Mike Huckabee

"Joe Biden still has not been forced to explain why he fired Ukraine’s top prosecutor at precisely the moment his son was being paid to get him to fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor.”

That was Tucker Carlson on his Thursday show, which aired live before Biden’s televised town hall was over. Sure enough, that observation was still true afterward, because Biden wasn’t asked ONE QUESTION about this. And no wonder; anyone invested in a Biden win 2-1/2 weeks from now must know how damaging the story would be if it got the attention it deserves.

Biden also has never said whether or not he personally benefited from son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. He still insists he’s never talked with his son about them, not once. But according to one of the more telling emails on what is almost certainly Hunter’s discarded laptop, “Pop” benefited quite a lot. “I love you all,” it reads. “But I don’t receive any respect and thats fine I guess – works for you apparently. I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

What? Joe Biden was pocketing half of what Hunter made?

No doubt Hunter wouldn’t have made the big bucks without his father’s last name, and he has acknowledged as much. So in a way, it might seem fitting that his father would take a generous cut. That is, if his father weren’t VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Rudy Giuliani describes this as “a racketeering case.”

Tucker went on to talk about Thursday's update in the NEW YORK POST (don’t look for it on Twitter, as they’ve deemed the whole story “unsafe”), which explores Hunter’s dealings in China. Here, we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions and more. Another email on the laptop reads, “At the moment, there’s a provisional agreement the equity will be distributed as follows: Ten held by Hunter for the big guy...” The “big guy” surely was Joe Biden. So, can this money destined for him be traced back to the CCP?

According to Miranda Devine, a columnist for the NY POST, one deal with a Chinese energy company netted Hunter Biden $10 million a year for “introductions alone.”

He was also on a $1 million retainer from another company for “legal services.” Devine poses the question that, since the gravy train continued when Biden was no longer Vice President, what exactly were the Chinese paying for? I assume she’s wondering what we all are: were they anticipating the day when Biden would be running for President and likely becoming Commander-in-Chief in, say, January of 2021? They clearly want him to win.

This brings to mind the Clinton Global Foundation, whose billions in donations dried up soon after Hillary lost in 2016.

Ironically, by blocking a story that involves the the CCP, Twitter and Facebook are acting JUST LIKE the CCP. (Really, who needs Russia to “meddle” in our elections when we have Twitter and FB to do it?) And now Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are using Big Tech’s rejection of the Biden story as evidence that it’s not true. They’re saying it’s “debunked” when it’s not at all.

As Tucker pointed out, Twitter and FB aren’t claiming it's a hoax but are simply cutting off communication about it. I hope it’s not getting tiresome for me to bring up George Orwell, but these people really are acting like the Ministry Of Truth. They want censorship if it works in their favor. And they don’t mean just to shut down some obscure blog, though that would be wrong as well, but even to censor major publications to silence a story they don't want. Likewise, they’ll pass along an easily-debunked lie if the lie is what they DO want. They’ve crossed a big red line.

This should scare the pants off you.

According to Ms. Devine, the Biden campaign is backing off its original response, which was that his official calendar had no record of his meeting with the Burisma official who’d emailed Hunter a thank-you for their meeting. Now they’re saying they “would not rule out the possibility” of a meeting, but it would’ve just been “informal” and “cursory.” Okay, but the official had referred to “spending some time” with the Vice President. How much time?

She concluded by saying, “Maybe he will answer it tonight when he does a town hall. I doubt whether he’ll be asked any really tough questions, though.” (Wow, she must be psychic!)

Fortunately, outside the mainstream, there’s still some real journalism going on, such as this update from THE EPOCH TIMES.

Yesterday, I expressed curiosity about the “backstory” of the abandoned MacBook Pro, notably how it came to be subpoenaed by the FBI –- where it seems to have been deep-sixed around the time of the Trump impeachment (hmm). Seems I was not alone.

Giuliani says he received a copy of the hard drive three weeks ago from his attorney, Robert Costello, who got it from John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. (Isaac had had the laptop for 90 days and was unable to contact the owner.) Steve Bannon negotiated a deal and passed it to the NY POST, which also did its own authentication. This deal allowed Giuliani to later disclose the material to other media as he is now doing. (This begs the question: Can Twitter shut them ALL down?)

What I’m most curious about is the FBI subpoena --- what was that about? Mac Isaac gave Costello a copy of what he said was the subpoena, dated Dec. 9, 2019, used to seize the laptop. (Fortunately, he copied the hard drive before he turned it over.) Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that he wants the FBI to "come clean." What were they doing with this? Why did they sit on it?

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware declined to confirm the authenticity of the subpoena. As in the old song, “They didn’t say yes, they didn’t say no.”

There are some inconsistencies with Mac Isaacs as a witness; the EPOCH TIMES piece mentions these. Still, they have little to do with whether or not this laptop is the real deal or a hoax. These emails are either real or they’re not, regardless of Mac Isaac’s motivations or the fact that Giuliani is Trump’s attorney. It’s understandable that Giuliani and other Trump advocates are working overtime to get the truth out, because “journalists” have utterly failed to do their job and don’t even care if Biden and his family are corrupt.

Mike Huckabee

“How Dare You Question Your Queen, Peasant?!” Wolf Blitzer of CNN committed the ultimate media sin by actually asking a top Democrat a tough question. He learned one reason why reporters never do that (you know the other reason.) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went into full-on huff mode when Wolf dared to ask her why she refuses to negotiate with Republicans to pass a coronavirus relief bill and keeps holding out for her far larger version, even as businesses are going bankrupt and Americans are losing their jobs and standing in food lines.

At the link, you can read quotes or watch on video as Pelosi haughtily lectures Blitzer that he’s wrong and should “respect the committees” and that the paltry $1.8 trillion offered by the Republicans is not even close to good. As for the people standing on corners begging for change, she claimed that “we see them,” although it might be hard through the smoked glass windows of her limo. Maybe $1.8 trillion just doesn’t seem like that much when you have $120 million and eat artisan ice cream out of two high-end freezers in your mansion.

Pelosi became so outraged at the effrontery of one of her house lackeys daring to question her that at one point, she said, "I don’t know why you’re always an apologist and many of your colleagues are apologists for the Republican position." Yes, she’s actually so far left that she thinks CNN anchors are spokespeople for the GOP!

This article also lists some of the vitally important demands that she’s holding up the virus relief bill over. They include $1 trillion for (blue) cities and states with no restrictions on how they use it, other than it can’t be spent on policing (as if it would be!); lots of climate change pork; revoking voter ID laws and legalizing ballot harvesting; funding pot shops and public broadcasting; racial quota enforcement on corporate boards; and taxpayer-funded free healthcare for illegal immigrants.

All obviously necessary actions to fight the virus and help Americans survive the endless lockdowns that Democrat politicians are enforcing, even though the WHO has now said they’re doing more harm than good and shouldn’t be the primary way of fighting the coronavirus. Ladies and gentlemen, the Party of “SCIENCE!” I assume that means “the science of picking the taxpayers’ pockets to increase your own power.”

If you think about it, when you hear Democrats complain about all the horrible things wrong with America, how many of those problems are largely caused by the same people complaining about them? We had a booming economy that was knocked for a loop by a virus from China (for whom they are boosters and apologists) and that continues to suffer due to lockdowns they enforced and refuse to lift. Racial divisiveness that was on the decline before they did everything possible to promote more of it. We have riots, crime and street violence in cities they run. They claim the riots are sparked by racist brutality by police forces they’ve controlled for, in some cases, up to 70 years. And after years of endless wars and growing terrorism, peace is breaking out all over the Middle East and they seem downright upset by it because Trump arranged it.

That’s why, when Chuck Schumer threatened for all the Senate Democrats to refuse to come to work, my first thought was, “Can you get the House Democrats to do that, too?” Imagine how many problems could be fixed in a week if they weren’t there to “help!”

U.S. Attorney John Bash of Texas, who was tasked by Attorney General Bill Barr with looking into the repeated unmaskings of associates of Donald Trump, resigned his office and left the Justice Department last week, without even issuing a report.

So far, the Department has declined to release any of Bash’s work.

News media are reacting as one might imagine, affirming that unmasking the names of American citizens caught up in surveillance of foreign targets was “a common and appropriate” practice exploited by conservatives to create a political conspiracy. (In reality, it used to be relatively uncommon.) According to the predictably predictable WASHINGTON POST, “Legal analysts feared that Bash’s review was yet another attempt by Trump’s Justice Department to target political opponents of the President. Even if it ultimately produced no results of consequence, legal analysts said, it allowed President Trump and other conservatives to say Obama-era officials were under scrutiny, as long as the case stayed active.” Here’s their take in full, if you really want to subject yourself.

Bash and his team were looking not only at the unmasking but also at the leaking of information to reporters, which we know was done. But the AG’s office chose not to release any findings publicly. According to WAPO, “the WASHINGTON POST was unable to review the full results of what Bash found.”

According to the WAPO story, Bash accepted a job offer in the private sector and told Barr of this about a month ago. He surprised many at the DOJ when he announced his departure last week, making no reference to the unmasking investigation he’d been working on.

The U.S. attorney replacing him in the San Antonio office will be Gregg Sofer, and it’s hard to tell if any leftovers from the investigation will be transferred to him, or if it will just be closed.

Bash had no comment. A spokesman for the DOJ’s San Antonio office had no comment. So far, Barr has had no comment. It’s not clear why the Department is holding back Bash’s findings --- even WAPO acknowledged that.

But Bash’s probe is just one part of this look into unmasking. Reportedly, U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation includes unmasking as well, and it’s hard to know how the two investigations overlapped. Barr has said that no report of Durham’s findings will be released before the election. But he’s also said he wouldn’t delay Durham’s findings over concerns about the election being so close. Well, that’s confusing; I guess he’s saying he won’t delay the findings but knows they won't be ready, anyway. So the question is, why the heck won't they?

We know, thanks to the efforts of then-acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, that unmasking requests skyrocketed under Obama, with more than three dozen former Obama administration officials on the list of those who made those requests. These include presidential candidate and then-Vice President Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.

But Bash will be providing details on none of this. As Trump said of a similar review conducted by U.S. Attorney John Huber in Utah, “He was a garbage disposal for important documents & then tap, tap, tap, just drag it along and run out of time.”

Since there's no report, it’s not known if Bash collected evidence that supported the allegations of Michael Flynn's attorney Sidney Powell, but on Monday, Powell appeared on FOX Business News with Maria Bartiromo to allege that the Obama administration participated in the smear campaign against her client.

Democrats are braying that, absent the indictments (well, there's been one), all of this is a big “nothingburger.” But we already know enough about it to say they're as wrong about this as they are about most things, which is saying a lot.

One thing noted by THE CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE last June is extremely pertinent to this perplexing new development: that Flynn’s conversation with Russian Ambassador Kislyak was NOT obtained by unmasking his name. Flynn himself had already been put under surveillance. The targeting of Flynn is something Durham should definitely be looking at. For when you have time, this detailed piece explains it all.

We know this is true from the Mueller report, which says that before Flynn’s phone call with Kislyak, “the FBI had opened an investigation OF FLYNN [emphasis mine] based on his relationship with the Russia government.” This is why there’s no paper trail of an unmasking request on this phone call with Michael Flynn. No unmasking necessary! They were getting that information anyway.

