By Mike Huckabee
June 1, 2022
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Blessings on you and your family and from all the Huckabee staff! Today's newsletter includes:
- The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end
- Our theory: Sussmann trial was a "loss leader" for Durham
- And much more...
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise,
16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:15-16
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
2. The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end
The reign of terror and error by transgender activists might finally be coming to an end, judging by several news stories that all came in over the weekend. First, another top executive at Netflix defended Dave Chappelle's and Ricky Gervais' right to make jokes about trans people as a free speech issue, just as comedians make jokes about anyone else, despite the furious calls for boycotts and censorship and the hyperbolic claims that joking about the excesses of trans activists will cause people to die.
https://news.yahoo.com/netflix-says-standing-dave-chappelle-171600618.html
Even some members of the trans community are speaking up in defense of Gervais, saying that he’s not attacking trans people, he’s speaking truth to power about the excesses of trans activists. One trans journalist wrote, “Trans activist ideology has run unchecked for too long, and it is time to call it to account."
“Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling has also refused to knuckle under to the cancel crowd and continues to speak out in defense of women (as Gervais would say, the old-fashioned kind, with wombs.) She was attacked for tweeting a news story about terrified women inmates at a New Jersey prison where officials are housing violent male felons who claim to “identify” as women. But HBO is still seeking a new creative deal with her.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1530576557839994882
And then the most surprising and possibly portentous pushback of all: the New York Times actually ran a story Sunday on the trans takeover of women’s sports that not only fairly presented the concerns of female athletes (who came across as much more sympathetic than the selfish “#MeFirst” attitudes of the trans activists they quoted), it actually included comments from doctors. These experts who have medical degrees (and I assume, eyes) said that swimmer Lia Thomas does have an unfair advantage because going through puberty as a male confers physical advantages that a year or even four years of testosterone-lowering hormones cannot reverse.
Of course, irrefutable biological facts aren’t enough to stop Thomas, who now wants to compete against women in the Olympics, where officials are still easily cowed by accusations of transphobia.
Sister Toldjah at Redstate.com sees all these things as hopeful signs that the tide of public opinion is finally turning against the tidal wave of radical transgender insanity that’s engulfed society over the past two years. Or at least that people are finally growing spines.
I think the trans people who are defending Ricky Gervais are right: these radical activists are doing them more harm than good. They say they just want to be accepted to live their lives like anyone else, but the radicals are insisting that they be treated as a special class, with the right to never be called out no matter how unreasonable they are, to never be laughed at (as we all are at times), and to have the power to destroy anyone who criticizes them.
They claim to be a poor oppressed minority and say that any criticism of them is “punching down,” even as they’re the ones crushing other people. News flash: When people are cowering in fear that you’ll glare their way and destroy their lives, careers and reputations just because they told a joke you don’t like, you aren’t a powerless underdog. You’re that monstrous child who sent people to the cornfield on “The Twilight Zone.”
Have a comment? Leave me one here.
3. Our theory: Sussmann trial was a "loss leader" for Durham
By now, you know that Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann was found not guilty of lying to the FBI, even though he did.
In his statement after the trial, Sussmann said he didn’t lie to the FBI. But that was a lie, too. Special Counsel John Durham had absolute proof, in the form of a Perkins Coie billing record and a text to then-FBI general counsel James Baker saying that Sussmann wasn’t meeting with him on behalf of clients when he really was. But the judge used a technicality to let jurors weigh that second piece of evidence minimally, as it had been handed over to Durham by Baker after the statute of limitations had lapsed. Once Sussmann couldn’t be charged for THAT lie –- the one in the text –- Baker happened to remember some texts, including that one. Isn’t it funny how a lapsed statute of limitations can jog someone’s memory?
So it appears Baker and Sussmann were on the same team. Baker helped Sussmann, and so did the judge, who worked like a champ to keep Durham’s evidence out of the courtroom.
Nick Arama discusses the judge’s ruling on Sussmann’s text message here. He also reviews what Durham managed to expose about Hillary and her campaign, noting there is more to come.
