By Mike Huckabee
December 2, 2021
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THE MORNING EDITION By Mike Huckabee
Good morning! Here are some stories from me that I think you will want to read. Topics include:
- New York Times/Washington Post coverage of Russia story
- Roe v Wade challenge
- Abrams for Governor
- Prayer Tree
- And Much More
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Today's Bible Verse was recommended by Kathy W.
12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Acts 4:12 KJV
If you have a Bible verse you want to see in our newsletter, please email [email protected].
THE LATEST NEWS
1. NYT and WAPO: GIVE PULITZER BACK NOW
In 2018, The New York Times and the Washington Post were honored with the coveted Pulitzer Prize for 20 articles described as “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the public’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”
The award was for their coverage of Trump-Russia "collusion," based on Christopher Steele’s thoroughly discredited “dossier,” and now that the story has been exposed as a lie, these “news” outlets should have to give it back.
Here's OUR description of their work (are you listening, Pulitzer committee?): deeply flawed, badly sourced yet relentlessly reported fake news that defied the public interest by furthering the public’s misunderstanding, by lying about Russian "collusion" with the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.
Real journalist Aaron Mate at RealClearInvestigations has written a fabulous article on these publications’ completely inadequate attempts at “fixing” some of their mistakes/lies, offering detailed suggestions for how they really could correct what they wrote. It’s called “Five Trump-Russia ‘Collusion’ Corrections We Need From the Media Now –- Just For Starters.”
It’s been FIVE YEARS since BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” peddled by Michael Sussmann, now under indictment by Special Counsel John Durham for failing to tell the FBI that he was Hillary’s attorney when he gave them the story. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, is charged with lying as well. Sara Fischer at Axios has called this reporting “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history” and says the media’s response to its own fake reporting has been “tepid.” She points out that Axios did not publish the “dossier” or any original reporting based on its contents, as it was not verified. Thank you, Axios.
(Note: Also, in all these years, the Huckabee team has never had to retract or correct anything we’ve said about Trump and Russia.)
Fischer does give WAPO credit for allowing their media critic, Eric Wemple, to write about the mistakes they and other media outlets made in covering the Russia “collusion” story. In contrast, BuzzFeed still has the “dossier” posted, with a note added that “The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.” Nice of them to at least say that, five years later.
Ben Smith, BuzzFeed’s then-editor-in-chief, told Axios, “My view on the logic of publishing hasn’t changed.” He’s now a columnist for The New York Times.
Some outlets didn’t respond to Fischer’s calls about this. David Corn, in a comment to Wemple, revealed his continuing denial of reality: “My priority has been to deal with the much larger topic of Russia’s undisputed attack and Trump’s undisputed collaboration with Moscow’s cover-up.” What??
After the federal indictment of Danchenko, WAPO quietly re-edited a dozen stories related to Steele and the “dossier,” In a couple of cases –- stories written by Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamberger –- this involved removal of entire sections, changing headlines, and adding lengthier editor’s notes. But, as the RealClearInvestigations article points out, the editors never explain how the mistakes happened or offer names of the anonymous sources who deceived “them and the public over months and years.”
Helderman and Hamberger are two of the dozen-plus reporters who now share the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction---I mean, for Reporting. Neither WAPO or the NYT has given any indication that they might return the award, even though, as Mate points out, “the Post’s and the Times’ reporting has the same problem as the Steele document that these same outlets are now distancing themselves from: a reliance on anonymous, deceptive, and almost certainly partisan sources for claims that proved to be false.” (Note: I’d remove the “almost” –- the sources were certainly partisan.)
It took seemingly forever for WAPO to address this at all, as the “dossier” has been discredited since April 2019, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his FBI team failed to verify any of its contents. That didn’t matter; most of the media still aggressively pushed the Trump-Russia narrative. Some, like David Corn, will never really give it up.
After BuzzFeed published the “dossier,” WAPO and the NYT were joined by other outlets in a media frenzy. Mate cites particularly outrageous stories that ran in the New Yorker (a “fawning” profile of Steele), McClatchy (Mueller had "evidence" Trump attorney Michael Cohen had been to Prague), and The Guardian (Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange in London’s Ecuadorian embassy). BuzzFeed stayed in the act, too, with a false story that Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress. All fake, fake, fake.
To add juice to the argument that WAPO and the NYT should return their Pulitzer, Mate documents five specific stories “containing false or misleading claims, and thereby due for retraction or correction, that were either among the Post and Times’ winning entries, or other work of reporters who shared that prize.” These outright falsehoods can be shown to be wrong with information that has “long been in the public domain,” he says.