One piece of evidence that finally did come out on Tuesday was the FBI’s Steele dossier “spread sheet,” showing what was included vs. what was actually verified. Virtually nothing was verified. Finally declassified, this 94-page document supports –- one might say “verifies” –- just about everything we already knew about the phony Trump/dossier. It was a big pile of nothing. The “verification” was hearsay and circular reporting.

CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE also has an excellent, very detailed report for when you have time, including a link to a pdf of the spreadsheet.

Finally, Drew Holden at THE FEDERALIST said it well: “In hindsight, the allegations range from overeager to merely comical. But it’s important to remember that they have had a real, lasting impact on American politics, and that those chiefly responsible have yet to be held accountable.”

We're long past time to see accountability. It's now or never.

Mike Huckabee

If you’re looking for a new reason to hate Nike, try this: the ultra-woke sporting apparel giant just severed relations with Frank’s Sports Shop, which has been in The Bronx since the big star of the Yankees was Babe Ruth. After five decades, Nike sent a terse email saying the venerable family-owned store “no longer aligns with our distribution policy…This notice reflects a definitive final decision by the company.”

Moe Stein, the 92-year-old owner of Frank’s, said, “This is plain chutzpah. Let me tell you about Nike. We knew them when they had nothing. How do you like that? They’re putting down the Bronx. The Bronx! It’s not an elite place to them.”

Well, certainly not as elite as Beijing, which seems to be the place Nike is most concerned with these days. But it’s pretty obvious that neither Nike nor the sports leagues they’re in partnership with care much about Americans and their opinions these days, and the feeling is increasingly mutual. Sunday, the Lakers won the Finals over the Miami Heat, and a record low 5.6 million people tuned in. Last year’s game six, between the Warriors and the Raptors, drew 18.34 million viewers.

Liberal outlets like Yahoo Sports are trying to blame many other factors besides all the racial and political messages for the ratings collapse, like the coronavirus forcing multiple sports into competition. For instance, Sunday’s NBA game was opposite an NFL game that drew over 11 million viewers. But by comparison, in 1998, 36.9 million Americans watched the Bulls-Jazz game six alone.

Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban also tried to deflect the claim that sports fans are sick of in-your-face racial grievance politics, disrespect to America and kowtowing to BLM and China. His view on China: they’re “a customer” and they’re “not the only country with human rights violations.” To his credit, I haven’t seen anyone in basketball spin anything that fast since the Harlem Globetrotters’ Curly Neal spun a basketball on his index finger.

Mike Huckabee

We’re one day closer to Election Day --- now just three weeks out --- and most voters are still wearing blindfolds, clueless on a variety of issues. To a large extent, it’s because information is being hidden from them.

As reported yesterday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won’t even answer questions about what they plan to do in office, notably whether they’ll pack the Supreme Court –- a prospect that used to horrify even the most diehard Democrats. Attorney General Barr has told us not to expect U.S. Attorney John Durham’s report before the election is over, and it seems voters won’t even see an interim report. My patience has certainly worn thin. Lawmakers, even some Republicans, are dragging out the search for evidence that implicates Biden and his cohorts in potentially criminal behavior.

Voters tend to make their choices based on economic issues and other things that directly affect them, so why are the results of these investigations important now? Because if Trump loses, those same people will be right back in place, ending the investigations and cementing their power in a variety of ways. Voters deserve to know if their candidates are criminals. Heck, some in the middle who are currently leaning left might even care.

As we’ve reported, social media also play a huge role in hiding information. The Tweet Police at Twitter are blocking tweets that provide evidence of ongoing voter fraud with mail-in ballots. They even “play doctor,” critiquing and blocking President Trump’s tweets about coronavirus, comments that might be pretty darned informative considering what he’s personally been through. The mainstream media enforce the Democrat narrative as well, in part by hiding violence infecting those “peaceful protests” in leftist-run cities.

These are just a few examples. Their strategy is to HIDE EVERYTHING POSSIBLE UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION.

Speaking of hiding, we have an update on what I reported yesterday, about CIA Director Gina Haspel working to protect her agency from oversight at all costs. She received a letter last Wednesday from Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, ordering her to comply with a number of oversight requests regarding “Crossfire Hurricane” that they’d sent her in July. (July!) But she’s blown it off.

An excerpt from their letter to Haspel reads, “The American people have a right to know the full extent of official action taken by federal officials during the 2016 campaign, the presidential transition, and into the Trump administration...Unfortunately, many of the puzzle pieces remain hidden, and some of the information rests within your agency.”

Haspel was given until October 9 to comply with their requests. It’s now October 13. As reported earlier in THE FEDERALIST, Haspel is personally setting up the roadblocks. To protect her position, she’s pulling for Biden to win and all the Old Guard to resume their places in The Swamp.

As then-CIA Director John Brennan’s hand-picked station chief in London, Haspel was in the perfect spot to know what was going on with former MI-6 agent Christopher Steele and whatever was being choreographed across-the-pond to create the phony “Trump/Russia” narrative. But she’s still hiding it.

Ironically, Haspel said this during her confirmation hearing for CIA director in 2018: “As both a career intelligence officer and as an American citizen, I am a strong believer in the importance of oversight [and accountability]...I will uphold the Agency’s obligations to Congress and ensure that oversight works on behalf of the American people.”

What a hoot. The President should order her to respond fully to all inquiries immediately or else collect her things and be escorted out of the building. And how long does it take to prepare a subpoena?

So, why is all this important right now? Haven’t most people already decided which candidate to vote for? Yes, they have. In fact, many have voted already, as the DNC has been pushing them to VOTE EARLY! (The old saying “vote early and vote often” might not be much of a joke this year.) But Biden’s support is not what you’d call enthusiastic; many might swing away if they knew more: his rapidly deteriorating mental condition, his repeated and demonstrable lies, the radical leftists pulling his strings, his disrespect for voters, and, yes, his scandals, including alleged criminal conduct. The Democrat leadership knows that the sooner voters cast their ballots, the less likely they are to be operating on any of this information when they do.

Another investigation that hasn’t seen resolution before the election (and absolutely will end if the Democrats get back in power) is that of the DNC “hacks” that were supposedly done by the Russians. This was the start of the whole @#$% “Russia Russia Russia!” obsession we were subjected to for four years. Incredibly, some Biden supporters STILL believe that Trump was and is an agent of Vladimir Putin, and their votes will reflect that lie.

It would come as a surprise to most voters that there isn’t even any evidence that Russia hacked the DNC. You and I now know this was a story concocted by Hillary Clinton, apparently with help from one of her foreign policy advisers, to distract from her own email scandal. Recall that the cybersecurity company that DNC/Hillary law firm Perkins Coie hired to examine its servers and that launched the hacking allegation against Russia in 2016 was a firm called CrowdStrike, which is no little mom-and-pop.

CrowdStrike never transferred custody of the servers to the FBI but gave them reports, which were later cited by both the FBI and the special counsel. As RealClear Investigations writes, “During that fateful July 2019 phone call that would later trigger impeachment proceedings, Trump asked Ukraine’s [president] to scrutinize CrowdStrike’s role in the DNC server breach, suggesting that the company may have been involved in hiding the real perpetrators.” And why shouldn’t the President suspect them? After all, IT WAS HILLARY WHO HIRED THEM.

If you've been following the details, here’s the latest on CrowdStrike. By the way, the reason CrowdStrike is in the news today is that according to recent financial disclosure filings, Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul have just invested up to $1 million in CrowdStrike Holdings.

Mike Huckabee

Just a few weeks before the election, transparency should be the most important consideration of all. I’ve said numerous times that voters should, if they can, wait till Election Day to vote (in person) so they have as much information as possible. But this time, it seems that even those who wait till the last day to vote will lack information they should have. Why would anyone want to vote for a candidate who deliberately keeps them in the dark?

One thing Trump supporters love about him is that he respects them enough to tell them honestly what he wants to do, and then he actually does it. But in Washington, among all the politicians and bureaucrats, it seems he is just about alone in that. I’m talking about the bureaucracy and both political parties, which reflexively play everything close to the vest.

The Democrats have always run to the right of who they really are, but this time, they’re counting on voters hating Trump so much that they won’t care even if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t bother to answer questions about what they plan to do. Their evasion is downright cringe-inducing and, in effect, gives us our answer.

When asked directly by a reporter if voters didn’t deserve to know if he wanted to pack the Supreme Court, Biden actually said flat-out, “NO, THEY DON’T.” I’m sure many Democrats don’t even know what “packing the Court” is, and his media buddies will give him a pass, so he thinks he can get away with treating voters this way. How little regard his campaign has for the voters.

See, Democrats DO believe in walls, the kind that protect them from scrutiny. They’re still very much the party of the smoke-filled room --- or at least the modern smoke-free equivalent of that room --- with its secret deals and power brokers. Exhibit A: the placement of Kamala Harris on the ticket, which had nothing to do with the wishes of most Democrats, who had understandably rejected her early on. Reportedly, Bernie Sanders is calling the shots behind the scenes, as Hillary used to.

But Biden and the Democrats aren’t the only ones lacking in transparency. Some Republicans, even those who yammer incessantly about transparency, have been taking for freaking ever to reveal evidence about the intel community’s “meddling” in the 2016 election that President Trump has now FULLY DECLASSIFIED WITHOUT REDACTIONS. Some still tease us on FOX News with that cat-that-ate-the-canary grin and a cryptic, “Stay tuned.” Well, we can’t stay tuned much longer, as the election (the voting part, anyway) will be over in just a few weeks, and voters, especially those in the middle who might not have paid attention as diligently as we have, deserve to know what Biden and other Democrats did or did not do –- BEFORE casting their ballots.

For example, guess who is reportedly on Biden’s “shortlist” for attorney general if he is President? SALLY YATES. It sure would be nice to know what involvement both Biden and Yates had in the Russia hoax –- including the Michael Flynn case –- before Election Day.

I'm aware that the Senate Intel and Judiciary Committees are not involved in criminal prosecution, but for crying out loud, some of them have the security clearance to have seen every last classified document --- at least the ones the FBI and CIA have turned over so far; I’ll get to that in a minute --- and they should now be able to speak freely and openly about all of it. Just spill it. Don’t drag it out another week or even another day.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had set up a hearing for former FBI official Andrew McCabe, but McCabe dropped out; we’ve discussed his flimsy excuses. Sen. Graham said on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES that he’s still “trying to get him to come in voluntarily.” Why didn’t he just subpoena the guy? Now the committee will be tied up with the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings and McCabe gets to skate for who knows how long?

Who cares about “voluntarily” at this point? This has gone on too long. Senators, for crying out loud, get tough.

Sen. Graham disappointed on Sunday when he said this of Obama’s condoning of Hillary’s plot to smear Trump: “Now, is that a crime? I doubt it. Is it a crime to try to smear your opponent? Probably not. But what Obama did is one the saddest chapters in the history of the presidency. He knew that his party’s nominee was out to try to link President Trump to Russia unfairly, and without evidence, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

Wow, that mealymouthed criticism is just not strong enough, Sen. Graham. What Obama and his team did was far worse than that. With no evidence at all, President Obama --- and apparently Biden as well --- were at the very least complicit in the misuse of the FBI and a special counsel, using the full force of the American government to target the President-elect of the United States. That is much more serious than simply “smearing your opponent.” It is criminal. Americans need to see that it is criminal.

At least Graham outlined some possible crimes, noting that’s where U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation comes in. All right, but at this point, we've got to see the wheels turning at the Department of Justice, and so far there is nothing to see. Voters deserve transparency here, too. It’s Lady Justice who’s supposed to be wearing a blindfold, not the voters!