Durham surely knew by the time the jury had been seated --- maybe even by the assignment of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee with huge ties to the Democrat Party and the DOJ --- that his chances of getting a conviction in this Washington DC court were nil. Heck, he probably knew it all along, but he had his reasons for pursuing it. Those who insist Durham’s defeat is some kind of “black mark” against his investigation are missing the important stuff.
Durham has exposed what Hillary and her campaign did, which went well beyond the “political dirty trick” of peddling a fake story to the media. They reinforced their fake story by also peddling it to the FBI to push for an investigation. In other words, they went to federal law enforcement under false pretenses to frame a political opponent, and THAT, if you or I did it, would be very serious indeed.
But this jury treated it like nothing. This is evident because the jury forewoman, who doesn’t give her name, has spoken to the media. And now we can see she went beyond the scope of what she was there to determine, concluding that the case shouldn’t have been prosecuted at all. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI,” she told the media.
Oh, REALLY?? What if, say, a Republican attorney for the Trump campaign had gone to a Republican-appointed FBI official with a fake story about Hillary Clinton a few days before the 2016 election, and had flat-out lied and said he wasn’t representing Trump? (Not that anyone would need to peddle a fake story about Hillary; there were enough real scandals about her.) Do you think this solid-Democrat Washington DC jury would just blow that off?
Of course not. They’d call it the crime of the century. They’d say this attorney was working with Russians. They’d blame him for Hillary’s loss. They’d call him an ultra-MAGA deplorable, an insurrectionist, destroyer of institutions, election-interferer. Their quick verdict would be Guilty, Guilty, Guilty. They might not even need any hard evidence, just an accusation by the Democrat special counsel. And that lawyer would be off to jail.
Of course, the judge made it a lot easier for the jury to think this was nothing, as he largely kept Durham’s evidence of the “joint venture” (broader conspiracy) out of the courtroom.
As Jonathan Turley tweeted: “Telling a lie to the FBI was the entire basis for the prosecution. It was the jury’s job to determine the fact of such a lie and its materiality.” As in, ONLY THAT. Turley noted that such a bias, if expressed during jury selection, would have led to this woman being challenged by the prosecution.
And Durham surely would’ve challenged her, but recall that Judge Cooper actually refused his challenge of some members of the jury pool who ended up on the jury.
The kicker: This woman insisted after the trial that politics had not been a factor.
Throughout the past two weeks, we’ve discussed the various factors that people are pointing to now in the post mortem. As Andrew C. McCarthy told FOX News Thursday evening, “In order to figure out this case, I think you really have to make up your mind about what the FBI is. Are they ‘a dupe’ or are they a willing collaborator? Durham has staked his investigation on the notion that they’re a dupe. You have to prove, for materiality purposes in a false statements trial, that the ‘duped’ party actually was fooled. And I think the evidence here was pretty strong that...they weren’t fooled at all by it. They fully knew that they were getting political information from a partisan source. And a lot of what they did was designed to conceal the fact that they knew that.”
All true. But that’s what we think Durham was really in that courtroom to show. Again, he had to know he would lose the Sussmann case, given the judge and jury. We believe this case was, to Durham, a “loss leader.” As you probably know, that’s a term in retail that describes a store selling one item, such as milk, at a loss, just to get people into the store. Similarly, the Sussmann case had to be a loss for Durham, but look at what it accomplished for the investigation as a whole!
In that observation, we are more in line with what Margot Cleveland says in her analysis from Tuesday. “...For all posterity,” she writes, Clinton’s fingerprints will be seen covering the worst political scandal of our country’s history.”
Here’s what she wrote just prior to the jury’s verdict, which, of course, she expected.
"...Measuring Durham’s performance by the outcome in United States v. Sussmann would be a mistake,” she said. “...It would ignore the valuable information exposed related to the broader Spygate scandal. Using that gauge as a measure, the special counsel’s office succeeded wildly.”
