Mike Huckabee

I’m not going to have a detailed write-up of night four of the Republican Convention because I was out late last night. My wife Janet and I were on the White House lawn, watching history be made as President Trump accepted the nomination for reelection. And we got home late for three reasons:

1. Trump spoke for 72 minutes (the Dems considered it a miracle that Biden spoke for 20 minutes, and Trump did something Biden could never do: he ad-libbed.)

2. That magnificent fireworks show that seemed to go on and on. One commentator said that Trump was giving Americans the July 4th fireworks display that the Chinese virus denied them. When the sparks actually spelled out “TRUMP 2020” in the sky over Washington, I swear the booming noise was the sound of liberal heads exploding.

3. We had to wait to get past the mob of threatening protesters who’d shown up (with prop guillotines) to make Trump’s point that they are the violent enemies of free speech and freedom of thought. Rand Paul said he was attacked by a crazed mob of over 100 people and credited the DC Police with saving him.

This was one time when I was glad we had our face masks since Janet and I were able to don ours and leave with the crowd without being recognized. (Yes, Twitter scolds, we had masks, even though it was outside in the wind, the least likely place to transmit a virus.)

Incidentally, it was reported that even the “protesters” shut up for a while and watched the fireworks show. Maybe it came as a surprise to them that you could shoot fireworks into the air rather than just at cops or into occupied buildings.

Steven Kruiser at PJ Media had a great observation on how we know that the Dems realize how good this speech and the convention overall were: by the way they’re running around barking, “Hatch Act!,” like scared Chihuahuas.

The theme of the final night was “Land of Greatness.” Even though Trump loves to use the word “great” bombastically, this night seemed completely sincere in its message that Republicans see America not as an irredeemably racist, imperialist colonizer with a shameful history that must be torn down, but as the greatest nation ever created…one that may never have been perfect, but that has constantly pursued perfection, even at great struggle and cost. Americans aren’t bound by a single race or culture, but by the fact that we are all the descendants of the people in foreign lands who looked around and said, “There’s got to be someplace better than this,” and who had the guts to risk everything to find it.

Whereas the Democrats want to dismantle America and scare everyone into lowering their expectations, Republicans see America as a big nation of big ideas, big dreams and big, seemingly impossible accomplishments. This is the nation that decided not only to put a man on the moon, and to do it within the decade, but accomplished it with five months to spare. I wonder what JFK would think of his Party now, led by a group of tunnel-visioned bunglers who can’t even keep the lights on in California.

Mike Huckabee

Wednesday was night three of the GOP virtual convention, and while it’s hard to compare, this might have been the best night yet. Michael Goodwin of the New York Post said that Trump is producing the greatest reality show on Earth, and I would second that. If you aren’t watching it (and if you’re watching on a liberal network where they yak over 90% of the speeches, you aren’t really watching it), then be sure to watch the final night tonight, and go to YouTube to catch up on the previous nights uninterrupted from CSPAN. It makes the Democrats’ Convention look like a Zoom meeting set up by 14-year-olds, not that that would be too hard.

Funny, everyone was talking about all the severe limitations put on the convention, yet Trump has delivered possibly the best convention ever. But then, over-delivering despite having severe limitations put on him could describe his entire Administration.

Here’s a link to the full live-stream of night three that starts after CSPAN's opening with a WaPo reporter repeating Democrat talking points – disappointing, since CSPAN had been simply airing the event with no editorializing up until now to let viewers make up their own minds.

And here are last night’s live blogs by PJ Media…

And Townhall.com…

Plus a good article on five important parts of night three, although the author correctly admits that there were so many inspiring stories and great speeches that it was hard to narrow it down to only five.

Night three’s theme was a salute to heroes, and they weren’t make-believe movie superheroes but regular Americans who’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. There were more great speeches and stories than I have room to recount, here are just a few highlights:

Ohio mom Tera Myers, who refused to be pressured into aborting her Down Syndrome son or letting him go without an education. She fought for school choice reform and helped create a program that gives parents of special needs kids the freedom to choose education that fits them best…

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident (reading his speech by Braille), describing the heartless tyranny of the Chinese communist government and its mandatory one-child policy that he exposed. FYI, while visiting China in 2011, Joe Biden told his hosts, “Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I'm not second-guessing — of one child per family”…

Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who lost an eye and nearly died from an IED explosion during his third tour of duty in Afghanistan…

Madison Cawthorn, who will be the youngest House member if elected in North Carolina in November, is paralyzed from a car crash when he was 18. In a stunning moment, he ended his speech by using a walker to rise from his wheelchair and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance…

Sister Deirdre Byrne, who is not only Mother Superior of the Washington Little Workers sisters but also a doctor and a colonel and reservist in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, praised Trump for his defense of the unborn, whom she called “the most marginalized group in the world.” She branded Biden/Harris as "the most anti-life presidential ticket in history" and warned, "While what I have to say may be difficult for some to hear, I am saying it because I’m not just pro-life, I’m pro-eternal life, and I want all of us to end up in Heaven someday."

And what a fantastic speech by civil rights icon Clarence Henderson, who risked his life by defying Jim Crow laws and ordering food at a segregated Southern lunch counter in the ‘60s. Pointing out that that’s what “peaceful protest” really looks like, he recounted the history of the Republican Party’s leadership on civil rights issues, and ended by referencing Joe Biden’s claim that if you don’t vote for him, “you ain’t black.” Henderson said if you think it’s strange that he’s a Republican, then “you don’t know history.”

And there were many more moving and inspiring real life stories and terrific speakers, including Kayleigh McEnany (who discussed her double mastectomy, and how Donald and Melania Trump were among the first to call her afterwards)…Kellyanne Conway, who was the first woman to manage a winning Presidential campaign, talked about how Trump has put more women into major positions of power than any other President…Former DNI Richard Grennell, who said he was sickened when he finally got to see the pathetic “evidence” that the Democrats had for their Russian collusion charges …Rep. Elise Stefanik, who defended Trump so well during the ludicrous impeachment trial, called that "not just an attack on the President. This was an attack on you." Also, like all the blue city violence, impeachment was never mentioned even once at the DNC Convention. They’re hoping we’ll forget about their giant partisan waste of time and money…

Plus more great speeches by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (who is sparking Presidential buzz), Burgess Owens…

…both Mike and Karen Pence, Joni Ernst, and a must-see speech by former NFL player and lifelong Democrat Jack Brewer, who took a rhetorical flamethrower to the idea that blacks have to believe false narratives and vote for Biden/Harris because they don’t like Trump’s “tone.”

I think Sen. Marsha Blackburn had the funniest line of the night: “Nancy Pelosi says China would prefer Joe Biden…Yep!...I BET they WOULD!”

And how great was it to see Mike Pence speak from Fort McHenry, where the Star-Spangled Banner that inspired Francis Scott Key to write our National Anthem once flew? At this convention, even disabled people stand to salute the flag. On the other side, they kneel to the Anthem, burn the flag, try to “cancel” Francis Scott Key and want to change the National Anthem to John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

I could go on and on, but go to YouTube and watch it yourself if you haven’t already. Trump and his people are doing the impossible: they’re making a political convention a binge-watchable series. Tonight is the final night, and Trump himself will be speaking. It's "Must-See TV!"

Mike Huckabee

One of the most moving speeches on Wednesday night of the Republican Convention was given by a man named Sam Vigil. Sam who? This soft-spoken gentleman is not famous and certainly never thought he’d be speaking to the nation, but he came to speak about being touched by crime, as his wife Jackie was killed in their own garage during what was apparently an attempted carjacking.

They lived in Albuquerque, which he said is “one of the most violent cities in the country.” Most homicides go unsolved. In a sad irony, Jackie had immigrated from Colombia, known for violence, to seek a better life in America.

For eight months, the overwhelmed local police made no arrest in Jackie’s murder. But after President Trump launched Operation Legend this July, the FBI took over the case and in just days, they arrested four people, with the fifth arrested later in Texas on unrelated charges. Mr. Vigil thanked Trump for delivering justice for his wife and “for all the other innocent victims of violent crime.”

"I know he will never stop fighting for justice,” Mr. Vigil said, “for law and order, and for peace, security and our communities.”

Watching this in context of all the violence happening around the country, I thought that, more than anything, this election comes down to order and freedom vs. chaos and the resulting loss of freedom. The President wants us to be able to go about our lives in safety, whether it’s from a carjacking in Albuquerque or a vicious assault on the streets of Seattle.

The other side WANTS chaos, as they think that, one way or another, it will keep Trump from another term. But notice that they’re suddenly becoming more subversive about this, saying publicly that they are against violence. This is because polling shows that violence by BLM and other groups appears to be backfiring. Their plan to blame Trump isn’t working.

Even their friends in the media are trying to help, but they blew their own cover, right on the air.

Democrats don’t care how the violence is hurting people, just that it might be hurting then in the POLLS. The practice of going into restaurants and bullying diners is especially not playing well. So even Biden has (finally) come out and said he’s against violence. Even though nobody even brought it up during their convention, he and Kamala Harris will say whatever they need to now.

There are other ways the left thinks chaos can help them ultimately get what they want. For example, they can send the message that the riots we see in major cities will spread to all of America if their side loses.

They even blame Trump for their own acting out. One of my staffers said she was reminded of her niece having a tantrum when she was in her “terrible two’s,” screaming at her mother, suddenly shrieking wildly, “YOU MADE ME THIS WAY!” Imagine a two-year-old (!) with that kind of instinctive understanding of how to make her mother feel guilty for what she herself was doing. We are dealing with emotional two-year-olds, trying to manipulate in just the same way.

Give in to them, and that’s how they'll get their way with EVERYTHING –- by creating chaos and threatening escalation if we don’t appease them. They’re using race as the pretext for this, and they’ll take the conflict as far as they think they have to.

Prof. Glenn Reynolds at PJ Media came to a similar conclusion: “The left wants it to be about black vs. white, immigrant vs. native, etc. Trump’s making it clear that it’s about people who are constructive, productive, and generally happy, vs. people who are destructive, parasitic and generally miserable, and that that difference transcends things like race. This is a huge, underappreciated –- and very traditionally American –- message. By promoting it at this crucial time, Trump may very well be saving America.”

Amen. That’s what it will come down to. Americans can’t go about their lives and be productive and happy under the constant threat of chaos.

Hillary Clinton recently brought up another way that chaos can help her side get what they want. Remember at the 2016 debates when she was “horrified” that Trump wouldn’t promise to accept the upcoming election results (when he had no way to anticipate how they might conceivably be messed with)? Here’s what this ghoulishly hypocritical woman says now.

So, Biden should not concede “under any circumstances.” Putting Biden in the White House is simply “an organizational challenge,” even if America has clearly elected Trump. Imagine the chaos THIS creates. It shows she cares nothing for “democracy” and what Americans want, only power.

A commentary in Wednesday’s WALL STREET JOURNAL called “Mail-in Voting Could Deliver Chaos” describes the mess that could happen with mail-in balloting and one candidate simply refusing to concede. The WSJ has a paywall; but one of the authors has posted it.

Also, check out Dan Bongino’s podcast from Wednesday, Episode 1331, starting at 34:15.

The WSJ article greatly worries Bongino; he says to “get ready for the idea” that we won’t have a result even by December. But by FEDERAL LAW, the dates for the election and Electoral College voting are set in stone, and THE CONSTITUTION sets Inauguration Day as January 20. Period.

Mail-in ballots do not change this, but they must be postmarked no later than Election Day, in this case November 3, to count. Of course, the “mailbox” hoax is already being used ahead of time to discredit mail-in results, even as Democrats have pushed for mail-in voting.

State electors are supposed to resolve disputes six days before the Electoral College meets (this year, December 14), and if they can’t, the STATE LEGISLATURE has those six days to resolve the matter. If it can't, THE STATE FORFEITS ALL ITS ELECTORAL VOTES.

It’s easy to see how, at the state level, Democrats might mess with this system in key swing states to affect the electoral vote count. And even if Trump is inaugurated, they’ll say they “really” won, using the electoral chaos they created to delegitimize his second term, just as they used the “Russia” hoax they created to delegitimize his first term.

RealClear Politics goes into even more detail on what could go wrong with mail-in voting.

No wonder Democrats have pushed so hard for this. Anyway, get ready for anything. These people will sit by while violence destroys cities and gets people killed as long as they can blame it on Trump --- the very one who (unlike them) is genuinely interested in making life better and more productive for Americans.

Mike Huckabee

Please sit down before reading this. If you’re standing up, you might laugh so hard, you’ll fall down and hurt yourself. Ready? Good…

Guess who’s decided to become a “fact-checker.” Rachel Maddow of MSNBC! That’s right: the woman who spent three years spinning ever wackier Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theories has decided that the Republicans at the convention are such “LYING LIARS WHO LIE” (trademark registered) that she just has to “correct the record” for her extremely undemanding viewers.

And what is her first subject on her maiden voyage into the uncharted territory of actually checking a fact? She claims that Cissy Graham Lynch misled viewers by calling Trump a champion of religious freedom rights because if he cared about religious freedom, he wouldn’t have instituted the “Muslim ban.”

