Mike Huckabee

The slogan “Black lives matter” is indeed true. Of course black lives matter. Our nation is founded on the premise that “all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” No one, regardless of color, ethnicity, or origin, should be denied those God-given rights. So you bet-black lives matter. But recently, the slogan has morphed into a meme that black lives have to matter MORE. The left goes berserk if someone then adds, “All lives matter.” But isn’t that the point? If historically black lives didn’t matter as much, affirming that black lives matter equally should indeed be the uncompromised quest and rightful demand. But if someone gets angry that recognizing that black lives matter because there is equality of lives, then the assumption becomes that black lives matter MORE and thus perpetuate inequality. Such an absurd view is illogical and irrational. It becomes more than a slight to those who are white, who are no more guilty of their whiteness than someone is of his or her blackness. It’s equally an insult to Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, and Mid-Easterners who aren’t black, but who are equally human and equally endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Why would that be offensive to those who chant “Black lives matter?”

It may be because black lives matter is more than a slogan. It’s the name of a radical left-wing Marxist organization that openly advocates for the dismantling of America’s economic system and the family structure involving a man, a woman, and children related by blood or adoption to that man and woman. Here’s some of the actual language direct from the website of the organization Black Lives Matter:

“We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer?affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”

There is more, and some of their goals are shocking. So why do major American corporations like Nike, Apple, GM, Coca-Cola, LL Bean, and others give millions of dollars to the organization whose stated goals are the deconstruction of the traditional family and the free-market economy that has empowered people of all colors to succeed and prosper? Great question! It appears because they are afraid to say no to the bullies who run this and other radical leftist groups and because too many of us who believe in true equality for ALL people whether black, white, red, yellow, brown, are also afraid to stand up and speak out. It’s time we do speak out. I do not believe that a majority of Americans, whatever their color, support rioting, looting, disregard for authority to the point of physically assaulting police officers and demanding that we defund the police. But if we don’t become as vocal in opposition to mob rule as the mobs are so as to cause the biggest corporations in our country and politicians of both parties to cower in the corner and surrender to the mobs, we will get what we deserve, but we will not like it. The elections this year will not be about political parties nor will it be a popularity contest to elect the most pleasant personality. Whether you identify as Democrat or Republican, you better identify as one who believes in the rule of law, civil order, and genuine equality for people that doesn’t favor some over others for ANY reason.

So, yes—black lives matter. And they don’t matter less than any other. But neither do they matter more. To say they do is bigotry and yes, it’s racism as surely as is the sinful notion of white supremacy. No race is supreme. God alone is Supreme. And we must live as servants to Him and to each other as we “do unto others what we would have others do unto us.”

The so-called “Lincoln Project” (I put it in quotes to stress that the name is an insult to Abraham Lincoln) claims to be a group of “principled conservatives” who oppose President Trump because he just doesn’t live up to their high standards of principled conservatism.

Funny, I’ve always thought of myself as a principled conservative, but I had no idea that “conservative principles” included taking a lot of donor money and putting in my own pocket, or signing up as an official representative of Russia, or working to defeat even moderate Republicans so that the Senate and White House can flip to the Democrats and usher in a new era of far-left policies, sky-high taxes and unbridled deficit spending that will destroy America as we know it.

I decided to look at some lists of conservative principles, and I admit, I could not find any of those things on any of them. But in an era when money-grubbing liberal frauds like the Lincoln Project pose as conservatives and are actually treated as such by the media because they’re useful in promoting the left’s agenda, I think it’s important to remind people what conservative principles actually are. They do not include “white supremacy,” nor do they include turning all power over to dangerous socialists. Who better to teach us what real conservatives stand for than the late Sen. Barry Goldwater?

And as long as we’re quoting the great leaders of conservatism, here’s a comment from Ronald Reagan that couldn’t be more timely or more sobering:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."

Mike Huckabee

UPDATE: I told you yesterday about ViacomCBS severing ties with Nick Cannon over his podcast that spread vile conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and anti-white racist rhetoric. I said that we finally knew how far a leftist had to go to get “canceled” from holding a high profile job. Well, I take it back: Fox decided that Cannon will continue in his most high profile gig, as host of “The Masked Singer.” After all, he’s apologized and is “remorseful.” Well, that settles it, then. Oh, and by the way, Cannon is demanding an apology from ViacomCBS. Don’t be surprised if he gets one.

Meanwhile, black actor Terry Crews is still facing Twitter mob demands that he be fired from the TV show “Brooklyn-Nine Nine” for criticizing Black Lives Matter, saying we shouldn’t demonize anyone because of their race, and that the solution to white supremacy isn’t black supremacy because “we’re all in this together.”

Well, you can see why they’d want him fired while pouring support out for Nick Cannon. Saying we shouldn't hate each other because of race and we should all work together is genuinely offensive to today’s leftists. It undermines all their hard work.

Mike Huckabee

A few days ago, I told you about the new book FALLOUT from investigative reporters John Solomon and Seamus Bruner, and late yesterday, John Solomon had an update about the John Durham probe.

He said that Durham has been conducting “a lot” of interviews and going through a lot of documents; apparently, his investigation has been fairly unhampered by the virus. He said there have been discussions about plea bargains and cooperation from certain individuals, though, of course, he couldn’t name names.

He reported on Thursday’s HANNITY TV show that “multiple sources” with direct knowledge of the U.S. attorney’s investigation had informed him that Durham is looking specifically at the Defense Department’s Office Of Net Assessments, which had kept “confidential human source” Stefan Halper under contract to “write reports.” Durham wants to know if the Defense Department was actually funding Halper’s undercover (SPYING) activities “prior to the FBI having a predicate to do so.” (Never mind that the so-called “predicate” used later by the FBI was phony.)

Recall that the Office Of Net Assessments, like all offices at the Defense Department and within the intel community, would have been subject to audits and likely sweeping budget cuts if former national security adviser Michael Flynn had kept his job. That one fact probably explains a lot about what happened to him. Perhaps justice will be done.

"Listen, all signs are pointing to the building of a criminal indictment,” Solomon said. “Maybe it’ll come up around, just before or after Labor Day.”

But, incredibly, former special counsel Robert Mueller is still defending the “Trump/Russia” investigation, even though doing so involves contradicting his own report. Right after President Trump commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence last week, Mueller wrote an op-ed for the WASHINGTON POST that, as reported by RealClear Investigations, didn’t just attack Stone but also disputed “broad claims that our investigation was illegitimate and our motives improper.”

And why would critics (like me) be making such claims? Well, maybe it’s because after years of examining their bogus “investigation” and finally obtaining documents and testimony that had been withheld even from defense attorneys, we could see that their investigation was illegitimate and their motives were improper.

Mueller’s op-ed contradicts the official findings concerning George Papadopoulos, whose barroom conversation with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer was NOT evidence that “the Russians had signaled” anything to him and also was NOT even mentioned by Papadopoulos to anyone in Trump’s campaign. The record, in the form of a recently-declassified electronic communication (EC) that officially opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” shows it was nothing but hearsay, with no evidence it had come from the Russian government or even from a Russian national.

It seems Downer didn’t know at the time he passed along this hearsay to the FBI that it had come to Papadopoulos by way of Josef Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese academic. Although former FBI Director James Comey has claimed without evidence in a WASHINGTON POST op-ed of his own that Mifsud was a Russian agent, the U.S. government has never tied him in that way to Russia, and the Mueller report takes care not to label him as such. Likewise, when Andrew McCabe was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 –- this testimony has only recently been declassified –- he said the tip given to Papadopoulos by Mifsud about Hillary’s emails was not considered evidence of a Russia connection.

But Mueller is still pushing this debunked narrative. “By late 2016,” he writes in WAPO, “the FBI had evidence that the Russians had signaled a Trump campaign adviser that they could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to the Democratic candidate.” No, Mr. Mueller, they did not.

At his unimpressive congressional hearing a year ago, Mueller declined to comment on Mifsud’s identity or explain why the FBI hadn’t arrested him after his interview and charged him with perjury. After all, the Mueller report claims that he made false statements. Why didn’t they treat him the same shameful way they did Roger Stone?

Speaking of Roger Stone, Mueller goes on to vilify him in ways that don’t match the conclusions of his investigation. In the op-ed, Mueller writes that he “lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks” and also about “the existence of written communications with his intermediary.”

But as RealClear Investigations reports, “that claim from Mueller is at odds with his investigation’s failure to establish that Stone HAD [emphasis mine] an intermediary to WikiLeaks.” Stone had claimed this, but it turned out that the two individuals ever singled out by name, Randy Credico and Jerome Corsi, didn’t actually make contact with WikiLeaks. (Credico did interview Julian Assange on his radio show in August of 2016, but this had nothing to do with being a go-between with Stone.)

There's only one known contact between WikiLeaks and Stone from before the 2016 election, and it was WikiLeaks tweeting to Stone to stop making “false claims of association.”

Stone claimed to have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of email material, but Mueller has never asserted that he actually did. According to RealClear Investigations, Stone did have “minimal and inconsequential” contact with Guccifer 2.0, but it was actually exculpatory for Stone, as none of the three short Twitter messages even mentioned the stolen DNC emails.

Former senior attorney for the special counsel Andrew Weissmann went even further in his own op-ed, this one in THE NEW YORK TIMES three days later. Weissmann, now a legal analyst for MSNBC (of course), wants to continue the investigation and see Roger Stone go before a grand jury. He still suspects that Stone hid incriminating evidence to try to help Trump, and by gum, he’s going to get to the bottom of this and find out what it is!

I think that even now, many people are unclear about just what Roger Stone was convicted of lying about. Did you know he wasn’t even accused of lying about any actual coordination regarding those emails? That’s because there WAS no coordination. Stone was accused and convicted of making false statements about his FAILED efforts to obtain information about WikiLeaks during the campaign. That’s all. He never was able to actually do it. And by the time they charged him with lying, he had already corrected the record, just not under oath. (They didn’t swear him in and give him the chance to do that, because then they wouldn’t have been able to indict him for lying. That alone is enough reason for Trump to commute his prison sentence.) Even the NYT itself reported that Stone “had no real ties to WikiLeaks.”

