tell-guatemalans-thing/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Roger Simon at the Epoch Times has a blistering op-ed about how the Biden Administration is turning its back on Cuban pro-freedom protesters while (in an eerie echo of Obama’s desertion of Iranian pro-freedom protesters) removing sanctions on Iran and kowtowing to the Mullahs to get them to reenter Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/462120/

The full article is behind a paywall, but if you’re not a subscriber, that Instapundit link has a substantial excerpt, including this opening, which deserves to be quoted far and wide:

“If I hadn’t left the Democratic Party years ago, I would leave it now. Their namby-pamby, lip-service reaction to the uprising of the Cuban people against 62 years of brutal communist oppression is shameful beyond words.”

Mike Huckabee

A New York City school principal is under investigation and may lose her job because she allegedly let her hostility toward white people inspire her to try to divide the faculty by race to get the minorities to conspire with her to fire white teachers.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nyc-principal-allegedly-conspires-oust-white-teachers-move-backfires-may-get-boot-instead/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Here’s the good news in the story: 83% of the teaching staff – including whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Jews – signed a complaint against the principal, saying she’s a vindictive bigot who tried to divide them against each other by race, and they “no longer have confidence” in her ability to lead the school.

I would like to believe that about 83% of teachers in a lot of schools realize how poisonous all this racial division is but are afraid to speak up out of fear of the loud-mouthed 17%. Let’s hope they take inspiration from these teachers of all races who had enough and dared to say, “No more!”

Mike Huckabee

First, a reader comment about our Fulton County story...

From Michael:

I would like to ask if this could be forwarded to some groups I am in. I am a Georgia voter. Fulton County is the most crooked county in Georgia, and that has been true for a long time. I would like to publicize this as far as I could.

……………………

Yes, by all means! Here is the link to that report again.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=7F2A7AEE-D1C1-4A93-9DBF-BB16AC3E1800

Since the shock of what we saw at State Farm Arena on Election Night 2020, we’ve been getting an increasingly clear picture of what was likely going on. Fulton County officials have been as uncooperative and non-transparent as it gets, and it’s hard to believe they’d behave this way if they didn’t have something to hide.

Since Tucker Carlson reported on the duplicate ballot scans Wednesday night, there’s been an all-out war declared to try to get him off the air at FOX NEWS. This is an organized effort called #TuckerIsKillingUs, featuring a video montage suggesting that his advice, particularly on the virus and medical issues, is irresponsible and will get people killed.

Author and communications expert Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon strip, said Thursday in his “Coffee With Scott Adams” podcast that if significant fraud in the Trump-Biden race can be proved, “Trump’s your next President.” (That doesn’t mean he would be rightfully installed as President before 2024, but it does mean he’d win the next election if he chose to run.) No wonder leftists are pulling out all the stops to keep auditors from seeing everything.

“If Tucker’s reporting holds up,” he said, “Trump’s your next President, because it will be too delicious to keep him out of office.” The danger they saw in a Trump first term –- meaning the danger to the system they have in place –- would be “on steroids” in a second term, he said, because Trump wouldn’t have to worry about getting re-elected. “I don’t think Republicans would be able to resist letting a rabid dog into the house with their enemies. I feel like, if the pit bull wants to kill somebody, and you need somebody killed --- figuratively speaking, not actually killing people --- I feel like it’s gonna be too hard to resist.”

He said that, in general, people make decisions based on how they feel, not primarily on policy. “How would you feel,” he asked, “if you believed that the election was fraudulent, and even if it didn’t change the final outcome, they tried really hard [to cheat for Biden]?”

“That’ll get you to the election, won’t it?”

A story in RedState supports his view. In special elections in Georgia, Alabama and Wisconsin, Republicans “overperformed” compared to the 2020 election. And it was in Georgia, a state currently under the magnifying glass for its conduct in 2020, that we saw this the most. Republicans came out in force in a suburban Atlanta district that had seen the GOP vote share dip to an all-time low just under a year ago. (I won’t speculate on how accurate that vote count was.) Voters swung 22 points back to the GOP.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/07/14/the-lefts-fear-is-palpable-after-republicans-overperform-in-a-georgia-election-n410632

The Democrats were so taken aback that “Fair Fight,” the organization headed by failed gubernatorial candidate and “voting rights” activist Stacey Abrams, tweeted this: “Tonight, Georgia Republicans won a Republican district, just like Georgia Democrats will continue to win our Democratic state. The election was an opportunity for us to protect voters in the midst of unprecedented attacks on the freedom to vote across the country.”

They also tweeted this nugget of racism: “While the Georgia GOP’s spin factory kicks into high gear, they continue running scared from the voters of color across the state who defeated them last November and again in January.”

Of course, she was referring to the proposed voting law in her own state of Georgia. Polls show that most people, of all colors, are for such safeguards as photo IDs for voters. But the Democrat leadership is desperate to stop any attempts to keep elections honest, so they’re manufacturing the necessary outrage. Here’s a great opinion piece on that, also from RedState.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/04/03/new-poll-shows-the-outrage-over-georgia-voting-law-is-absolute-nonsense-n354952

Georgia's Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger is seeing the writing on the wall for Fulton County, and on Thursday he called for the firing of top elections officials there. He says that elections director Richard Barron and voter registration chief Ralph Jones have got to go.

“Every time we think we’ve reached the peak of Fulton County’s election mismanagement issues, more comes to light,” he told THE EPOCH TIMES. You’d think that line would have come from Tucker Carlson or perhaps us, but no, it came from the Georgia secretary of state.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/raffensperger-calls-for-fulton-county-to-clean-house-or-face-state-takeover_3903367.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-07-15-2&mktids=cf244d1adf6842f9043762b6e740a5c6&est=G0r%2BMSgWzJh4ZQtXHeC7nkzrTmeyu5HFayT5DKzIsEVi8oedl1w4ZeSFJTmKYer7%2FE2mXQ%3D%3D

Still, though, his office is trying to maintain that fraud did not occur. Carter Jones said that double-counting is not evidence of fraud. “Fulton is so poor at handling the actual process that if they had actually tried to rig the election, they would have bungled it and we would have found out,” he said.

Jones is the one who was in charge of monitoring issues real-time on Election Day. His handwritten notes contain words such as “chaos,” “confusion,” and “a massive chain of custody problem.” Why would chain of custody be important except to safeguard against cheating?

He cited many more problems. THE EPOCH TIMES has all the shocking details here in a “premium” story, well worth signing up for.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-investigators-notes-detail-massive-issues-during-2020-election_3864679.html

Truly, Election Night was an absolute horror show in Fulton County, Georgia. If what happened there affected just their own local races, one could argue that they deserve what they get if they can’t manage their elections better than that. But, through cheating or incompetence or (most likely) a combination of both, they played an important role in inflicting the Biden administration on the whole country.

And, yes, I’d say that’s a firing offense.

Mike Huckabee

Since AOC and other icons of young “Democratic socialists” are being eerily silent about the Cuban people’s uprising against socialist tyranny, I’d like to call attention to this excellent op-ed that came out last month on Townhall.com from Humberto Fontova.