Her piece is a must-read. It’s infuriating to see how much was made of the Alfa Bank story and the whole Trump-Russia Hoax, considering that it was all based on NOTHING. It became an industry, a make-work program for lawyers. Years wasted, hundreds of attorneys and investigators, many millions of dollars, people’s lives ruined (Michael Flynn, to name one), and the country divided, all over a fake story.
“Justice” became a joke. As Charles Lipson wrote for SPECTATOR, “Despite Sussmann’s not-guilty verdict, his trial revealed the rank odor of Washington politics. It suffuses our courts, our law enforcement bureaucracy, and the mainstream media. It reeks of insider dealing and extreme partisan bias. That stench should alarm anyone concerned about America’s ability to govern democratically.”
This is what the special counsel has exposed, and will continue to expose. Thank you, Mr. Durham.
https://spectatorworld.com/
……………………………………….
More for Durham –- CAN WE BE SHOCKED ANYMORE?
As long as we’re talking about the stench of Washington politics, especially as it centers around Hillary Clinton and Perkins Coie, there’s a related story –- just breaking –- that the special counsel will want to look into, if he isn’t doing so already:
Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio received an FBI whistleblower contact about the existence of an actual FBI workspace inside DNC and Hillary law firm Perkins Coie, complete with a portal to the FBI database. In response to a letter sent to them by Gaetz and Jordan, Perkins Coie reportedly admitted they have been hosting this "secure work environment" since 2012.
That’s right, the premiere Democrat law firm –- and, by extension, Hillary Clinton –- had a portal right into the FBI databases. If this is what it looks like, it takes what Hillary was doing as First Lady in the White House with individuals' raw FBI data (remember her mysterious White House “personnel” officer Craig Livingstone?) to a whole new level.
Fast-forward to 2022. “The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation,” writes Sundance at CONSERVATIVE TREEHOUSE, who has long suspected the existence of something like this. Here are the details.
He says that the record of non-compliant searches shows “the same people were continually being tracked, searched and surveilled by querying the FBI database over time.” The scale and scope of these unlawful searches, going back to 2012, was noticed by FISA presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer. And 2012 happens to be the year Perkins Coie first started operating the FBI portal. Also, the dates in the report from Gaetz and Jordan about Perkins Coie are “in direct alignment,” he says, with Collyer’s report on unlawful searches..
He sees this as “having the potential to be extremely explosive.”
Have a comment? Leave me one here.
4. The Police response and more Uvalde shooting news
While Democrats and much of the media continue exploiting the terrible Uvalde school shooting to promote gun control and repealing the Second Amendment, we’re learning that much of what we were initially told about the police response was wrong. That’s why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was so furious that he was given false information to pass along to the public.
The latest story in dispute is the claim that the shooter got in because a teacher had propped open a door that was supposed to be locked. Not willing to take the fall, the teacher hired an attorney who says that video proves she heard men at the funeral home across the street yell, “He’s got a gun,” and she kicked aside a rock that was holding the door open and slammed it shut. She assumed it would automatically lock because it was supposed to. It did not, and it was reported that neither did another door in the school, despite nearly $70,000 being spent on security measures a few years ago.
There was also this (warning!) very disturbing story about yet another giant red flag involving the shooter that apparently was ignored.
As for the investigation into why the police stood outside for 45 minutes while the shooter murdered children and teachers until Border Patrol agents finally arrived and ended the siege, it was reported that local police stopped cooperating with state investigators. The Department of Public Safety issued a statement claiming that the local police and school district were cooperating, but the Uvalde police chief hadn’t responded to a follow-up interview request made two days before.
Meanwhile, “Beto” O’Rourke has flip-flopped yet again and now once more backs confiscating everyone’s AR-15 rifles, saying this “may not be politically popular.” I think that’s a rare understatement for him. If that tasteless stunt he pulled at the press conference didn’t end any chances he had of being elected Governor of Texas (and those were snowball level chances in Hades to begin with), this should do it.
https://www.westernjournal.com/beto-orourke-flips-backs-mass-confiscation-ar-15s/
But it’s not just Texans who are rejecting the argument that guns are to blame for school shootings. A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters asked what is most to blame for young men shooting up their schools.
