Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!
Today's newsletter includes:
- Bible Verse of the Day - Genesis 1:1
- Important follow-up: Maricopa County "discrepancies"
- Biden's Vaccine Speech
- America The Beautiful
- Where The Blame For Vaccine Hesitancy Really Lies
- Note on President Biden’s Vaccine Speech
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
Important follow-up: Maricopa County "discrepancies"
By Mike Huckabee
A reader of our newsletter, to be identified for our purpose here merely as Carl, left us a phone message after reading Thursday’s story, “Maricopa County canvassing uncovers huge discrepancies.” This reader had called with firsthand knowledge of the same type of ballot “discrepancies” in Maricopa County that canvassers had found.
To set the scene for what he told us, we’d first like to call attention to an interview on Stephen Colbert’s late-night “comedy” show –- not so much what Colbert had to say (no surprises there) as what guest Chris Wallace contributed to the discussion. The interview was part of the promotion for Chris’ new book on 9/11, which I’m sure is a great read. To be clear, I bring attention to this not to single out Chris Wallace specifically, but rather to highlight the dismissal with which legitimate concerns about the election are typically received.
Let's start with how Colbert phrases his question: “I’m wondering whether you and your fellow Sunday morning guys out there who are doin’ the Sunday shows, talkin’ about the week, if you ever feel like you shouldn’t have on people who have the irrational belief that the last election...” (Pause for predictable applause from Colbert’s audience.) “...the people who are cynically –- and I know you’ve held these guys’ feet to the fire; I don’t want to suggest that you haven’t pushed back; you have, quite famously –- but have you ever seen anything so cynical in Washington, DC, than...people saying things they know aren’t true, uh, that they KNOW has to have lasting damage on our democracy, coming on TV and saying these things with a straight face?”
This is where Perry Mason would rise and say “Objection, leading the witness.” But leading questions ARE asked in court, at least whenever opposing counsel is asleep and they can be gotten away with, because they work. The same holds true in TV studios, and this one worked here, setting the tone for the whole exchange. If you have a strong stomach, hear it all at the link.
I debated whether or not to provide a full transcript of the conversation, since the video is available, but I think it’s instructive to see at least a part of it in print. So here’s a condensed version, starting where Chris answers the above question from Colbert:
“I have never seen this...I’ve been in Washington 40 years, so I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff [chuckle], but nothing like this, where --- and, you know, someone would say to me, ‘Well, are they delusional?’ No --- well, maybe some of them are --- but what’s worse, I think some of them have cynically decided, because of the Trump base, because they don’t want to get crosswise with the former President, they’re gonna say something they know is not true. Now, I don’t believe you’re just gonna sit there and say, ‘I’m not gonna have them on. But if I’m gonna have them on, I’m gonna hold them to account, over and over, about, you know, ‘what about, you know, this election, what about --- I’ve said this to many of them, ‘Is Joe Biden the duly-elected President of the United States, and they’ll say ‘Well, he’s the President,’ and I’ll say ‘No, no, was he elected fair and square?’ So, we go back on this, and I don’t let it pass...”
More: “There are plenty of people who were the leaders in the Congress who were challenging [the election] that I just have not had on the show ever since then, and have purposefully not had on the show, because I frankly don’t wanna hear their crap. But having said that, there are some leaders that you have to ask them questions. There are people in leadership and the Senate and I won’t let them come on without putting them through the wringer.”
Colbert interjects at this point, referring to such concerns as ‘garbage.” Wallace segues into January 6, “one of the worst days,” as he watched “this mob coming to the cathedral of our democracy.” “I was sickened,” he says, to applause. Colbert goes on to say that anyone who isn’t “wiling to stand up for that truth” –- I guess he means the “truth” that Biden was duly elected –- should be “DISQUALIFIED to be in the public sphere.” (!!!) He says that appearing on those Sunday shows is of value to such people because it helps them “promulgate that lie.”
“Does it worry you,” he asks Chris, “that you have given legitimacy to people who have abdicated all public responsibility?” (Again, where's Perry Mason when you need him?)