The contrast between Weissmann’s op-ed and the known facts of the Stone case, as laid out by RealClear Investigations, makes for some entertaining, if perplexing, reading. Weissmann’s inability to stop chasing windmills when it comes to Trump reminds me a lot of someone else who has been in the news lately. Emmet Sullivan.

Mike Huckabee

South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham appeared on Wednesday’s HANNITY TV show to talk about the Senate Judiciary Committee’s efforts to declassify an approximately 40-page FBI memo critical of the Steele “dossier,” and also to question the lead intel analyst and a case agent who interviewed Steele’s Russian “sub-source” –- actually Steele’s employee –- twice, first in January and later in March of 2017. (The warrant to spy on Carter Page was renewed in April and June of 2017, after the problems with the “dossier” were known. This is documented, and it is a crime.)

Sen. Graham didn’t mention names, and in the IG report the lead analyst is identified only as Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, never by name, but I think Graham must have been talking about this guy.

Yes, I know; the headline alone is a laff riot, if you want to laugh until you cry. Profiled here by Paul Sperry at RealClear Investigations, our “person of interest” is senior FBI analyst Brian J. Auten. He was central to the vetting process for the “dossier” that was used in the FISA application and three renewals to spy on Carter Page, but it’s also true that since 2010, he has taught a class on...wait for it...the ethics of spying at Patrick Henry College. (Motto: “Give me irony, or give me death!” Kidding.)

As Sperry reports, Auten “seems to have violated his own stated “golden rule” for spying, which involves using ‘the least intrusive standard” for surveilling U.S. citizens to avoid harming “a subject’s reputation, dignity and privacy.” Yes, we’ve seen how that standard was respected in the case of Carter Page, who was actually accused of being a Russian agent in order for the FBI to get inside Trump’s 2016 campaign. Page was put through the wringer over that horrific charge, telling RealClear Investigations that based on leaks to the media, people believed he was a “traitor” who conspired with the Kremlin to help Trump. He received death threats. Imagine if that happened to you.

Sperry goes into detail describing Auten’s involvement in downplaying the problems with the “dossier.” It’s a lengthy article, but I encourage you to read it (you won't be tested), just to see how one person in the right place within a bureaucracy can guide a chain of events. It's also quite interesting to see how a so-called “ethicist” can so skillfully rationalize his own lack of ethics.

Sperry reports that Auten’s name is indeed on a list of witnesses Sen. Graham intends to call now that he has received subpoena power for the Judiciary Committee, and also that Graham says they’ll be focusing on the investigators.

Incidentally, last December, FBI Director Christopher Wray wrote Inspector General Michael Horowitz to tell him he’d put every employee involved in the 2016-2017 FISA application process through “additional training in ethics” with “an emphasis on privacy and civil liberties.”

Don't know about you, but I feel so much better now. Hey, wouldn’t it be hilarious if we found out Brian J. Auten taught the class? No, really, I wonder if he did.

Mike Huckabee

With all the political and racial unrest going on in the country right now, there’s a very different --- and extremely welcome (to me) --- kind of unrest going on at the same time. It’s happening in the media, as “cancel culture” starts to eat its own.

Yesterday, we brought you the story of Bari Weiss, a self-described “centrist” journalist who very publicly left her job as a writer and editor at THE NEW YORK TIMES after finding out what it was like there to try to express an individual, intellectually curious, non-sanctioned thought or even to report a story that didn't advance a leftist, anti-Trump agenda. In case you didn’t see her open resignation letter, here it is at her website. There is still smoke coming off of it.

Weiss justifiably slams media people, particularly at the NYT, for their sense of self-importance. “A new consensus has emerged in the press,” she writes, but perhaps especially at this paper that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

Seems to me that it should have been enough that Weiss was upset at Donald Trump’s victory and even cried at her desk when he won. But, no, that wasn’t nearly enough. In fact, they were all too busy sobbing at their own desks to notice her dismay. She soon found out that in the new Era of Trump, all so-called “journalists” were required from that day forward to have a single-minded focus on destroying...HIM.

(By the way, I thought it was interesting that Weiss’s colleagues called her a “Nazi” while also complaining that she was "writing about Jews again.” Just wondering: if they’re complaining about her writing about Jews, just who are the Nazis here? Do these so-called professional journalists even know what a Nazi is? But I digress.)

Brian Kilmeade, subbing for Tucker Carlson on his Tuesday evening show, played a clip of Ms. Weiss from “The Joe Rogan Experience,” talking about what happened. She makes a very interesting point about “cancel culture”: “The people who are inoculated from it [the ostracism, firings, etc.] are people that are already extremely successful and can take the risk. It’s why Ricky Gervais can be Ricky Gervais; it’s why J. K. Rowling can tweet what she tweeted a few months ago and survive it, because they’ve already accumulated enough capital. The people that I hear from that are completely screwed by it are people like artists and poets and untenured professors are aren’t famous and no one knows about, and are, you know, having to go with a begging bowl..to get support after they’ve, you know, made a bad joke, or whatever it is.”

Weiss apparently hadn’t reached the point in her career at which she could get away with expressing her own thoughts. Thank goodness actor/comedian Ricky Gervais had attained that level by the time Hollywood “cancel culture” inspired him to ridicule it, which he has done mercilessly. And he hasn’t let up. (My theory: he knows what he says is really what most people think.)

Kilmeade pointed out that another NYT editor, Liz Spayd, sounded very much like Weiss in an interview with Carlson back in December of 2016 (right after Trump was elected). Spayd lost her job (surprise!) shortly after doing that interview. “I consider it almost an unrecognized point of view,” she said, “that The Times has that comes from being in New York, being in that, you know, in a certain circle, and seeing the world a certain way, not being in touch with people who don’t live like them or don’t live in cities and who are the ones who elected Donald Trump to the presidency. They’re just out of touch with that.”

I’ll say it again: they should have just read my 2016 book GOD, GUNS, GRITS, & GRAVY.

Journalists who try to challenge their more radical, “woke” colleagues at The Times to look outside their safe little thought-bubble tend not to last long there. It’s a hostile work environment, to say the least. Weiss believes there are many in the same position she was in; they just do what they know is expected of them and don’t speak up. I would imagine that even some of the editors directing and correcting their underlings are doing it out of fear of “cancel culture,” protecting their own job security.

But now Andrew Sullivan has left his job at THE NEW YORKER. Sullivan is someone who does have quite a big name. He says the underlying reasons for his exit are “pretty self-evident” and that he’ll address them in his last column on Friday. Sullivan also has backed Weiss, saying, “The mob bullied and harrassed a young woman for thoughtcrimes. And her editors stood by and watched.”

Someone else has resigned, not from the media but from another influential post in popular culture: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art senior curator of painting and sculpture Gary Garrels. As reported by Robby Soave at REASON magazine, he was accused of “toxic white supremacist beliefs” in a petition from museum employees for daring to say he would still accept works of art from white men. I am not kidding –- that is ALL he said. I wish Garrels, after 20 years with the museum, had put up more of a fight against such a ludicrous accusation, but at least this puts into focus how a small minority of crazies are trying to run the show. More sane people will become fed up with this type of radical orthodoxy, and more WILL fight back.

Finally, today's look at what’s happening with media wouldn’t be complete without examining how it’s blurring the lines between news and outright campaign advocacy. CourierNewsroom.com, known as “Courier,” was created and funded by the Democrat-aligned digital organization Acronym. It is absolutely political, but because it’s organized as a media outlet, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors or the total dollars it spends promoting Democrat politicians. (In that way, it’s a lot like Black Lives Matter not having to report its source of funding.)

According to this story in POLITICO, “Experts in media ethics and misinformation worry that the advocacy-cloaked-in-journalism tactic is pouring gasoline on a raging fire of consumer misinformation and online disinformation." Yes, there is that, but I also agree with those who say that this trend will further undermine the public’s trust in news, which has already fallen to about as low as it can go. It gets harder all the time just to find accurate information on a candidate or an issue, even as partisan “fact-checkers” abound. That’s why we’re trying so hard here to sort it all out and be a valued and trusted source.

Mike Huckabee

Republicans warn that voting by mail would be a recipe for massive vote fraud (it would.) But that’s only part of the problem. It would also mean trusting the integrity of our elections to the US Post Office. Nothing against the hard-working men and women of the postal service, but there’s a reason why there so many jokes about things being lost in the mail.

Here’s a round up of the latest vote-by-mail stories. For instance, in Wisconsin, it was an absolute disaster, with ballots never getting to voters, arriving at the wrong destinations or getting back too late to be counted. The primary was April 7th, and they’re still not sure who the valid winners were…

California election officials have rejected over 100,000 mail-in ballots from their recent primary, due to mistakes…

And in West Virginia, a mail carrier pleaded guilty to changing the party affiliation on some mail-in ballots. He claimed he did it as “a joke.”

If all this doesn’t convince Democrats to abandon the idea of voting by mail, maybe this will:

The mail carrier in West Virginia changed the party affiliation on those ballots from Democrat to Republican. Maybe that will actually make Democrats care about stopping vote fraud.

Mike Huckabee

For all the people jumping up and down and screaming about President Trump withdrawing from the World Health Organization, here’s a big, cold bucket of reality about why.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, formerly a specialist in virology and immunology at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, is now in hiding in the US and in fear for her life because she says she knew the minute she told the truth about COVID-19 and China, she would be “disappeared and killed,” so she had to go to the US to speak out.

The truth is that the Chinese government knew early on that the virus was deadly and was transferred human-to-human, and they kept it a secret while the WHO downplayed the danger. They refused to let outside health experts in and warned doctors to keep silent. They could have prevented the spread of the pandemic if they’d done certain things and sounded an alarm, but they didn’t because of “the corruption among this kind of international organization like the W-H-O to China government, and to China Communist Party government.”

Read the full thing. It’s good info to have in your pocket the next time someone blames President Trump for every coronavirus death and claims we need to replace him with Joe “China’s no threat” Biden.