I have to thank her because I’d almost forgotten about that hoax. That was one of the earliest examples of the media deliberately distorting what Trump said or did, and it set the template for all their "reporting" since (whatever Trump says or does, ascribe the worst possible motives to it.) If you don’t remember, thanks to Obama/Biden letting ISIS spread across the Middle East, there was a threat of terrorist attacks on our homeland. When Trump first came into office, he wanted to restrict travel from a handful of nations that had active anti-American terrorist cells and no structure for vetting emigrants. Liberals immediately misrepresented this as a “Muslim ban,” even though not all the nations on the list were majority Muslim and there were many other majority Muslim nations that were not on the list. It was really about keeping out terrorists, but the media spun it as "Trump hates Muslims."

This was the earliest example of Democrats and the media being willing to trade the safety and security of their fellow Americans for bad publicity for Trump. It would soon be followed by many more.

How appropriate is it that Rachel Maddow based her first “fact-check” of Republicans on a known partisan lie? But then, anyone who would rely on her to give them the “facts” about Trump would also probably take advice about proper Oval Office decorum from Bill Clinton. Oh, wait: that was actually part of the Democratic Convention.

She pressed on in her "fact-check" to talk about Trump’s executive order exempting the Little Sisters of the Poor from having to provide contraceptives and abortifacient drugs to employees under Obamacare. Maddow condescendingly “explained,” “The anti-abortion right has decided to say in recent years that contraception including things like the birth control pill, they've decided to call that abortion. So if you take birth control pills you're, like, constantly having abortions all the time. That's what that reference is to. And that may be very familiar rhetoric in the anti-abortion right.”

Umm, we’re not talking about the “anti-abortion right.” We’re talking about an order of Catholic nuns, who understandably don’t want to be forced to pay for contraceptives. That’s why this is a religious freedom issue.

Maybe she should just go back to the Russia collusion fairy tale and leave discussions of religious freedom rights to people who know anything at all about religion. Or facts.

Mike Huckabee

It’s actually good that U.S. Attorney John Durham is still putting the finishing touches on his report on FISA abuse, as we’re going to need some focused post-convention time to take a look at it. There’s a story to be told, a very important story, and we should soon know a lot more about how the "Russia" hoax came together. In fact, one can get a “sneak peek” right now by looking at Kevin Clinesmith’s plea agreement and seeing how it relates to parts of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s internal report.

Thanks to Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST for connecting more dots. She's done the tedious part; now we get to talk about it.

As you know, Kevin Clinesmith, who worked in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying evidence; the plea agreement was released last Wednesday. He admitted that he had added four critical words --- “was not a source” --- to an email from an “unidentified government agency” (let’s just say the CIA because we know it was) concerning Carter Page’s “operation contact” with that agency. One of the agents involved in Crossfire Hurricane had told him they wanted “something in writing” about it, so he altered the email and forwarded it to that agent. (While pleading guilty, he still claims it was not his “intent” to mislead. Trying to have it both ways.) This revised email cleared the way for the fourth FISA.

But wait --- there had already been an original FISA application and two renewals, and they hadn’t mentioned this. What’s the story there? Well, according to Clinesmith’s plea agreement, the CIA had provided “certain members of the Crossfire Hurricane team” with a memo indicating that Page had been approved as an “operation contact” for them from 2008 to 2013 and detailing information that Page had provided them about “his prior contacts with certain Russian officers.” But we know this information was not included in the first three FISAs. (The Horowitz report says so, and Clinesmith makes a point of it in his plea agreement.)

If I understand correctly, THIS is the “suspicious” contact with Russians that gave the Crossfire Hurricane team their reason (excuse) to accuse Page of being a Russian agent. But in truth, there was no reason to spy on him over this; he had already been debriefed by the CIA about it, and the CIA had informed "certain members" of the team of his relationship with them before the initial FISA application was made. The FBI just left it out of the applications.

To accomplish this, the Crossfire Hurricane team even left it out of the information given to the division that HELPS with FISA applications, and one member of the team, Stephen Somma –- more on him coming up –- gave them incorrect information when explicitly ASKED about Page’s relationship with the CIA. This key information about Page is one of the “17 substantial errors or omissions” in the FISAs that Horowitz attributed to the FBI.

So, now we need to know the identities of the “certain members of the Crossfire Hurricane team” who received the memo about Page from the CIA, because they are the ones who kept the information out of the application and first two renewals. In the IG report, one is identified as “Case Agent 1,” and that person was identified by THE NEW YORK TIMES as the aforementioned Stephen Somma, who happens to have been Stefan Halper’s FBI “handler” as well! So we’re likely to be hearing more about Mr. Somma.

Cleveland’s article has more detail on how Somma mischaracterized Page’s work in Russia, moving the dates of it years earlier so it became “beyond the scope” of the FISA application. Clever, these FBI agents.

The Horowitz report says Somma claimed “not to recall his state of knowledge” about Page’s history with the CIA. One has to wonder if his memory might improve while under questioning in Durham’s criminal investigation, under threat of perjury.

Cleveland –- who has a FANTASTIC memory –- remembers that Somma, as Case Agent #1, had expressed great interest early on in surveilling Carter Page. But according to the IG report, the Crossfire Hurricane team didn’t become aware of the “dossier” till September. Before then, only Steele’s “handler” and a few agents in the New York Field Office knew about it, starting in early July.

But guess where Somma was working in early July, before joining the Crossfire Hurricane team in August? The New York Field Office, where he was a special agent for counterintelligence with a focus on...Russia.

Cleveland goes into more detail on who else among the team might have known about Page’s CIA involvement and kept it out of the application. Joe Pientka is certainly a possibility.

But the big stinky cheese at the FBI at that time was Director Comey, and this is one slick dude when it comes to protecting himself. As you might recall, Comey slithered his way out of having to talk about classified material with IG Horowitz by refusing to have his security clearance reinstated. Smooth, huh? The memo sent to the FBI about Page’s CIA activities would have been classified, for sure, and without a security clearance, Comey couldn’t have been shown the memo or asked anything about it.

A criminal investigation is different, though. Maybe Durham can put the squeeze on the big cheese. And maybe we’ll finally learn the whole sordid story.

Mike Huckabee

I expected the Republican virtual convention to be better than the Democrats for several reasons: President Trump is a better showman; the mission is to emphasize patriotism and optimism, not sow gloom and division; etc. I just didn’t expect that the GOP convention would be so much better right out of the gate that it was almost like comparing “Citizen Kane” to “Plan Nine from Outer Space.”

Day one of the Democrat infomercial mostly featured politicians talking directly into the camera like a national version of a bedroom vlogger’s YouTube stream, telling us over their iPhones how awful everything is because of the bad Orange Man. The most memorable things about it were Michelle Obama repeating the debunked “children in cages” lie (that actually started under her husband) and the giant wall of firewood behind Bernie Sanders. I’ll bet whoever cut that wood wasn’t the only one who was sawing logs last week.

By contrast, the Republicans offered an inspiring and well-produced (the opening film narrated by Jon Voight was superb) showcase of both political figures and private citizens from a wide range of backgrounds. They talked about positive things Trump has done for them and America, promises kept, and their optimism for the future, as long as Democrats are kept out of power. (BTW, you can add “Internet live productions” to cities, states and the Congress on the ever-lengthening list of “Things Democrats Cannot Be Trusted to Run.”) When Republicans did talk about negatives, like the riots, looting and assaults on police officers in blue cities that are the #1 news story in America right now, that was also a glaring contrast because the Democrats went for three days without ever mentioning that giant donkey in the room.

Maybe it’s not fair to compare the two. The GOP Convention could focus on Trump’s accomplishments because he actually has so many. The Democrats concentrated on Trump hate, division and name-calling because, hey, you go with what you’ve got.

There were so many powerful moments just on night one that I don’t have time or space to list them all. If you missed it, I suggest, believe it or not, that you actually watch the entire stream. It’s on YouTube here.

And here are the liveblogs from PJ Media…

And Townhall.com…

As well as a separate article I wrote for Fox News…

Here are just a few of the highlights, but incredibly, there were no lowlights (maybe the Democrats had so many lowlights because they were experiencing rolling brownouts):

Black Georgia Democratic Rep. Vernon Jones, who was viciously attacked for praising Trump, talked of how Trump has created opportunity zones and good jobs for blacks, and criminal justice reform of the law Biden co-wrote. He reminded us that Democrats are defunding cops who protect black children while providing security for themselves, and blasted Pelosi and Schumer for “pandering” to blacks by wearing African kente cloths. He said, “The Democratic Party has become infected with the pandemic of intolerance, bigotry, socialism, anti-law enforcement bias, and a dangerous tolerance for people who attack others, destroy their property and terrorize their own communities.” He warned that black people are becoming louder and more “woke” (I love the new, more accurate spin he put on that term) and in a line that is sure to be quoted and remembered for a long time: "The Democratic Party does not want black people to leave their mental plantation.” As one commenter put it, he left a smoking crater where the DNA used to be.

Cuban immigrant Maximo Alvarez choked back tears as he recalled his family’s escape from communism in Cuba, and how he’s hearing ominous echoes of their same tactics and rhetoric from blue cities like Seattle, Chicago and Portland. He said, “If I gave away everything that I have today, it would not equal 1 percent of what I was given when I came to this great country of ours: the gift of freedom. Right now, it is up to us to decide our fate and to choose freedom over oppression.”

NFL great Herschel Walker spoke movingly of his 38-year friendship with Trump and testified that the claim Trump is a racist is a slanderous lie (and will anyone ever forget the image of Trump joining Walker’s family at Disney World to ride “It’s A Small World” in a business suit?) By the way, I’ve also seen Trump enter one of his hotels and greet the desk clerks and other workers by name and ask about their families. Can you even imagine Hillary Clinton doing something like that?

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, credited President Trump with reversing the Obama “restorative justice” policy that he blames for the killer not being stopped sooner, and warned that Joe Biden wants to bring it back…

Mark and Patricia McCloskey probably never imagined they’d be speaking at a GOP Convention (Mark is a lawyer who’s defended a BLM activist.) But after they were charged with a felony by St. Louis’ far-left DA for brandishing guns to protect their home from a threatening mob – but none of the mob members were charged – their blinders fell off pretty quickly.

After hearing Sen. Tim Scott’s closing speech, I have to second what some conservative bloggers said: I want to vote for him for President in 2024. It was personal and moving, but also substantive. And I loved this line about his early struggles in school: "Trust me, after spending seven years in the Senate, I know I’m not the only one in Congress who failed civics."

I was thrilled that for the Pledge of Allegiance, the speaker made a point of reminding people that the words include “under God,” which was left out of two recitations of it at the Democratic Convention. (I also appreciated that they told attendees to stand for the National Anthem, not stand or kneel, whatever your preference.) The embrace of God may have already turned at least one vote…

Natalie Harp, who would have been relegated to death by cancer by government regulations if it weren’t for Trump’s “right to try” reform that let her try an experimental drug, reminded viewers of all the people who have been saved by Trump’s ending of VA hospital waiting lists, reduction of drug prices and other health initiatives. She also reminded us of Charlie Gard, the British infant who was sentenced to die by British government health care bureaucrats.

There was also a powerful film and speech by a Louisiana doctor who both treated and contracted COVID-19, on the false narrative that President Trump did nothing about or botched the disease response. It reminded viewers of how the pandemic took the world unawares and unprepared, and Trump quickly built an unprecedented public-private effort that prevented equipment shortages, removed FDA red tape and fast-tracked new treatments. Bonus: footage of Democratic Governors such as Andrew Cuomo praising Trump’s efforts (this was before word came down that they were supposed to trash and blame him)

Charlie Kirk appealed to young people by defending “the American way of life,” including freedom of speech and religion, against the cancel culture, self-righteous Silicon Valley censors, and a mob of “bitter, deceitful, vengeful activists who have never built anything in their lives.” He called Trump “the bodyguard of Western Civilization”…

Rebecca Friedrichs, the California kindergarten teacher who took on the teachers’ unions in court and won (she noted that the Obama/Biden Administration and Kamala Harris fiercely opposed her in that lawsuit), spoke about school choice (a recurring theme of the evening) and how teachers’ unions are trapping poor and minority children in failing schools. It’s a subject that’s become red hot now that stuck-at-home parents are discovering what their kids were being “taught” all these years…

All this, and I still haven’t touched on Nikki Haley’s excellent speech, Trump’s moving visits with coronavirus essential workers and Americans who’d been held hostage abroad whom he brought home (he rescues people from the other side of the world while Democrats fight having to give medical care to a newborn baby in the same room), Maryland House candidate Kim Klacik’s powerfull message, and so much more.

It was also a stunning contrast just to see Trump popping up everywhere, seemingly working around the clock with limitless energy. At the Democratic Convention, we waited three days for Joe Biden to emerge from his basement like we were waiting for Punxsutawney Phil to rouse himself from his burrow on Groundhog Day. It definitely bolsters Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” moniker and puts pressure on the Dems to let Biden debate to prove he’s up to the job.

You really should watch it all if you can. It will lift your spirits and renew your hope. As I said in my article for Fox News, the Dems gave a funeral for America, and the Republicans threw a celebration. Never has an electoral choice been so stark – or so obvious.

But I can’t end without quoting the funniest line of the night, from Donald Trump Jr: Joe Biden is the “Loch Ness Monster of the swamp.” He sticks his head up every 20 years or so to run for President, then disappears into the swamp again.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

America set the bar so low for Joe Biden’s speech Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention, he ended up getting raves simply for standing on his mark and reading off a prompter for a mere 20 minutes. For Democrats, he also got raves for not being Trump, which is the greatest accomplishment of all.