Devin Nunes appeared with Bartiromo on October 4 to talk about “smoking guns” and “information [that] needs to be made available to the American public.” Indeed. “And from what I understand,” he said, “there’s even more underlying evidence that backs up what Director Ratcliffe put out.” He noted that it’s been difficult to get to the bottom of this because of “corrupt officials.”

But now, another week has passed. CIA Director Gina Haspel is reportedly still holding on with her fingernails to documents unflattering to the CIA. AG Barr has said not to look for Durham’s report before the election. (Two words, Mr. Barr: INTERIM REPORT.) Ric Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence, was interviewed by Maria this Sunday, saying, “Somebody needs to go to jail, and be prosecuted first, obviously, and this is a slam-dunk...This can never happen again. We cannot allow our government to weaponize information, to hold it back.”

Recall that, ironically, Grenell was shut down by Twitter last Thursday for his tweet with pictures showing ballot fraud. Twitter is getting more adept all the time at withholding information.

This is what I mean about the importance of transparency, of ripping off the blindfold. Holding information back, in the context of an election, is just as bad as weaponizing it.

Mike Huckabee

One of the weaknesses of the bullying tactics of the left is that they believed that if they seized control of pop culture, sports, entertainment and the news media, they could tell all Americans what to do, say and think, and we would have no choice but to go along with it. They forgot that all those industries are, at bottom, capitalistic, and in such systems, the customers are always right, even if we’re not left. They depend on us to support their lavish lifestyles. When we get sick of being told what racists we are or listening to people insult America, our religious and political beliefs, and our intelligence, we can simply stop patronizing them and find something else to do with our time. As millions of us have.

That message might finally be starting to sink in. With movie revenues tanking and TV ratings plummeting for “woke” shows, pro sports and liberal cable news channels, some of these arrogant leftist celebrities might be starting to imagine themselves preaching their politics from a cardboard box in an alley instead of a mansion in Beverly Hills.

I mention this as a prelude to telling you that viewership for Game Three of the NBA finals took a plunge to 4.08 million from the record-low 4.5 million who watched Game Two, which itself shattered the record low of 7.41 million who watched Game One. At this rate, if there’s a Game Seven, it will be beaten in the ratings by reruns of “Green Acres” on ME-TV.

And just like magic, suddenly the bosses of the NBA seem to have decided that they made their point, the BLM moment in time was this past summer (emphasis on "past") and while America is, of course, still a horrible racist country, maybe next season there should be more basketball and fewer political messages all over the courts and on the players’ jerseys and in the fans' faces.

That would be a very smart business move. Although they might want to do it now while they can still afford new jerseys. And before all their former fans discover that “Green Acres” was a really funny show, and Arnold the pig never called his fans racists.

Mike Huckabee

The FBI arrested seven members of a militia group on charges of allegedly conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, “put her on trial” for her assaults on Constitutional rights, and kill her.

Naturally, Whitmer couldn’t imagine why anybody would hate her so she blamed the plot on President Trump for allegedly providing a “rallying cry” to rightwing hate groups – like the ones he has publicly denounced on over 20 occasions. Of course, the media also piled on in blaming Trump, as did Joe Biden, by once again tweeting the repeatedly debunked “very fine people” hoax quote from Charlottesville. Ironically, this could be considered an actual example of the incredibly irresponsible use of a racially-charged lie as a “rallying cry” to leftwing hate groups to attack a political leader (Trump.)

And just in case there’s anyone left in the media who bothers to do any research before repeating partisan attacks as if they were news, here is a story about one of the alleged conspirators, complete with one of his social media videos. He doesn't sound much like a Republican or Trump supporter. In his videos, he sat in front of an anarchist flag, raged against both the government and the police, and claimed the Constitution is illegitimate and laws and authority “doesn’t exist, dude.” And he never expressed any support for Trump in any way.

Personally, the anarchist flag, tats, ear hoops, unkempt beard, wool hat and “dude” all scream “leftist hipster radical” to me, but unlike everyone else in the media, I don’t leap to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence.

Mike Huckabee

This will come as a shock these days, but a group of academics, historians and college professors has released a statement demanding that American history be taught accurately.

The statement calls on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in ‘The 1619 Project” that claims that America’s founding ideals were false and the American Revolution was really fought to preserve slavery. They say there is zero evidence of that, the Revolution was fought for freedom and to defeat tyranny, and the Times knew it when they published that garbage, which is now being taught in many schools to make kids hate their own nation. One historian who actually worked on fact-checking the original piece pointed out the flaws but the Times editors ignored the suggested corrections.

The statement says that “given the glaring historical fallacy at the heart of its account, and the subsequent breaches of core journalistic ethics by both Hannah-Jones and the Times," they do not deserve the Pulitzer Prize. They write:

“The duplicity of attempting to alter the historical record in a manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction against professional ethics as a journalist can commit. A ‘sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay,’ as the Pulitzer Prize Board called it, does not have the license to sweep its own errors into obscurity or the remit to publish ‘deeply reported’ falsehoods.”

Honestly, that sounds like any issue of the New York Times, but we don’t need to give them prizes for it.

Mike Huckabee

MORNING EDITION

October 11, 2020 

By Mike Huckabee

"HUCKABEE" PREVIEW

Take off your face mask, relax and join me for another great new episode of “Huckabee” tonight on TBN! I’ll talk politics with Sen. Lindsay Graham and capitalism with financial guru Charles Mizrahi. You’ll meet the subjects of a stunning new documentary about a radical Islamist whose life changed when he went to Israel and met a Jewish Holocaust survivor. We’ll also have laughs from comedian Ron Pearson, then round it all up with rodeo world champion Tyson Durfey and his wife, country music star Shea Fisher, who will perform her latest release with Tre Corley and the Music City Connection.

It’s all coming at 9 EST/8 CST, on TBN. To find out where you can watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv and click on “Channel Finder” on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only “Digital Exclusives,” including extended interviews, “In Case You Missed It” and “Facts of the Matter” segments, and extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests, all at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.

EVIDENCE

Problems with mail-in voting? Why, that’s nothing but a hoax, bandied about “without evidence!” Oh, and here are another 50,000 pieces of evidence.

NEW MOVIE WORTH WATCHING

A documentary filmmaker has released a movie online called “The Trump I Know” (http://www.thetrumpiknow.com) that gives a completely different view of Donald Trump than the cartoonish villain depicted by the media. It features interviews with the many women in Trump’s family, businesses and staff, telling their personal stories of how Trump promoted them, gave them tremendous career opportunities, and has shown nothing but respect and support for them, which they return with fierce loyalty to him.

It’s staggering to think how different Trump’s public image and approval rating might be if people actually knew him the way those close to him do, instead of getting their view of him through 24/7 propaganda churned out by a mass media that’s relentlessly negative. I know that’s true because when he started this project, the director didn’t even like Trump. But by the time he’d finished it and talked to all the women who work for Trump, he said he had a “’Wizard of Oz’ moment.” A figurative curtain was lifted and he saw what the media have really been doing to create a scary false image. In that way, he hopes the movie won’t just give viewers insights into the women around Trump and what he’s really like, but also open their eyes to the ways they’re being fed unreliable information.

CRAZY FAR-LEFT

How crazy-far-left is Keith Olbermann? So much so that he quit a good-paying sports network job to go on YouTube, rant insanely and fantasize about being Joseph Stalin.

Note to Keith: I also think you could use some serious reeducation, but fortunately for you, I don’t want to send you to a gulag. All you have to do is read my newsletter. It’s even free to subscribe, which you should like since you get something for free that other people work to produce.

Mike Huckabee

We asked for reader comments on the Pence-Harris debate and were deluged. Most of them contrasted Pence’s honest, classy, gentlemanly manner with Harris’s dishonesty, evasiveness, condescension and immaturity. Many also agreed that the moderator was biased in her choice and wording of questions and overly strict handling of Pence’s time. (As we've noted, Kamala’s total speaking time was actually a little longer than Pence’s.)

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD TAKE NOTE: most of the letters focus sharply on DEMEANOR. This tells me something very important: that the President really should not reject an opportunity to debate again, as his contentious approach during the first debate --- understandable to us--- inadvertently played right into the wrong impression of him so many people have. This was not the Donald Trump we know. Actually, the first Trump-Biden debate was a worthless mess; neither man came off well at all.

The President says he's feeling really great now. The debate commission has picked a biased moderator, for sure --- a Democrat who interned with Joe Biden! --- but Trump has the skills to work around that. On Thursday night's HANNITY show, Trump called the commission "a disgrace" and even challenged Biden on the air to just have a debate on their own, in person, without the commission setting the rules. (Watch Biden hide behind the commission, which has rejected a second in-person debate.)

Anyway, letters are still coming in on Pence-Harris, but here are a few highlights. Notice how many of them concentrate on attitude and demeanor...

From Dee:

Last night we saw two people who very likely could be the leader of the free world USA. VP Pence showed he is knowledgable, articulate, intelligent, and able to stay calm in uncomfortable situations. K Harris showed us she knows how to make faces, deliver preplanned one-liners, and lie...not very well. Biden is not well and she is unequipped to handle the job. I will say I would be happy if President Trump stayed calm in his next encounter and just be prepared with the facts.

From Sue:

Pence killed it. He made great points and great rebuttals. He corrected her when needed and let her speak her nonsense enough to hang herself. Super job. So honored to have such a great VP. Pence 2024

From Karen:

How can I get on the debate committee? My dead cat could pick better debate moderators then the Republicans on the committee.

From Kay:

Fly picked the winner.

Tried to pack too much in too little time. Needed more time to answer questions.

From Gene:

Senator Harris bragged on her record as a D.A. When Pence questioned that record, she responded with "I won't be lectured..." What she's really saying is that she won't allow anyone to hold her accountable. That's not the look of transparency or the attitude of a public servant.

From Helen (excerpt):

Kamala started off with putting down the President. After the first 40 minutes, I had to turn it off. I would rather watch reruns of paint drying on a DIY show than listen to her blatant lies. I live in CA, I know all about her career...

From Claudia:

Watching her debate gave me PTSD. She is a very practiced liar. Thinking that she could possibly be President is the scariest thing I could ever imagine.

From LaDina:

I'm very nervous. Harris is nasty and I want Trump to be presidential at his next debate. Not to get mad or interrupt, and to look at us, not Biden. Pence was very good, but he missed some good openings to make good points.

From Bette:

If Trump can debate like Pence did, then the next debate could be of great value, but if it’s a repeat of the first one, then it shouldn’t go forward. Undecided voters are looking at the trustworthiness of the candidate as individuals, and all the hysteria and frustration get in the way. Please, Mr. President, show us your compassion and your love for Americans and our country in the next debate. People need to learn who you are as a person. We’re praying for our President and our Country’s future!

From Raelene:

Kamala’s laughter and smirking have us a great insight on how she really feels about our most serious issues as a country. I’m proud of how Pence stayed so respectful to everyone and didn’t find the serious matters funny as if they were a joke.

From Gina (excerpt):

The last question tells you all you need to know. A young girl asks about the fighting and Partisanship. Pence gives a story about Ginsberg and Scalia and there friendship. Harris tells the Charlottesville lie and bashes the President...

From Kathy:

I watched it till I couldn’t stand Kamala any more...She gives me that slimy feeling that politicians give off. They don’t really care about you and try to tell you everything you want to hear only to do nothing they said over the next 47 years they are in office.