Speaking of Biden and his claim that he would’ve handled the pandemic so much better than Trump, take a look at this chart comparing the caseload for the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus to the H1N1 (swine flu) that struck under Obama-Biden in 2009.

They promised to have 160 million vaccine doses by late October but produced only 30 million, too late to do most Americans any good. While Democrats blame Trump for over 3 million Americans being infected with COVID-19, nearly 61 million were infected with H1N1. As Biden’s then-chief of staff and current campaign health adviser Ron Klain noted, it was only due to luck that swine flu wasn’t more lethal and wasn’t “one of the great mass casualty events in American history.”

So if you’d like to bet your life on sheer dumb luck, vote for Biden! Say, that would make a perfect campaign slogan for him.

Mike Huckabee

If it’s a new week, then there must be some new insane comments from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But I warn you, you might feel your I.Q. dropping just from reading this.

Like her claim that the surge in crime in New York City is due to unemployed people having to “shoplift some bread” to feed their families. That surge includes 44 shootings and eight fatalities over the Fourth of July weekend, and 15 shootings in 15 hours on Saturday alone. Those are some heavily-armed shoplifters!

She’s also complained that Mayor DeBlasio’s call to cut $1.5 billion from the police budget doesn’t go far enough; that it can’t just be budget tricks that move spending around or reduce overtime pay. No, cutting the police budget is not effective if it does not result in the reduced presence of law enforcement...during a major surge in crime…including an epidemic of shootings. Those can only be solved by getting rid of the police entirely. While they’re at it, maybe New York should eliminate fires by getting rid of the Fire Department.

And just to be mischievous, here’s AOC flashing a double “white supremacy” finger sign. Aren't regular people forced out of their jobs for doing this?

Mike Huckabee

Friday, President Trump announced that he is commuting the three-year prison sentence of his former campaign adviser Roger Stone, which was set to begin in a few days. Trump is being vilified by Democrats and the media for making this move, but he probably figured he gets vilified by them for eating breakfast in the morning, so who cares? They’re already rushing to the cameras to declare him the “most corrupt President in history” for pardoning someone caught up in an illegal coup attempt, easily the worst political scandal in US history, which was hatched under the President they admire most, Barack Obama.

Trump’s spokespeople say Stone is 67 and his health would be at risk in prison. Besides, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the decision to commute was "in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial," that the charges were the "product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice," and he could not get a fair trial in ultra-Democratic DC.

The charges against him, such as false statements and obstructing the Mueller investigation, all stem from the probe itself, which we now know was based on political animus, fraudulent “evidence,” illegally-obtained FISA warrants and no underlying crimes. It was also discovered that the forewoman of Stone’s jury hid the fact that she was virulently anti-Trump and had been posting nasty comments online about him and Stone during the trial, but the judge ruled that that somehow didn’t taint the verdict one whit. Stone continues to maintain his innocence and was already appealing his conviction.

I’m sure we’ll hear caterwauling from now until November about how outrageous it is that a 67-year-old Trump adviser isn’t doing hard time in the big house for process crimes, and from the same people who are letting rioters and looters out in 24 hours, giving sanctuary to Mexican drug gangsters and freeing thousands of actual criminals lest they contract a virus in prison. I guess what I’m trying to say is, “Cry me a river.”

Mike Huckabee

Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield at FrontpageMag.com took a deeper look at some of the giant US corporations that are showering Black Lives Matter with millions of dollars, frantically virtue-signaling about America’s shameful legacy of slavery and backing efforts to silence conservative voices on social media. He asks why so many of these uber-woke corporations are making their profits off of actual slavery – not slavery from the 1860s that over 360,000 Union soldiers died to end, but current-day, 21st century forced labor in China.

Some of the corporations cited include Coca-Cola, Apple, BMW, Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, GM, LL Bean, Gap, Volkswagen, and that paragon of ostentatious wokeness, Nike. Here’s what Greenfield writes about Nike, citing a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute:

“A factory making shoes for Nike was ‘equipped with watchtowers, barbed-wire fences, and police guard boxes.’ Nike Shox were discovered being made in another factory by slave laborers shipped far from home to produce shoes for the sportswear giant. Too far for them to run away.

‘We can walk around, but we can’t go back,’ one worker said.

The same company that holds up Colin Kaepernick, a millionaire anti-American activist, as an icon of social justice, also profits from an alleged slave labor facility that moved to be closer to ‘the region’s cotton fields’. The millionaire victims of imaginary racism that Nike wants us to care about are on their billboards while modern-day slaves still toil in the cotton fields because their lives don’t matter.”

If you’re wondering why this is suddenly coming out, it’s not sudden; you just weren't told about it until now. The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, whose members range from Sen. Marco Rubio to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, released a report on forced labor in China back in March. It inspired a proposed bill called the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act that names Nike and a number of other large US corporations as being suspected of profiting from forced labor. It’s also prompted sanctions on some Chinese officials, for which China just retaliated with some vague “sanctions” on Rubio, Ted Cruz, and other US critics of its unconscionable policies.

At least that’s getting a little media attention. But why have the media buried this story for so long while they hyperventilate over America’s long-banished era of slavery from the century-before-last? Greenfield believes it’s because it makes their big pockets advertisers look bad. I would add that there is also a tangled web of profits and ownership connecting news outlets (and sports franchises) to big media companies, Chinese investors, and reliance on both Chinese labor and the Chinese market. To put it bluntly, they’ve sold their souls to China.

It’s ironic that they vilify America while covering for China, where any criticism of that nation’s government, history, and culture would be ruthlessly and violently suppressed. These corporate honchos should savor the American freedom of speech that allows them to attack their own nation because if control of it ever fell into the hands of the people they’re covering for, that freedom would quickly become a thing of the past (Don’t believe me? Look at Hong Kong.) They would soon find themselves even less free to express a dissenting opinion than a conservative on Twitter.

Mike Huckabee

IF I WANTED TO DESTROY AMERICA...

Do you ever get the idea that some of the people in our country just don’t like it? Even some elected officials who want to govern the country, like MN Congresswoman Ilhan Omar openly says we need to dismantle the very structures of America, including our economic system. I find that a bit strange coming from someone who escaped the absolute squalor of Somalia where the annual per capita income is $225 and came to America where she lives large and even somehow got elected to Congress. Is her goal to make us like her home country? I sure hope not! I’m starting to think that some loud voices in our world want to get rid of America once and for all. And they’ve observed that it doesn’t work to do it from the outside. An attack like Pearl Harbor or 9-11 only unifies the country and gives us the resolve to fight back. So suppose I wanted to destroy America? What would be the best way to do it?

I’d first replace the education system top to bottom. Instead of giving students the tools to think, reason, and analyze based on hard facts, I’d give them a system in which everyone thinks alike. Deviating from “group-think” would be strictly forbidden, and would result in a person being ostracized, scorned, and prohibited from even being employed. I’d erase all substance and symbols of history. Instead of ensuring that students actually read and understood the documents of our origin, like the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I’d focus instead on pop culture and fill history books with Lady Gaga, the Kardashians, and Beyonce. I’d demonize George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin by never allowing students to see what these men actually said or did. I’d find any flaw in them and make that the only thing kids learned.

I’d never simply teach that the country had some ugly chapters of slavery and racism, as did virtually every nation. I’d pretend that those things still exist now, despite the obvious fact that a black person was twice elected President by defeating white candidates which meant that a large number of white people voted for the black candidate. I’d ignore that black people have held virtually every cabinet agency at one time or another, served at the top of our military, advanced in business to become millionaires and billionaires, led the world in several scientific and medical innovations.

I would seek to undo a system of economic capitalism which rewarded work and innovation. I wouldn’t demand equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, which would mean that there wouldn’t be an incentive to study all night for an “A” since everyone would get the same grade anyway. And why take the risk of starting a business based on a better idea to do or create something if working from early to late still netted you the same pay as the person who came late, left early, and never created anything? I’d just give everyone a trophy. No one would ever lose.

I’d get rid of law enforcement. Cops get in the way of us doing what we want, taking what belongs to others, and having civil order. If there is anarchy and chaos and people are terrified to live and work where they live, it’ll be easier for me to convince people that the problem is not LACK of law enforcement, but the presence of law enforcement. I’d use words that sound good to cover my real intentions. I’d say equality when I really mean favoritism; I’d say tolerance when I really mean intolerance; I’d say diversity when I really mean uniformity; and I’d say women’s health when I really mean doing a very unnatural surgical procedure to kill a baby and do real damage to a woman’s physical and mental health. I’d marginalize religion and brand its adherents as fanatics, bigots, hate-mongers, and racists because belief in moral absolutes like love, forgiveness, charity, sacrifice, and service are a real threat to controlling people and making them follow what they are told.

I’d never attack America with a bomb, bullets, or battleships. I’d just lie about her history and origins, destroy every symbol of its legacy both good and bad, indoctrinate instead of educate so as to have uniformity of thought, and I’d take away all ownership of private property and personal capital and give everyone the exact same thing so as to destroy the incentives that made people like me who grew up poor to work really hard to live better and with that to give better.

But I don’t want to destroy America. I love America. And it’s why I won’t let her get destroyed without a fight.

Mike Huckabee

The talking heads on CNN make so many biased and ignorant comments about conservatives and Christians that I hardly consider it news anymore and seldom even bother to comment. This is especially true of Don Lemon. But yesterday, he went so far beyond offensive and made me angry enough that I had to call him out on it.

During an interview with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Lemon was talking about the tearing down of statues of the Founders because they weren’t perfect people when he said this:

“Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ, admittedly, was not perfect when he was here on this Earth.” Shockingly, Cuomo, who is Catholic and should know better, let that slide by without objection. It suggests that he subscribes to the same strange form of Catholicism as Nancy Pelosi, who seems to think that abortion is a sacrament.

The Bible makes it very clear in numerous places that Christ was the only perfect person ever to walk the Earth. This article at Faithwire.com cites a few of the passages.