As author James Lileks put it, Biden benefited from “the soft bigotry of Joe expectations.”

Since there was only one noteworthy flub –- he skipped over the word “not,” but everybody knew what he meant –- the conversation inevitably turned to whether or not Biden was actually speaking live. On Friday, even Rush Limbaugh discussed this, including whether or not the speech could have been edited, given that Biden was essentially motionless throughout, and Rush said he knew of a number of people “looking at it.”

Before getting into that discussion, let me say that just the fact we’re even speculating about it should tell us what’s “off” about this crazy year and the Biden ticket in particular. When Trump hits it out of the park (as he will, guaranteed) this week at the Republican Convention --- in the middle of a no-doubt grueling schedule --- no one is going to wonder if HE spoke live and in the moment, not for one second. Because that’s just him; what you see is what you get. His party is not going to be deceiving you about that. That is so refreshing in the world of politics. Anyway...

Though my background is not in computers –- far from it! –- I know technology exists to “fix” much of what might have needed to be fixed, but probably not in such a way that it wouldn’t be detected by experts who know what to look for. (Aside: we’re not far away from the horrifying day when this CAN be done undetectably.) So it’s very unlikely that this was done. No, if Biden’s campaign didn’t have total confidence in his ability to do the speech live, the best way around that would have been much simpler.

I do have a background in writing speeches for corporate executives and even coaching them on delivery and how to appear on camera. What they would have done: get Biden rested and ready, and then run through the whole speech a comfortable number of times with Biden in rehearsal, hitting “Record” on all the run-throughs. (Don’t tire him; at some point, the law of diminishing returns will apply.) Typically in a rehearsal, you'd record the run-throughs anyway, to be able to review the performance and give the “talent” (I use the term loosely) some notes before doing another take. Once you have a full take you like --- especially if you sense he’s getting tired --- just stop. Don’t wait for perfection; a minor flub or two makes this more believable, and in this case, that’s the most important thing. Use the take that best conveys the personal qualities you want to get across, as Democrats think the election turns on this.

After that, as long as you’re down to a TINY group of people who can be implicitly trusted not to leak, it’s only a matter of hitting the right button at the right time to send out the recording instead of going live. Then, while the video played, Biden and Jill would just be “bidin’” their time in that room until it was time to walk out with Kamala and her husband to wave at the cheering crowd. Or, Biden could even do it "for real," unaware that the speech going out was really a take from earlier in the day.

That’s what Lt. Columbo would suspect. Do NOT call me a conspiracy theorist; I am not saying they did this. I’m saying this is how it could have been done if they had serious concerns about Biden "going live." It’s tempting to think of this as their “insurance policy”; we know Democrats are fond of those.

Biden probably just read it live, as it wouldn’t take much for that, given that he had the words right in front of him. But, again, the fact that we’re even speculating tells us all we need to know about what is wrong with the 2020 Democratic ticket. Given the high stakes, we have no doubt that if they were sure they could get away with this without anyone being the wiser, they'd do it.

So the bigger issue is whether the speech itself met expectations. To preface that discussion, I’d say that even without the questions concerning his mind, much of Biden’s past political life would do much to set the bar for content just as low (unless, of course, it were to be plagiarized from other sources). This opinion piece from JUST THE NEWS offers a quick background.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/biden-has-history-controversies-involving-plagiarism-fabricated-stories

Gov. Huckabee has a commentary of his own today on the glaring lack of any specificity in Biden’s speech. He’s right --- this was vapid campaign talk, nothing but typical election-year platitudes. I have little to add, except that it occurs to me his speechwriter might have taken inspiration from a commercial currently being run in America by Italian coffee company Lavazza (which calls their ad a “global communication campaign”), featuring the voice of Charlie Chaplin from 1940.

The visuals are impossibly artistic and edgy, showing humanity at its most open, loving and --- importantly for leftists --- stylish. The words laud a borderless planet in which everyone gets along (as in the insipid John Lennon song “Imagine”). There's no word on how we’re going to create this beautiful world, except to “Unite!” Leftists just love flowery, uplifting speeches about mankind with no specifics.

The words Lavazza used are from Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film THE GREAT DICTATOR, a movie that rightfully savages Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

To his credit, Biden at least didn't plagiarize this.

It would be fun to create new visuals for the Lavazza ad that included shot after shot of leftist violence in Seattle, Portland and other American cities (which Biden never mentioned, incidentally). You know the images I mean: buildings burning and people being kicked in the head by radical leftist thugs demanding "justice." Oh, the humanity.

Now, I am a huge fan of Chaplin’s movies, but it should be noted that he was a far-leftist --- he grew up in dire, horrific poverty in England --- who became fabulously wealthy in capitalist America and eventually exited the U.S. to live in Switzerland. He claimed not to be a Communist, but here's an interesting piece on his Stalinist leanings.

We mustn’t forget that Russian Communist ruler Stalin was quite the dictator and mass-murderer himself. Clearly, one would have to be a dictator to have anywhere near the level of control it takes to remake society. Prospective Democrat voters might want to consider that.

Mike Huckabee

Attorney General Bill Barr announced that over 1,000 arrests have been made, 400 weapons seized and over 217 people charged with federal crimes in a crackdown on violent crime in major cities.

It’s part of Operation Legend, named after a four-year-old African-American child, LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed while he was sleeping in Kansas City, Missouri. Barr said, “LeGend is a symbol of the many hundreds of innocent lives that have been taken in the recent upsurge of crime in many of our urban areas. His life mattered and the lives of all of those victims matter. His name should be remembered and his senseless death, like those of all the other innocent victims in this recent surge, should be unacceptable to all Americans.”

It's not at all surprising to me that President Trump’s DOJ is doing more to uphold the principle that black lives matter – indeed, that all innocent lives matter and deserve protection – than all the violent agitators who are destroying black neighborhoods in the name of Black Lives Matter.

Mike Huckabee

Since “Russian collusion” finally imploded, the Democrats’ new “Trump is rigging the election” hoax is a ridiculous claim that he’s gathering up all the mailboxes so Democrats won’t be able to mail in their ballots. If you’re dumb enough to believe that – or not to know that you can always mail a ballot at the post office, or just leave it in your own mailbox and the carrier will pick it up – then maybe you shouldn’t be voting at all.

Nancy Pelosi is trying hard to make a federal case out of it, but it’s so mind-bendingly stupid that not even the reliably liberal “fact-checking” sites can bring themselves to go along with it. For instance, here’s Politifact ruling that, no, a photo of a stack of mailboxes is NOT proof of “massive voter suppression.” It’s a photo of a company that refinishes old mailboxes for the Postal Service.

Politifact is so in the bag for the Dems that they had to stick into this story a line about Trump making a “false” claim that mail-in voting is rife with fraud (Okay, it’s rife with errors that give it a tremendous potential for fraud, is that precise enough? And of course, we all know voter fraud never happens. Oh, wait…)

But that still can’t balance out the sheer willful idiocy of this story. What’s next? “Hey, I found three stacks of crackers inside my Ritz box! It’s massive proof that Trump is trying to hide food from the poor!”

Probably shouldn’t even say that. Nancy will convene impeachment hearings.

Mike Huckabee

A few good random observations on the Democratic convention from around the Internet:

From Thomas Sowell: “Barack Obama's political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good to people who have not followed the issues in any detail — regardless of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have.”

From RedState.com’s Brad Slager: “This will be fun - long segments to come about the need to get people back to work, from the party that is arresting people for going back to work.”

From Matt Margolis: Barack Obama, who slams Trump’s character and lack of judgement, gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a sex predator who preyed on underage boys.

From Steve Guest: “Biden: ‘When I think about climate change, I think about jobs.’ Biden’s ban on fracking alone would eliminate 19 MILLION jobs between 2021-2025 all while reducing our GDP by $7.1 TRILLION.”

From the Washington Post: "While the Obama administration deported 1.18 million people in his first three years, the number of deportations has been a little under 800,000 so far under Trump." And "DNC misleads by implying Trump called all immigrants 'animals.' He was talking about the animalistic MS-13 gang.” (Surprised that WaPo actually committed journalism.)

Elle Bufkin commented: “Democrats love to say no one is above the law when torching Trump. Meanwhile, they defund the police, advocate for the abolition of jails, and allow rioters and looters to go unpunished. Also, they reward illegal immigrants with sanctuary cities and hide them from the law while advocating for free health care for them.”

The GOP tweeted: “The ‘anemic’ economic recovery under the Obama/Biden Admin was the slowest since World War II. Under the Obama/Biden Admin, homeownership plummeted. In their final year, just 62.9% of homes were occupied by their owner, the lowest level in more than 50 years.”

From Julio Rosas: "Obama said the president shouldn't use troops as political props, right after the DNC did just that yesterday."

And after a DNC rep said you can see that women virtually run the Democratic Party, GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted, “A WOMAN ACTUALLY RUNS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren gave pretty much the convention speech that everyone expected, but there were two unusual side notes…

1. The subliminal messaging of arranging three children’s letter blocks in the elementary classroom background to spell out “BLM,” which not only tells us where the Dems are coming from but also why so many parents don’t want to put their kids back into public schools run by them…

2. In pushing for government child care, she recalled how her family was only saved because her Aunt Bee brought her suitcase and came to provide child care for her. This prompted some pundits to question if she’s stopped appropriating Native American heritage and started appropriating the plotline of “The Andy Griffith Show.” I won’t doubt her, since maybe she really does have an Aunt Bee. Just in case, I won’t ask her for her pickle recipe. But I will suggest that she stop letting Otis the town drunk write her economic proposals.

Mike Huckabee

When I promised that we’d watch the news so you don’t have to, I wasn’t thinking about having to sit through four nights of the virtual Democratic convention. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, so we’ll hold our noses, prop open our eyes and press on.

If you’re interested, here’s the live stream of the entire 3-1/4 hours. I notice that it took them until night three to figure out to turn off the comments on YouTube. Too bad, that might have offered some entertainment value.

For the more entertaining recaps, check out the liveblogs by PJ Media and Townhall.com.

Last night was when the convention was supposed to hit its stride, with speeches by superstars Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech. Instead, we got the same small ideas, just mouthed by bigger names.

Conventions are supposed to fire up the base and get them enthused about backing the ticket and the Party. But have you seen any positive messages or fresh policy proposals AT ALL? All we hear about Joe Biden is that he’s a nice guy (which might be true if he’s not yelling at you that you’re a dog-faced pony soldier.) But I’m nicer, and none of these people endorsed me for President. I don’t really want a President who’ll be really nice to China. I think the mean tone is because they know what a new NBC poll found: that only 36% of Biden supporters support him because they want Biden. 58% percent do it because they hate Trump. It says “Love, Tolerance, Compassion” on the label, but the ingredients are hatred, frustration and resentment.

It’s no wonder Americans are tuning out in droves. Night two of the convention was slaughtered in the ratings by “America’s Got Talent,” which featured some yo-yo artists. Understandable: at least their yo-yo’s have some pizzazz. I wonder how many people on night one turned on Penn & Teller’s show because they saw “Fool Us” in the TV listings and assumed that was the Democratic Convention?

This is coming across as a convention of angry, bitter cranks, furious that they were voted out of power by all you dumb racist deplorables and even more enraged that Donald Trump is in the seat of power that should be theirs by divine right. I don’t even recognize America, the way they describe it: a dark, dystopian, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic wasteland where there may be “liberty and justice for all…someday,” as they rewrote the Pledge of Allegiance. I was reminded of Sally Field’s famous Oscar speech: “They hate us! They REALLY hate us!”

Not only is the dour negativity relentless, it’s also incredibly boring and predictable. I’m not even going to bother to recount Obama, Clinton or Harris’ speeches in detail. Just imagine what you think they were like.

You’re right.

Harris mostly dispensed unmemorable platitudes to make sure she didn’t tick off the moderates or the crazy leftists. Hillary did what she’s done for over three years now: snipe at the guy who beat her, remind us that she won the meaningless popular vote (by 3 million votes!), and hint darkly that some foreign influence was going to rig the election for Trump. She’s the Miss Havisham of politics, forever frozen in time on the day she was jilted at the altar.

And Obama was…Obama. Haughty, condescending, defensive, making vicious and underhanded political attacks on his successor while posing as if he were taking the high road. You know the routine. And just as predictably, the media wet their Depends over it.

Obama also implied that Trump, who has lost billions in net worth since entering politics and donates his entire salary, is only interested in enriching himself and his supporters. FYI: since leaving office, Obama has cashed in more than any other ex-President, including a $65 million book deal and a $50 million Netflix deal. Not that you could tell that by any generous donations made to his brother Joe’s campaign.

Republicans always say that you can tell what the Democrats are doing by what they accuse their opponents of doing, but never have they been so transparent about it. So far, we’ve had John Kerry telling us Trump has made a mess of foreign policy, Bill Clinton telling us Trump’s not behaving properly in the Oval Office, Andrew Cuomo telling us Trump botched the handling of COVID-19, Hillary Clinton telling us that Trump dehumanizes his political opponents (I’m sure she’s also worried that HE won’t accept the results of the election), and Barack (Operation Crossfire/rule by executive order/weaponize the IRS against the Tea Party) Obama telling us that Trump abuses Presidential power and doesn't observe the polite protocols of office (like not badmouthing your sitting successor?)

On the very same day Obama spoke, one of his former FBI employees pleaded guilty to falsifying evidence to get illegal FISA warrants to spy on a Trump campaign aide.