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2021/06/19/rock-stars-blondie-cherish-their-financial-partnership-with-castro-regime-n2591197

I didn’t write about it then, but it’s suddenly become incredibly timely. Fontova begins by quoting singer Debbie Harry of the rock group Blondie, who recently performed in Havana as part of a four-day cultural exchange that was made into a film being shown outside Cuba. I’m sure the Cuban leaders think it’s great publicity for their regime.

Ms Harry mouths the typical fashionable comments of a liberal US celebrity: having previously declared that “Americans are suffering at the hands of President Trump” and denounced him as a “racist,” she lauded Che Guevarra and Fidel Castro as “fascinating, enigmatic political heroes and antiheroes in the United States for the most part. It was always very attractive to me…”

The rest of the article goes on to detail what Cuba and those “fascinating political heroes” were really like. It’s nothing like the dreamy image of Che on dorm room posters. For instance, did you know that Cuba imprisoned more black political prisoners for longer and under worse conditions than South Africa jailed Nelson Mandela? Or that 10 times the number of Cubans have died trying to escape Cuba than died trying to escape communist East Germany? Or that under her idol Fidel, simply being caught listening to “imperialist” rock music like her band makes could get you thrown into a forced labor camp guarded by machine gunners?

So why was Blondie welcomed? Because, as an unearthed Soviet KGB document from 1981 explained, “Cultural exchanges with foreign countries are our most effective propaganda.” In short, Blondie was played, and I don’t mean the records because that could get you thrown into prison in Cuba.

None of this is intended to pick on Ms Harry, who merely repeated the kind of propaganda that most showbiz liberals have been spoon-fed. But with the truth about Cuba and the way its socialist dictators have oppressed, starved and abused its people finally breaking through into the public consciousness, this is a great time to pull back the curtain and learn that it’s nothing new. It’s not because of COVID, or Trump’s sanctions, as the media would like you to believe. It’s longstanding communist tyranny and rot, the end result of all socialist regimes.

It’s time for all the Che and Fidel fans to take off their blinders and face the truth. This article is a great, eye-opening place to start.

Mike Huckabee

Tuesday, in a victory for both Second Amendment rights and common sense, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the 21-year-old age requirement for legally purchasing guns.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/07/13/federal-court-restricting-handgun-purchases-to-those-under-21-is-unconstitutional-n2592463

Many of our age limit laws make little sense (you can get married at 18 but you can’t drink a beer until you’re 21, etc.), but this one was particularly onerous. You can join the military at 18 and carry high-powered weaponry onto a battlefield, but you can’t buy the kind of deer rifle that most male students in my high school used to have on a rack in the back window of their pickup trucks (and somehow, it never occurred to any of us to use them to shoot our classmates.)

The Court quite sensibly found that the Bill of Rights applies to all adult Americans upon reaching the age of 18, and Congress has no power to make an exception for the right to keep and bear arms. Judge Julius Richardson wrote, "Despite the weighty interest in reducing crime and violence, we refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status."

I was glad to see the Court specifically point out the logical fallacy so often cited in passing gun control laws: that just because there were more legal gun purchases and higher crime, that didn’t prove that the first thing caused the second. Congress didn’t consider illegal gun purchases, which are how most criminals get their weapons. They just reacted to crime by trying to take away the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

That’s a pretty fair encapsulation of the argument behind most gun control laws. It’s a relief to see that the Court applied reason to it and rejected it.

Mike Huckabee

I miss having a President who wildly exaggerated how good everything was. It was invigorating to hear Trump boast that we had the best economy in the universe or the strongest job growth in the history of the world. Sure, it was a little over the top, but you knew the underlying theme was true, and it made you feel good about America and think that things could only get better and not even the sky was the limit.

Flash forward, and now we have a President who wildly exaggerates how bad everything is and actively tries to make us despise and distrust our fellow Americans because of it. Tuesday in Pennsylvania, President Biden ominously claimed that asking people to show the same ID to vote that they had to show to get into the venue where he was speaking is racist oppression on the level of the Ku Klux Klan. And that a handful of rowdy pro-Trump protesters in the Capitol were a worse threat to the government than the Confederate Army during the Civil War (he hyperbolically added, “That’s not hyperbole.”)

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-joe-biden-says-trump-supporters-worse-slave-owning-confederates/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

(Megyn Kelly set liberal heads exploding by daring to say what many have started thinking: yes, that is hyperbole, and the “Great Attempted Insurrection of January 6th“ has gotten blown way out of proportion. It seems to get bigger every time a Democrat tells it, like a fisherman talking about the one that got away):

https://www.westernjournal.com/megyn-kelly-jan-6-wasnt-insurrection-media-represented-much-worse-actually/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

This is of a piece with claiming that exercising the filibuster in the Senate is an unprecedented assault on democracy (it’s only okay for the minority to block a majority vote when Texas Democrats do it.) Or that expecting men to stay out of the ladies’ room is hateful transphobic oppression. Or that the growing white supremacy movement is an even bigger threat to America than it was in the days when there actually was a growing white supremacy movement.

Biden is starting to remind me of comic Dana Carvey’s character, “The Grumpy Old Man,” who would fume about how ridiculously terrible things were back in his day, except that Biden does it when he talks about today. Only it’s very selective grumpiness: as Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com reminds us, he’s fulminating against Georgia election laws that are less restrictive than the ones that have prevailed for years in his own home state that he’s never criticized at all.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/07/13/biden-speech-n2592442

Democrats have to convince us that everything from the weather to showing your ID when you vote is a hair-on-fire emergency, because that’s how you get people to panic, turn against each other, and make bad rash decisions without thinking, like voting to put Democrats in charge of things. It usually doesn’t take long before people come to their senses and say, “What have I done?!”

The fact is that America does face many serious problems. We do have violent insurrectionists attacking the very foundations of our government. We have a rising tide of violent crime. We have serious problems with the economy that are threatening to get worse. And we really do have people who are trying to turn us against each other by bringing back awful racist ideas from the past, like segregation and judging people by their skin color instead of their character, and even forcing those poisonous notions onto our children.

The problem with putting Democrats in charge of fixing those things is that every last one of them is coming from their side.

Mike Huckabee

This letter came in response to Tuesday's story on Peter Schweizer's apparently fruitful investigation into Hunter Biden and his dad, President Joe Biden.

From Sam M (with slight editing):

Be careful of what you ask for. Getting your wish may be worse than sucking it up and sticking it out!!

Remember the constitutionally MANDATED line of succession when a President is removed by impeachment or Article 25. Do you really think Harris or Pelosi would be better? Unfortunately, the only realistic solution is to vote out the House socialists in November 2022 to get an anti-socialist Speaker of the House. At that time, we can talk about removal of corrupt or incompetent Presidents as a way to protect our Constitutional form of government.

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Sam. No, neither Harris nor Pelosi would be better. But remember, the Democrats are playing chess, not checkers, so we have to do so as well. Here is what the chess board looks like to us, right at this moment

A lot will happen between now and November 2022. If the Democrats think they’re going to be blown out of the water at the next election (which seems almost certain at present, considering they’ve “outed themselves” as being totally batwing crazy), they know they have to set themselves up to be in as strong a position as possible before that happens. This means acting while Congress is in their hands, while Pelosi and not a Republican speaker is in the line of succession. That’s for insurance.

