Mike Huckabee

There’s an inside term in political journalism that everyone needs to learn: “Put a lid on the day.”

No, that doesn’t refer to thinking “Oh, put a lid on it” every time Nancy Pelosi opens her mouth. It’s what a campaign team tells the media to let them know that there will be no more comments, appearances or events involving the candidate for the rest of the day. And the media are hearing it a lot these days from the Biden campaign, and very early in the day, which worries them since they are the unofficial PR arm of the campaign.

For instance, Tuesday morning before 9 a.m., Biden’s aides told the media they were “putting a lid on the day.” So 42 days away from the election, while President Trump is jetting around the country, giving 90-minute campaign speeches and addressing the UN in between dealing with major policy issues, Biden is declaring the day over before most people even get to work.

In the linked article from David Marcus of the Federalist, he goes to some lengths to say he has tried hard not to accept rumors or assumptions about Biden’s mental or physical health. I’ve also tried not to get into that kind of personal speculation. Maybe it is some brilliant "lay-low strategy" they're following. But when the candidate not only seems incapable of remaining coherent even with a Teleprompter in front of him, and his campaign day ends at 9 a.m., you have to start wondering if Biden is capable of handling the most demanding job in the world.

It’s obvious that his supporters in the media are starting to panic. I hate giving the leftist magazine the Nation any clicks, but just to prove I’m not making this up, one of their writers just published a screed insisting that there’s nothing to be learned from presidential debates so we should cancel them all, “permanently.”

Translation: I’m saying “permanently” because I don’t want to admit that I’m scared out of my wits about this particular candidate in these particular debates, but I’ll write another screed arguing the opposite in four years.

If Biden is capable of being President, then he should at least be capable of working past the end of the “Today” show. If he’s not, and the Democrats know it, then they are attempting to pull a shameful scam on the American people, and one that’s cruelly unfair to Biden as well. As for all the claims that there should be no debates because Joe Biden is just too honest and pure to lower himself to debate Trump, my response to that is “Put a lid on it.”

Mike Huckabee

I don’t want to be accused of being a “climate denier” (I do believe there is a climate) or of being so anti-science that I disagree with Nancy Pelosi when she warns us, “Mother Earth is angry.” But if we’re ever going to get the terrible wildfires in California under control, it’s necessary to look at real facts and not simply accept overheated claims that “manmade climate change” is entirely to blame for the fires – something that even Gov. Gavin Newsom recently admitted wasn’t true.

Toward that end, I thought I’d point you to a couple of recent reports that look at real statistics and history of both wildfires and weather trends to see if the environmental left’s claims about droughts, temperature and forest fires (pardon the expression) hold water.

First, check out this report from the Foundation for Economic Education.

It asks the provocative question, if global climate changes are to blame for California’s fires, why aren’t other places with forests on fire? Texas, for instance, has more forest acreage than California and a hotter climate, but it’s not burning down. California's winds get blamed, but those have been blowing for millennia. Maybe, as the article points out, it’s because 95% of Texas’ land is privately owned by people who practice wise management policies like controlled burns to remove dead vegetation that turns into kindling, something that California’s environmentalists won’t allow.

"Well, then, how do you explain why the number of wildfires and the acreage on fire are both at record levels?"

Answer: they aren’t. 2020 is on track to be a very bad year, but not as bad as 2017.

“Still, that was the all-time record year for forest fires!” Only because the records being cited start in 1960. In 1930, about five times more acreage burned as in 2017, and the annual average from 1926-‘52 was several times higher. Forest fires have been with us since before there even were humans in North America, but in recent decades, we learned how to control them. Only California has made those methods illegal.

Ironically, one thing that’s also illegal in California is arson, but that hasn’t seemed to stop anyone from doing it.

Of course, pointing all this out doesn’t mean that there is no climate change going on. But the climate is always changing. The big questions are, is it due to humans and is it catastrophic? It’s now conventional wisdom that the answer to both is a big “YES!” and if you disagree, you’re a science-denying lunkhead.

So to check that out, a researcher for the Global Warming Policy Foundation examined data mostly from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “to analyse trends in temperature, precipitation, droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, sea-level rise and wildfires. In particular, it takes account of the widely varying regional climates.” The goal was to determine the state of the climate in 2019.

Here’s what the data shows, quoted directly from the report’s summary:

• “Average temperatures have risen by 0.15°F/decade since 1895, with the increase most marked in winter.

• There has been little or no rise in temperatures since the mid 1990s.

• Summers were hotter in the 1930s than in any recent years.

• Heatwaves were considerably more intense in decades up to 1960 than anything seen since.

• Cold spells are much less severe than they used to be.

• Central and Eastern regions have become wetter, with a consequent drastic reduction in drought. In the west, there has been little long-term change.

• While the climate has become wetter in much of the country, evidence shows that floods are not getting worse.

• Hurricanes are not becoming either more frequent or powerful.

• Tornadoes are now less common than they used to be, particularly the stronger ones.

• Sea-level rise is currently no higher than around the mid-20th century.

• Wildfires now burn only a fraction of the acreage they did prior to the Second World War.

In short, the US climate is in most ways less extreme than it used to be. Temperatures are less extreme at both ends of the scale, storms less severe and droughts far less damaging. While it is now slightly warmer, this appears to have been largely beneficial.”

I’m sure many people will attack the report, the writer and the foundation that funded it. But I’ll be waiting to see if they produce any evidence that he or NOAA got their weather data wrong.

Mike Huckabee

Breaking News on the SCOTUS Nomination: Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the Republicans who was originally said to be opposed to confirming a Trump nominee before the election, now says she won’t rule that out if the Judiciary Committee passes one. Also, it depends on who it is.

Considering those two conditions would apply to any SCOTUS nominee, this shouldn’t even be news (“Bulletin: Senator Does Constitutional Duty!!!”) But the big news here is that with Murkowski and Mitt Romney both rejecting the Democrats’ threats and demands to refuse to do their jobs, at least one side of the Senate is still functioning according to the Constitution, not politics. The equally good news is that threats, ultimatums, name-calling and temper tantrums may have finally ceased to be effective tools of political persuasion.

It might have helped if everything the Democrats are threatening to do (harass and assault Republicans at their homes and in public, riot, burn things down, pack the Court, etc.) they hadn’t already been doing for months/years or already threatened to do anyway if they got into power.

Mike Huckabee

If you read the commentary for Tuesday morning, you know that if Democrats take the Senate and White House, their threats of packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the Electoral College, granting statehood to Puerto Rico and DC, and making other seismic changes will be carried out whether or not President Trump fills the vacant Court seat before the election. So Trump may as well DO IT, and, in fact, intends to. As we reported yesterday, the Senate apparently has the votes. So that part of the discussion is over, or at least should be.

EVERYONE knows that if a Democrat President were in the same position as Trump, with a Democrat Senate to confirm his choice, he’d have his new (activist) justice sworn in faster than you can say “Christine Blasey Ford.” The full Court would be able to start hearing cases in October, hardly missing a beat.

But the double standard applies once again. The media are completely off their meds. The meltdown on CNN and MSNBC was so predictable that there’s no point in even getting into it. Mostly, they’re wrongly equating one situation (the Merrick Garland nomination), in which the President and Senate were of different parties, with another situation, in which the President and Senate are of the same party. But these scenarios are very different, and the anger we see is coming from their blind partisanship and willful ignorance. I’ll do what I hope you do --- ignore it.

Except for one dangerous part of it: They’re encouraging the Democrats to go ahead and “burn it all down": As soon as they gain power, pack the Court to suit the President, destroying checks and balances. (VOX said this might be “the only solution.”) Add states, to gain senators who vote their way. Get rid of the filibuster completely. “Blow up” the Electoral College and choose the President by straight popular vote (gee, why shouldn’t California and a handful of big cities pick the President?). Maybe even impeach the attorney general, for, um, agreeing with Trump too much. Do whatever it takes to hold onto power. The media apparently learned in journalism school that they’re supposed to be the cheering section for all this.

THE FEDERALIST has a great piece on just how far the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) plan to take this.

However, this episode has taken one surprising turn. Under the heading of “even a broken clock is right twice a day,” I have to give credit to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney for seeing the big picture on this issue and putting history and precedent over politics and personal grievance. The LA TIMES wrote that Mitt “made the wrong call,” which means he made the right call. They also left out –- I’m sure deliberately –- the first part of what he said, about the fairness of following the law, so I’ll put that back in:

"My decision regarding a Supreme Court nomination is not the result of a subjective test of ‘fairness’...it is based on the immutable fairness of following the law, which in this case is the Constitution and precedent,” his said. “The historical precedent of election year nominations is that the Senate generally does not confirm an opposing party’s nominee but does confirm one of its own.”

Romney went on to say that he would follow the Constitution and vote based on the nominee’s qualifications. Good job, Mitt!

House Republicans had something to say about Court-packing, too. Not that Democrats care.

As reported in POLITICO on Monday, Joe Biden refused to tell a reporter whether or not he would pack the Supreme Court if he won. He weaseled out by saying, “It’s a legitimate question. But let me tell you why I’m not going to answer that question: Because it will shift all the focus. That’s what he [Trump] wants.”

"Shift all the focus”? To quote Biden after the passage of Obamacare, “This is a big (bleeping) deal!” The idea of Court-packing is a big deal. Shouldn’t we focus on it right now? If Biden won’t renounce Court-packing, that tells us his party intends to do just that if they get the chance.

This is also one more example of Biden flip-flopping, as he said during the primary race that he “would not get into Court-packing...we’d begin to lose any credibility the Court has at all.”

And so we would. Why can’t he say that now?

Kamala Harris was more forthcoming, in a chilling sort of way. As reported by THE NEW YORK TIMES, she said she was “absolutely open to” packing the Court. Well, of course she is. She and AOC are on the same page, you can bet the farm. (Of course, if they end up in power, they’ll likely take your farm.)

Biden won’t even divulge his own “shortlist” of SCOTUS nominees. Maybe he doesn’t know them or remember their names. But he knows who’s in charge of his party, and he has said he’ll have “the most progressive administration in history.” If you want to see progressive, all you have to do is look at the extremists running New York City, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. Leftists have way too much power NOW; we’d be crazy to give them more.