From Patrice:

Mr. Pence. He can play poker.

From Gregory (excerpt):

He ate her lunch, dinner and tomorrow's breakfast, very gracefully and spectacularly...PENCE 2024.

From TD:

I don’t think it changed any minds. If you want higher taxes, murdered babies, infringements on the Constitution, then by all means vote Biden/Harris. If you want the government out of your business, vote Trump/Pence ticket. Federal government was not created to run your life but for your safety and security.

From Alissa:

Kamala is absolutely terrifying. Period.

From Mary (excerpt):

I am so thankful that Vice President Pence loves Jesus and is bold about it...He presented the facts clear and precise. Did not put up with any lying from Harris. I was greatly encouraged. God bless America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

From Kimberly:

VP Pence rocked it! Though I Iove my President, I hope he took notes. Please tell him to keep quiet and let Biden talk.. He [Biden] will hang himself.

From Chris:

OMGosh, my wife told me it really does no good to yell at the TV. She's right, of course.

And finally, Rhonda makes my point:

Trump needs to do the second debate no matter what (virtual or in person). He needs to tell the American people what his plans are for the next 4 years. Tell us –- we want to hear it with compassion & love for our country!!! He WILL win hands down if he goes that route!!!

Mike Huckabee

Last night was the one and only Vice Presidential debate, and I think it’s safe to say that Mike Pence did to Kamala Harris what Tulsi Gabbard did to her in the primary debates. But before I get into any details, here’s a link to watch the whole debate.

Here’s a write-up of the highpoints.

And for background, fact-checking and just fun, here are the live blogs of the debate from PJ Media, Townhall and Redstate, all worth scrolling through.

There was plenty of post-debate commentary, but rather than point you to partisan analyses, here’s one that hits on what I thought was the major takeaway of the night: the vitally important questions that Kamala Harris simply refused to answer.

Like her silence on whether they would try to pack the Supreme Court and her denial that Biden will ban fracking (see them both promise to do that very thing at this link)…

…Or her denial that Biden will raise people’s taxes “on day one” (he claims he won’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000, but he’s also vowed to reverse the Trump tax cuts, which he misrepresents as a “tax cut for the rich” – which Democrats call all tax cuts – when most of the benefits actually went to the middle class.)

At least somebody finally asked the Democrat these long-overdue questions, even though it often fell to Pence to ask them, since the moderator certainly wasn’t going to do it.

Both sides are claiming that their candidate obviously won, but flash polls showed viewers thought Pence was the winner by as much as 2-1. It was pretty clear to the undecided voters in Frank Luntz’s focus group that Pence won decisively. And these were actual undecided voters, not the kind in NBC’s recent Joe Biden townhall who were only undecided about whether to get their “Biden 2020” tattoos on their arms or their faces.

Those viewers appreciated that the debate was more cordial than the last one (a low bar indeed!), but didn’t like when questions were dodged. Their impression of Pence was that he seemed tired but presidential, while Harris seemed abrasive and condescending. That’s probably because of the smirking, eye-rolling and inappropriate laughter during Pence’s comments. I know some are claiming that’s sexist, and that women are held to impossible standards of presentation, but I refer you to the Bush-Gore debate where Gore rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically and everyone agreed that he came across as an arrogant jackass.

The best thing about this debate for me was that Pence got a chance to calmly explain what the Trump Administration has really accomplished on a variety of fronts, cut through the Democrat/media narrative that they’ve botched or failed at everything, and compare it to Biden’s dismal record, from the coronavirus to the economy to trade deals to China and the Middle East.

For instance, he finally got to remind viewers that while it’s tragic that over 200,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus, the world was blindsided with a new and deadly disease from CHINA (really glad to hear someone say that), and there was a tremendous public-private effort to study the disease while ensuring there were adequate supplies of ventilators, masks, hospital beds, etc., so that the predicted shortages and 2.2 million deaths never occurred. And he destroyed Biden’s claim that he would handle pandemics better by pointing out that Biden’s own health advisor admitted that if H1N1 (swine flu) had been as lethal as COVID-19, millions of Americans would have died under Obama/Biden’s feckless response.

As for Harris’ claim that Biden “has a plan” (they “have a plan” for everything, but don’t seem to want to share some of them), Pence noted that his plan is all things that the Trump Administration is already doing (I loved the dig about Joe's familiarity with plagiarism.) This is what I meant after the last debate when I said that Trump missed opportunities to correct a lot of false narratives. Pence grabbed those opportunities over and over and gutted the falsehoods like a trout.

Another highpoint came when Pence refuted the nonsensical rumors about Trump not accepting the results of the election by pointing out all the damage done by Democrats for 3-1/2 years because they still don’t accept the results of the 2016 election.

Harris followed Biden’s lead in repeating a number of debunked “fake news” stories and questionable partisan claims as if they were fact. To list just a few off the top of my head:

* That Trump called our soldiers “suckers” and “losers” (from an anonymously-sourced hit piece refuted by over 20 people who were actually there, including my daughter)…

* That Trump derided soldiers in Arlington Cemetery, saying, “’What’s in it for them?’ Because of course, he only thinks about what’s in it for him.” (Ripped wildly out of context; Trump was praising them for their selflessness and sacrifice.)

* That Trump “called Mexicans rapists and criminals” (he was specifically referring to MS-13 gang members, who are rapists and criminals.)

* That Trump refuses to denounce white supremacists (he’s done it over 20 times; here’s a video of 17 of them).

* That Trump said there were “fine people” among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville (he said there were fine people on both sides of the debate about removing Confederate monuments but that the neo-Nazis should be “condemned totally.”) This has been debunked repeatedly, even by liberal outlets; and the only excuse for repeating it now is that you’re either an idiot, a cynical liar or senile. I don’t believe Biden and Harris are idiots or that Sen. Harris is senile.

It was like a greatest hits list of debunked anti-Trumper stories. Judging from those statements, Harris and Biden believe everything they read on Alyssa Milano’s Twitter feed, which isn’t comforting when you think of them having access to the nuclear button.

A real debate moderator would’ve thrown a red flag on statements that are not spin or opinion but verified lies and fake news. I’m thinking of forwarding this list to the next moderators so they have no excuse for not doing their jobs when they inevitably come up again.

Speaking of bald-faced lies, Harris tried to dodge the Court-packing question by claiming that Abraham Lincoln declined to nominate a Justice until after the election. She said, “Honest Abe said, ‘It’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next President of the United States and then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land.'”

That’s patently false. That Court opening occurred in October, 1864, while the Senate was out of session, and back then, it didn’t reconvene until after the election, on December 5. Lincoln nominated Salmon Chase and he was confirmed, all on day one of the next Senate term.

I don’t think anyone will be nicknaming her “Honest Kamala” anytime soon.

Finally, here are the questions I would have asked Sen. Harris: You recently traveled to Wisconsin to sit by the bedside of a man accused of sexual assault who was shot while resisting arrest and tell him you were proud of him. You’ve previously said that women who make rape accusations should be believed (you even said it of Biden’s accuser before becoming his running mate), so should we not believe his accuser? And secondly, when two police officers in your home state of California were shot at point-blank range by a cop-hating criminal, did you fly to their bedsides to tell them you were proud of them?

Mike Huckabee

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is threatening to close Orthodox Jewish synagogues if they don’t obey his limits on public gatherings, and Mayor Bill DeBlasio is threatening to arrest Orthodox Jews if they dare gather to worship. But they give their blessings to huge mass gatherings of violent, black-clad protesters who behave like fascists. Now, let me think, who else did that?...

The Orthodox Jewish community responded angrily to the threats and restrictions last night, with hundreds of people rallying in Brooklyn and even lighting a fire in protest. Local Jewish lawmakers slammed Cuomo for his “scientifically and constitutionally questionable shutdown of our communities,” and city councilman Kalman Yeger told the crowd, “We are not going to be deprived of the right that we have in America, like everybody else in America, the right to observe our religion.”

Sadly, that right is also under assault all across America, but I’m heartened to see many churches and synagogues fighting back and winning in the courts. Also by doing what they did in Brooklyn: staging a mass protest, which the politicians threatening them can't object to because they've already declared that mass protests don’t spread the virus, particularly when there’s fire involved.

Mike Huckabee

Word went out while President Trump was in the hospital that he’d had enough of the Intelligence Community’s hiding of “Russia” documents and that he'd be using his time there to work on declassifying it all. Not surprisingly, he was true to his word.

He has DONE IT.

As he tweeted on Tuesday, “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”

Hallelujah.

Though we’ve heard from reputable sources that CIA Director Gina Haspel was holding on with her teeth to all remaining materials that might embarrass the Agency, rest assured that it's all coming out. Failure to produce these documents --- well, Director Haspel, I think that’s called “obstruction of justice.” Hand everything over now. Anyone who tries to slow the process can clean out his or her desk immediately and be escorted out, and they’d better hire themselves a good lawyer. As Devin Nunes said on Sunday, “THIS IS OVER.”

Last week, documents were declassified showing that then-CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed President Obama and other national security officials about information that Russian intel had learned Hillary Clinton was going after Trump with a made-up Russia scandal, tying Trump with Putin and the so-called hacking of DNC emails to detract from her own (real) email scandal. When former FBI Director James Comey was asked last Wednesday under oath about the investigatory lead the FBI got after this briefing, he laughably said “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.”

But now, in the first of what is sure to be a cascade of many document releases, we have Brennan’s own handwritten notes made after the briefing that Comey can’t seem to remember. They were first released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe with heavy redactions on Tuesday; one may assume from Trump’s tweet that the un-redacted versions will be available right away pursuant to his order.

Investigative reporter Sara Carter has a good analysis of what was going on with Brennan and why he might have supplied those notes. Remember, a smart intel guy is going to think in terms of “CYA.”

Most of the Brennan notes as seen here are still almost totally redacted. This is obviously the way Haspel intends members of Congress (and us) to see them. Trump is saying that will change.

Brooke Singman at FOX News also reported this on Tuesday.

Brennan’s notes reinforce what Ratcliffe included in his letter last week to Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ratcliffe also declassified a CIA memo showing that officials referred the matter to James Comey and Peter Strzok at the FBI for potential investigation. This really should "ring a bell" with Comey.

Right now, we’re still having to deal with redactions, as in Brennan’s largely blacked-out note that says, “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED], CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Won’t it be nice to know who [REDACTED] is?

One other part of Brennan’s notes that isn’t redacted consists of cryptic notes in the margins: “JC,” “Denis” and “Susan.” Easy guesses are that he was talking about James Comey, Denis McDonough (Obama’s chief of staff) and Susan Rice.

Importantly, since one way Brennan can "C" his "A" is to say that the "dossier" was Russian disinformation, numerous sources have characterized Hillary’s plot as NOT being Russian disinformation. One observation that makes particularly good sense: “This is not Russian disinformation. Even Brennan knew, or he wouldn’t be briefing the President of the United States on it.” Another source said, “...this information has been sought by hundreds of congressional requests for legitimate oversight purposes and was withheld for political spite --- and the belief that they’d never get caught.”

