Mike Huckabee
Some of the comments and questions I received on yesterday’s newsletter story about information gleaned from the Strzok-Page texts were incredibly insightful –- you know I always read them –- and I wish I could offer quick answers to them all. Many of them fall into a few overall themes: the obvious double standard in Washington and the media, with the lack of “justice for all”; the apparent worthlessness of Attorney General Jeff Sessions (among others); the hesitance of President Trump to use his constitutional authority to fire government officials and declassify documents that still haven’t been released or have been mostly blacked out; the frustration that Robert Mueller will never end his investigation; and fear for democracy itself.
There’s no easy end to this, but every day brings more evidence that it’s unraveling. The scandal within the FBI and DOJ seems now to be centered on the cast of characters we’ve come to know all too well: former FBI Director James Comey, acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, demoted FBI official Peter Strzok (who seems to be in the thick of it all and is still, unbelievably, employed at the Bureau), and former McCabe legal assistant Lisa Page. Then-CIA Director John Brennan (now a contributor at MSNBC, where he fits in well) seems to have been in on the get-Trump scheme from the very start; in fact, he launched it. And don’t forget former CIA Director James Clapper. It’s all coming out; the FBI/DOJ can delay delay delay, and officials can go before Congress and lie lie lie, but they’re not going to keep their misdeeds under wraps forever. That would have been possible only if Hillary had been elected.
In Congress, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Ron DeSantis of Florida have had enough of the stonewalling and are asking Trump to use his executive authority to instruct Jeff Sessions to order the DOJ to immediately turn over all subpoenaed documents to Congress as part of their constitutional function of oversight. The DOJ and FBI have been lying about their reasons for redacting the documents; we know this because when some were unredacted, the black-outs had had nothing to do with national security.
Even the New York Times has helped shed light on the corruption, though inadvertently. A new piece about the very real anti-Trump operation called “Crossfire Hurricane” confirms that the investigation had already been opened when investigators heard the Papadopoulos story from Australian diplomat (and Hillary associate) Alexander Downer in July of 2016. (As Andrew C. McCarthy points out, there was no crime to investigate, so the FBI used a counterintelligence investigation as cover to look for a crime.) The article also confirms something we’d theorized: that the investigation proceeded on the assumption that Hillary would win.
Reporters also have sniffed out a person working undercover in the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI and Brennan, someone who approached people working for the campaign with offers to “help” while asking questions about Trump’s foreign policy. The New York Times piece actually refers to an FBI informant embedded in the campaign. It now seems to be an open secret among the reporters who this person was, though they’re being unusually careful about releasing his or her name. But it’s just a matter of time. All Americans should be outraged at this very REAL and unacceptable “meddling” in our election by elitists in our own government. America really is over if we let this go on.
And, can I hear an amen –- according to the DOJ, the Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s handling of the investigation into the use of Hillary’s email server has wrapped! It’s likely that some of the action we’d like to see on this mess was deliberately postponed until his conclusions are made public, and that should happen shortly.
So let the anti-Trump media scream about Stormy Daniels and a meeting at Trump Tower that means exactly nothing. The things we care about are so much more important –- concepts like “equal justice” and “rule of law” that actually define us as a nation but that are under siege by a politicized justice system. We’ve had plenty to be concerned about, and I can tell from your letters that you are plenty concerned. But at the same time, there’s reason to be hopeful.
If you have some time –- a lot of time; this is long –- check out the New York Times article; you’ll marvel at the way their effort to make excuses for the investigation actually points up some of the problems with it. Knowing what you know about the obvious motivations driving certain people, you may be dismayed by some of the article’s turns of phrase, but just remember it’s the New York Times and let it roll off.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/us/politics/crossfire-hurricane-trump-russia-fbi-mueller-investigation.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fadam-goldman&action=click&contentCollection=undefined®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
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A story appeared a few days ago that I deliberately avoided talking about in hopes that the people trying to turn it into a big deal would start to feel ashamed of themselves and reel it in. Instead, it’s just gone on and on, and gotten louder and louder. I feel I have to talk about it, but I’m going to do so by saying as little about the details as possible.
The story involves a little-known Trump White House staffer who, according to a leak, made a callous remark during a private meeting about Sen. John McCain, who is suffering from last-stage brain cancer. I won’t quote it, but she allegedly implied that his opposition would not be a factor because he will not live much longer. I don’t know if she actually said that, or the tone of her comment (was it mocking or disrespectful or simply coldly pragmatic?) But it sparked the usual howls of outrage and demands from the left that she be fired for slandering an American hero.
That prompted conservative news outlets to start digging into the records and finding far worse, unfair things that had been said about McCain by the left, including some of the very same people feigning outrage on McCain's behalf now. As an example, here’s a link to a story about comments made about McCain by Al Franken before he became a Senator. I could link to a lot more, but one should be more than enough.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/al-franken-mccains-not-a-war-hero/
This story turned into a full-blown media frenzy that’s still consuming airtime days later. Yet, nobody is saying what really needs to be said about it. So here goes:
Why did anything need to be said about this at all? Did any of the people who claim to be offended on behalf of Sen. McCain and his family ever consider that they were making it 1,000 times worse by giving it so much attention? Even if the leak turns out to be true, it was an unfortunate comment in a private meeting by a lower-level staffer. That is not news. The proper response wasn’t a media frenzy. It should have been a quiet reprimand and a reminder that some things, like showing compassion for a fellow human being suffering with a terminal illness and his family members, are more important than political gamesmanship.