Finally, for when you have time, it’s fascinating to look back at what happened when Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to get the House and Senate to pass legislation to help him pack the Court, just so it would rubber-stamp his New Deal programs. Back in 1937, even though these were all Democrats, they reacted with horror at such a power-grab and refused. FDR’s plan flopped spectacularly. If only this were still your great-great-grandfather’s Democrat Party.

FDR’s Court-Packing Attempt | The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Mike Huckabee

Monday, President Trump held one of his open-air “protest rallies” (he calls them that because according to Democrats, the coronavirus spreads at Trump rallies, but not protest rallies.) He spoke for slightly over an hour. Here’s a link to the entire speech.

The Secret Service arrested two people near the rally who were carrying a backpack with a gun and ammo in it. No details yet on what their intentions might have been, but here’s what we know at press time.

Whatever they intended, it’s a good reminder to anyone dumb enough to listen to AOC’s calls to become more “radicalized” that when you start threatening federal officials like the President and Senators, you don’t get put in pretend jail for an hour by a liberal DA who then releases you to go do it again. You get arrested by federal agents, hit with federal charges and sent to a federal prison, where sticking your middle finger in people’s faces and calling them filthy names is a very effective way to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side on Monday, Joe Biden spoke at an aluminum plant in Wisconsin, where he once again attacked Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, declaring, “He panicked. The virus was too big for him.” (Actually, viruses are so small that it’s impossible to keep them from coming across the border, although one good way to slow it down was to stop travel from China, which Trump did and which Biden called hysterical and xenophobic.)

I guess he thinks Trump should have kept his cool and done pretty much nothing, the way Obama and Biden did about the H1N1 virus.

However, the most memorable thing said by Biden went largely unreported by the sycophantic media, but I think you should hear it. It’s his novel version of the Pledge of Allegiance. Here’s what he said:

“I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real.”

I think they should start the first debate off with that.

Mike Huckabee

"Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time...I’ve heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges. I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the Court.”

So said Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in an NPR interview on July 24, 2019.

Democrats are now threatening to pack the Court with as many as four more justices; it seems they have no problem going against RBG on this, while using her name as a pretext for doing it.

As reported by NPR, she also dictated a statement to her granddaughter in her last days saying it was her “most fervent wish” that she “not be replaced until a new President is installed.” Ah, but this time, Democrats consider RBG’s wishes sacrosanct.

And they ignore something she’d previously said: “...the President is elected for four years, not three. So the powers that he has in year three continue into year four...and that’s how it should be.”

Never mind the confusion created by these very different versions of what she said she wanted, let alone the idea that someone’s deathbed wish should override the Constitution. And what did she mean by “new President”? “New,” as in “different”? Did she mean that if Trump is re-elected, we should hold her seat open till the “new” President takes office in 2025? That sure is a long time to struggle on with a tie-prone 8-member court. Just getting through the next few months that way would be a nightmare, given the inevitable election challenges.

Times sure have changed. As I said on Sean Hannity’s TV show Monday night, it was Sen. Harry Reid who “threw the match in the gas can” in 2013, when he killed the filibuster for judicial appointments. He was told at the time that it would come back to bite, and now it has. Thank God we have a President who won’t be intimidated and will do his duty, and I pray the Senate will do the same. I also wish we had some real journalism going on; then people would know that proceeding with nomination and confirmation of a new justice under these circumstances is constitutional and customary.

Andrew C. McCarthy, writing in NATIONAL REVIEW, makes the same point I did over the weekend --- that what happens now really all comes down to politics. One party will do what it calculates it has the power to do, given the anticipated political fallout.

As McCarthy points out, there was nothing wrong with President Obama nominating Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice, just as there was nothing wrong with Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Senate majority blocking that nomination. It’s all constitutional. The rest –- all the “outrage” –- is pure politics.

McCarthy worries, though, that Republicans’ push to confirm before the election may make it harder for Trump to win against enraged Democrats, as it motivates them even more. I don’t know about that. At the risk of sounding like Chandler Bing from FRIENDS, could Democrats BE more enraged? Republicans could smile and nod and confess to deep-seated racism and capitalist greed and cave to everything the left wanted, no matter how insane and unconstitutional, and they’d still move the goalposts and find more reasons to be enraged. It would never end. Republicans have the opportunity to make this appointment, it’s perfectly constitutional, and they must take advantage of it, just as the Democrats absolutely would. Case closed.

Sen. Lindsay Graham said on Hannity’s show that “we’re gonna move forward in the [Judiciary] committee, we’re gonna report the nomination out of the committee to the floor of the United States Senate, so we can vote before the election. That’s the constitutional process.”

Why so determined? “After Kavanaugh, everything changed with me,” he said. “They’re not gonna intimidate me, Mitch McConnell or anybody else...We’re gonna have a process that you’ll be proud of, a nominee who’s gonna be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee, and WE’VE GOT THE VOTES TO CONFIRM THE JUDGE [emphasis mine] on the floor of the Senate before the election. And that’s what’s coming.”

Trump says he'll announce his choice on Friday or Saturday. Senators know it'll be Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who reportedly met with the President on Monday, or one of several other women on his shortlist (which he, unlike Biden, has revealed).

So this is apparently happening. Get ready to hear a lot more threats about packing the Court as “payback” for doing what the Senate absolutely has the constitutional right and, arguably, obligation to do.

REASON has a must-read (cautionary) article that outlines the various power-grabs the Democrats intend to make as soon as they are able. What everyone needs to understand is this: IF THEY GAIN POWER, THEY WILL DO THESE THINGS WHETHER TRUMP WAS ABLE TO GET HIS NOMINEE CONFIRMED OR NOT. For this reason, no matter what else happens, Biden and the Democrat ticket absolutely must not win. I cannot say this strongly enough. If they do, the America we love will be largely over. Republicans have to win in such a landslide that there’s nothing Democrats can do after November 3 to upset the process and the will of the electorate.

Author Josh Blackman agrees with Jeffrey Toobin in the NEW YORKER that these changes are not only good payback but “good policy as well.” He’s all for 1) the complete elimination of the filibuster, 2) statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, with two new senators for each (“an appropriate rejoinder”), 3) adding to the number of lower-court judges, and 4) adding to the number of SCOTUS justices (“the greatest and most appropriate form of retribution”).

"If Republicans succeed in stealing two seats,” he writes (note his choice of the word “stealing”), “the Scalia and Ginsburg vacancies, the Democrats could simply pass a law that creates two or three more seats on the Supreme Court." He likens this to playing a game of hardball.

See how the “game” is rationalized? (Again, they really don’t care what RBG would think of adding seats.) I brought up this article to get you into leftists’ heads and show you what they have planned. Clearly, they intend to do these things whether Trump gets his way on a new justice or not.

Mike Huckabee

In a shocking but somehow unsurprising story, a professor at Marshall University in West Virginia is on suspension pending an investigation after allegedly telling students during an online class that she hoped all of Trump’s supporters would get the coronavirus and die before the election. I thought universities were supposed to create “safe spaces” for students. How safe would a Trump-supporting student feel in her class?

I say it’s unsurprising because this is the kind of nasty, dehumanizing, violent, radical left rhetoric that’s become all too common among university faculty who fancy themselves smarter and better than the rest of us. At least this one is still clinging to enough shards of self-awareness to say she’s sorry she’s “become the type of person” who wishes death on people who disagree with her politically.

That prompted this interesting blog post on how apparently intelligent and well-educated people who live in a bubble where only one view is ever expressed can let a steady diet of political hatred turn them into soulless tyrants with no regard for human life.

What is missing from these people’s lives that has left such a huge hole in their souls that they would prioritize ideology over human life? I think I know what it is, but she works in a university so I assume I wouldn’t be allowed to give her a Bible.

Mike Huckabee

If you thought the left had gone insane over the coming election (and its results-be-damned aftermath), you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

With the sudden vacancy on the Supreme Court, they have completely lost their minds. On Sunday, Nancy Pelosi threatened to impeach Trump if he dared to do his constitutional duty and nominate a new justice. She described impeachment as “one of the arrows in our quiver.” Good grief.

Interestingly, in a Sunday evening presser, Sen. Chuck Schumer was joined not by Pelosi but by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which should tell you who is really running the show among the Democrats.

The media are nuts, too. To cite one of many incendiary comments, Reza Aslan tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire (bleeping) thing down.”

To his credit, President Trump says he’s going to go ahead with his obligation (his word) to make the nomination.

Schumer said, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.” That’s hilarious; we all know what he said in 2016 (the opposite), and what he’d do now if positions were reversed (fill the vacancy immediately).

He knows, of course, that if Trump DOESN’T nominate someone before the election, the chance of us having a “new President” rises exponentially, as nothing would make Trump’s supporters stay home in fury like his failure to do this. Republicans would burn their OWN party to the ground.

Sunday on FOX News’ MEDIABUZZ, I addressed the political reality by citing Harry Reid, recalling that he “blew up the filibuster” on judicial nominees when Republicans had warned it would come back to haunt him. “So,” I said, “when the Republicans have an opportunity to put a Supreme Court justice on, they’re gonna do it, because they have the Senate and they’ve got the White House. I think there’s plenty of, sort of, double-talk going around...Both parties have taken the position that they’re going to do what they CAN do when they’re in power...That’s politics; that’s how it works.”

In an appearance on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said that “Trump is “following the historic norm. Nine out of ten times, when the party in the White House is the same party that’s controlling the Senate [NOTE: that is key]...during an election year, you put someone forward, they get confirmed.”

Indeed, in 2016, the WASHINGTON POST noted that “one-third of all U.S. Presidents appointed a Supreme Court Justice in an election year” --- including six lame-duck Presidents!

The critical issue here is getting someone on the Court who will respect the law and the Constitution. But the left has given us a preview of coming attractions on what we can expect from them, as they don't respect the Bill of Rights one whit (a whit being smaller than a coronavirus).

As for Pelosi’s threat to impeach the President (also AG Barr) if Trump moves forward, Jordan said, “I don’t think the American people like to be threatened.”

So at this point, the question isn’t whether Trump will nominate a new justice (he will), but rather if the Senate will vote soon and not wait till after the election. House Judiciary chair Jerrold Nadler also has issued a threat: that if the GOP Senate confirms before the election, but in November it goes Democrat, that'll mean payback time, as Democrats “pack” the Court the way Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped to during his administration.

What should the current Senate do? Delay voting in hopes that Democrats won’t try to pack to Court later if they get the chance? Or stop acting like Charlie Brown does every time Lucy promises not to take away the football if he’ll just kick, and take the doggone vote?