Among those verses are that Jesus “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), was “a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19) and is “holy and blameless, unstained by sin” (Hebrews 7:26). In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and Matthew 5:48 tells us that “your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”

It’s bad enough that CNN has become a fountain of stupidity, but the stupidity has now crossed the line into blasphemy. It’s also telling that a top anchor on CNN is so utterly out of touch with the majority of Americans, who are Christians. The media’s hostility to people of faith is obvious, but now, so is the fact that they’re hostile toward a belief system about which they don’t even know the most fundamental tenet.

I believe there’s a word for hating people you know nothing about: “bigotry.” Liberals might not care if they commit blasphemy, but maybe that will force them to do a little self-examination and, to use one of their favorite phrases, “educate themselves.”

Mike Huckabee

As exasperating as the news is that Judge Emmet “Captain Ahab” Sullivan refused to comply with an order by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and drop the case against Michael Flynn, it’s hardly unexpected. After all, the original Captain Ahab just kept pursuing his great white whale until (spoiler alert!) it finally dragged him down to his watery grave.

The investigation of the attempted coup against the Trump Administration has uncovered widespread misconduct in the FBI and DOJ, including evidence that Flynn was set up, he did nothing wrong and the FBI knew it, and exculpatory evidence that should have been turned over to his attorneys was hidden. The DOJ rightly requested that the case be dropped, which is the prosecutors’ prerogative. But Sullivan, attempting to act as both judge and prosecutor, still refuses, even after being ordered by his superiors to hang it up. He’s clinging to a novel legal theory that if a defendant changes his plea, he can be charged with perjury for making the plea he withdrew (and never mind that we now know Flynn’s initial guilty plea was coerced: after having lost his job, reputation, home and life savings, he was being threatened with having the same done to his son if he didn’t plead guilty.)

It's obvious that there is no real case against Flynn, but Sullivan apparently hopes either to force Trump to pardon Flynn so it can be made into a political issue, or else drag the case out beyond the election in hopes that anti-Flynn conspirator Joe Biden is elected. Then the coup cabal can return to power, kill the investigation into their own misconduct, cover up their crimes and go right back to their unconstitutional abuses of government power against political opponents, just as if Hillary had been elected in 2016.

So now, the case will have to be heard again by the entire DC Circuit Court. If there is any justice remaining in Washington at all, let us pray that the judges quickly dispense with this unfunny farce, release Flynn so that he can get on with the serious legal business of suing the pants off of the people who targeted him, and order that Sullivan be removed from the bench and have to run 15 laps around the courthouse. I know that last part isn’t technically within their constitutional powers, but that hasn’t been much of a factor in this case so far.

Mike Huckabee

A salute to Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Hackett for finally demonstrating to other corporations the proper way to deal with “cancel culture” cranks on their payrolls. We’ve seen far too many companies cave in to the childish demands of crybully leftist staffers, from the publisher who canceled Woody Allen’s autobiography to the New York Times, who fired an editor for daring to run an op-ed by a Republican Senator. So when some employees of Ford demanded that the company stop making police cars because they’re “accessories to police brutality and oppression” and “racist policing policies,” Hackett politely but firmly refused. He couched it all in a lot of soft-soap liberal buzzwords to keep from offending anyone, but the point was clear.

Personally, I would have suggested that if their consciences wouldn’t allow them to do their jobs, there are plenty of other people who’d be happy to take them, while, to quote Bill Murray from “Ghostbusters,” “someone with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a top-flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries.” That’s also what should have been said to the entitled snowflakes at the Times and the publishing house, two businesses where there are easily a thousand eager applicants for every open position.

By the way, I’ll throw the Ford CEO a salute, but only with my index finger. If he wants the full-hand salute, then the Ford Foundation should stop giving money ($7.6 million since 2018) to groups like Black Lives Matter that are now pushing to defund the police departments that buy police cars from Ford. That’s both bad politics and bad business. You’d think the shareholders would bring that up to him.

Now, here’s a CEO who deserves the full-hand salute for bravery…

Mike Huckabee

Byron York of the Washington Examiner compares what President Trump said at Mount Rushmore to what Trump-hating media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post told their readers that he said. Their "reporting" reflects reality about as accurately as a Picasso portrait with three noses.

Let this stand as an important lesson: from now on, and especially until the election, do not believe anything that these media outlets tell you that Trump (or for that matter, any Republican) said. Go to the Internet and check out the original source. That’s what my staff and I have been doing for years, and we’ve had to issue far fewer corrections than the New York Times does.

It’s sad that this is necessary, but these outlets have willingly quit the journalism business to become 24/7 Baghdad Bobs for the Democratic Party. Believing that you know what Trump said because you heard it from them would be like thinking you really understand Israeli government policies because you watch Al Jazeera.

Mike Huckabee

Tuesday, Minnesota Rep. and “Squad” member Ilhan Omar condemned the entire American way of life, telling an audience “As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality…We cannot stop at the criminal justice system. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

Conservatives immediately pointed out that Omar was openly calling for the destruction of the US political and capitalist economic systems, and demanded to know if Joe Biden and fellow Democrats backed those goals. Which is silly…they’d never admit that!

I take a more charitable view of Rep. Omar’s bloviations. Let’s look at the evidence:

She came to America as an immigrant from Somalia, a nation that is under the following travel advisory from the US State Department: “Do not travel to Somalia due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, health issues, kidnapping, and piracy.” So at least we can assume she thinks America is slightly better than that or she wouldn't be here.

After having come to America, she got elected to the House, where she currently pulls down a healthy $174,000 a year. That’s about 773 times the average annual income in Somalia ($225 US.) She has parlayed that position into other lucrative areas, including a book deal for a memoir (“This Is What America Looks Like”) with an advance alone that was reported to be in the $100k-$250k range.

I think we can also assume that she will personally benefit from the reported $878,000 paid since 2018 to her latest husband’s political consulting firm out of donations to her Congressional campaign. They’re taking advantage of a loophole in the federal anti-nepotism law that bars Congress members from hiring relatives for government jobs but not from doing campaign work.

So while Rep. Omar might enrage a lot of people by seemingly wanting to turn America into Somalia, a more charitable view might be to take inventory of all the ways she’s turned into a money-grubbing capitalist since escaping Somalia for our oppressive, racist shores. Maybe mouthing a lot of anti-American, anti-capitalist garbage to her deluded leftist followers is just her business model. To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of rich liberals.

By the way, none of this is to suggest that I think she’s not a dangerous figure who shouldn’t be within 300 miles of government power. If her constituents are having trouble finding someone better to send to the House to replace her, I will happily provide them with a local phone book and a dart free of charge.

And now, a rebuttal to Rep. Omar by a Venezuelan refugee who has seen exactly where all her socialist rhetoric really leads (and it’s not to Rep. Omar’s now-fat bank account):

Mike Huckabee

And in a second ruling that also strikes a blow for religious liberty, the Supreme Court again ruled 7-2 (Ginsberg and Sotomayor dissenting) that religious schools should be free from discrimination lawsuits if they don’t hire people for ministerial positions whose lifestyles conflict with their religious beliefs.

Read the details of both cases at the link. Religious schools were already supposed to be protected from these lawsuits, but again, litigants are searching for ways around those protections and liberal judges in places like California are only too willing to help them do that. This ruling expands that protection to cover less ministerial positions and more types of discrimination lawsuits to help head off all the various ways in which people were trying to use the law to force religious schools to hire people who contradict their beliefs and teachings.

As this article points out, the decision will raise controversy because opponents claim it allows religious organizations to discriminate against employees who are not in fully ministerial positions, such as math teachers. But the alternative is to allow the government to decide which positions in a religious institution qualify as “ministerial,” and that doesn't sound like a job that the government should be doing at all. It sounds instead like a perfect example of what the Founders were banning when they wrote that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

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Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, I brought you the story of what has happened to the rights of the people of Hong Kong in an attempt to show how quickly it can happen here. Truly, the Democrat Party cares no more about your rights than the Communist Chinese Party cares about Hong Kong’s. As a follow-up today, I’d like to explain a bit about the philosophy we’re up against and the grip it currently has on our media and culture. We have to know about our enemy – and, yes, it is our ENEMY – in order to figure out how to defeat it.

To help me in this, I’ve linked to an excellent piece in THE FEDERALIST by John Andrews, former president of the Colorado Senate (where I’m sure they could use him now) and former vice president of Colorado Christian University.

Andrews is right in seeing “Marxist fingerprints” all over the current mess in our country. The infiltration has been going on for decades. I’m sure it once seemed farfetched to many when the more outspoken conservative commentators, such as Mark Levin, frequently warned of Marxism in America. Today, no one would call that over-the-top. He has always been right about this; it's just more obvious now.

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As Andrews notes, the assumptions underlying Marx have pervaded schools and universities, mass media and popular entertainment, corporate philosophy, medicine, the arts and sciences, even many churches and seminaries. They define today’s Democrat Party as well, “Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi no less than Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama.” That’s why I said yesterday that it doesn’t matter whose names are on the ticket this fall.

So what are these Marxist assumptions? Well, they certainly don’t spring from the Judeo-Christian values we hold dear, the spiritual connections that enrich our lives. Both Marx and Hegel were materialists, considering all things spiritual to be inconsistent with their way of looking at the world. The idea gives new meaning to Madonna’s song about “living in a material world.” Living in THIS “material world” is a grim, empty way to exist, with no real objective concepts of right and wrong, only what your leaders tell you. But in places such as North Korea, it’s how the people exist. They know nothing else. They are ALLOWED to know nothing else.

Atheists tend to see the world as a random collision of atoms affected by physical forces, so they’re much more likely to “gravitate” (ha) to this way of seeing life. And it’s true that more Americans are atheists today than in previous generations. But it should be stressed that many people who doubt the existence of God have still been exposed in our culture to religious beliefs about right and wrong and understand the value of these concepts in our lives. They love America and dread the thought of our freedoms being taken away just as much as any churchgoer. Some of them may even be induced to start praying for our country, as in the old saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”

Still, as Andrews says, “Cultural Marxism is increasingly defining the worldview within which all debates and decision-making take place, even for most of those who rightly fear and despise Marx.” The goal: “deconstructing the American way of life from top to bottom, leaving no sphere of our lives untouched.”