“Be careful what you wish for” doesn’t really enter in, because it seems likely that before the next election, regardless of what does or doesn't come out about his family, President Biden will be removed BY THE DEMOCRATS, using the 25th Amendment. In other words, they're going to beat us to the punch.

It’s hard to imagine that they would wait till after 2022. For one thing, Biden’s appearance suggests that he’s suffering a mental decline even steeper than anticipated, and if that’s the case, they’ll have to do it fairly soon –- pretending, of course, that it’s a desperation move made in the interest of the country. For another, they’ll want to have their ducks in a row before Congress changes hands. That means putting Kamala in the White House and getting as much radical legislation passed and signed as possible. If you think this will disgust the electorate and lead to a sure Democrat loss in 2022, you’re right, but Democrats know they’re going to lose then ANYWAY, and probably by such a margin that no amount of cheating could make up for it. So, yes, Sam, we will have to suck it up...for President Kamala Harris.

What do we do then? As bone-chilling as the prospect of a President Harris might be, we have to ask if there is anything about her that rises to a charge of “high crimes and misdemeanors." This is an open question, but at the moment we don’t know of anything specific. (Of course, President Trump didn’t have anything illegal, either, but that didn’t stop the Democrats from making stuff up –- twice.) Unless we uncover something or decide to act like Democrats and hop aboard that rusty ol’ impeachment train anyway, we’re likely stuck with a President Harris, tempered to a degree by the newly-elected Republican Congress and Senate, until January 20, 2025.

The crystal ball grows dim after that, because, again, so much can happen. But the truth about the Biden family, and those covering for them, does need to come out. Thanks to tireless investigators such as Peter Schweizer, it will. Asking for that is a good thing.

TELL THE GOVERNOR WHAT YOU THINK, LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW.

Mike Huckabee

Mass protests are continuing in Cuba against the repressive communist regime, but the government is using special forces to crack down on the protesters. Despite the attempted media blackout, there are reports of a growing list of “missing” persons.

Sen. Ted Cruz lambasted President Biden for his weak sauce response and reminded him that he said just the day before that he stands with the Cuban people and their right to peaceful assembly. So what is he going to do about the brutal crackdown?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cruz-calls-out-bidens-state-department-amid-reports-of-cuba-e2-80-99s-crackdown-on-protesters/ar-AAM56P1

Former President Trump also stood by the Cuban protesters and urged Biden to put some starch in his spine and do likewise.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-speaks-cuban-uprising-urges-biden-stand-freedom/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Reminder: last April, candidate Biden said he would reverse Trump’s tough-on-Cuban-communism policies and return to Obama’s policy of engagement with the dictatorship. So how’s that working out? We should add this to the ever-growing dumpster fire of Trump policies that Biden reversed, only to have them blow up in his face.

As the world watches, and I hope continues to pray for the safety and success of the Cuban freedom fighters, here is an explanation of why they’re finally turning on the government (and no, it’s not because of COVID, although it is refreshing to hear Democrats finally admit that Cuba doesn’t have the world’s greatest health care system.) These are the words of Cuban freedom activist Marcell Felipe, who says that no matter what the media try to tell you, “The Cuban people have rejected socialism and the socialist regime for the longest time, both in exile, here in Miami, and directly on the islands”:

“The [regime] controls the means of production. The flip side to the government providing everything is that you depend on the government for everything. So they have every means of control and not just with bullets and threats, but with food. If you protest, we take away your food. And part of what we are seeing is that the government’s inability to provide even the most basic foods is now resulting in the people no longer having anything to lose.”

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/461292/

Instead of Critical Race Theory and other anti-American propaganda, those are words that should be taught to every American school child. Maybe then, they'd stop falling into the trap of believing the scurrilous lie that socialism is “fair” and takes care of everyone.

Mike Huckabee

Rudy Giuliani has said that when the FBI came to his home with a warrant to search for electronics, he offered them his copy of Hunter Biden’s hard drive and they declined to take it.

Well, the FBI might not have wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole, but Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and bestselling author of several books on grift among the political and corporate elite, was very interested to obtain one, and he did. He said Monday on the radio with Sean Hannity that he has determined from Hunter’s emails that then-Vice President Joe Biden was a “direct beneficiary” of Hunter Biden’s financial deals with foreign interests.

First, of course, he had to make sure this copy of the hard drive was the real deal --- that these were Hunter Biden’s genuine emails and not some elaborate fakery. It must have been a tedious job to go through thousands of messages and cross-reference them with Hunter’s Secret Service travel records, but that’s what his staff did.

The travel records had been obtained by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as ranking member of the House Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations . And, yes, the emails line up “absolutely, 100 percent” with them. If emails say, for example, that Hunter was in Dubai on a certain date, the Secret Service records confirm he was indeed there. If the emails on this hard drive aren’t real, that would make it a truly magnificent piece of fakery. Schweizer can say with confidence that this copy of Hunter’s hard drive has been documented as real.

And, of course, Hunter hasn’t denied this, though he just can't remember for sure and he’s very dedicated to his art right now and is probably very busy blowing paint through a straw. This is a developing story, as it will take some time for GAI to put all the information together and investigate everything. There’s so much to go through, in fact, that Schweizer says it could take till the end of the year to get it all done.

They’re doing the job that the media should be doing but won’t. And they say that it will expose “disastrous dimensions” of the Biden family.

As they continue to work, “it will take on a far more sinister tone than it has even now in terms of what it says about the Biden family and and vulnerabilities of the Biden family,” Schweizer told Hannity. When Sean asked him how bad it was on a scale of one to ten, he said, “The coming revelations based on what we are in the middle of right now, on a scale of one to ten –- and you know, Sean, I’m pretty cautious about this stuff –- frankly are an eleven. It’s that bad.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/12/peter-schweizer-our-copy-of-hunter-bidens-laptop-confirms-joe-biden-was-a-direct-beneficiary-of-his-sons-deals/

As for Hunter’s newfound career in art, it’s taking off, as some “experts” say they like it. In case you have seen his paintings, I feel the need to let you know that I am not kidding. There’s an article in the NEW YORK POST about it.

https://nypost.com/2021/06/15/hunter-bidens-artwork-is-actually-good-experts-say/

Mike Tribe, chairman of the MFA Fine Arts Department at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, told the POST, “I think it’s pretty strong –- I like it. The colors and compelling organic forms –- it’s the kind of organic abstraction that I find easy on the eyes and provokes your curiosity.”

Alex Acevedo, who owns the Alexander Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, said, “I’ve been in the art business since 1956. I’m not impressed with modern art at all. But I was floored by that guy. The palette was wonderful. The space was well-organized. I would buy a couple of them.”

If you’ve seen the paintings and think this guy is crazy, he is –- crazy like a fox. What he says next is telling: “And anybody who buys it would be guaranteed instant profit. He’s the President’s son. Anybody would want a piece of that. The provenance is impeccable.”

prov-e-nance (noun) 1. the place of origin or earliest known history of something

Thanks to their impeccable provenance, Acevedo expects that some of Hunter's pieces might end up topping $1 million.

Art consultant Martin Galindo is “not a fan,” he said, but is “very positive that he’s gonna do well in the market because the industry is very much about, what’s a simple way to put this? It’s like clout.”

“Honestly, I mean, from an aesthetic perspective, I don’t like it. But I’m sure he’s gonna do really well.”

