By Mike Huckabee
June 17, 2023
|
|
Daily Bible Verse
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
Proverbs 16:9 KJV
“Huckabee” Preview
Don’t forget that Sunday is Father’s Day. So give dad an early gift by letting him settle into the recliner to watch a great new episode of “Huckabee” tonight on TBN. I’ll talk about current hot button political issues with Sen. Lindsey Graham. Hilarious comedian David Kaye will bring the laughs. Vintage Guitar magazine senior editor Willie G. Moseley is here for a must-see segment. And our musical guest segment is something very special: an interview and performance from the band that invented the Contemporary Christian Music genre, LoveSong.
It all gets rolling tonight at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and Sunday at 9 EST/8 CST on TBN. To find out how to watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv and click on “Channel Finder” on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only “Digital Exclusives,” including extended interviews, “In Case You Missed It” and “Facts of the Matter” segments, plus extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests and links to all their sites, at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.
Video of the Day
A CNN reporter pressed Speaker Kevin McCarthy on whether he would defend Trump against charges that he mishandled (marked) classified documents. He bluntly reminded her that Andrew McCabe was fired from the FBI for leaking classified documents, and James Clapper lied to the American people about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation, and CNN not only hired both of them but continues to stand behind them and pay them to pontificate on their channel.
He demanded, “Are you prepared to get rid of those people from your network? Because my concern as a policymaker is that when you weaponize government, and now you’re weaponizing networks, that is wrong.”
She should have responded, "But...this is CNN!"
Found it!
When a reporter asked about the alleged $10 million in bribes from a Burisma executive to the Biden family, President Biden brushed it off by saying, “Where’s the money?” Well, some Republicans are wondering if maybe they’ve found it…on Biden’s 2017 tax return.
Another reminder of the two-tiered justice system
Here’s yet another reminder that the two-tiered “justice” system isn’t just at the federal level, but anywhere that “progressive” Democrats seize control of a district attorney’s office. It’s why a mentally unstable repeat criminal can be arrested and released over 40 times and face no serious consequences, but the hammer will be brought down on a Marine veteran who protected innocent citizens from him.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2023/06/15/plea-deal-for-nyc-hate-crime-n2624499
Joe Biden’s railroad dreams
Whenever Joe Biden goes off the teleprompter, you can expect a train wreck. But imagine the train wreck that would ensue if we actually let him build a railroad “across the Indian Ocean.”
Planned Parenthood CEO earnings
It isn’t outrageous enough that hundreds of millions of our tax dollars are given to Planned Parenthood every year. But a new report by STOPP International on the abortion-chain-disguised-as-a-health-clinic found that executive salaries at the “nonprofit” far exceed those of the average corporate executive. The average compensation for a CEO at Planned Parenthood affiliates hit $317,564 in 2020, up 33% in five years. The top paid PP CEO pulls down $616,926, putting her in the top 1% of US earners.
Another surprising finding for such a leftist, virtue-signaling organization: there’s a notable disparity in salaries by gender and race at Planned Parenthood. Out of 53 affiliate CEOs, the second- and third-highest paid are white men, and only seven identified as people of color (three Hispanic and four black.)
Well, maybe they’d like to hire more black CEOs, but there just aren’t many black applicants because they keep aborting them.
A Majority of Americans agree with this position on “gender-affirming care” …
If you listen to leftists and their media hand puppets, you’d think that everything they push is the accepted truth and anything that questions it is “controversial” at best and “dangerous disinformation” at worst. But how can an opinion be “controversial” when the vast majority of Americans agree with it?