I did appreciate that Obama appeared from Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution and talked about the Constitution. But it would have been more persuasive if he’d ever shown any regard for the Constitution, and if the Democrats would say one word about their own followers who are currently ripping down and burning every monument to the American Revolution. They’ve also never mentioned China. Apparently, Donald Trump and climate change are the only threats they recognize.

That would include the threat of being shot in one of the cities they’ve run for decades. Last night’s show also included a lot of talk about gun control. They want to empty the prisons, open the borders, defund the police and take away law-abiding citizens' guns. There’s a winning combination! They also talked about the Parkland shooting while demanding that police be removed from schools. Do you know why so many children died there? Because it took the police so long to show up at the school.

I also wonder how well all the gun-grabbing talk is going over with their voters, considering that thanks to the rampant street violence they refuse to do anything about other than condone it, gun sales are up 95% over this time last year. And guess what’s driving those sales: first-time gun purchases by blacks and women who realize they can no longer count on the police to protect them in blue cities.

And if they’re going to tell constant lies, can’t they at least go to the trouble of thinking up some new ones instead of repeating the same dusty, debunked lies, like “children in cages,” “very fine people among the white supremacists” and “Trump called all Mexican immigrants animals”? I’m not even going to bother refuting those again; by now, anyone who hasn’t been in a coma since 2016 should know those are all bogus and why. But they just keep rolling them out, like a faded pop star sleepwalking through his greatest hits for the 10,000th time. Their only new song is the “Trump is responsible for the Chinese virus and the job losses caused by blue states shutting down businesses” shuffle, but the audience goes to the bathroom during that one.

In a nutshell (emphasis on “nut”), here’s what I’ve gotten out of this convention so far: We HATE Trump! Trump is the cause of all bad things in the universe! We hate people who voted for Trump! America is a really bad country, but maybe there’s hope for it someday if you let us run it. We see countless problems, but our only solution is “Put us back in power!” For instance, if we only had Congress and the White House, we could give everyone affordable health care.

Yeah, they had that from 2008-2010, and they gave us the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare.) It cost people their family doctors and doubled and tripled their premiums. It was so unpopular, it cost them the House in the next election.

It’s ironic that Obama accused Trump of “not growing in the job,” when Trump came in as a complete outsider and political amateur, won the Presidency, and has racked up an impressive array of achievements, some by simply doing the opposite of what Obama did. It’s these people who seem to have learned nothing since they were thrown out of office. They’re long on resentment, but short on self-reflection. They’re like the cool kids who peaked in high school, still acting like Big Shots on Campus at the reunion when the rest of us have outgrown being impressed by them. All this convention is doing is reminding us of what a smart move we made when we moved on to something new. They’re forever stuck back in 2015, and demanding we make them prom king and queen again.

It’s funny that Bruce Springsteen appeared on night one of the convention, since he wrote a song that would be the perfect theme for this week, “Glory Days”:

“…Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but

Boring stories of…

Glory days, yeah, they'll pass you by,

Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye,

Glory days, glory days, glory days…”

Mike Huckabee

“But, the Narrative!...” The more Americans of all colors see the “peaceful protesters” burning, looting, rioting and assaulting, the more they’re supporting the police. A new survey by Heritage Action For America found that opposition to defunding the police has risen to 79 percent, with only 16 percent supporting it.

Even when presented with the soft-soap version of the issue that the Democrats are pushing (Do you agree that we need the police to enforce the rule of law or that we need to rethink policing and spend more of that money on social services, welfare programs and schools instead?), the pro-law-and-order side still came out ahead by 62-29%. And despite all the talk of early, overwhelming support for Black Lives Matter, the latest survey found that by 49-42%, Americans believe that the protests “have stopped being about racial injustice and have become violent riots by people who hate America and want to tear down our government and radically change American culture.”

Proving once again, as a great Republican President once observed, that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Mike Huckabee

So, if someone spews propaganda for two hours and nobody hears it, did they make a sound?

Last night, the Democrats officially kicked off their “virtual convention,” and the results were…underwhelming. I don’t think that’s a partisan reaction. If you’re a true masochist, here’s the entire thing that you can watch on YouTube (incidentally, it was a bad idea to allow people to post comments):

That live stream went on for over two hours. Michelle Obama alone talked for over 18 minutes. But even the Party’s lapdog media at NBC could only scrape up 5-1/2 minutes of “highlights.” (It was a bad idea to allow comments on this video, too.)

And if you want the most entertaining recap of the evening, go to PJ Media’s live-blog, scroll all the way to the bottom, and read back up toward the top.

Stephen Green of PJ Media nailed the problem, writing, “What the Dems are selling requires exuberant crowds of people who aren't thinking too clearly about the longterm. That's a very difficult sell to make when staring into a webcam, sitting in front of a green screen.” There’s also only so much entertainment value you can inject when your Hollywood leftist celebrities are beaming in to lecture us on our privilege from their $20 million gated mansions. Green also described it aptly as the "'Star Wars' Prequels of conventions: Badly-directed big-name actors shoved in front of green screens to recite horrible lines they aren't invested in at all."

Steve Guest caught a hilarious clip that perfectly summed up the audience reaction: CNN cut to a family representing “viewers at home,” and they all looked as if they were about to doze off and tumble off the couch until they obviously got an off-screen cue and snapped awake and started clapping.

Granted, it was always going to be hard to rev up the base when everyone was literally phoning it in (note to “Beto” O’Rourke: that’s what “literally” means. Trump is not “literally” tearing apart the fabric of America, unless he’s going around ripping the pockets off of everyone’s shirts.) I doubt that the GOP Convention will be as exciting as it normally would be, either, although I imagine Donald Trump will muster a lot more showmanship than this stink burger. Our resident pop culture historian Pat Reeder said it reminded him of midcentury movie director Sam Woods, who told his actors before every take, “Go out there and sell ‘em a load of clams.” He said he could not only see the intense sales effort but practically smell the clams through his computer monitor. He also wondered who would actually watch this, noting that he is paid to watch it, then adding, “But not enough.”

I wonder how many people did watch it, considering the platforms showing it were so split up. Bryan Preston, one of bloggers for PJ Media, noticed that 1250 people were viewing it on the game stream platform Twitch, while “a stream of a guy playing (the three-year-old game) Horizon Zero Dawn has more than 23,000 viewers.”

Some of the lowlights for me, in no particular order: At least they did start off by playing the National Anthem, but they had to tell viewers that they may stand or kneel, whichever is their preference… They also had a prayer, which is odd considering their long-running war on prayers at all other public gatherings, even to the point of booing an attempt to reinsert God’s name into their platform at the 2012 convention…Paying lip service to Black Lives Matter and defending all those “peaceful protesters” who are burning down Democrat-run cities, but showing no respect to the police who are being killed and injured when they try to stop the riots (then again, Biden learned how it goes over with the far-left wing when he says anything even mildly complimentary about police:

…Repeating with great passion several long-debunked lies, like claiming that Trump called the coronavirus a “hoax”…And all the crazy conspiracy nuttery about how Trump is “dismantling” the Post Office (nobody ever complained about the Post Office before Trump was elected, and he’s obviously responsible for the 12,000+ mailboxes that were removed in the last five years of the Obama Administration)…

Here are a few moments worthy of more detail…

* Claiming that Joe Biden knows how to handle a pandemic because we all didn’t die of Ebola: Ebola was nothing like the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus. It was deadlier but much less contagious. H1N1 (swine flu), which hit during Obama’s term, was contagious, but not nearly as deadly. Good thing, since even one of Biden’s top health advisors admitted that Obama's response was so lacking that it was only by sheer luck that millions of Americans didn’t die. You know, like they predicted would happen under Trump, and when it didn’t, they blamed him for every death anyway.

We also know how Joe would have handled this pandemic, since he attacked Trump as a xenophobe after he shut off travel from China and Europe early on. He also blames Trump for the economic damage caused by the lockdowns, yet he and other Democrats think we should have locked down harder and sooner and stayed locked down longer. So judging by his own words, if Joe had been in charge, we would have had a lot more cases a lot sooner, and the economy would have suffered more and longer. If I’m wrong, then tell me what he would have done differently that would have made things better…Is that crickets I hear?

* Bringing in New York Gov. Mario Cuomo to talk about the coronavirus (which he called – and I am not making this up – the “European virus”) was not good strategery. Maybe they’re still living a few months in the past, when Cuomo’s handling of the virus was being hailed by the media as brilliant, back before people realized what actually happened. Another big lie told last night was that America has the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the world. But if New York State were a separate country, it would be #1 by a mile (1688 per million, nearly twice the per capita death rate as #2 Belgium.)

The only possible worse choice during the time of the coronavirus would have been the vastly unpopular and irrationally dictatorial Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer…Oh, wait, she was a speaker. She claimed that “science” will drive Biden’s fight against the coronavirus. You know, like science tells us that the virus spreads in churches, but not at protest rallies. And it only spreads at bars if they serve food less substantial than sandwiches. Science!!

* Presenting John Kasich as an example of a Republican who opposes Trump is like trying to convince us that someone is a bad guy because the bitter former co-worker he beat out for the top job says so. Bonus: Here’s Kasich in 2012 telling us that Biden is a big liar.

* My writers said of Michelle Obama’s speech that it was infuriating for its dishonesty, but they had to give whoever wrote it props for persuasive ability. They found it to be the best-crafted pack of lies, distortions, historical revisionism, and scaremongering of the entire evening, and that’s not meant as faint praise just because all the rest were so clumsy and obvious. Making the theme “going high” while repeatedly going low was quite ingenious speechcraft. However, they did notice that while she mentioned Joe Biden by name 14 times, two words never crossed her lips: “Kamala Harris.”

Of course, the mainstream media figures are in full-out worship mode. Rachel Maddow declared that at MSNBC, once Michelle started talking, “none of us breathed for 18 minutes." That would explain the brain death.

You know a political convention isn’t a hit when the most talked-about and memed moment was the astonishingly large wall of fireplace logs behind Bernie Sanders, which drew far more interest than his speech (and was less wooden). People were asking if it was fair that one man should have so much firewood? Shouldn’t it be redistributed to people who aren’t privileged to have so much firewood?!

Personally, my theory is that he’s hoarding firewood. He knows that if these people actually get elected, that will be the only fuel available to heat your house.

Update: It's been revealed that the reason Michelle Obama didn't mention Kamala Harris in her speech is that it was recorded before Biden picked Harris as his running mate. Does anyone else wonder if she would have endorsed Joe so heartily if she'd known it wasn't going to be her?

Mike Huckabee

This “mailbox” conspiracy theory is getting so crazy, and so many people actually believe the lies in the media, that we’re going to talk about it again today. It’s so ridiculous that Tucker Carlson, on Monday night, introduced his segment on it by saying, “Like cows taken by UFOs, or crop circles, mailboxes are disappearing mysteriously across this country. This is a big story, it may be more serious even than ‘Russia collusion,’ says Nancy Pelosi. No mailbox is safe tonight.”

It’s ridiculous, but extremely serious at the same time because, tragically, a lot of people do swallow it, and many in the media, major media and social media combined, are working overtime to make SURE those people and all their friends believe it. Facebook and Twitter are fine with this garbage. So, what is this insane story? It’s that the President of the United States is actually working to prevent the mail from delivering completed ballots by plotting to have official U.S. mailboxes in “blue” areas STOLEN.

During a “virtual” fundraiser from his basement on Friday, Joe Biden said that “they’re going around, literally, with tractor-trailers, picking up mailboxes! You ought to go online and check out what they’re doing in Oregon! I mean, it’s bizarre.”

It’s bizarre, all right. The whole made-up story. It’s been thoroughly debunked; in fact, we pretty much tore it to shreds in yesterday’s edition, so I don’t think we need go through the whole thing again.

The Post Office moves mailboxes all the time. As Tucker reported, the USPS inspector general reported in 2017 that the postal service had removed 14,000 mailboxes over the preceding 5 years (when Obama was President).

Last week, Trump didn’t give Democrats the $3.5 billion they wanted for the USPS to help process mail-in voting; in fact, that’s why the next “stimulus” bill is on hold. Democrats are furious; they crave universal mail-in voting, unlike sane and honest people who see the potential for rampant fraud and seismic mistakes. We’ve showed you numerous examples of huge voter fraud, such as one in Nevada that involved 200,000 mail-in votes.

Tucker wondered the same thing we did: in a “blue” state like Oregon, which Biden is going to win anyway, how does Trump gain by going around pulling up mailboxes there? But this doesn’t have to make any sense; logic is so old-school.

So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is actually bringing Congress back from summer vacation to deal with this fake emergency, saying the President is trying to “sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service.” She also tried to scare the elderly by claiming they may not get their Social Security checks in the mail. (Hasn’t she ever heard of Direct Deposit? That’s how it’s been done since 2013.)

A crowd of angry demonstrators got so worked up, they showed up at the Postmaster General’s HOUSE. And now, if (when!) Trump wins, many people will be pre-set to believe that he cheated to get re-elected --- by stealing mailboxes.

Yes, Trump is against widespread mail-in voting. That’s because he’s trying to SAVE the integrity of elections. To illustrate, let’s look at why, even under ideal circumstances (which we’ll never have), mail-in voting is just a bad idea.

