By Mike Huckabee
February 2, 2024
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Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee team! Today, if you have a moment, leave me a comment about something you read. Comments help me fine tune what I am writing, and they show that we have an active community of readers.
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
P.S. The Morning Edition delivers Monday-Saturday.
Daily Bible Verse
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:22
Newsletter Notes
17 stories
4,042 words
Reading time: About 19 minutes
Keeping Chris Kyle’s legacy alive
11 years ago on Feb 2, true American hero Chris Kyle was murdered by a troubled vet Chris was trying to help. Chris's widow Taya and son Colton keep the legacy alive. I'm proud to wear t-shirt honoring Chris Kyle.
https://americansniper.com
Groundhog Day
Today is Groundhog Day, and in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog reportedly did not see his shadow, foretelling an early spring and not another six more weeks of winter.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/groundhog-day-history-superstitious-tradition-us
Joe Biden blamed it on global warming and issued an executive order banning groundhogs.
Breaking News:
As we were going to press, word arrived that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has subpoenaed Fulton County, Georgia, DA Fan Willis to testify about allegations of misconduct, misuse of federal funds, and firing a whistleblower. The subpoena came after Willis repeatedly refused to comply with requests to voluntarily supply documents to Congress.
If she refuses to comply with the subpoena, I assume she will be arrested in public and prosecuted into federal prison, the way the Biden DOJ did to Trump adviser Peter Nararro. And don’t forget: if she asks her secretary to write a letter to the House refusing to comply with the subpoena, they both should be indicted on RICO conspiracy charges. What’s good for the goose, etc., etc.
Jobs
The Labor Department reported this morning that the US economy added 353,000 jobs in December, nearly double the 185,000 economists predicted. That would be great news except, as Columbo would say, for a few things that keep bothering me.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/02/02/u-s-economy-created-353000-jobs-in-january/
One is that the explosive rise in jobs is due to the government revising the previously-reported number of jobs in December upward by a staggering 117,000. If they missed it by that much a few weeks ago, how do I know they’ve got it right now?
Then there’s this sentence: “Compared with the pre-pandemic years, however, this was a high level of job growth, much of it driven by sectors still rebuilding from mass layoffs due to lockdowns and the pandemic.” So is this actual new job growth, or just more getting-back-to-normal after the artificial government shutdown?
And as always, there’s the problem that any positive news for job growth is taken by the Feds as inflationary and a reason not to reduce sky-high interest rates.
Don’t get me wrong, I honestly want to see economic growth and plenty of jobs for Americans. I just find it hard to believe that’s happening under the current government policies, especially when the reported jobs numbers seem to be coming out of a random number generator and can be “revised” by six figures in either direction.
The good news:
Fifty House Democrats voted with Republicans to pass a bill to deport illegal immigrants who are caught driving drunk, with the measure passing by 274-150.
The bad news:
150 House Democrats actually voted against deporting illegal immigrants who are going around killing Americans by driving drunk. Kind of makes you wonder who they’re supposedly working for.
Blue City Update:
At least four of the illegal immigrants who allegedly beat up two unarmed police officers in New York City and were released on no bail with an order to show up for a hearing later have reportedly already skipped town on a bus headed for California. I’m sure they’re going to LOVE it there!
What a way to start your day, Joe Biden
For all those who claim Trump can’t control his mouth or that Biden isn’t having cognitive problems, let it be recorded that it was Biden who said we should remember “who the hell we are” at the National Prayer Breakfast.
https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-ends-national-prayer-breakfast-remarks-mix/
One more thing we can thank Joe Biden and his open border for:
One of the most bloodthirsty Venezuelan criminal gangs is reportedly now active across the US, after illegally coming across our border along with the wave of unvetted Venezuelan “migrants.”
"Friday Failure Corner"
I could probably fill this newsletter with stories like these every day, but that might get tedious, so I’ll just blow a few of them out all at once in a section we'll call "Friday Failure Corner":
The last remaining REI sporting goods store in Portland, Oregon, closed for good yesterday, blaming the highest number of thefts and break-ins in its 20-year history.
https://www.kptv.com/2024/02/01/last-portland-rei-closing-permanently/
Jeffrey’s Toys, the oldest toy store in San Francisco and the inspiration for the classic film “Toy Story,” is closing due to rampant crime and inflation.