I already told you this week about a new poll showing that large majorities of Americans disapprove of “gender-affirming care” (i.e., surgical and chemical mutilation) of children. Yet the media claim that’s the “controversial” opinion. Now comes a new narrative-shattering Mason-Dixon Poll. After two years of Democrats attacking the Supreme Court for not ruling the way they want, questioning the Court's legitimacy, demanding that more Justices be added so the SCOTUS can be politically packed, attacking conservative Justices’ ethics and even threatening them in their homes, this poll shows a staggering majority of Americans like the Supreme Court the way it is.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/supreme-court-poll-reveals-americans-clear-message-congress
In one of his many bait-and-switch campaign promises, Joe Biden said before the 2020 election, "The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want.” Then shortly after taking office, he set up a commission to study multiple ways to change the Court. Fortunately, he hasn’t tried to implement any of them, and this poll shows Americans likely wouldn’t stand for it.
The poll found that 59% oppose attacks on the Justices’ integrity, 68% oppose the left’s fever dream of Court-packing, 72% believe politicizing the Supreme Court threatens judicial independence, and a whopping 91% believe an independent judiciary is a crucial safeguard of our civil liberties. Also, 69% don’t want Congress setting rules for judicial ethics.
Although I imagine they’d be okay with Congress finally setting some rules for their own ethics.
Released: The first of many decisions from SCOTUS
Speaking of the SCOTUS, it’s releasing some long-awaited major decisions this month. Friday morning, the Court issued a 7-2 ruling upholding Congress’ authority under the Indian Child Welfare Act to give preference to Native American couples in the adoptions of Native American children.
The plaintiffs were a White Texas evangelical couple who wanted to adopt a Native American boy and argued that it was unconstitutional racial discrimination to give preference to Native American parents. The tribes opposed the adoption while the child's mother, father and grandmother supported it. The couple also tried to adopt a Native American girl who has lived with them for five years and is part of their family, but the tribe again objected. The states of Texas, Louisiana and Indiana sided with the couple.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that “Congress's power to legislate with respect to Indians is well established and broad" and supersedes "both tribal and state authority" in this case. However, Justice Kavanaugh said the racial discrimination issue wasn’t settled by this case and was a serious question that should be revisited in a future case.
Must-See
Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw grilled Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale, who was supposedly an “expert witness” opposing a measure to ban transgender medical treatments for minors. Her attempts to be condescending fell flat when it became apparent that Crenshaw had done his homework on this issue – possibly more than she had.
Read that article or watch the video to see how Crenshaw politely and skillfully gutted her claims like a carp, forcing her to confront the fact that a British Medical Journal review of 61 studies couldn’t turn up any evidence that “puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries in young people” have any positive benefits. When she tried to change the subject to the high standards of care that kids subjected to this butchery (my term) receive, Crenshaw used an excuse blocker on her:
He said, “The standards of care — that’s not a journal, that’s not a study, that’s not an organization, that’s not an institution. You’re just saying words. Name one study.”
Spoiler alert: she couldn’t.
Related: If you’d like an eye-opening lesson in why our military is falling behind China and can’t fill its recruit quotas, then grab a barf bag and listen to this. It’s a speech by the US Space Force’s Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber, and Nuclear, Lieutenant General Deanna Burt. She spoke earlier this month at the Pentagon’s 12th Annual LGBTQ+ Pride Celebration. Her topic: denouncing state laws that ban the grooming and “transing” of children as somehow undermining military readiness. I can see why they named her a top space cadet.
A Victim of NYC Crime? Don’t defend yourself…
On the same day that US Marine Daniel Penney was indicted for manslaughter in New York, a similar incident was unfolding on another subway car. A mentally-disturbed ex-con named Devictor Ouedraogo was pacing the car, taking off his shirt and threatening to “erase” the passengers. He began threatening one couple, and after he punched the young woman in the face, her companion, 20-year-old Jordan Williams, pulled a knife and stabbed him twice. Ouedraogo died, and now Williams, too, is facing manslaughter charges.