"We already have absentee voting,” you might be thinking, “and that’s by mail. So why can’t we all just mail in our votes?” In case you don’t know (or have friends who could use a simple explanation), absentee voting and mail-in voting are very different. In mail-in voting, ballots are just mailed out to voters on the rolls, to whatever address they have for you, which means you may not even GET your ballot. Somebody else may get it and fill it out. Maybe they fill it out for someone who’s died. (Makes you wonder why the Democrats are so all-fired enthusiastic about it. Or maybe not.) With absentee voting, you apply for the ballot and it’s sent to you, registered to YOU. That is YOUR VOTE. Voting absentee is kind of like using registered mail as compared to just regular mail, which may or may not get to you and, even if it does and you reply, may not get to where it needs to go.

Now, which way of voting is more secure? Let’s say you won the Powerball Lottery and were going to receive $100 million (well, $60 million after taxes, ha). How would you claim your winnings? Would you just sign your ticket, put it in an envelope, mail it and cross your fingers? Or would you send it registered mail? Given just those two choices, I’d certainly opt for registered mail!

On the other hand, if at all possible, I’d go IN PERSON to deliver that ticket, show I.D. and claim my winnings (even if I had to wear a mask, keep my distance and use hand sanitizer). Likewise, going in person to cast your vote is still the best choice of all. It’s time to think of your vote as THAT valuable.

Bottom line: 1) Good gracious, Trump is not taking the mailboxes. 2) Mail-in voting BAD; absentee voting BETTER; in-person voting BEST.

Mike Huckabee

The new Franklin Templeton–Gallup Economics of Recovery Study found that many Americans are shockingly misinformed about the actual dangers of the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus. While it’s certainly a serious and potentially deadly disease that we should all take reasonable precautions to avoid, most people believe it’s much more deadly than it really is, and to the wrong people.

Here are the three main findings, direct from the report:

1. "On average, Americans believe that people aged 55 and older account for just over half of total COVID-19 deaths; the actual figure is 92%.

2. Americans believe that people aged 44 and younger account for about 30% of total deaths; the actual figure is 2.7%.

3. Americans overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 for people aged 24 and younger by a factor of 50; and they think the risk for people aged 65 and older is half of what it actually is (40% vs 80%)."

As the study points out, we’ve known since this started six months ago that by far the greatest danger is to older people and those with comorbidities like obesity or diabetes. So what’s to blame for this stunningly high level of incorrect beliefs? Partly, it’s just paranoia over our own health, but the two most common factors among those who believe false information are…brace yourselves for a shock…political partisanship (i.e., identifying as a Democrat) and getting your information from social media. I know, you could knock me over with a feather!

If you are a Democrat who gets your information mostly from other Democrats on social media, then COVID-19 may be terrifying you -- but it's probably not your biggest problem. To see some of the many ways in which believing this false information is hurting people personally and the nation in general, check out the rest of the study at the link.

Mike Huckabee

Instapundit gives us a roundup of news and background on the state officials' warning in California that rolling blackouts could cut power to as many as 3.3 million homes.

This is the worst possible time, since many people are still working out of their houses and can’t return to an office with back-up generators, so businesses will not only be locked down, but shut down completely. A Reuters story on this blames the power shortage on an intense heatwave.

They’d like us to think that “climate change” is the reason, but much of Southern California was reclaimed from the desert and has always been hot in the summer (note that the last time blackouts were this bad was 19 years ago.) An intelligent state government would have taken into account the warm climate and the rising population and made plans to provide enough energy for everyone’s future needs.

Unfortunately, California hasn’t had an intelligent state government for decades. Instead, it’s had a one-party, leftist Utopian government with no regard for future consequences of their actions. They listened to radical environmentalists who considered it a victory to impose poorly thought-out eco-policies that made wildfires bigger and harder to put out and resulted in severe shortages of water and electricity. They celebrated when they shut down a power plant or blocked a new one, but did nothing to make up for the loss of energy, other than hoping that it would be magically offset by sunshine, windmills, rainbows and unicorn flatulence. These are the same “progressives” who inherited the Golden State and, even before COVID-19, managed to regress it to the Dark Ages of feudalism, homelessness, lawlessness, dangerous unsanitary conditions and ancient diseases like typhus. Sweltering in the dark with no electricity just seems like the next logical step in their long game plan to dismantle Western Civilization.

As the linked post points out, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom led the crusade against California’s last nuclear power plant, the cleanest and most effective form of non-CO2-producing energy. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for an investigation into why the state is facing massive power blackouts. Might I suggest that he start by looking into the nearest mirror?

At least he’s finally admitting that “the transition away from fossil fuels has left California with a gap in the reliability of its energy system” and the state must reexamine its reliance on solar power and how that fits into its broader energy portfolio. Gee, who could have predicted that doing away with the only reliable sources of energy and replacing them with sources that couldn’t possibly meet the demand might result in shortages?

They say that trends start in California and spread east all across America. Let’s all hope and pray that’s not true! Because Californians are about to get a nasty preview of what America will be like if Joe Biden is elected, shuts down the fossil fuel industry and passes the “Green New Deal.”

Mike Huckabee

No, President Trump did NOT vow to “terminate Social Security.” He wants to help people struggling with the coronavirus lockdowns by not collecting the Social Security payroll tax for the rest of 2020, and he said he’d like to terminate that tax permanently. That would mean finding other funding sources, but he didn’t say he wanted to terminate people’s Social Security checks. And since the fund currently has a $2.9 trillion surplus, it can go for a while without collecting the tax.

The claim that Trump wants to terminate Social Security is being promoted by a partisan group called Social Security Works, but there is zero truth to it. Even USA Today sided with Trump on this.

This phony claim is as reliable an indicator that an election is nearing as falling leaves are a harbinger of autumn. I’ve been on this planet for six-and-a-half decades, and not an election has gone by in all that time that Democrats haven’t claimed Republicans want to take away grandma’s Social Security check. Yet over my entire lifetime, Social Security checks have never failed to go out, even during government shutdowns, or been reduced, and now I’m old enough to collect one myself.

Mike Huckabee

Do you wonder how a bunch of young Americans who not that long ago were bright-eyed children eager to learn have become a mob of angry, violent leftist radicals who hate their own nation, history and culture? They were taught to be that way in our schools when parents weren’t paying attention. Here’s an article by a former schoolteacher who explains precisely how it happens:

You can add this anti-American indoctrination to a growing list of reasons why many parents are coming up with creative alternatives to putting their kids back in public school -- and the teachers’ unions, with their threats of strikes and ridiculous political demands that have nothing to do with virus safety are just accelerating that process. It's no wonder that some teachers are reportedly worried about giving online classes for fear parents will listen in and discover what their kids are being told.

At this link, the National Review takes a look at some of the proliferating alternatives to public school, from “hybrid homeschooling” to “pandemic pods.”

And here’s another chilling incentive for parents: a 2015 survey by the Nehemiah Institute found that 90 percent of church-going Christian teens who attended public schools abandoned their faith to embrace a secular worldview. That’s no surprise when you read what the former teacher said about how he was encouraged to read kids stories from all different cultures around the world, until he tried to read them a story from the Bible and was shut down immediately.

Perhaps the best piece of advice in this article is that “every church should start a school.”

Mike Huckabee

A new Pew Research Center survey proves that those white liberal arts majors who are burning down black neighborhoods while claiming to be championing black lives aren’t the only white liberals who presume to speak for minorities. There’s been a lot of pressure lately from the left, especially in the media, to use the term “Latinx” (or to be even more pretentious, “LatinX”) as a PC, gender-neutral term for all Hispanics. If you don’t use it, white liberals accuse you of being a bigot and disrespecting Latinx (sorry: “LatinX”) culture. But did anyone ask Hispanics what they think about this?

Well, the Pew Research Center finally did, and here are the results.

44% prefer the term “Hispanic.” 24% prefer Latino/Latina (did the people pushing the gender-neutral “LatinX” even consider that Spanish is a romance language, which means every noun has a gender?) 11% prefer to be identified by their specific native country. 5% prefer Chicano/Chicana. As for “Latinx,” less than 3% prefer that, and 23% have never heard of it.

In attempting to defend this neutering of one of our great romance languages, an immigration attorney writing in The Hill argued that the survey talked to too many older immigrants, when it’s young, American-born Hispanics who prefer “Latinx.” Which sounds like yet another example of a small group of “woke” liberals trying to impose their preferences on a large group of minority citizens. Sounds kind of racist, doesn't it? He also argued that since the survey had a margin of error of 5%, “Latinx” might be preferred by as many as 8%.

Three observations: 8% is still pretty darn few. Since 6% of Hispanic-Americans (God bless them) just prefer to be called “American,” with the margin of error, that could be as many as 11%, meaning that far more Hispanics prefer to be called “American” than “Latinx.” Finally, with 3% support and a margin of error of 5%, that could also mean that zero percent prefer “Latinx.” The fact that the left wants to impose an awkward, arbitrary term on an entire minority population, when it’s possible none of them actually want it, is a perfect example of the condescending sense of privilege our current class of “liberal activists” exhibit.

Mike Huckabee

From Diane H:

Please don't get too political!!! You have stood out as a commentator because of your fairness and honesty. I am so sick of politics driving everything in this country. Please just present the facts. I'm tired of seeing Democrats just involved in painting the Republicans black. And I'm getting just as tired of Republicans bending over backwards to paint the Democrats in as bad a light as possible. PLEASE don't make this your game too. This is being written in response to many of your columns recently not particularly this one. I know it's a war but Republicans are doing their part in escalating it.

From the Gov:

Thanks for writing, Diane, and I'm sorry to hear you feel I've been less than completely fair and honest in recent days. I think the best way to counter false arguments is with as much fairness and honesty as there can possibly be. Right now, the voting public is being deluged with false arguments and wrong information –- even the so-called “fact-checkers” are tainted by politics. And, yes, that does get wearying.

Let me assure you, I am still trying my best to be fair in my comments and 100 percent honest and accurate when presenting the facts. Unlike just about every major media outlet, which typically gets fooled by jumping on every anti-Trump story out there, I haven’t had to retract stories in my newsletter as “fake news.” We try to make sure that every story we bring you is the real deal.

If my tone seems more strident lately, and if politics appears to be “driving everything in this country,” it can’t be helped right now. This is happening because we’re in the last few months of one of the most significant fights for power that our country has ever seen, possibly even more so than when Hillary was running in 2016 (and that’s saying a lot). It’s perfectly fair and honest for me to say that the Democrat Party is now openly controlled by far-left socialists who seek to destroy everything America was built on. Just look at their list of demands. Or ask their leadership to denounce even violent pro-communist groups such as Antifa and BLM; they won’t do it. This really is so serious that it’s impossible not to be political, and, yes, even partisan. When I say Democrats absolutely cannot be allowed to win this one, I am not playing a “game” or merely “painting” them as villains.

Just turning on the news and seeing what is going on in our major cities, and in government from Congress all the way down to some city councils, is disgusting and horrifying. To observe that is not to “paint the Democrats in a bad light.” Why should I “bend over backwards,” as you put it, to paint them in a bad light when they are doing a spectacular job of it all by themselves? I’m not bending any which way at all, just being honest about what I see and what I think it means for the country if it comes to pass.

Diana, this is not "my game." So much is at stake, it’s impossible not to be political now. And what’s happening is real. For some, especially those centered in Washington, DC, and paid handsomely to play it, politics IS a game –- some see it as a blood sport –- but, trust me, this is all real. What’s happening in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and coming soon to a city near you...IT’S REAL. It affects people’s lives; sometimes it ends people’s lives. What I say about it is opinion, of course, but my opinion is based on fact, which I give you as well.

My staff and I are working hard, swimming through this toxic environment to give you the information you need. Much of it isn’t being widely reported but is true nonetheless. We are dismayed by how utterly misinformed many Americans are going to be when they cast their vote. The media have worked overtime to present one side, and, given what we know to be true on a variety of issues, we usually have to turn them off before our heads explode. No, we don’t want to be the “Republican” counterpart to what we see on the Democrat side. We do take the higher ground, in that we want you to know what's really going on.

You say you know this is a war. Please understand that we are not the aggressors in this war; it is being waged against us and America as a nation. FIGHTING BACK IS NOT THE SAME AS ESCALATION. The left will not stop; if we don’t fight back and end up losing this, we'll essentially be run over, along with our values and our cherished rights. We will lose such basic rights as freedom of speech, self-defense (along with defunded police departments), worship, property, and equal justice under the law, which is already pretty shaky as it is. We will have open borders and packed courts. History will continue to be torn down and rewritten. We will have essentially one-party rule and no compromise. “Equality of opportunity” will be twisted into “equality of outcome” for racial groups. There will be little we can do to stop full-term and even just-born infants from being killed or allowed to die untended. And the bureaucracy that abused its power to spy on Americans and create the fake “Russia” story will go unpunished and be free to continue violating the rights of those they don't like.

This is all extremely important, and politics will decide it. It’s not a game –- we have to fight back. If you don’t like politics, you’ll just have to wait it out. And that, Diane, is my fair and honest assessment!

Mike Huckabee

From law professor/blogger Ann Althouse, on Joe Biden’s speech and his first tweet after announcing Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Prof. Althouse was appalled by Biden’s attempts to stir up racial division and hatred with his description of what happened in Charlottesville, but also with his attempt, yet again, to claim that President Trump said there were “very fine people” on the side of the racist white nationalists.