Chris responds that there are members of Congress who have been the leaders on that argument whom he just has deliberately not had on the show, “ever since then.” He says it was because he “frankly, didn’t want to hear their crap.” (This is followed by predictable audience cheers and applause.)
He goes on to say there are certain ones you have to have on, “but I won’t let ‘em come on without putting ‘em through the wringer.” That was pretty much the end of the interview, except for a book plug, and then on to the commercial break, which should have been for Pepto-Bismol.
So, Chris Wallace said he essentially gives his guests a litmus test, and it’s not enough for them to say, “Biden is the President.” It SHOULD be enough, but no –- the guest has to say that, yes, Biden was elected “fair and square,” even though it’s not known for sure that he was. We do not have definitive proof that the election was “stolen,” either, but after known problems with mass mail-in balloting in 2020, we have good reason to call for audits, and this does not make us “cynical,” "irrational" or “delusional.” It certainly does not mean that we "lie." Likewise, fact-based observations that there were problems with the last election that need to be fixed or that elections need to be more transparent are not “garbage” or “crap,” and to suggest this is offensive and insulting to millions of intelligent and informed people.
Such observations are not made to stay in good with “Trump’s base.” They are made because there are valid reasons for concern. Concerned Americans want to make sure we can TRUST the system, and maintaining that trust is PRO-democracy --- much more pro-democracy than pulling the curtain over the election and saying, “You have to talk about this in a certain way or you can’t participate in public life.”
Indeed, though I strongly and repeatedly condemned the breach of the Capitol Building, it's easy to understand why it happened. People were fed up because no one, not even the courts, would take their concerns seriously, saying that whatever the truth, the issue was "moot."
So, back to Carl. (Remember Carl?) Our commentary on Maricopa County sparked him to call and tell us about his niece, who moved from Maricopa County to Florida ten years ago. She found out something very interesting this year when a jury summons from Maricopa County was forwarded to her. She received this because they still had her on the Maricopa County voter rolls.
And the records showed her as having “voted” in the 2020 election.
Biden's Vaccine Speech
By Mike Huckabee
Thursday, President Biden gave what many commentators are describing as the most disturbing, dictatorial speech ever given by an American President. I’m so angry about this speech that I’m glad I don’t have to describe it in detail, since the writer Bonchie at Redstate.com did it so well for me:
Stacey Lennox at PJ Media also has a good rundown…
And Lincoln Brown has some pointed questions about it…
https://pjmedia.com/columns/lincolnbrown/2021/09/10/mr-president-a-few-questions-n1477380
The President who didn’t dare say “boo” to the Taliban attacked the “freedom and personal choice” of tens of millions of Americans who are hesitant to get vaccinated for COVID, darkly warning that his “patience is wearing thin” with them. The man who, as a candidate and as recently as six weeks ago, rejected vaccine mandates…
declared that he would impose a draconian mandate on both government and private sector employees, including every business with more than 100 workers, forcing them to force their workers to be vaccinated or be tested weekly. Considering businesses are already having trouble finding workers, what would it do to the economy if millions of workers simply refused to show up and comply? Particularly since that includes a large percentage of healthcare workers.
Biden also spat on the entire idea of federalism by warning that if any state Governors opposed him, he would use his powers to “get them out of the way.”
I know he’s been acting more and more like King Lear lately, but someone needs to tell him he’s not a king, and he doesn’t rule by Divine Right. He’s also not Tony Soprano. And of this writing, 14 Governors have already announced plans to sue the second he tries to impose this.
Bear in mind, I’m only talking about the parts that blatantly overstepped his powers, and not even the parts that defied logic, like saying, “We’re going to protect the vaccinated from unvaccinated co-workers” (if vaccines work, why would the vaccinated be threatened? It sounds as if he’s saying vaccination is useless while attacking anyone who thinks that.) Or claiming that GOP officials are actively working to undermine the fight against COVID and not encouraging people to get vaccinated. That’s not merely a lie, it’s a slanderous lie. The Governors he attacks most often, DeSantis in Florida and Abbott in Texas, are both vaccinated, both strongly encourage vaccination, and they’ve both done a far better job of distributing vaccines than just about any blue state.