Looking at one particular abstract of Hunter’s, he said, “Oh, my God, that looks like COVID.”

One refreshingly candid art collector who would give her name only as “Jill” used the words “nice” and “different” but said she thought “a lot of people can do that.” And then she said she wouldn’t buy any of them. “I wouldn’t pay sh** for it because he’s a criminal.”

The NEW YORK POST also ran an opinion piece by Andrea Peyser on Friday about the latest bit of news concerning Hunter’s art career –- the fact that buyers are to remain anonymous. “Hunter Biden’s art con is an insult to ethics –- and good taste,” says the headline.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/08/hunter-bidens-art-con-is-an-insult-to-ethics-and-good-taste/

Peyer takes a look at the newfound art career of someone whose artistic experience is, as far as she knows, “limited to to doodles on strip club cocktail napkins.” In October, a Soho art gallery will be putting 15 of his works on the market. But first, in September, a private “VIP” viewing will be held in Los Angeles.

“It’s the kind of high profile showing that many a talented artist who lacks Hunter Biden’s pedigree and connections could only hallucinate about.” It occurs to me that by coincidence some of these paintings do look like hallucinations, of bacteria and viruses. You’d have to pay ME half a million dollars for me to put one on my wall.

The White House is insisting that the anonymity of the buyers (even to Hunter) will ensure everything is on the up-and-up, but give me a break. That makes it even worse. It’ll be easy for the Bidens to know who “invested” in Hunter’s art. Assume that they will know. The anonymity ensures WE won’t know.

The buyer could even destroy Hunter’s “masterpiece” to make sure nobody knew about the grift. Some art lovers might consider that a public service, but it doesn’t make up for the sleaziness of this operation.

Don Trump, Jr., has speculated about what the reaction would be if one of the Trump offspring had done this while Trump was in office. We all know exactly what it would be. I’d love for Don to produce a big abstract canvas of his own and offer it for “sale,” just to make the point. He could even have a showing himself, if any gallery owner would play along, and call it “The Art of the Steal.”

Compare this new star of the art world to someone like former President George W. Bush, who studied art after leaving politics and has developed into a surprisingly adept portrait artist with a distinctive style.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-taught-george-bush-paint

Mike Huckabee

What I believe is the most important story of the weekend (and particularly appropriate, considering we’re winding up our Independence Day vacation) was the video escaping Cuba of massive anti-government protests, despite efforts by the dictatorial government to shut off the Internet and censor the news. I hope you will join me in praying for the protesters' safety and success.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/thousands-of-protesters-take-to-the-streets-in-cuba

The Cuban people are rightly fed up with being starved and oppressed by a communist dictatorship, and they’re demanding an end to it and chanting, “Freedom!,” “Enough!” “We want liberty!” and “We are not afraid!” Cuban “President” and communist party chief Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed the US for stoking the unrest (oh, if that were only true!) and called on “revolutionary” citizens to fight back against their fellow Cubans demanding freedom. Good luck with that.

I can’t help thinking that if Trump were still President, the White House would be doing more than trying to avoid the subject of Cubans taking to the streets to demand freedom.

RELATED READING:  Mass Protests Continue In Cuba

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/11/psaki-refuses-to-acknowledge-the-cuban-peoples-call-for-freedom-n409599

…Or actually trying to convince us that the protesters are just worried about COVID-19. No, it’s the deadly virus of communism that they want to eradicate.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/state-department-tweet-tying-covid-19-to-cuban-protests-is-criticized

And of course, all our “Democratic” socialists in Congress who claim to speak for the people haven’t made a peep to back up the Cuban people who are risking their lives to demand an end to incompetent, oppressive, deadly socialism.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-socialists-ignore-cuban-protesters-railing-against-communist-dictatorship

Finally, Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media has a good round-up of the shameful way in which US media outlets, many of whom spent years shining Fidel Castro’s boots with their tongues, are trying to spin and twist this story. News flash to the New York Times: “Freedom” is not an “anti-government slogan” unless you’re admitting that the government is an enemy of freedom. Second news flash: Cuba's is.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/07/12/the-morning-briefing-cubans-desire-for-freedom-confuses-american-commies-n1460847

Mike Huckabee

Former Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill declared that she was starting a new Fourth of July tradition in her family to watch video of the January 6th Capitol riot and insisted there needs to be an investigation because it was worse than Benghazi.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/former-sen-claire-mccaskill-capitol-hill-riot-worse-than-benghazi/

Since I hold the idiocy to be self-evident, I’ll just make three quick points:

1. Terrorists in Benghazi destroyed our diplomatic outpost in Libya and murdered four brave Americans: security contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, US Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and the US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. I list their names because too many people would like us to forget them. This was also an attack on an American government installation and the murder of US officials.

On January 6th, the only person killed was an unarmed protester shot at point blank range by a Capitol Police officer who has been absolved of any wrongdoing and is yet to identified…maybe.

https://beckernews.com/house-sergeant-at-arms-slips-up-may-have-just-revealed-name-of-ashli-babbitts-shooter-40094/)

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/07/07/naming_the_capitol_cop_who_killed_jan_6_rioter_ashli_babbitt_779601.html

2. The deaths in Benghazi were both tragic and unnecessary: the attack on the anniversary of 9/11 was predictable, pleas for more security before the attack were ignored, and pleas for backup and rescue went unanswered. The day before the Capitol violence, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected an offer of federal officers to provide extra security, insisting it wasn’t needed. This was one way in which it was actually similar to Benghazi: the failure of Democrats to do their jobs.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2021/01/07/dc-mayor-refused-any-federal-law-enforcement-help-prior-to-protests-n2582757

3. I am starting a new July 4th tradition in my family as well. We will all join together and thank God that Claire McCaskill is a “former Senator.”

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

We hear often these days that society shouldn’t have any absolute moral standards. Imposing standards is oppressive, judgmental and outdated. Like Linus and the Great Pumpkin, it doesn’t matter what we choose to believe, as long as we’re really sincere in believing it. Well, pardon me for pointing it out, but that’s…well, stupid (sorry, Linus!)

There are all sorts of absolute standards to which we adhere. A rock band might be filled with nonconformists, but they can’t each play in whatever key they feel like. You might concede Hannibal Lecter’s sincere belief in cannibalism, but you wouldn’t go to his house for dinner. It seems counter-intuitive, but freedom can’t work unless we all agree to abide by certain basic standards of right and wrong. When we step outside those boundaries, chaos ensues, as we’re seeing right now with blue city officials allowing leftwing extremists to ignore laws, seize public property or smash monuments and statues, just because they feel like it. That can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and I’m not still referring to Hannibal Lecter. I like to illustrate the concept with a story from the days when my own kids were young.

When my son John Mark was only 12, he decided one day to bake a cake. My wife Janet and I returned home and were greeted by our son, proudly offering ol’ dad the first taste. Well, it looked good, and I was already preparing some fatherly praise as I took that first bite. But what came out of my mouth wasn’t words. It was the cake. It was so awful, I had to spit it out. My first thought was that my son was trying to kill me for the insurance.

As soon as my tongue overcame its shock, I asked John Mark if he’d used a recipe. He said he had, and he’d followed it to the letter. Well, except that he didn’t know what a “dash” of salt meant, so he decided a cup of salt should be enough.