Ratcliffe himself said in a statement to FOX News, “To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community. I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”

As reported at NOQ (“News. Opinion. Quotes”) Report, “The President has promised to [eliminate the redactions] and offer complete transparency just in time for the November elections.” Mr. President, please make this happen IMMEDIATELY, as millions of people have already voted early. As I’ve long said, early voting is a bad idea, because voters need and deserve all the information they can get before casting their ballots. Holding information until after an election is in itself a political decision with potentially huge political consequences. We have only 27 days before voting (at least non-fraudulent voting) ends.

Paul Sperry, a longtime source of ours, tweeted, “When all the documents are finally declassified, and all the redactions removed from reports, the nation will see that the FBI and CIA not only knew that the Russia “collusion” allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.”

Finally, Sean Hannity, on his TV show Tuesday night, did a segment on this breaking news featuring Gregg Jarrett, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, who was Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager.

Of course, Jarrett has reported at length about Hillary and the Russia hoax, not to mention Obama’s cover-up. “He [Obama] sat there silently,” Jarrett said Tuesday night, “as our government was thrown into turmoil for the last four years over what he knew, based on the intelligence presented to him by John Brennan, which was phony information conjured up by Hillary Clinton...”

Lewandowski was more focused on the two-tier justice system and who is going to pay for this CRIME, the greatest hoax in political history. He said Trump told him in 2018 (!) that, yes, Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper and Comey DID KNOW it was all a hoax. They attempted to depose a duly-elected President, yet “not one person has been put in jail for this yet.”

The time has come. As David Bossie said Tuesday night, “You don’t have to be Columbo to figure this one out.”

Mike Huckabee

LEAVE ME A COMMENT BELOW. I READ THEM!

Mike Huckabee

One of the downsides for the media during Trump’s quarantine is that it’s so hard for some of them to practice basic human decency. Even if they can restrain themselves from celebrating that someone they disagree with politically has a potentially lethal disease, they still can’t stop themselves from hurling groundless accusations, spinning ridiculous conspiracy theaters and making up fake news. It’s hard to break a habit when you’ve been doing it every day for nearly four years, and besides, fake news is a multi-billion-dollar industry now.

So over the past few days, with Trump briefly out of commission, they had to struggle, but they came through. There were accusations that Trump wasn’t really sick and is just faking this to get out of debating Biden again (you know, the guy Trump keeps trying to talk into more debates.) But there are also accusations that Trump is much sicker than we’ve been told because the White House says he’s doing well and they’re “LYING LIARS WHO LIE!!!”

One “journalist” tried to prove that Trump isn’t really working by tweeting a photo of Trump signing a document that he claims is blank, as if you could actually tell that from a fuzzy vidcap taken from 15 feet away. I’m still trying to figure out the point. Even if he did just sign a paper for that photo, he’s still sitting up and signing things, not on a respirator. Oh, well, TDS is a sad disease itself.

The press’ desperation to spin everything Trump does as evil even extended to blasting him for putting on a mask and driving in a closed car past the crowds of well-wishers outside to wave thank-you to them. He’s putting police at deadly risk! (Wait, I thought masks worked to prevent the spread of the virus? If not, why are we all still wearing them?) Some even accused him of committing attempted murder and demanded he face criminal charges and be removed from office. Then, they do that every time he puts ketchup on a steak, so I think we can just wave and drive on by them.

Mike Huckabee

In Arizona, Republican Sen. Martha McSally is in a heated race against challenger Mark Kelly, who’s ahead in the polls because he's running more to the right than most Democrats these days. Kelly relies heavily on his resume as an astronaut while staying quiet about his positions on controversial issues. But he may be forced into talking issues thanks to two unique “October surprises.”

The first was an endorsement of McSally by three of Kelly’s fellow former astronauts. They say that being an astronaut doesn’t mean you’d be a good Senator, and they accuse Kelly of hiding a liberal agenda of high taxes, gun control and other leftwing positions behind his NASA resume.

And another moon boot just dropped with the release of an undercover tape of a Democratic field organizer admitting that Kelly isn’t talking about gun control because he has to get the Independents to vote for him. She says, “He’s trying to be elected and then he’ll implement the measures. You always can’t trust politicians.”

This story illustrates one of the key differences between the parties in the modern age. Democrats are afraid that if Republicans get elected, they’ll do exactly what they promised the voters they would do. And Republicans are afraid that if Democrats get elected, they’ll do exactly what they deny they plan to do. There's now plenty of evidence that both are correct.

Mike Huckabee

Former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was set to testify in person this Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee --- which is finally doing more than just talk about getting to the bottom of “Crossfire Hurricane” --- but he's now backed out because, he says, he’s scared of contracting the coronavirus.

It helps his case a little that the hearing has already been postponed after two members of the committee, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, tested positive for the virus.

But Carter Page, the subject of the FISA warrant that was used in “Crossfire Hurricane” as a window to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016, isn’t buying McCabe’s excuse. He thinks McCabe should go ahead and testify –- just do it remotely, as former FBI Director James Comey did last Wednesday.

As far as we know, this virus, contagious as it is, does NOT spread over the internet (it's not that kind of virus). I’ve already made the argument that if Comey could disgrace himself via Zoom, so could McCabe.

Page doesn’t think it should be so easy for McCabe to get out of this. He told Carrie Sheffield at JUST THE NEWS, “Hopefully a subpoena is issued today. It’s now Monday morning, and I hope that is resolved so that he can show up and be held to account and answer for these terrible problems that were created.”

I think McCabe’s real problem is that Comey so thoroughly botched his own testimony last Wednesday that McCabe can’t figure out how to protect himself. Comey obviously lied about not being able to remember former CIA Director John Brennan’s briefing concerning Hillary’s “Russia” story. (“It doesn’t ring a bell with me.”) Last week, we had the release, in the form of Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham, of information concerning the real origins of the “Trump/Russia” story, including that briefing. The actual events surrounding the opening of "Crossfire Hurricane" are a mess that McCabe surely hadn’t expected to get into.

So now McCabe’s attorney says he's afraid to testify in person but doesn’t think it’s fair for him to have to testify remotely. I might not be a sneaky lawyer, but I have a suspicion he set up this testimony to be in person just to give McCabe an “out.” The argument that this subject is too complex and contentious to be handled any other way but in person does not fly. Today we have the miracle of technology, which sometimes even works. If Joe Biden can run for President from his basement, Andrew McCabe can testify from his. Sens. Lee and Tillis can listen remotely, as well.

Page can certainly see through McCabe’s feeble excuse, and that’s not surprising given what he’s experienced over the past four years. “I think it’s another example of the complete double standards,” he said. “So many Trump supporters, including myself, were dragged in front of not only the U.S. Senate, which is what’s in question here, but the House.”

Remember what Trump said Monday about not letting the virus hold you back. The Senate might try gently humoring McCabe's "fears" by repeating Trump’s words, softly and reassuringly, “Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it.”

If that doesn’t get him into the witness chair, subpoena the son of a bee.

In case you’d like a review of the allegations in Ratcliffe’s letter to Sen. Graham, Andrew C. McCarthy has an excellent column on the subject.

This column appeared the day before Comey’s testimony last week; little did McCarthy know the extent to which Comey would lie and prevaricate. Still, it’s an extremely informative, easy-to-understand outline of what happened in the summer of 2016. Of course, if you've wearied of those details, you can just think of it as the Summer of Hillary Clinton --- that tells you just about all you need to know.

In related news, recall that CIA Director Gina Haspel is suspected of personally blocking the release of documents that might put the CIA “in the spotlight.” Sean Davis at THE FEDERALIST has an update, saying “multiple senior U.S. officials” have said she’s stalling in the hope that Trump will lose the election so that she doesn’t have to turn the documents over. “The frustration with Haspel is reaching nuclear levels,” one official is quoted as saying.

As we've reported, Haspel was John Brennan’s hand-picked CIA station chief in London during 2016-17 and is concerned about the release of documents revealing what the CIA was doing at that time. According to Davis, one senior official said that “Haspel and [FBI Director Christopher] Wray both want Trump to lose, because it’s the only chance they have of keeping their jobs. They’re banking on Biden winning and keeping where they are.”

How did they get these jobs in the first place? I want to know who recommended them to President Trump.

These skunks just want to protect themselves and their fiefdoms. This sounds like the same rationale the intel community had during the 2016 campaign --- why they desperately wanted Hillary to win, not Trump.

Another senior intel official said, “It’s far more important for Haspel to block any embarrassment of herself or her agency than to have full transparency and accountability. She’s just hoping she can get past the election so the documents will never come out.” Haspel has also been accused of ferociously lying about the declassification process and providing baseless excuses for her failure to produce certain documents, sounding pretty much to me on the same level as “My dog ate it.”

This is why the investigation is taking so long and why Durham needs to at least release an interim report NOW. I believe Trump will win, but with all the forces set against him, and the intensity of their determination, Durham’s got to do this JUST IN CASE. If he wants the results of his hard work to ever see the light of day, he should consider this report his legacy and his sworn duty.

We all know: If the Democrats get back in, all investigation of The Swamp will be shut down faster than you can say Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mike Huckabee

First, some breaking news: Andrew McCabe, who was set to testify, apparently in person, before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, won’t be appearing because he says he’s afraid of catching COVID. What?? Oh, for crying out loud, Mr. McCabe, just testify online. That's how your colleague Jim Comey disgraced himself, so why can't you do the same?

I know the virus is highly contagious, but if it spreads via Zoom, we’re all in big trouble. On the other hand, I guess that would give Biden an excuse to get back to his knitting and not make any more appearances during the campaign

Anyway, over the weekend, Maria Bartiromo on FOX NEWS SUNDAY reviewed what we’ve learned in recent days about Hillary Clinton and, yes, President Obama concerning their involvement in the Russia hoax. Of course, my readers already knew about this, but Maria’s guests had additional details.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy noted what a colossal waste of time the “Russia” investigation has been, focusing on a fake story when we've been trying for so long to get the real story. He said that when the letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to Sen. Lindsay Graham was released, leaders of Congress wanted to have a meeting about it right away, because in all this time no one in either the House or Senate had seen this information. “This should drive every member of Congress,” he said, “to go get the underlying information that John Ratcliffe has just made transparent to the world.”

Looking back now, the timeline of events is just tragic. In July of 2016, key people are briefed on a story that Russian intelligence have picked up that Hillary’s campaign was creating a false narrative about Trump “colluding” with Russia to take attention off her own scandal, which involved the use of a personal email server for all her official State Department business. Then-CIA Director John Brennan personally briefs President Obama and others of this on July 26. “Crossfire Hurricane” is conveniently (for Hillary) opened just a few days later, on July 31. When former FBI Director James Comey is asked about this briefing last Wednesday, he says it "DOESN’T RING A BELL.”

We know this is a lie. Investigating a major presidential candidate for being an agent of Russia is a huge deal, the details of which are not something that would simply escape one’s memory, unless perhaps we’re talking about Joe Biden’s memory.

McCarthy calls this “the biggest news that didn’t get reported.” True, last week was a big week for news, but there was plenty of time before the report that Trump had tested positive for COVID-19 to get it out there.

So, how was this information hidden from Congress (and the rest of us) for so long? Why did we appoint a special counsel when it was known even by Obama the previous year that the “Trump/Russia” story was part of Hillary’s election strategy?

Maria brought up another story we reported last week about CIA Director Gina Haspel still blocking the declassification of certain documents. Her own sources, Maria said, had told her Ratcliffe wants to see much more material declassified but that Haspel “does not want the spotlight on the CIA.” Well, that's just too bad, CIA.