FALSEHOOD #1: Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Russia and lied about it. We’ve covered the real story in detail here, throughout Flynn’s long ordeal of personal destruction. WAPO did not tell the truth in February of 2017 when they added their own spin and plenty of mind-reading to their report on Flynn’s phone call with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Both WAPO and the NYT continued the deception in articles from May of 2020 about the transcripts.
FALSEHOOD #2: Trump officials had repeated contacts with Russian officials. This fake story, written by three members of the NYT Pulitzer-winning team, came out the day after Flynn resigned as national security adviser in February of 2017. Debunked.
FALSEHOOD #3: George Papadopoulos’ “night of heavy drinking” with Australian envoy Alexander Downer in which he supposedly said the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary. This fake story was reported in December of 2017, a couple of months after it was revealed that Marc Elias of the Clinton-funded law firm Perkins Coie paid for the “dossier.” (Yes, this was uncovered that soon, by House Republicans led by Devin Nunes.) Their characterization of this conversation turned out to be false, as documented by declassified FBI recordings.
FALSEHOOD #4: Russia’s “sweeping interference campaign” posed a national security threat. Read the details in Mate’s article and you will see this story was a complete crock. To be fair, Mueller sensationalized this, too, as the body of his report fails miserably to live up to the headline.
FALSEHOOD #5: The DOJ never fully examined Trump’s ties to Russia. Reporters tried to “explain” why Mueller hadn’t found anything on Trump by saying Attorney General Barr and deputy AG Rod Rosenstein had handcuffed him. More fakeness. Even Peter Strzok later contradicted this.
Caution: reading through Mate’s article will raise your blood pressure, with example after example of this steaming load of Pulitzer-winning “journalism.” This utter waste of the public’s and the government’s time was created out of essentially nothing to damage Trump and his presidency as much as possible. It was all made up.
So, New York Times and Washington Post: GIVE THE PULITZER BACK NOW.
2. THE MOST SERIOUS CHALLENGE YET TO ROE V. WADE:
Wednesday, the Supreme Court Justices drilled attorneys during oral arguments over Mississippi’s ban on abortion before 15 weeks, the most serious challenge yet to Roe v. Wade.
The general consensus among legal analysts was that the conservative Justices were trying to force the pro-abortion attorneys to offer some kind of concrete rationale for why abortion should be legal, the liberal justices were pushing to maintain the status quo, and Chief Justice John Roberts was looking for some way to split the difference, to allow Mississippi-like restrictions while still preserving the idea of a right to abortion under some circumstances. But even he didn’t seem inclined to defend Roe v. Wade, comparing its arbitrary “viability” standard to those in China and North Korea, which we don’t need to emulate.
I linked yesterday to an article about four things the SCOTUS had to keep in mind in making their decision, and the liberals' push for maintaining the status quo was one of the logical fallacies mentioned. If a ruling is bad and has terrible consequences (in Roe’s case, the slaughter of over 60 million children in the womb), then saying it’s been around so long and so many people depend on it that we have to keep it is not a rational argument. If a ruling is that bad, then it should have been overturned sooner, not preserved forever. Under that thinking, we’d still have slavery. And preserving a bad ruling doesn't protect the Court's integrity or reputation, it erodes it.
https://www.westernjournal.com/four-things-supreme-court-must-keep-mind-takes-abortion-question/
In this exchange, Justice Clarence Thomas practically had to get his pliers and pull some teeth to get the pro-abortion attorney to admit that they were there to defend the right to abortion rather than just some vague manifestation of the rights to liberty, autonomy or privacy. It appeared that not even the person arguing that there’s a right to abortion in the Constitution wanted to be put in the position of trying to point out where it is.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave a great example of how foolish it was with the original Roe decision to expect lawyers in robes to make medical decisions, such as when a fetus becomes viable. Sotomayor argued, contrary to recent medical discoveries, that it was a “fringe” idea to suggest that babies in the womb can feel pain before 24 weeks, and compared fetuses to “braindead” people.
I can think of someone I could compare to braindead people, but that doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain.
For more, this is a good article from PJ Media, summarizing 10 key moments during the oral arguments.
Finally, Larry O’Connor at Townhall.com shows how Justice Kavanaugh hit the nail on the head by pointing out that you cannot accommodate both sides, you have to choose. What does the Constitution say? Does it protect the right of humans in the womb to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or does it protect the right of a pregnant woman to abort her child?
All I can say is that I’ve read the Constitution a fair number of times, and I’ve never found the word “abortion” in it anywhere.
