Mike Huckabee

First, I should admit that if you’d like to see a demonstration of “confirmation bias” in action, you need look no further than my periodic observations about Michelle Obama. You see, I concluded well over a year ago that, based on political realities and what I’d already seen, Michelle O would be the Democrat nominee for President. So now I actively look for developments that tend to support this view. And I find a lot.

It’s not that I want this to happen --- just the opposite. One of the many reasons I don’t is the main reason many Democrats do: she’s absolutely the only person on the Democrat side with the star power to generate excitement and draw crowds in a way approaching Trump. (It DOESN’T MATTER that she has no accomplishments other than a failed lunch program.) Bernie was drawing good-sized crowds of “progressives,” but enthusiasm has waned since he went full-out commie and praised Fidel Castro for his “literacy programs,” and he failed to wow on Super Tuesday. (Hey, Breadline Bernie, what good is literacy when you’re permitted to read only Party-approved propaganda?) Dems crave rock-star quality and “cred,” and Michelle has all that. They like her for what she represents to them.

Biden did surprisingly well on Super Tuesday, but with his mind teetering on the brink and his impression that of a diminished person, the individual selected to be his running mate is all-important. If Biden’s faculties fade even more noticeably on the campaign trail, that person will need to step in “for the good of America” before the election. If Biden manages to make it through to the election and wins, he won’t be able to keep up with the immense responsibilities and non-stop schedule of a President, and the 25th Amendment will almost certainly be used at some point in his term of office to “retire” him and install the Vice President as the new POTUS. We’ve all envisioned this scenario. I do believe that Uncle Joe is being used as a vehicle for others to obtain power.

Laura Ingraham said as much on Wednesday night: “...Everyone knows, including all those big names who just endorsed Biden, that he’s just going to be a figurehead President. Americans won’t be voting for a man who can articulate a serious policy agenda, let alone defend it. They’ll be voting for the party machine’s geriatric puppet...The man barely knows where he is or who he’s with at any hour of the day...Biden is basically being shuffled around by his wife and his staff from event to event, campaign stop to campaign stop. He’s not in charge, and everyone knows it.”

Already gaffe-prone, Biden is, sadly, deteriorating before our eyes. What used to be mildly amusing is no longer anything to laugh at. On Wednesday, Guy Benson on Shannon Bream’s FOX NEWS show tried to be kind: “The larger concern [with Biden] is the [brain] synapses, and I say this with all respect to the former Vice President...it is a little bit difficult and painful to watch. And I think a lot of other candidates have danced around that issue. Donald Trump will not; Donald Trump will have a sledgehammer on this issue.”

Brit Hume, who has spoken of this before, was more blunt: “How many of the people who voted for him tonight would agree that he’s senile?”

https://therightscoop.com/watch-biden-mixes-up-his-wife-and-sister-during-his-victory-speech-brit-hume-wonders-how-many-voters-think-biden-is-approaching-senility/

Tucker Carlson understands the danger this situation poses, and he didn’t hold back Wednesday in talking about what we all can see:

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6138506766001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips

Hillary must desperately want to be on that ticket with Biden. She’s increased her visibility –- in safe situations –- and surely has done God-knows-what behind the scenes to wangle this for herself. But she has more baggage than the Lost-and-Found at LaGuardia. Too many voters on both sides of the aisle can’t stand her and have had enough of her scandals. And after what her DNC did to Bernie in 2016, his supporters won't come out to support HER. They’ll either spend Election Day holed up in their rooms in their parents’ basements, tweeting and smoking pot, or they’ll scream at the sky and riot.

Plus, we’re talking about Democrats here, with their laser-beam focus on identity politics (which is a racist scourge on society), and she’s so...white, and so...old. Biden, challenged in the general election by his own whiteness and oldness, has said specifically that he’d consider a black female as his running mate. Pundits automatically thought of Kamala Harris, but her stunning lack of success on the campaign trail suggests that'll be a NO.

Democrats are desperate this time, not just to dump Trump and retake the White House, but to hold Congress and perhaps even take the Senate. A Democrat White House could do serious damage even with a Republican Senate, as it would release a flurry of big-time executive orders in place of legislation that would have had to pass there. With a Democrat Senate, though, they could pass these as laws AND oversee all judicial appointments, perhaps even moving the Supreme Court farther left if a conservative judge such as Clarence Thomas needs to step down. In other words, stick a fork in the Constitution; it’s done.

So, what’s Michelle Obama up to these days? Apparently, she’s readying to hit the campaign trail in the battleground state of Michigan, to “boost voter turnout” as co-chair of a “non-partisan” (sure) group called “Why We All Vote.” The tickets to her appearance in Detroit on March 27 are free, but not available to the general public (so much for the “all”), only to “the organization’s volunteers and partners, as well as educators, college students and high school students who are eligible to vote.”

https://www.theamericanmirror.com/2020/03/michelle-o-hits-campaign-trail-in-battleground-state/

And what is the Democrat Party up to? I’d guess they’ve been working up some plans…

Plan A: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; he crashes and burns before election; Michelle becomes the candidate. If she wins, Obama machine gets back in.

Plan B: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; if they win, he is “retired” and Michelle assumes power. Obama machine gets back in.

Plan C: Biden gets nomination, names Michelle as running mate; if they win, Biden remains as figurehead for a time and Obama machine gets back in.

Plan D: No one has enough delegates; it’s a brokered convention; Michelle ends up on ticket in either the #1 or #2 spot; if they win, Obama machine gets back in.

Plan E: Biden crashes and burns BEFORE convention; Michelle is drafted at convention; if she wins, Obama machine gets back in.

There may be other scenarios I haven’t thought of, but they all lead to the Obama machine getting back in. That’s Valerie Jarrett, the old DOJ and intel bureaucracy, and maybe the whole works. I hope I'm wrong. The only thing to stop it is a tsunami of Trump support, and MY plan is to be a part of that.

Mike Huckabee

Super Tuesday has passed into the history books…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/super-tuesday-results

https://www.westernjournal.com/super-tuesday-live-updates/

…So before Super Thursday arrives, let’s take stock of what we’ve learned:

1. Media talking heads obviously haven’t learned anything. The same people who were confidently predicting Bernie’s revolution, Joe Biden’s political demise and Bloomberg’s rise, or endorsing both Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, were caught totally flat-footed by Biden’s resurgence, Bernie’s wilt, Bloomberg’s humiliation and Warren’s inability even to place higher than third in her home state. Yet within minutes of the results arriving, they were already back to making more confident, totally baseless predictions. (Remember when they assured us the candidate most likely to be our next President was Kamala Harris?)

As I said on my TV show two weeks ago, I might not agree with these candidates on anything, but I respect them all for having the courage to get in the game. None of the people commenting on them (present company excluded) have ever done that, yet they opine on it at length as if they were experts. If you just need something to fill your time, better to buy a DVD box of Looney Tunes cartoons than listen to them. Because, as I’ve been hammering away since I started my media career in 2009, you can’t trust polls, and the people inside the media bubble are largely out of touch with most of America. They have less understanding of people outside the Beltway than Mike Bloomberg does of farming. That’s why the only polls that matter are the ones where people actually vote.

2. Bernie may have done himself in by ignoring the advice, “Never go full commie.” Much of his popularity for years has depended on him being like an M&M: a lovable “Crazy Uncle” candy shell hiding the radical socialist within. A lot of people bought into that facade, particularly young people who have no actual memories of what real socialism/communism are like. They were miseducated to believe in “Democratic socialism,” which isn’t the icky kind with the goon squads and starvation but the shiny, happy kind, where the government gives you free stuff and pays your college tuition and sends the bill to greedy rich people. The only nation where that’s ever existed is Fantasyland.

But over the past couple of weeks, Bernie has given some interviews in which he allowed some cracks to open in his candy coating and reveal the reality inside. Like his defense of Fidel Castro: sure, he turned a paradise into a prison island and put dissenters in dungeons and in front of firing squads – but he also had that great literacy program! And free health care! I think the blinders may have come off some of his young followers, who failed to show up in the expected numbers, and especially older voters who hadn’t been paying that much attention. They suddenly realized that Bernie is an honest-to-Pete SOCIALIST, and he may claim he just admires Denmark, but he also thinks he sees Denmark when he's looking at Cuba.

When the reality finally started to dawn, Bernie’s revolution started crumbling faster than the Berlin Wall (for you youngsters: that was a concrete and barbed wire border wall designed to keep people in a socialist utopia from fleeing it, even though they still risked their lives to do so, just as Cubans took their chances with the sharks rather than stay there to enjoy Castro's free health care and literacy program.)

It’s extremely telling that Bernie did much better in early voting, with those who decided this week making a big surge away from him and toward Biden. Speaking of whom…

3. It’s true that Bernie didn’t do as well as expected and Biden far outperformed his…well, performance (largely thanks to black voters.) Biden even won Massachusetts! It's a big PR boost for his campaign, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Biden will win the nomination before the convention.

I mentioned last week that Democrats are always changing the rules based on the last election with no thought to how it might negatively affect them in future elections (for instance, wanting to eliminate the Electoral College because they lost there in 2016.) On Super Tuesday, they reaped more of the unintended consequences of their own fiddling with the process.

They now have no winner-take-all state primaries (that wasn’t “democratic” enough.) So even though Biden seems to be surging ahead of Bernie to the DNC’s great relief, they still could face a brutal contested convention because they have to divvy up the delegates proportionally between all candidates getting 15% or more of the vote (“Fairness!”) That makes it almost impossible for one candidate to top the 1,991-delegate threshold to clinch the nomination without a string of landslide wins -- unless either Bernie or Biden drops out (fat chance!) For instance, Biden scored a big morale victory by winning Texas, but by only a few points over Bernie. And with Bloomberg topping 15%, Biden may be hailed as the frontrunner, but he won’t collect many more delegates than Bernie.

Under their arcane rules, if a candidate scores a lopsided win, he/she/xe gets a much larger cut; but if it’s a close shave, the delegates are carved up more equally. Here’s some more on that, if you’d like your eyes to cross:

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21142609/super-tuesday-2020-polls-delegates-contested-convention

Democrats also agitated for years for early voting, thinking an extended voting period would benefit them. They didn’t consider how many Democrats would be furious because they cast early votes for Buttigieg, Steyer or Klobuchar only to have them drop out at the last minute, rendering their votes meaningless and keeping the delegate count fractured when they desperately want as many as possible to go to Biden.

The lesson I take from this is that despite their rebranding of themselves as “progressives,” these are the last people in the world you should trust to anticipate and plan wisely for the future.

4. Finally, the good news for Tom Steyer is that it’s likely he will have to hold the embarrassing record for the most expensive failed vanity Presidential campaign of all time for only a couple of days. The $250 million he spent pales next to the estimated $500 million Mike Bloomberg spent on a blitzkrieg of advertising to win a handful of delegates and exactly one primary, in American Samoa (5 delegates.)

At this writing, Bloomberg reportedly plans to stay in for the duration (but then, Warren says that, too.) He has another 123 half-billion dollars he could burn. But as it stands now, the one thing he’s accomplished for all that spending is to forever debunk the Democrats’ whining about how billionaires can use their money to buy elections.

Mike Huckabee

Just hours after Mike Bloomberg’s campaign claimed he would press on past his Super Tuesday wipeout, Bloomberg suspended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. Although you’d think he’d be a Bernie man by the way he just redistributed so much of a billionaire’s wealth.

RELATED READING: Super Tuesday results

The announcement was greeted with great sadness by thousands of TV stations and websites that were making a killing off his wasted $500 million ad budget, but with great relief by everyone outside of American Samoa, who will finally be able to watch cat videos on YouTube without having to see Mike Bloomberg first. It just proves once again that all the advertising in the world can’t sell a faulty product once the public gets a good look at it.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-bloomberg-suspends-presidential-campaign-after-super-tuesday-show

Mike Huckabee

From the Interesting-But-Not-Surprising Department: The Democrat establishment, including Obama-era “deep state” bureaucrats such as former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and former CIA Director John Brennan have something in common besides support of Hillary and hatred of President Trump. They've come out solidly in support of Joe Biden.

It didn’t require Obama’s official endorsement of Biden for them to know he was the one to back, the one who would best serve their interests.

Comey was proud to tweet that he had voted in his first Democrat primary because that was the party dedicated to “restoring values” in the White House. (I’ll pause while you fall to the floor, helpless with laughter.) He went on: “We need [a] candidate who cares about all Americans and will restore decency, dignity to the office. There’s a reason Trump fears Joe Biden and roots for Bernie.”

So, Comey wants to restore decency and dignity to the office of President? Who did he think was going to restore decency and dignity to the office of FBI director after he screwed it up so badly?

Andrew Bates, director or rapid response for the Biden campaign, reportedly tweeted this (according to THE HILL): “Yes, customer service? I just received a package that I very much did not order. How can I return it free of charge?”

After getting some pushback on that tweet, he clarified: “I forgot the #1 rule of politics, which is if you talk about anyone or anything related to 2016, common sense goes out the window. It was meant to be a lighthearted joke – not a rejection. We appreciate the vote of anyone repelled by Donald Trump.”

Bates was in a quandary, as a Comey endorsement during the primaries doesn’t necessarily help Biden. That’s because of Comey’s announcement, shortly before the 2016 election, of the FBI’s re-opening of Hillary’s email investigation, widely seen by Democrats as damaging to her prospects. (I believe he was actually trying his best under the circumstances to minimize the damage Hillary had caused to herself with the use of a private server and the appearance of her emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, but what can you do when someone has flouted the law so egregiously?)

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-campaign-comey-endorsement

https://www.newser.com/story/287717/biden-campaign-gets-an-endorsement-it-doesnt-want.html

Susan Rice tweeted a picture of herself embracing Biden, with a message from the heart: “I’m proud to endorse Joe Biden for President. Here he is comforting me on 1/4/17 just after my mother passed away. There is no one kinder, more empathetic and caring than Joe Biden. He will lead America with the same deep compassion and decency.”

Biden would naturally support a friend after the loss of her mother, and he surely has moments of extreme kindness. On the other hand, I know we can all think of many things Biden has said that did NOT show a glimmer of compassion or decency or even comprehension of reality. One that quickly comes to mind for me is something horrible he said about Republicans: “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.” He plays the race card. He calls people names. He picks fights at town halls with those who disagree with him. Plus, on many occasions he doesn’t seem to know what state he’s in, what the Declaration of Independence says, or what media personality he’s talking to.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/01/fncs_chris_wallace_challenges_biden_on_campaign_gaffes_biden_calls_chris_chuck.html

John Brennan tweeted that “Joe Biden is one of the most honest, decent, practical & experienced individuals with whom I have ever worked. If nominated and elected, he is capable of unifying our country & restoring America’s standing around the world.”