I would add that race is just a pretext for all of this. Create chaos, add heat, mix well, cook until done.

Andrews warns of the three main ways Marxism accomplishes this deconstruction. (If you’ve read George Orwell, especially ANIMAL FARM, you’re ahead of the game. Ironically, Orwell himself was a democratic socialist but an unsparing critic of how Marxist societies worked in practice, particularly under Stalin. Brilliant as he was, it seems he was too much of an idealist to realize in those days that his socialist dream of a classless society and nationalizing everything was not also going to be free.)

Anyway, the first step: dehumanizing of the individual. We’re seeing the Democrat Party doing this with identity politics, which reduces every person to his or her group victimhood or guilt.

Second, demoralizing relationships. In a world with no objective right and wrong, everything boils down to the material; forget such things as personal dignity, family ties and duties, promises, tradition and heritage, even love and life itself. Really, all the things that make us human have no value in such a world.

I would add that if you’ve read Orwell’s “1984,” you know that in such a society, truth itself is meaningless, as the truth is whatever your leaders say it is. (It’s not enough for you to say that 2+2=5; you must truly believe that 2+2=5.) To give a current example, if it’s politically correct for you to believe that, as a white person, you are a racist, but you know you’re not, you will have to undergo sensitivity training and read WHITE FRAGILITY as many times as it takes for you to sincerely believe you are one. If you can’t believe this about yourself and do what is required of you to atone, you will have to be a nonperson.

Third, institutions must fall. The idea of civics and the citizen, with a shared history, is seen as absurd. Look at how it’s being destroyed now, with statues crumbling and history being twisted. Even language has to be controlled, as it’s a shared part of the culture used to communicate and seek truth. We can see that happening today as well.

Importantly, ANIMAL FARM shows that the noble idea that “all animals are equal” inevitably is tweaked into “...but some are more equal than others.” We see this now in the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Try saying that “all lives matter” and see where it gets you. And don’t think that those at the top of the socialist pyramid will ever give up their wealth and control. Rather, they will cast it in stone and make sure no one else gets it.

Why would “educated” young people and “the masses” living in leftist cities ever want this kind of nation? They’ve been brainwashed into thinking capitalism must be overthrown. In their artfully poisoned minds, America must atone with “social justice” for generations of racism and exploitation. America is evil, with an evil history and corrupt values that must be erased for all time. Even seeing an American flag "triggers" them. Trying to reason with a person indoctrinated in this view is like trying to communicate with a cult member. He’s not interested in what you think, only in getting you “woke” or getting you out of the way.

We’ve got people like this expressing themselves quite openly in the House of Representatives. Here’s just one.

I realize that today’s commentary hasn’t exactly been a treat to read, but knowing what we’re dealing with is the first step in developing a plan of action. Many of you have written in frustration to ask, “What can we DO??” Tomorrow morning, we’re going to talk about what we can do. A long-term plan is important, but we’ll focus on the short-term for now, as we have four months to keep leftists from taking over America.

Mike Huckabee

I am still in shock after receiving a message Monday from country legend Charlie Daniels’ representative, letting me know that he had died of a stroke at 83. He was so big, so strong, so omnipresent in music for 70 years, and so bold and outspoken in defense of America and its veterans, police, and first responders that it seems almost impossible that he could have left us so suddenly. I’m proud to say that he was a friend of mine and a friend of our TBN show, where he appeared just recently to promote one of his many initiatives to help our veterans.

Fox News immediately contacted me to write a tribute. I hope you will read it at this link.

This obituary from the Nashville Tennessean includes some highlights from Charlie Daniels’ amazing career and the many fellow icons who worked with him, from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to Ringo Starr and Elvis Presley. He was truly a “musician’s musician,” the "best there's ever been" on both fiddle and guitar, and the man the greats called when they wanted to make music history.

Here are some of the many tributes to him that are pouring in from fellow music stars.

To show the deep love and respect that Americans felt for Charlie Daniels, here are some photos of his body being driven to the funeral home, accompanied by a police escort, followed by a group of fans on motorcycles, and saluted by fans lining the sidewalks to pay their respects as they held up the American flag he revered.

Finally, it’s especially unfortunate that he leaves us at a time when so many people are turning on the patriotic American values he fought so hard to protect and defend. I wish he could have lived to see what I hope and pray will be the crushing repudiation by voters of the current wave of violent, ignorant, intolerant and divisive anti-Americanism. But he left us a great legacy of writings and recordings to help inspire patriots to fight back.

One of the greatest was a song that came out during a similarly depressing, if less violent, time in America’s history: 1980, the end of the Carter years when we were told that malaise was our “new normal,” that America was in decline, that we could be pushed around by countries like Iran, and we’d better just get used to it. He released a battle cry of a song that reminded us not to believe the demoralizing lies and anti-American propaganda. Some say he helped save the nation, as that song fired up patriotic Americans to go to the polls, elect Ronald Reagan, and reclaim America’s greatness. He revived it again after 9/11, as you can see in this live video. I think it’s high time we start playing it again, right up to and beyond Election Day 2020. It’s called “In America.”

Mike Huckabee

Of all the Fourth of July celebrations in my lifetime, this was perhaps the strangest --- and also the most important for us to ponder.

The Fourth of July is usually a time to get together and enjoy our freedom as Americans, and we mostly take for granted that we will always have it. But the very fact that this year was so out of kilter should tell us how very much we have to lose. Leftists here in this country –- a trifecta of the power-mad, the indoctrinated and the ignorant –- want to “burn it all down” to set up a fantasy Marxist utopia ruled by identity politics, which is just another form of racism. Look around; they’re in the process of doing it. We can’t take our freedom for granted any longer.

We forget how quickly everything can change. A system of government can fall just like...THAT! (I’m snapping my fingers.) It’s like toppling a statue; no matter how much skill and care and artistry went into creating that unique piece, or how many centuries it has stood, it can be turned into rubble with one hard pull of a rope or a few sticks of dynamite. Even a constitutional republic like ours can be very quickly taken over and altered beyond recognition, with little or no hope of going back. We are at risk of that now.

Look at what China has done to Hong Kong in just a week. All it had to do was pass a law, and now Hong Kong authorities are forced to strengthen regulation of the media and the internet. Beijing also has given itself broad powers to deploy state security agencies and to establish a bureau overseeing “national security” in Hong Kong. As reported in BLOOMBERG NEWS, China may even block citizens of Hong Kong from leaving for the U.K. Thousands took to the streets last week in protest, but it won’t change any of this. The “one country-two systems” framework that has governed the former British colony since it was returned to China in 1997 is essentially over, now that China has chosen to disregard that agreement.

As Mike Pompeo said to Laura Ingraham on Monday, “We can see this is going to end up being just another Communist-run city. It’s unfortunate; Hong Kong was such a special place, where there were all the freedoms that the people of Hong Kong were promised by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s much like the promise they made to tell us the truth about where the coronavirus came from...It’s the same kind of broken promises that’ll lead the United States to take the right response.”

Fine; we should hold them accountable. But the CCP is going to steamroll Hong Kong anyway, just as surely as they rolled their tanks through Tiananmen Square. They are liars and not to be trusted. The rule of law has been eviscerated in Hong Kong; now it’s the rule of the CCP.

Alarm bells have sounded in Taiwan as well, as CCP control of social media also applies to the millions of Taiwanese messages of support for Hong Kong’s democracy movement and Taiwanese independence, as well as criticism of human rights abuses in China. Of course, they’re also worried that their country is next.

Hong Kong is now essentially just another Chinese city, according to Jillian Melchior of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. The people of Hong Kong weren’t even allowed to read the legislation before it was passed. What it does, she says, is criminalize dissent on a sweeping scale. “Basically anything but complete submission to Beijing is illegal,” she says. “It’s bringing the Chinese system of justice to Hong Kong.” She means even in the physical sense; mainland government offices will be coming there as well. In other words, there’s no need to extradite people from Hong Kong to China to exact “justice” –- China will just do it there. How conveeeenient.

Life in prison is now a very real possibility for anyone in Hong Kong who expresses dissent against the CCP. The same law also applies to foreigners, including journalists, who have spoken out against the CCP; they might risk arrest simply by stepping inside Hong Kong or even touching down at the airport there.

"This is the end of legal autonomy,” Melchior says, “and it’s the end of rights for Hong Kong’s people.” She’s talking about the basic rights we as Americans take for granted: freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. And the law as written is so broad, it can be used to target anyone the government doesn’t like.

More details here.

So, since we’re talking about basic rights that Americans enjoy, let’s look again at the threats we as Americans face in the year 2020. In about four months (!), we’ve got an election coming that has the potential to bring about the end of many freedoms we enjoy. In case you didn’t know, leftists don’t like freedom. At least, not for you.

Let me tell you what is going to happen if the Democrats win in November. It doesn’t matter if Biden is at the top of the ticket or not or who is #2. Hard-core leftists run the party, and they will run the government like they’re the CCP and we are Hong Kong.

They will cement their power in numerous ways, with help from a compliant media. If they happen not to take the Senate, it won’t matter; they’ll just govern by executive order. They’ll fire Attorney General Barr and immediately close all investigations except those relating to President Trump. They’ll pack the Supreme Court with far-left judges. They’ll further reward schools for indoctrinating students into hating America. No monuments to America’s past will be left standing. Courts will rule in favor of states going around the Electoral College, effectively destroying it and making sure “flyover country” never gets a say in another presidential election. They’ll open borders, make Washington DC a state and let non-citizens vote, canceling out the votes of many citizens. With help from social media and the political correctness brigade, conservative speech will be shut down. The most reasonable, fact-based observations, even in fields such as science and technology, will be classified as “hate speech” and disallowed. Perhaps even the American flag will become "hate speech." The police will indeed be defunded, property rights will be disrespected, and more infringements will be made on the 2nd Amendment. Individual rights in general will be sacrificed to the god of identity politics, which will rule the day.