I’m stunned by the openly authoritarian tone of this speech. For four years, the left railed that Trump was a dictator, he was “literally Hitler,” just for using his Constitutional authority to enact his agenda. And yet they’re cheering this insane power grab, with Biden angrily dictating to private businesses, state officials and individual citizens that they will do what he says and inject something into their bodies that they don’t want injected, or else.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/intense-mixed-reactions-biden-anger-at-the-unvaccinated
If Afghanistan didn’t convince Americans, this should: he needs to resign, NOW. I’m sure a lot of Republicans would agree, as both GOP Governors and Congress members are already declaring Biden’s threats and mandates to be blatantly unconstitutional, calling him the wannabe dictator that the left falsely accused Trump of being, and prepping to fight him in court and Congress.
That rising spirit of resistance to government overreach may be the only silver lining to this toxic cloud. To be clear: I’ve been quite open that I’m vaccinated myself, and I think people should be vaccinated, but it’s not the government’s place to force it on anyone (the “My body, my choice” crowd thinks that only applies to abortion, which actually destroys someone else’s body.) And this is such an unprecedented abuse of power that there’s no way it will stand.
But Brandon Morse argues that it will serve the left’s political aims because when the Supreme Court inevitably throws it out, that will give Democrats the opening to fire up their crazy base by claiming the conservative court wants people to DIE and the only solution is to expand and pack the Court, and so we’re back to that end-run around the Constitution.
If Biden and his cohorts spent as much time and effort figuring out how to get around the Taliban as they do trying to get around the Constitution, all our people would be out of Afghanistan by now.
America The Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Grand Canyon National Park, visit its website here.
Where The Blame For Vaccine Hesitancy Really Lies
By Mike Huckabee
Thanks to Instapundit for directing readers to this article by George Korda of the Knoxville News Sentinel, who shows where much of the blame for vaccine hesitancy really lies. Maybe Biden doesn’t remember 2020 (and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t), but he, his running mate, other top Democrats, their lackeys in the media from CNN to Newsweek, and even their godhead Dr. Fauci, all spent last year casting doubt on the safety and effectiveness of any vaccine developed under President Trump. Mr. Korda went through the archives and dug up some of their scare quotes about the unlikelihood of a vaccine being developed that quickly, and the safety risks if it were.
Biden seems to have forgotten that he was at the forefront of a Democratic Party/liberal media PR push to convince Americans that any vaccine that didn’t take years to test and wasn’t fully FDA-approved might be dangerous. Biden would like us to forget, too, since he and Harris got themselves jabbed with the Trump vaccine before they even took office, and then promptly started taking credit for it. Now, they’re demonizing anyone who might have the same doubts they were promoting less than a year ago.
Instead of attacking people who are skeptical of the vaccines, Biden might be more effective, and certainly more believable, if he’d come clean and say, “Look, I was just playing a cynical political game with the lives of 320 million Americans. So don’t distrust the vaccines. Just distrust anything I say.”
Note on President Biden’s Vaccine Speech
By Mike Huckabee
In threatening to crush the freedoms of any unvaccinated America, Biden still never acknowledged that an estimated 140 million Americans have already been exposed to COVID and should have natural immunity. The left has tried to paint natural immunity as an anti-vaxxer hoax or dangerous misinformation, but that’s become much harder with the rising number of studies showing natural immunity to be as good as or possibly better than vaccination.
A recent study out of Israel that’s getting a lot of attention found that people who’d had two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 27 times more likely to get symptomatic COVID-19 and eight times more likely to be hospitalized than people who were previously infected (FYI: both were very rare, but natural immunity re-infection was rarer.) The results were so overwhelming that a writer for the Washington Post who’d previously claimed that vaccines were more effective than natural immunity from prior infection actually admitted, “I was wrong, and stand corrected.”
Our President might actually convince more people to get vaccinated if he could say those words instead of threatening everyone.
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2021/9/morning-edition-september-10
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