Not to imply something truly nefarious about Biden personally, but with that line coming from Brennan, I can’t help but be reminded of a similar line from THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE: “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

The article from which I took these pro-Biden tweets makes a good point: that this group is part of a vast network of powerful figures with assets in the media, Hollywood, and political party offices who will do everything they can to get Biden the nomination. I would add that if he gets it, they’ll be pushing for him to win in November like we’ve never seen before. Even if he’s gradually losing his mental faculties --- I can’t say for a fact that this is happening but it increasingly seems to be --- they’ll push for him anyway. A feeble-minded 80-year-old figurehead is fine with them if he has the right “figures” behind him, running things.

https://noqreport.com/2020/03/03/deep-state-endorses-joe-biden/

With the party and the bureaucracy pushing Biden as the nominee, it strikes a nerve whenever someone suggests their convention will be rigged to keep Bernie off the ballot in November. In case you haven’t seen it, former DNC chairwoman and current FOX NEWS contributor Donna Brazile totally lost her mind when this was brought up by RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. She actually told McDaniel, repeatedly, to go to hell.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/03/donna_brazile_tells_rnc_chairwoman_ronna_mcdaniel_to_go_to_hell_when_she_says_election_is_rigged_against_sanders.html

She said Republicans “don’t have the kind of democracy we see on the Democratic side.” (Pause for laughter.) She also said Republicans were using “Russian talking points” in order to “sow division among Americans.” That was when she sowed division by telling Ronna to go to hell on live TV.

"We are not trying to prevent anyone from becoming the nominee,” Brazile insisted. “If you have the delegates and win, you will win. This notion that somehow or another Democrats are out there trying to put hurdles or roadblocks before one candidate, that’s stupid.”

And then she goes full-on with the phony “Russia” narrative: “[Republicans] need to be [focusing on] preventing foreign interference in our elections. Stop using Russian talking points, Madame Chairwoman. Period. Stop using it.”

McDaniel tweeted later: “It’s ok...I’d be having a bad day too if my party was still hopelessly divided. Talk of a brokered convention and the DNC trying to stop Bernie Sanders obviously hit a little close to home.”

Indeed. Recall that it was Brazile herself who slipped Hillary three questions in advance of one of the 2016 presidential debates. No wonder this struck a nerve.

But be ready to hear about “Russia” whenever Biden is challenged by Republicans. The same people who originated the false “Russia” narrative against Trump will use it to help Biden now. Conveniently, the real hard-core Russia aficionado, Bernie Sanders, is assisting in that effort by going pedal-to-the-metal Castro-loving commie.

Oh, and just to end with something really hilarious, here’s Hillary Clinton in a Super Tuesday appearance on ABC’s GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, in which she slams the Sanders campaign and stresses the importance of following the rules. You have to admit that any time Hillary lectures other people about following the rules, that’s pretty funny.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/03/hillary_clinton_bernie_sanders_has_to_follow_the_rules_on_delegates_at_dnc_convention.html

Mike Huckabee

Today is Super Tuesday when primaries are held in 14 states and American Samoa. By this time tomorrow (assuming the Democrats have figured out how to count ballots), we should have a clearer idea of whether Joe Biden is really back in the race or if South Carolina was just a fluke; whether Democratic primary voters actually believe Bernie Sanders is going to help workers just because his ideas are straight out of The Daily Worker; and whether it really is possible for Mike Bloomberg to buy a shot at a major party Presidential nomination by running more ads than My Pillow.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/super-tuesday-states

One person who will definitely not be coming out of Super Tuesday a winner is Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race on Monday (too bad if you already voted for her in early voting!) and endorsed Joe Biden. Pete Buttigieg also endorsed Biden, but it took him a couple of days. As usual, President Trump had a hilarious comment, suggesting that these candidates are being promised jobs in a Biden Administration in exchange for their endorsements. Trump said, “That’s called a quid pro quo. QUID!...PRO!...QUO!”

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-klobuchar-ending-presidential-bid-will-endorse-biden/

If you’re a Democrat, I urge you to turn out and vote for the loser of your choice. And Republicans, even though Trump is likely a given for the nomination (barring a last-minute surge by Rocky da la Fuente), you should also vote. Not only to make your voice heard, and to scare the media with the pro-Trump turnout, but also because your local races matter. This is true for both parties!

Case in point: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the House of Representatives now because voters in her solid blue New York district thought incumbent Joe Crowley was a shoo-in, so the primary didn’t matter. AOC’s partisans showed up at the polls, and she now has a national platform for her dangerous socialist nonsense, thanks to just 15,897 voters, about the same number as the population of Durant, Oklahoma. Her 4,000-vote winning margin was smaller than the population of Prairie Grove, Arkansas. The population of her district is 706,440 people. I'll bet a lot of them wish now that they'd showed up to vote in the last primary so they'd actually have a Congressional Representative.

It’s not too late to do some last-minute research into the candidates. Your local newspaper’s website probably has information on all of them, perhaps even with the editors’ endorsements, which you can take as a cue to vote for or against their pick, based on what you think about their editorials.

It’s important to vote in primaries because it’s not enough just to elect someone with the correct letter after their name in parentheses. Republicans held the House during Trump’s first two years, but stymied much of Trump’s agenda. Then Democrats took over and ignored all pressing issues in favor of impeachment uber alles. You can’t just have power in the hands of your party. It needs to be trusted to the right people in your party. That’s up to you, by turning out and casting an informed vote in your local primary races.

Mike Huckabee

Once again, the persistence of conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has finally paid off. D.C. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth has granted their request to depose Hillary Clinton about her emails and Benghazi attack documents. Not only that, but he's allowed the depositions of Hillary’s IT technician, her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials.

"I give kudos to Judicial Watch,” House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes said to Tucker Carlson on Monday. “They have been tough. They’ve stayed on this. That’s what we have to do in this town. These people don’t just lie down. They don’t go away. You have to fight them every single step of the way.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/devin-nunes-hillary-clinton-email-scandal-judicial-watch

I know my readers get tired of waiting for justice, but persistence is the only way. This case goes back to 2014, when Judicial Watch found out that Susan Rice’s “talking points” for her false statements about Benghazi were actually created by the Obama White House. Recall that it was JW’s lawsuit about Benghazi that led to the discovery of Hillary’s private email server in 2015. Think of it: if JW hadn’t been digging around about Benghazi, Hillary’s use of a private email server to conduct government business would likely have remained a secret forever. There’s so much about The Swamp that would never have come to light. (And who knows what else there is that’s still shrouded in darkness; we’ve seen just the tip of the iceberg.)

So now, in the ongoing case of Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State, Judge Lamberth, on the guiding principle that more information is always better, has opted for more testimony. (Thank you!) It was Judge Lamberth who in 2018 ordered discovery into whether Hillary’s use of a private server was intended to stymie Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests. (I would add that no one knows more about the stymieing of FOIA requests than Judicial Watch.) Lamberth said that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

Of course, it’s challenging whenever plaintiffs have to show intent. Did Hillary INTEND to circumvent FOIA? It defies reason to think she didn't. Fortunately, Judge Lamberth appears to be an eminently reasonable jurist. To us, it appeared that Hillary had skated away to a wine bar in Chappaqua, but this case has been moving under the radar.

Hillary argued that she had already answered questions and should not have to again, but Judge Lamberth disagreed. “With each passing round of discovery,” he said, “the Court is left with more questions than answers.” He finds it inexplicable that with so many important questions left unanswered, the Justice Department wants to close the case. “The Court is especially troubled by this,” he continued. “To argue that the Court now has enough information to determine whether State conducted an adequate search is preposterous, especially when considering State’s deficient representations regarding the existence of additional Clinton emails.”

My favorite part of the ruling is Judge Lamberth’s comments on Hillary’s ability to recollect: “The Court has considered the numerous times in which Secretary Clinton said she could not recall or remember certain details in her prior interrogatory answers. In a deposition, it is more likely that plaintiff’s counsel could use documents and other testimony to attempt to refresh her recollection. And so, to avoid the unsatisfactory and inefficient outcome of multiple rounds of fruitless interrogatories and move this almost six-year-old case closer to its conclusion, Judicial Watch will be permitted to clarify and further explore Secretary Clinton’s answers IN PERSON AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER SHE GIVES THEM [emphasis mine]. The Court agrees with Judicial Watch --- it is time to hear directly from Secretary Clinton.”

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-victory-federal-court-orders-deposition-of-hillary-clinton-on-emails-and-benghazi-attack-records/

One of the other officials that Lamberth is allowing to be deposed is Paul Combetta, an IT specialist who worked on Hillary’s private server and was involved in deleting her emails (after they’d been subpoenaed). He took the Fifth during previous questioning, so we’ll see. Remember this?

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/295620-clinton-it-aide-does-not-appear-before-oversight-panel-despite

By now, Judicial Watch should be well-armed with questions for Combetta to not answer. Also to be deposed are a couple of other State Department officials familiar with Hillary’s private server, Brett Gittleson and Yvette Jacks.

Hillary will play the artful dodger. As Gregg Jarrett said on Monday’s HANNITY show, she is “a master of prevarication. She has elevated lies and deception and evasion to an art form.” It’s true; we’ve seen her tell lie after lie and change her story whenever she needed to. Recall that at the start of the curiosity about her email, she said she hadn’t emailed classified material. Later she said she never sent material that was classified at the time. Still later, she changed her story again, saying she had never emailed anything marked “classified.”

Even James Comey had to say that this was not true. (Never mind that he lied himself when he said “no reasonable prosecutor” would take that case.)

Oh, and in her bogus “Mid-Year Exam” interview with the FBI, Hillary said some version of “I don’t recall” 39 times. Jarrett thinks this new interview will most likely be a waste of time because she’ll just “feign amnesia.”

In this opinion piece for FOX NEWS, he calls her “slippery as an eel.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-judge-orders-hillary-clinton-deposition-to-address-private-emails-there-is-still-more-to-learn

But I would add that her amnesia-feigning will fall at the same time she’s trying to garner some notice as an alternative for the presidential nomination. Why should Democrats opt for her phony memory loss when they already have a candidate with real memory loss, Joe Biden?

And she actually might not get away with it this time. Expect her to be especially hard-pressed in this deposition, perhaps being put on the spot as never before. As Judge Lamberth said, “[The existing record] does not sufficiently explain Secretary Clinton’s state of mind when she decided it would be an acceptable practice to set up and use a private server to conduct State Department business.” He called her responses “either incomplete, unhelpful or cursory at best.” And no –- written questions will not do, he said, as they “will only muddle any understanding of Secretary Clinton’s state of mind and fail to capture the full picture...”

We’re not going to learn from this case what actions were taken after the 2012 Benghazi attack; that’s a separate issue and Judge Lamberth has ruled witnesses can’t be questioned about it. But witnesses will be asked about “their knowledge of the existence of any emails, documents or text messages related to the Benghazi attack.”

There’s a good reason why we have laws against doing what Hillary did. Can you imagine what such easy access to the Secretary of State’s emails would mean to foreign spies? I’d bet that over the decades in previous administrations, enemy agents have lost their lives trying to gain such access. Yet Hillary Clinton didn’t care and has never thought the laws applied to her. It’s time for her to finally learn she was wrong about that.

Another take-away from this: Judge Lamberth is a Reagan appointee and a fabulous judge who obviously cares about the law. Elections mean things!

Mike Huckabee

The coronavirus outbreak has suddenly been politicized in a way nobody saw coming. There are now 2,336 cases and 77 deaths from it in Iran. One of those deaths was of a close confidant to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and 23 of the new cases are among Iran’s Parliament members.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/iran-says-77-dead-amid-2336-cases-of-new-coronavirus

But the political ramifications aren’t limited to Iran. Shortly before the outbreak hit, Connecticut liberal Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy took it upon himself to thumb his nose at the Logan Act and hold a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, apparently to undermine President Trump’s tough policy stance against Iran. It’s unclear if any other Democrats also held meetings with any Iranian officials at the same time.

Even though there’s a very low risk that Murphy was infected, he’s been schmoozing around Washington for weeks, and there’s a slight possibly he’s been spreading the infection. A number of people are demanding he be quarantined.

https://www.westernjournal.com/chris-murphy-met-top-iranian-days-outbreak-now-people-want-quarantined/

I don’t know if a quarantine is necessary to prevent Murphy from spreading the coronavirus, but locking him in his house for a while might at least keep him from illegally conducting foreign policy.

Mike Huckabee

Today's Edition

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FEATURED COMMENTARY

"Russia hoax" goes on despite evidence of monstrous CrowdStrike lie

By Mike Huckabee

The “Trump/Russia” collusion hoax goes on, with Jim Acosta, still CNN’s chief White House correspondent, asking Trump at a press conference in India, ”Can you pledge to the American people that you will not accept any foreign assistance in the coming election?” When challenged by Trump, Acosta actually insulted him, saying, “Mr. President, I think our record of delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes...” Trump said from the podium that Acosta ought to be ashamed, and he should be, but he won't, because he has no shame.

California Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has announced he’s planning to file a federal lawsuit Monday afternoon against the WASHINGTON POST after years of false “Trump/Russia” reporting. Even after no evidence of collusion has been found, the fake news lives on and evolves.

"The mainstream media continues to go about their normal pace of creating narratives and then going out and selling them to the American people, and they hope that we forget,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Sunday.

READ MORE AND COMMENT HERE>>>

Mike Huckabee

The “Trump/Russia” collusion hoax goes on, with Jim Acosta, still CNN’s chief White House correspondent, asking Trump at a press conference in India, ”Can you pledge to the American people that you will not accept any foreign assistance in the coming election?” When challenged by Trump, Acosta actually insulted him, saying, “Mr. President, I think our record of delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes...” Trump said from the podium that Acosta ought to be ashamed, and he should be, but he won't, because he has no shame.

California Rep. Devin Nunes, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has announced he’s planning to file a federal lawsuit Monday afternoon against the WASHINGTON POST after years of false “Trump/Russia” reporting. Even after no evidence of collusion has been found, the fake news lives on and evolves.

"The mainstream media continues to go about their normal pace of creating narratives and then going out and selling them to the American people, and they hope that we forget,” he told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News Sunday.

Unlike the suit by Trump’s campaign against The New York Times, which was not brought by an individual and therefore might be determined not to have standing, Nunes' is on his own, as WaPo went after him personally. “What [they] did to me...there’s no explanation for it. I never talked to President Trump about Admiral McGuire; I didn’t go to the White House. None of this was true; it was all invented by someone.”

Nunes also has an ongoing suit against CNN --- that's right, Jim Acosta --- over a fake story they ran about his activities in Vienna; he has proof he was not there when they said he was. Similarly, when Nunes, according to WaPo, was supposedly meeting with Trump about Admiral McGuire, he was actually in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He says that if these news outlets want to know where he is, all they have to do is go to his social media.

He’s created a website associated with the Devin Nunes campaign called DefendUSA.com “that people can go to and join the fight.” He wants to stop the media from being able to poison millions of Americans with fake news.

https://act.devinnunes.com/defend-usa/

Recall that the whole “Russia hoax” claim –- which led to sanctions against Russia, the two-year Mueller investigation and a presidential impeachment –- originated with Hillary Clinton (of course) and the supposed hacking of John Podesta’s emails, which were extremely damaging to her at a critical time in her fight against Bernie Sanders for the 2016 nomination. American Greatness has just posted a revised and expanded version of two articles from July of 2018, under the single title “The Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike” by Michael Thau, in which he looks at the DNC’s unsubstantiated claim that Russia hacked their servers as well as their unrelenting determination to keep those servers in the hands of CrowdStrike instead of turning them over to the FBI.