The twist is that Twitter mobs accused the white Penny of racism for defending the passengers from a threatening, mentally-deranged black man who’d been arrested and released over 40 times. They can’t do that with Williams, who is black himself. Even his own mother drew parallels with Penny in pleading for her son’s release from the Rikers Island jail, writing, “He should not suffer because he cannot afford bail on a case where he simply was justified in the actions he took.” She noted that Penny was bailed out immediately because supporters donated funds, but worries her son won’t be, even though they both acted in self-defense.
It's a good point, also made by the New York Post’s Nicole Gelinas, that conservatives should also support Williams or else he’ll be kept in jail and forced to accept a plea for defending himself and his girlfriend against a dangerous ex-con who was assaulting them.
The cruel irony is that both of these men, and I assume, anyone else who defends himself from a criminal who’s been repeatedly released by the NYC DA, will be charged by that same DA for defending himself. The people who are really responsible for all the crime, fear, assaults and deaths are the leftist DAs who reflexively side with criminals over law-abiding citizens. The best you can say about them is that these two cases prove they aren’t racist: they will charge law-abiding citizens for defending themselves, regardless of their color.
Of course, the DA's never have to worry about defending themselves from the criminals they’ve freed, since they have police protection and never take the subway. They should be forced to ride it every day with no protection and see what they’ve created. Better yet, they’re the ones who should be in a jail cell on Rikers Island, paying for all the blood that’s on their hands.
Least Surprising News of the Week
A review by the Washington Free Beacon of public financial records found that 99.5% of political donations by so-called professional “fact-checkers” go to Democrats or liberal organizations, despite their claims to be objective and impartial.
Over the past four election cycles, “fact-checkers” gave $22,683 to politicians with $22,580 of that going to Democrats. Only three donated to Republicans, giving a combined total of $103. They also gave ten times more money to Bernie Sanders alone than to all Republicans combined.
I don’t know what they think all those donations are buying them, but it did help earn them the quotation marks I always put around “fact checkers.”
This Is CNN
“THIS… Is CNN…and your eyelids are getting veeeery heeeavy…” In an attempt to rewrite reality that was stunning even for CNN, business reporter Christine Romans claimed that Bud Light’s sudden fall from the #1 selling beer in America wasn’t due to conservatives boycotting it over its association with “trans influencer” Dylan Mulvaney, but merely “changing tastes” in beer. It was so jaw-dropping, even the other CNN correspondent couldn’t swallow it without choking (I mean her claim, not Bud Light.)
I’m not a drinker, but I understand that taste has very little to do with Bud Light’s success.
Never Mistake Virtue Signaling For Actual Virtue
New York City Mayor Eric Adams backtracked on his claim that if city lawyers approved it, he would be glad to welcome illegal migrants to come live with his family in Gracie Mansion.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/15/eric-adams-migrants-gracie-mansion-symbolic/
Turns out that rhetoric was just “symbolic.” He said doing that would be illegal and “we are never going to break the law” (they’re just going to encourage and support millions of illegal aliens who do it.) Adams “explained”…
“Leading the challenge of the migrant problem is both substantive and symbolic and as I always said, ‘Good generals lead from the front.' They don’t send their troops into battle and ask, ‘How was the war?’ They lead them into battle. The symbolism of saying, ‘I’m willing to put a homeless family in Gracie’ is that symbolism…And so, we’d be able to know what we can’t do and what we can’t do as a symbolism of saying, ‘I’m willing to open up the people’s house to the people of the city.'”
Translation: His wife found out what he said.
Welcome to California
Welcome to Gavin Newsom’s California, which has dived so deep into leftist lunacy land that even one of its own state senators is urging citizens to flee to another state.
