By Mike Huckabee
July 17, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Thank you for subscribing!
Sincerely,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
Pray for the victims
Please join me in praying for the victims of deadly flash flooding over the weekend in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and for their families. Pray also that there will be no more deaths. The fatalities now stand at five, with a nine-month-old baby and two-year-old girl still missing.
Breaking story
Early Monday morning, a train derailed in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The cars were believed to be carrying hazardous materials and a Level-2 Hazmat team responded. But so far, the only thing found to be leaking is harmless silicone pellets. This is a breaking story, so keep an eye on the news for further developments.
White House Cocaine Update
Bits and pieces of info about the Secret Service’s “investigation” of the bag of cocaine found at the White House are still emerging. For instance, they apparently didn’t even interview anyone about it…
According to Sen. Tom Cotton, that naturally includes not asking Hunter Biden about it, because what are the odds that Hunter Biden would know anything about a bag of coke in the White House?
According to former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, his former colleagues know exactly who the coke belongs to and are furious about the way this has been handled.
Soldier of Fortune magazine reported that a source told them the Secret Service did find fingerprints on the bag of cocaine, but a spokesman for the agency strongly denied that, saying they found no physical evidence or surveillance video leads, and without them, they had no “reasonable suspicion” to justify interviewing anyone. Seriously, NO “reasonable suspicion”?...
This looks so bad that even disgraced FBI official Andrew Weissman, who was at the center of the Russia collusion hoax, is dunking on the Secret Service. He asked on MSNBC why any investigator would tell the suspects that they had no fingerprint or video evidence before interviewing them (which they apparently never did), and in a line worthy of Sen. John Kennedy, said, “The Secret Service here looks like they can’t find a dead cow in a closet.”
Heaven knows I have my differences with the man, but when you’re right, you’re right. Frankly, at this stage, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did find a dead cow in a White House closet and refused to ask Hunter if he knew anything about it.
Now that President Biden has blurted out to the world that the US military is running out of ammo, having shipped it all to Ukraine, you’d think the Pentagon would be focusing intensely on replenishing our arsenal. But as Daniel Greenfield points out in Front Page magazine, not only are we low on ammo, but recruitment is down and nearly 40% of our attack submarines are out of commission and in need of repairs. That’s up from 28% in 2017. Currently, our Navy has only 31 subs that are operationally ready.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/while-navy-pushes-dei-37-of-attack-subs-are-out-of-order/
And what is the Pentagon “leadership” under Biden focusing intensely on? “Diversity, equity and inclusion,” silencing anti-left political dissent, providing enlistees with abortions and sex change operations, and going green to eliminate CO2 emissions (the Navy is spending $718 million, or more than 10% of its 2023 vehicle maintenance budget, on fighting global warming rather than making sure we're ready to fight China or Russia.) On the plus side, those out-of-commission subs are currently emitting no CO2 whatsoever.
Just so you don’t think I’m only picking on the Biden military leadership for having horrendous wacky priorities, his “climate czar” John “That private jet is my wife’s” Kerry is also under fire for ignoring all the tragic death, destruction and displacement of the Russia-Ukraine war to whine about how much carbon dioxide all the bombs and fires are emitting.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-silent-john-kerry-laments-ukraine-wars-carbon-emissions
Related: Another thing the Pentagon might want to focus on is not making typos that reveal millions of sensitive emails and messages to the African nation of Mali.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-typo-leaked-millions-sensitive-messages-african-nation
America the Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. We are blessed with his bounty. Take a moment to enjoy it.
Mushroom politics
There’s a story going around the Internet that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent trip to China was such a disaster because she was spotted eating a dish in a local restaurant that contains mushrooms that can be hallucinogenic. But that’s only the case if they’re not fully cooked, which the restaurant says they were.
So I think we can safely file this under “urban legend.” The Treasury Secretary was not “trippin’ on ‘shrums.” She just that bad at her job naturally. But I’d like to withhold judgement on the rest of Biden’s Cabinet until we can get them to take a drug test.
Speaking of people who sound like they're high on mushrooms, the White House helpfully released a transcript of a recent speech by Vice President Kamala Harris, “correcting” her claim that we need to reduce the population to fight climate change. They altered “population” to “pollution.”
This drew a lot of attention as a “letting the cat out of the bag” moment, an admission that the radical green agenda includes reducing the human population. While that certainly does fit with what we know about them, I always tend to cut people slack on slips of the tongue. As someone who’s had to give the same campaign speech over and over while dead tired, I know how easy it is to fumble your words.