McCarthy was followed by Devin Nunes, who made a great point: When Republicans in the legislative branch tried to find out where the “Russia” story came from, Comey and his colleagues didn’t seem to know. But now we have evidence that they absolutely knew, four years ago! And there's quite a lot more evidence that Congress still hasn’t seen.

"Here you have the media,” he said, “which is the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party...ignoring all of this for the last four years...so here they’ve been blaming Republicans having something to do with Russia when the whole damn time, THEY had something to do with Russia." In other words, it was the Democrats who were hiring Russian spies, not the Republicans.

Here is where Nunes spoke for all of us, by saying, “Every Republican, senator and member of Congress, should be saying, “THIS IS OVER. WE WANT EVERY DAMN BIT OF EVIDENCE THAT EVERY INTELLIGENCE AGENCY HAS, OR IT’S MAYBE TIME TO SHUT THOSE AGENCIES DOWN. BECAUSE, AT THE END OF THE DAY, OUR LIBERTIES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE WE HAVE IN THIS COUNTRY, AND THEY HAVE BEEN STAMPEDED OVER BY THESE DIRTY COPS AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE MEDIA WHO FAILS TO REPORT ON IT.”

Finally, former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell also appeared with Maria, saying, “We’ve had a scandal developing...largely because politicians have allowed individuals to hide information to create a false narrative by one side.” He characterized what Comey said in testimony this week as “really shocking,” because Comey is blaming mid-level career FBI people for what really came from the top down. There were voices who, early on, characterized this story as Russian propaganda, but the leadership “decided to hide those warnings,” and now Comey (protected by Democrat vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner of Virginia, Grenell alleged) is blaming those same people.

"This is what happens,” Grenell said, “when the insiders maintain control over all the information, and this is why I believe that President Trump as the outsider is being viciously attacked, because he’s getting close to really changing the way that Washington works and they do not want the rules changed...” He added that this is why the insiders support Joe Biden. They know he’ll play by their rules.

As Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas lectured Comey on Wednesday, what he did "has done severe damage to the professionals and the honorable men and women at the FBI, because law enforcement should not be used as a political weapon. And that is the legacy you’ve left.”

Mike Huckabee

“They Don’t Hear Very Well, Do They?” The media continue to press President Trump to denounce white supremacist groups and claim he refuses to do it. I recently shared a video showing him doing that exact thing on seven different occasions. Now, someone has compiled a longer video showing him doing it on 17 different occasions. You can watch it at this link, along with some more examples the video left out, which brings the total number of public condemnations of white supremacists to over 20.

All of this is a straw man. There is no giant surge in the number of white supremacist hate groups, or the SPLC wouldn't have to keep slandering benign Christian conservative groups as "hate groups" to gin up donations. We also know that the ludicrous claim that the rioters destroying blue cities are rightwing extremists in disguise is a lie because if they really were rightwingers, instead of being immediately released to do it again, they'd actually be arrested, jailed and have the book thrown at them, like anyone in those cities who uses his Second Amendment rights to defend his life, property or family.

The idea that Trump's supporters are all racists and white supremacists is a feeble excuse the Democrats cooked up to explain why he beat them in 2016. It saved them having to do any serious self-reflection about why they were really rejected, like the fact that eight years of Obama had proven that their policies are a disaster, and that they had nominated the most arrogant, entitled, dishonest and unlikable candidate in history.

Incidentally, the one candidate in the 2020 Presidential race who actually has been endorsed by a genuine, prominent white supremacist (Richard Spencer) is Joe Biden.

His campaign denounced the endorsement, but Biden himself never has personally. So how come the media aren’t demanding that he denounce Spencer’s endorsement? Oh, right: they don’t really believe this is an issue. It’s just a way to smear Trump with the same false accusation. Over and over and over. I think Candace Owens described the diminishing effects of this tactic perfectly in one word: “Boring.”

Say, here’s a way to put a fresh spin on it and make it more interesting: how about if the media start demanding that the Democrats apologize for their long, long history of supporting white supremacists?

Mike Huckabee

Because of Tuesday’s presidential debate, the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday didn’t get the attention it deserved at the time. But now, after a few days to unwind from that excruciating night, let’s take a look at what happened during the Comey hearing.

Comey was there at the prodding of Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the committee, which is looking into Crossfire Hurricane and FBI corruption related to that case. If there was ever any doubt that James Comey is the slipperiest, slimiest snake in the swamp, he certainly put it to rest on Wednesday. Comey showed a selective lack of “recall” that was even more pronounced than Hillary Clinton’s, if that is possible. He just couldn’t remember with specificity much of anything he did that had to do with the “dossier” or FISA.

Any more mental lapses and he would’ve been qualified to run for President as a Democrat. Except in Comey’s case, it was an act.

Someone as smooth as Comey has to be pinned down quite forcefully to show how much he has to hide and how hard he’s trying to hide it. On Wednesday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley did exactly that. He skillfully filleted Comey like a fish. Hawley must be pleased to know that Megan Fox at PJ Media described his style as that of “a young Perry Mason with better hair.”

I\If Sen. Hawley was having a good hair day, he was also having a good questioning day. Comey could only go into his “Duh, I dunno” routine and at one point, after being hopelessly caught in an inconsistency, smirk and shrug idiotically. But Comey is not an idiot; his line of defense at the hearing was obviously to protect himself legally by “knowing” or “remembering” as little as possible, present himself as ethically pure, and give the impression that, hey, the FBI is ALWAYS this incompetent.

Comey tried to distance himself from the grossly misleading and error-ridden FISA application and weasel out of his own responsibility, even as Hawley pressed him on the fact that he had personally signed off on it. (Examples of Comey’s distancing: He said “what the FBI Director does in connection to a FISA is actually very narrow.” He said he doesn’t regret his “role” in this matter; he regrets that “it happened.”) If Comey’s not responsible for the verified accuracy and truthfulness of the content, then what does his signature to that effect even mean?

Comey claimed he didn’t have “personal knowledge that would have led me to understand that we weren’t supplying complete information.” But Hawley challenged him on the true extent of his personal knowledge, asking him if at the time he certified the first FISA application against Carter Page, he knew that Christopher Steele was working for the DNC.

"I don’t know if I knew [it was] the Democratic Party,” Comey prevaricated. “I knew that he was working for political opponents of President Trump.” (We know now that by the time of the FISA application, Comey and all those top-tier people knew Steele was working for Hillary.)

Hawley zeroed in: “Now surely you recognized at the time that relying so heavily on a biased source would undermine public confidence in the FBI’s activities, didn’t you?”

"No, I did not,” Comey answered tersely. NO, HE DID NOT??

Hawley went on, using Comey’s self-serving comments from other testimony against him. (Example: “You...said, ‘A reasonable appearance of bias can corrupt the American people’s faith in your work as much as actual bias can.’ Do you stand by those remarks?”) It was masterful.

He brought up Stuart Evans, a lawyer in the national security division of the DOJ under Obama, “reminding” Comey that before the first FISA, Evans raised “serious concerns about the ostensibly partisan nature of the information provided by Mr. Steele, did he not?”

Comey, again very tersely: “I don’t know.”

Hawley then cited Evans’ concerns as they appear in the IG report. This was a total take-down of Comey, who went on to claim not to have known who Steele’s sub-source was or anything about him. (Of course, we now know that the FBI had previously investigated this person over several years on suspicion that he was a Russian agent.) Hawley again read from the IG report: “‘Comey told us that the application seemed factually and legally sufficient when he read it. He had no questions or concerns before he signed it.’”

Comey stared into the camera like a diminished human being.

The former FBI Director actually said that the referral from the IC (intelligence community) to the FBI of Hillary’s plan to smear Trump with a story about “collusion” with Russia (the one referred to by DNI John Ratcliffe in a letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham) “doesn’t ring any bells with me.” If that is true, Joe Biden’s not the only one who could benefit from memory-enhancing drugs.

More details at the link, including the spectacular must-watch video of Sen. Hawley expertly nailing Comey to the wall.

It should now be obvious to all that James Comey and Hillary Clinton were cut from the same cloth. And the cloth is that slippery kind that slides around and won’t stay put.

Keep in mind, Comey was FBI Director, supposedly at the helm of an enormously significant and politically-charged case. Imagine: investigating a major-party presidential candidate for possibly being an agent of Russia and colluding with Vladimir Putin to win the election! That would be treason. Comey would have demanded to know every detail –- just as Obama and Brennan would have.

And yet, today, Comey is vague on the details. How was he able to write a book?

Reaching the end of his time to question Comey, Hawley asked the former FBI director, “How are the American people supposed to trust the FBI following abuses like this?” Comey responded just the way you’d expect: he focused on his own integrity.

Comey will go down in history all right, not for his integrity but for his stupendous lack of it. Thanks to Sen. Hawley for giving the world a clearer look at the FBI, from the top down, in 2016.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

We’re sad to report the deaths of two major music stars of the 1970s on Tuesday, both at age 78. No cause of death was announced for pop singer Helen Reddy, but she suffered from Addison’s disease and was diagnosed with dementia in 2015.

During her heyday, Reddy had her own variety show, appeared on countless other TV shows, acted in movies such as Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” and on Broadway and London’s West End, and 15 top 40 Billboard singles, including six top 10’s and three #1 hits. They include “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” “Delta Dawn,” “You and Me Against the World,” “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady” and “Angie Baby.”

Her biggest hit, though, and the one that cemented her forever as a feminist icon, was 1972’s “I Am Woman,” for which she wrote the lyrics and Ray Burton wrote the music. It went to #1 and won her the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal. She said it was inspired by the strong women in her family who survived the Depression, world wars and abusive, alcoholic husbands, and by the sexism she’d had to battle in show business. (Ironically, some feminists were upset over the line, “But I’m still an embryo,” since they didn’t want to associate the women’s lib movement with a pregnancy – or maybe they didn’t want to associate an embryo with a human being.)

Ironically, the massive success of “I Am Woman” helped end Reddy’s career. When she learned it was mentioned in a friend’s daughter’s history book, she decided she’d made her mark and could never outdo it, so she retired in 2002 to her native Australia. Aside from a few occasional live performances, she mostly devoted herself to her family and a new career as a clinical hypnotherapist. Ironically, just this month, a new movie about her life debuted. It’s called “I Am Woman.”

Also on Tuesday, pop/country singer/songwriter/actor Mac Davis passed away in Nashville after heart surgery. Davis recorded a number of hits, including “Stop and Smell the Roses,” “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me” and “It’s Hard to Be Humble.” He also wrote many hits for other artists, including Kenny Rogers’ “Something’s Burning,” Gallery’s “I Believe In Music,” the Elvis classics “In The Ghetto,” “Memories” and “A Little Less Conversation,” and even co-wrote the recent Bruno Mars hit, “Young Girls.”

Like Reddy, Davis also hosted his own NBC variety series and acted in movies (“North Dallas Forty,” “The Sting II”) and on stage (“The Will Rogers Follies.”) He was so versatile, he is both a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

* * * *

A personal post-debate note…

Last night, to cure my post-debate headache, I put on Amazon Prime to watch “The Andy Griffith Show.” By sheer dumb luck (the same force that kept my wife Laura from dying when she caught swine flu under Obama/Biden), the next episode up in my rotation was “Politics Begins at Home” (Season 7, Ep. 8.)