3. ABRAMS ANNOUNCES RUN FOR GOVERNOR:
Stacey Abrams announced that she’s running for Governor of Georgia again. I suppose I should say she’s running for reelection, since she’s convinced she was really elected Governor in 2018, despite that claim being debunked by even liberal Georgia media outlets. One might even call it a “Big Lie."
Funny how when Republicans claim that an election was rigged, it’s an assault on democracy. But when Democrats claim an election was rigged, it’s a defense of democracy.
4. FUNNY CAUSE IT'S TRUE:
Stephen Green at PJ Media shows us how Monty Python predicted the rise of radical wokeism 40 years ago. Of course, it was a lot funnier back when it wasn’t real yet.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
Images of America's cities, landscapes and people.
5. CLEARING THE RECORD FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP:
As I said, I’m not going to cover the Ghislaine Maxwell trial in depth because it’s already saturating the media. But if they distort something important, we’ll correct it. For instance, out of all the testimony yesterday, here’s what the media are focusing on. Even Fox News had a misleading headline and subhead on it:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ghislaine-maxwell-accuser-epstein-trump
“Ghislaine Maxwell trial: First accuser says Epstein introduced her to Trump at age 14
‘Jane’ broke down in tears as she recounted meeting with prosecutors for the first time”
It seems intended to leave the impression that Trump was involved in Epstein’s sick exploitation of underage girls. But if you read past the headline, you learn that what she said was that Epstein once took her to the Mar-A-Lago resort, where she was introduced to Trump. “However, she did not allege that there was any inappropriate behavior from the former president nor from (Prince Andrew). Earlier, during the defense’s questioning, she had stated that the late financier did not force her to have sex with any of his friends.”
So despite the day’s more important testimony, the media’s big takeaway was an attempt to smear Trump with Epstein’s crimes, even though the witness really said nothing more than that she once met Trump. Knowing what a germophobe he is, I doubt that they even shook hands.
This is why one of our top rules in writing this newsletter is to never take the word of any media outlet about what happened or what someone said. We go to the primary sources and find out what they said in their own words. So I’ll also note that she testified to meeting Mike Wallace when she was 15 and singing “Happy Birthday” to him. Funny that there were no media headlines reading, “Pedophile Epstein Introduced Victim to Mike Wallace at 15.” Certainly not at CBS.
6. FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE DAY:
Meet the World War II veteran and his lovely bride who weren’t able to take photos of their rushed wedding before he had to go away to fight. So they recreated their wedding and finally got that romantic “kiss the bride” photo…on their 77th wedding anniversary.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/couple-recreates-wedding-77-years-later
7. I JUST WANTED TO SAY:
Thank you for reading today's newsletter.
AWAY IN THE MANGER
Today's Christmas carol is recommended by Janet B.
Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.
The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle 'til morning is nigh.
Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And take us to heaven, to live with Thee there.
Written by: William J. Kirkpatrick
If you have a favorite Christmas carol/hymn you want to see in our newsletter, please email [email protected].
ADDITIONAL READING
For past editions of my morning newsletter, please visit my website here.
For more of my news coverage, visit my website here.
We are stronger together. Submit your prayer request for HEALTH & HEALING or IN MEMORIAM by visiting my website here.
Our hope is that our newsletter readers will consider these prayer requests each day.
HEALTH AND HEALING
"Please lift our son Davis, age 21, up in prayer. For healing his depression - caused in large part to COVID and being isolated while away at college. That God will heal him and help him find joy and a path forward - with or without college. THANK YOU KELLY (mom)"
"My husband. He is a Vietnam veteran and now has dementia. For me as I care for him."
"Health and healing for Caroline, young teenager dealing with mental health and currently in mental crisis center."
"For my husband, Bruce, who has multiple health problems."
"Pray for all that they may be awakened. Pray that they have eyes that truly see. Pray that they have ears to hear truths. Pray that they have clear and healthy minds. Pray for hearts that are able to both give and receive love."
"For my husband Stan fighting two stage four cancers for 16 years and now an inoperable tumor threatens him again. On his fourth chemotherapy to try to stop it. Healing and hope!!!"
"Please pray for my loved one who has alcoholic neuropathy, an irreversible disease-causing incredible pain."
"Pray for Michael J. Who is suffering with cancer."
"Tracy Stowe Cox. She has had severe migraines since covid vaccine plus a cyst & tumor in her stomach area."
"Please pray for my granddaughter Sophia who is fourteen. She has been diagnosed with juvenile arthritis and eye inflammation in her iris. She is on a very potent medicine and is having migraine headaches. Please pray for healing in her body."
IN MEMORIAM
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- Mike Huckabee
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