Thau’s article makes a strong case that the Democratic National Committee refused to let investigators look at their “evidence” of Russian infiltration for a very simple reason: there isn’t any.

Of course, President Trump is well aware of this whole business, and it seems obvious that his mere mention of “CrowdStrike” in the call with Ukrainian President Zelensky struck fear into the Democrats and led them even more frantically down the impeachment path. Think about it: if they'd had the goods on the Russkies with actual forensic evidence, they would have gleefully handed it over to the FBI on a silver platter decorated with roses and daffodils. But instead they've drawn a red line, so to speak, and refused to hand it over to anyone.

Robert Mueller’s team went ahead and blamed the Russians anyway.

So why wouldn’t the DNC instruct CrowdStrike to hand over the servers, and why did the FBI just shrug their shoulders and refuse to get tough about this? Even then-FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress three times that the DNC refused the FBI’s “[m]ultiple requests at different levels” to collect forensic evidence.” Simultaneously, the DNC had been hyping the theft of the emails as akin to “an act of war.” This makes no sense, unless they were pulling a "Jussie Smollett."  It also makes no sense that the FBI didn't, well, make a federal case out of it.

A senior FBI official told The Hill in January 2017 that the Bureau “repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise.” This same source said that “the FBI [had] no choice but to rely upon” CrowdStrike, whose executives refused to discuss the matter under oath.

No choice??

The DNC also rebuffed Department of Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson’s requests and wouldn’t even discuss the matter with him.

I’m no computer expert, but numerous people who are have expressed skepticism about the claim of a Russian hack. One such skeptic who goes by the pseudonym “Adam Carter” has concluded, after working on this story for a few years, that “Guccifer 2.0” was a fake identity created by CrowdStrike as a fake hacker. Though most of Carter’s evidence is technical, Thau says “he’s unquestionably found an inconsistency in the Russian narrative that ought to raise doubts in even the most computer-illiterate congressman’s mind.” This article presents exactly that.

To explain why the DNC might resort to such elaborate fakery, Thau takes us back to March 19, 2016, the day they learned that "hostile actors" had obtained all the emails in the Gmail account of Hillary campaign manager John Podesta. We know this was not an actual hack; he’d fallen for a common “spear-phishing” scam that tricked him into divulging his password (which was --- I kid you not --- “password”). The emails were extremely derogatory towards Hillary and even contradicted the defense they’d publicly made for her use of a private server. When Julian Assange said on June 12 that he’d acquired Hillary’s emails, they must have immediately assumed these were from the same "hack."  Bernie Sanders reacted, too, by meeting with top advisors and resolving a continued fight for the nomination.

The DNC quickly armed itself with the “Russia” narrative and, on June 14 in WaPo, shrieked about Russia stealing Podesta’s emails. (Not surprisingly, all information in the WaPo article had been provided by CrowdStrike and the DNC.) By October 7, when WikiLeaks began releasing the emails, Hillary’s supporters had already been, in Thau’s words, “taught to tune them out by angrily reciting the mantras ‘Putin’ and ‘Russia.’” This became Hillary’s personal defense. “What is really important about WikiLeaks,” she said, “is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans.”

Thau’s article takes a close look at “Guccifer 2.0” and the carelessness of “clues” left in documents sent to the press and asks excellent, common-sense questions that debunk the claim --- maintained in Mueller’s report and continuing through the 2020 election --- that he was a Russian spy trying to aid Donald Trump. By all means, set aside a block of time to read this.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/22/the-monstrous-lie-behind-crowdstrike/

Mike Huckabee

HBO Max has convinced the six cast members to reunite for a one-hour special in May. It’s not a new episode of the series, but a cast reunion where they’ll talk about the show.

And conservative showbiz writer Christian Toto reports that CNN knows exactly how they should spend that hour: groveling and apologizing for all the jokes from 20 years ago that are now “problematic” for today’s ultrasensitive PC snowflakes. They might need more than an hour.

https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/cnn-friends-reunion-woke/

The Twitter mobs love to attack “Friends” because it’s popular with young viewers, but it has elements that, well, could they BE more politically incorrect? Like jokes about how fat Monica once was (body shaming!), or Chandler’s insecurity about his masculinity (homophobia!) or the lack of racial diversity of the cast. And don’t forget the more arcane triggers, like Ross being embarrassed that his wife left him for a woman or depicting Phoebe as being tougher than the others because she’d once been homeless when that could have been an “opportunity to raise viewers’ social consciousness.” (And wouldn’t that have been hilarious!)

The CNN article tsk-tsk’s, “As even devoted fans can recognize now, ‘Friends’ often ended up on the wrong side of cultural history, highlighting many troubling norms of its time.”

Speaking of troubling norms, one of the most troubling norms of our current time is the insistence on judging things and people from the past by standards that didn’t even exist at the time. Another is treating comedy as if it’s deadly serious, which is killing humor. That’s why I refuse to let it die: I will continue making fun of these humorless PC prigs, and when they slam me on Twitter, I just laugh at them. Take a tip from Ricky Gervais: they only have as much power as you give to them. So stop giving them any. They’ve done nothing to deserve it, and they see every apology not as an opportunity to forgive and move on but as weakness, some blood in the water to encourage more attacks.

I hope the “Friends” cast and creators don’t waste a lot of time in this special addressing this nonsense. After all, these sniping critics don’t seem to appreciate that in its day, “Friends” was one of the more liberal sitcoms. The creators actually thought they were creating a “social justice” landmark by airing TV’s first lesbian wedding, and even casting Newt Gingrich’s sister as the minister to poke conservatives in the eye. It was so controversial, two TV stations refused to air it. Now, just a few years later, they’re under attack by the very people they were trying to side with. It shows once again that the left always turn on and devour their own eventually.

If the “Friends” reunion turns into an hour of groveling apologies because some jokes from decades past aren’t PC enough for 2020, then someone had better start a new cable channel for Norman Lear to apologize for “All In The Family” 24 hours a day.

Mike Huckabee

President Trump went to South Carolina Friday (he loves to troll Democratic primaries) for a rally in North Charleston.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rallies-in-north-charleston-on-eve-of-south-carolina-primary

While en route, he announced that Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe is his nominee for the new Director of National Intelligence. On cue, Ratcliffe was savaged by liberals, with Nancy Pelosi claiming the pick showed Trump’s “clear disrespect” for the intelligence community.

I wonder why Trump would want to put someone in charge who defended him against bogus impeachment charges based on an investigation sparked by fake “evidence” that was used by entrenched political partisans in the intelligence agencies to get illegal warrants to spy on his campaign and undermine his Administration? Why, he should have promoted from within! Get somebody who’s been in the Deep State for a looong time! What could possibly go wrong?

There’s also a lot of whooping and hollering over Trump saying at the rally that Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus and trying to blame him for the disease or the stock market drop it’s caused. Some Democrats are theatrically infuriated over anyone questioning their pure motives…

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/485212-house-democrat-denies-he-threatened-trump-jr-with-physical-violence

Why, it’s OUTRAGE-ous that Trump would say such a horrible thing that’s patently obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention. Prominent liberals have been publicly hoping for some disaster or recession to come along for months now, and they're doing their best to whip up panic and celebrate its fallout. And they don’t even have the decency to delete their tweets when they’re called out, like Chuck Schumer.

https://noqreport.com/2020/02/28/trumpcrash-trends-as-leftists-totally-dont-think-the-coronavirus-is-affecting-the-stock-market/

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/02/27/patricia-arquette-urges-one-day-economic-shutdown-to-hurt-trump/

If you prefer to get your Trump rally news unfiltered and undistorted, here’s a video of his entire speech:

https://youtu.be/zTG4AOL6lbg

Mike Huckabee

With Tom Steyer ending his quixotic Presidential campaign, it’s time to settle up the accounts, and he’d better sit down for this. Ken Kurson at the California Globe suggests that this could go down as the worst Presidential campaign in history. There’s a lot of competition for that title, but it is in the running for the biggest waste of money.

https://californiaglobe.com/fl/was-tom-steyers-campaign-the-worst-in-presidential-history/

The FEC reports that through January 31st, Steyer’s campaign spent $253,718,074 and over $250 million of that (a quarter of a billion dollars!) was his own money. Kurson estimates that at the same spending rate through February, Steyer spent about $280 million to win 83,000 votes that cost him $3,373 per vote. Heck, I would’ve voted for him in an open primary for half that! He also spent $280 million for zero delegates.

This doesn’t even take into account the $70 million or so he spent on TV ads and Astroturf groups to promote impeaching President Trump, which turned out to be one of the dumbest, most counter-productive, time-wasting political witch hunts in US history.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/fool_and_his_money_good_riddance_tom_steyer.html

And this guy wanted us to send him to Washington to make decisions about how to spend our tax money wisely! I’d rather trust my life savings to a Nigerian email scammer.

The good news for Steyer is that at least he made a name for himself in history for running the most pointless, spendthrift campaign ever. Of course, he might not even keep that title for long, considering Mike Bloomberg has already spent about $500 million on advertising and started dropping in the polls after voters got a good look at him in the debates.

The good news for both of them is that they should eventually be able to make back all the millions they squandered, as long as Trump is reelected and keeps the economy booming.

Mike Huckabee

This week, President Trump took to Twitter to express his displeasure and frustration with Democratic leaders who seem more concerned with blaming him for the coronavirus and hyping up a panic than in doing anything to help. He noted that while he was working to prepare for the virus, they were tying up Congress with their fruitless impeachment crusade.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-continues-to-rail-against-dems-wasting-time-blaming-him-for-coronavirus

Not to add to the panic, but there already is a terrible epidemic disease ravaging America. In the worst cases, it results in hysteria, loss of brain function and inability to control one’s mouth. That disease is TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome.)

It’s primarily spread via airborne means, such as 24-hour TV news channels, and chiefly affects Democratic politicians and their unpaid press agents in the media. A particularly virulent strain started in China and is now reaching peak infection. You can see the symptoms on full display in the reactions to President Trump’s press conference on the coronavirus, where he introduced some top health experts who are leading the effort. Also, to show how seriously he’s taking this, he announced that Vice President Pence will head up a White House task force to coordinate the efforts of multiple agencies. This is important because a number of agencies will be involved and having someone with the Vice President’s clout in charge will help eliminate red tape and bureaucratic turf conflicts.

To a person with a normal, healthy brain, that should all have been reassuring. But here’s what TDS sufferers heard:

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, AND IT’S ALL TRUMP’S FAULT!” As Trump might say: Sad!

If you think I’m exaggerating their exaggerations, you must not have been near a TV in the past couple of days. I’ve seen networks such as CNN and MSNBC trot out furrow-browed “experts” to tell us that the government is totally unprepared, that Pence hates science, that Trump slashed funding for the CDC and the NIH so there’s nobody left there who knows anything about how to deal with this, and that Trump is a lying liar who lies so it’s better to listen to China and hysterical rumors than the disease stats and info the White House is giving us.

Speaking of lying liars, two leading Democratic Presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg, both made such egregiously false claims about Trump gutting the CDC and NIH budgets that even the A.P. couldn’t let them slip past. Here’s their fact-check, and for once, it’s a legitimate checking of facts:

https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104

In short: no, neither agency’s budgets have been cut. There was a reduction in CDC grants to state and local governments, but that was in place before Trump took office. And there are numerous top health experts involved who have extensive experience dealing with previous epidemics, including CDC deputy director Dr. Ann Schuchat and NIH infectious disease chief Dr. Anthony Fauci, who’s advised six Presidents.

But some candidates have even more advanced case of TDS that have rendered rational thought impossible. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who actually thinks she should be in charge of national health emergencies, quickly introduced a “Prioritizing Pandemic Prevention Act” that would transfer the $10 billion Trump allocated for his “racist” border wall to the CDC to prevent pandemics. This sparked Ted Cruz and others with clearer heads to ask how you prevent people from bringing foreign diseases into the US by doing away with border security.

https://www.westernjournal.com/elizabeth-warren-rolls-coronavirus-plan-de-funds-border-security/

Bernie Sanders, who can find something good to say about any murderous communist dictator but thinks America is a cesspool of racism and xenophobia, accused Pence of intending to do nothing but try to “pray away” the coronavirus. Because he’s a devout Christian, and we all know what THOSE people are like, amiright?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/disgusting-bernie-sanders-slams-decision-to-put-pence-in-charge-of-coronavirus-response

A reminder to Bernie and all the others who are attacking and second-guessing Pence’s record as Governor of Indiana: he actually was a Governor, managing a huge Health and Human Services organization with an annual budget of around $14 billion. Bernie Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, before becoming one of 100 Senators and sponsoring seven bills in 13 years that have passed, two of them to rename post offices and one to declare March 4, 1991, as Vermont Bicentennial Day.

Some of the deranged media responses include worries that the coronavirus might make Americans exhibit xenophobia against the Chinese and a New York Times article suggesting that the disease be named after Trump (I guess they think he’s responsible for the San Francisco-level public hygiene in parts of China.) And don’t even get me started on this terminal TDS case:

https://victorygirlsblog.com/cnn-anchor-claims-coronavirus-part-of-trumps-war-on-truth/

All of this is helping drive down the stock market. Sadly, I think that harming the market and the economy so they can blame Trump and hurt his reelection chances is a big motivator behind all this panic-mongering. I wish I didn’t have to suspect that the left could be so deranged that they would sacrifice Americans' jobs and security just to gain a political advantage, but I still remember Bill Maher publicly wishing for a recession just to harm Trump at the polls.

My advice would be to tune out all the hysteria and partisan finger-pointing and just listen to people who really know what they’re talking about, like actual doctors. They recommend following precautions similar to what you do when it’s flu season:

Wash your hands frequently; stay away from people who are coughing or sneezing; don’t go to work if you’re sick; use surface disinfectants such as Lysol or Clorox, especially in public places like airplanes; and seek medical care immediately if you have a cough, fever or trouble breathing. Fortunately, we don’t have socialized medicine (yet!), so you should be able to see a doctor immediately. Surgical masks likely will do no good, unless you already have it, then they might keep you from spreading it. Here’s more on that subject, from Dr. Marc Siegel and the World Health Organization:

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6136820331001#sp=show-clips

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

Also important, don’t fall victim to TDS by listening to its fervent spreaders. As I said last night on Fox News, if President Trump flew around the world like Superman, sucked the virus out of every patient’s lungs, then dived to the bottom of the Pacific to get rid of it, he’d return home to find the Democrats and media accusing him of polluting the ocean.

Mike Huckabee

Today's Edition

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FEATURED COMMENTARY

A Florida poll worth looking at

By Mike Huckabee

I normally don’t pay much attention to polls, but there’s a new one out of Florida that’s very interesting, if it’s remotely accurate. The St. Pete Poll shows that Biden is well ahead in Florida with 33.8%, followed by Mike Bloomberg at 24.9%. The interesting part is that just one week ago, the very same poll had Bloomberg ahead at 31.7% and Biden lagging at 26.5%. Bloomberg managed to vault into the #1 slot with his carpet-bombing of TV and Internet ads, but after voters got a look at him in the debates, he fell by almost 7 points in one week. Proving that advertising might be able to sell anything at first, but if there’s a problem with the product, people stop buying it.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/320841-poll-of-floridas-democratic-presidential-primary-2-27-20

A couple of side notes: there’s been some talk of Bernie Sanders collapsing to third in this Florida poll due to outrage over his praise of Castro, but in fact, he actually rose from 11.4% to 13% in the past week. Cuban-American parents might want to sit their kids down and tell them a little family history to counteract what they’re hearing in college.