Now, my son worked hard on that cake…he had the best of intentions…and he sincerely believed he’d done a good job. But hard work, good intentions and sincere beliefs meant nothing once he decided he could make up his own measurement standards. That’s literally a recipe for disaster.

Freedom can’t exist in a moral vacuum. It makes some people uncomfortable to hear this, but without clear boundaries of right and wrong, the very concept of liberty breaks down. A person might argue that he should be free to look at pictures others find offensive. But if it’s pornography featuring a child who’s being exploited, then there’s more at stake than just the liberty of the viewer. There was a big controversy over separating children from parents who crossed the border illegally, but very few people brought up the facts that the parents chose to bring their children along as they knowingly violated federal immigration law – or that (as a pilot DNA test program proved) in many cases, those weren’t even their parents but people illegally exploiting children they weren’t related to.

Self-government can’t mean each of us lives by our own unique set of rules. If that’s how you define liberty, then you’re just going to get less of it. When people live outside the boundaries of a principled and agreed-upon moral code, it inevitably leads to government that’s bigger and more intrusive (and an avalanche of lawsuits), just to force people to do the right thing. And if it doesn’t, then society quickly spirals into anarchy. Neither prospect is acceptable.

If you think more lawyers and bigger government actually improve society, or that doing away with laws and police is a good idea, then I have a delicious cake recipe I’d like to sell you. Then again, no…selling people a recipe for disaster would definitely be morally wrong.

Mike Huckabee

Some new polls bring a tsunami of bad news for Democrats. They show that even with the combined propaganda might of the government, the media and social media, you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of most Americans. You can bully some into not saying what they’re thinking, but you can’t keep them from thinking it. And eventually, they’ll get sick enough of being bullied and yell what they're thinking into your face.

First up, a new Trafalgar Group poll finds that 56.5% of Americans don’t believe that Joe Biden is fully executing the duties of his office. That even includes 31.7% of Democrats. Only 36.4% believe Biden is fully in control. These people are also known as “Americans who’ve never watched a Joe Biden press conference.”

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/07/06/poll-finds-most-americans-believe-others-are-controlling-biden-and-thats-bad-news-for-democrats-n407151

Related: No, despite what Biden told the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers Friday, he did NOT hit a 368-foot home run off the right centerfield wall of RFK Stadium in his second Congressional baseball game in 1974. He actually singled out twice, and it wasn’t even played in RFK Stadium. The White House had no comment, and neither did the media. You can imagine the howls of “Lying liar!!!” if Trump had said that, but with Joe, they just assume he confused himself with Mark McGwire and move on.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/05/biden-gets-busted-over-false-baseball-boast-n406918

On to the other polls: A Washington Post/ABC News poll (so I assume it’s heavily slanted left) still found that 51% of Americans disapprove of how Biden is handling the border, with only 33% thinking he’s doing a decent job.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2021/07/05/another-left-leaning-poll-shows-how-americans-feel-about-bidens-handling-of-the-migrant-crisis-n406922

Democrats may be shocked by a new Pew Research poll that shows how many black Americans identify as conservative, moderate or Christian (80%...hardly a shock to me); how many Republican ideas like charter schools and voter ID that they support; and how strongly opposed they are to crazy leftist ideas like defunding the police.

https://redstate.com/redstate-guest-editorial/2021/07/04/the-mainstream-media-and-both-political-parties-lie-about-black-americas-views-n406426

A poll by Forbes/Tate Partners finds overwhelming disapproval by Americans of the Democrats’ “PRO Act” that would kill contract and gig jobs, eliminate right-to-work laws and force workers to pay union dues.

http://myprivateballot.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/PRO_Act-National-Survey-Summary-6.28.21.pdf

A new poll by Heritage Action finds that 64% of Americans oppose defunding the police (I’m surprised it’s not higher), and only 31% believe the handling of crime is better under Biden. I’m assuming those 31% are criminals.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/07/05/poll-americans-reject-defunding-the-police-n2592043

Finally, and most encouraging for the 4th of July, an Issues & Insights/TIPP poll found that most Americans aren’t ashamed of this nation. In fact, they’re rightly proud to be Americans. 44% say they are “extremely proud,” 23% are “very proud,” 15% are “moderately proud,” 8% are “slightly proud,” and the big voting bloc that the Democrats are aiming for, those who are “not at all proud to be Americans,” comprise 6%.

Despite all the assaults on America as irredeemably racist, 55% of blacks and 57% of Hispanics say they are either “very” or “extremely” proud to be Americans. Only 7% and 9%, respectively, are not proud. They are also known as “CNN commentators.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/05/ii-tipp-poll-just-36-of-young-people-are-proud-to-be-american/

Surprisingly, despite the far-left bent of universities and the media's dissing of “low information” patriotic Americans, 75% of college graduates are proud to be Americans compared to 62% of those with only a high school diploma.

It’s worrying that the only group where a majority are not very or extremely proud to be Americans (36% total) are young people aged 18 to 24. I assume this reflects the corrosive miseducation they’ve received from leftist schools, media and social media. Here’s video proof of how woefully ignorant they are about America's history and how incredibly blessed they are to be here:

https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=15168

That problem urgently needs to be corrected by reforming schools and reining in social media. Let’s hope that the current badly-educated generation will come to their senses once they’re far enough away from the campuses and get enough experience with real life to have some sense knocked into them.

Mike Huckabee

The nation’s largest teachers’ union, the misleadingly named National Education Association (“Education” should more accurately be replaced with “Indoctrination”) came out against parents who are trying to get racist Critical Race Theory out of schools.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/largest-teachers-union-critical-race-theory-reasonable-and-appropriate

The NEA voted that it is “reasonable and appropriate” to use CRT in social studies classes (interestingly contradicting other leftists, who claim it’s too “complex” for lower grades and deny it’s being pushed in K-12 schools at all.) They also approved a plan to "publicize" CRT and dedicate a "team of staffers" to assist union members looking to "fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric" (i.e., they want to research the backgrounds of critics of CRT to try to smear and dox them.)

The resolution also calls for the NEA to "join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project to call for a rally this year on Oct. 14 — George Floyd’s birthday — as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression." FYI: Howard Zinn was the self-described anarchist/socialist who wrote “A People’s History of the United States,” the first major anti-American “revisionist” (false and propagandistic) history book which has infected America’s schools for years.

The NEA also voted to back the “1619 Project,” the latest false anti-American account of US history. It’s so bad that even the World Socialist Web Site dismissed it as a load of careless, cherry-picked, racialist garbage that evinces “no familiarity with the massive body of work produced by generations of historians.”

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/459872/

And this is what the largest teachers’ union in America endorses pouring into your kids’ noggins. That’s why many people say that sending your kids to a public school these days is a form of child abuse.

On the plus side, since this is the same union that’s fighting tooth and toenail to keep from reopening schools, maybe they’ll still be refusing to indoctrinate kids even by October. By then, you will have been able to find a good school for your kids, or be home-schooling them, or have replaced your school board or pressured local leaders to replace this racist, Marxist brainwashing with actual education.