What have we learned, class? It’s simple: NEVER ‘COMPROMISE’ WITH DEMOCRATS. NEVER APPEASE THEM. NEVER BELIEVE THEM. THEY WILL NEVER COMPROMISE WITH REPUBLICANS.

The threat to pack SCOTUS is serious, indeed; that’s why Republicans MUST keep the Senate this November. Mark this, if they take the Senate and have a new President to appoint leftist justices, they’ll pack the Court faster than you can say “Ruth Bader Ginsberg.”

As I said on MEDIABUZZ, Democrats have “walked away from everything the President has laid on the table that they said they wanted: DACA, infrastructure, tax reform, dealing with COVID...They don’t want solutions; they want control.” They detest Trump because he won’t play their game. Senators had better not play it, either.

RedState.com has a great new column about why Republican senators must reject any “grand bargain” on this with Democrats. It sounds a lot like me, so, of course, it’s a must-read.

"Bonchie” says, “...I think it’s one of the dumbest suggestions I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s basically negotiating with a person threatening to blow your brains out with a gun that has no bullets." He means Democrats have no power now on this and don’t know that it would change after the election.

"Further,” he says, the idea that giving into Democrats here will somehow heal the nation’s divide is ludicrous and naive. If the GOP doesn’t replace Ginsburg before the election...the riots won’t stop and Antifa isn’t going away. You cannot fix what ails this nation with political olive branches.”

That the GOP Senate would press forward in this scenario should surprise no one. Mitch McConnell told FOX News’ Bret Baier in February, “If you’re asking me a hypothetical, whether this Republican Senate would confirm a member of the Supreme Court, to a vacancy created this year [before November]...we would fill it.”

Of course, the media will NOT do their duty, which is to report this accurately. There is nothing unconstitutional or unusual about confirming a SCOTUS nominee this close to an election when the President and Senate are of the same party. Doesn’t matter; the media are already saying this is OUTRAGEOUS!! But that's just another lie, another false narrative –- an extremely inflammatory one, but they don’t care.

They’ll do anything to pressure the few reachable Republican Senators to waver.

Steve Hilton, on his FOX News show THE NEXT REVOLUTION, had a spectacular opening monologue about madness from the left that is a must-watch! He says pretty much everything else I’d like to say --- with one glaring exception: he did say the Senate should vote after the election. On the other hand, his guest, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, pointed out that the process generally takes about 30 days from nomination to hearings and another 30 days to the vote.

On the OTHER hand --- I’m sounding like Tevye in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF --- there’s something else to consider: we desperately need a full-court to rule on the various election challenges that are inevitable after Nov. 3. That could be the most important consideration of all.

Pat Reeder, Staff writer

Many of you know me and my wife, Laura Ainsworth, through this newsletter. For over ten years, we have worked as writers/researchers for Gov. Huckabee on his radio, TV, Internet and book projects. He trusts us to dig up news that’s accurate and quotes that are fully sourced and in context, to ferret out fake news, and not to share slanted stores that ignore some facts to support a viewpoint, even if we agree with it. There’s plenty of that elsewhere.

Since you know we are straight shooters who try to bring you the honest truth, we thought you might be interested in hearing our personal experience with contracting COVID-19. This was frightening news for us. Even though we are otherwise healthy and not elderly, we’d heard all the scare stories. Laura is also an award-winning retro-jazz singer and recording artist (you can hear her music here: http://www.lauraainsworth.com and on “Huckabee” with the Music City Connection here. So we have to protect her voice.

Plus, she has a preexisting condition: In 2009, she got swine flu (H1N1) during the second wave, which was only diagnosed later because they weren’t testing for it even that late (so much for Biden’s claim that he would handle pandemics better than Trump.) She was very sick for eight months, developed pneumonia and pleurisy, and suffered permanent scarring on her lungs that recently sent her to the ER. She even had to relearn to sing after that.

So we were very worried last month when we came down with suspiciously familiar symptoms. After a trip to a parking lot testing center where we had to stick a six-inch Q-Tip up our noses until our eyes watered, we were told to self-quarantine until we got the results. A few days later, the tests came back: Positive. We both had the Covid.

We were asked if we knew where we got it. No. We’d followed all the precautions: hand washing and hand sanitizer, social distancing (I’ve been doing that since high school), working from home (which we’ve done for years), masks in public, etc. We did go to a few restaurants, but they all took extreme precautions, and we only sat in open-air patios far from other diners. This suggested to me that much of the talk about the precautions – and Biden’s insistence on expanding and enforcing them indefinitely – is mostly “security theater.” If you really know anything about “science” and the size of viruses, you know that wearing a cheap surgical mask to stop a virus is like putting up a chain link fence to keep out mosquitoes.

What was the disease like? We both coughed a lot. We had fevers, but never that high, and they went away after four or five days. We lost our senses of smell (it’s weird to hold a jar of peanut butter up to your nose and smell nothing), but luckily, that’s come back. We had no appetites and had to force ourselves to eat. We also felt queasy (it’s odd to feel like you might throw up when your stomach is so empty it’s cramping.) We also lost much of our sense of taste (I mean our taste buds, not that we started listening to Cardi B music.) Unfortunately, we retained enough to have a constant horrible taste in our mouths, like sucking on pennies. We had no energy and slept a LOT, suffered headaches and body aches, and our skin was so sensitive that having clothes or blankets touching us was very irritating.

Fortunately, we live in a place where there are plenty of delivery options, so we had food, medicine and (most importantly) supplies for the 12 rescued parrots and cockatoos we live with.

We started to feel better after a week or so. As sick as we were, we never missed a day’s work on the newsletter or TV show or a day’s birdcage cleaning, so I think you could say we definitely had mild cases. We never took anything other than aspirin, Pepto-Bismol and vitamins. Laura is still trying to get some energy back, and I still have a lingering wheezy cough, but we’re out of quarantine and mostly back to normal.

This is not in any way meant to downplay the seriousness of this disease, because we know it’s been much worse, even deadly, for some people, so we count ourselves lucky. But for us, as bad as it was, it was hardly the worst thing we ever had (I had something far worse last winter that dragged on for two months.) For most people like us (not elderly and otherwise in good health), it seems to be like a bad, rather weird version of the flu that’s mostly over within a week.

Now that we've had it, we feel strangely relieved. All that worry and effort avoiding it, then we got it, and…that’s it? It’s over now? I feel like making T-shirts that say, “I’d had it already, so save your mask lecture.”

Our experience did convince me that shutting down the world economy over this was one of the dumbest mistakes in history. We should have scrupulously protected those most at risk (like not putting COVID-19 patients into nursing homes), encouraged everyone else to follow reasonable precautions (for all the good it did us), and otherwise gone on with life. I seriously doubt that the death rates would have been noticeably different (look at Sweden), but millions of people would have been much better off and countless businesses would not now be extinct.

Finally, do I blame Donald Trump because we got sick from a virus that lying Chinese communists unleashed on the world? Of course not, I’m not an idiot. The same people who’ve spent the past four years saying Trump is crazy to think he can keep millions of illegal immigrants from crossing the border now expect us to believe he had the power to keep a virus out. I’m just glad we didn’t catch whatever brain disease they have.

Mike Huckabee

"Putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s --- you know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint --- this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

Attorney General Bill Barr made the above comment during a discussion at Hillsdale College on Wednesday. The lying and twisting of his words started immediately, along with the expected OUTRAGE!!! CNN accused him onscreen of “comparing stay-at-home orders and slavery” as Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina exclaimed, “I think that that statement by Mr. Barr was the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things I’ve ever heard. It is incredible that the chief law enforcement officer in this country would equate human bondage to expert advice to save lives.”

Except that Barr DIDN’T “equate human bondage” to following lockdown advice. Read it again. He specifically EXEMPTED slavery from the comparison he was making. He was comparing the lockdown with all the other intrusions on civil liberties EXCEPT slavery, which he placed in a class by itself. When you take slavery (and surely he meant that to encompass the later Jim Crow laws as well) out of the discussion, as he did, it’s certainly arguable that widespread stay-at-home orders and the near-total lockdown of the American economy are exactly what he said they are, the worst and most large-scale intrusion on civil liberties we’ve ever had.

That doesn’t matter, though, because a lot of people aren’t smart or conscientious enough to look at what Barr really said and understand the difference. Of those who ARE capable of doing this, some of them deliberately twist his words to fool the less intelligent and/or informed.

CNN kept on with this, of course, with presidential historian Jon Meacham saying in an interview with Don Lemon that “...it’s incendiary hyperbole. If you think that this is akin to slavery, you obviously never suffered under the burden of slavery in real time or in its longtime, uh, longtime system of segregation...”

Except that Barr never said the lockdown was “akin” to slavery. To repeat: he exempted slavery from the comparison, as it was a “different kind of restraint” (indeed). Barr was comparing the lockdown to OTHER intrusions on civil liberties and finding it to be the most extreme of THOSE intrusions.

Barr was right. To cite just one example, I’ve written about the damage done to the great city of Nashville, right around the corner from where I produce my TV show. The tourist economy of Nashville has been destroyed by the closing of restaurants and bars by mayor John Cooper, along with the livelihoods of countless musicians. Shockingly, government officials have even tried to hide the data that show a relatively tiny number of people caught the virus at those restaurants and bars. The intrusion into people’s lives and livelihoods has been devastating.

As brilliant as Barr is, he should anticipate before the words come out of his mouth how they'll be twisted to say something he didn’t mean at all, and speak accordingly to head off incidents like this. But this time, sadly, he let the predictable happen. Because of the resolve he has to discover the truth about certain activities, he’s got a big target on his back. Attorney General Barr is seen by the left as a huge threat --- you know, not counting Donald Trump, who is uniquely loathed and despised --- and is perhaps the biggest threat to the left in American history.

See what I did in that last sentence? I did NOT compare Barr to Donald Trump or say that Barr is “akin” to Donald Trump. I set Trump aside in the discussion. I said if you DON’T INCLUDE TRUMP, then Barr is maybe the biggest threat the left had ever faced. Just as Barr was saying if you DON’T INCLUDE SLAVERY, then the lockdown was the worst intrusion on civil liberties Americans have ever faced.

See?

In another part of the same conversation, Barr said this of the organization Black Lives Matter:

"They’re not interested in black lives...they’re interested in ‘props,’ a small number of blacks who are killed by police during, uh, conflict with police, usually less than a dozen a year, who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda.”