Of course, that didn’t apply to Kamala, who was well rested and reading off a prompter. But if she were capable of stating what she really thinks, even inadvertently, I’m sure she would have done it at some other time before now.
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Fact-check racket
This will come as no surprise to longtime readers of this newsletter, but it’s important that we never forget how the bogus, politically-motivated “factchecker” industry rose to prominence during the pandemic and was used as a justification for censoring legitimate and often correct points of view.
https://truthbasedmedia.com/2023/07/16/the-fact-check-racket-finally-unravels/
This article has a good timeline/recap of how it happened, how these sites operate, and how it’s now been exposed for the biased sham that it is. At least, let’s hope so.
We’ve heard estimates that from $100 billion to $400 billion in COVID relief funds were stolen, misused or misappropriated. But that could be a very lowball estimate. Here’s an article on Redstate.com arguing that when all the fraud is added up, the wasted COVID funds could top $1 trillion.
Related: And what should happen to the man who helped set off the hysteria that led to all that fraud, and shut down the economy, and whom we now know suspected COVID was a Chinese lab creation but forcibly silenced any debate? Matt Margolis at PJ Media has a suggestion in a piece entitled, "Can We Arrest Fauci Now?"
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/07/16/can-we-arrest-fauci-now-n1711060
Misused COVID relief funds
We’ve heard estimates that from $100 billion to $400 billion in COVID relief funds were stolen, misused or misappropriated. But that could be a very lowball estimate. Here’s an article on Redstate.com arguing that when all the fraud is added up, the wasted COVID funds could top $1 trillion.
Related: And what should happen to the man who helped set off the hysteria that led to all that fraud, and shut down the economy, and whom we now know suspected COVID was a Chinese lab creation but forcibly silenced any debate? Matt Margolis at PJ Media has a suggestion in a piece entitled, "Can We Arrest Fauci Now?"
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/07/16/can-we-arrest-fauci-now-n1711060
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Paused
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals put a pause on a lower court’s injunction blocking Tennessee’s new ban on “sex change surgeries, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones” and “any drug or device” intended for the same purposes from taking effect. That’s a lot of negatives, but it all sorts out to “the ban can go into effect.” But with many other states blessedly passing the same law, and LGBTQ activists and the ACLU challenging them, this is certain to end up in the Supreme Court. There are more details at the link.
https://www.westernjournal.com/scotus-may-soon-face-emergency-appeal-trans-surgery-kids/
That story quotes a senior legal fellow at Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies as saying that courts will have to decide “whether a state’s interest in protecting the welfare of children outweighs a parents’ interest in getting experimental medical treatment.” Another conservative legal expert said this is an attempt by liberal activists to get courts to legalize what they could never get through legislatures, which is okaying treatments “that amount to genital mutilation or chemical castration of children.” Proponents argue that it’s necessary to prevent conditions like depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide, but opponents say there’s no evidence of that, and that suicidal tendencies tend to remain even the irreversible chemical and surgical mutilation.
I would just add this: in the name of upholding the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm,” governments ban “experimental” medical procedures. Some argue, reasonably, that such treatments should be made available to certain patients, like consenting adults who are facing terminal cancer for which no approved treatment will work. They have no alternatives other than death.
But in this case, we’re being asked to impose permanently body-altering “experimental” procedures on minors who cannot mentally or emotionally understand the full ramifications. This is why even the deep blue state of New York bans giving tattoos to anyone under 18 (but apparently, it’s okay to hack off their breasts and genitals.) In most cases, these confused kids are just going through a phase they’ll outgrow, and the only threat of death is that they threaten to kill themselves if we don’t give it to them. That alone should be an alarm bell that we’re dealing with a mental issue, not a physical one.
I hope and pray that in the not-too-distant future, society will come to its senses and look back in horror at this as an era of widespread hysteria fed by radical activists, quack doctors, politicized school officials and peer and social media pressure. I can easily imagine future generations asking, “How could they have treated their own children like lab rats?” It’s a question we need to start asking right now.
If you think that’s too harsh, here’s yet another of a sadly growing number of “de-transitioners” who feel that they were misled and mutilated by the adults they trusted and are now suffering permanent consequences.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/jasmine-gender-transition-mistake-consequences
A new version of “Snow White”
Because the world just hasn’t had enough soulless, live-action cash grab remakes of classic Disney animated movies, Disney is producing a new version of “Snow White.” But last week, the Daily Mail set off a firestorm of ridicule and criticism by printing a photo allegedly taken on location, showing that Snow White (who’s named that because her skin was as white as snow) is played now by a Latina actress and the Seven Dwarfs were deemed too politically incorrect. Snow’s seven companions now look like a racially and sexually diverse group of “United Colors of Benetton” hipsters on their way to a Renaissance Fair.