In nearby Oakland, a beloved Denny’s restaurant that’s advertised itself as “Always open” for 54 years closed permanently this week due to rampant crime.
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/02/02/beloved-dennys-in-oakland-due-to-rampant-crime-n2169530
The San Francisco Center Mall, once a thriving upscale shopping destination, is now a virtual ghost town due to stores moving out and consumers refusing to leave their homes. The local liberal media would like to blame that on the pandemic, but we all know the real reasons.
https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/02/westfield-downtown-san-francisco-centre-mall-empty-dead/
Finally (although that’s hardly all the blue city store closings I could list), Walgreens is closing three locations in Boston. This prompted Massachusetts Democrat Rep. and “Squad” member (and advocate for defunding police and releasing thieves on no bail) Ayanna Pressley to accuse Walgreens of “divesting from Black & brown communities” and committing “disruptive, life-threatening acts of racial and economic discrimination.”
As you can tell from the responses on Twitter, the public isn’t buying her excuses for leftist policy failures. The best came from a man who described himself as a former loss prevention supervisor for Walgreens for eight years. He wrote: “You don’t get to blame it on race. If a store was closed, it’s quite simply because whoever lived in the area stole too d**n much merchandise. And now they can live without a Walgreens.”
I’d advise her to go take an aspirin and lie down, but I don’t know if there are any drug stores still open in Washington, DC.
More proof that you aren’t even safe from leftist insanity in a red state:
El Paso, Texas, police have been ordered to ask everyone they encounter their “preferred pronouns” and names.
Just a factual note on pronouns: They were invented to give a generic name to large collective groups (he/she/it) because it is impossible to learn and use the specific name of every individual on Earth. The “preferred pronoun” crowd demands that we learn and use the specific “pronoun” of every individual on Earth, no matter how unlikely, nonsensical, unique or wholly made-up it may be. In short, the very idea of “preferred pronouns” is not only impossible to implement, but it negates the entire purpose of having pronouns.
So, pretty much a typical liberal idea.
New PBS J6 documentary unwittingly makes the case against Democrats
How to understand the way leftists think, in two easy steps: 1) listen to them talk to each other, and 2) watch their propaganda. They’ll inadvertently give the game away. At least PBS just did.
They aired a new January 6 documentary for FRONTLINE, dramatically titled “Democracy On Trial: The Criminal Cases Against Former President Trump Tied to His 2020 Election Loss.” Writer/producers Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser (Kirk directed) chose to open it with the audio of Trump’s “I only need 11,000 votes” phone call --- taken totally out of context, of course, to twist its meaning, just as Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis did to be able to charge Trump. “The President’s intent was to stay in power at all costs,” intones one TV pundit and apparent Trump mindreader. “They put their faith in Donald Trump, and he deceived them,” says TDS-infected Liz Cheney. So in the first minute or so of watching, you know what you’re in for.
The documentary is two and a half hours long, and we have no intention of recommending you sit through it, as at the end, you’d know less than you did before. Instead, let’s focus on just one thing, something a few other writers have noticed as well: that in bragging about what Nancy Pelosi’s “Select” (that’s for sure) January 6 Committee did to shape the narrative for their so-called “investigative” hearings, they inadvertently revealed these were just as partisan as anything PBS could come up with. This was a show trial. And those who are out to get Trump are so clueless, they boast about this effort without seeming to care or even realize what it looks like to the rest of us.
Filmmaker Eric Abbenante posted this on X: “In a remarkable PBS documentary, the January 6th committee admits the entire thing was a publicity stunt/fabricated TV production meant to manipulate the audience. Which is why they brought in the former president of ABC News [James Goldston] "‘It was Goldston who envisioned this as a miniseries.’ ‘We knew how high the stakes were. We were either going to make people realize that this was important or once you've lost them you've lost them for good.’ Well, you failed and you lost most of the American public for good. Nice try though.”
