By Mike Huckabee
March 20, 2022
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Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read. Topics include:
- Hunter's laptop: media guilty of election interference
- A blank book of pages
- Another Biden Word Salad
- Durham is investigating DNC email "hack"
- Russo-Ukraine War of 2022 Update
- Signs even San Francisco can get their head out of the clouds
Sincerely,
Mike Huckabee
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
1 Corinthians 1:10
If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].
Hunter's laptop: media guilty of election interference
Warning to all “fact”-checkers and online content moderators (censors): This commentary discusses the theme of election interference, specifically in the 2020 presidential election. And it's all demonstrably true. While some on the left like to rail about supposed “voter suppression,” there’s something else that really can and does affect the outcome of elections, and that’s why it’s used. I’m talking about voter INFORMATION suppression. Voters need information, and to deny them this is to deceive them. We’re tired of the lies.
A poll from the Media Research Center a few weeks after the election in seven key swing states showed that, among the Biden voters who were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and some others such as the Tara Reid allegations, a full 16 percent said that if they’d known, they would not have voted for Biden. They included 4 percent who would have switched and voted for Trump, another 4 percent voting for a third candidate, and another 4 percent not voting for President. Another 5 percent would not have gone to the polls at all. Then there were 5 percent who just wouldn’t answer the question.
Recall that the great Miranda Devine of the New York Post broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, abandoned by him at a Delaware computer repair shop, and later wrote a bestselling book –- highly recommended –- called LAPTOP FROM HELL. Of course, readers of this newsletter know all about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and don’t need a refresher. Along with incredible debauchery surrounding Hunter’s personal life, it contained startling information about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.
Major news outlets such The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and NPR suppressed the story before the 2020 election, with the NYT calling it “unsubstantiated” even in September of 2021. Later the Times re-edited that story for their archives but did not issue a formal correction.
But on Wednesday, deep into an inside-page story about Hunter Biden’s taxes being under federal investigation, they quietly acknowledged the legitimacy of the laptop story, saying that files from Hunter’s laptop had been “authenticated.”
To the surprise of no one, major TV networks other than FOX News didn’t even seem to notice, though we may safely assume they did. But on Thursday, the NY Post editorial board had this response, a must-read:
Recall that Hunter’s former partner on some China business deals, Tony Bobulinksi, came forward in the fall of 2020, right after Devine had broken the story, and confirmed that the Hunter emails bearing his name were real. (He was also interviewed by the FBI.) “How did the Times [finally] authenticate the laptop?” asks the NYP board. “It doesn’t say...No facts have changed since fall 2020. They knew the laptop was real from the start. They just didn’t want to say so."
The Post editorial board also mentioned the meeting between Joe Biden and an official from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that had hired Hunter and his partner Devon Archer to be on its board. The Times had cast doubt on this meeting as well, they said, simply by quoting a Biden campaign spokesperson who said it the meeting wasn’t on his official schedule. Well, if a Biden campaign spokesperson says so...! But Devine can document that it must have taken place.
(Note: We’re not linking to NYT stories on this because it is a subscription service that only pretends to be reporting the news. You’d actually have to give them money even to read one article.)
Sixteen months after Joe Biden was elected –- barely squeaking by in key battleground states –- the Times felt it was safe to quietly mention that the laptop was “authenticated.” Can you even imagine what their reporting on this would have been like in October 2020 if such a laptop had belonged to someone in Donald Trump’s family? It would have been more frenzied than a drug-fueled orgy at Chateau Marmont, one of Hunter’s favorite places to party in Los Angeles.
Speaking of must-read commentaries, Matt Vespa at Townhall has a great one, pointing out that the Hunter Biden laptop story was THE “October Surprise” of the 2020 election, buried by the liberal news media and smeared by the same people who peddled the Steele “dossier” and the whole nonsensical Russian hoax in 2016.
How many times does it have to happen? In story after story, we’ve got it right and they’re shown to be wrong, and they just keep trying to keep the lies going. Vespa points out that when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this on Thursday, she could only weakly deflect. “I would point you to the Department of Justice,” she said, “and also to Hunter Biden’s representatives. He doesn’t work in government.” That’s irrelevant, Jen, and you know it.
Of course, in this era when so many are (unwisely) getting their news from social media, it wasn’t enough that newspapers such as the Times were suppressing information before the election. Twitter had to help, too, and they did, by actively censoring the Post for days, punishment for daring to report their true story. “Twitter banned us for supposedly publishing ‘hacked materials’ that weren’t hacked,” the editorial board said. “The company’s CEO apologized, but by that point, they had accomplished what they wanted. Like the Times, they cast enough doubt to avoid making their preferred candidate look bad.”