Disney at first denied that photo was from their production and demanded a retraction, then admitted it was from their movie but wasn’t “authorized.” Gee, I wonder why?
By the way, it’s also been reported that in this version, Snow White isn’t waiting for Prince Charming to come, but is concerned with whether she can be a tough enough girl boss to take down the Wicked Witch and assume rule over her late father’s kingdom. I think we all know the answer to that. The only mystery is how much money Disney can lose before it’s officially declared a nonprofit organization.
Related: “Sound of Freedom,” the crowd-funded, fact-based movie about taking down child traffickers, was second only to “Mission Impossible” in its second weekend. It has now earned nearly $85.5 million on a $14 million budget, and should easily cross the $100 million mark in the US alone. In an era when most movies take big drops in their second weekend, “Sound of Freedom’s” box office rose by 63.7% on Friday, and by another 36.5% on Saturday as it was added to another 400 theaters.
The film was actually made five years ago and Disney had the rights to it, but they sat on it until indie Angel Studios acquired the rights and released it. How in the world Disney thought that film shouldn’t be released while they kept putting out all the money-losing garbage they’ve produced over the past five years is a mystery. Unless there’s something about the film’s message that liberal Hollywood executives found disagreeable. The message is that child sex predators are the scum of the Earth.
Hey, we DID learn some things from Christopher Wray’s testimony
Christopher Wray might be unusually adept at dodging questions --- perhaps rivaled only by Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who was the champion --- but in his testimony last week to the House Judiciary Committee, he still inadvertently communicated some important points to those paying attention. Legal analyst Margot Cleveland was paying attention.
Recall that it was just ahead of this hearing that we learned of the FBI’s role as a conduit between Ukrainian intelligence (the SBU, which, ironically, was known to have been infiltrated by Russia) and social media companies to stop so-called “Russian disinformation.” The FBI could not have been more helpful to the SBU, sending lists of accounts, including American accounts, that social media should remove.
This new information came in a report from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. As Cleveland points out, “the FBI’s involvement triggered the same First Amendment problems as those litigated in Missouri v. Biden. Several members of the Judiciary Committee directly challenged Wray to justify the activity.
Wray told the Judiciary Committee that the FBI had stepped in because Ukraine’s communications system was down. But if that’s true, the SBU should have contacted American companies on its own if it thought any American accounts should be shut down. Why did they go to the FBI, when the FBI isn’t supposed to be “in the business” (Wray’s words) of doing this? Do social media companies accept such requests from foreign countries? And do these companies censor Americans based on foreign claims of “disinformation?”
It’s not just social media, either, that the FBI has exploited, but also private corporations such as banks. Recall that they went to Bank of America to get the financial records of customers who had purchased firearms in the six months prior to January 6, 2021. Bank of America apparently handed them right over --- as memory serves, there was no subpoena.
The FBI decided not to use those records, but that’s not the point. As Cleveland explains, “Wray framed Bank of America’s data sharing as consistent with ‘business partners’ who ‘all the time’ share information about possible criminal activity.
“Business partners”?? And, by the way, the legal purchase of a firearm is by definition NOT a criminal activity. So why would Bank of America simply turn their customers’ information over? And what other “business partners” is the FBI working with?
Another disturbing thing about Wray’s testimony: he insisted the Bureau wasn’t responsible for censorship because they were only making “suggestions” to social media. Cleveland suggests Wray read the opinion in Missouri v. Biden, as the FBI actually played a heavy role. (When social media dawdled, they even sent a follow-up email to crack the whip.)
Wray also demonstrated --- or feigned --- ignorance of what his agency had been doing. In two different testimonies, he’s contradicted himself on whether the FBI had used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows them to conduct warrantless collection of communications of foreign individuals, in their investigation of January 6. We already knew the FBI had abused this provision of the law to “unmask” Americans such as Michael Flynn in conversations with foreign officials.
To set the record straight, the FBI did indeed abuse Section 702 --- thousands of times --- against J6 protesters as reported by THE HILL about two months ago. Wray seems a bit hazy on that. Section 702 is set to expire at the end of the year, and that is one that should NOT be renewed.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/4012650-fbi-misused-surveillance-tool-fisa-section-702/
Wray also failed to answer questions about Brian Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation. Auten has supposedly been under investigation (sure he has) since 2019 for his role in Crossfire Hurricane.