Also, here’s some ammunition for critics of early voting. Primary voting is already underway in Florida, and among those who’ve already voted, Bloomberg has 29.4% support, while he’s only at 24.6% among those who have yet to vote. This does bolster the view of those who wait until the last minute because they want to know everything there is to know about the candidates before voting, to avoid buyer’s remorse.

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##Appellation##, I wanted to make sure you also read these comments:

This just in: Bernie Sanders isn’t the only Democratic Presidential contender who can see the good in communist tyrants. I’ve also heard that Hitler was a marvelous dancer and an excellent painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. Two coats!

https://freebeacon.com/politics/bloomberg-xi-isnt-a-dictator-because-the-chinese-dont-seem-to-want-elections/

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Israeli researchers say they’ve made a breakthrough on the coronavirus and might be able to develop a vaccine within a matter of weeks, and have it available 90 days after that.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bds-this-israel-makes-exciting-breakthrough-in-race-for-coronavirus-vaccine

So, since Democrats who are attacking Trump’s handling of this disease seem so concerned about the coronavirus, does this mean they’ll stop attacking Israel, slandering Benjamin Netanyahu, making anti-Semitic statements, and supporting known anti-Semites and the vile BDS divestment movement?

Don’t hold your breath. For anyone who thinks they’d put the public’s health and safety ahead of their political agenda, I have two words: “sanctuary city.”

-------------------------------------

I’m always proud to say I’m from Arkansas, but never more so than after I saw this headline:

https://thedcpatriot.com/massive-line-of-8-people-forms-in-bentonville-arkansas-for-bloomberg-rally/

Bible Verse of the Day (KJV)

"Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.."

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

Did you miss reading a newsletter recently?  Go to our archive here.

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Today's Edition

 

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READ MY NEWSLETTER HERE>>>>

##Appellation##,

This week, President Trump took to Twitter to express his displeasure and frustration with Democratic leaders who seem more concerned with blaming him for the coronavirus and hyping up a panic than in doing anything to help. He noted that while he was working to prepare for the virus, they were tying up Congress with their fruitless impeachment crusade.

Not to add to the panic, but there already is a terrible epidemic disease ravaging America. In the worst cases, it results in hysteria, loss of brain function and inability to control one’s mouth. That disease is TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome.)

It’s primarily spread via airborne means, such as 24-hour TV news channels, and chiefly affects Democratic politicians and their unpaid press agents in the media. A particularly virulent strain started in China and is now reaching peak infection. You can see the symptoms on full display in the reactions to President Trump’s press conference on the coronavirus, where he introduced some top health experts who are leading the effort. Also, to show how seriously he’s taking this, he announced that Vice President Pence will head up a White House task force to coordinate the efforts of multiple agencies. This is important because a number of agencies will be involved and having someone with the Vice President’s clout in charge will help eliminate red tape and bureaucratic turf conflicts.

To a person with a normal, healthy brain, that should all have been reassuring. But here’s what TDS sufferers heard:

“WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, AND IT’S ALL TRUMP’S FAULT!” As Trump might say: Sad!

READ MORE AND COMMENT HERE>>>

With gratitude,

Mike Huckabee

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Commentary continues below advertisement

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FEATURED COMMENTARY

A Florida poll worth looking at

By Mike Huckabee

I normally don’t pay much attention to polls, but there’s a new one out of Florida that’s very interesting, if it’s remotely accurate. The St. Pete Poll shows that Biden is well ahead in Florida with 33.8%, followed by Mike Bloomberg at 24.9%. The interesting part is that just one week ago, the very same poll had Bloomberg ahead at 31.7% and Biden lagging at 26.5%. Bloomberg managed to vault into the #1 slot with his carpet-bombing of TV and Internet ads, but after voters got a look at him in the debates, he fell by almost 7 points in one week. Proving that advertising might be able to sell anything at first, but if there’s a problem with the product, people stop buying it.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/320841-poll-of-floridas-democratic-presidential-primary-2-27-20

A couple of side notes: there’s been some talk of Bernie Sanders collapsing to third in this Florida poll due to outrage over his praise of Castro, but in fact, he actually rose from 11.4% to 13% in the past week. Cuban-American parents might want to sit their kids down and tell them a little family history to counteract what they’re hearing in college.

Also, here’s some ammunition for critics of early voting. Primary voting is already underway in Florida, and among those who’ve already voted, Bloomberg has 29.4% support, while he’s only at 24.6% among those who have yet to vote. This does bolster the view of those who wait until the last minute because they want to know everything there is to know about the candidates before voting, to avoid buyer’s remorse.

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Commentary continues below advertisement

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##Appellation##, I wanted to make sure you also read these comments:

This just in: Bernie Sanders isn’t the only Democratic Presidential contender who can see the good in communist tyrants. I’ve also heard that Hitler was a marvelous dancer and an excellent painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. Two coats!

https://freebeacon.com/politics/bloomberg-xi-isnt-a-dictator-because-the-chinese-dont-seem-to-want-elections/

---------------------------------

Israeli researchers say they’ve made a breakthrough on the coronavirus and might be able to develop a vaccine within a matter of weeks, and have it available 90 days after that.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bds-this-israel-makes-exciting-breakthrough-in-race-for-coronavirus-vaccine

So, since Democrats who are attacking Trump’s handling of this disease seem so concerned about the coronavirus, does this mean they’ll stop attacking Israel, slandering Benjamin Netanyahu, making anti-Semitic statements, and supporting known anti-Semites and the vile BDS divestment movement?

Don’t hold your breath. For anyone who thinks they’d put the public’s health and safety ahead of their political agenda, I have two words: “sanctuary city.”

-------------------------------------

I’m always proud to say I’m from Arkansas, but never more so than after I saw this headline:

https://thedcpatriot.com/massive-line-of-8-people-forms-in-bentonville-arkansas-for-bloomberg-rally/

Bible Verse of the Day (KJV)

"Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.."

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

Did you miss reading a newsletter recently?  Go to our archive here.

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Advertisement

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Mike Huckabee

Democrats and the media (pardon my redundancy) routinely claim that President Trump has dragged the Republican Party away from its traditional principles and to the far-right. But a recent analysis found that the major positions of the GOP have remained pretty consistent going back to Reagan, while the Democrats have moved sharply to the left.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/357508/

I can think of no more disgusting example of that than yesterday’s vote in the Senate, where 56 Senators, including all the Republicans and three Democrats, voted to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, but it was blocked from final passage by a filibuster, thanks to 41 Democratic Senators opposing it. The three Senators running for President (Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar) weren’t there, but all three have previously opposed the bill.

https://www.westernjournal.com/god-help-us-41-dem-senators-vote-protecting-already-born-babies-legally-murdered/

All that this bill does is codify that if a baby is born alive during a “botched” abortion (“botched” meaning that the patient lived), it must receive the same medical care that any other baby would receive. This should not be a partisan issue. It’s a blindingly obvious example of basic human decency. At that point, the baby (and yes, it is a baby) is a separate, living human being. Like every other US citizen, from children to homeless drug addicts, he or she is entitled by law to receive emergency medical care.

But 41 Democrats (plus three more who were off running for President) are so beholden to the abortion lobby and its chief pusher, Planned Parenthood, that they actually voted to deny emergency medical care to that child rather than do anything that might theoretically place any limits at all on their radical “abortion up to and beyond the moment of birth” agenda. Didn’t Elizabeth Warren just rant about how horrible it was to say "Kill it" to a pregnant woman? Didn't Bernie Sanders just insist that “health care is a human right”? To oppose this law, they not only have to contradict their own statements, they have to deny the reality that a baby is a human.

To quote another long-ago Senate proceeding, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Mike Huckabee

It seems as if you can’t even look at the glass screen on your washing machine without seeing a commercial for Mike Bloomberg. But as I’ve warned many times, no matter how rich you are, if you get into politics, you can’t dodge that media colonoscopy. And so, some people have been doing deep dives into Bloomberg’s past. Here, Jim Geraughty of National Review reveals “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Mike Bloomberg,” and I’ll bet none of them ever makes it to one of his ads.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/twenty-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-michael-bloomberg/

I have to warn you that some of the language and subject matter here is not for young eyes or delicate sensibilities, particularly the sexual harassment claims of women who worked in his companies. I’ll let you read those for yourselves. But here are a few other items that I expect will make news:

Bloomberg has claimed that the reason New York City has such stark income inequality is because it attracts billionaires from all over the world, adding, “All I know is from the city’s point of view, we want these people, and why criticize them? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?”

Bloomberg was also criticized for using his status as Mayor to advance his businesses and for breaking his campaign promise not to raise taxes. Shortly after being elected, property taxes jumped by 18% and a year later, income taxes went up. More taxes followed.

This would be a good place to point out how crazy it is for Democrats who hate Donald Trump for being a billionaire and who falsely accuse him of breaking his campaign promises, using his office to enrich his businesses and cozying up to Russian oligarchs, to demand that replace him with Mike Bloomberg, an even richer billionaire who represents all those things on steroids.

There’s also a section quoting him about all the safety regulations his first business ignored when installing computers, “all without permission, without giving any thought to any fire law or building code. It’s amazing we didn’t burn down some office or electrocute ourselves.” And yet, he assumes that everybody, including criminals, will obey all all his new gun laws.

Finally, I thought that after insulting working women, pregnant women, blacks, Latinos, farmers, factory workers and even socialists, Bloomberg was running out of groups to tick off. But this story won’t win him too many suburban votes:

“At a breakfast in October 2001, he told executives that their companies should not hire people who live in the suburbs because suburbanites are not smart enough. (From the New York Times):

‘[Bloomberg] also suggested that companies should not be interested in hiring people who live in the suburbs because they are not “the best and the brightest.”

“There is a self-selection process,” he said. “People that want to go there aren’t the people that you want to have in your company.”’

I don’t know where he got his ideas about what farmers do, but it sounds as if everything he knows about suburban dwellers came from the song “Somewhere That’s Green” in the musical, “Little Shop of Horrors.”

As long as we’re on that subject, here’s a list of some questions that farmers actually have to deal with on a regular basis. What do you think the odds are that Mr. Bloomberg could ace this quiz?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/michael_bloomberg_flunks_ag_101.html

I’m passing this reader comment on to you because it’s particularly well-articulated and speaks for many who have written to me about the lack of accountability in Washington, DC. It came in reply to my commentary on the FBI lying to the court about George Papadopoulos…

From Melana:

Ok, great! This is all well and good but WHEN IS SOMEONE GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! And yes, I'm YELLING! Flynn lied....he goes to jail....Schiff, Clinton, Brennan, Comey, Holder, Lynch, Obama, Biden, McCabe, Rice....et all LIE and they are out writing books making millions! Please, answer that question...when is someone going to be accused, tried and go to jail? Those of us with an ounce of common sense can see pretty darn clearly how this has gone in the past and will most likely go in the future. I no longer trust the FISA "secret court"....get rid of them; I don't trust the FBI, CIA, IRS, DOJ or any other agency. There is no "justice" in the United States any longer. The rich and powerful can buy what they want, say what they want and DO what they want (example from last night's debate: Bloomberg was happy to state he "bought" the House in 2018). I grow weary reading all the well-written articles like this one to realize you might as well be reading it sitting in the dark in a closet because no "light" will be brought to the situation other than to continue to hammer home the point that NOTHING WILL EVER BE DONE.

From the Gov:

I’m not so sure that’s true, though even if I thought it likely that none of those people would see the inside of a jail cell, I’d still feel obliged to report to you what’s going on from day to day. If they operated in complete secrecy, their efforts to destroy this country’s founding principles would be even more brazen and much more consequential --- quickly so --- believe me. (That’s why they did so much damage to the process when Hillary was assumed to be the next President: “Ha! No one will ever know what we’re doing!”)

Now we KNOW what they were up to, and still are. Unfortunately, they continue to have most of the media on their side, covering for them, which means we have to work harder to expose them, rather than conclude we're fighting a losing battle and get so sick of the whole thing that we just give up. That would be the worst thing to do –- the very thing they want us to do and are trying to get us to do. (How happy they would be if we said, "Millennials want socialism? Okay, they can HAVE it and then let them see how they like it when the nation goes bankrupt and they're eating the bark off trees!") I can think offhand of several reasons to be hopeful:

1. Hillary did NOT get elected. (By the way, have you noticed that every scandal seems to lead, in some circuitous way, back to her? Amazing, isn’t it?) This one's at the top of my list. Consider that if she had fulfilled her dream of becoming President, the curtain of secrecy would have been fully lowered and nailed to the floor, and we would never have learned about what was going on. Heaven knows what they would be doing now behind the scenes to cement their power forever. Thank the Lord that we dodged that bullet; it was the kind of ammo that explodes inside its target and destroys vital organs with no hope of recovery.

2. Trump DID get elected, in spite of The Swamp's lying and spying, and he’s likely to be re-elected (though we must never take that for granted!) To cite just one accomplishment relevant to my argument, he’s made great strides with judicial appointments, and he needs the opportunity to do much more in that area. In fact, that's likely the biggest reason of all that the left wants him gone.

3. With luck and hard work –- this is where we as Americans need to put our effort –- the House will change hands with the upcoming election, and we can get down to the business of reform after two years of Schiff and Nadler and impeachment madness. (This is so important. Consider that the Democrat-led House is currently working on the bill to re-authorize the FISA process; too bad Republicans aren’t in charge of that right now!)

4. At last we have an attorney general who is set on getting to the bottom of what has gone wrong and, like the President, has the strength to stand up to the partisan attacks against him, which will become even more vicious in coming months. His appointment of John Durham to quietly and methodically lead the criminal investigation into the FBI/DOJ/CIA and “Crossfire Hurricane” appears to have been a masterful move.

5. Along with Durham and his team inside the government, we also have investigators such as Lee Smith and John Solomon in the private sector who refuse to stop digging. As “60 Minutes” doesn’t do its job any more, we should be especially thankful for people like him --- and for their publishers. The success of podcasters such as Dan Bongino and numerous others also gives me reason to hope. Leftists certainly are fighting to control social media --- along with everything else they want to keep a lid on --- but what does not kill us makes us stronger.

That’s five reasons, off the top of my head, not to despair. Something else I just thought of: the American people. I think we still have enough voters with sufficient brains to see that the left has gone off the rails at 200 miles an hour. (Anybody who watched the lineup of Democrat candidates in Tuesday’s embarrassing train-wreck "debate" could see that.) And, instinctively, most of us still react with horror at the idea of a two-tier justice system and government authoritarianism in general. This next election will likely tell the tale. Don’t give up, Melana.

I’ll close with this helpful comment from Don:

Actions and comments about Roger Stone by Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson shows that President Trump will need another 4-year term to just to drain the judicial swamp. How many more swamps are there?

From the Gov:

Thanks, Don. Four more years!