Again...OUTRAGE!! You’d think that Barr had said he personally wasn’t interested in black lives. No, he was exposing the ugly truth about an organization that is centered around a Marxist agenda and is using black lives –- and the pretext of racial “justice” –- to further that agenda. They ARE using tragic incidents with police to start riots, looting and burning that, ironically, destroy black lives and predominantly black neighborhoods. That organization apparently is NOT interested in the damage it causes those black lives.

Once again, Barr is correct.

Don’t think so? In a must-read article, here’s what you should know about the real BLM, the so-called “Black Lives Matter.”

Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza has another venture called the Black Futures Lab, and if you click to donate (for the love of heaven, don’t donate), you’ll be told to send the money to the “Chinese Progressive Association” explaining that the Black Futures Lab is “a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association.”

By the way, the Chinese Progressive Association is organized as a 501(c)3, tax-exempt.

A 2009 paper from Stanford University that appears on the website Marxist.org describes it as a pro-People’s Republic of China organization whose “support for the PRC was based on the inspiration its members took from what they saw as a successful grassroots model that presented a viable alternative to Western capitalism.”

That's what this is really about. Again, read the article, and Barr will not only be seen as correct but as understating the threat of Black Lives Matter.

Mike Huckabee

While professional football allows players to kneel during the National Anthem and wear the names of felons on their uniforms, Little Miami High School in Morrow, Ohio, suspended two football players (the sons of a firefighter and a police officer) for carrying flags onto the field on 9/11 to honor police and firefighters who died on that date attempting to save others.

The school athletic director claims the boys were punished because they were told they weren’t allowed to do it but did it anyway, and “we did not want to place ourselves in a circumstance where another family might want a different flag to come out of the tunnel, one that may be [one that] many other families may not agree with from a political perspective.”

Judging from all the angry messages the school is getting from the community, there aren’t too many locals who understand why the boys were told they couldn’t do it or why anyone would think that honoring fallen first responders on 9/11 would require some sort of equal time for opposing views.

This again illustrates how too many people running our schools have the “courage” to punish students for daring to express beliefs that leftists oppose, but quake with fear at the idea that leftists might complain about being exposed to beliefs they disagree with. And if one of the beliefs that you find offensive is that we should honor the police and firefighters who heroically gave their lives to save others on the anniversary of September 11th, then I think the correct and proper response to your complaints is “Go pound sand.”

Mike Huckabee

It was a ridiculously odd “coincidence” that about 30 phones used by members of Robert Mueller’s special counsel team were completely erased before being turned over to John Durham’s investigators. But the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, voted Wednesday to authorize over two dozen subpoenas, and this destruction of government records will definitely be on the agenda.

It’s really kind of funny to read POLITICO’s report on this, as their methods are as transparent as Saran Wrap. Consider that in the opening paragraph, they term this effort “part of a highly partisan, Republican-led investigation targeting former Obama administration officials’ role in the presidential transition period.” Why, it’s “targeting President Trump’s political foes less than 50 days before Election Day.” The story does quote a Republican, though. Mitt Romney.

Democrats called the committee’s probes “inappropriate fishing expeditions,” which I have to say is something they know quite a lot about. Ranking Democrat Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan sent a letter to Sen. Johnson on Monday formally objecting to the subpoenas, accusing Republicans of just trying to help Trump's bid for re-election.

How about calling these efforts what they really are, a possibly last-ditch effort to find out the TRUTH of what has gone on to undermine Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy for President? If Democrats (shudder) take the Senate in the coming election, ALL investigations will be shut down faster than you can say "Chuck Schumer." This could be a case of now or never for justice to be done.

At the same time, Sen. Johnson has apparently acknowledged that his committee's effort would help Trump. According to POLITICO, he told a radio host that the probe “would certainly help Donald Trump win re-election and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.” If this raises your hackles, I would point out that deliberately putting off finding the truth until AFTER the election is, in effect, influencing the election --- just in the other direction, by CONCEALING the truth from voters, who deserve to know. That observation applies to John Durham’s findings as well.

"Our investigation is focused on uncovering and revealing the truth," Sen. Johnson said, “but Democrats seem intent at every turn to frustrate and interfere with our oversight efforts.”

This could get interesting. Those targeted with subpoenas include former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI counsel Lisa Page, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough, former FBI agent Joe Pientka, former FBI director of counterintelligence Bill Priestap, former UN ambassador Samantha Power, former White House national security adviser Susan Rice, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith (who has already pleaded guilty to making a false statement after altering a document to lie about Carter Page), former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former top lawyer for the FBI James Baker, top DOJ official Bruce Ohr, Cambridge University professor and FBI “confidential human source” Stefan Halper, and former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. There’s also James Baker, head of the Office of Net Assessment at the Defense Department, which had hired Stefan Halper as a contractor.

Oh, and last but not least, Sidney Blumenthal. Fun times!

Some of the subpoenas do involve Ukraine and Joe and Hunter Biden, as Johnson wants to formally investigate claims made by Andriy Derkach, described by POLITICO as “a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker who was just sanctioned by the Treasury Department for election interference.” In fact, the Treasury Department called him a Russian agent. That must be why Jacob Lew is being subpoenaed.

In another bit of unintentional hilarity, Sen. Chuck Schumer did the (for him) laughably predictable thing and brought up “Russia Russia Russia!” Have you noticed this is always his fall-back? He sought to pass a resolution “calling for a cessation of any Senate investigation or activity that allows Congress to act as a conduit for Russian information." Message to Sen. Schumer: Your act is getting stale.

For a less slanted take on the story than POLITICO’s, I recommend this one.

And also this one.

In related news, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been (finally) busy setting up hearings as well, with chairman Lindsay Graham (finally) announcing that Comey has agreed to testify without a subpoena about “Crossfire Hurricane.”

The scheduled date is September 30. Graham said on Wednesday’s HANNITY show that Comey “will be respectfully treated but asked hard questions.” (I assume they’ve figured out how to get around Comey’s sneaky refusal to renew his own security clearance.) They’re also in negotiation with McCabe and Strzok. (“He’s selling a book,” Graham joked about Strzok. “We will see if he will come without a subpoena.”)

Mueller, however, has already declined to appear voluntarily. He says he “doesn’t have enough time.” He might have a point; judging by his previous testimony, there’s not enough time in the world for him to familiarize himself even with his own report, which it seems someone else wrote and put his name on. But I’d say go with a subpoena for him and anyone else who tries to weasel out. It sure would be nice to get their comments on all those curiously “wiped” phones.

Mike Huckabee

According to an article in Politico...

...Joe Biden seems obsessed with not getting the COVID-19 (Chinese) coronavirus (too bad he’s never told his family members to put more distance between themselves and China.) It’s why his speeches are held in the middle of bug-infested fields with carefully-disinfected microphones and the press held back at least 20 feet from him and confined inside hula-hoops on the ground.

So, if the coronavirus is so terrifying to him - and the way his campaign constantly slams Trump supporters for gathering in large crowds that aren’t BML riots, so the virus might spread there (”Science!”) – why was Joe perfectly able to vote safely in person in the Delaware Primary?

Doesn’t this disprove the entire Democrat argument that we must have national mail-in voting because it would be deadly for people to vote in person? Biden is 77, which puts him squarely among the most likely group to die of COVID-19 (he’s so old, he literally couldn’t remember where he was going to be the next day), and we know he’s incredibly paranoid about catching it, yet he voted in person with no problems. President Trump immediately jumped on the news, tweeting that if Biden, “as weak, tired and sleepy as he is,” can vote safely in person, “any American can do it!”

It’s hard to argue with that logic, but I’m sure the mainstream media will.

On a side note, there’s the question of why Politico would run such an article that makes Biden sound weak and paranoid. A glance at Politico’s home page will show that they currently exist for the express purpose of attacking everything Trump does (including creating peace in the Middle East) and trying to elect the Harris-Biden ticket. Rush Limbaugh has a reasonable theory: that the point of the story was to lay the groundwork for giving Biden an excuse not to debate. Why, he’s just being “responsible” by not showing up to risk spreading the virus.

But if that is the plan, I can’t imagine voters thinking that he could possibly stand up to the rigors of the toughest job in the world if he can’t even stand up at a podium for 90 minutes.

Mike Huckabee

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg could be using his vast fortune to help his struggling hometown of New York City, but instead, he’s using it to try to inflict all its problems on the entire nation by electing Joe Biden and his crew of DeBlasio-like handlers to the White House. You’d think he could look at what’s happened to the city he used to run and realize the disaster that occurs when you put leftists in charge of anything, but apparently he’s blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

In what’s actually a good sign for Trump (the Democrats must be really nervous about the internal polls they’re seeing), Bloomberg has pledged to spend $100 million of his own money on ads to try to help Biden bamboozle the voters of Florida (Democrats hate when billionaires influence elections, except when it's their billionaires.)

While I’m concerned about how many lies can be spewed with $100 million, I have to point out that just because Bloomberg is selling his snake oil, that doesn’t mean people are buying. During his disastrous Presidential bid, he blew more than $1 billion. He ended up winning 55 delegates, who cost him $18 million each. Or put another way, he paid $241 for each vote he won. Still, at that rate, $100 million could buy nearly 415,000 votes, if people are dumb enough to believe his advertising. Of course, it’s possible that most of the people who voted for Bloomberg only did it in hopes that if he became President, he’d stop interrupting every YouTube video they were trying to watch.

Naturally, President Trump had a reaction on Twitter, and it was as blunt and to the point as ever:

“I thought Mini Mike was through with Democrat politics after spending almost 2 Billion Dollars, and then giving the worst and most inept Debate Performance in the history of Presidential Politics. Pocahontas ended his political career on first question, OVER! Save NYC instead.”

Mike Huckabee

Believe it or not, thanks to mail-in voting, people are already casting votes for President. Voting this early is a very bad idea if you want to cast an informed vote, which is one of many reasons why Democrats like it. We haven’t even seen the first debate (if we ever do see a debate, which remains to be seen.) Biden’s supporters are desperately casting around for some reason for him not to debate. They seem to have landed on “Trump is a lying liar who lies, so poor Honest Joe would have to ‘correct’ all his falsehoods.” Or to put it another way, Trump will say things Biden disagrees with, and he’ll have to try to refute him, which is also known as “A DEBATE.”