First World Problems Update
In 2021, pop singer Demi Lovato announced that she was “gender neutral” and declared that from then on, her pronouns would be “they/them.” A year later, she added “she/her” to her list of pronouns because she was “feeling more feminine.” Now, she’s reverted to “she/her” exclusively and dropped “they/them” because "I constantly had to educate people and explain why I identified with those pronouns. It was absolutely exhausting."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/demi-lovato-she-her-pronouns
Trust me, Demi, if you think it was exhausting for you, imagine how the poor people who had to deal with your nonsense felt. Here’s a clue: unless you’re an identical twin or have a split personality, you’re not a “they.” Here’s something nobody seems to have the guts to say anymore, not even English teachers, but I have a feeling it’s about to come roaring back as everyone’s just about fed up with this:
All these narcissistic demands that everyone learn and use your “personal pronouns” not only commit violence against proper grammar, they also completely negate the point of having pronouns at all. Pronouns were invented because we needed a few basic terms that refer to very large groups of people since it’s impossible for anyone to learn all their individual names. “Personal pronouns” are just another word for individual names. Throw in gibberish like “xe” and “xir” and it becomes exponentially more difficult to keep all this hooey straight. Add in harsh punishments for anyone who shares the common human weakness of not being able to read the minds of countless mentally unstable people and “misgenders” them, and you’ve added tyranny to insanity.
Demanding that people use your “personal pronouns” is the equivalent of demanding that every stranger you meet must call you by your name, even if they don’t know it. If that’s what you want, stop insisting that people read your mind and just wear a name tag 24/7.
Irony Alert
Rita Joseph notes that the indictment of Donald Trump coincides with the 808th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, which established fair and equal treatment under the law as a basic human right.
https://www.westernjournal.com/joseph-trumps-indictment-coincides-anniversary-event-made-impossible/
Speaking of unequal application of the law, and not that anyone expects Democrats to actually be held accountable for violating laws, but…just one week after Biden’s press secretary was cited by the Special Counsel’s Office for violating the Hatch Act by using the political term “MAGA” during her official duties, the White House is still doing it. Okay, DOJ: where are those federal indictments?
Oversight
A Louisiana high school is reviewing its policies after an illegal immigrant posed as a 17-year-old ninth grader and attended school there for a year without anyone realizing she was actually 28 years old. She’s facing charges and if found guilty, will be sentenced to star in a high school drama series on the CW Network.
“Mar-A-Lago” prosecutors cheapen the image of sleazy lawyers everywhere
On Friday, we looked at what one former assistant U.S. attorney, Will Scharf, said about the Trump “Mar-A-Lago” case, including that Stanley Woodward, attorney for Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta, had accused DOJ official Jay Bratt of suggesting Woodward’s pending judicial appointment might be looked on more favorably if he and his client cooperated against Trump. That seemed like such egregious prosecutorial misconduct that it might get the whole case tossed out.
FYI --- Here’s a little background on Bratt, who, as head of counterintelligence, was in charge of the Mar-A-Lago raid and was the official who inspected the main storage area in advance of that unnecessary show of force, telling them to put that extra lock on the door.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/18/inside-the-controversial-fbi-unit-behind-the-trump-raid/
Of course, Scharf had more. He also noted that prosecutors violated attorney-client privilege by forcing Trump’s attorneys to testify before the grand jury about private conversations. Special counsel Jack Smith has tried to paint those conversations as part of a criminal conspiracy to break the law when they were really just Trump talking with his attorneys to clarify what they could and could not do. You know, getting ADVICE from legal counsel --- what every defendant is supposed to be able to do in private. Trump’s attorneys have argued that this is yet another example of prosecutorial misconduct.
Even just the choice of Smith by Attorney General Merrick Garland as special counsel has tainted this case, Scharf said, because Smith has shown over-the-line aggressiveness and overzealousness as a prosecutor before. And you know Garland’s choice was no accident.
That brings us to an exclusive story in PJ MEDIA by Catherine Salgado, who tells us this isn’t the first time Jack Smith has come under fire for his abuse of the attorney-client privilege.
Smith and his team have previously been sanctioned for this, in their case against former Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi, who pleaded not guilty to bribery and extortion charges, was convicted, and was later given a full presidential pardon by President Trump --- ironically, because he’d been subjected to the same sort of prosecutorial misconduct that’s being used against Trump now.