Mike Huckabee

With a few rare and now-gone voices of sanity, such as John Delaney, the Democratic Primary has largely resembled a Bizarro World auction where the participants bid against one another to see who can give away the most stuff for “free.”

“Free” is in quotes because, as every child should be taught and obviously, far too few are these days, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.” That’s been true since the dawn of time, and putting the word “Democratic” in front of “socialism” won’t change it, any more than calling useless and counter-productive gun laws "common sense" will make them common sense. Not even the schools’ “free lunch” program is free: taxpayers pay a lot for it, and the money often comes with government strings attached. Or a “quid pro quo,” to coin a phrase.

Just last night, Tom Steyer added paying reparations for slavery to the list, and earlier, Bernie Sanders tossed another new expensive “human right” on the pile: a $1.2 trillion plan called “Free Child Care and Pre-K for All.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernie-sanders-unveils-free-childcare-plan-eye-popping-price-tag-1-5-trillion/

Personally, I can think of few ideas more chilling than every child from the age of three being put into an “education program” designed by Bernie Sanders. But I suppose we should be thankful that the cost of this one is “only” $1.2 trillion, or a little less than 1/4th of the entire current federal budget, rather than his typical plan that costs the entire US GDP.

I know that child care is very important. It’s a real problem for many low-income working people, and the government might have a role to play, although it should be on the state or local level, or better yet, handled by community organizations and churches. But spending nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget to create a new “human right” to free daycare is what passes in Bernie’s mind for “common sense” government action that isn’t “radical” at all.

I know that Bernie knows the word “privilege” because when he recently declared health care to be a “human right,” he added, “It is not a privilege!” I’ve written before about how “progressives” can’t win arguments on facts or experience, so they win by rewriting the language (for instance, liberals, leftists, socialists and communists became too infamous as purveyors of tragically failed policies, so they magically became “progressives.”)

But some of us still care about the English language, and how words actually mean things. As children used to be taught, a “right” is something you are endowed with by God, such as the right to free speech. It doesn’t require anyone else giving up their rights to provide it to you. Making a speech in a public park is a “right.” Demanding that the government provide you with a free P.A. system is a “privilege.” Just as demanding that other people attend medical school or deal with government paperwork to spend their time caring for you while others pay higher taxes to cover the cost makes that a “privilege.” You may say that you think health care should be a privilege of citizenship, but by definition, it can never be a “right.” Bernie goes around finding new “rights” the way my grandkids find Easter eggs, but they don’t have a "right" to chocolate eggs: that’s a privilege of me being their grandpa.

And as long as I’m offering a remedial primer on rights, I’d also like to point out that the Bill of Rights doesn’t list rights the government gives to you. It lists rights with which God endows you and that the government has no right to take away from you.

Mike Huckabee

With a few rare and now-gone voices of sanity, such as John Delaney, the Democratic Primary has largely resembled a Bizarro World auction where the participants bid against one another to see who can give away the most stuff for “free.”

“Free” is in quotes because, as every child should be taught and obviously, far too few are these days, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.” That’s been true since the dawn of time, and putting the word “Democratic” in front of “socialism” won’t change it, any more than calling useless and counter-productive gun laws "common sense" will make them common sense. Not even the schools’ “free lunch” program is free: taxpayers pay a lot for it, and the money often comes with government strings attached. Or a “quid pro quo,” to coin a phrase.

Just last night, Tom Steyer added paying reparations for slavery to the list, and earlier, Bernie Sanders tossed another new expensive “human right” on the pile: a $1.2 trillion plan called “Free Child Care and Pre-K for All.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernie-sanders-unveils-free-childcare-plan-eye-popping-price-tag-1-5-trillion/

Personally, I can think of few ideas more chilling than every child from the age of three being put into an “education program” designed by Bernie Sanders. But I suppose we should be thankful that the cost of this one is “only” $1.2 trillion, or a little less than 1/4th of the entire current federal budget, rather than his typical plan that costs the entire US GDP.

I know that child care is very important. It’s a real problem for many low-income working people, and the government might have a role to play, although it should be on the state or local level, or better yet, handled by community organizations and churches. But spending nearly a quarter of the entire federal budget to create a new “human right” to free day care is what passes in Bernie’s mind for “common sense” government action that isn’t “radical” at all.

I know that Bernie knows the word “privilege” because when he recently declared health care to be a “human right,” he added, “It is not a privilege!” I’ve written before about how “progressives” can’t win arguments on facts or experience, so they win by rewriting the language (for instance, liberals, leftists, socialists and communists became too infamous as purveyors of tragically failed policies, so they magically became “progressives.”)

But some of us still care about the English language, and how words actually mean things. As children used to be taught, a “right” is something you are endowed with by God, such as the right to free speech. It doesn’t require anyone else giving up their rights to provide it to you. Making a speech in a public park is a “right.” Demanding that the government provide you with a free P.A. system is a “privilege.” Just as demanding that other people attend medical school or deal with government paperwork to spend their time caring for you while others pay higher taxes to cover the cost makes that a “privilege.” You may say that you think health care should be a privilege of citizenship, but by definition, it can never be a “right.” Bernie goes around finding new “rights” the way my grandkids find Easter eggs, but they don’t have a "right" to chocolate eggs: that’s a privilege of me being their grandpa.

And as long as I’m offering a remedial primer on rights, I’d also like to point out that the Bill of Rights doesn’t list rights the government gives to you. It lists rights with which God endows you and that the government has no right to take away from you.

---------------------------------

As liberal media people start to panic at the idea of Bernie Sanders being the nominee, they’re finally starting to do some background research into his previous kooky statements (both the ones we’re all known about for years, and some that are more…exotic.) As they put it at the Instapundit blog, Bernie keeps telling you what he is; you should believe him. Mike Bloomberg reportedly plans to spend some of his riches on blasting this oppo research far and wide, like Bernie’s ideas on child care that should make anyone recoil at the idea of a government day care program created by him.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/bloomberg-spox-rips-bernies-loopy-comments-said-toddlers-should-run-around-naked-and-touch-each-others-genitals/

Even more concerning is Bernie’s admiration for communist dictatorships like Cuba, Nicaragua and the USSR. He claims he doesn’t admire “authoritarianism,” but socialism without authoritarianism would be like trying to make coffee without coffee beans. If the government controls production and decides what choices you get to make (and Bernie is on record as thinking capitalism gives you too many choices of deodorants), then if someone disagrees and wants to make a different choice than what the government approves, somebody has to stop them to protect the “system.” Enter the government guns and gulags.

But Bernie is the eternal optimist, always able to see the daisy growing out of the pile of bull manure. First it was Castro’s “literacy program” (which forced people to read communist propaganda), and now he’s praising communist China for lifting more people out of extreme poverty than any other nation on Earth (too bad about all the genocides, forced sterilizations and destroying of churches.)

https://www.westernjournal.com/sanders-doubles-communist-regime-praise-gives-credit-china-fighting-extreme-poverty/

Actually, it’s socialism and communism that put people into extreme poverty, and capitalism that’s lifted more of them out of it than at any time in history. Even China made the advances they did by allowing limited amounts of capitalist free enterprise (but not too much freedom: see “Hong Kong.”)

Bernie’s go-to model for the US is Denmark, and other “Democratic socialist” Scandinavian nations. But there are things rotten in Denmark, and Bernie just can’t smell them. The problems with his argument include…

(A.) The Nordic nations are not socialist, as their leaders adamantly insist; by some metrics, Denmark has more economic freedom than the US. Norway’s prosperity is largely thanks to off-shore oil wells, which Bernie would surely ban…

(B.) These nations are actually rolling back some of the socialist-lite programs they instituted after realizing they were unaffordable and were eroding their people’s traditional work ethic (if you’ve ever heard the stories about “Norwegian bachelor farmers” and Lutherans on “Prairie Home Companion,” you know that if socialism won’t work on Scandinavians, who are raised to work hard and expect little in return, then it won’t work anywhere.)

(C.) The image of all those Danes who are happy as larks to pay exorbitant taxes in return for those amazing government services is a delusional fiction. Read this commentary from the Bookworm Room blog, on a book written by someone who’s lived there. Example: under that fantastic Danish government health care, the author visited an emergency care center and was told he’d have to make an appointment.

https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/02/23/the-truth-behind-bernies-shtick-that-he-just-wants-to-make-america-like-denmark/

One of the comments on this story includes a great quote. The writer says that when the media were touting Denmark as the “happiest place on Earth” (they’re actually #2 in Europe behind Iceland in anti-depressant consumption), he met a Danish couple applying for US citizenship. When he asked why the Danes they were leaving behind were were so happy, she replied, “Because their expectations are so low.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to replace “Keep America Great” with “Lower Your Expectations.”

-----------------------------------

The stock market is taking a dive this week amid fears of the coronavirus spreading (or as President Trump called it, “a buying opportunity.”) It’s too early to know just how bad this could become, but it’s also too early to be launching panics over it. Here’s a little information that might help put things in perspective.

https://www.westernjournal.com/numbers-show-coronavirus-appears-far-less-deadly-flu-govt-media-keep-promoting-panic/

Mike Huckabee

Project Veritas has released another undercover video, this time of ABC reporter David Wright. In it, Wright describes himself as a socialist and espouses several far-left views on topics such as national health care and income inequality. He also calls President Trump an unrepeatable name and says, “We don’t hold him to account,” but admits, “We also don’t give him credit for what things he does do.” And Wright complains that “in television, we have lost any sense of context” and “the truth suffers, the voters are poorly informed.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-news-suspends-david-wright-for-remarks-made-in-project-veritas-video-report

ABC claimed Wright had been tricked into speaking without knowing the camera was on, but they suspended him and said he would later be reassigned away from politics. The network said, “Any action that damages our reputation for fairness and impartiality or gives the appearance of compromising it harms ABC News and the individuals involved.”

As Ed Driscoll at Instapundit points out, this is the same network that has former Clinton right-hand man George Stephanopoulos as an impartial news anchor and that recently got a former ABC staffer fired from CBS for allegedly leaking an ABC reporter's complaints about ABC covering up for a politically-connected pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. So if their reputation for fairness and impartiality is stained, don’t look at Project Veritas.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/359603

Bonus: Driscoll also notes that Will Sommer of the liberal site Daily Beast called Wright’s suspension “ridiculous,” claiming that he just made “the same critiques of the broadcast news business that you’d hear in any journalism class.” That’s probably true, but the fact that it was opinions on current events from the standpoint of a self-admitted socialist probably says a lot more about current journalism classes – and the state of “journalism” itself – than Mr. Sommer realizes.

Mike Huckabee

I have been working from Israel this week, where I gave a speech on Monday promoting the reelection of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I described him, I think quite accurately, as not just a leader of Israel but a leader of the world, a Churchill in a world filled with Chamberlains.

Video of that speech has now been posted on Facebook, and I hope you’ll give it a look. Outside of our own elections, this is one of the most important elections to the US, since it will determine the future of our greatest ally in an area of the world where we need a strong ally like Israel to keep the peace. Netanyahu will insure that Israel remains strong.

https://www.facebook.com/LikudAnglos/videos/vb.157560110960960/246748056324121/?type=2&thea

And as a timely reminder to American voters, one of the Democrats’ leading Presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish himself, refused to attend next week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference. He accused Israel of “bigotry” against the Palestinians for acts that amount to nothing more than basic self-defense.

Just hours after Sanders made those comments, Palestinian terrorists launched a rocket attack in the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip. The rockets narrowly missed a Jewish school and damaged a playground just a few yards from the classrooms. Several people were treated for shock, but miraculously, no one was injured as there were no children on the playground. Not that the people who fired those rockets cared, since they would have celebrated any injuries to or deaths of innocent Jewish children.

https://www.westernjournal.com/hours-bernie-defends-palestinians-palestinians-shoot-rocket-israeli-playground/

I think Bernie Sanders and I have a very different definition of “bigotry.”

--------------------

Many stunning photos have appeared from the President and First Lady’s tour of India, and as usual, there have been comments about Melania Trump’s fashions. She’s a former model and incredibly stylish, so I think she always looks fantastic, but there are also the usual catty, snotty remarks from liberals.

Some people complain that there’s too much coverage of how Mrs. Trump dresses, that it’s either too laudatory or demeaning and sexist. So Fox News did a poll. They found that the public is split, with 37% saying media coverage of her looks and styles has been fair, 35% saying it’s been too negative and 9% saying coverage of her fashions has been “too positive.”

Here’s my question: who are the 9% who think that coverage of Melania Trump by the fashion media is “too positive”? Fashion magazines are so lockstep leftist that three long years into her tenure as one of the most beautiful and fashionable First Ladies in history, I can’t think of a single major women's or fashion magazine that’s put her on its cover even once. It’s absolutely shameful, and a perfect example of how the editors of these magazines prioritize leftist politics over fashion or fairness to the point of acting like a gaggle of high school mean girls with big expense accounts. They’d rather put Lena Dunham on a fashion magazine cover than Melania Trump. And that’s “too positive” for some people?

I just want them to know that we all know that has nothing to do with fashion. We are well aware that if Melania were married to a liberal Democrat President, they’d be worshiping her like she was the second coming of Princess Diana. When they attack her fashion choices or act as if she doesn't exist, they aren't fooling anyone other than themselves.

---------------------------------

There are two prominent names in this morning’s obituaries. Hosni Mubarak, the former strongman leader of Egypt who rule for 30 years before being deposed in 2011, has died in a Cairo hospital at 91 after undisclosed surgery.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/hosni-mubarak-egypts-former-autocratic-president-dead-at-91-report

And former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson has died at 101. She was one of a group of African-American women whose genius at math helped build the US space program. Their contributions went unrecognized for many years until their story was finally told in the book and 2016 movie, “Hidden Figures.” A big Huck’s Hero salute and the gratitude of all Americans to Katherine Johnson, and our prayers and condolences to her family.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nasa-mathematician-depicted-hidden-figures-katherine-johnson-passed-away-age-101/

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Pot, Meet Kettle: While Elizabeth Warren was blasting Mike Bloomberg for having female employees sign non-disclosure agreements, the Democratic Party was trying to keep the media from learning about any potential disasters in the Nevada Caucuses by requiring volunteers to sign…non-disclosure agreements!

https://www.westernjournal.com/bernies-win-nevada-caucuses-rocky-start-democrats-telling-volunteers-not-talk-media/

---------------------------

Okay, I said I wasn’t going to run all of these “foaming-at-the-mouth leftists attack innocent Trump supporters” stories every day because there are so many of them, it would be all we ever got done. But to that anonymous Internet commenter who started this by claiming that most politically-motivated violence was perpetrated by people on the right, I can’t help adding this one.

https://www.westernjournal.com/couple-charged-felony-allegedly-running-boys-bikes-trump-flags-off-road/

Two details worth highlighting: there have been about 400 politically-motivated violent incidents against Trump supporters since September 2015 (those are just the ones that were reported; and it doesn’t take into account how many people have felt too threatened even to wear a MAGA cap or put a Trump sticker on their car or a sign in their yard, which is a blatant violation of their right to free speech.)