Both Biden and Harris claim that “character is on the ballot.” Yet they’re trying to scare black people into thinking Republicans want to lynch them, and (ironically, since his defenders are trying to use the “Trump is a liar” narrative as an excuse for Joe to weasel out of debating him) kicking off their campaign by repeating a scurrilous, slanderous and thoroughly debunked lie.

Even CNN’s Jake Tapper admitted that Trump was talking about people on both sides of the debate over removing Confederate monuments. When the interviewer asked if he meant the white nationalists, he seemed incredulous that anyone would ask such a stupid question and said of course not, neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “condemned totally.”

As Prof. Althouse points out, Biden piously declared that "’No president of the United States of America has ever said anything like that.’ Well, now, that is true. Because Trump didn't say it.”

She recalls that when Biden first repeated that inflammatory, debunked lie about Trump over a year ago, she wrote this: "If Biden does not come forward and retract [a video relying on the Charlottesville hoax] and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President." Yet, she adds, over a year later, he’s “doubled down on the lie” and is “making it the centerpiece of his campaign!” At this point, she said, “I can't imagine what Biden could do to win my confidence.”

I can’t, either. But I can assure Joe that plagiarizing Ronald Reagan won’t do it.

Mike Huckabee

One of the hallmarks of the Trump era has been the muckraking, back-stabbing “tell-all” book. I hate even to sully my eyeballs with this garbage, but I have no choice: I “read the news so you won’t have to,” even if it means having to research opportunistic, money-grubbing dreck that’s completely at odds with known facts.

For instance, I told you what was in Mary Trump’s recent book trashing her Uncle, the President, even though it was mostly debunked rumors (the SAT story) or second-hand hearsay from relatives who held a grudge over not inheriting enough money and who hadn’t seen The Donald in years. Naturally, that didn’t dissuade the media from giving the author tons of free publicity.

Well, this fall, we’re reportedly going to see a book that’s unflattering to Joe Biden – not a political book critiquing his policies, but a dirt-digging expose book that promises some stunning personal revelations. I don’t like even talking about stuff like this, but I have to tell you it’s coming because the media is likely to bury it deeper than nuclear waste. This book is by someone who potentially has an ax to grind, but unquestionably does know things that few other people would. The author is Jill Biden’s ex-husband, Bill Stephenson.

The National File has an exclusive preview. The splashiest and most unsavory claim is that the entire story of how Joe and Jill met on a blind date was fabricated, and they actually had known each other far longer. Stephenson alleges that he divorced Jill when he discovered she and Joe were having an affair after Joe backed into another car while driving the Corvette that Bill had given his wife (and Biden even welched on paying the $650 in damages he caused.)

But there are stunning non-personal claims as well. Stephenson was an early supporter of Biden’s political career, and he alleges that before Joe’s first Senate run, he gave $3,000 to Joe’s brother Frank to bribe a local Teamsters’ boss to make sure a newspaper that endorsed his opponent wasn’t delivered for three days, until after the polls closed. He also claims that shortly after the divorce, “Frank Biden approached Stevenson and suggested that he get out of town because he was now a liability to Joe Biden’s political career.”

Is all of this true? I have no idea. I do know that if it were about Trump, it would be front-page news, true or not. The National File has reporters already working on verifying some of the claims. But it is coming out -- unless someone manages to kill it. If so, then that will be a story in its own right. If nothing else, when you consider it alongside Joe’s long, known history of plagiarism, self-aggrandizement and outright whoppers…

…it renders even more laughable the excuse by rabid anti-Trumpers like Bill Kristol that Joe Biden shouldn’t lower himself to debate someone who’s told so many lies.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

If (when!) Joe Biden’s campaign manages to weasel out of any debate appearances with President Trump, Trump's campaign should just buy some prime airtime, put him next to an empty chair (or maybe a cardboard cut-out of Biden), and have him give the opening statement he might have made in a real debate (but significantly longer, since Joe's not there). Here's what I wish he would say:

PRESIDENT TRUMP:

"My fellow Americans, I love my country –- I love America, with all my heart. I always have. And I feel really bad right now, because millions of Americans, just because they don’t like ME –- don’t like my style, don’t like my tweets, don’t like things they think I’ve said (most of which are twisted-up versions that convey something I never intended) –- are ready to vote for anybody but me. Anybody. I mean……..ANYBODY. That’s what “never-Trumper” means, after all; I know that. And THAT means, right now, this country is in big trouble.

“Because they don’t like ME, some Americans might unwittingly put into power a radical political machine that will decimate their most basic freedoms, with ruthless, violent tactics and a long list of demands that will change America into something unrecognizable, probably forever. (Some of this has been a long time coming, but because the virus hit, they’re jumping on the crisis as a way to take control quickly.)

"Because they don’t like ME, some Americans might unwittingly offer inroads to groups that literally want to destroy American cities --- that are ALREADY destroying American cities, GREAT American cities.

“Because they don’t like ME, some in our government abused our own justice system to try to bring me down, and if they get away with what they did, mark my word, they’ll do it again to the next leader they don’t like. They went so far as to accuse me, with no evidence at all except for what was falsified, of working as an agent of Russia. It was crazy –- 2020 will go down in history as “the year America went crazy.” Who needs Russia to interfere in our elections when we’ve got our own bureaucracy to do it, as well as various outside influences with virtually limitless resources, pouring money into radical leftist anti-American groups?

“Because they don’t like ME, some Americans ignore all that I did --- before the virus arrived from China to at least temporarily undo much of it --- to bring the economy back like gangbusters after years of weak semi-recovery. They ignore the incredible benefit that came out of that to hard-working Americans, men and women, of all races, in all walks of life.

“Because they don’t like ME, some Americans even ignore the legitimate work of some doctors and researchers because they think it’s more important to believe I’m wrong. And they forget that I was the one to stop incoming travel from China and Europe, which likely saved thousands of American lives, when my opponents ridiculed that.

“Because they don’t like ME, some Americans paint me as someone I don’t even know. Really, I don’t even recognize myself from what they say. If I met that person, I wouldn’t like him, either! They’ve said I only care about myself, when that is such a lie. I know, I know, it’s just politics. Say whatever you need to, right? (Like Kamala, she knows all about that.) But those of you who don’t like me need to understand: the object of your hatred is a phantom, something made up. My own style –- which can be misinterpreted, I know –- may have helped fixate that in your mind, as I’m obviously not a slick politician, but it’s still false.

“I don’t care a whole lot about that part of it, because I knew when I got into politics that it would be rough. I got into it anyway because I love my country and had a beautiful vision of what we could do. I kind of expected the lies from the politicians, but the media –- you have a lot to answer for. Because YOU don’t like me, you have become a shameful propaganda machine for my opponents. You are to journalism what potted meat is to chateaubriand. And it doesn’t seem to matter to you how this might damage our country in the long run. You just wanted Americans to hate me.

“And now, because you did your job and some of them DO hate me, they may be on the verge of putting into power a group of people, those on the far left, who don’t know what in hell they are doing. I mean, they don’t. We can all see they don’t, unless pure anarchy really is what they want. They’ve shown they can’t run cities. They can’t run states. They won’t enforce the law. They’ll gladly take away your police AND your means to defend yourself.

And everywhere they look, they see racism that in most cases isn’t even there, except in their own minds. They don’t understand that in our country, in just the past several decades, most hearts and minds have changed drastically about race, which is fantastic. And it was only going to get better. It’s as if for some reason they weren’t comfortable with that and wanted to do something, quite deliberately, to make it worse again. I wonder why that is?

These people don’t care about law and order. They don’t care about your personal freedom. They don’t care about learning from history; they want to rewrite it to fit their own agenda, which is to tear down the results of hundreds of years of hard work and incredible advancement.

“Now, simply because some Americans don’t like ME, America is in jeopardy of losing everything that makes it...America. I want you to be aware of this when you cast your vote. PLEASE don’t put our beloved country into the hands of people who are set on destroying its very foundation, and I am not exaggerating, not one bit. I love this country. I’ve showed you the kinds of things I can do for this country, to make it better for all. We’ll get through this virus, and you know I’m the one who needs to be in charge of the vibrant recovery we’ll need afterwards.

So I’m asking for your vote. Remember, it has to be a landslide vote that can be counted right away because so many people will be mailing in their ballots –- vote in person! –-and it has be decisive to save this country from even more chaos. More is at stake now than almost ever before in the history of our country, and I know you realize that. Thank you with all my heart, and God bless America.

Mike Huckabee

As if the mainstream media needed any help deciding how to treat Democrats with kid gloves, party operatives have actually sent a memo to media organizations telling them how and how not to cover Kamala Harris. As Tammy Bruce says in a must-read op-ed in the WASHINGTON TIMES, “the fact that they expected this partisan missive to be accepted and adhered to by media entities tells you all you need to know about the problem with today’s legacy media.”

The Democrats are wrapping their demands in identity politics. “The implication of the memo,” Bruce writes, “is that any critical coverage of her deemed unfair (and all would be deemed so) will be declared racist and/or sexist.” For extra emphasis, it even manages to work in the name of George Floyd.

Oh, and they just want to be “helpful.” It’s “challenging” this year to cover “a Black or Brown woman candidate.” (THEY capitalized those words; I’m sticking with the old stylebook, thank you.) So to “help” journalists, they say, “we intend to collectively and individually monitor coverage and we will call out those we believe take the country backwards with sexist and/or racist coverage. As we enter another historic moment, WE WILL BE WATCHING YOU.” (Emphasis mine.)

Among the women signing on to this travesty are Obama and Clinton operatives such as Valerie Jarrett.

Quite masterfully, Bruce makes the case that it’s this very letter and the assumptions behind it that are sexist, as they presume that a woman needs special treatment. It’s that idea that is disgusting. I don’t know if they plan to “monitor” opinion sites such as this one, but if they do, I’ll tell them right now that their warnings and demands will have precisely no effect on anything we say or don’t say about Kamala Harris, who essentially is running for the office of President, not VP, right now. As a candidate, she will be treated like anyone else of any race or gender running for such high office. And that means no kid gloves.

Though it’s generally not my style to put things this way, in this case I will: they can take their memo filled with implicit threats and shove it.

Mike Huckabee

I’ve made it pretty clear what I think about Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy and, now, the choice of Kamala Harris for the #2 slot. In case there’s any doubt, check out my monologue as guest host on Wednesday’s INGRAHAM ANGLE.

In fact, keep watching after that, for an examination of her candidacy with guests Sara Carter and former California Rep. Darrell Issa, who shared with Harris quite a number of years of service in the California delegation.”

Sara Carter pointed out that Biden himself has intimated that, considering his age, Harris would be the one to end up running the country. And she would do it by bringing a radical agenda, Carter rightly said, pointing out what a “chameleon” she is. “She transforms herself whenever she wants, into whatever she wants.”

Just one example: Harris has actually brought up, with Don Lemon on CNN, the issue of prison inmates being able to vote. Well, I guess some would consider that fair to all the small-time dope smokers (I think about 1500) she put in prison for breaking minor drug laws when she herself has admittedly smoked marijuana.

The Green New Deal, open borders, everything on the radical left’s extensive wish list: she’s for it.

Since Issa had worked with her so long, even back when she was attorney general of California, I asked him what, specifically, about a Kamala Harris vice presidency would keep him up at night. “The fact that the President might need to be replaced,” he said. She made great speeches as the attorney general, he said, but then was “completely hopeless” in that role.

She was so bad, he went on to say, that when she ran “as a progressive” for the Senate, he endorsed and campaigned for her DEMOCRAT opponent. That was “not an easy thing to do for a seated Republican congressman,” he said, “but the fact was, we had a moderate Democrat in Loretta Sanchez by comparison.” The far-left Democrats prevailed, though, and Harris went on to the Senate.

"She will change what she says she stands for,” he said, “at the drop of a coin. But at the end of the day, this is somebody owned by the ‘progressive’ left.” He pointed out that right now, she’s backing away from some of her actions that might be perceived as pro-law and order, but “if that’s gone, she has nothing.”

We also talked about what House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said Wednesday on CNN, that the country really is moving to the left and is exactly where Biden and Harris are. Consensus: OH, NO IT ISN’T.

We really are at a crossroads, and I believe most Americans understand this.

Issa cited a statistic we’ve mentioned here: that surveys show at least 80 percent of Americans want law and order; they want to restore the law and have the same or greater police presence in their neighborhoods. That includes black neighborhoods. (Of course, this is where Harris will play “chameleon” and tout her so-called law-and-order credentials. It’s bunko.)

Be sure and watch the rest of the show if you haven’t seen it, for a great segment with Democrat pollster Doug Schoen about “warning signs” within the Democrat Party concerning the success of “The Squad” in their primary vote. The far left –- the activist, “progressive” wing –- has been quite successful, he says. But they support “policies that are out of step with the broader American electorate.” He would advise Democrats not to campaign so hard on confiscation of weapons, etc. (I didn't have time to ask him, but would that really fool anyone? I think at this point we're all wise to them and know they’d do just that, given half a chance.)

Later I discussed something with Rudy Giuliani that you might not have heard: Harris’s claim, in June of 2019, that if she were in the White House, the Justice Department would pursue “criminal charges” against President Trump. She told NPR, “I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes.”