So, how did Smith and his team violate Renzi’s attorney-client privilege? By illegally wiretapping Renzi’s attorneys during privileged conversations with Renzi --- dozens of times.
According to Renzi, they were sanctioned three times. “The first is, they illegally wiretapped my attorney 41 times, they lied to the court that they did that, and they did it in order to try and pierce the attorney-client privilege using the crime-fraud exception, the same thing they us[ing] now on President Trump.”
Smith didn’t actually place the wiretaps himself, but he was responsible for overseeing the other members of his team and for holding them accountable. He did not; instead, he doubled down. Prosecutors went so far as to indict one of Renzi’s attorneys, who was later found innocent of all charges.
Once again, the DOJ is allegedly trying to use conversations protected by attorney-client privilege, this time against Trump. As Renzi explains, Smith and his hand-picked lead prosecutor David Harbach are claiming that the “former President was trying to commit a crime by asking” a certain question, even though it was “normal and proper” attorney-client privileged communication.
One of Trump’s own attorneys (until very recently), Timothy Parlatore, said Smith’s team “crossed a line” while he was testifying before the grand jury, by asking him questions that infringed on attorney-client privilege. Just as in Renzi’s case, Smith’s team was “not acting appropriately,” Parlatore said, “and made several attempts to pierce privilege and, in my opinion, made several significant misstatements to the [grand] jury, which I believe constitutes prosecutorial misconduct.”
Renzi told Salgado that “the question Trump asked [his attorneys] is being wrongly used against him. These guys have used it, framed it, in order to pierce the attorney-client privilege veil, just as they tried to do in my case.” Salgado concluded her report with a teaser that promised “more exclusive and shocking accusations of prosecutorial misconduct from Smith.”
In a story from Tuesday, Salgado has more. “Based on a 2019 complaint filed on Renzi’s behalf by respected legal firm Mayer Brown, evidence was found of prosecutorial misconduct, including improper media leaks, illegal wiretaps, concealment of exculpatory evidence, and introduction of false testimony before and during Renzi’s trial. This misconduct involved both the FBI and DOJ, with prosecutors under the supervision of none other than Jack Smith. David Harbach was among those handling the prosecution of Renzi.”
Smith’s tactics in his prosecution of President Trump seem to very much echo the Renzi case. Renzi has no illusions talking about Smith now: “Jack Smith gets up, wraps himself in the [U.S.] flag as an independent, but he’s been clearly biased against Republicans for years. He’s very, very dangerous.”
Another strategy used by Smith and Harbach: choosing the jury based on political beliefs. For Renzi’s trial, they asked members of the jury pool to raise their hands if they were pro-life or in favor of pregnancy centers. Those who raised their hands were not selected for the jury. That might have had something to do with Ranzi being a vocally pro-life congressman who is also the father of 12 children. Similarly, knowing that pro-life jurors are likely to support Trump, Smith and Harbach could easily use the same technique to weed them out of Trump’s jury pool.
CNN has actually looked with favor on stacking Trump’s jury politically against him, saying jurors should be chosen for their “worldviews” and “where [they] get their news.”
So we know what this is: a political prosecution --- more accurately, persecution --- of a former President and current leading candidate for President, run by the kind of attorney who shouldn’t even be allowed to practice law.
Chris Farrell, director of investigations and research of Judicial Watch, discussed the Presidential Records Act with Dan Ball on the “Real America” podcast saying the President has an “absolute, unreviewable authority” to decide what will be his personal records. And the National Archives are “specifically prohibited” from getting involved in deciding what’s personal and what’s a presidential record. This ruling, from DC District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, came out of the now-famous Bill Clinton “sock drawer” case, which, ironically, was brought, and lost, by Judicial Watch. It has stood unchallenged for 12 years.