All the fuss over it was stunningly hypocritical: people who claimed to be outraged that someone would say something hurtful about McCain in private amplified it into a 24/7 news story guaranteed to be seen by him and his family. They feign being offended that anyone would place politics over showing respect for Sen. McCain, yet they will gladly shine a spotlight on insults to McCain if it can inflict political damage on the Trump Administration.
Are there no news editors left who have a iota of taste, class, empathy or just common decency; who can look at a story like that and say, “A dumb private remark by an unknown underling is not newsworthy, plus publicizing it would cause pain and disrespect for a terminally-ill American hero. We have higher standards than that. Go find some real news to report.”
Maybe it’s the age we live in, when the Internet has given everyone a soap box to say whatever they want, but many people, from that White House staffer to her gleeful critics in the media, seem to have forgotten a very important lesson:
Just because the First Amendment gives you the right to say any stupid thing that pops into your head, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to say it.
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In their efforts to paint Israel as a violent aggressor and to somehow blame President Trump’s decision to keep America’s promise to move our Embassy to Jerusalem for the deaths of Palestinians who violently protested it, some Western media outlets were willing to air anything that promoted the narrative. Among them were claims that the Hamas-backed protesters were unarmed and engaging in such peaceful activities as flying kites when they were brutally attacked by Israeli troops.
That’s the media narrative; now, the ugly truth. Click the link for quotes from some of the protesters, making it very clear what they planned to do to Jews if they could just break through the fence. The “unarmed” protesters were carrying large knives, burning tires and using giant slingshots to launch rocks, glass and firebombs. As for those colorful kites: one photo of an armed Israeli drone hovering over a kite that was meant to contrast the violent Israelis with the peaceful Palestinians becomes clearer when you learn that the kites were being used to drop Molotov cocktails on the other side of the security fence.
Moral: When you see biased reporting like that, tell the people responsible to go fly a kite.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/molotovs-kite-bombs-anti-israel/
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And more narrative-busting news from the Middle East you probably didn’t hear reported: Israel sent two truckloads of humanitarian aid to help the Palestinians injured in the protests against Israel. But Hamas turned the aid trucks away because they came from Israel. I wonder if they polled the Palestinians who needed that aid, to see if they wanted to turn it away? No, that’s just a rhetorical question; I really don’t wonder about that at all.
https://www.westernjournal.com/israel-sends-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza-strip-hamas-turns-it-away/
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A giant salute today to a four-star Huck’s Hero, school resource officer Mark Dallas of Dixon, Illinois. Students at Dixon High School were gathering near the gym at 8 a.m. for a graduation ceremony when a 19-year-old male pulled out a gun started shooting. While the students ran for cover, Officer Dallas (unlike some other officers I could name) ran toward the gunfire. The suspect fled, and Dallas gave chase. The suspect fired at Dallas several times. He returned fire and wounded the suspect. When police arrived, the suspect was arrested and is recovering from non-life-threatening injuries.
Officer Dallas is being rightly hailed as a hero for saving countless lives. Without him, think of how much time would have passed between the first shot and the police arriving, time during which the shooter would have been unimpeded in a target-rich environment. What could have been a tragedy on a mass scale was stopped in its tracks with no injuries to any students because there was an armed officer on duty – a “good guy with a gun” and the courage to run toward danger and to use a firearm as it was intended, the way law-abiding gun owners use them up to 100,000 times per year: to prevent crimes and protect innocent lives.
https://www.westernjournal.com/police-officer-brings-down-teen-gunman-who-opened-fire-at-illinois-high-school/
Having shown yet again how responsible use of a gun can help save children, here’s an example of how not to help save children: at the link, a story about how a big box store where you probably shop rejected a $500 donation to the Children’s Miracle Network because it came from a law-abiding gun store. Is that how they define putting children first? Because it looks to me as if they put virtue-signaling and kowtowing to leftist Twitter mobs first and children last.
https://www.westernjournal.com/report-costco-rejects-500-donation-for-childrens-charity-because-it-came-from-gun-seller/
This is why the "blue wave" already seems to be breaking on the shores of reality. I told you that generic “unnamed Democrat or Republican” polls are useless because no race ever involves generic, unnamed candidates. And the race can easily be lost in the primaries.
At the moment, the most fired-up, Trump-hating, pro-socialist radicals are insuring that the Democratic Party will be stuck in November with a slate of candidates who…(now, let me see if I can make up something so far-out it couldn’t possibly be true. Oh, I know!)…who think it’s a bad thing that America won the Revolutionary War because if we were still subjects of the British crown, we could get in on that sweet government medical care that’s recently made news for killing babies while blocking their parents from doing anything to save them.
Wait, I’m sorry: I didn’t think up a crazy enough example. A Democratic candidate in Minnesota's special election for Al Franken's former Senate seat just said that very thing.
https://www.westernjournal.com/dem-candidate-life-better-under-british-crown-asks-what-was-the-point-of-the-revolution/