Recall that Attorney General Bill Barr has made it clear he’s against using the DOJ as a political weapon and has refrained from going after Obama and Biden personally. Obviously, that would be out the window if Harris came to power. “We would be a banana republic,” Rudy told me Wednesday night. He proceeded to go into her record as a prosecutor; it’s shocking to see the extent to which she selectively applied justice and screwed up big cases. She went after “the little people,” he said. “...She is mean, and she is an incompetent lawyer, and she was an incompetent DA.”

As I said later in the show, Harris “comes into this with more baggage than Delta Airlines on Thanksgiving weekend.” Open those bags, expose her radical views on the issues and her past incompetence, and it’s clear: we do not want this person anywhere NEAR the seat of power.

Mike Huckabee

There are two new books out about the Trump Administration, one by a former White House insider and the other co-written by a black political activist. But before you brace yourself for whatever mud the authors have agreed to peddle for a fat advance, you should know these are not the kind of back-stabbing books we’ve come to expect.

The first is by former Trump Director of Oval Office Operations, Madeleine Westerhout, and it’s called “Off the Record: My Dream Job at the White House, How I Lost It, and What I Learned.” She has some harsh words, but not for Trump. Westerhout saves her criticism for the media, and with good cause. After a dinner at Trump’s golf resort in New Jersey, she had a few drinks with some reporters she thought were her friends and who assured her their conversation was off-the-record. She made some catty jokes about Trump’s daughter Tiffany’s weight and his relationship with his daughters. Of course, the “off the record” comments were immediately reported, and she was quickly invited to resign. She now believes they reported those stories just because they hate Trump so much and want to hurt him in any way they can. She learned the hard way not to trust the media.

Westerhout says her comments weren’t true and it “broke her heart” to hurt Trump and his family. But she has talked to him on the phone twice since and he forgave her, which she says “just goes to show how gracious he is.” In fact, she was surprised to discover that he was nothing like what she expected. And she was hardly a Trump sycophant.

Until she went to work for him, all she knew about him was the horrible things she’d heard in the media, so she hadn’t even voted for him in 2016 (although she stresses that she did not vote for Hillary.) She was surprised to discover that he was nothing like how he had been painted. She says he’s actually a kind and friendly boss, he reads constantly, works very hard, relies heavily on female aides and is very warm toward friends, family and staffers.

Westerhout said one of her goals with her book is to counter the relentless false negative stories about Trump. I wish her luck, although I suspect that’s like trying to put out the Chicago Fire with a flyswatter.

The other new book is called “Coming Home: How Black Americans Will Re-elect Trump.” It’s by African-American conservative political activist Vernon Robinson III and Bruce Eberle of the Eberle Associates political fundraising firm.

They tell a similar story of not supporting Trump at first and only voting for him because he had to be better than Hillary Clinton (Note: he is also much better than Joe Biden.) But they came around after seeing him keep his promises about governing like a real conservative with his judicial appointments, peace through strength, cutting of regulations and more, as well as forcing new trade deals, making our allies pay more for their defense, strengthening border security and other measures that put Americans first.

But the thing that’s unusual about this book is its theory that Trump will win reelection because he’ll get a higher percentage of the black vote than any Republican in a century. Two reasons: he’s actually doing things to help black Americans (sentencing reform, job creation, rising wages, opportunity zones, protecting their churches) and unlike most Republicans, he’s actively appealing to them for their votes and not just letting the Democrats’ false claims that he’s a “racist” define him.

I don’t know if that will win him enough black votes to tip the election, although the Democrats wouldn’t have to lose that many for it to sink them. That’s why they viciously attack any black person who dares to oppose them (i.e., if you don’t vote for Biden, “you ain’t black.”) I know it can be done because when I was Governor of Arkansas, I reached out to the black community, listened to their concerns and worked with them to try to solve some problems. They were skeptical at first (they’d grown up hearing a lot of anti-Republican propaganda), but they eventually realized I was sincere. I’m proud to say that I won reelection with the highest percentage of the black vote of any Arkansas Governor since Reconstruction. But of course, I didn’t have a national media churning out a 24/7/365 river of poison accusing me of being a racist. That’s a lot to have to overcome.

November’s election will present a stark choice for African-Americans. Republicans offer proven policies that make them safer, freer and more prosperous. Democrats offer policies that have failed black communities for decades and are currently making life exponentially worse for them. But they’ve resorted to tokenism by adding a black VP candidate and they’re ramping up the false accusations of racism. I think that the choice is pretty clear. I hope enough black voters agree.

Mike Huckabee

Here’s a handy list of four things to know about Sen. Kamala Harris, the VP running mate picked by Joe Biden, or whoever picks Joe Biden’s running mates for him these days.

And just to be helpful, here is my pick for the best serious social media comment on Harris.

David Daleiden, who was charged with felonies in California for exposing Planned Parenthood’s body parts business, tweeted, “Kamala Harris is the greatest threat to civil rights our country has ever seen. I know because she had my home raided for speaking the truth about her political patrons at Planned Parenthood.”

…And the second best…

…My pick for the most surprising criticism of Harris: some African-American activists are furious that she’s being called “African-American” when she’s actually of Indian and Jamaican heritage:

…And for the funniest, this uncredited Facebook post that claims Stacey Abrams has declared herself Biden’s real running mate and wants to know the procedure for demanding a VP nomination recount.

Mike Huckabee

Here's a wrap-up and analysis of Tuesday’s primary election results by Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor Doug Schoen.

As he notes, the big story is the wins by anti-establishment candidates on both the left and right, a problem for leaders of both parties, but worse for the Democrats. This widens even further the great divide between the shell-shocked voters whom Biden will have to feed "moderate" baloney to convince them the party hasn’t gone crazy and the wild-eyed leftist nutjobs who are actually getting elected in blue cities and states and turning them into Third World countries (he’ll also need to win over the voters who actually voted for that!)

Also, deeply depressing but hardly unexpected, voters in Minnesota gave a big win to Rep. Ilhan Omar over her better-funded, equally “progressive” but not stunningly corrupt, anti-American and anti-Semitic challenger. It’s further proof that once Democrats get into a seat of power, no matter how awful they may be, removing them from it is like trying to pry off a deer tick.

Mike Huckabee

Judge Jeanine Pirro said something interesting about Joe Biden and #2 pick Kamala Harris in her appearance on Tuesday’s HANNITY TV show. It was almost a throwaway line as people were talking over each other, but it was this: “I mean, American people, we can sense who’s authentic and who isn’t, and you know what? The longer this goes on...the more I believe Joe Biden isn’t even gonna be on the ticket in the end. Because I can’t believe he picked this woman.”

In fact, former Obama adviser David Axelrod doesn’t think she WAS Biden’s choice.

She did get all of 2 percent of Democrat support when she was running for the nomination. But if former Vice President Joe Biden somehow does make it to Election Day without self-destructing with some monstrous, indefensible gaffe –- that’s a big unknown, a little less than three months out –- and actually (shudder) wins the election, his Vice President will very soon become President of the United States. I think everyone, at some level of consciousness, knows this. In fact, it might be about the only thing on which Democrats and Republicans can agree, though Democrats won’t admit it publicly.

At his Tuesday White House press briefing shortly after the announcement, Trump came right out of the gate with his opinion, saying Harris is “the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the U.S. Senate.” Coming from him, with the way he’s been treated, that’s saying a lot.

Trump said that in regard to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, also saying that he “thought it was terrible for her and...terrible for our nation.”

The President was right. It was also terrible for the #MeToo movement, which was used for political purposes by Harris and others who were desperate to keep Kavanaugh off the bench. Harris might not ever admit it or even realize it, but the way those hearings were conducted actually set women in the workplace BACK, as it made men terrified of even taking a business meeting with a female colleague. This is true even if Harris personally managed to advance her own political career and end up on the presidential ticket as a result, in part, of her moment in the sun.

Oh, and speaking of #MeToo, Harris said in 2019 that she believed the women who complained about Joe Biden’s weird behavior with them, all that hair-sniffing and otherwise getting all kissy and hands-y.

One of them, former congressional aide Amy Lappos, after describing the creepy way Biden physically handled her, said, “There’s absolutely a line of decency. Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It’s not cultural. It’s not affection. It’s sexism or misogyny.”

In April of last year, when Harris was asked about the various women’s claims, she said she “believes them and respects their being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it.” Well, yay all you women for coming forward! Kamala believes you, but that doesn’t mean she won’t do what she can to help the man who did these things become President and to proudly serve beside him, however sexist or misogynistic he may be!

One suggestion: if she’s going to stand beside him, she might want to switch to some cheap store-brand shampoo and quit using that expensive stuff that smells so good…

Recall that at the time this topic was in the news, THE INTERCEPT had obtained a 1993 transcript of Tara Reade’s mother calling in to an episode of LARRY KING LIVE (which, incidentally, was called “Washington: the Cruelest City on Earth”) about her daughter’s problems with “a prominent U.S. senator.” As you’ll recall, Reade came forward with extremely serious accusations against then-Sen. Biden. Harris hasn’t commented specifically on Reade’s story, but I doubt she’s been put on the spot, either, or will be, at least by the mainstream media. (Seriously, do you think the media are going to hit her with a “gotcha” question now?) I won’t go into detail here about what she says Biden did to her, but if you don’t know and would like to, the details are here.

Imagine if some Republican man –- say, a U.S. senator –- had been accused of doing something THIS SERIOUS to an UNDERLING while he was IN OFFICE, and Kamala Harris were questioning him about it with the cameras rolling. Think how utterly ruthless she would be. That's because it’s not about women; it’s about politics. If the accused is a political enemy, you know she’ll treat him as guilty until proven innocent, because you’ve seen her do that with Kavanaugh. (She’s even attacked him since.) If it’s Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, she sets the accusations aside and becomes his running mate.

She’s not the only one to put political power above all. It’s what Democrats do. THE DAILY CALLER contacted 24 Democrat senators, including Harris, to ask if they would even consider the allegations by Reade. Their offices were given 24 hours to respond, and not one of them returned the call.

Mollie Hemingway made the case on Tuesday that Biden “messed up” when he picked Harris. She’s not someone who will help get back any of those voters lost in 2016, Hemingway said. Instead, he picked “a far-left California Democrat.” I haven’t even addressed the issues here –- much more in the coming days –- but yesterday I linked to a piece that listed the “package” we’d be getting from Biden and the Democrats. (Scroll down to point #10 to compare “packages.”) Harris backs it all, 100 percent. Taken as a whole, this is scary, scary stuff, I dare say for most Americans.

Finally, look who tweeted enthusiastic congratulations to Harris on Tuesday. Yes, it’s the son of George Soros.

A lot can happen between now and Election Day. Judge Pirro is right when she says Biden might not even be the nominee by then. If he’s not, does that mean Kamala Harris advances to the top spot? No, the DNC gets to pick, and I'll bet they already have, "just in case." As the Magic 8 Ball says, “ASK AGAIN LATER.”

Mike Huckabee

Scary moment at the White House Monday, as President Trump started a press conference, then was immediately escorted out by the Secret Service. Trump soon returned and explained that shots had been fired near the White House, but not on the grounds. Someone had confronted a Secret Service agent, and there was a reported exchange of fire. Both the assailant and the officer were taken to the hospital but their injuries are not life-threatening. A big Huck’s Hero salute to that Secret Service agent.

The group behind “Occupy Wall Street” is planning a 50-day “siege” of the White House until Election Day, and threatening to fill Lafayette Square with tens of thousands of Antifa-type anti-capitalist radicals hashtagging “#revolution” at each other on their Apple iPhones. If they are as smelly and lawless as the previous OWS losers, it could be an excellent incentive to drive Trump voters to the polls. In the meantime, I’m glad to see that the Secret Service is on the job and ready and willing to take whatever measures are necessary to protect the President, his family and the White House.

Mike Huckabee

I am often challenged as to how a practicing Christian believer and former pastor can support Donald Trump with his many character flaws. First of all, it’s not my place to judge someone else’s character. I’ve also never made it a secret that I find some of the President's language, tweets and behavior to be less reverent than I would like. But God has not sent us any perfect people in the past 2,000 years. When choosing a President, you have to consider more than whether you approve of someone’s personality and temperament. You have to consider what that person will do for (or to) America and the world.

When I look at how President Trump has defended life, religious liberty and Israel, and how he has worked so hard to restore American strength, protect the innocent, end terrorism, and create jobs and rising wages for all Americans – and I compare that to the far-left, job-killing, tax-raising, government-bloating, free speech-destroying, student-indoctrinating, religion-crushing, gender-confusing, crime-condoning, border-erasing, abortion-at-all-stages agenda of the Democrats – it is simply no contest.

Wayne Grudem is a Distinguished Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, and it’s obvious that he's heard similar arguments about how he can reconcile being an Evangelical Christian with supporting Trump. He’s written a response that is lengthy, but it’s incredibly thoughtful, well-reasoned and persuasive.

I strongly urge you to read it, bookmark it and share it with everyone you can. There are enough Christians in American that if we would just go to the polls and vote for candidates who support our values, there would be a permanent end to the government’s war on people of faith.

There’s only one change I would suggest to Prof. Grudem’s case. When he says today’s Democratic Party would “allow abortion up to the moment of birth,” I would add, “and well beyond.”

Mike Huckabee

Monday, the Seattle City Council defied thousands of citizens who turned out Sunday to back the police (so much for listening to protesters) and voted to slash the budget of the Police Department. All but one voted in favor, and that’s only because she didn’t think they cut the police budget enough. It was a decision so idiotic and destructive that even Mayor Jenny “The CHOP zone is a new ‘summer of love’” Durkan urged them not to do it.