In October of 2020, readers of the Post (and this newsletter, of course) knew “that Hunter Biden pursued business deals in Europe and Asia” to the tune of billions of dollars, and that he “may have leveraged his father’s position as Vice President to do it.” There was much more, as you’re aware, such as the reference to setting aside 10 percent of the spoils for “the big guy.” But Twitter and other social media did what they could to contain all of this.
And the term “Russian disinformation” (used interchangeably with “misinformation” because many so-called journalists don’t even seem to know the distinction) was everywhere. Biden himself blamed Russia, in a presidential debate. Thursday night, Tucker Carlson had a great interview with Miranda Devine and also aired a fun montage of “journalists” and public officials repeating variations of the same "Russian disinformation" talking point over and over.
We couldn’t find a clip of just that segment posted yet; here’s the whole episode with the segment starting at 24:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr6HL74NjHo
I said recently that Lesley Stahl needed to apologize to President Trump for contradicting him during an interview, after he correctly said he’d been spied on. Update: She now needs to apologize twice, this time for repeatedly insisting that the laptop “can’t be verified” as Hunter’s. When Trump presses her to tell him how she knows, she vapidly keeps insisting it can’t be verified.
https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=50581443-31DE-4A4C-9858-8274544E8A62
President Trump was asked on Thursday–- not by Lesley Stahl –- about the NYT’s admission about the laptop, and we’d like to leave you with his comments, brief and to the point.
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A blank book of pages
The first school in which we enroll, and the most important in shaping our future, is our home. A casual view of modern TV shows might lead us to believe that parents don’t matter. I contend that nothing matters more.
When Benjamin West was a boy, his mother left him in charge of his younger sister, Sally. Benjamin found bottles of colored ink and painted Sally’s portrait. When his mother arrived home, she discovered spilled ink and ruined paper. But before she had the chance to scold Benjamin, she saw the picture. Then she planted an encouraging kiss on his cheek. He would grow up to become of the greatest painters of historic and religious artworks, a teacher of many other famous artists, and a major force in launching Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts, for which he served as president. Benjamin West would later say, “My mother’s kiss made me a painter.”
Every child’s life is like a book of blank pages waiting to be written on. Something is written each day. A parent who exposes a child of hours of television, video games, unsupervised time on the Internet, and an occasional trip to church is not likely to raise a child whose value system will mirror that of the parent. The child will probably reflect the value system of the entertainment industry.
While researching for a book I co-wrote on juvenile delinquency (“Kids Who Kill”), I became aware that children need parents who are informed, involved and (yes) invasive in their children’s lives. There is no single fact that will explain why a child as young as eleven would commit mass murder, but one thing seems certain: the likelihood of this taking place decreases drastically when children have a stable home, good role models and parents who are clearly more afraid for their children than afraid of their children.
Too many parents fear angering or alienating their children. They convince themselves that love means avoiding asking their children questions about how their time is spent and who their friends are. They fool themselves into thinking they’re being good parents when they don’t hold their children accountable for their schoolwork and other activities. On the other hand, we shouldn’t be “helicopter parents” who are so overprotective that our children turn into a generation of “snowflakes” who cannot learn through their failures or develop a healthy maturity and independence.
The requirement of parents summed up in Ephesians 6:4 is simple yet profound: “Do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Children should not be driven to exasperation by parents who make demands that are so difficult to achieve that the children are prevented from succeeding. There’s a vast difference between breaking a child’s rebellious will and breaking his or her spirit.
As parents, our goal should be to channel the energy of our children, rather than destroy their creative and curious natures given by God that motivate them to discover their unique purposes. We are further admonished to bring up our children “in the training and instruction of the Lord.” By both example and exhortation, parents are to nourish their children. Most values are caught and then taught. Our children are more likely to imitate what they see us do than what they hear us say.
We live in a world where a meal can be microwaved in seconds, and an Internet message can be transmitted around the world almost instantly (another reason why it would be nice if they were fact-checked before hitting “Send.”) But part of the legacy we must leave is raising children who understand that some things can’t be rushed. Patience is a virtue as well as a pathway to victory. Things of great value take time.
If the thing to which you ascribe the greatest value in your life is your children, then don’t they deserve the greatest amount of time, nurturing and guidance you can possible give?
(Adapted from the book, “Rare, Medium or Done Well: Make the Most of your Life.” )
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Another Biden Word Salad
President Biden continued making public statements that had people again calling for him to take a cognitive test. They weren’t just word salad, they were a whole word salad bar.The weirdest might have been when he started talking about how people try to blackmail their exes with naked photos. There’s a Presidential quote for the ages! But Nick Arama at Redstate.com thinks he knows how that image found its way into Joe’s brain and thus fell out of his mouth: it’s exactly the kind of thing that might happen to his son, Hunter.