Mike Huckabee

We all knew a kid in school who just had to run everything. Remember the classmate who insisted on picking the games you’d all play at recess, where you’d go after school, even who was “in” or “out” of your group? In high school, that kid had a compulsive need to be the leader of every student organization. You just wanted to say, “Hey! You’re not the boss of me!” Whatever happened to those kids? I wouldn’t be surprised if most ended up in government. We certainly have no shortage of people there who think they know how to live your life and spend your paycheck better than you do.

I’m convinced the world is divided into people who just want to live their own lives and those who, for some reason, have an uncontrollable urge to tell everyone else how to live. Unfortunately, to that latter group, government seems like the ideal place to work, and at the moment, they are getting 99.9% of all the attention from the media. As more of them gravitated toward government, Congress abdicated much of its legislating authority to unelected bureaucrats. Their bureaus grew like kudzu, and so did their regulations with the force of law (but no input from the people.) Then one day, we looked up and discovered we had a crushing national debt and were paying huge salaries to an army of people who enforce how big your soda should be and who couldn’t be fired and who is allowed to come into your daughter’s locker room. That’s when sane people realized that government is the LAST place these out-of-control control freaks needed to be.

The temptation for government to overreach is hardly new. In fact, it stretches back to the beginning of recorded history, and I bet even earlier than that. There’s a story in the ninth chapter of the book of Judges in the Old Testament about Gideon’s son Abimelech, who craved leadership and stature - not to serve the people but to control them and make them serve him. He said, “Give me dominion over your lives, and I will simplify your existence.” Wow, does that sound familiar? It’s basically the entire 2020 Democratic platform. Our government has taken us pretty far down that same road, but does your life seem any simpler -- or just a lot less free?

Anyway, back to Abimelech. He had a very smart younger brother, Jotham, who came up with a clever tale about three trees: an olive tree, a fig tree, and a vine tree. All three were fine trees that produced lots of fruit. All were offered the exalted position of “King Of All Trees,” but all three turned it down. The plant that wanted to be “King Of All Trees” was the bramble bush, a weak plant that produces no fruit at all. Jotham’s point was that only the weak and nonproductive have the desire to rule everyone else. Does that lesson not resonate like a gong right now?

When anyone aspires to a position of power, take a long, hard look. If that person seemingly crawled out of the cradle with an ambition to be President, then beware! Anytime someone talks about “running the country,” alarm bells should sound. No one – not the President, not Congress, no one person – “runs the country” or should aspire to. That’s why the Founders took such pains to divide and limit federal power, and why we need to reinstate those limits that have been blurred in recent years, whether by Presidents ruling via executive order or out-of-control judges legislating from the bench or unelected bureaucrats abusing their power to try to influence the results of elections. If we allow any one person or entity to ignore those limits and assume the power to run everything, we won’t be able to stop them when they run America into the ground.

We should pick leaders who resemble the trees in the Bible story that don’t need or crave power but that have shown they bear good fruit. As it is said, by their fruits ye shall know them. Government has more than enough nuts already.

Mike Huckabee

When a lie gets repeated so often that everyone thinks it’s true, it’s called “conventional wisdom” – maybe because it happens so often at political conventions. These days, the conventional wisdom is that Americans are clamoring for cradle-to-grave Socialism. Don’t buy it.

Throughout the Bush-Obama era, the media kept repeating “failed conservative policies” until even a lot of so-called conservatives believed it. Well, what a difference a few years make. We tried leftist policies. They resulted in a sluggish economy, depressed job growth, rising income inequality, reduced wealth and opportunities for minorities, rising class and racial divisions, and abroad, a decline in US prestige and leadership and the advancement and emboldening of our enemies, including a terrorist “JV team” metastasizing into a worldwide threat.

Polls began to show that most Americans wanted the government to do less and spend less. In France, where an actual Socialist was elected President, his huge tax hikes crashed the economy and made socialism as popular with the French as cheese in a can. The media were shocked when voters turned right in the next election. They should’ve known that nothing turns people off of socialism like actually experiencing it. Ask a Cuban or Venezuelan. The elites responded by doubling down on the arrogance, condescension and name-calling of those who dared to challenge their divine right to rule. The people were forced to make their point even more clearly by shutting down large sections of the country with Tea Party protests, and demanding their culture and secure national borders back, and finally by shocking the elites with the election of Donald Trump.

Trump reversed virtually every Obama policy. Result: ISIS was crushed, peace started breaking out in the Middle East, illegal immigration plummeted, the economy boomed, and unemployment for all groups fell to record lows while real wages rose for the first time in decades. It took the artificial shutdown of that economy due to COVID-19 to crush it. Now, as it’s starting to rush back, we have Biden crushing it and bringing back Middle East violence and illegal immigration, plus skyrocketing crime and inflation, simply by reversing all of Trump’s policies.

If you ever wanted a laboratory demonstration of whose policies work and whose don’t, you could just look at the past three Administrations prior to President Trump. It’s like watching someone turn off the lights, turn them back on, then turn them off again.

It is a shame that voters have to keep relearning the hard way that top-down, big government solutions and leftist utopian fantasies don’t work in reality. Young people can almost be excused for believing in socialism for the same reason they believe in the Tooth Fairy: they are empty vessels who get filled with whatever adults pour into them. As many parents have recently realized, we’ve been dangerously remiss in allowing leftists to take over our schools and fill those precious vessels with mental pollution.

But Republicans who promised small government and fiscal responsibility have let us down, too. Too many let deficits skyrocket, stuffed budgets with pork, and became cheerleaders for big government and disdainful toward the very Americans who put them in office. These so-called “conservatives” slammed me in 2007 for not being a “real conservative” because I pointed out problems in the economy that were hurting working people and criticized the lack of oversight of Wall Street’s excesses. Two years later, they wanted to spend $700 billion of our grandkids’ money to save Wall Street from its excesses. They abandoned government’s rightful role as a tough-but-impartial referee and wanted to use its power to pick winners and losers in the market. Is that “real conservatism?”

The truth is that voters didn’t turn their backs on conservatism, Republican politicians did. Democrats didn’t sweep to power in 2008 by claiming to be government-bloating tax-and-spenders, but by swearing they’d changed and were now fiscally responsible. Of course, once they gave Obama, Pelosi and Reid unlimited power, voters quickly realized their terrible mistake and gave the House back to the GOP in the next election. But too many Republicans had already squandered their credibility, so when Democrats ballooned the deficit, they could deflect criticism by simply pointing at their opponents’ own record.

In 2020, the endless media assaults on Trump and the false messaging that Biden was a moderate centrist hoodwinked the voters yet again into putting the Democrats back into power. From his first day in power, he surrounded himself with people who can’t wait to bloat government, reversed all of Trump’s successful policies, and started pushing to raise taxes, spend money like water, regulate everything that moves, and turn the whole country into a coast-to-coast version of one of the failing cities Democrats have run for decades. Only a few months in, buyers’ remorse has hit Americans harder than COVID-19.

Another example: New Yorkers lived through the nightmare of the Dinkins years, elected Republican Rudy Giuliani, who miraculously saved the city (ignoring Democrats who routinely called him a Nazi and a fascist) and then Bloomberg, who continued Rudy’s policies and kept it going. Then for some unfathomable reason, New Yorkers decided they were tired of a well-run, successful city, or had become so complacent that they thought NYC could run itself, so they elected Dinkins’ protégé, Bill DeBlasio. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Look at NYC now, and look at how many voters are desperate to get rid of DeBlasio.