“Bill Clinton gets a pass, he gets to walk and do whatever he damn well pleases; Donald Trump gets a phonied-up, way-out-of-the-ballpark Espionage Act claim brought against him.”
Some legal analysts are saying Clinton’s tapes of interviews and conversations are not the same as defense-related materials, but applied to the Espionage Act, this is a specious argument until we know the nature of those materials and if Trump thought his possession of them posed any danger to national security.
Farrell notes that the indictment drawn up by Jack Smith against President Trump contains not even one mention of the Presidential Records Act. If Smith mentions it, that opens the door to the “Clinton sock drawer” decision.
Judicial Watch is suing to find out who is on Smith’s prosecution team, because Smith won’t say. But they’re not supposed to be acting as a secret cabal. Is this largely the same cast of characters, the same political hacks who faked the Russia Hoax against Trump and later worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team? We’ll be surprised if it’s not.
………………..
RELATED: And now for the flip side. Jeff Charles at REDSTATE wonders if the FBI ever really investigated the Biden bribery scandal at all.
FOX NEWS’ Harris Faulkner interviewed Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton about suing to obtain information about the 1,850 boxes of documents held at the Penn Biden Center. They also want a copy of the secret deal the university has with Joe Biden to keep the American people from seeing them. Fitton says Biden’s deal was structured in such a way that we won’t see them until “two years after he leaves politics.”
Finally, for your weekend reading (I won’t say “reading pleasure” because it’ll make you mad), here’s Alan Dershowitz on the problem Trump is having even HIRING top attorneys. We’ve talked before about the “65 Project,” a detestable group that tries to intimidate lawyers out of representing Trump. Thoroughly disgusting and un-American.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-donald-trump-cannot-get-top-tier-lawyer
Congratulations Laura
Congratulations to our writer Laura Ainsworth. Her “other” job is singing retro jazz, and her great new album “You Asked For It” just racked up a couple more impressive accolades. It won the indie artist Akademia Music Awards for Jazz Album of the Month and Jazz Video of the Month for June 2023.
The group’s site describes the album this way: “A sentimentally-distilled collection of classic jazz ballads, ‘You Asked For It’ is astonishingly subtle to abet its dazzling vocal and instrumental ingenuities. This essential album demonstrates an impressive range of jazz intrigues.” As for the video of her jazz reinvention of “Goldfinger,” they write: “Laura Ainsworth’s rendition of the cinema classic ‘Goldfinger’ is one of the most intriguing noir jazz pieces we’ve encountered – an immaculately rendered visual work.”
You can see that video here, and please “like,” comment and share:
And you can buy the album here:
Or you can find it all and more at http://www.lauraainsworth.com
Glenda Jackson RIP
By “Huckabee” pop culture guru Pat Reeder (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com)
I’m sorry to have to report that British actress Glenda Jackson died Thursday at her home in London at 87.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/glenda-jackson-two-time-oscar-winner-dead-87
She was one of the rare “triple crown” winners of acting, having received an Emmy, a Tony and two Oscars for Best Actress (for “A Touch of Class” and “Women in Love”) out of four Oscar nominations. Unlike actors who just like to spout their political opinions, Jackson left acting in her 50s to run for Britain’s Parliament, where she served for 23 years and was Tony Blair’s minister for transport (and I’m sure a better one than Pete Buttigieg.)
She left Parliament in 2017 and returned to acting, where she won her Tony in her 80s, as well as a BAFTA, the British Oscar equivalent. She still has another movie that’s yet to be released, “The Great Escaper,” co-starring Michael Caine, 90, with whom she last appeared in “The Romantic Englishwoman” in 1975.
Despite decades of acclaim, Jackson kept her ego in check, once revealing that she gave her two Oscars to her mother, who used them as bookends.
I Just Wanted to Say
Thank you for reading my newsletter.
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2023/6/huckabee-post
Leave a Comment
Note: Fields marked with an * are required.