To push this pablum, they’re repeating the nonsensical claim that Trump has told over 20,000 lies. To arrive at that number, the leftist media basically declares everything that Trump says to be a “lie,” including opinions they disagree with, irrelevant details, hyperbole for rhetorical effect, obvious jokes and things that are plainly true but they don’t like to hear them.

They never seem to remember, however, that “Honest Joe” Biden has built his entire career on false claims about his resume, plagiarizing other people’s life stories and speeches, and enriching his relatives through their connections to his office. This isn’t a matter of interpretation: one of his previous presidential bids crashed and burned specifically because he was caught plagiarizing someone else’s speech and biography. So far in just this campaign, he’s claimed to be in favor of banning fracking, then denied it; in favor of defunding police, then denied it, then claimed Trump wants to do it; against shutting down travel from China, then in favor of it; for mandatory mask-wearing, then against it; and for the “peaceful protesters,” then against the violence they were committing the entire time he was claiming they were peaceful.

If that’s your idea of “honest, no malarkey straight talk,” then check out these eight “big whoppers” that should disqualify him from the Presidency if he thinks that liars don’t belong there.

Finally, as long as we're being scrupulously honest, here’s Howie Carr with a list of recent comments by Biden that the media failed to report. I think this is the real, honest reason why Joe’s supporters are as scared of letting him debate as they are of assaulting a Trump supporter who isn’t over the age of 80.

Mike Huckabee

About a week ago, I brought you THE most important pre-election story of them all, about Democrats readying for a possible “coup,” and linked to this piece by Michael Anton in AMERICAN MIND. Since we presented it as a must-read, I’ll link to it again here to make sure you don't miss it.

Since its publication, that piece has created quite a stir –- at least among conservatives –- and Mark Levin had Mr. Anton on his FOX News TV show on Sunday.

It’s true that the Democrat Party and the media (but I repeat myself) have no intention of allowing President Trump to be re-elected, no matter what. They will do anything within their power, legitimate or otherwise, to stop it from happening. The tradition of Election Day has been rendered almost moot as it is, with early voting starting this year even before any scheduled presidential debate (if they happen at all), along with the horror of widespread, essentially uncontrolled mail-in balloting.

As we discussed, they’ve twisted the whole plot to make it seems as though TRUMP is the one who will resist the will of the people, as though it’s TRUMP who will destroy the public’s faith in the system, when they are the ones openly doing those very things. They hide their activity in plain sight.

They're the ones who plan to count the ballots until they win. If Biden wins enough electoral votes after the first count, they will somehow head off any recounts. If Trump wins, they will count, and count, and...”find” more ballots...and count again until Biden miraculously has just enough electoral votes, and then the counting will be over. Recall the quote often attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who may or may not have said it: “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Anton, who was a member of the National Security Council under Trump and is now a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute (“Recovering the American Idea,” which is a good idea) and a research fellow at Hillsdale College, has a new book out that might be as much of a must-read as his “coup” commentary, called “THE STAKES: America at the Point of No Return.”

I don’t think I have to tell you that we’re very close to that no-return point on numerous fronts right now. Specifically, though, Anton is talking about the threat of one-party as opposed to two-party government, the looming prospect of locked-in blue-state rule, as in, say, Oregon, but coast to coast. Yikes.

Of what the left is already doing to advance the “coup,” he says, “There are ten or twelve data points one could point to. To me, the strongest is when Hillary Clinton herself, who lost to Donald Trump in 2016, said, ‘Joe Biden should not concede under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.’” Presumably, Hillary was talking even about a 50-state Trump landslide. She does not care what the voters want, only what “their” voters want.

Anton said that of all the times there have been recounts, he can think of only one in which the Republican ended up pulling ahead, and that was in 2000 for George W. Bush in Florida, when the Supreme Court finally had to step in and stop the process.

Biden himself has talked about getting the military involved to “drag” Trump out of the White House. Disgraceful. And we had the story last week about the two former Army officers who wrote an open letter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advising preparation to deploy an active-duty combat unit to remove Trump from office on January 20, 2021, should that be necessary. (Fortunately, Gen. Mark Milley responded that the military would play “no role” in any transfer of power.)

Anton had a message he hoped would get passed along to everyone in the military, so here’s where we can all do out part. He is hoping that every military officer, current or former, will get the word out to “friends who are loyal to the U.S. military, who are loyal to the Constitution,” to “knock off” this kind of talk. “And if someone tries to whisper in your ear that this is what you need to be doing in January of 2021," he said, "tell them to BUZZ OFF, and that you are loyal to the Constitution, you are loyal to your oath and you are loyal to the American military that was founded literally in the American Revolution and is one of our cornerstone institutions that defend our freedom.”

Amen. Got that? Please spread this message to everyone you know who's serving our country in the military.

Levin tied Democrats’ effort to use the armed forces this way to that thoroughly-debunked piece in THE ATLANTIC that said Trump had called them contemptible names. Anton, who worked around the President a great deal during the first 14 months of his administration (including visits to military bases and all foreign trips) and never saw anything from him but deep respect and admiration for our troops, agreed that this was part of the strategy. “It’s impossible for me to believe that he could have said something like that,” Anton said. “I think that story is completely made up.”

He explained that they’re able to get away with making it up because they just about control the media (FOX News and conservative sites like this one being the exception), including cable, broadcast, pop culture (Hollywood, music, etc.), and social media. He discusses this in his book, calling it “the megaphone.” The left hold the megaphone. These institutions push out the narrative, he said, which is that “Trump is illegitimate, Trump was elected by the Russians.” Those who find out the contradictions and try to enlighten others are de-platformed. Big Tech is heavily into muzzling anything pro-Trump this year.

This is why millions of Americans STILL think Trump “colluded” with Russia. If (when!) Trump wins, they’ll rehash the same “Russia Russia Russia!” routine. Who knows how many phony “dossiers” are being passed around right now?

Levin and Anton also discussed something quite interesting in Bob Woodward’s new book. Now, I wouldn't believe one thing Woodward said about Trump, but this is an anecdote about then-Secretary of Defense Jim Matttis. According to the book –- which I’ll remind you is anonymously sourced –- Mattis, along with former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates, discussed possibly “colluding” with some Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump. It might be that “7th floor” officials at the FBI weren’t the only ones contemplating an “insurance policy.” And here, it involved top-level military. This sort of thing used to be unimaginable.

It’s another reason why this message needs to get out to our military, now, at all levels: Do not allow yourselves or others within your ranks to be used in such a way to subvert the Constitution and the will of the voters. It will mark the end of our republic if you do.

Mike Huckabee

Friday, President Trump announced another “extraordinary” Middle East peace agreement to establish full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain. It’s similar to last month’s agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. This also comes a week after Trump brokered a deal to normalize economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo that includes Kosovo recognizing Israel and Serbia agreeing to move its embassy to Jerusalem.

White House deputy press secretary Brian Morgenstern said, “This is an extraordinary achievement. The President made the first major breakthrough like this in 26 years. In less than a month, he's made yet another one."

He said Trump "has not one, but two Nobel Peace Prize nominations now in recent days because the President is ending endless wars and he's bringing about peace and prosperity, promoting our ally, Israel, normalizing relations with Arab states, really tremendous developments, and also isolating those who want to do harm and cause violence and dysfunction, isolating actors like Iran."

Well, now we know why so many former Deep State Clinton/Bush/Obama proponents of endless wars are so adamant that Trump must be removed from office. With this incompetent lunatic in charge, peace is breaking out all over!

Mike Huckabee

Remember when we learned Hillary and her aides had erased their hard drives with BleachBit software and literally hit phones with hammers to destroy the information on them? James Comey said on July 5, 2016, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge Hillary after the “Mid-Year Exam” investigation because it wasn’t her INTENT to skirt the law.

We all laughed until we cried at that one, but now we’ve learned, thanks to a release of documents from the Department of Justice, that a large number of high-level people who SURELY knew better destroyed their communications, too. Coincidentally, these were all members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team.

What are the odds that the devices of over 20 of Mueller’s team members would have been “wiped” in a variety of creative ways before they were to be handed over to the DOJ for review?

There are numerous methods for achieving this: by just “accidentally" wiping, by inputting an incorrect password too many times, or by leaving a device in “airplane” mode with either incorrect or no passwords provided.

Or, as with Lisa Page’s phone, the device could simply be reset to factory settings (no reason given, as far as we know), in effect wiping the device clean of all Information before it was handed over to the Office of the Inspector General.

Gosh, it happened with lead prosecutor Andrew Weissmann’s phone, too, after he entered his password too many times in doing so. You’d think someone smart enough to be the lead prosecutor on a case of this magnitude would know how to open his own phone without wiping off all the data. On the other hand, he surely would be smart enough to know how TO wipe the data, if he so desired.

Some of the phones apparently just “wiped themselves.”

Over a dozen Mueller team members lost their data by putting their phones into “airplane” mode, locking them and then forgetting their passwords or otherwise “accidentally” wiping them.

It is yet to be seen if anyone has been able to recover the data, but at the very least, we learn from this that the people investigating President Trump were not keen on going by the book and didn’t care about the requirements for documenting their activities. Given what we know, it seems much more likely that they were actively hiding those activities.

Sean Davis at THE FEDERALIST posted 87 pages of documents relating to the lost phone content (be glad you don’t have to slog through that), leading to this comment.

Actually, Weissmann had THREE phones that went down. One was wiped “accidentally.” The other two were wiped by entering the wrong password too many times. Maybe someday his phone records will turn up; if so, they’ll probably be in the same place as the rest of Mike Flynn’s exculpatory evidence. (In case leftists are reading this, I’m joking.)

As often as these high-level government officials must have traveled by air, it seems unlikely they’d have been thrown for a loop by the prospect of turning their phones off and on. Hillary could at least try to pass for a ninny when it came to electronic devices (“You mean, like, with a cloth?”), but these people just can’t, not credibly.

But, as Davis tweeted, “The newly released DOJ records from the OIG investigation of corruption during the Mueller probe shows that a key tactic used by the Mueller team was to put the phones in airplane mode, lock them, and then claim they didn’t have the password.”

Lindsay Graham said on Thursday’s HANNITY, “If you can’t manage your own phone, why should we trust you to investigate a crime?...I guess they just ran out of hammers and ‘bleaching’ material. So the question is, did they obstruct justice? Did they INTENTIONALLY [emphasis mine] delete information from their phones because Horowitz was on the case?”