Recall our reporting at the time that Nancy’s “Kangaroo Kommittee” had hired the former president of ABC News to slice-and-dice the J6 video --- at least the parts of it they wanted us to see --- in a way that would involve viewers emotionally so they’d see that, by golly, this WAS an insurrection! This new documentary confirms that this was their goal.
On Thursday, Nick Arama at REDSTATE wrote about what the film says about why they brought in Goldston, including what Goldston himself said about this, after getting a call “pretty much out of the blue” from the committee saying they wanted a “storyteller”: “While they were brilliant lawyers, storytelling for a mass audience is not what they do.” (Aside: Really?? We’d say that making up stories for public consumption is one of the main things the Democrats do, all the time, but never mind.) Goldston viewed this project as an entertainment “miniseries,” with hearings that played like episodes --- nine episodes, each with a different theme. He was praised for thinking “outside the box.”
Here’s “Republican” committee member Adam Kinzinger from the documentary, on why they enlisted Goldston: “The one thing that we knew was the information that we have is compelling. The thing we needed to do was tell that to the American people in a compelling way.” Really, is that what hearings are supposed to do? Certainly, it’s what propagandists do, but hearings are supposed to find out the truth, not just move people.
The primetime hearing was conducted like a multimedia live stage production, and everything had to come together. From the way they told it, committee members’ hearts were pounding on that first night, wondering, “Is this going to work or not?” Work in what way, pray tell? If they wanted it to be taken seriously as a real fact-finding hearing, they blew it.
But that wasn’t the committee’s goal. Their real aim was to make sure this production would, in the words of Communications Director Tim Mulvey, “grab the audience and hold onto them.”
Chairman Bennie Thompson became known for saying, “It’s gotta pop.” I’d like to know how much of our tax money was spent to manufacture all that popping. Come to think of it, the J6 Committee and PBS have something in common: they both got taxpayer funding to selectively edit information about January 6 to create the anti-Trump narrative they wanted!
(Side note: Looking into this, we found a report in Yahoo Finance that didn’t give us the figure we were looking for but did say this, and get your barf bags ready… “The bottom line: The committee’s operations and expenses may be sizable, but protecting U.S. democracy is priceless.”)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cost-congress-january-6-committee-231101988
The mainstream media went crazy on “opening night,” of course, presenting it, in the words of CBS News, as “an extraordinary moment in American history.” But, Arama’s headline after that first night was, “Hilarious: Jan. 6 Committee now trying to ‘temper expectations’ as Cheney and Schiff spin like crazy.” What was supposed to blow the roof off turned out to be more like “connecting the dots,” as one committee aide described it. And recall that Goldston’s nine-part “series” couldn’t be stretched into that many hearings and ended up fizzling (like their ratings). It’s fun to go back and see what Arama said at the time.
Sample quote: “[This is] a performance, a made-for-TV production, that’s why they need the TV guy. They don’t want you to evaluate the facts for yourself, they must tell you what it means, so you accept their narrative. Hey, Democrats, this is America, the government doesn’t dictate what people believe here.”
Yes, of course we knew at the time what they were up to. They had their speeches on teleprompters, for crying out loud. And we knew that when Liz Cheney read a January 6 tweet from President Trump but left out the “Go home with love and peace,” she telegraphed their intention to craft a lie. But the unintentionally hilarious thing about this new PBS propaganda piece is that its inclusion of committee members’ bragging about their big “production” gives up the game. It’s not a good look, for the committee or for the media. And they appear not to even be aware of that.
Joel Pollak at BREITBART notes that Nancy Pelosi had, for the first time in American history, rejected the committee nominees from the minority party and took it upon herself to pick those nominees, choosing two virulent anti-Trump “Republicans.” In other words, the fix was in, with everyone on the committee being opposed to Trump. Due process was out the window, with most testimony behind closed doors, with no exculpatory evidence allowed and no chance for the other side to present an argument or cross-examine witnesses.