Also, note that this cowardly assault took place back in July but is only now coming to light because it took three months for Snapchat to turn the video over to police in response to a search warrant. Funny how when a Trump supporter posts a joke or meme that a leftist doesn’t like and they claim to feel “threatened” by it, social media sites somehow manage to take action overnight.

Mike Huckabee

“If It Weren’t For Double Standards…” Dept: A few years ago, before entering politics, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bragged on social media about somehow being able to get her goddaughter into a good charter school, something that liberals like her want to abolish because they think private education alternatives to public schools undermine the power of teachers’ unions. Needless to say, they also undermine the school’s ability to indoctrinate students with leftist curricula because they empower parents.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/the-aoc-tapes-rep-says-she-got-goddaughter-into-bronx-charter-school

I have never understood why anyone would think that the public school system should prioritize protecting teachers’ unions over the good of the students (but then, I don’t belong to a political party that’s heavily dependent on money and campaign volunteers from teachers’ unions.) The only purpose of a school should be to give the students the best education possible, and if it’s failing to do that, then something needs to change.

As hypocritical as this story makes AOC sound, though, I have to cut her some slack. I don’t blame her for wanting her goddaughter to have the best education possible. In fact, I want that child to go to a good charter school with a real economics class that won’t teach her to be a socialist. And AOC is hardly the only liberal politician to preach public schools for everyone else while sending their own family to expensive private schools. Frankly, I can’t think offhand of any liberal politicians who did send their kids to public school (you’re welcome to list them in the comments section if you know of any. And Elizabeth Warren’s denials don’t count.)

It’s only natural to want the best education possible for your own family. I just wish they'd quit fighting so hard to deny that right to other people's children.

Mike Huckabee

I told you yesterday about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a much-ballyhooed dissent in the “public charge” immigration ban case. Her major gripe was that the Trump Administration calls on the SCOTUS too often to make emergency rulings rather than let challenges to its policies work their way through the courts. Trump defenders (myself included) pointed out that this is because so many liberal activist judges keep imposing unconstitutional nationwide stays that are beyond their jurisdictions, in a politicized attempt to thwart policies that the President has the Constitutional power to impose and hog-tie his Administration. The problem here is not an out-of-control White House, but an out-of-control judiciary.

Now, as you knew he would, Trump himself has weighed in on Twitter. He said Sotomayor was accusing some of her fellow Justices of being biased in favor of him and trying to “shame” them into voting her way, but she never criticized Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg when she publicly made anti-Trump comments during the campaign. Trump said both Sotomayor and Ginsberg should recuse themselves from cases involving him, since they’ve both publicly expressed bias against him.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-sotomayor-ginsburg-should-recuse-themselves-from-cases-dealing-with-his-administration

I’m sure this will spark the by-now ritualistic cries of “outrage” from Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself.) That would carry a lot more weight if we didn’t just go through an impeachment process where the same people were demanding that Mitch McConnell recuse himself from voting because he’d publicly supported Trump. Frankly, I assume that in today’s hyper-partisan atmosphere, nobody who isn’t forced by law to recuse him- or herself is ever going to do it.

Hey, speaking of that, Roger Stone’s Obama-appointed judge who praised an outrageously biased juror and accused Stone of things he wasn’t even charged with while sentencing him, just refused to recuse herself and let him have a new judge. Quote:

"If parties could move to disqualify every judge who furrows his brow at one side or the other before ruling, the entire court system would come to a standstill."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/23/roger-stone-judge-berman-jackson-117066

I don’t think there’s enough Botox in the world to hide a brow that furrowed.

Mike Huckabee

Who was Philip Haney and why did he die?

I can offer some information regarding the first part of that question but none, at least yet, on the last part. “Brilliant, dedicated, devout” are some of the words being used by his stunned friends to describe Philip Haney, a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security who, according to one online tribute, “was characterized by tireless, intrepid, and in certain quarters unwelcome research and analysis about...Islam’s totalitarian code known as sharia and the supremacists who seek to impose it on all of us.”

Haney co-authored a book with Art Moore detailing the challenges of his work during the Obama administration called “SEE SOMETHING, SAY NOTHING: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad.” His job was to identify individuals and organizations with terrorist links, and he made it clear he saw people promoting sharia law within this country as America’s “enemy within.” He was self-taught in Arabic and had spent many years studying the Koran and other sacred and judicial texts.

"We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for his life and innumerable contributions to the cause of freedom,” the tribute continues, “many of which will never be publicly acknowledged or otherwise made known to his countrymen and women whom he did so much to secure.”

This DHS “whistleblower” apparently did not receive whistleblower protection when he exposed some intricate ties inside the Obama administration to the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups they called their “outreach partners.” It might come as little surprise that for his efforts, Haney was reportedly subjected to various job actions, investigations and threats. Rep. Louis Gomert apparently helped him clear his name and retire with full benefits; Gomert’s glowing review of Haney’s book, in which he calls Haney “a modern-day hero” and “an honorable, truthful patriot,” can be found on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/See-Something-Say-Nothing-Governments/dp/1944229205

Haney’s wife Francesca died last year after a long struggle with her health, but Haney had gone on with his life and was planning to be married in about a month.

Early unofficial reports said that Haney had been found on the ground next to his vehicle, killed by one gunshot to the chest, near the intersection of two highways in Drytown, California, not far from his home in the San Francisco area. The story is developing, with few details so far and some conflicting reports, but at the time of this writing neither suicide nor foul play can be definitively ruled out. National security specialist Ilana Freedman, who had worked with Haney, said in an interview Sunday with The Gateway Pundit that she was very surprised and that people who knew him wouldn’t believe he committed suicide. “He was a very religious man who believed suicide was a sin," she said. "A fellow associate I know said Philip stated several times that if he was accused of suicide not to believe it. He said that to a lot of people.”

She said he was working on a project involving some very serious allegations that was going to be published later this year. I’m passing this information along just to let you know this is what his friends are saying. But, as I said, no one can get inside someone else’s mind, and I would not want to come to a conclusion at this point based on speculation. I’ll have more information to share when this story passes that stage.

In the meantime, check out the interview Haney gave in June of 2016 with Sean Hannity.

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/02/22/report-obama-administration-whistleblower-found-shot-to-death/

Mike Huckabee

Just as the Democrats have started in AGAIN, this time for 2020, with their frantic cries of “Russia, Russia, Russia!,” Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced the formal start of his investigation this coming week into FISA abuse and the origins of the “Trump/Russia” hoax.

Sen. Graham told Maria Bartiromo on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES that he doesn’t “have jurisdiction” over the whistleblower (you know, ERIC CIARAMELLA) --- which would belong to the Senate Intelligence Committee, I suppose because of highly classified material --- but in light of the current DOJ’s decision that the last two FISA renewals to spy on Carter Page were illegal, he plans to call a long list of people to determine what Andrew McCabe and James Comey knew about the fictional nature of the Christopher Steele “dossier,” and how early in the process they knew it.

We still don’t have determinations on the legality of the original FISA warrant application and the first renewal; those are pending. But we know for sure that way back in January of 2017, Steele’s primary Russian “subsource” told four members of the DOJ and FBI that the dossier was nothing but “bar-talk and hearsay,” as Graham put it. For an investigation so important –- into a major-party nominee for President, no less –- how could the director and deputy director of the FBI not have known about this? (Answer: THEY DID, but they’ve already lied so much, I wouldn’t expect the truth from them about this, either.) Yet they kept pursuing their bogus investigation, to the point at which the whole issue was handed off to Robert Mueller’s special counsel. The four people who heard directly from the subsource are at the top of the list Graham intends to call.

Recall that the first FISA application was made after a previous effort to get a warrant, in July of 2016, was turned down by the court. On Sunday, Sen. Graham mentioned something quite interesting: It was McCabe, at that time the deputy FBI Director, who then advised the FBI Washington, DC, office to go to the New York office, saying “they have something” that might help them get a warrant. That “something” was the Steele dossier.

So….how did McCabe know about the dossier? Who had been in touch with McCabe about it? (We know that stupid dossier was being floated around by then-CIA Director and known liar John Brennan; if I were investigating this, I’d focus on him.) Also, did Rod Rosenstein, who signed off on the last FISA renewal, know that the dossier had already been debunked? How could he possibly not have known that?

The interviews with McCabe and Comey won’t be happening right away. Before Graham calls them, he needs to lay the groundwork. So his staff will be interviewing other witnesses first to assemble the necessary foundation.

We know they kept renewing the FISA warrant after they knew the dossier on which it had been based was a pile of trash. Why did they keep going –- not just within the FBI but two more years with a special counsel, when there was no evidence of any underlying crime? In Sen. Graham’s words, “This whole thing is fishy as hell.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/02/23/lindsey_graham_says_he_will_call_21_people_to_testify_in_senate_judiciary_investigation_into_fisa_abuses.html

Over in the House Judiciary Committee, they’re supposedly looking at the FISA issue as well and are scheduled to work this week on a “markup” of new legislation. But under the control of impeachment-mad Jerrold Nadler, the focus has not been on determining what is wrong with that process. Ranking member Doug Collins wanted to have Inspector General Horowitz come in and give testimony about the problems he found with the FBI’s use of the FISA court, but that hasn’t happened. It’s no surprise that Nadler isn’t going to get into all that. “And now,” Collins said, “we’re going to put forward a bill that, really, I don’t think is going to address the issues. We’re gonna have some say about that; wait for what we’re gonna be putting forward. I think we’re gonna find ways to understand it. We need to restore the American people’s trust in [FISA], and if that cannot be done, then people will not have confidence that our intelligence communities are doing what they need to be doing and being able to use this court properly.”

Attorney General Bill Barr goes before the House Judiciary Committee at the end of March. Rep. Collins wants to know, as we all do, why Andrew McCabe was not charged. He also wants to make sure that the Durham criminal investigation has all the resources it needs to go forward. There are questions for FBI director Christopher Wray as well. But Nadler and the Democrats will be too busy trying to trash Barr as someone just trying to protect the President to drill down on these important issues.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/barr-hearing-will-address-whether-john-durham-has-adequate-resources

My take-away: ELECTIONS MEAN THINGS. If Democrats hadn’t taken control of the House in 2018, we already would have been able to look into all of this. Instead of FISA reform, we got Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and the ginned-up impeachment. It’s so important that the House be taken out of their hands with the 2020 election.

As for the renewed “Russia” hysteria, the media will cooperate at every step with Democrats trying to spread it. Adam Schiff likely leaked information –- somebody did, and he’s the most likely suspect –- from a classified briefing to THE NEW YORK TIMES, who grabbed on to the old “Trump is an agent of Putin” idea” with no supporting evidence at all. Why would it surprise anyone that big-time leaker Schiff would leak classified information? Likewise, why would it surprise anyone that the Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese or anyone else might try to interfere with our elections, in 2016 or 2020 or any year, past, present or future? It would be weird if they DIDN’T. We know that Russia –- along with Ukraine and surely other foreign entities –- “meddled” in 2016 to create chaos (which we got), but keep this in mind: Foreigners may have “meddled,” but Democrats in our own government helped them when they “peddled”...the Steele dossier. And now they’re peddling the same garbage.

The media are ready partners in that effort, and this “Russia” story lingers and spreads like a political coronavirus. Here’s a piece from last December that seems even more significant now in light of what we know…

https://pjmedia.com/trending/reporters-lied-steele-dossier-carter-page-fisa-warrants/

Now here’s a new story on the latest “peddling,” and it should surprise no one who is leading the charge…

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/21/hillary-clinton-peddles-russia-collusion-2-0-labels-trump-putins-puppet/

Mike Huckabee

Roger Stone was sentenced by Judge Amy Berman Jackson as originally scheduled on Thursday, despite revelations about the vicious anti-Trump views and Democrat activism of the jury foreperson.

Stone, who is 67, didn’t receive the stunningly punitive seven-to-nine year sentence recommended by his prosecutors, but it’s still pretty substantial, especially considering that numerous others who have lied to Congress are still walking around free, profiting off book deals and contracts with CNN and MSNBC. Jackson sentenced Stone to serve 3 years and 4 months, pay a $20,000 fine, spend 2 years in supervised release and perform 250 hours’ community service.

But because of the allegations of juror bias and misconduct, she did suspend the imposition of all those punishments pending her ruling on Stone’s request for a new trial. Of course, if she grants one, those punishments are voided. President Trump could also pardon him.

The backstory: Prosecutors recommended an outrageously harsh sentence for Stone –- seven to nine years, when typically it would be about three –- and the DOJ reduced that to something approaching that average. Four prosecutors responded by acting like babies and leaving their jobs in protest (good riddance). Democrats went bat-nuts and accused AG William Barr of doing Trump’s bidding, ludicrously calling for him to resign or else be impeached. Trump complained in his tweets about the excessive sentence, but Barr says the DOJ decided to intervene before hearing anything from him.

Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday that Jackson is the judge who placed both Paul Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates under house arrest pending trial, though neither was a flight risk or had any criminal history. It was also Judge Jackson who revoked Manafort’s bail and placed him in solitary confinement.

In her courtroom Thursday, she lit into Stone, saying he was “prosecuted for covering up for the President.” She said Stone lied because he knew that public disclosures that he was in touch with WikiLeaks would “reflect badly” on Trump. The left cheered her for this, but what she said is a lie. First, unless she’s one of those “certified authentic psychics,” she can’t possibly have known this was in his mind. Second, Stone was NOT actually in touch with WikiLeaks. Third, Stone was not charged with helping Trump cover up anything; there was nothing to cover up, as nobody associated with President Trump has been prosecuted for “colluding” with Russia or any related crimes, let alone has been found guilty of such crimes. In fact, a two-year special counsel investigation found no evidence of anything on Trump’s part that needed to be “covered up.” Question: how much hate must a federal judge have for the President to say such a thing in her courtroom?

Carlson also told his audience that Stone “would be on this show right now to respond, but he can no longer speak in public. Amy Berman Jackson has revoked his First Amendment rights.” Stone can be defamed mercilessly,” he said, “but if he dares to express his own opinion, Amy Berman Jackson will send him to jail immediately --- she said that.” Jackson banned Stone from speaking publicly, in ANY forum, about his case, and no one else can speak on his behalf. “...What you’re watching is the capricious authoritarianism of a Democratic activist wearing robes.”

Predictably, just the fact that Stone received prison time is being used by the media to suggest Trump himself is a criminal. The words of this judge enable them to continue their phony “Russia collusion” narrative, which is well past its expiration date and beginning to stink. The President still “colludes” with Putin, they say, and if we just keep digging, we’ll eventually find some piece of evidence that confirms it.

At least Jackson knew she’d better defer to Barr’s more reasonable recommendation and scale back the sentence, but Stone shouldn’t have been sentenced at all. After learning about the horrendous bias of the jury foreperson, Democrat activist Tomeka Hart, this judge should have had no choice but to start over with a new trial for Stone –- and a change of venue from Washington DC –- or else let him go after all he’s been through. Instead, she praised the jurors for having “served with integrity under difficult circumstances.” Maybe some did, but not all.