This is a developing story. Graham’s committee is not involved with criminal prosecution, but regarding that, he said, “I would be shocked if the only person prosecuted is [Kevin] Clinesmith.” Clinesmith, you’ll recall, has been indicted for falsifying evidence against Carter Page, changing a document to say he was not an asset for the CIA when he actually had been.

Graham said Thursday that he has “made an invitation” to James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions raised by the Horowitz report. “None of them have testified since Horowitz issued his report,” Graham said. “I’m working with their lawyers to try to get them into the committee...They may have good answers, but they need to be asked the questions.” I should add that, unlike Graham, Durham has subpoena power.

So, did the special counsel team deliberately erase their devices before turning them over to the IG? Judging by the circumstantial evidence we know, yes, they did. Can this be proved? That’s up to investigators, and we don’t know everything they know. But we do know this, in Graham’s words: “We cannot live in a country where this is tolerated. ‘Trump/Russia’ –- look how much money they spent, how many agents were involved investigating...how many subpoenas issued, how many lives turned upside down. The question for me –- was there a double standard here? –- it’s pretty obvious to me there was.”

His Cheshire-cat expression also suggested he knows more than he’s telling now. “You think you’re mad about the phones being wiped? Stay tuned. We’ll talk in about ten or twelve days and we’ll see if there’s something else you could get mad about. Just stay tuned.”

Well, Senator, we're not exactly going anywhere. I can’t imagine being much madder, given what we already know. But, sure, we’ll be waiting.

UPDATE late Thursday --- Apparently, the way some of those phones were set up, it took entering an invalid password TEN TIMES before the information would be wiped. But they still managed to do it!

Mike Huckabee

I almost hate to get out of bed these days because apparently, each new sunrise between now and the election is going to bring yet another phony, anonymously-sourced anti-Trump “BOMBSHELL!” fable that some Democratic Party mouthpiece with a byline has been sitting on for two or three years, waiting to launch it within two months of the election. And the rest of the media will dutifully rush to jawbone over it, as if it were the most important story of the day, thinking it’s somehow going to convince Trump voters to violate every principle they hold and go vote for Biden, despite having had four years to watch how Trump actually governs while fielding endless daily attacks of fake news and made-up quotes.

Wednesday’s came to us courtesy of Bob Woodward, who used to be a journalist in the Watergate days of 45 years ago, but has since given us widely-denounced potboilers like the John Belushi hatchet job “Wired;” “Veil,” the CIA expose in which he claimed to hear former CIA Director William Casey’s deathbed confession, even though he was barred from the room and Casey could no longer talk; and now, two anti-Trump books. The controversy du Wednesday came from Woodward’s claim that in a March 19th phone call, Trump told him about the coronavirus, “I wanted to always play it down.” He conveniently didn’t play up the rest of the quote: “I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic."

Woodward concludes his book with this quote: “Trump is the wrong man for the job.” You know, like reliable, objective journalists do.

At this link, Matt Vespa covers the latest hair-on-fire “controversy”….

…and also points out that no matter what Trump did, the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) would have said he was wrong. If he had played up the dangers, they would’ve accused him of inciting panic. If he didn’t, he would be accused of not taking it seriously. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to Woodward’s claims by saying that there was never a time that Trump contradicted what the top doctors were telling him. It was a new disease and it took awhile for people to learn what we were dealing with. At least Trump’s instincts, like shutting off travel from China immediately, were correct, even while Biden and other Democrats were calling him a racist and a xenophobe for doing it.

Of course, Biden immediately cited the book to slam Trump because if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Joe Biden, it’s that he never waits to find out whether an accusation is true or not before he condemns someone for it. Exactly what you want in a guy who has his finger on the nuclear button.

But Woodward himself is also facing backlash, with questions like, “If you had evidence that Trump was downplaying a deadly airborne disease months ago, why did you wait until close the election and the release of your book to tell anyone?” I guess for the same reason that Democrats who now claim they would have taken it more seriously than Trump were denouncing him for overreacting while telling everyone to ignore it and come on down to Chinatown. Or as late as this summer, telling people that it was fine to ignore safety procedures and go to BLM protests.

As long as we’re playing 20/20 hindsight and blaming political opponents for deaths, here’s a MUST-READ article by Matt Margolis that blows away the laughable claim that if only Biden had been in charge, the pandemic wouldn’t have been so bad. No, it’s not about the H1N1 pandemic that happened under Obama/Biden and that only good luck and the grace of God kept from killing millions of Americans because of their lack of action. This is about the VA scandal. Remember that?

Did you know that more than 300,000 veterans died because of the long waiting lists for care at VA clinics under Obama/Biden, which is 120,000 more Americans than have died of the coronavirus nationwide? Did you know that the problem was improving until they took over, and then it got worse (processing times increased 40% from 2011 to 2013)? Did you know that people who caused the problem and falsified records to cover it up were not investigated and even got promoted while there were complaints of retaliation against whistleblowers who exposed it in 28 states? And this problem was definitely fixable, because when Donald Trump was elected, he FIXED IT!

I hope I don’t have to deal with fresh garbage deliveries by the media every day between now and the election. I think most people have figured out this game by now. At this late date, we’ve lived through this so many times already that nobody’s going to vote for the donkeys because their sheep in the media keep crying wolf.

Mike Huckabee

Yesterday, I brought you what I consider to be THE MOST important story you’ll hear between now and the election: the plan to create election chaos and do whatever it takes –- riots, looting, military intervention –- to get Joe Biden inaugurated, regardless of the will of the voters. The plan is to organize a coup to take down the President and twist the scenario to make it look as though it’s actually the President trying to play “dictator” and bringing it about.

Last night, I went on Sean Hannity’s TV show, along with former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, to talk about one key element of the plan: the ease of voter fraud.

Ari noted some of the problems we’re going to have with mail-in ballots, even with absentee ballots. “Ballot harvesting is really the biggest problem out there,” he said, “because what it means is, it’s licensing people from the parties, and in particular the Democrat Party that does this, to go out and subject voters to possible intimidation.” They can collect votes from Republican areas and not turn them in, he explained, while turning in the ballots from Democrat areas. And that’s just one way to mess up the count. “There’s no accountability,” he said, “no tracing or tracking on these ballots once they’re collected.”

He noted another problem: states whose deadlines are much too close to Election Day to apply for an absentee ballot. “They won’t get it in time,” he said. “And then all the lawyers are going to be empowered to demand to count every vote, even the ones that came in after Election Day.”

I would add that even the Associated Press is now pointing out problems with absentee ballots. I doubt seriously they'd be doing this unless they thought it helped the Biden campaign.

"If ballots are rejected at the same rate as during this year’s primaries,” the AP story said, “up to three times as many voters in November could be disenfranchised in key battleground states when compared to the last Presidential election, according to an AP analysis of rejected ballots. It could be even more pronounced in some urban areas where Democratic votes are concentrated and ballot rejection rates trended higher during this year’s primaries.”

Ah, and there it is: “some urban areas where Democratic votes are concentrated.” The AP is referring to non-white areas, helping to set the stage for race-based disenfranchisement to be used as a pretext to mess with election results. The AP story places this squarely on the agenda. At the same time, TRUMP is being criticized for casting doubt on the accuracy of absentee and, especially, mail-in voting this fall. HE has to be the one blamed for the election chaos, especially if he wins the initial vote count.

This is going to be a mess, and that’s precisely what the Biden campaign wants, as they almost certainly have internal polling that shows better-than-expected results for Trump. The irony is, Trump is absolutely correct about the inaccuracy about mail-in vote counts and the ease with which the system can be gamed. He doesn’t want mail-in voting. He's old-school; he wants all the votes to count, you know, like in AMERICA.

That’s why he (like me) is encouraging voters to cast their ballots in person, not to mail them. He doesn’t want post-election chaos. It’s the Democrats who want it, and they'll make it happen no matter what they have to do. Heck, they’ve got people writing the checks who will PAY rioters to burn down cities.

By the way, Democrats have found something else to be outraged at President Trump about: his recent tongue-in-cheek comment to supporters about voting for him twice. They seriously accuse him of having broken the law for encouraging voters to cast more than one ballot. I think the main problem the left has might be that they just don’t have a sense of humor. They don’t “get” when he's kidding. Heck, they still think he was seriously telling Russia to find Hillary's emails.

That’s why it actually might be a good idea for the Left Coast to secede and take all those leftists with no sense of humor with them. They can burn their own cities down and listen to their unfunny late-night talk shows in their safe spaces while we get back to work and laugh at their stupidity.

Along those lines, I pointed out on HANNITY that the desire for chaos is being driven not by enthusiasm for Joe Biden, goodness knows, but just by hatred for Donald Trump. “They don’t care who gets elected,” I said, “as long as it isn’t Donald Trump.” And this time, it’s even worse than in past years, when maybe we were just worried about who was going to get the “cemetery” vote. Now, we have to worry about people getting more than one ballot and all the other problems.

As I’ve been saying, President Trump has to have an army of people to go vote, IN PERSON. “If the river is flooding, swim the river at flood stage,” I told Hannity.

He brought up another good point: we need poll watchers everywhere! And we’ll also need an army of LAWYERS. It’s sad that we need this, but we do. (Ari recalled the scenario in which Al Franken finally “won” the Senate race in Minnesota after Norm Coleman actually won the vote count on Election Day. As the recount progressed, 26 precincts ended up with more ballots cast than there were registered voters.)

Normally, I think that when it comes to lawyers, the fewer the better. But this time, bring on the lawyers! Reportedly, the Democrats have brought on board over 600 of them. So, CALLING ALL LAWYERS who are fair-minded and want to work for an accurate (as opposed to a partisan) vote count. We are going to need you. If I were a lawyer, I would be on board right now.

Left-wing groups such as MoveOn.org are already organizing a day of “mass public unrest” after Election Day, just in case they don’t like the results (and I don’t think they’re going to). As we’ve said, they want to tie the election in knots and then BLAME TRUMP for it, even as they’re doing it themselves. Look at how they’re already trying to twist the narrative, including their threat of the West Coast seceding unless their demands are met. I say again, let ‘em go.