Pollak also mentions that Goldston had a controversial history at ABC, as he was the leader at the time they were alleged to have buried the Jeffrey Epstein story.
Perhaps worst of all, the committee also is being investigated for destruction of evidence, records that were supposed to be turned over to GOP-led congressional committees, compromising Trump’s rights and those of other J6 defendants.
Sarah Arnold for TOWNHALL writes, “The outlet [PBS] explains how the committee carefully chose witnesses to spew testimony --- whether true or not --- to manipulate the nation regarding J6.”
REDSTATE also has a VIP (subscription-only) piece about this, by Becky Noble. If you’re signed up, it makes good reading, but she does come to the same conclusions we do. She recalls some of the outright lying that was done in prime time, such as Chairman Bennie Thompson claiming that seven people were killed on January 6. Pelosi was said to have “begged” for National Guard help; never mind the part about Trump offering their presence that day and Pelosi declining. And, of course, the committee never showed the video we saw much later of Capitol Hill police standing by unconcerned as people peacefully wandered into the Capitol.
They ignored the pipe bombs --- the Kamala Harris “assassination attempt” --- too. Wonder why? We’ll have an update on that unfolding story for the weekend.
Impeachment inquiry demands drafts of Biden’s speech about firing Shokin
Surprise, surprise; the White House isn’t cooperating with the committees handling the impeachment inquiry. As part of their investigation into then-Vice President Biden’s relationship with Burisma --- the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that had paid son Hunter handsomely to be on its board of directors --- House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer requested the original drafts of a speech Biden gave about firing Ukrainian lead prosecutor Viktor Shokin. These would be coming from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), but the White House has refused to allow them to produce them. It’s been five months.
Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan are now demanding that the White House allow NARA to produce the drafts by February 7. If the White House doesn’t comply, they’ll “consider the use of compulsory process,” meaning subpoenas. Oh, just send the subpoenas, guys; you know the White House won’t cooperate.
RELATED HUNTER NEWS: If you thought you’d heard it all when it came to Hunter Biden, here’s something especially weird. In a recent court filing in his Delaware gun case, Hunter bizarrely compared himself to various historical figures and groups of victimized people, mostly dead.
As law professor Jonathan Turley writes, the filing “presents Hunter as one of the most tragic figures since the fall of Troy. Literally.” He’s cursed, it says, to be the son of one of the most powerful people on Earth. It suggests that this is an “immutable characteristic,” a term often used to protect members of a racial minority from discrimination.
The filing goes on from there, arguing that Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who his father is. In that respect, it even compares Hunter to a child detained in a Japanese internment camp because he’s “the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign.”
Hard to even know where to start.
It compares Hunter to the greatly privileged sons of famous people down through history who were “the target of animus…History is replete with children of political figures being abducted and assassinated literally (e.g., murder of Romanov children by Russian revolutionaries) or figuratively (e.g., Odysseus murdering the son of Crown Prince Hector when sacking Troy).”
Turley says it “borders on delusional.” Borders on?? Still, what a way for members of powerful families to get away with anything. Imagine Ted Kennedy’s attorneys sitting around in Chappaquiddick, smoking cigars and discussing how to extricate him legally from the death of Mary Jo Kopechne: “Let’s say he’s targeted because he’s a Kennedy! You know, it just might work!”
Oh, you’ve got to read this. Maybe (maybe) Hunter has cleaned up his act and is not currently doing drugs, but one has to wonder, seriously, if his attorneys have been smoking crack.
Hunter’s Heroic Epic: Biden Files Motion Comparing Himself to Dead Romanovs and Ancient Greek Heroes
More bad news for Disney
More bad news for the Disney Corporation, but this time, it doesn’t involve an overbudget movie flop, which is kind of refreshing:
A federal judge threw out the Mouse House’s lawsuit that tried to overturn Gov. DeSantis’ decision to strip Disney of its special district privileges that had turned the Magic Kingdom into a Disney fiefdom. They were put under a new state-appointed oversight board, which has unearthed evidence of Disney operating its own private government for years in its selfish interests. Naturally, Disney will appeal. The full legal language is at the link, but in a nutshell:
Disney claimed that DeSantis did this because of the company’s woke political activism, so it was a violation of their First Amendment free speech rights. But the judge ruled that you can’t claim a constitutionally-permissible government action is invalid because you don’t like its alleged motives, and that Disney cited no injury other than being under a government regulatory board that it can’t control. Welcome to the club, Mickey.