In it, Aunt Bea decides to run for city council, not knowing that Andy has already endorsed county clerk Howard Sprague for the seat. She accuses Andy of being a sexist and doesn’t believe his pleas that he just thinks Howard is better qualified for the position. After making his life miserable for a while, she goes to a debate with Howard. When people ask about issues of local importance, like whether to build a new bridge or sewer system, she has the same answer:

If the people want a bridge (or sewer system or whatever), then they shall have a bridge! The people’s will shall always be supreme and lead us through the dark night of politics (or something like that.) Naturally, it gets a lot of applause.

Then Howard keeps explaining, with facts and figures, why those projects would be wastes of taxpayer money and how the same thing could be accomplished much cheaper.

Eventually, Aunt Bea stands up and urges everyone to vote for Howard because he’s obviously the most qualified and she doesn’t know why anyone would vote for her.

If only last night’s debate had gone like that, with Uncle Joe in the role of Aunt Bea.

Mike Huckabee

Chris Wallace is taking a lot of flak over his “moderation” (odd to use that word in this context) of Tuesday’s Presidential debate, but one moment in particular rankled many conservatives. It was when he couched President Trump’s ban of “critical race theory” seminars in government offices as banning “racial sensitivity training.”

“Critical race theory” is almost the opposite of racial sensitivity. It’s born out of a Marxist movement to use race to sow division and resentment. It’s fundamentally racist itself, as it singles out white people for public shaming, making them admit to being evil racists even if they’re not. It not only destroys Dr. King’s vision of a colorblind society, it actually promotes racism by insisting that people be judged not by their individual character but by the color of their skin. If it hadn’t been promoted and protected by the left, I would imagine it would have resulted in a lot of lawsuits by now for blatantly violating federal anti-racist workplace laws.

If you want to know more about what “critical race theory” is, where it slithered out of, and the damage it’s doing, Timothy Daughtry has an excellent review of it at Townhall.com. I also recommend that Chris Wallace read it.

Mike Huckabee

I don’t have much in common politically with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, but on ABC’s “This Week,” he made some comments that deserve to be taken seriously by his fellow Democrats.

Other Democrats are throwing ridiculous allegations at Judge Amy Coney Barrett (including claiming she’s totally unqualified and suggesting she’s a racist for…adopting two black children?), and threatening to try to disrupt and delay her confirmation hearing with procedural tactics and general tantrum-throwing. But Durbin admitted that Democrats have no power to stop her confirmation, that "we can slow it down perhaps a matter of hours, maybe days at the most. But we can't stop the outcome."

Instead, he said, "I've met with every Supreme Court nominee since I've been in the Senate. I will extend that courtesy, if she requests it, for at least a socially distanced, safe meeting, perhaps over the phone. I want to be respectful. We disagree on some things. And in terms of participating in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, I'll be there to do my job."

Even more stunning, Durbin publicly refuted Hillary Clinton’s plea to Joe Biden not to concede the election under any circumstance (like she’s apparently never conceded that she lost in 2016, and this is what that kind of denial of reality does to your mind.) Durbin said, "I respect her, I like her. But I think she's just flat-out wrong. The election itself is going to be announced, the winner will be announced at some point. If we are going to maintain a democracy, peaceful transition through an election is the only way to do it. Whoever the winner is, if it is clear and legal, that should be announced and the other party should concede." (This is assuming that Hillary was not talking about dragging out the results while enough new ballots could be “found” to win.)

Durbin’s words are a refreshing throwback to a time when political differences took a backseat to the good of the nation, and when all Americans observed the great traditions that have made America such an exceptional nation, like accepting losses, respecting other people’s right to hold different views, working across the aisle and observing a peaceful transfer of power after elections. One of the silliest stories of the past month has been the accusation that if Trump lost, he might not accept the outcome and that would be a “constitutional crisis.” Would it be worse than all the Democrats who still haven’t accepted that they lost four years ago, and are willing to burn the Constitution over it, from blowing up the Electoral College to packing the Supreme Court? They’re like children who scream that no race is “fair” unless they win it.

These days, too many people not only ignore those traditions, they deny that America even has great traditions or is an exceptional nation at all. Yet the things they would replace our traditions with would reduce us to the level of “world’s biggest banana republic.”

May Dick Durbin’s wise words (and courage to speak them aloud) sink into his fellow Democrats’ craniums and inspire some long-overdue soul-searching. At long last, there’s an adult in the room. (Or at least there was until he started endorsing some of the proposed changes Democrats would make if they win back the White House and Senate, but we can all save him from himself by voting to prevent that.)

Mike Huckabee

Project Veritas just released a new undercover video expose of alleged voter fraud tied to Rep. Ilhan Omar. It involves accusations of vote buying and ballot harvesting to keep Omar and other members of the DFL (Democratic-Farmers-Labor Party) in power in Minnesota. This is a must-read, and more details are at the link.

Just a few lowlights: alleged ballot harvester Liban Mohamed is on video showing piles of ballots in his car and bragging about harvesting 300 that day for his brother, Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman (state law bars anyone from acting as a “designated agent” for more than three absentee voters.)

An anonymous whistleblower also claims that before the August primary, Omar’s ballot harvesters went to the Charles Horn Towers public housing complex and took every ballot from seniors there. She said, “They have perfected this system…They will tell you we are applying for your ballot. They take a picture of your Social Security and your driver’s license. They have a database. When the ballot comes, they track it. Sometimes, they make fake emails. They track the ballot. Then they come and pick up the ballot, unopened…They don’t give a (bleep) about any Somali…The DFL wants to win this state at all costs…and the victims is the Somali people.”

She also claims that young people and women were paid for their votes in the primary and that campaign operatives “were carrying bags of money…When you vote and they mark you off, then you get in the van, they give you the cash.”

Read the whole thing and get justifiably and non-partisanly furious. These tactics not only put corrupt politicians in power over all of us, they also cancel out legitimate votes and disenfranchise real voters. I have little faith in Minneapolis officials to investigate this (they’re too busy defunding their police department), but maybe it will finally convince FBI Director Christopher Wray that vote fraud really is a problem worth dealing with.

Mike Huckabee

Saturday, President Trump made it official, nominating Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

As you can see in the linked article, Democratic leaders are already resorting to their standard playbook: foaming and fulminating, citing the Constitution incorrectly and accusing the nominee of wanting to take health care away from American families (as the mother of seven kids, including a special needs child, obviously would.) And of course, we’re already hearing from some Democrats like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (whose previous government experience for the Senate was one term in the House) that Barrett is “clearly unfit for the Supreme Court.”

So in advance of the hearings, which Republicans hope to wrap up by October 26, I thought you might like to know a bit about her resume. She got a magna cum laude BA in English lit from Rhodes College and was inducted into the honors fraternity Phi Beta Kappa. She went on to study law at Notre Dame on a full scholarship, was executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review and graduated summa cum laude and first in her class. She spent two years as a law clerk, including for SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia, and three years in private law practice, including doing research for the historic Bush v. Gore case.

She became a law professor, teaching first at George Washington University and then Notre Dame, where she received the “Distinguished Professor of the Year” award three times. Here’s an article by three former students of varying political views who all agree that she’s the embodiment of integrity and virtue, she “treats every person with whom she interacts with the utmost respect, kindness, and warmth” and “the nation could not ask for a more qualified candidate":

And here is a Notre Dame law school colleague who disagrees with her political views but says her “intellect and heart are unrivaled,” and that she is brilliant, humble, loving, kind, a principled and careful judge and “one of the most generous people I have ever met,” as well as “a leading constitutional law scholar and one of our best, and most challenging, teachers.”

She’s continued teaching law, even while serving as a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and raising seven children, two adopted from Haiti and one with Down Syndrome. She also personally went to bat for a blind student who was having problems and mentored her for three years. She recently completed service as the first blind Supreme Court law clerk in US history.

If that’s what Democrats consider “unqualified for office,” what would they call AOC?

Mike Huckabee

From our “Voter Fraud Is A Rightwing Myth” File: Authorities investigating election issues in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, found nine mail-in military ballots that had been discarded. All nine were votes for Trump.

Skeptics may scoff that it’s “only nine ballots,” but those would be nine US military members who would’ve been disenfranchised from selecting the commander-in-chief who has the power to send them into endess, pointless wars or not, just as every fake vote cast disenfranchises a real voter. Also, we don’t know at this point how many ballots were discarded, only that nine were recovered.

As the linked story notes, this follows a report of three trays of mail, including absentee ballots, being found in a ditch in Wisconsin.

For those who dismiss the Pennsylvania story because it’s “only nine ballots,” we have news that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed 134 felony charges, including election fraud, mail-in ballot fraud and tampering with a government record, against four people in an alleged scheme to steal a Democratic primary election in Gregg County in 2018. In that race, incumbent County Commissioner Shannon Brown was losing to his primary challenger by a handful of votes until mail-in ballots put him five votes ahead, and he went on to be reelected.

Brown is now facing 23 charges with the others filed against three associates. Paxton says the accused engaged in a scheme to swing the election by targeting young, able-bodied voters to cast ballots by mail by fraudulently claiming the voters were “disabled,” in most cases without the voters’ knowledge or consent. 239 of those ballots bore the signatures of just five people supposedly helping the voters fill them out. The investigation came after the challenger smelled a rat and sued, noting that over a third of the ballots cast were by mail and 29% claimed to be disabled, which must make Gregg the most disabled county in Texas.

It’s interesting that as the Democrats are denying mail-in vote fraud exists, we keep getting evidence that it does and is largely used by Democrats (ahem…New Jersey!) In this case, it was (allegedly) used by a Democrat to cheat another Democrat out of an election win! You’d think that would at last raise their concerns about voter fraud.

But then it appears Democrats might be getting concerned about their big “everyone vote by mail” push blowing up in their faces, since they’re changing their position faster than Joe Biden has on…well, name any issue. They’ve been pushing hard for universal voting by mail (not requesting an absentee ballot, but just mailing out blank ballots to everyone on the voter rolls, which would flood the nation with easily-falsified ballots (again, see “New Jersey.”) But now, they’re urging their voters to vote in person.

Previously, the cover story fed to the media for why Democrats had to vote by mail was that while the coronavirus doesn’t spread at leftist protests and riots, it’s wildly contagious among people in masks standing six feet apart in orderly polling station lines. But now, there’s a new cover story: if Trump loses to mail-in voters, he might refuse to leave office and institute “fascism,” something he’s never threatened and that is laughable coming from the people who’ve given us masked thugs threatening people with violence if they don’t vow allegiance to the thugs’ political views and vote the way they’re told.

Stacey Lennox at PJ Media suggests a more believable reason for the sudden flip-flop: while Republicans are listening to Trump (and me, I hope!) and planning to vote in person, far more Democrats say they plan to vote by mail. And while that does make voter fraud easier, they suddenly realized that mail-in ballots are far more likely to be disqualified because voters on their own are more likely to fill in the ballots incorrectly.

Naturally, the Biden campaign denies that they’ve never encouraged anyone to vote by any particular method. So the advice to Democrats remains what it has always been: Vote early and vote often.

Mike Huckabee

Many people are talking about Joe Biden’s “home in bed by 9 a.m.” campaign, but there are also questions about why his running mate Kamala Harris is equally MIA. She hasn’t held a press conference since Biden picked her 45 days ago. Does she really need two months to “prepare for the debate” with Mike Pence?

But Harris did finally speak out in public this week. Americans' support of BLM is plummeting and polls show people are sick of violent rioters and bullying thugs masquerading as “peaceful protesters” and want more police to restore law and order. Even Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi finally felt forced to speak out against the lawlessness.