Mike Huckabee

For six decades, Labor Day meant an American tradition: the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. MDA ended its association with Lewis in 2010, although the telethon continued in ever-shorter form until its final broadcast in 2014. But the association of Labor Day with helping the MDA continues. Some local areas still host telethons, and firefighters across America are out this holiday weekend at intersections, collecting cash for their “Fill the Boot” drive. If you see them, I hope you’ll dig into your pocket and give generously.

And the national organization this year is bringing back the Telethon in a new “COVID-19/Zoom”-friendly way. You can learn more and donate directly at their website: https://www.mda.org/telethon

Although Jerry Lewis passed away a few years ago at 91, active right up until the end, I’m sure that he would want you to continue giving generously and remember that it’s about helping the kids. In fact, while Jerry made the telethon the success that it became, he wasn’t the one who started it all rolling. He gave credit for sparking his six-decade mission to wipe out muscular dystrophy to another man -- a man you’ve probably never heard of. Jerry kept the story secret for many years, until the publication of his memoir, “Jerry Lewis in Person.”

Jerry recalled that it was in 1948. He was 22, and he and Dean Martin were the hottest comedy team in show business. His good friend and press agent, Jack Keller, had helped make them stars, but never requested a single thing for himself -- until one day, he came to Jerry and begged a favor. He had a friend who was in trouble and asked if Jerry would talk to him. His name was Paul Cohen. He’d had MD since childhood, and he’d started a group called the Muscular Dystrophy Association to fight it. They had a few patients, their parents and nothing much else.

By chance, Jerry knew someone whose nephew had had MD. He said he’d watched helplessly as that child had withered like a leaf in the winter, and the effect of seeing that would never leave his mind until a cure was found. So he agreed to meet with the handful of doctors who knew anything about MD at the time. They weren’t encouraging. They warned him that research was in the Dark Ages. Nobody even knew what caused MD, and no known medicines helped. It was like fighting an invisible killer. But that just made Jerry more determined to take it on.

He and Dean began hosting fundraisers…until one night, Jerry jokingly ad-libbed at the end of their TV show that viewers should each send in two dollars. He was stunned when over $2,000 arrived in the mail. And that’s when it hit him: the power of television to raise money for charity. So in 1951, Jack Keller put together a special hosted by Dean and Jerry. It aired on just one station and raised $68,000 (over $671,000 in today’s dollars), and the MDA telethon was off and running.

Over the next six decades, Jerry Lewis’ tireless work on his Labor Day telethons helped raised well over a billion dollars to fight neuromuscular diseases and help the victims and their families. He also inspired millions of Americans to join in the effort. That’s why so many Americans will always associate him with Labor Day.

But let’s also salute an unsung hero. If you think one person can’t make a difference, remember that the Labor Day tradition that raised over a billion dollars to help children with MD started because a man you’d never heard of, Jack Keller…for the first time in his life…asked someone for a favor. And as Jerry observed, it was no surprise to him that the favor was a request to help someone else.

So when you see a firefighter out collecting for MDA, doing his or her bit to help the kids, please do your bit and toss something into the boot. You'd be amazed how all those individual efforts add up.

Mike Huckabee

Remember how President Trump took so much heat for saying that if you remove all the Confederate monuments, the “protesters” would just move on to demanding that monuments to Washington, Jefferson and other Founders be torn down? That crazy bad orange man! Well, he was right, of course, and he might not even have realized how right he was.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed a committee to look into “problematic” monuments in DC, and that confederacy of dunces has issued its report. Surprise! They recommend removing, relocating or “contextualizing” the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, statues of Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson and other figures, and more.

These are the same people who went ballistic at Melania Trump for disrespecting American history by allegedly removing a couple of cherry trees from the Rose Garden that were never there to begin with. But they want to tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial because Washington should “only honor those individuals who exemplified those values such as equity, opportunity and diversity that DC residents hold dear.” Yep, none of those DC residents got anything from the people who won the American Revolution and wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Remember this the next time Democrats argue that DC should be made a state and granted two Senators. The place seems incapable even of electing a mayor who isn’t a complete embarrassment.

Mike Huckabee

I was on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show last night, talking about how, at his advanced age, Joe Biden has only now realized that protesting and rioting are not the same thing. And no, people weren’t looting the Louis Vuitton store because they needed a loaf of bread. You can see the video here.

The question put before us on the show was, “Is Joe Biden plagiarizing the Trump campaign?” Well, you go with your strengths, and plagiarism was always Joe’s chief strength. After months of making excuses for rioters and looters, and hosting an entire convention where they weren’t even mentioned, suddenly, the Democrats noticed the polls were cratering (Don Lemon let the cat out of the bag: they didn’t care at all about the victims of the riots; it only became a serious problem when it started hurting their election chances.) And suddenly, Joe Biden denounced the violence, just as Trump has been doing all along because it was obviously the right thing to do.

But this is hardly the first or only example of Biden following Trump (since the Democrats have jettisoned the “Me, Too” movement, maybe this will give “me, too” a new meaning.) Biden’s entire plan for dealing with COVID-19 is mostly a lot of stuff that Trump’s already done, back when it was timely enough to actually help. Biden wasn’t going to campaign until after Labor Day until Trump mocked him for hiding (“Ten days is an eternity in Trumpville!”), and suddenly, Joe comes out and makes a speech. Biden wasn’t going to go to Kenosha, but Trump went, and now Biden is going.

It’s an interesting new definition of “leadership”: doing whatever Trump does first.

Biden will be in Kenosha today, but I think that may prove to be a strategic blunder. We all saw the photos of Trump talking to devastated business owners in the rubble of their former businesses. How is it going to look for Joe to stand in the same setting and try to ooze “empathy” when everyone knows he and his Party have spent the past weeks standing by, letting it happen and denying it even existed? If I were one of those business owners, I would definitely ask him why he employs 13 campaign staffers who donated to a fund to bail out the people who burned down and looted my business.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

Offhand, I can think of three “Cs” that are really bad for America: communism, corruption, and crime, all three of which are currently being excused and even promoted by the left. In fact, we talk a lot about those three “Cs” often, right here. But Gov. Huckabee has a great new book –- just out –- that’s written from the positive perspective we need more than ever now. Co-authored by Steve Feazel, it’s about the three “Cs” that made America GREAT and must be protected at all costs.

Do you know what they are? Here’s a clue: the title of the book is THE THREE Cs THAT MADE AMERICA GREAT: CHRISTIANITY, CAPITALISM, AND THE CONSTITUTION.

This is the right book at the right time, because America really is in a fight for its soul right now. All three “Cs” are under relentless attack. The book was written as a call to action for Christians and conservatives who look around and can’t believe what they see. This is not a time to be shocked into paralysis but to take an active role in the political arena, to push back against the forces that are trying to tear America away from its founding principles and its heritage. Our nation has been the brightest light of freedom the world has ever known, and it’s time to make that light shine again.

On his weekend TBN show, Gov. Huckabee was freshly inspired about what makes America great after watching Trump’s convention speech from the White House lawn. In his monologue, he talked about the new book as “a fact-filled reminder of the underpinnings of America and its origins,” saying the “leftist loons” who are educating our kids are responsible for their lack of knowledge, as these people are clueless about the role played by Judeo-Christian values in our launch as a new nation. This monologue focused on the first “C,” Christianity.

The Gov. said he’s aware that not all the founders were devout Christians, but stressed that even the less pious were aware “that liberty only lives when people self-govern, and that’s because of the moral code written onto the tablets of our hearts by our Creator.”

People who follow the word of God don’t need to look to an authoritarian government to worship, he explained, “because then you’re free from the bonds of self-centered behavior.”

The Gov. also offered some surprising history I wasn’t aware of, saying that today's secular Ivy League universities generally have their origins in schools devoted to religious instruction. For example, Harvard University was named for a young minister, John Harvard, who died at only 31. So far, a statue of him, seated and holding a Bible, still graces the campus, unless some numb-skulled anarchist has pulled it down.

And did you know Harvard students were once required to read Scripture twice daily and be ready to “give evidence of proficiency of their knowledge of the Bible”? Me, neither. An early school motto was “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Yale students, as well, were required “to live according to the rules of God’s word.” Princeton has a similar religious legacy; I wonder how many students can translate its Latin slogan, “Under the protection of God she flourishes.” How is THAT still on their flag? (I also wonder why they necessarily assume an institution of higher learning would use the pronoun “she” –- maybe it would prefer “xi.”)

Did you know that in 1782, the Continental Congress actually printed Bibles to give to inhabitants of the United States? They thought the values taught in the Bible were essential to the emerging nation. I thought I knew my American history pretty darn well, but this was news to me.

John Jay, our nation’s first Supreme Court justice and obviously one of the founders who WERE very devout, referred to America as “a Christian nation” and said we should “select and prefer Christians” as our leaders. Didn’t know that, either! (Of course, that didn’t and shouldn’t carry force of law; it was just his view.) Gov. Huckabee did say this book would make liberals’ heads explode; I think the part about John Jay might be where that happens.

Later in the Gov.’s show, co-author Steve Feazel sat for an interview. (He joked that Sarah Sanders wasn’t available to co-author his book with him, so he’d had to call Huckabee. He and the Gov. did have a mutual friend but had not met prior to this project.)

This is going to be the book to give your liberal friends --- especially the ones with kids in school --- who just have no clue about the founding of our nation, the “underpinnings,” as the Gov. put it.

Not one to just be “preaching to the choir,” I’d like to add something for the agnostics and even atheists who might be seeing this. You should read this book, too. Even those of us who aren’t as devout as John Jay and some of the other founders should not allow ourselves to be in denial about the role Judeo-Christian values played in the formation of America. That understanding of right and wrong is basic –- it’s written into our law and forms the basis of a society being able to live together, whether or not everyone goes to church or even believes in God. (Obviously, people are not able to live together peaceably in our cities right now, and this is because the traditional moral code is out the window.) Whether or not one believes that God literally gave us natural law or handed Moses the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, we have to treat the Constitution and our system of justice with that same level of reverence if our nation is to endure. The republic itself, our freedom, and the system on which it rests must be treated as sacred. We seem to be far away from that as a nation right now.

Mike Huckabee

Monday was like Groundhog Day in summer, as Punxsutawney Joe emerged from his burrow 10 days ahead of schedule, saw his Teleprompter in Pittsburgh, and signaled that there will be two more months of campaigning after all.