From Jefferson’s belief that government closest to the people governs best to Reagan’s faith in free markets, from low taxes to letting markets instead of government make business decisions, conservative ideas work whenever they’re tried. Unfortunately, party leaders and the media are wildly out of touch with most Americans, and they are the ones with Hollywood, the media and social media acting as a 24-hour PR apparatus for bad leftist policies. This amplifies the liberal side and suppresses the conservative side so much that not only is the tail wagging the dog, but it’s like a Chihuahua’s tail wagging a St. Bernard. Too often, they succeed in hookwinking the voters into giving them more power, despite decades of failure.

But as that great Republican Abraham Lincoln observed, you can fool some of the people all of the time (they’re called “progressives”) and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Let’s pray that 2022 will be one of those “won’t get fooled again” elections.

Mike Huckabee

I’ve been astounded recently by the way the left has been so successful at using the phrase “hate speech” and the fear of school shootings to convince young people to demand that their own First and Second Amendment rights be taken away.

Somehow, they have managed to bamboozle a large slice of the young generation into simultaneously believing that they are wise and mature enough to start voting and even writing laws at 16; yet they are so childish and irresponsible, they can’t be trusted to touch a firearm until they’re 21, or to hear an opposing opinion without rushing to a safe space to cuddle a puppy and schmoosh Play-Doh.

When young people don’t know their rights, where those rights came from, and how much was sacrificed to secure them, it’s easy to convince them to trade them away for empty promises of comfort and security. This is the basis of all those quotes warning not to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage, a bit of advice so ancient and universal that it dates back to Esau in Genesis 25: 29-34. But leftists are still counting on young people not knowing it (no wonder they want to ban the Bible from schools.)

These days, students are taught an ugly, twisted and totally negative perversion of American history. They’re taught to hate their own magnificent heritage, and they don’t learn the most basic facts (or even what the word “pottage” means), let alone all the great stories you discover when you dig into real American history. This seems like the perfect week for a lesson in how America came to be born. And I’ll try to put it into terms they can relate to.

Maybe – possibly – today’s students vaguely recognize the name Paul Revere (although they might believe he was a slave trader. I certainly doubt they had to memorize the poem, the way we did.) But how many know there was another heroic midnight rider who warned that the British were coming, only this one was a teenage girl from Duchess County, New York?

She’s just one of many American heroes that kids don’t learn about because modern textbooks scrub history of everything interesting or inspiring in favor of leftist social and political agendas that downgrade America. They depict it as a land of nothing but racism and oppression, not as a land where people of goodwill have struggled and sacrificed for generations, constantly working to improve things by establishing justice, securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity and creating a “more perfect union” (in the original foundational document, the writers made it clear that nothing’s perfect, but we would strive always to keep working together toward perfection.)

Kids, American history is not a list of personal grievances against people who’ve been dead for 200 years. It’s everything that ever happened to everyone before you came on the scene. Seek it out. Trust me: it can be pretty interesting, and you can actually learn things from it.

For instance: listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of…Sybil Ludington? As the oldest of 11 children, Sybil had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age. She was barely 16 on the night of April 26, 1777. She had just tucked all her siblings into bed when, suddenly, there came an urgent knock at the door. It was a messenger, coming to warn her father, Col. Henry Ludington, that British troops were invading.

His troops weren’t expecting an attack and were scattered all over the countryside. Gathering them meant a dangerous ride over pitch-black roads, through enemy soldiers, wild animals, and hostile Indians (sorry: “Indigenous Peoples.”) Understandably, the messenger refused an order to go. But Sybil volunteered. Her father protested, but she pointed out that only she knew where all his men lived. As any father of a strong-willed daughter (especially one named Sybil!) will recognize, he’d long since learned that arguing with her was futile. So Sybil mounted up and rode off.

It was a rainy night. The British had already set nearby Danbury, Connecticut, on fire, and the flames cast an eerie, red glow on the fog. It spurred Sybil on as she galloped from house to house, banging on doors and shouting that the British were coming. According to legend, at one point, a highway robber tried to intercept Sybil, but she raised her father’s musket and sent him running. Yet another reason why teenagers should think twice before demanding that the Second Amendment be taken away from them.

By dawn, Sybil and her horse were cold, wet and exhausted. She’d roused over 400 troops, who joined the Battle of Ridgefield and helped drive the British all the way back to Long Island Sound. Gen. Washington personally honored Sybil for her heroism.

Today, there are historic markers all along her route, and statues of her in New York and Washington (if they haven’t been torn down by historical illiterates.) But I’ll bet most young people never even heard of Sybil Ludington, a teenager much like them, except she knew what really happened during the American Revolution. Maybe it’s because nobody wrote a famous poem about her midnight ride -- even though her ride was over twice as long as Paul Revere’s. Let’s hope someone turns her story into a hip-hop musical.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

Mike Huckabee

Happy Independence Day and happy 245th birthday to the United States of America! No, this nation was not born in 1619 when slaves first arrived, no matter how many trinkets liberal “journalists” award themselves for creating bogus history. It was born on July 4th, 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which officially kicked out the previous regime and kicked off history’s greatest experiment in freedom.

Today is when all Americans celebrate our freedoms. But sadly, too many young Americans have been miseducated to feel no gratitude for the titanic struggles and sacrifices made by those of previous generations to secure and preserve those freedoms. As the recent pandemic proved, even those who recognize how lucky they are to be Americans are often too willing to trade away their freedoms in exchange for hollow promises of security. As the great philosopher Joni Mitchell once said, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”

That’s why the Founding Fathers took such care to lock our most important rights safely within the First Amendment to the Constitution. There are more freedoms guaranteed in that one short sentence than people in most nations can even dream of. That’s why for centuries now, people from around the world have risked their lives to come to America (by the way, why do the same people who think America is the worst nation on Earth also demand open borders to accommodate all the people who want to be Americans?) It’s also why legal immigrants are often more patriotic than natural-born Americans: they’re aware of how unique America is and truly grateful the freedoms too many of us take for granted.

The Founders understood how precious and rare such freedoms are. When the framers of the Constitution first met in 1787, many feared that if they created a strong federal government, it would trample the rights of the people, just like the British king they’d fought to break free of. So to make sure the people’s rights would always be protected, they added 10 amendments - although George Mason thought they were so important, they should come first, as the Preface to the Constitution!

Now, in case you’ve never heard it or have just forgotten (as too many federal judges and a few Supreme Court Justices I could name apparently have), here is the First Amendment, in its entirety. Don’t worry, this really won’t take long:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yep, that’s it. This was before government needed a 2,000-page bill just to ruin your health insurance or put $2 trillion on your credit card. Only 45 simple words were needed to protect our rights…

* To speak freely without fear of government retribution...