We don’t have to live in Hong Kong to experience a loss of personal rights on this level. We can just stay right here in America and let the far left take over our country in November. Think I’m exaggerating? Some of it is already happening. What did leftist-run American cities look like to you this Fourth of July?

Mike Huckabee

While President Trump’s speech defending America’s history, heroes and values was mercilessly attacked by the media, their Presidential hope, Joe Biden, also made a 4th of July statement. His vision of America (which I’m sure they would never call dark or divisive) is of a place rotten with racism, a “systemic racism” that he vowed to rip out in its entirety (translation: government will take over everything) and that once elected, he will “transform America.” Into what, downtown Minneapolis? The CHOP autonomous zone in Seattle?

As was noted when Barack Obama used that phrase, how can anyone claim to love America, then vow to fundamentally transform it? Biden’s radicalism is especially eye-opening, considering that he’s what now passes for a “moderate” in the Democratic Party. It’s even rubbing off on his potential running mates, who are so scared to upset the mobs, they can’t even say they wouldn’t blow up Mount Rushmore if elected.

The narrative of Biden as a “moderate” is the basis of what I call the Democrats’ Trojan Horse campaign (or maybe that should be Trojan Donkey.) The Party has moved so far to the left that they could never get elected if they admitted what they really plan to do, so they’re hiding it behind Biden’s bland image. But nobody seriously believes that Biden will set the agenda, any more than we believe that Lambchop was the brains behind Shari Lewis’ ventriloquist act.

Possibly the most hilarious self-reveal came when Ted Cruz listed some of the radical ideas that they represent, and to refute him, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sarcastically tweeted back that the Democrats wanted to do all those radical things, so they nominated Joe Biden.

Yes, that’s precisely why they nominated Joe Biden. Because if they nominated someone like AOC, they wouldn’t win, even if those are the policies you’ll get either way. What you should be asking yourself is this: “If Joe Biden is such a moderate, why is he being defended by one of his top campaign advisors, notorious socialist and ‘Green New Deal” pusher, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”

Mike Huckabee

This weekend we celebrate 244 years as an independent nation, but the events of the past few months leave us wondering if we will have many more to celebrate. We started as a unique country based on the notion that our rights come from God, not government; that because we recognize God as the creator of us all, we are all equal in intrinsic worth and value; that we would not require a big government because we would mostly self-govern and live with the understanding that the great freedoms we enjoy require great responsibilities. As the scripture teaches, “unto whom much is given, much is required.”

We were never perfect and still aren’t. We’ve had some very ugly chapters in our history, but the brilliance of our Founders was to create a nation that would be governed by law and not by our passions and emotions. We would grant rights even to those accused of awful crimes so that we wouldn’t be ruled by a mob, whose sense of justice would be at best uneven, and at worst, as evil as the crime, it was seeking to avenge. It made our system at times slow, sometimes unfair, and just plain wrong on occasion. But the ideal way to make all of us accountable to the same laws and suffer the same consequences for violating them.

All of that is at risk of going away if we allow people in the highest levels of law enforcement and the intelligence community to get away with trying to stage a coup d’etat against an elected President. A man of color in Minneapolis was murdered by a cop and a video of the murder is seen by the world. While no one defends the cop’s action, some use the tragedy as an excuse to break windows, assault innocent people, loot stores, and burn businesses that were actually owned by people of color. When that happens, we are rewarding anarchy and mob rule.

But while the news reports the worst of our nation’s sins, there are truly outstanding things of love, kindness, and sacrifice that are happening around us every day. We need to hear more of their stories and tonight you will. I hope you’ll celebrate America this weekend. Sure, we aren’t perfect, but we are a better nation than any of the over 70 nations I’ve visited.

244 years ago, some very courageous souls risked their fortunes and their very lives to give us a country unlike any ever created. I don’t want to lose this country by those who would trade liberty for the lunacy of a system that would resemble the government like it was in the time of the Judges of the Old Testament, where “every man did what was right in his own eyes.”

Let’s celebrate America. But let’s fight to preserve the best of it, and change and reform the worst of it.

Mike Huckabee

MORNING EDITION

July 4, 2020 

By Mike Huckabee

A BIG SHOW THIS EVENING

We’re taking a brief break from the daily news so that my staff and I can enjoy some time off to celebrate the Fourth of July with our families. But don’t worry, we’ve prepared some newsletter material in advance. And if anything major occurs that cries out for comment, we’ll set down our hot dogs and rush to our laptops! We will return to covering the daily headlines on Tuesday.

Before watching the socially-distanced Fourth of July fireworks displays on TV, join me for some real fireworks on “Huckabee” on TBN! We’ve put together a very special July 4th show for you. I’ll have some new comments on the holiday and the news, plus we’ll revisit some of the very best, funniest and most patriotic moments from previous shows. I won't spoil the surprises, but I guarantee you'll love it.

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

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

Happy Independence Day and happy 244th 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. 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 comfort and 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, and why immigrants are often more aware of how unique America is and more grateful for those freedoms than native-born Americans. The Founders understood that freedom really is that precious.

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!

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 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 the government needed a 2,000-page bill just to ruin your health insurance. Only 45 simple words were needed to protect our right to speak freely without fear of government retribution...Our right to publish those words so that other Americans can read and debate them…Our right to band together with like-thinking Americans and protest peacefully without fear of arrest (note: protesting peacefully does not include rioting, arson, and looting)…Our right to petition our leaders to change their policies…And our right 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 we can’t gather in church to worship, but we can gather in Walmart.) A lot of people celebrate the first half of that religious right (no state religions) 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.”

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

Mike Huckabee

NEWS UPDATE: CHOP has been chopped. After degenerating from an alleged “festival atmosphere” and “second summer of love” into a dangerous, lawless war zone within days, the area of Seattle “occupied” by leftist radicals was finally cleared out Wednesday morning.

Mayor Jenny Durkan must’ve gotten tired of competing with Bill DeBlasio for the title of America’s Worst Mayor because she finally issued the order police had been waiting for. They moved and gave the big, tough social justice “warriors” eight minutes to clear out (yes, that’s how quickly this could have ended if the Mayor had ever done her job.) Among those who resisted, there were 31 arrests. Let’s hope that for probably the first time in their lives, they will discover what it means to face real consequences for their rotten behavior.

CHOP was a disaster and a massive dereliction of the city’s duty to protect its citizens. It was also an unwarranted tragedy that resulted in robberies, assaults and other violent crimes, three serious injuries from shootings, and the shooting deaths of two black teenagers - Lorenzo Anderson Jr. and Antonio Mays Jr. – by people who claimed they launched this radical Romper Room with no police allowed to protest the unjust killing of black people by police.

At the link is a post-mortem on what happened in Seattle and how (the first step was the mistake of electing a far-left government.) As bad as the entire episode was, it did serve one purpose: seldom has there been a more horrifying but useful illustration of how swiftly civilization can spiral into anarchy when you do something as stupid as abolishing the police and giving power to a bunch of socialist undergrads.

Mike Huckabee

I hope you’re having a great 4th of July week, but between the celebratory fireworks on one hand and the anti-American political fireworks on the other, let’s take just a moment to reflect on what Independence Day really means and how it led to the freedoms and blessings that far too many Americans fail to appreciate these days.

Most historians (not New York Times writers, but real historians) mark the beginning of America as the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. But in truth, there was still a long road to travel before America as we know it came to be. First, of course, there was the matter of fighting a bloody revolution against Great Britain, one where victory was an overwhelming longshot, and win or lose, the leaders risked their lives and fortunes. Victory was followed by more heated battles over what kind of government we would have.

Our Forefathers finally agreed to a blueprint, the Constitution, that wasn’t even introduced until 1789 – over 13 years later. Today, many Americans take those hard-won freedoms very lightly and seem eager to trade them away for false promises of security. Some can’t even name the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Maybe they’d cherish them more if they knew how close they came to not having them at all.

Did you know that the Constitution very nearly got passed without the Bill of Rights? Even some of the wisest of our forefathers thought a Bill of Rights was a dangerous idea. Alexander Hamilton argued that it was risky to list the rights the government couldn’t take away because then, politicians might try to grab any and every power that wasn’t specifically prohibited to them (apparently, the ability to rap wasn’t the only way Hamilton predicted the 21st century). He and many others also felt that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary: since nobody was surrendering their God-given rights by agreeing to the Constitution, there was no need to list them, right? Hamilton wrote, “Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”

It’s ironic that Hamilton made that argument. Later on, as the first Treasury Secretary, he cited powers that the Constitution merely implied that the government had in order to take on debt, create a federal bank and impose unpopular taxes. Over a century later, when the federal income tax was passed, some lawmakers wanted to include a 10% limit, but they were voted down. Opponents scoffed that it was absurd to think the government would ever steal as much as 10% of an American’s hard-earned wages. Flash forward just 30 years, and they were happily taxing away 94%. So just imagine how few freedoms we’d have today if they’d listened to Hamilton and decided it wasn’t necessary to put specific limits on government power.

Luckily for us all, Thomas Jefferson won the argument, and the Bill of Rights was added. They even included the 9th amendment, which I’ll bet most people can’t even describe. Here’s what it says:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

It means that just because some God-given rights aren’t specifically listed, that doesn’t mean the people cede them to the government. Maybe because so many of the framers were also farmers, they understood that like weeds, government tends to grow and grow, choking out the productive crops -- and like a bull, it will trample you if you don’t corral it.

So if we want to preserve our freedoms, and keep government limited, maybe we should send more farmers to Washington -- and fewer lawyers.

Mike Huckabee

Great news: the First Amendment is still in effect, at least in some courtrooms. Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio from enforcing restrictions on outdoor and indoor gatherings of religious groups that are stricter than those on businesses and other types of gatherings. They'd even put tighter restrictions on religious groups than on businesses and gatherings that were classified as “non-essential,” which ranked religious expression as lower than “non-essential.”

It’s a great victory for religious liberty but what makes it extra sweet is that the judge based his ruling partly on the blatantly biased way that those two Democrats treated the recent street protests over George Floyd and the police.