And tell me, given Hart’s activism and social media history, how did she get a seat in the jury box in the first place? She was so invested in the outcome, she continued expressing interest in the prosectors and the sentencing even after the verdict was reached; this was none of her concern.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign advisor who suffered his own legal problems as a result, was on with Carlson to ask people to sign the petition at FreeRogerStone.com, asking for Stone to be pardoned immediately. That’s “immediately,” meaning “now, not after the election.” Trump has said he wants the case to “play out to its fullest,” as he thinks Stone “has a very good chance of exoneration.” He’d like to see it go through the system, although “the system” has failed Stone thus far.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/150000-have-signed-petition-urging-president-trump-to-pardon-roger-stone/

So I hope he listens to the many thousands who have signed and will sign this petition, as opposed to people like Adam Schiff, who is desperate to continue the “Russia” hoax and who, interestingly, talked about Stone in almost the same words Judge Jackson used: “Roger Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress. He did it to cover up for Trump...to pardon Stone when his crimes were committed to protect Trump would be a breathtaking act of corruption.”

Of course, the Grand Poobah of the Great Russia Hoax, former CIA Director John Brennan, will do all he can to preserve the false narrative. Thursday, he tweeted: “We are now in a full-blown national security crisis. By trying to prevent the flow in intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES is helping maintain this fiction, having just reported that Russia plans to “meddle” in the 2020 election. I like what Trey Gowdy had to say about that: “I don’t know anyone who really thinks that Russia prefers Donald Trump to win over Comrade Sanders.”

Roger Stone sentenced to over 3 years in prison as judge slams him for 'covering up for' Trump

Mike Huckabee

Not long ago, I observed that the move was on in the media to discredit three people: Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and investigative reporter/opinion writer John Solomon. These are all now in full swing.

THE HILL, where Solomon’s work used to appear, has just reported on an internal review of his columns they began in November of last year, after U.S. State Department officials in Ukraine criticized them during the Trump impeachment hearings. The review was quite a project, with working groups formed to look at each of 14 pieces Solomon had written for TheHill.com. They “analyzed and discussed them at length, looking at possible corrections and/or context that could have been added at the time of the writings. They also “reviewed congressional testimony and other public documentation related to Solomon’s columns, as well as related media reports, to add editor’s notes to the columns regarding what has been learned since the columns were posted by THE HILL.” They also included some of Solomon’s “relevant public remarks” that were in response to critics.

Solomon was hired by THE HILL on July 10, 2017, as vice president for digital video (to launch Hill.TV), and wrote numerous news articles for them in 2017 and 2018. An editorial decision was made to label his work “opinion” after May 14, 2018. He left THE HILL on October 4 of last year.

When they announced that Solomon would be categorized as an opinion writer, I said that might actually be a good thing, as it allowed him freedom in connecting dots that a straight news writer doesn’t have. (If only more “journalists” who write their opinions were similarly labeled –- but that seems to happen rarely and only with conservative opinion writers.) Here at MikeHuckabee.com, we’ve continued to use his findings as we work to put the puzzle pieces together at our end as well.

THE HILL’s review focused on columns Solomon had written about Ukraine that reported on Joe and Hunter Biden and also members of the U.S. diplomatic corps there. Solomon was appearing frequently on Sean Hannity’s TV show, so his work had a wide reach. My staff and I often refer to his findings –- of course, our work is “opinion” as well, but we stand behind the facts we have used from his reports.

Of course, the issue of corruption in Ukraine, including the Bidens, is what led to “the phone call” between Trump and President Zelensky, the fake “whistleblower” report by ERIC CIARAMELLA, and the whole impeachment charade. (Note: since this is “opinion” and it’s my site, I’ll say that if I want to.) THE HILL followed a vetting process for his columns just as they did with the work of all their opinion writers, involving at least one and often two opinion editors. Solomon had to provide them information about his unnamed sources, identifying them and offering their relevance to the topic, and he had to supply copies of documents he’d referenced as fact or used in the formation of his opinions and conclusions.

No source cited by Solomon ever contacted THE HILL to demand corrections or clarifications –- with one exception: Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder and executive director of the George Soros-funded Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). She wrote a column strongly rebutting Solomon’s criticism of AntAC and the U.S. embassy’s role in fighting corruption in Ukraine.

It seems to me that THE HILL’s report on Solomon actually compliments his work –- perhaps unwittingly –- when it says people might be confused into thinking it was news and not opinion because it’s long and detailed, contains a lot of facts and caveats and reads like a real news report! Imagine that. Most of what we read today is labeled “news” and reads like opinion; Solomon’s work is labeled “opinion” and reads like news.

Also, a couple of Solomon’s Ukrainian sources have been deemed unreliable by some State Department officials (remember that crew from the impeachment hearings?). Then-Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko had told Solomon he’d opened an investigation into alleged attempts by Ukrainians to interfere in the U.S. election in 2016, and also that then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich had given him a do-not-prosecute list. “State Department officials, U.S. national security agencies and the Senate Intelligence Committee have concluded that Ukraine did not meddle in the 2016 presidential election,” THE HILL’s report asserts. “Russian government officials, who have denied meddling in the 2016 election, have pushed the narrative that Ukraine interfered in that U.S. election.”

This again. It’s verboten to say Ukraine was involved in the 2016 election, as there’s this odd premise that it had to be EITHER Russia OR Ukraine, not both, and it was Russia, so therefore it couldn’t be Ukraine. The candy mint/breath mint argument. Anyone who even entertains the notion that Ukraine tried to interfere is a heretic, a crazy conspiracy theorist. (By the way, I’m not so sure that everyone on the Senate Intel Committee is on board with the conclusion that Ukraine wasn’t involved.)

Also in the report: due to a translation error, it may not have been that Yovanovich had an actual written list. She may have “voiced” the list. And Lutsenko offered Solomon slightly different details in his “list” story than when he told it to a Ukrainian newspaper.

Solomon continues to stand by his columns on Lutsenko, Yovanovich and Ukraine meddling. He also denies allegations that he “smeared” Yovanovich, noting that supportive remarks about her by State Department officials were included in his columns. (Note: The same allegation about smearing Yovanovich has been used to damage Giuliani.) In testimony during the impeachment hearings, these stories were cited as part of the attempt to oust Yovonovich, an official who, in my OPINION, really needed ousting.

The report goes on to discuss Solomon’s columns about the Bidens, noting that “there has never been any proof of legal wrongdoing by the Bidens.” Sorry, but that observation belongs in the same category as “Ukrainians didn’t interfere in the 2016 election.”

One thing that should have been disclosed by Solomon but that has since been clarified is the fact that Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who both have been involved with some of the key players in Ukraine, even representing the oligarch Dmitry Firtash, are also Solomon’s own longtime lawyers.

After reading the full report, I find nothing that should cast doubt on what Solomon has written. Editors at THE HILL were concerned that their policies regarding the “hybridization” of investigative reporting and opinion writing were causing confusion among their readership, as there are certain rules for reporters regarding full disclosure that Solomon hadn’t followed. My staff and I never had any problem understanding that Solomon’s writing was in the “opinion” category.

But they’ve revised their policies; the new rules are at the end of their report. And one of these is that “opinion” pieces aren't to read like news stories. Personally, I think Solomon’s fact-packed way of writing his “opinion” –- really an ongoing investigation –- is much more useful to someone wanting to understand the complicated goings-on in Ukraine than a run-of-the-mill opinion piece would be. It’s fortunate that he’s gone on to continue investigating and writing on his own.

The Hill's review of John Solomon's columns on Ukraine

Mike Huckabee

At this link, a California CPA and lifelong Democrat writes an open letter to her state government about AB5, the new law that’s putting up to 2 million contract workers out of business (for their own good, of course) and forcing businesses to send those jobs out of state. She lays out the problems and asked incredulously, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” This is based on the groundless assumption that California's current political leaders are capable of thinking. Since she seems to believe this will be resolved in a one-party state, and she gives no hint of ever considering any other way of voting than reelecting Democrats, I have to ask, “What are YOU thinking?”

https://www.ab5facts.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-ca-government-democrats-what-were-you-thinking

Meanwhile, across the nation in that other blue paradise, New York, the recent legalization of crime by abolishing bail continues to yield completely predictable consequences. This idiotic law has a new poster child, Charles Barry, who’s served six terms in state prison but now knows all the cops can do is hold him for 36 hours, then let him go. So he’s allegedly gone on a one-man subway crime wave, including charges of snatching cash from people trying to use Metrocard machines.

Barry is up to 139 arrests (at this writing) and is completely unfazed. As he was recently led away by cops, he shouted at a New York Daily News reporter, “I’m famous! I take $200, $300 a day of your money, cracker! You can’t stop me!...Bail reform, it’s lit! It’s the Democrats! The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-transit-offender-busted-again-nypd-20200215-cw7jlzg7rvecraevc5usevk2va-story.html

Of course, he could be stopped, just as California’s government could be stopped from passing insane laws that destroy people’s jobs and strip them of their rights. But that would take the people who are writing these stories and suffering these horrible consequences to make the mental connection between the awful policies that are making their lives miserable and their habit of voting for anyone a (D) after their name. What do you think the odds are of that?

Mike Huckabee

Unlike other Presidents, President Trump isn’t waiting until his last day in office to issue pardons so he can avoid the political heat. Instead, he’s taking advantage of his boost in approval ratings from the failed “impeachment” stab at him to issue several pardons seemingly designed to make his opponents have a meltdown (but since they have a meltdown every day, who cares anymore?)

Trump commuted the 14-year sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who’d served seven years already for trying to obtain favors in exchange for appointing someone to fill Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat (Corruption in Illinois politics?! Say it ain’t so!) He also pardoned former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes and lying to the White House; financier Michael Milken, who spent two years in jail in the early 90s after prosecutors alleged his tactics were "criminal schemes," and who has since devoted himself to philanthropy and medical research; and former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., who pleaded guilty in a gambling scandal. More details are here…

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/trump-commute-rod-blagojevich-sentence

Here’s a story about the former NFL greats who came to the White House to thank Trump for pardoning DeBartolo…

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-pardons-former-nfl-owner-jerry-rice-says-take-hat-off-donald-trump/

(FYI: Elsewhere in San Francisco sports, former Giants pitcher Aubrey Huff claims he was banned from a 10-year reunion of the World Series team for supporting Trump. They’d better hope their team owner never needs a pardon.)

https://pjmedia.com/trending/aubrey-huff-says-san-francisco-giants-banned-him-from-world-series-reunion-over-trump-support/

And here are some comments from Andrew McCarthy about why Trump might have chosen to pardon some of these people, and the message it sends. One message: it’s a perfect way to spotlight the stunning disparity in justice between the way people like Blagojevich, Kerik and Milken were pursued without mercy by the DOJ, while DOJ insiders like Andrew McCabe and James Comey (who actually pressed their prosecutions) were allowed to walk away scot-free from their dishonest actions.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/andy-mccarthy-trump-pardons-kerik-blagojevich

If Comey and McCabe ever do face justice, I wouldn’t count on Trump for a pardon, so that means they won’t be out until at least 2025. As for all the liberal talking heads screaming about Trump’s OUTRAGEOUS abuse of Presidential pardon power, I suggest they Google the name “Marc Rich.”

Mike Huckabee

“I’m gonna try to make sure that the public knows that ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ was not designed to help protect the Trump campaign, as it should have been. It was designed to destroy it.”

So said Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Sean Hannity’s Monday night show. “It reeked of political bias,” he added.

“[As for] the four front-line Mueller prosecutors who are asking for a seven-to-nine-year sentence [on Roger Stone] that was totally unjustified, there was no threat to a witness that would justify increasing the three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half-year recommendation from the guidelines. So the four prosecutors were the ones who were overzealous, and [Attorney General] Bill Barr rightly corrected that.” He said Barr stepped in and stopped what he thought was “unjust sentence enhancement.” (So that’s what it’s called!)

Graham noted that Barr also has a separate outside person looking at Trump’s original national security adviser Michael Flynn, who “was abused here.” (We’ve followed his case from the start and agree wholeheartedly.) Graham hopes the judge will void Flynn’s guilty plea. But now Andrew Weissmann, former lead investigator on the Mueller special counsel team, is muddying the waters, reportedly claiming that the Flynn review being undertaken by Barr is really a cover to look into Comey, McCabe and Strzok as well. Of course, this was blown up into a big negative story on MSNBC, but if it’s true it’s fine with me –- the review SHOULD cover them. These people are all part of Flynn’s story.

“I want to find out how far up the chain it went,” Graham said. “I want to make sure that no FISA warrant is ever issued again like it was against Carter Page. That system will have more checks and balances.” He considers “Crossfire Hurricane” to have been a danger to democracy and said Weissmann needs to explain why it took two years to complete the Mueller investigation when “he should have figured it out in the first week. There was nothing there.”

“To the people who want Barr to resign,” he said, “we know your agenda. You’re not trying to uphold the rule of law. You’re trying to take a good man down because you hate Trump.”

Precisely. Sen. Graham has started the probe he promised into the “Russia” investigation, requesting interviews with pertinent DOJ and FBI officials. He says he trusts Barr “as much as anybody I’ve ever met” to get to the bottom of what was done, and he doesn’t want to interfere with the process. And Graham knows enough about “Crossfire Hurricane” to want to make sure nothing like it ever occurs again.

The outside attorney Barr has named to look into the Flynn case is Jeffrey Jensen, the top federal prosecutor in St. Louis --- ah, good to get out of the DC swamp --- and he’ll be working alongside the lead prosecutor in the case, Brandon Van Grack. According to an official at the Justice Department, Jensen has been brought in “to get a complete and thorough understanding of the facts and the record in a complicated case.” It was just one month ago that Flynn, through his powerhouse attorney Sidney Powell, told the judge he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, and if anyone had good reason to do that, it’s Flynn.

But now, the ruthless Weissmann, who is almost certainly the real author of the “Mueller” report, is using his current position of (surprise) NBC legal analyst to defend the FBI and raise concerns about the appointment of Jensen as a “ploy” by Barr. This appears to be part of a concerted effort to discredit Jensen –- and continue the push to get rid of Barr –- before they get too close to proving what actually happened with Flynn and others who were spied on.

Weissmann noted that the judge in the Flynn case rejected claims that Flynn was set up by the FBI after seeing the facts in the underlying investigation. Judging from what we know about the underlying investigation, which certainly does seem set up, I think there must be much more to it than that.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-mueller-prosecutor-says-doj-starting-new-investigation-into-comey-mccabe-and-strzok/

As for Andrew McCabe, being part of The Swamp, he’s been notified through his attorney that he won’t face charges on the leaking and related lying we all know he did. Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Tucker Carlson on Monday night that the IG’s report “lays out the factual basis” for a case against McCabe; in fact, the IG even referred him for criminal prosecution to the U.S. attorney in Washington, DC.

But that was then and this is now. Roger Stone and Andrew McCabe represent the two tiers of the justice system. While McCabe avoided prosecution for clear violations, Barr had to step in (before the President tweeted, I should add) and modify the DOJ’s ungodly recommended sentence for Stone.

Knowing how hard it is to bring cases and charge people with crimes, Whitaker trusts Barr and knows “that these difficult decisions are being well considered and being made for the right reasons.” Still, while he doesn’t want to second-guess Barr, he finds it difficult to understand why McCabe hasn’t been charged.

And he hears the same thing from Americans wherever he goes. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s getting hard for Americans to have confidence in the system, which I would add is a side benefit for “progressives” who want to tear that down along with Trump and those who support him.