Other bizarre Bidenisms ranged from tongue fumbles like referring to Kamala Harris as the First Lady to transparent whoppers such as saying that his “green energy” push that’s helped gas skyrocket to upwards of $7 a gallon will save Americans $500 a year in energy costs. This stuff might be funny if it weren’t coming from the alleged leader of the free world during a time when we need someone who’s capable of dealing with countless domestic problems while also avoiding World War III.
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Durham is investigating DNC email "hack"
During one of her press briefings a few days ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki brought up that old accusation about Russia “hacking” the 2016 election. There is no evidence that Russia changed any vote tallies or did anything else to change the outcome, and Psaki never really made clear what she meant by “hacking the election,” so we find it ironic that she said this in the same briefing in which she spoke about “misinformation.”
It’s also pretty hilarious that anyone questioning the electronic security of the 2020 vote is roundly scorned, even censored and canceled, while questioning the electronic security of the 2016 vote is just fine, even patriotic at a time when Russia has shown itself to be such an enemy.
We’d like to focus on one part of Jerry Dunleavy’s report, the paragraph that has to do with the supposed Russian “hacking” of the DNC’s emails. He wrote that “U.S. intelligence officials did conclude Russian operatives were behind the hacking of Democratic emails in 2016. Russian military intelligence interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in part by spearphishing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email systems, then providing them to WikiLeaks, for dissemination, Robert Mueller’s special counsel report concluded. Russia has denied involvement, and WikiLeaks has denied receiving emails from Russia.”
Of course, we can’t believe anything that comes from the Kremlin –- or, sadly, from U.S. intelligence officials –- but I do have considerably more confidence in what comes from WikiLeaks. The story about Russia “hacking” the DNC still belongs in the category of misinformation. It’s a talking point. I say this even though Robert Mueller concluded in his special counsel report that this had happened. We know now that this conclusion was reached without any actual evidence, because the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike never allowed the FBI to do a forensic examination of the DNC server. The FBI never demanded that they turn it over and, incredibly, took CrowdStrike at its word. We scratch our heads at how the U.S. intel community could legitimately have had “high confidence” –- their words –- that the Russians did this. For what it’s worth, here’s what Mueller said at the time, as reported by Dunleavy in 2019...
But fast-forward to 2022, and Margot Cleveland is reporting that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating the 2016 DNC server hack. If anyone is serious about getting down to the truth about this, you know he is. Until now, there was no known link between the Alfa Bank hoax being investigated by Durham and the DNC “hack,” but now there is. As it happens, the Defense Department tasked the same Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax –- “Researcher – 1” in Durham’s court filings pertaining to the Michael Sussmann case but known to be Mano Antonakakis –- with investigating the “origins” of the DNC hacker.
And here is Cleveland's update on that story:
According to an email obtained by The Federalist on March 9 in response to a “Right-to-Know” request, the special counsel’s office is indeed investigating the so-called “hack,” and “prosecutors harbor concerns” about the Defense Department’s choice of this particular researcher to investigate it.
Cleveland’s report provides a good refresher on Durham’s investigation, but it boils down to this: According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann (Perkins Coie attorney for the Hillary campaign and DNC), a cyber executive named Rodney Joffe (“Tech Executive- 1”) asked Antonakakis and another Georgia Tech researcher, David Dagon (“Researcher – 2”) to find some way to use internet data to connect then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia. Antonakakis –- whom I would add has shown himself in emails to be strongly anti-Trump –- apparently couldn’t find anything useful, because he told Joffe that the results “do not make sense with the storyline you have.” Even so, Joffe came up with a draft “white paper” containing the fake story of a connection between Trump and Alfa Bank, which he gave to these two men and another researcher involved, April Lorenzen, to review. Then Sussmann passed this “white paper” to then-FBI general counsel James Baker, purportedly out of his sense of duty but secretly in service to Joffe and the Hillary campaign, which Durham found was being billed for Sussmann's services.
Until The Federalist got hold of this particular email from Antonakakis, nothing was known of any connection between the Alfa Bank story and the DNC “hack,” but he's the link. Antonakakis had written it to general counsel and other higher-ups at Georgia Tech about a week after his testimony before Durham’s DC grand jury, highlighting “areas of concern” that he wanted to discuss “after the dust settles.” In Cleveland’s words, he “launched a soliloquy that perfectly described the Russia-collusion and the plot by anti-Trump politicians and the deep state intelligence and law enforcement communities to take down the President of the United States.”
It was also a rant in which he painted himself as the victim of the special counsel. He said he’d been asked “point-blank” if “DARPA [the central R&D organization of the Defense Department] should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?” How DARE the special counsel’s office ask that question, he steamed. It’s easily determined from the email that he had indeed been asked to investigate this.
The fact that he was being questioned because his team had allowed itself to be exploited by Sussmann and Joffe for political reasons seems to have been lost on him.