Judge Gary Sharpe pointed out that Cuomo and DeBlasio not only allowed but endorsed and participated in protests that violated their own restrictions on large gatherings while harshly enforcing those restrictions on religious groups (DeBlasio even spoke at one – with no mask! – at the same time that he was threatening to arrest Jews who gathered in groups of more than ten to worship.) That denied churches, synagogues and other religious groups equal protection under the law.

Some legal experts noted that what they were also doing was establishing an unconstitutional state religion: the religion of secular leftism, which is allowed to flout the rules because the government deems its mission and message to be so much more important than those of traditional religions.

So now that we have an official ruling that secular leftism is a religion, I’m sure the leftists will agree with me that it has to be kicked out of public schools immediately.

Mike Huckabee

Once again on Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear that he can no longer be considered part of the “conservative” wing of the Supreme Court, as he joined with the liberals for the third time in two weeks on major cases. This time, it was a 5-4 ruling striking down a Louisiana law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges to some hospital within a 30-mile radius.

While the pro-abortion lobby (and probably Kermit Gosnell from his cell) celebrated this ruling as a victory for “women’s health,” it is anything but. They fight tooth and nail against any laws that hold abortion clinics to the most basic standards of safety and hygiene that any other medical clinic has to meet. This is because to them, nothing must interfere with aborting babies, even protecting the health of the mother by ensuring that if something goes wrong during this invasive surgical procedure, that she can be quickly taken to a real hospital where they know how to save lives instead of just ending them.

As the article at the link makes clear, once again, Justice Roberts engaged in his patented form of legal reasoning that begins with choosing your preferred outcome, then working backwards to find a way to justify it. In this case, he argued that since the Court overturned a similar Texas law four years ago, “the legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.”

Here are the problems with that: the Louisiana law was not as restrictive as the Texas law, yet four years ago, Roberts was on the dissenting side of the ruling against the Texas law. Also, in his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas scolded Roberts, pointing out that stare decisis is usually applied only to historic rulings with a long record of decisions stemming from them, not a case that was just decided four years ago.

I know it’s disheartening for conservatives to stand by as a so-called “conservative” Justice (he’s earned those sarcastic quotation marks) appointed by a Republican President (George W. Bush) stabs them in the back more times than Norman Bates, and then see any point in voting for a Republican President to appoint SCOTUS Justices. But it’s actually all the more reason why we need to do so.

There is a natural tendency inside the Beltway for judges to become more and more liberal with age (the rare principled Justices such as Thomas being the blessed exceptions.) Roberts now "swings" more than Hugh Hefner, so this can no longer be considered a majority conservative Court. The only way to protect the Constitution is to reelect Trump, whose most important contribution to America might not be his work on the economy but his many conservative judicial appointments. Given four more years, he could appoint another two or more SCOTUS Justices. Then Roberts could attend all the liberal cocktail parties he wants, and invent all the half-baked excuses for violating the Constitution that he wants, and it won’t make any difference because when he votes with the liberals, they’ll still lose 6-3.

But if, Heaven forbid, Joe Biden (or actually, his handlers) are picking those SCOTUS nominees, we might as well sell the Constitution to the Charmin company.

Mike Huckabee

The Democrats tweeted, then deleted, this message. But too late; it was archived.

So this is what we’ve come to in 2020. If you vote for Democrats, you’re voting to put people in charge of a nation whose own history and culture they hate so much that when they hear the patriotic phrase “President to attend 4th of July celebration with fireworks at Mount Rushmore,” what they hear is “President to attend white supremacist rally at sacred land stolen from indigenous peoples.”

I implore you: please have some sympathy for the poor Democrats and don’t curse them by forcing them to hold public office in a nation for which they are seething with hatred and obviously despise most of its people, whom they believe are irredeemable racist deplorables. Encourage them instead to retire to someplace where they would feel much more comfortable, like Cuba or Venezuela.

By Pat Reeder, “Huckabee” writer/pop culture historian

The streaming service Hulu has yanked an episode of the ‘80s sitcom “The Golden Girls” because Rose and Blanche appear in blackface – except they don’t. The two ladies are wearing mud masks on their faces, just like women (and some men) of all races have for centuries.

When a black character walks in on them, they’re embarrassed and insist they’re not wearing blackface, which shows that the writers were aware even then that blackface was offensive. But of course, trivialities such as accuracy, intention or context mean nothing when you’re competing to see who can find the next thing to be faux-offended by, or when you’re panicking in fear before the phony outrage of the cancel culture brats.

But there’s a larger point that makes what Hulu is doing seem even stupider, if that’s possible. Most people forget now, because “The Golden Girls” is so beloved by multiple generations for its humor, its cast and its wonderful characters who seem like family, but in its day, it was one of the most “progressive” shows on TV. Creator Susan Harris (who wrote the landmark abortion episode of “Maude”) filled the show with liberal messages that were on the then-cutting edge of what was allowed on prime time

Blanche, of course, was the poster girl for recreational sex, but the show also touched on adultery (Dorothy’s husband left her for another woman, and she later had an affair with a married man) and sex among senior citizens. Blanche’s single daughter wanted to get artificially inseminated, a lesbian had a crush on Rose, Dorothy’s brother was a transvestite (the girls also accidentally hired a transvestite band for a fundraiser), a male character confessed to having had a sex change operation, and Blanche’s gay brother showed up with his partner to announce that they were getting married.

This was well before “Friends” aired the first lesbian wedding, although that show made sure to put a thumb in the eye of Christian conservatives by casting Newt Gingrich’s lesbian sister to officiate and say that “nothing makes God happier than when two people – ANY two people – come together in love.” (I’d cite the Bible chapter for that, but I can’t find it.) “Friends” also included Kathleen Turner as Chandler’s trans dad. In the same way, “Will & Grace” is often lauded for using the sitcom form to promote acceptance of gays and “soften America up” for accepting same-sex marriage.

Even in the “Golden Girls” episode that Hulu is pulling, the storyline was about Dorothy’s son marrying a much older black woman and everyone having to overcome both racism and ageism.

But here’s that larger point I mentioned: The left always eat their own. The creators of “Golden Girls,” “Friends” and “Will & Grace” thought they were brave pioneers of tolerance for including all those liberal messages in their shows. Yet all three are now under fire from intolerant leftists: “W&G” for promoting swishy gay stereotypes, “Friends” for homophobic behavior by the men, and “GG” over a “blackface” scene that really isn’t. Instead of honoring them for pushing the envelope in an earlier time, leftists attack them for not living up to current standards that might not even exist if it weren’t for them. They demand that those shows be edited or yanked, just like they demand that statues be smashed or books be burned or bowdlerized – and by the way, the big streaming services are already doing that with some e-books.

In social justice warrior land, there is no honor or respect for those who went before. There is only ruthless judgement and condemnation for not meeting a standard that changes almost hourly. If you give into it, it’s like trying to appease the sharks circling your life raft by cutting off a finger and tossing it to them. The taste of blood will only make them all the more ravenous. It’s better just to give them the finger from your boat and preserve history the way it happened.

This is why my house is stuffed to the rafters with real books, LPs, CDs, DVDs, files on hard drives, singles, VHS tapes, cassettes, 8-tracks, Play-Tapes, etc. etc. If you have to rely on streaming for anything, then you don’t really own it.

Incidentally, for a great lesson in how to react to the SJW mob and how not to, look at Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. Former partners on the raunchy comedy series “The Man Show,” Carolla refused to knuckle under to the mob. He started a very popular podcast so the networks can’t censor him, and he’s become a defiant champion of free speech. He’s often vilified, but he is never censored or silenced. And he has a new book out on that very subject called “I’m Your Emotional Support Animal” that’s sure to be a best-seller. (Warning: contains rough language that he refuses to self-censor.)

Meanwhile, his former partner Kimmel has tossed in his lot with the leftists. His once-funny late night show has become just another Trump-bashing snoozefest, and he’s as likely to deliver a teary lecture on some hot button leftist subject as a comedy monologue. But all that virtue signaling gained him zip: when it was revealed that in long-ago comedy bits, he’d worn blackface and said the “n-word” while impersonating black celebrities, he was forced to take a break to “spend time with his family.” He’s now playing the liberal martyr by blaming his problems on evil right-wingers digging up his old material. But it’s not right-wingers who are demanding his head for comedy bits he did 20 years ago. All they’d like from him is for him to be funny again. It’s the leftists he sucked up to and who will turn on him on anyone else in an instant if they smell any deviation from accepted groupthink.

My advice to him would be to spend less time interviewing boring leftists and more time with Adam Carolla.

Mike Huckabee

I didn’t address this story when it came out on Friday because I have a standard rule: any shocking “blockbuster” anti-Trump story that comes from hostile media outlets such as the New York Times should be allowed to sit and air out for at least 48-72 hours to give the truth a chance to bubble up. Since this story came out on Friday, and it’s now Monday, I guess it’s safe to mention it.

The New York Times, citing its favorite source, “unnamed officials,” “reported” that Russia offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US troops in Afghanistan to drive the US out of the region, and that the President was briefed on it. Joe Biden, picking up the softball handed to him by the Times, declared:

“The truly shocking revelation that if the Times report is true, and I emphasize that again, is that President Trump, the commander in chief of American troops serving in a dangerous theater of war, has known about this for months, according to the Times, and done worse than nothing.”

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) screamed that Trump was guilty of Russian collusion (do they ever get tired of doing that?), and even some top Republicans are demanding an investigation. They really need to learn to count to 100 before taking anything seriously that comes from the New York Times.

So here’s what we know after waiting a couple of days: Russia called the story “fake,” and the Taliban denied there was any truth to it. Neither of those things may cut any ice with you, but Trump also tweeted that the Intelligence agencies reported to him that they did not brief him or the Vice President on this because they didn’t find the info credible (and that was even before they saw it in the New York Times.)

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, “This does not speak to the merit of the alleged intelligence, but to the inaccuracy of the New York Times story erroneously suggesting that President Trump was briefed on this matter.” So she's saying that maybe Russia did offer such a bounty (even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally), but the big anti-Trump “bombshell” part of the story was fake news. Unless you believe our intelligence agencies are willing to lie to make it appear that President Trump is NOT colluding with Russia. And if you believe that, you haven’t been paying much attention for the past three years.