Within hours of the vote, Police Chief Carmen Best emailed them her resignation. For the record, she’s black, and the City Council cares so much about black people that they’d already slashed her salary and sided with protesters who threatened her home (neighbors turned out and defended it.) Now, as Best pointed out, their cuts will mean layoffs of about 100 cops, likely the most recent hires, who are largely minority officers protecting black neighborhoods. Thanks, “progressives!” Although I expect there will be no need to lay off police since so many of them will also likely be handing in their resignations and getting the heck out of town, just like business owners and law-abiding taxpayers.

Best ended her resignation with a message to her fellow police officers that she looks forward to “seeing how this department moves forward through the process of re-envisioning public safety. I relish the work that will be done by all of you.” Translation: “Goodbye, good luck, and may God have mercy on your souls.”

For some reason, this vote reminds me of something George Burns once said. When he worked with his wife Gracie Allen, they did what was usually called a “Dumb Dora” act. But he had to explain to new writers that normal “dumb” jokes didn’t work for Gracie. She had to say things that weren’t simply dumb, but they had to be SO dumb in such a cockeyed way that they’d sort of make sense to somebody who was totally coo-coo. Watching the Seattle City Council react to violence in the streets and a 525% leap in crime by voting to slash the police budget (because if there are no police to arrest criminals the crime numbers will plummet) makes me wish George and Gracie were still around so that the Seattle City Council could go work as their writing staff and stop destroying a once-great city.

Mike Huckabee

Over the years, I’ve often imagined that somewhere in Washington, maybe hidden under the Capitol dome, there’s a big switch, like the one in the lab in Frankenstein movies. Whenever the Party in power in the White House changes over, someone throws that switch, and immediately, all the standards change to the exact opposite of whatever they’ve been for the previous four to eight years.

Just a few of many examples: Under Democrats, the homeless problem disappears from the news. (Switch!) This uncompassionate Republican President is entirely to blame for the homeless population, even though they were there before he ever got the job…Bush was a “war criminal” for ordering bombing in the Middle East. (Switch!) Obama could order drone strikes that would kill dozens of innocent people and nobody cared…Obama built illegal immigrant detention centers on the border. Democrats yawned. (Switch!) Trump puts children in CAGES!...Obama weaponized government agencies against his political opposition and hey, they had it coming. (Switch!) Trump made a phone call and mentioned the guy who might be running against him in two years. IMPEACH HIM!!

The greatest example may be Hillary Clinton sucking up to Vladimir Putin, then (Switch!) becoming the biggest Russia hawk since Joe McCarthy after losing the election. Democrats who’d spent decades as Russia apologists suddenly started snarkily calling Trump voters “Ivan” and blaming Hillary’s loss on Russian skulduggery instead of her horrible record, awful personality and open contempt for the American people. What made this the ultimate metaphor for the changing double standard is that before the switch, Hillary once brandished a red “Reset” button prop to kowtow to Russia – an actual, physical “switch!”

I bring all this up because we have a new example of “The Switch” that rivals even Hillary’s “switch” from Putin sycophant to 1950’s style Russkie baiter. Throughout the Obama Administration, on my radio and TV shows, I chronicled Obama’s habit of legislating via executive order. Few in the Democratic Party or the media seemed to care, and even Republicans declined to challenge him, beyond public complaining. As one of Obama’s aides put it, “Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Pretty cool.”

Except it wasn’t cool: it was plainly unconstitutional. Duties like making immigration law or ratifying treaties are specifically reserved for the people's elected representatives in Congress. Then Trump was elected, and (Switch!) suddenly, the President had no power to issue executive orders. Every EO was challenged in court. He dosen’t even have the power to rescind an Obama executive order (DACA) that Obama repeatedly admitted he had no power to create before he did it anyway.

And then came this weekend’s executive orders to extend coronavirus relief when Congress deadlocked (remember, Obama justified his DACA order by claiming that if Congress wouldn’t act, he had to.) And what was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reaction? She was fine with Obama's end-runs around Congress, but now, she’s threatening a legal challenge because Trump's orders are “Absurdly unconstitutional!” (FYI: Trump had the DOJ vet his orders and determine that they are constitutional under the President’s power to allocate relief funds in the case of natural disasters.)

So (Switch!) now, the Constitution that was ignored for eight years suddenly must be followed to the letter, according to Nancy Pelosi. How long do you think it will take for the switch to be flipped back the other way if Joe Biden is (shudder!) elected President? Considering that he’s vowed to reverse Trump’s protections of First Amendment religious liberties in his first week in office, I think we all know the answer to that.

Mike Huckabee

According to MSNBC, women’s groups are already mobilizing to fight any sexist or racist attacks on Joe Biden’s choice for Vice President Kamala Harris. Just like they did for Sarah Palin. Oh, wait…

I notice they’re already trying to blunt that reminder of their hypocrisy with the “Well, but…” rationale. Apparently, since they didn’t like Sarah Palin’s political views, it was okay to launch the classic sexist attack of questioning her unqualifications (even though she was the only one of the four – Obama, McCain and Biden – who had been a business owner and chief executive of a town and a state), to attack her family and to denigrate her with the most obscene sexist slurs for women. You know, just like it’s also okay to do that to Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump, who is actually leading an international project to help empower women in business.

If they really want to stop racist attacks on people because of their political views, they should start with the guy at the top of their ticket, who recently told black conservatives that if they don’t vote for him, then “you ain’t black.”

Mike Huckabee

Remember when the big complaint from teachers was that parents weren’t involved enough in what their kids were doing in school? Well, for some teachers, the biggest problem with holding online classes is their fear that parents might be watching and find out just what they’re indoctrinating our kids with.

A Philadelphia teacher let the cat out of the bag by tweeting that “We’ll never be quite sure who is overhearing the discourse,” and that if parents hear what their kids are being told, it will ruin the “safe space” and “what happens here stays here” environment. He wrote that while “damage can come from the left, too,” his main concern is “conservative parents”: “If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kid’s racism or homophobia or transphobia – how much do we want their classmates’ parents piling on?”

This sparked so much furious backlash that the teacher made his Twitter account private, but not before the comments had been captured. You can see them at the link, along with one from another teacher who agreed that “parents are dangerous.”

As several of the commenters pointed out, the idea of an adult trying to seal children off and tell them things that they shouldn’t let their parents know about is intensely creepy and a giant alarm bell. In this case, the child abuse it signals is mental abuse. This teacher works at the Science Leadership Academy. How about teaching the kids’ science instead of indoctrinating them into leftist identity group/victimology dogma?

The pandemic has been a terrible curse, but at least it’s opening parents’ eyes to what their kids are being "taught" and why they come home from school spouting leftist propaganda that sounds like their homework assignment was to memorize Bernie Sanders’ presidential platform. No wonder so many parents say they’ve decided to keep on home-schooling. This story confirms the wisdom of that decision.

Mike Huckabee

Constitutional Rights For Me, But Not For Thee: The city of Dallas, which was perfectly okay with allowing mass anti-police demonstrations, shut down a planned convention by the conservative group Young Americans for Liberty just three days before it was set to begin, citing the spike in coronavirus cases (and I wonder what caused that?)

Politicians claimed it was the hotel’s decision, but that hotel is run by the city. Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who was scheduled to speak at the event, called it “surprising, coming from Texas.” But unfortunately, the left has made big inroads in Texas, at least in urban areas. The major cities are all run not just by Democrats but by far-left “progressives” (recall the similar situation in Houston, which allowed mass protests but canceled the state GOP convention.)

I don’t know if this is because even Texas allowed leftists to take over schools and indoctrinate children, or if so many people fled blue states but brought the policies with them that they fled from. But you can certainly see the results. Not just in the blatant partisanship and disregard for First Amendment rights, but also in the spiraling crime. US cities are disproportionately run by Democrats, so it’s hardly surprising that murder is up in 36 of our 50 largest cities. But it might surprise you to learn that at #1, with a 64% increase in murders in one year, was Austin, Texas.

But when you realize how liberal the “Keep Austin Weird” government of the Lone Star State’s bluest city is, then maybe it’s not so surprising after all.

Mike Huckabee

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin –- hey, that rhymes –- has just subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray in the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s investigation into the origins of the “Russia” probe.

The subpoena, issued Monday, requires Wray to turn over “any and all” documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Johnson said he issued it because “transparency in government is essential and...the American people have waited too long for the truth.” No kidding.

The FBI has said they would cooperate.

But over the weekend, Lindsay Graham accused Wray’s FBI of deliberately misleading the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2018. (Graham chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.) They essentially stuck to their (fake) story and told the same lies about the Steele “dossier” to the Senate that they had told the FISA court in their application to spy on Carter Page, testifying they “had no reason” to distrust the dossier or its sources. Heck, we know they’d been aware for at least a year that the dossier was unverified political oppo research and that Steele’s sub-sources had disavowed it.

Why would the FBI keep lying? So they could keep investigating Trump, of course, and also to keep the focus off what they themselves had done.

Legal analyst Jonathan Turley has been following the media’s “pattern of willful blindness” about the FBI’s apparent falsification of evidence and subsequent lies. The transcript of that 2018 hearing Sen. Graham referenced has been declassified, and, in Turley’s words, “It is hard to read the document...and not conclude that the FBI misled the Congress on the subject.”

The FBI told Congress that the primary sub-source “did not cite any significant concerns with the way his reporting was characterized in the dossier to the extent he could identify it.”

But we know from the declassified transcript that the sub-source, in his 2017 interview that took place over three days, had expressed very significant concerns. He’d said he had “no idea” where some of the information in the dossier that was attributed to him had come from. Some he'd specifically denied giving Steele. What he told Steele had not been meant seriously; he’d just repeated some stories told in jest after a few drinks.

Though Steele’s allegations were discredited by early 2017, the FBI kept right on using them. Even Peter Strzok had said there was no evidence of any members of Trump’s campaign being in collusion with Russians. Didn’t matter.

The media were obsessed with the “Russia” story, but not in finding out whether it was true or not. To them, it WAS true. As Turley said, “the media spent years exploring every possible claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, which was found to be baseless.”

But they’re conspicuously silent now on the exposure of the FBI’s dishonesty. The “Trump/Russia” story has been going on for so long that even many Republicans have forgotten how serious it was for Obama’s administration to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposing party. Watergate started with the attempted bugging of one office, that of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The firestorm over that was so great, it ended up toppling an entire administration. Where have Woodward and Bernstein been this time? We sure won’t find their equivalent at the WASHINGTON POST.

WAPO’s most recent contribution to this area of investigation was a laughable op-ed written by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal accusing Sen. Johnson of “perpetuating Russian disinformation in the U.S. Senate.” Thanks, WaPo! (The piece is behind a paywall, but here’s a link to Sen. Johnson’s refutation.)

Even when it was confirmed that the FBI had used its intel briefing with the new President to SPY ON HIM and his new national security adviser, Michael Flynn, the media refused to pay attention. What they did was imply a kind of (to use the cringeworthy new expression) “new normal” in which it’s not even noteworthy for the FBI to target the President, as long as it’s Trump. Why he’s a Russian agent! NATURALLY, they’re investigating him!

And now, as Turley sees it, “The problem is that there seems a virtual news blackout on the new evidence being declassified. After using tanker loads of ink on the unfounded collusion theories, the media seems unwilling to use a drop of ink on the evidence of misconduct in pursuing that investigation.”

The media have been, and continue to be, complicit. A couple of weeks ago, another of Turley’s columns (four stars –- highly recommended) detailed some of the media’s most blatant coverage lapses, including George Stephanopoulos’ avoidance of a huge breakthrough that seriously undermined the credibility of the dossier: the identity of Steele’s sub-source, who lived not in Russia but America and had worked for Hillary ally Strobe Talbott at the Brookings Institute. Anybody watching ABC News that Sunday would have remained blissfully unaware of any problem with Steele’s claims about Trump. Let’s call this what it is: lying by omission.

FOX News will continue its coverage, of course. And here’s some good news: in the latest TV ratings, FOX News is up, rated higher than any other news source, in fact, and not just on cable. It beat all the broadcast news, too. Even so, it’s going to take the release of the Durham report –- and, especially, some well-deserved arrests –- to create any real stir, and even then, be prepared for it to be downplayed. This has taken so long, they’ll just feign boredom and say it’s “old news,” even though it’s the biggest political scandal of our lives.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

We’re sad to report that veteran character actor Wilfred Brimley died last week in Utah at 85 from several ongoing medical issues.

Instantly recognizable by his gruff voice and iconic walrus mustache, Brimley played many roles in movies and TV over the years, from “The Waltons” to “Seinfeld,” and from menacing villains in films like “The Firm” to crusty but loveable grandpas in movies like “The Natural” and “Cocoon.” He was famous as a commercial pitchman for Quaker Oats and for PSAs for diabetes (or as he called it, “die-a-beetus.”) He was also active on social media, interacting with fans and poking fun at his image, such as suggesting his pro wrestler name might be “The Under-Quaker” or the “DIE-a-BEASTUS.”

Here’s a bit of surprising trivia: like Cliff “Charley Weaver” Arquette, Brimley began playing old coots when he was still relatively young and aged into the part. Brace yourself: when he played the retired grandpa in “Cocoon” in 1985, Brimley was 51. As a blogger friend of mine noted, Tom “Still Doing His Own Insane Stunts” Cruise is 58.