However, during an appearance at the NAACP’s national convention Thursday, Harris was effusive in her praise of Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests. Harris praised the “brilliance” and “impact” of BLM, adding, "I actually believe that Black Lives Matter has been the most significant agent for change within the criminal justice system." She also hailed the protests as “an essential component of evolution in our country," declaring, “the people's voices must be heard, and it is often the people who must speak to get their government to do what it is supposed to do, but may not do naturally unless the people speak loudly -- and obviously peacefully." I'm sure the DNC was relieved that she tacked on that last part as an afterthought.

Maybe this will give a clue as to why the Democrats have been keeping her hidden and would rather have nobody speak for their ticket than her. She gives away what the real governing philosophy will be if they can just get enough voters to take in the Joe Biden Trojan Horse.

Mike Huckabee

I warned you that you’d better learn the media term “called a lid for the day” (meaning a candidate will have no further comments or events for the rest of the day) because we were hearing it a lot from the Biden campaign. But just to be clear how little time Joe is putting into campaigning, his people have put a lid on the day before noon nine times so far this month, and some of those lids dropped before 9 a.m. I’d say that Trump does more before 9 a.m. than Biden does all day, but for Biden, 9 a.m. IS “all day.”

Now, with major news exploding all around us, Biden has nothing scheduled except a trip to Washington to mourn Ruth Bader Ginsburg from now until Tuesday, when the first debate takes place.

Matt Vespa at Townhall.com suggests that this is because they’re panicked that he’ll go off the rails if asked about the blockbuster Senate report on his son Hunter’s financial shenanigans, but seriously, what are the odds that any media outlet he’d talk to would ask him about that? The big liberal news outlets that even mentioned that report presented it not as an in-depth expose of Hunter’s shady influence peddling but as a partisan attack on Biden “without evidence” (Trademark registered.)

The official excuses for Biden spending less time campaigning than Hillary Clinton (and I mean less time than she’s spending NOW) are that he’s “modeling good coronavirus behavior” by not appearing in front of crowds like Trump (I thought the virus didn’t spread in crowds of Democrats who hate Trump) and that he’s “preparing for the debate.”

This was dutifully echoed by his media peanut gallery. But the debate was over five days away when his campaign put a lid on that day, the next day, the weekend and the first two days of next week. Trump is preparing for the debate while dealing with many major issues and campaigning all over the US. In other words, working all day long, like a President has to. Plus, we know what the debate topics will be and that Chris Wallace will ask both candidates to describe their visions for America under their leadership.

If, after 47 years in Washington, 8 years as Vice President and three Presidential runs, Joe Biden can’t tell us off the top of his head what he would do if he became President, then there’s nothing on the top of his head other than hair plugs.

Mike Huckabee

(Correction: our editor wishes to apologize for pulling a "Joe Biden" with Agent BARNETT's name in this piece when it ran originally, adding that 3AM might have been the time for performance-enhancing drugs. Also, Amy Coney Barrett had been in the news all day. We promise never to refer to her as Amy Comey Barrett. Please enjoy the corrected version in its entirety.)

I don’t know if Maria Bartiromo had something in her eye during this weekend's edition of SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES, but it sure looked like a small tear running down her cheek as she reported that, according to her sources, John Durham’s report on the “Trump/Russia” investigation would not be out until after the election.

Durham’s office reportedly had concerns that delivering his conclusions this close to the election would be considered too politicizing, but I strongly disagree. I’m with Sen. Ron Johnson, who appeared on her show later in the hour. We’ve long been saying that it’s the withholding of information until after the election that should be seen as politicizing, not the releasing, as voters deserve all the information they can get before casting their ballots. Sen. Johnson said essentially the same thing on Sunday.

One of Bartiromo’s guests, Sen. Lindsay Graham, did have encouraging news: the Senate Judiciary Committee intends to call William Barnett, the FBI agent who opened the Michael Flynn case –- after being personally selected by Joe Pientka, who supervised “Crossfire Hurricane” –- and learned over time that it was all about “getting Trump.” Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway have a new report on the interview with Barnett conducted just under two weeks ago by U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to review the special counsel’s handling of the Michael Flynn case.

One thing that stood out to me in reading this was that Barnett said special counsel agents would actually joke about it being a game of “Collusion ‘CLUE.’” In this game, he said, investigators choose any character, in any location, conducting any activity, and pair this person with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion. Hilarious.

Barnett is essentially a whistleblower now –- not the kind Democrats like –- and the transcript of his interview with Jensen, or at least the summary, was obtained by Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell and filed with Judge Emmet Sullivan. (If Durham isn’t going to release any report before the election, we’re dependent on this sort of process to get the facts out.)

Barnett said in his interview that there was never any basis for the Trump/Russia “collusion” theory. He told DOJ investigators that “the handling of the probes [Flynn and Paul Manafort] troubled him so much that he threatened to quit working on it in one case, and threatened to go to the Inspector General in another."

In 2016, when Barnett was first assigned to the case, he thought that reading through the evidence would give him a better understanding of why the investigation into Trump’s “collusion” with Russia was launched. But after about six weeks, he still couldn’t figure it out. He characterized their theory as “groping.”

Barnett is the agent who moved to close the Flynn case due to lack of evidence. He’s the one who was told by Peter Strzok that the “7th Floor” wanted to keep it open and that Flynn should be investigated for a Logan Act violation. (Recall that then-Vice President Joe Biden was present at the January 5 Oval Office meeting during which this was discussed and, according to Sally Yates, was the one to bring up the Logan Act.) Barnett was not familiar with the Logan Act –- who was? –- but after researching it, knew that it didn’t apply to Flynn, who was not a private citizen but the incoming national security adviser.

Read the Davis/Hemingway piece for details of how Barnett was cut out of Strzok and Pientka’s “ambush” interview with Flynn. Apparently, Barnett was left out of other meetings as well, as the Flynn probe was directed “from the top down,” meaning all the direction was coming from senior officials. (My speculation is that by then, they would've liked to have him off the case but were worried about what he might say publicly.)

By February, 2017, Barnett had had his fill and asked to be removed from the case. In his interview, he said that the Flynn investigation “was problematic and could result in an IG investigation.” (He didn’t need a crystal ball for that one!)

Ironically, it was the supervision by top officials that had made him think it must be legal, as uncomfortable as it made him. Barnett added that one analyst who was “very skeptical of the Flynn collusion investigation” ---name not provided, but it wasn’t Barnett --- was indeed removed from the Flynn investigation. (Surely Jensen has interviewed that person.)

When the Flynn investigation was made part of Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe in May, 2017, Barnett told team member Jeannie Rhee that there was “no evidence of a crime” committed by Flynn. She dismissed his concerns. He said he didn’t want to be involved in the special counsel, but Peter Strzok urged him to move over there. Davis and Hemingway report that Barnett “decided to work at the special counsel office in the hope his perspective would keep them from ‘group think.’”

Once Barnett was working with the special counsel, he could see the “group think” in action --- what he characterized as “GET TRUMP.” The investigation was run in the opposite way of how an FBI investigation would be. He said, “There was always someone at SCO (special counsel’s office) who claimed to have a lead on information that would prove the collusion, only to have the information be a dead end.” It happened over and over.

Incidentally, Barnett never wiped his phone, though he testified that other members of the special counsel would joke about wiping theirs.

The notes from Barnett’s interview ended with this: “Barnett believed the prosecution of Flynn by SCO was used as a means to “get TRUMP.”

It seems there might be much more behind Durham’s delay than we even imagined. RedState.com has some interesting observations on that.

This report came in after Maria Bartiromo’s show, and I hope she’s had a chance to read it. This writer doesn’t think that Jensen and Barr were prepared for what has been revealed by Barnett about the political calculations involved in the Russia Hoax investigation. There is speculation that Barr is extremely upset that Mueller, now aging and perhaps fading a bit mentally, was being used as cover by Andrew Weissmann and others to overstep wildly in their desire to “get Trump.”

Something had to trigger Barr’s decision to have Barnett interviewed by Jensen. It’s possible that this has to do with Judge Emmet Sullivan’s (mis)handling of the Michael Flynn case, as it shows the case to be even more obviously politically motivated than we knew. The message to Sullivan: “Sure, you idiot, go ahead and keep this case open. The longer you keep it open, the more we’ll reveal.”

And apparently there is more. What we’ve seen has to do with “Crossfire Razor,” the investigation into Flynn. The rest is known only to investigators. It seems that the information that Jensen got from Agent Barnett may indeed be a game-changer. Even so, it’s wrong to keep it under wraps, for whatever reason, until after the election. Two words: interim report.

Mike Huckabee

Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats unveiled proposed legislation called the “Protecting Our Democracy Act,” which would severely curtail Presidential powers. Of course, they made no secret of the fact that it’s aimed specifically at President Trump, because long-term thinking is not their strong suit.

Boy, where to begin? First, the USA isn’t a democracy, it’s a representative republic, so they don’t even know what kind of government they’re a part of running. And I’ve always assumed they don’t know what the Constitution is, but it provides for three co-equal branches of the government. Congress doesn't have the power to limit the President’s powers, and if they try, he’ll either ignore them or take them to the Supreme Court, and guess how that will work out, especially a couple of months from now.

At least it’s a relief to know that for all the public gasbagging they did about this, they’re not actually dumb enough to vote on it and send it to the Senate, which they know would stomp it like a cockroach. Like virtually everything else the Democrats have done since taking over the House in 2018, it’s an empty piece of political theater designed solely to smear President Trump. Wouldn’t it have been nice if they’d taken the time and energy they wasted on this political mudball and instead put it into working with Trump and the Senate to pass another coronavirus relief bill? This is what Americans who are hurting from the shutdowns get for Halloween instead: a trick instead of a treat.

Mike Huckabee

Actress Alyssa Milano, a Twitter leftwing activist and proponent of defunding the police, made embarrassing headlines after she reportedly called 911 about an “armed gunman” in black clothing on her property (she later claimed a neighbor called 911, but admitted her husband made a follow-up call to police.) She lives in an 8,000-square-foot, $2.5 million home in a gated community in an upscale area north of L.A.

The call elicited a massive police response, including a K-9 unit and a helicopter. They determined that the “armed gunman” was a teenager shooting at squirrels with an air rifle.

Milano praised the police, but blamed “rightwing trolls” for “targeting” her with ridicule, which you must admit would be extremely hard to resist doing.

Let it be known, though, that I am not singling her out for mockery. She did the right thing in calling the police. I think that by now, we should have all learned that if you see a young person in black clothing carrying what appears to be a rifle, the police should definitely be called in to deal with the situation in whatever numbers are needed. If that had happened in Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, etc., a lot of black neighborhoods and businesses might not be smoking ruins today.

I also don’t think it’s fair to single her out for hypocrisy for denouncing the police while expecting them to pull out all the stops to protect her. In that regard, she’s simply like virtually every liberal celebrity in Hollywood, like the ones who want to defund the police and ban you from owning a gun to protect your family while they’re protected by armed bodyguards and battalions of cops at awards shows.

And it’s not even a new story. Back on June 2nd, I wrote about a certain former NBA and ESPN star who was tweeting “Burn it all down” about the Minneapolis riots, and just one day later, frantically tweeting about some “animals” trying to get into his gated community, then expressing relief when the cops showed up and repelled them.

But I will ask this: what’s with all these liberal celebrities living in “gated communities”? I thought walls were useless for providing security.