Speaking of Trump supporters, Alan Dershowitz isn’t exactly one of those, but he’s objective enough and loves the Constitution enough that he can see the horrendous damage being done by “his” side, the Democrats. He gives Trump credit for being out-in-the-open about any contact he makes with the Justice Department. And, in a move that will absolutely get him banned from the guest list for every high-tone cocktail party on the Upper West Side, he gets to the subject of Obama, contrasting him negatively with Trump. (Oh, my.)  To paraphrase: “Trump tweets about the DOJ; Obama whispers about it.”

And now, Dershowitz claims that he’s in possession of documents that will show President Obama asked the FBI to investigate an unnamed person on behalf of --- yikes --- George Soros. He’s planning to disclose it down the road as part of a lawsuit. The material is “about how President Obama personally asked the FBI to investigate somebody on behalf of George Soros, who was a close ally of his.”

I’m reminded that Barr has reportedly set up a process for vetting information from Rudy Giuliani; perhaps he’s doing the same for Alan Dershowitz. Neither of them get invited to those cocktail parties, anyway –- not anymore –- but something tells me they don’t much care.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-personally-asked-the-fbi-to-investigate-someone-on-behalf-of-george-soros-says-alan-dershowitz/

Mike Huckabee

Over the weekend, President Trump paid a visit to the Daytona 500 that reminded NASCAR fans of why he was known as one of our greatest showmen before he even entered politics. It started with a thrilling buzz of the event in Air Force One...

https://youtu.be/t9borCIRsBw

Then the First Lady joined him for some patriotic comments…

https://youtu.be/B6_H6NjiIMk

And he even took a lap of the track in the armored Presidential limo, “The Beast.” It had the crowd cheering and race commentators declaring it “awesome!”

https://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20200216/trump-pumps-daytona-500-crowd-with-speech-starting-lap

But of course, the liberal media outlets were not impressed. They were (and stop me if you’ve heard this before) “outraged!” How DARE Trump use government resources like Air Force One and the Presidential limo to attend an event that might burnish his election chances, they stewed…conveniently ignoring all the times they cheered Obama’s coolness for doing things like throwing out the first ball at the World Series, using the limo for an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, and flying to L.A. so many times to vacuum money out of the pockets of leftwing celebrities that Angelinos coined the term “Obama-jam” to describe the traffic tie-ups from all the street closures caused by his frequent fundraiser visits.

This was the type of all-American event that Presidents often take part in, but when Trump does it, it’s an unprecedented scandal, and possibly an impeachable offense (they should ask Alan Dershowitz about that.) I wonder if these whiners realize that they’re coming off like the sad goth kids in high school, pouting at their table in the back of the cafeteria and making snarky comments about the cool kids – not realizing that everyone knows they’re jealous and secretly wish they could be that popular.

Mike Huckabee

There’s an old saying that in our justice system, “you can indict a ham sandwich.” But after the recent decision at the Department of Justice not to prosecute former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe for lying, we’re seeing that for this saying to be true, there has to be one caveat: “...UNLESS the ham sandwich is part of the anti-Trump swamp.” In that case, the sandwich will remain unindicted and will walk free, to be picked up by CNN or MSNBC, where it will be hired as a paid contributor.

The decision not to indict didn’t come from Attorney General Bill Barr. The U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, sent a letter to McCabe’s lawyer saying he wouldn’t face prosecution over the leaks and related lies. Clearly, McCabe did lie about his role in the leak to reporter Devlin Barrett, then at the WALL STREET JOURNAL, and lied some more to try to cover himself. IG Michael Horowitz’s report was blistering in its account of McCabe’s repeated lying. Legal expert Andrew McCarthy has a new piece in NATIONAL REVIEW, “Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged?” (link below) laying out the lies he told about a leak he authorized concerning the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation –- a bogus investigation, I would add, but that’s another issue –- and explaining what factors might have been involved in the decision, finally, not to charge McCabe. Compare this decision with the full-speed-ahead indictments against George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, and it’s easy to see the two-tier justice system at work.

The tweet sent by Lisa Page on the announcement that McCabe wouldn’t be charged says it all. 

https://twitter.com/NatSecLisa/status/1228426073131692037?s=20

There she is, smiling broadly in a sunny restaurant window, raising her glass of sparkling red wine in a toast to her colleague, Andy. She’s wearing a t-shirt that says “I am done being quiet.” The caption: “Cheers, Andy.” The irony is huge, as McCarthy says she is key to McCabe’s defense, having reportedly told the grand jury that since McCabe had the authority to approve media “disclosures” (leaks), he had no reason to lie about authorizing this one. McCarthy finds this assertion laughable, as McCabe was “serially misleading investigators” (repeatedly lying to investigators) so plainly that he had to have had a reason. Also, the IG found that he had orchestrated this leak for purposes of “self-promotion,” not the public interest, and that he had done this by making his superiors at the DOJ look bad. (Well, there’s something he could be, and was, fired for!)

It’s interesting that Page is so supportive of her colleague, as McCabe’s lies originally cast suspicion on her as the source of the leak. Chuck Ross at the DAILY CALLER has a good overview...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/why-wasnt-andrew-mccabe-charged/

Page’s grand jury testimony made prosecution of McCabe more difficult, at least in McCarthy’s analysis. “It’s tough to win a case when your witnesses are spinning for the defendant,” he says. I’d say this is especially problematic when your case is in Washington, DC, with a grand jury almost certainly infected with Trump-hate. How is it possible to win a conviction when you can’t even get an indictment from people who are automatically biased in favor of the accused?

Do you remember why McCabe lied in the first place? There was an internal conflict at the Bureau about the (purported) Clinton Foundation probe, stemming from the Obama DOJ pressuring the FBI to just drop it –- obviously part of their comprehensive efforts to rig the election for Hillary. About two weeks before the election, McCabe was the subject of a critical article by then-WSJ reporter Barrett that questioned –- with good reason, I’d add –- his fitness to lead an investigation into Hillary Clinton, as his wife had received a mind-bogglingly huge campaign contribution in her unsuccessful race for state senator from Clinton crony and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. McCabe got ticked off about the article and responded by authorizing a leak to Barrett, apparently crafted to paint himself as independent, not under the thumb of his superiors. The DOJ, in turn, were aghast about any investigation into the Clinton Foundation being discussed publicly two weeks before Hillary’s intended coronation---I mean election.

Here’s a great “refresher” on the details from McCarthy, written at the time Horowitz referred McCabe for possible criminal prosecution.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/andrew-mccabe-collusion-obama-justice-department-clinton-campaign/

And here’s the new piece, detailing McCabe’s sequence of lies as he kept deepening the hole he’d dug for himself. At the same time, it tempers the certainty of McCabe’s deception with the challenges of prosecuting him before an anti-Trump DC jury. His attorneys would surely argue he was being prosecuted for being at odds with a President they (the jurors) can’t stand. They’d identify with McCabe and feel bad for him. That’s one reason why we have such a blatant two-tier justice system in Washington, DC.

Why Wasn’t Andrew McCabe Charged? | National Review

Mike Huckabee

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told MSNBC (of course!) what she thought was a moving and inspirational anecdote. Warren choked up a little as she related that a young woman came up to her and said she was a broke college student with a ton of loan debt and only six dollars in the bank, but she just donated three dollars to Warren’s presidential campaign to keep her going.

https://www.westernjournal.com/millionaire-warren-brags-taking-half-broke-students-money/

But it backfired when critics online slammed Warren for taking half of that poor girl’s entire pitiful savings of six dollars when she’s worth an estimated $12 million. They suggested that she should have instead given the student her three bucks back, or shown real generosity and doubled it to six dollars.

I don’t think they understand that Warren hopes to use that $3 to become President, so she can erase that girl’s student loan debt and let her go to college free by confiscating and redistributing the wealth of greedy millionaires like…well, her. Using the iron hand of government to take people’s money away and give it to other people is the “progressive” version of charity. They see it as much more efficient than putting their own hands in their pockets and giving away their own money.

Speaking of Elizabeth Warren, she’s already proposed a wealth tax, and then proposed multiple new big spending programs, each of which would cost far more than her tax would generate. When economists protested that she couldn’t afford to pay for all that, she brushed them off as not knowing what they’re talking about. So as long as she’s just shoveling money into the ocean, why not do it literally? This week, she proposed a “blue new deal” to “save the oceans,” to go along with the “green new deal” to save the planet (I kind of assumed that the $90 trillion to save the planet would include the oceans, but apparently, they’re an optional extra.)

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/warren-proposes-blue-new-deal-to-save-our-oceans

Mike Huckabee

Ever since I referred to that Internet commenter who insisted that most political violence is perpetrated by people on the right, I’ve been making a little room each day to include one of the many stories I get about leftist thugs using threats and violence to try to silence and intimidate people who disagree with them. It’s not even hard to find them, they come spilling over the news feeds every day. I could easily fill these pages with them, but that might get repetitious, so I’ll just share two more to make it three days in a row and figure I’ve made my point.

This one is about a New Hampshire tough guy who (allegedly) assaulted three Trump supporters, including a 15-year-old boy for wearing a MAGA cap.

https://www.westernjournal.com/new-hampshire-man-slaps-teen-trump-supporter-school-vote-police/

And this one is about some tolerant leftists at the University of Santa Cruz attacking some College Republicans, tearing up their information table and throwing their Betsy Ross American flag on the ground and spitting on it. Here’s a video showing it happening and displaying their faces quite clearly. One of the victims reported it to the campus police, and a name of one of the attackers was discovered via social media. Are they still students there? If so, why? Are they under arrest? If not, why not?

https://www.foxnews.com/us/protesters-wreck-college-republicans-info-table-spit-on-us-flag-at-uc-santa-cruz-video-shows

Mike Huckabee

Friday in Manhattan, sleazy lawyer and former liberal media darling Michael Avenatti was convicted of attempted extortion and honest services fraud for threatening to harm the company if it didn’t pay him $25 million to conduct a probe of their alleged corporate corruption. There’s some irony for you! The charges carry a combined penalty of up to 42 years in prison, but the court system is far from finished with Avenatti. He’s still facing trials in April and May for allegedly defrauding clients out of millions, including porn star Stormy Daniels. And with multiple accusations that he was living his high-flying lifestyle by stealing from clients, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see even more trials in his future.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-michael-avenatti-convicted-attempted-extortion-fraud-faces-42-years-prison/

I can almost feel sorry for Stormy Daniels. Avenatti was so sleazy, he actually managed to lead a porn star astray, convincing her to sue President Trump in a case that she not only lost but was ordered to pay $300,000 in Trump’s legal fee after having her lawyer allegedly steal $300,000 from her. I can also see how a woman desperate for cash might fall for Avenatti’s banana oil, but what is the media’s excuse?

For months, they elevated Avenatti to news channel stardom, giving him a fortune in free publicity and even seriously promoting him as a Democratic presidential contender (why do I get a feeling of déjà vu when I hear people talking about Adam Schiff in the same way?) How hard did they shove Avenatti down the public’s throat? Beckett Adams at the Washington Examiner reminds us:

“CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC featured him for a combined 147 television interviews between March 7 and 15, 2018. That is an average of nearly four interviews on each network per day. This is to say nothing of Avenatti’s many other appearances at the height of his news media-promoted stardom, including at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Association dinner and the MTV Video Music Awards.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-media-elevated-michael-avenatti-to-stardom-his-felony-conviction-reflects-on-them

I often get comments of the “how can you defend Trump?” variety. Well, when I disagree with something he says or does, I don’t defend it. But I do defend him when I think he’s the victim of unfair or unfounded attacks. If it seems I’m always defending him, it’s not because I’m a rabid Trump partisan, it’s because his enemies are constantly making unfair and unfounded attacks on him. If I’m going to write about the news, that’s what I have to do constantly!

I’ve been around the block in politics and can spot the tactics (which tend to repeat – remember when George W. Bush was the “war criminal” and “literally Hitler”?) I also am well-connected to primary sources, do a lot of reading and have an excellent research staff. And I like to think I have fairly good judgement about people, which is why I spotted what Avenatti was from day one. Believe me, that’s not any special skill worth bragging about. As Adams writes:

“Anyone could have told you, back when Avenatti first appeared on the ‘resistance’ scene, that he was a sleazy tangle of lies, corruption, and faux bravado. Anyone, that is, except for journalists, always credulous where those hostile toward Trump are involved.”

And that’s the key: all it took was for Avenatti to be vociferously anti-Trump, and claim to possess a weapon (his client’s lawsuit) that might bring down Trump, and he was automatically elevated to hero status. The media, who flatter themselves as the guardians at the portal of truth, will throw due diligence on the trash heap and celebrate anyone who shows potential to harm Trump, regardless of their credibility, from Avenatti to Schiff, from James Comey to Ambassador Sondland to Julie Swetnick (the woman who claimed without evidence that Trump SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavenaugh organized rape gangs in high school, and who was – surprise! – a client of Michael Avenatti.)

When the media complain about Trump “attacking” their credibility, they forget that they long ago flushed away their own credibility by giving a massive platform to any liar or con artist who’s willing to badmouth Trump. It’s funny that they often smear Trump as a “liar” and “con artist,” but when they report on Avenatti’s actual felony convictions, I wonder how many of them will remind us that not that long ago, they were all-in for making him President?

Mike Huckabee

After a few days of public name-calling, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo actually met with President Trump on Thursday to talk about the Administration’s decision to remove New Yorkers from Global Entry and several other Trusted Traveler Programs that let people avoid long lines when returning from abroad.

Cuomo has been railing that it was political retribution and trying to paint it as a personal attack by Trump on New York with nefarious racist intentions. In fact, it was done because the databases to insure travelers are allowed in the US legally and don’t have criminal records are based on state drivers’ license records – and New York recently started giving licenses to undocumented immigrants and blocking the feds from seeing their state motor vehicle database with the necessary background information.

In short, the state expects federal agencies entrusted with guarding national security to have as little regard for who someone is and whether they’re in America legally or not as New York liberal Democrats do.

Not unexpectedly, there were no breakthroughs in the meeting, although Cuomo signaled a willingness to compromise a little by restoring federal access to driving records “on a limited basis.” Which is useless, not just because it’s limited but because having a New York drivers’ licenses will still be no guarantee that someone has the legal right to be in America at all. And he’s still vowing that “If they think they're going to extort New York into giving them a database of undocumented people, they're wrong. I will never do that."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-cuomo-fail-to-reach-agreement-global-entry-suspension-sanctuary-state

It’s a welcome development to see Cuomo at least putting aside the overheated rhetoric for an hour and having a White House meeting with Trump “as if he’s the President.” But if he expects Trump to compromise on national security, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. Gov. Cuomo needs to realize that as chief executive of his state, it’s his sworn duty to faithfully execute the laws, not to aid and abet people who violate them. His government’s indulgence for lawbreakers is already causing a spike in crime in New York, and President Trump is absolutely correct to hold firm in refusing to allow the contagion to spread to the federal level.

It's too bad all New Yorkers have to pay for the stubbornness and bad policies of their politicians. But if you elect people who refuse to take their jobs seriously and respect federal law, then go stand in the back of the line.