But Jim Hoft in a GATEWAY PUNDIT opinion piece reports that Auten is sort of the “Kevin Bacon” of FBI investigators, in that seemingly every hoax investigation has ties to him. Auten was involved in “Crossfire Hurricane,” a REAL attempted coup. He buried the Hunter laptop scandal ahead of the 2020 election, which likely changed the outcome. He also was involved in the raid on Mar-A-Lago.
As outlined in the hearing by Texas Rep. Chip Roy, not only does Auten still have a job after all that, but in August 2020 he was assigned by the FBI to complete an assessment on the allegations of financial crimes and corruption within the Biden family, which they used to characterize these revelations as --- you guessed it --- “Russian information.” Roy asked Wray, “How on earth did the FBI empower an agent under investigation for potentially corrupt performance and abuse of FISA in one politically fraught investigation, a Democrat-operative-driven case against President Trump, to play a key role to undermine a second politically fraught investigation, a case against the Bidens? How is that possible? How can you allow that to occur in the FBI?”
Wray answered that he couldn’t “at the moment” discuss “a pending personnel matter.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/more-dirty-chris-wray-fbi-chief-used-agent/
One thing Wray was more specific about: he was clear that the now-infamous parents-at-school-board-meetings-are-terrorists memo was entirely the work of Attorney General Merrick Garland. The implication is that even a “company man” like Wray finds this to be something he wouldn’t be proud to take credit for. Understandable --- it’s hard to stomach that much undiluted political hackery.
Cleveland also got a sense of the Democrats’ political strategy from their rhetoric and main lines of questioning. She sees them as divided into two groups: the left and the far-left. The leftist lawmakers spent most of their time going easy on the FBI, rehabilitating them, setting them up as heroes, etc. The far-left simply did what they enjoy most in the world: attack Donald Trump and so-called “MAGA Republicans.” Except for “Squad” member Pramila Jayapal, who actually challenged Wray about buying data on Americans from various data brokers --- and why aren’t all the Democrats asking about things like this?? --- both the left and the far-left seemed unconcerned with the many civil rights abuses we’ve seen coming from the FBI in recent years.
Another tactic the Democrats tried was to slander the whistleblowers, falsely stating that they had been paid for their testimony. That’s just plain rotten, but whistleblowers had to steel themselves for it, because the speech or debate clause prohibits them from suing members of Congress who lied about them. Lawmakers get to do that with impunity, and they did.
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1021/speech-and-debate-clause
Which brings us to Adam Schiff of California. During Wray’s hearing, he couldn’t resist repeating the lie about President Trump’s call with the Georgia secretary of state after the 2020 election, saying that Trump told Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” This did not actually happen, but just watch: Schiff will never stop lying about it, or ever apologize to any Republican for any lie he has ever told.
Law professor Jonathan Turley testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday about the reauthorization of Section 702. For when you have time, here’s the link to his written statement. Turley offers some suggestions for reform if the whole thing isn’t allowed to sunset, making it clear that there have been “gross and systemic violations by the government.”
https://jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Turley.Testimony.FISA_.6.14.23-2.pdf
Brandon Long, a Biden judiciary nominee, is being pressured by Sen. Marsha Blackburn to reveal his role in various FBI activities, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/13/marsha-blackburn-brandon-long-role-fbi-operations
Finally, it should surprise no one that Biden’s nominee to head the NSA and Cyber Command is a disaster. His Senate confirmation hearing was the same day Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee and so didn’t get much attention at the time. But he defends Section 702, saying it’s been “extensively used” (no kidding!) and “irreplaceable.”
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/13/top-biden-intel-nominee-warrantless-surveillance-irreplaceable/
………..
RELATED: In a big breath of fresh air, President Trump pledged Saturday at a Turning Point USA event to “totally obliterate the deep state” and create some form of “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” as other countries have done after periods of wrongdoing and corruption. This would declassify and release “all documents on deep-state spying, censorship and all the corruption that’s gone on in America.”
Trump makes it clear now that his previous time in the White House taught him who the players are. He knows who he should and should not have in his administration. “I know everybody in Washington,” he said. “I got a Ph.D. in learning about the people of Washington.” This is no honorary degree for him --- he earned it.
The amazing thing is that after learning about the people of Washington, he still wants to go back there. It has to be love of country and an unwavering desire to fix what’s wrong that drives him now. And even though the Lord says vengeance is His, I wouldn’t fault Trump too much for also being motivated by that.
I JUST WANTED TO SAY:
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