Not that it went that well. Having been goaded by President Trump into not hiding out for another 10 days (Trump called that "an eternity in Trumpville"), Biden did prove once again that he’s still capable of reading words off of a screen, but he seemed to get tired and confused toward the end, resulting in some indecipherable tossed word salad.

The “press conference” then ended with him turning and exiting the stage, ignoring the questions called out by the handful of reporters who were allowed to be in the huge room with him (each one corralled far back, inside “social distancing” circles that reminded me of the "Cone of Silence" from "Get Smart"...)

The thrust of the speech was partly for Biden to finally…FINALLY…suggest that riots, looting and murder of cops and Trump supporters aren’t cool, but mostly to float the idea that it’s all Trump’s fault. Trump is to blame for creating the atmosphere of divisiveness because he refused to accept the results of the 2016 election…oh, wait, that was them. Well, because he encourages his supporters to physically assault people who don’t agree with them. No, that’s them again...Okay, his supporters are to blame because a small handful of them (so far) have armed themselves to fight back against mobs attacking them and destroying their homes and businesses instead of just standing there like sitting ducks and taking it. How dare they?!

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “Trump’s America,” I think of Manhattan, Chicago, Portland, Seattle (cue grunge guitar riff), Minneapolis and other cities that have been under solid Democratic control since before Trump bought his first monogrammed hankie -- the kind of GOP hotbeds where people share unfunny Stephen Colbert video clips every day, think that Rachel Maddow is an actual journalist, and drive Priuses with “Not My President!” bumper stickers on them.

If that’s “Trump’s America,” then what’s “Biden’s America”? Fantasyland at Disney World?

Anyone who’s been paying any attention at all over the past few years knows that this level of mindless partisan vitriol was not caused by a few rude Trump tweets. It’s the poison fruit of the “Resistence” movement and leftist politicians like Maxine Waters, Ayanna Pressley, Nancy Pelosi and others, demonizing Trump and his supporters and urging civil unrest in the streets (or worse – ask Rep. Steve Scalise how Bernie Bros demonstrate their political opposition with rifles.) Only a few brainwashed potheads online could possibly believe that all the BLM/Antifa looting, arson and assaults on cops are secretly the doing of Trump supporters.

Tucker Carlson at Fox News summed up Biden’s speech well, calling it possibly “the most thoroughly dishonest speech ever given by a major presidential candidate," one in which “virtually every word of it was the opposite of the truth. It was literally beyond belief."

I couldn’t agree more, but what else are the Dems going to do? I can only imagine how awful their internal polls must look to scare them into taking on this emergency rescue mission. Especially after last week’s conventions, where the Dems spent all their time badmouthing Trump and America and paying homage to the “peaceful protesters” who are destroying our cities while Trump offered days’ worth of traditional, pro-American messaging about restoring law and order, putting aside racial differences and working together to make America great again.

(Here’s Rush Limbaugh’s commentary on how Trump is running to save us from a race war. It contains some really eye-opening poll data.)

(And a new Zogby poll showing that Biden’s support among blacks has dropped by 15 points and Trump’s support is up to 20 percent, or 9 points more than campaign officials believe he would need to win reelection.)

Biden’s handlers faced a Hobson’s choice: They could condemn the violent, racist radical rioters and risk alienating their far-left, pro-violence base…or they could embrace them and alienate all the sane people. They can’t win with no votes from sane people, and they need their insane base, so they’re trying to split the difference with a “Hail Mary” pass: finally acknowledge that the violence exists (now that it’s devolved into murdering a Trump supporter and celebrating that), but somehow blame it on Trump and his supporters. As if they somehow had it coming, what with thinking they had a First Amendment right to express their opinions in public without fear of being shot.

Trump has, in fact, made it clear that he doesn’t want his supporters to confront these people. He wants to send in the professionals to restore order, but the Democrat Mayors and Governors would rather put their TDS first and put on a public display of snuffing Trump than let him help stop the destruction of their own cities and the violence against their own people. That’s why the “D” in TDS stands for “Derangement.”

Buck Sexton summed up the latest excuse to spin away reality quite well:

The Democrats obviously think the big winning message of Biden’s speech is this, which they sent out in a tweet under his name: “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” Mollie Hemingway quite rightly replied, “The ‘blackmail Americans into voting for me by threatening more violence unless I win’ strategy is so impossibly evil and strategically unwise.”

Mike Huckabee

Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway movement, was sitting just two rows in front of me at President Trump’s speech Thursday night. I’m sickened to have to report that he was also among those attacked by leftist thugs when he and a friend returned to their hotel. He said it was almost identical to what Jussie Smollett reported, except this attack really happened.

Straka noted that he hadn't endured an anti-gay attack like that in 10 years, and worse, they couldn’t even fight back because the media would accuse them of being racists. He wrote, “At least back in the day when gay-bashing was common, the media didn’t blame the gay people.”

Sadly, that’s because the media, like much of the Democratic Party leadership, have thrown in their lot with a group of radical leftists who don’t care about gay rights, women’s rights, black rights or even human rights. The only right they care about is their own delusion that they have the right to exert power over everyone else. If you disagree or challenge them in any way, they will attack you with anything from vile racist, sexist or homophobic slurs and profanity to physical violence. And if you fight back, as Brandon says, you’re a “racist,” even if you’re black and the person you’re fighting is a white punk calling you the n-word.

I hate to see this for a number of reasons, but one of them is that I consider real racism to be a terrible sin that’s an insult to God, who created us all in His image. That’s why exploiting the condemnatory power of the word by falsely affixing to people who simply disagree with your politics is also a sin and an insult to God.

And if you’re surprised that a conservative Christian would be defending a gay man against homophobic attacks on him by alleged “social justice workers,” then you need to stop watching fake news sources.

Mike Huckabee

Ordinarily, I would have written extensively about Friday’s 57th anniversary of the March on Washington led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He was a huge inspiration to me as a kid growing up in the South, and his dream of a land in which all the races live together in peace, judged by the content of their characters and not the color of their skin, was an inspiration to my life and those of countless others.

Unfortunately, this year’s observance of that anniversary in Washington, organized by Al Sharpton, in many ways betrayed the spirit of the Rev. King’s message with gratuitous racial slanders for political purposes (i.e., Sharpton calling the President “Bull Trump” – Bull Connor was a Democrat, it needs to be noted again and again) and divisive, anti-American rhetoric. Some speakers couldn’t have perverted the Rev. King’s message more if they’d literally declared that we must judge people by their skin color, not their character.

One praiseworthy exception worth mentioning is the Rev. King’s 10-year-old granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, who said, “My generation has already taken to the streets – peacefully and with masks and social distancing – to protest racism.” I wish some of the adults there had her wisdom and sense of responsibility.

Before anyone starts accusing me of only saying this because I’m white, read the words of this longtime Democratic Tennessee state Representative and veteran of the civil rights movement who calls it “appalling” and “heartbreaking” to associate the non-violent protests of the Rev. King with “burning and looting and stealing.” He said, "It's like we're trying to live up to the worst of stereotypes, the worst of behavior, the worst of perceptions.”

As I often like to remind people, especially those who forget or try to obscure this fact, the Rev. King was, first and foremost, a great preacher of the Gospel. Some of his most inspiring words came in the form of sermons. I urge you to honor his legacy by reading those, not listening to people who would distort his message for their personal political motives. You can start with this, the final sermon he ever gave on April 3, 1968 in Memphis. You will search in vain to find any encouragement of violence or incitements of race hatred in it.

Laura Ainsworth, Staff Writer

One thing I loved about this year’s Republican National Convention that was missing from the Democrats’ glumfest the previous week was its generous display of WIT, life and humor.

For example, at my house, we were laughing and cheering when the fireworks after Trump’s speech spelled out “TRUMP 2020.” Oh, not just once --- it had to happen twice in case anybody missed it the first time! I had no idea this was even possible, but Trump’s fireworks show somehow had it.

Makes me think he really might reach his goal of putting a woman on Mars. (I’ve heard the joke that the woman will be Hillary. My money’s on Nancy Pelosi.)

Also, there was the soaring operatic aria that closed the event. Thanks to the popularization of this piece by Luciano Pavarotti, we’ve all heard it many times. But why this particular aria for this occasion?

I doubt the choice of this music to end the convention was arbitrary. Either Trump or some clever person with the campaign chose it at least partially for the little inside joke. The aria is “Nessun Dorma,” from the opera “TURNADOT” by Puccini, sung by the character Calaf. It’s a tribute to resilience, to boldness, to surviving great risk to meet a challenge and obtain a goal, and those last three notes that go up and up...in Italian “Vincero...vincero...vincero….” are, translated into English, “I will win...I will win...I will WIN…!”

Nice touch. I wonder if most leftists, who wouldn’t recognize subtlety if it hit them in the head with a two-by-four, get this.

I understand Pavarotti’s widow has complained about Trump using the Pavarotti version of this aria on the soundtrack for his campaign events. She has even said Trump’s “values” are not compatible with those of her late husband. Nicoletta Mantovani, in a letter co-signed by three of Pavarotti’s daughters, said, “We remind you that the values of brotherhood and solidarity that Luciano Pavarotti upheld throughout his artistic career are incompatible with the world vision of the candidate Donald Trump.”

Wow. Judging from the assumptions they make about Trump’s values, I think these women must have been watching WAY too much MSNBC.

This version, of course, was sung by the tenor Christopher Macchio. And he did such a beautiful job, perhaps his version is the one that should be on Trump’s campaign soundtrack, as that might resolve the issue to everyone's satisfaction. The reference to victory can be taken as a reference to America winning at a time of great challenge and conflict, and also to Trump winning the election, because at this point in our history, those two “wins” can easily be seen as intertwined.

After all the President has been through --- a fake impeachment and endless lies and personal attacks, the unleashing of a pandemic and the resulting economic catastrophe, and the deliberate fanning of racial fires by those in “blue” cities who would just as soon see them burned down if they could blame him for it --- Trump has shown that he still has the boundless energy and strength to endure and overcome them all. Little touches like the ones on display at the convention tell me that if anyone can bounce back from all this and bring the country right along with him, it will be President Trump.

He will win, he will win, he will win. Trump 2020.

A postscript: At Trump’s first rally after the convention, he carried on with that same sharp humor and verve, by noting that Joe Biden had announced he’d be coming out of the basement and making some campaign appearances “in ten days.” “TEN DAYS?!” Trump exclaimed hilariously. “TEN DAYS?! That’s like an eternity in Trumpville!” And so it is.