Let’s hope this puts an end to Disney’s tantrum about having to follow the same laws as every other business in Florida. Also, an end to all the articles, YouTube videos, Twitter rants and commentaries on liberal “news” channels about what a dictator DeSantis is and how Disney’s lawyers were going to eat him alive in court. That stuff has become about as annoying as riding the “It’s a Small World” ride 500 times.
New Excuses
“Squad” member Rep. Cori Bush has some new excuses for the ethics investigation of her lavish spending on private security. They aren’t any better than her first ones, but they’re new.
Lucky for her, she’s a Democrat, so even if they have her dead to rights, it’s extremely unlikely that she will ever be held accountable. Latest case in point (warning: note subject)…
Wait, I thought the Capitol was the sacred citadel of "our democracy," which is why the January 6th protesters had to be sent to prison for years for defiling it. I guess that only applies to Republicans and pro-life activists who defile our sacred abortion clinics by praying outside them.
“Stop the Coup 2025”
Since the Democrats are so horrified at the thought of anyone questioning or resisting the results of “free and fair” election, I assume they will all line up to strongly condemn a new radical left group called “Stop the Coup 2025.” With Trump now leading in many polls, they’ve already decided that if he wins, the election will be illegitimate (the first “coup” decided by a vote of the people.), So they’re making plans to undermine his Administration, block his agenda, and worst of all, harass and intimidate anyone he might want to hire or appoint to scare out of working for a Trump White House.
This is an example of how, when leftists are allowed to get away with something, they double down on it. Last time around, they used the media and the weaponized Deep State to harass, slander and prosecute anyone who dared to try to commit public service under Trump. But they denied that they were doing that and claimed it just happened because those people were sooooo corrupt.
Now, they’ve ripped their masks off (not literally, of course, but the metaphoric masks) and are revealing their true colors: they’re a radical mob trying to control the government by threatening anyone who disagrees with them to scare them out of taking jobs in it.
If I were Trump, my first consideration for an appointment would be to find someone who is not easily intimidated to head the DOJ, and to immediately end the targeting of parents and pro-life activists and bring back the prosecution and jailing of actual criminals who harass and threaten American citizens.
Kurt Schlichter has a new column that includes his trademark humor but is on a sobering subject:
All the unpredictable "Black Swan" events that could occur in 2024 to affect the election and throw the country (and the world) into chaos.
It’s ironic that one of the favorite leftist attacks on Trump is that he’s a “chaos agent,” when it’s actually Biden who’s thrown everything into a state of constant raging chaos. Anyone who tries to frighten us with stories about how terrible Trump is should first have to explain how he – or for that matter, anyone, from Mussolini to General Zod – could possibly make things worse than Biden has.
As a side note, I’ve seen comments from people asking me to explain why I think all the prosecutions against Trump are groundless and politically-motivated. I believe I’ve done that already in the past, usually as each indictment came up, and not being an attorney, I don’t want to get into the weeds explaining the weaknesses of these unprecedented, politically-motivated selective prosecutions and the judge/jury shopping that ensured they were be heard in hotbeds of anti-Trump bias.
But Kurt Schichter does address that issue in this column. He’s not only a commentator, he’s also a practicing attorney who has argued many major cases and won over $1 million in trial judgements. He's a graduate and former law review editor of Loyola Law School, and the author of legal analysis articles for such legal publications as the Los Angeles Daily Journal and California Lawyer. So I think you can trust him when he warns that Trump might be convicted, even imprisoned, before these cases are appealed to real courts. But he says this about them:
“Understand that none of them have any legal merit. Zero. Nada. As far as the law goes, they are a joke. But no one’s laughing when the Democrats attempt to use the power of law enforcement to arrest and imprison their opponents.”
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