In a somewhat related story, there’s a new movie coming out about the time in the 1930s when the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for fake stories covering up atrocities committed by Russian tyrant Joseph Stalin, an award they never returned. Now, THAT'S Russian collusion!

Mike Huckabee

Well, it’s taken long enough, but I’m starting to sense a shift in the wind as the “silent majority” are getting sick of staying silent while America-hating jerks smash national monuments.

Immediately after President Trump signed an executive order requiring the enforcement of the federal law against vandalizing public statues and monuments, the Justice Department announced indictments of four men in connection with the attempts to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square in Washington.

The DOJ rightly drew a line between lawful protest and vandalism, stating, “This Office remains steadfast in its commitment to protect the sacred First Amendment right of individuals to peacefully protest, but these charges should serve as a warning to those who choose to desecrate the statues and monuments that adorn our nation’s capital: your violent behavior and criminal conduct will not be tolerated.”

I feel fairly certain that the idea of facing consequences for their actions will be a completely new experience for these folks, and one that their parents should have introduced them to long ago. They were among 15 people whose photos were tweeted by Trump and whom the DOJ is searching for. Naturally, some liberal media outlets accused Trump of “inciting violence” by tweeting their wanted posters. Here’s a hint: if you don’t want to be the subject of a federal manhunt, then don’t do things that put your face on wanted posters, like trying to smash national monuments. This seems like one of those “you knew the job was dangerous when you took it” situations.

Trump isn’t the only one who’s fed up with allowing rampant crime and destruction in the streets under the guise of protesting racism. In Oklahoma City, DA David Prater announced charges of terrorism, rioting and assault against protesters who turned violent in May. He said, “This is not Seattle. We’re not putting up with this lawlessness here.”

In Manassas, Virginia, a different kind of protest occurred when hundreds of people turned out for a “back the blue” march to support the police. Participants called it “disgusting” to tar every police officer because of what some bad cops elsewhere did, and said police might need better training or background checks for hiring, but as for “defunding the police, "Who in their right mind would even think that's a good idea…” In fairness, I don’t think being in your right mind has anything to do with that particular movement.

At this point, I guess I should stop and make it clear to those who like to take things out of context and leap to dumb conclusions that none of this is meant in any way to diminish the justifiable anger over the death of George Floyd. Indeed, that was something that people of all races across the political spectrum agreed on. The growing backlash is not against legitimate protesters who have genuine concerns about police behavior toward blacks. It’s against the radical left extremists from groups like Antifa, many of them young white adults from privileged backgrounds who were indoctrinated into socialism and hating America in college, who are exploiting the anger over Floyd’s death as a convenient excuse to attack the foundations of the country and try to eliminate the police.

They not only aren’t helping the black community, they’re actively harming it, and they don’t care. And not just by tarnishing the image of legitimate peaceful protesters. Their riots, arson and looting are destroying black-owned businesses and black people’s jobs, eliminating needed goods and services, and making black neighborhoods less safe by driving police out.

Even Bill Maher sees through this latest form of twisted “white savior” behavior as you can see at this link.

Also, check out the must-see video at that link by Ami Horowitz. He asked white leftists on the street who hate the police and want to abolish them if they think black people in East Harlem would agree with them. Well, of course, they would! So he went to East Harlem and asked black people about that. Their response: they think the white leftists who want to abolish the police are “ignorant” and “full of c**p.” They don’t want to live in the lawless chaos that would exist if there were no police.

And check out this blow-by-blow account of the scene at the attempt to take down the Emancipation memorial (the statue of Lincoln freeing a slave) in Washington. Black history reenactors attempted to tell the screaming activists (most of them white) the history of the statue and why it’s important. But what one young white woman called “disgusting” was the fact that they were expected to respect their elders.

And since there are so many white celebrities speaking for black people (without being asked) and calling for abolishing the police, here’s a celebrity rebuttal: Muhammad Ali Jr. says that his father would have called the people who are smashing shops and police stations, beating up innocent people and terrorizing communities “devils.”

And because I don’t believe in smashing heads to make political points, but I’m not averse to making leftists’ heads explode, I’ll also pass along this quote from The Greatest’s son, which has to represent the ultimate backlash against the past few weeks of anarchy:

“I think Trump’s a good president. My father would have supported him. Trump’s not a racist; he’s for all the people. Democrats are the ones who are racist and not for everybody.”

Mike Huckabee

With the investigation of “Crossfire Hurricane” by U.S. Attorney John Durham looking more serious by the day, it’s obvious what the political cover is now. The memo has gone out to everyone in the Democrat Party and the media (but I repeat myself) to paint Attorney General Bill Barr, who had the gall to appoint Durham in the first place, as a purely political AG. Why, he’s not there to consistently enforce the law of the land; he’s just there to be President Trump’s protector, his lackey, his “wingman,” so to speak. (Wait, no, that was Eric Holder’s self-described role as attorney general for President Obama.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, with visions of impeachment still dancing in his head, assisted in this effort last week by bringing in federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky to speak to his House Judiciary Committee about Barr’s “interference” last February in the sentencing of Trump campaign associate Roger Stone.

Keep in mind that Zelinksy was a member of Mueller’s get-Trump special counsel team and also used to work under Rod Rosenstein. He was one of four prosecutors who dramatically resigned from the Stone case; in fact, he even chose to leave his position but (big surprise) continues to work with the Justice Department. In an interview for NPR on Thursday, Barr dismissed his testimony as “simply false” and “double hearsay.”

"I was the decision-maker in that case,” he said, “because there was a dispute. And usually what happens is, disputes, especially in high-profile cases, come up to the attorney general.” He said he had not discussed the sentencing with Trump and had already decided to change his recommendation before Trump’s angry tweet. Barr said that Stone “doesn’t deserve a break, but he doesn’t deserve to be...singled out, and treated more harshly than everyone else.”

I’ll point out what few Barr critics have: this was simply a sentencing RECOMMENDATION. Judge Amy Berman Jackson may follow the suggested guidelines or not. So what is the all-fired big deal?

Trump’s political enemies want looooong sentences for his associates because that puts pressure on him to pardon them, and that would unleash a media hysteria to last until Election Day. If this means putting a 67-year-old man behind bars potentially for life (especially if he gets coronavirus in there), so be it.

The narrative from now on will be that Barr is motivated only by the desire to help President Trump. Therefore, everything he does will be examined strictly from that perspective. It doesn’t matter that Stone’s sentence WAS harsh, that invading his home with a SWAT team while CNN cameras rolled WAS an abuse of power, and that the Russia “collusion” story in which he was ensnared WAS a hoax.

But Kimberly Strassel, writing about the Michael Flynn case in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, departs from the chosen media narrative. She points out that the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled on Judge Emmet Sullivan’s rejection of Barr’s decision to drop the case has done something beyond simply rule on the legal merits.

Importantly, the ruling is also a rebuke of the FBI and Robert Mueller’s special counsel team. This isn’t being widely reported, of course, but Strassel says it marks the first time a federal court has acknowledged the misconduct that Barr is trying to bring to light.

Judge Sullivan had bought into the same (debunked) Democratic conspiracy theories the FBI had been using; recall that he flew into a fit and even called Gen. Flynn a “traitor,” right there in the courtroom. So, naturally, he couldn’t let this case go just because the attorney general told him to, choosing instead to call on retired Judge John Gleeson to take on the role of shadow prosecutor.

Strassel makes an important point: that if the circuit court judges had any thought that Sullivan was right about Barr playing political favorites, they could have allowed him to continue fighting that. Instead, they said quite bluntly that there was “no legitimate basis” to question the Justice Department's behavior.

They even went after Judge Gleeson for relying in his amicus brief on “news stories, tweets, and other facts outside the record,” contrasting that with the DOJ’s motion that “includes an extensive discussion of newly discovered evidence casting Flynn’s guilt into doubt.”

They said this “includes evidence of misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

According to Strassel, the DOJ had provided voluminous evidence --- I would add that this is thanks to the determination of Flynn attorney Sidney Powell --- that the FBI had improperly pursued Flynn, kept the investigation open even when it had produced no evidence of wrongdoing, gone after him on the never-used Logan Act when he had acted appropriately, and schemed to trap Flynn into perjury with an interview that had no “legitimate investigative basis.”

Recall that in February of this year, Barr appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the Flynn case, and four months later, Jensen concluded that dismissal was “the just and proper course.” The appeals court decision was consistent with this.

Former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman was on FOX & FRIENDS on Friday to offer a similar viewpoint, saying that Flynn was so wronged that he should consider a “Bivens Action” against the Department of Justice and former Obama administration officials. A Bivens Action is the legal remedy to use when one’s rights have been violated by a federal investigator.

"I hope he is looking at it strongly,” Tolman said. I would imagine that at this point, Powell's team is already putting together that lawsuit. Let’s hope they are, and also hope he becomes an extremely wealthy man after losing his career and financial security over this bogus case.

Tolman agreed with Powell’s brief that the newly obtained notes penned by Peter Strzok, which describes the underlying action of Flynn’s phone calls as legitimate, show that stunning exculpatory evidence was withheld from Flynn’s defense.

He described what happened as “an absolute effort --- call it collusion, conspiracy, whatever you want to say --- that now we know goes as high as the Vice President and the President. To not only withhold information about the investigation to the incoming President, but to go after the incoming President through the incoming national security advisor on an investigation that did not have a foundation to it.” The fact that they should still have managed to bring a case should concern everyone, he said.

Tolman dared to voice what we’ve known for a long time: that they were trying to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office.

So remember when Barr continues to be accused of politicizing the DOJ, it’s just another example of Democrats accusing others of what they themselves are doing. The attack on Barr is political, and it’s coordinated. It sure seems to me that Barr’s the one trying to get the politics OUT. If his decisions at times help President Trump, perhaps it’s because the President actually has the truth and the law on his side.