* To publish those words so that other Americans can read and debate them (even if they disagree with the views of the people who own Facebook and Twitter)…

* To band together with like-thinking Americans and protest peacefully without fear of arrest (Note: protesting peacefully does not include rioting, arson and looting, but it should include simply stepping inside the Capitol when the door is open)…

* To petition our leaders to change their policies…

* And to be free from having an official state religion forced upon us, but also from government interference with the free expression of our personal religious beliefs (like telling us that going to church is nonessential and banned, but going to the liquor store is essential.) A lot of people celebrate the first half of that religious right (no state religion) but pretend the second half (no state interference in religion) doesn’t exist. The Supreme Court even seems to be reticent lately to make clear that it means what it says, even though it takes only six words to say it: “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Also, note that the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. In other words, trying to ban religious people from public office and expressions of faith on public property is not supported by the Constitution.

These are the rights that together create the free American culture that those of who know real history celebrate today. The Founders thought they were all so important that somehow, they found a way to list every single one of them first.

Then, just to be certain that no future government ever tried to take those rights away, they made the very next amendment the right to bear arms. And having just fought a bloody Revolution against the most powerful military force on Earth, they certainly never intended to limit gun ownership only to military members.

And perhaps most importantly, they emphasized that these rights are given by God, not government. So no matter how hard some people are trying to scratch some of them off of the parchment, it won’t make a lick of difference. You can’t edit God.

Mike Huckabee

This is a premium article from the Epoch Times, but even if you’re not a paid subscriber, you should know the basics of what it says.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/from-dove-to-hawk-nebraska-governor-explains-lessons-from-dealing-with-ccp_3879190.html

It details how Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts went from being a big proponent of international trade to working to reduce China’s influence on his state and America. His evolution started with a trade mission to China, where he was welcomed with open arms and puff pieces in the media. But he soon realized deception was baked into the alleged reforms he was told about. He said the CCP talks right, but goes left. He and his staff were also followed and monitored, and one had his hard drive stolen from his computer.

But what really opened his eyes was when China tried to retaliate against Trump’s tough trade policies by targeting Midwest farmers, which backfired when they stood by Trump. Also at that time, Ricketts began to learn of their horrific human rights abuses.

Now, Ricketts is not only trying to separate Nebraska from China’s influence (he’s even banned Chinese-owned TikTok from state government devices), he’s also warning other leaders to be wary of dealing with China’s communist government. He says they have a long-range plan of dominance while too many American politicians and corporations only care about short-term gains. He’s trying to warn Wall Street that anything American companies put into China will no longer belong to them, including trade secrets. He said, “So many publicly traded companies are driven quarter-to-quarter by earnings. And so that tends to make them more short-term oriented, rather than seeing the bigger, long-term picture.”

Sound like any company you can think of, or does that reference go “Swoosh” over your head?

https://www.foxnews.com/media/sen-cotton-nikes-message-towards-genocide-in-china-is-just-do-it

Mike Huckabee

Mark this day on your calendar: the media have finally started to realize that Democrats sometimes lie! The Washington Post fact-checker gave President Biden 4 Pinocchios for the string of blatant whoppers he came out with in promoting his latest gun control proposals.

https://www.westernjournal.com/washington-post-slaps-biden-4-pinocchios-lie-second-amendment/

Biden declared, “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

WaPo said the cannon claim had been debunked during the campaign and they have no idea why he’s still repeating it (maybe he just forgot, the way he keeps repeating the "very fine people" hoax about Trump.) There’s no evidence that the Founders ever banned Americans from owning cannons. In fact, the Constitution gives Congress the power to allow private citizens to act as pirates on behalf of the US against nations at war with it, and if they’re pirates, surely they can own cannons. Parrots, too.

Other experts told the Post that absolutely everything in Biden’s statement is incorrect: there were no federal or state limits on the kinds of guns that citizens could own. And certainly, the Second Amendment doesn’t limit gun rights; it protects them.

I guess they didn’t bother checking his claims that guns are to blame for skyrocketing crime in Democrat cities that have defunded the police, or that more gun control will solve that problem, or it would have been six Pinocchios.

Mike Huckabee

So far this year alone, there are over 42,000 cases of serious crimes in New York City, including murder, rape, robbery, burglary, felony assault, grand larceny and grand larceny auto. Many of these remain unsolved, as do many of the thousands of backlogged cases from before 2021.

And yet, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has squandered years of effort and public resources endlessly investigating former President Trump and his companies, without any evidence that he committed any crimes, other than beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 and not being a liberal Democrat. They even went all the way to the Supreme Court to get authorization to seize his tax records. And now, it appears that Vance’s Javert-like pursuit of his political nemesis is about to come to a stunning anti-climax.

Vance recently indicated that he was considering criminal charges against the Trump Organization, which got a LOT of headlines. So last week, Trump attorney Ronald Fischetti held a meeting with Vance’s team to find out what these alleged charges are. Do they involve the much-ballyhooed accusations made by Stormy Daniels or former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen?

No. Fischetti claims Vance’s team told him that the first indictments would not be against Trump, and they have no immediate plans to charge him. Instead, they plan to charge a small number of Trump company executives with failing to pay taxes on some perks and benefits, such as company cars. It’s such common small potatoes that tax attorneys told the New York Times that they couldn’t think of any company ever being charged over it.

Fischetti told Politico, “We asked, ‘Is there anything else?’ They said, ‘No.’ It’s crazy that that’s all they had…It’s like the Shakespeare play ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ This is so small that I can’t believe I’m going to have to try a case like this.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/28/trump-lawyer-manhattan-da-wont-charge-496768

It doesn’t surprise me that they got nothin’. They can abuse their office by harassing a citizen, but at the end of the day, they still have to come up with actual evidence of a crime (and by the way, you're supposed to have a solid reason to suspect a specific crime first; in America, investigations aren't supposed to be fishing trips.)

Vance’s team told Fischetti, “Our investigation is ongoing.” Which I’m sure it is: having wasted this much of the taxpayers’ money on a wild Trump hunt, they’re not giving up easily. Besides, they have to keep up the hopes of Trump haters and fans of politicized lawfare that if they hunt long enough, they’ll find something – anything! – to pin on Trump.

If those folks read my newsletter instead of the New York Times, they would have been better prepared for this. I’ve been saying for years that Trump must have massive tax returns filed by platoons of CPAs and tax attorneys and signed by a robo-pen. They have this fantasy of him staying up late on April 15th, sweating over his 1040 form and trying to hide criminal activity in it. The fact that the IRS examined those forms every year and never brought charges didn’t dissuade them from this delusion that his tax forms contain a smoking gun. Obviously, they know as little about how billionaires file their taxes as they do about the economy, policing, responsible public service, or just about anything you’d expect mature adults to grasp.

Mike Huckabee

Saturday in Wellington, Ohio, former President Trump drew a massive crowd for his return to live rallies, this time under the banner of “Save America.” He was in classic form. Sharyl Attkisson has a good roundup of quotes, photos, clips and stats about the size of the crowd and the online viewing audience (more than 2.2 million.)

https://sharylattkisson.com/2021/06/watch-hes-baaaack-more-than-2-2-million-watch-trump-rally-in-wellington-ohio-online/

Despite the mainstream media’s efforts to silence and censor Trump and his supporters, it appears that enthusiasm for his message has not diminished. And while some outlets refused to cover it, if you want to see the entire speech, it’s available on the YouTube alternative, Rumble. Move ahead to around the 46:00 mark for his arrival.

https://rumble.com/vj2p7j-live-president-donald-j-trump-in-wellington-oh.html