Good evening!

Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! Topics include:

• Bible Verse of the Day - John 11:25-26
• Sorting The Numbers
• Evil Triumphs
• History Made
• Wrong Side Of Issues
• Pelosi, The Taliban And Social Media

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

John 11:25-26

Sorting The Numbers

By Mike Huckabee

The media are upset again at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for making it harder to mislead people about COVID death rates.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/08/15/floridas-desantis-is-just-trolling-the-media-with-another-bold-move-and-its-fantastic-to-watch-n1469512

The state was reporting COVID deaths on the day they were reported to the state, which means that the combined weekend numbers looked like a surge. DeSantis ordered that deaths be reported on the day they occurred, to give a more accurate picture. This flattened out the surges and made it harder to blame DeSantis for them. There are also moves to separate patients who died of COVID from those who died of other things but just happened to be COVID-positive, which has caused large downward revisions in the numbers of previously-reported COVID deaths.

It's telling about how much this disease has been politicized when media outlets are angry that the data they’re getting about it is becoming more accurate.

Evil Triumphs

By Mike Huckabee

The horrific military and humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan is unfolding so rapidly that by the time you read this, it’s likely the situation will already have greatly changed. Simply having to write about it is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do since getting into the media.

It sickens me to think of the magnitude of this disaster: the swift triumph of evil and the Taliban’s humiliating mocking of America as they seize our advanced weapons and vow to spread radical Islam worldwide from the Presidential palace on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11 (yes, the Taliban was speaking to the press while President Biden was hiding out)…

https://www.westernjournal.com/absolute-victory-taliban-boldly-proclaim-new-direction-islamic-law-will-come-not-just-afghanistan-world/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

…the pain that our soldiers who sacrificed so much to help the Afghan people must be feeling as they watch everything they fought for unravel within days; and most of all, the terror of the people of Afghanistan, especially those who helped and trusted us, abandoned to face the wrath of pitiless conquerors. Some were so desperate to escape, they tried to cling to the sides and landing gear of an American plane taking off from the Kabul airport. There were reports that at least three fell to their deaths.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/16/horror-at-the-kabul-airport-n427145

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/live-updates-taliban-gain-more-ground-in-afghanistan-as-they-close-in-on-kabul

And of course, as the Taliban took control of Kabul, one of their first orders of business was to release imprisoned al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists so they could go back to killing and enslaving innocent people.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/terror-on-the-rise-taliban-frees-thousands-of-prisoners-from-former-u-s-base

Afghanistan’s first female ambassador Roya Rahmani tried to reassure American soldiers that their sacrifices were not in vain. She told Fox News, “You made a huge difference…in lives of people you haven’t met and will never meet," reminding them that Afghan girls were once banned from going to school or leaving the house without a male escort. Sadly, I fear that will happen again.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/afghan-ambassador-roya-rahmani-veterans-devastated-taliban-insurgency

She also noted that 70% of the population is under 30 and has only known life under the protection of the US forces. That makes it even more tragic to think what might happen to them with the return of the brutal Taliban. It should send a chilling lesson to every over-privileged, Ivy League, America-hating socialist that if you tear down this country and its institutions that give you a level of freedom unprecedented in the history of the world, you may be shocked at how swiftly things can change for the worse. If you think you're "oppressed" in America, try Afghanistan under the Taliban. We already have China and Russia as threats, and now it appears we’re about to have a newly-empowered Taliban armed with our weapons. Do you still think Trump voters and the weather are our biggest worries?

History Made

By Mike Huckabee

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration now has a humiliating, tragic, international disaster on its watch that will go down in history (if we still have any honest historians) alongside the Bay of Pigs, the fall of Saigon and the siege in Benghazi. If any book is written about Biden’s handling of this latest and most tragic of his string of disasters, it could easily be named “Profiles in Fecklessness.” Biden has ordered 5,000 US troops in to help evacuate people, and there are reports of attacks by US bombers, but not on the Taliban. They're blowing up our own military planes and other weapons that the Afghan forces abandoned before the Taliban can seize them.

Biden was on vacation at Camp David when Afghanistan began to fall apart, and his silence was deafening (even his spokesperson, Jen Psaki, is gone for the week.) Filling the void were replays of his now-notorious July 8th press conference in which he assured us his Afghanistan pullout would be orderly and it was unlikely the Taliban would come back. Other high Administration officials also assured us that a Taliban takeover could be repelled because it wasn’t the type of thing that could happen between a Frida and a Monday --- which is precisely what happened.

https://www.westernjournal.com/former-cia-officer-looks-back-bidens-july-speech-infamous-devastating-news-conference-us-president/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-lying-just-ignorant-said-asked-taliban-takeover/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Biden is facing heavy criticism from across the political spectrum in the US and internationally.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/biden-admin-faces-bipartisan-criticism-over-collapse-of-afghanistan_3949755.html

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/boris-johnson-blames-us-and-biden-for-afghanistan-collapse

Former President Trump called on Biden “to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy.” There have also been calls for the resignations of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley for bungling Afghanistan while focusing on wokeness in the military, Trump’s nonexistent “coup” plot and Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was reduced to imploring the Taliban to act civilized, which is like begging a charging rhinoceros to behave itself and not trample you.

https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2021/08/15/secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-embarrasses-us-in-front-of-the-taliban-again-n427090

In return, Biden tried to blame Trump for sticking him with the Afghanistan pullout decision, which I guess was the only Trump policy he thought was not reversible.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/16/no-biden-cant-blame-trump-for-the-afghanistan-withdrawal-disaster/

But while it would be easy and politically expedient (and not unfair) to blame Biden for this catastrophe, the truth is that the real failure here is of our “intelligence” agencies and the current military leadership. Trump also planned to remove troops from Afghanistan, and his plans also relied on the “intelligence” he was receiving about the relative strength of the Taliban (although I assume that unlike Biden, he would have paid attention to military leaders who’d actually been there.)

Those agencies were completely blindsided by the Taliban’s swift advance and by news that they already had shadow governments set up in various cities and were paying off officials to surrender. Any President’s decisions are only as sound as the “intelligence” he’s given, and both Trump and Biden were assured that the Afghan government was strong enough to hold and any assault would take months and could be repelled. They were devastatingly wrong on every count, and a lot of people should lose their jobs over it, not that anyone is ever held to account anymore.

Biden’s not responsible for the failure of intelligence, but he is responsible for being caught flatfooted and freezing when things began to spiral out of control.

Countless lives will be lost and innocent people tortured, raped and enslaved, and other nations will hesitate to trust us again, because our CIA and top military brass failed miserably. Maybe they were too preoccupied with trying to frame the last President and his associates, or focusing on the “real” threat to America (white supremacists), and couldn’t be bothered to notice what was happening in Afghanistan. In a better world, they’d be going to prison, but let’s hope and pray that the next Republican President – in 2024 – will at the very least issue a blizzard of pink slips to the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon, and have these deadly incompetents and useless political operatives forcibly escorted off the premises.

Wrong Side Of Issues

By Mike Huckabee

Richard Fernandez at PJ Media has some worrying comments about President Biden’s long history of being on the wrong side of issues, his inability to anticipate the disasters now engulfing him (and us), and his incapacity for coming up with any solutions.

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/08/15/biden-never-saw-what-hit-him-n1469569

Pelosi, The Taliban And Social Media

By Mike Huckabee