Only 30% put most of the blame on access to firearms. Forty percent blamed it more on mental health. That aligns with comments made by the parents of both the Uvalde and Buffalo shooters, claiming that COVID lockdowns had made their sons estranged from their families, paranoid and susceptible to radicalization via the Internet.
Ten percent each blamed family problems or social media, and 4% blamed problems in school.
I imagine at least 40% remember, as I do, when there were lots of guns and boys brought their rifles to school to go hunting afterward, but nobody shot their classmates. That was during a time when America valued marriage and family, two-parent homes, the sanctity of life, law and order, giving children discipline and moral instruction, worshipping God, reading the Bible and keeping sick entertainment like gory violence and pornography far away from kids. The left has been working diligently for decades to undermine all of those things, and now when amoral, disaffected youth with no moral compass shoot up a school, they blame it on the guns.
Ironically, their solution is to disarm law-abiding people who might not need to own guns if their cities weren’t also run by leftists who empty the jails, defund the police and refuse to enforce the laws. It’s all part of an endless cycle of leftists destroying things, blaming it on Republicans, then insisting that the only solution to the problems they caused is more of their policies. They’re like medieval doctors who knew only one cure for every ailment: more leeches.
Here’s a great editorial cartoon that sums up this endlessly recurring cycle perfectly.
https://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2022/06/01/190686?hpnl=true
Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett has similar thoughts on the decline of the family and the influence of fathers as contributors to the epidemic of violent young males.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/bennett-texas-school-shooting-moral-decay-parents
5. Biden's poll numbers
I’m not certain if there’s any point anymore in keeping track of President Biden’s poll numbers, other than for the same kind of curiosity that comes with watching a limbo contest: “How low can they go?!” For those keeping track, they just went even lower. The latest Civiqs Poll found Biden’s disapproval holding steady at 55%, but his approval rating dropping from 37 to 34%.
I’m not certain who the people are who approve of how things are going, but 34% approval is down there with heat rash and ketchup on salmon. Biden’s approval rating has even dropped to 35% in his home state of Delaware. He’s even at 42% approval/46% disapproval in California (But that could partly be because he’s not instituting even worse policies fast enough for some California leftists. Here’s a good example, and brace yourselves for maximum insanity.)
There are only three states where Biden’s approval rating is higher than his disapproval rating – Vermont, Massachusetts and Hawaii – and Hawaii is the only one where his approval reached 50%.
Biden’s approval rating is now lower than Trump’s, and Biden has gotten a free ride from the media while Trump was vilified on a daily basis. According to NBC News, Biden is reportedly furious that his approval rating is lower than Trump’s, and he’s casting around for a “better messaging strategy.”
I’ve written about this many times before: whenever leftist policies crash and fail, as they inevitably do, it’s never because the policies don’t work. It’s always because the public just doesn’t know how successful they are because the media are so biased against Democrats. I know, when you put it into words, it sounds even crazier.
Guy Benson at Townhall.com recounted some of Biden’s excuses, blame-shifting and self-pitying rationalizations for Americans not liking the problems that his own policies have created.
Biden is reportedly pushing his staff "to make a sharper case for all that we have accomplished thus far." I don’t think that’s going to help. Most Americans are well aware of what he’s accomplished. I report on that every day.
I also don’t think that whining about all the problems he inherited is going to help. He knew the problems and ran on a promise that only he knew how to fix them. He also inherited a rebounding economy, a secure border, three COVID vaccines, cheap and abundant oil and gas, and a plan for withdrawing safely from Afghanistan. If I’m going to feel sorry for any President, it will be whoever takes over the job from him.
Maybe the most worrisome Biden complaint is that he thinks he’s making clear, succinct statements and then his staff rushes out to contradict and correct him. The media are concerned that that plays into Republican messaging that he’s weak and incoherent. Yeah, that’s the problem. Not the weakness and incoherence, but the Republicans pointing it out.
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