Antonakakis reveals himself to be a sanctimonious and hypocritical piece of work who actually believes he was involved in this fake-narrative project to “preserve our democracy.” Yes, that's the phrase he used, one we've heard all too often from Democrats.
So, why did the special counsel’s office “dare” to ask him about this? Something had to lead Durham to find out, or at least suspect, that Antonakakis had been tasked by DARPA with investigating the DNC "hack." And something had to lead Durham to be concerned about this. What did this arm of the Defense Department have to do with it, and who there was involved? Did they gain access to the DNC server? If so, was it Sussmann, as attorney for the DNC and Hillary’s campaign, who granted it?
This opens up a whole new area for Durham, but one that continues to tie together the same group of folks. Sussmann ties them to Hillary, where (as we’ve said many times) all roads lead. Too much remains a mystery about the DNC “hack” --- note that we always put "hack" in quotes, as there is no proof it even WAS a hack, let alone by Russia. Julian Assange has said flat-out that neither Russia nor any other state government was his source. Yet it seems to have been the event that spawned the whole long “Russia Russia Russia” hoax that, in some circles, still refuses to die. Other than Assange, who else knows the identity of whoever obtained the Podesta/DNC emails and gave them to him?
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Russo-Ukraine War of 2022 Update
By Colonel Ken Allard
Three weeks into the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022, it is reasonable to ask: Who is deterring whom - and from what?
So far, the only one being deterred seems to be Joe Biden, who clumsily refused to allow Polish Mig-29’s to be transferred to Ukraine despite the fervent pleas of embattled president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Meanwhile, Old Uncle Joe was busy linking Vladimir Putin not only to the war in Ukraine but also to sky-rocketing American gas prices and rising inflation, twin outrages for which the Russian premiere bears only slight, if any, responsibility. Through such constant buffoonery, President Biden seems intent on channeling that canonical Mayor of Amity, hilariously reassuring townsfolk that a lucrative tourist season lay just ahead, despite Jaws occasionally snacking on their relatives.
Because we are a nation divorced from studying such politically incorrect subjects as military history, we can no longer distinguish the consequential from the trivial, the capillaries from the arteries. From Afghanistan to Ukraine, our intelligence community has been hit hardest, seemingly unable to predict whether Tuesday will be followed by Wednesday. Not only were our intel weenies utterly mistaken in predicting how fast the Taliban would triumph but they also admitted last week to the House Intelligence Committee that they had seriously under-estimated the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s citizens. Naturally, they over-corrected, reciting a laundry list of Russian tactical shortcomings. Caught up in the latest zeitgeist, Francis Fukuyama - famous for predicting the end of history several decades too early - argued last week “Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine…The army in the field will reach a point whether they can no longer be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize.” https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/
While we can all hope that Professor Fukuyama will be proven right, America’s enemies seem to be a long way from desperation. While we plead for them to produce additional oil and prepare to sign yet another nuclear non-proliferation scam, the Iranians were not deterred at all - raining their rockets down on an American consulate in Irbil, Iraq. How much does Putin fear NATO - with or without a rearmed Germany - when he launches air-strikes that came within a dozen miles of Polish territory over the weekend? And for good measure also threatened to target logistical routes acting as lifelines to the Ukrainian resistance?
Please forgive me for casting doubt on such widely-cherished Beltway assumptions: But Vladimir Putin and his fellow conspirators in the new Axis nations are not desperate! Instead, they have concluded - correctly in my view - that America suffers from catastrophically weak leadership, that it has abandoned its core spiritual values, as well as the world-beating confidence that our country once took for granted. While conceding that American martial prowess can be painfully recovered (or at least not entirely ruled out) neo-Axis leaders believe that the timing will never be better for a basic re-ordering of the global order. That new order will naturally reflect non-Western interests and dismiss any weaker set of values.
Ukraine is already one major stake in this game, Taiwan is surely next while NATO’s newly-minted Baltic states might not be far off. When measured against the potential stakes, who cares if Russian logistical problems persist, if they lose a few tanks or if they sacrifice a few more generals trying to recapture the morale of their troops? As my friend LTG Jim Dubik wrote recently, “Like other raw realists, Putin has no intention of stopping with Ukraine…Raw realists (like him) take what they can, when they can, until someone stops them.” https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/596614-the-world-after-the-war-in-ukraine-who-or-what-will-stop-putin?amp
I am also a realist of sorts, one who cherishes memories of the West Point faculty but now wonders how far the fault lines extend when five cadets are hospitalized after taking fentanyl-laced cocaine while on spring break. To say nothing of that loser who belatedly forfeited his commission only after posting a selfie that argued, “Communism will win.” It is also frustrating to see other losers with stars on the shoulders of their World War II knock-off uniforms, who have either forgotten or never learned the harsh lessons of real war.
They now confront an opponent who will shrug off small shortcomings to focus on the larger objective- using traditional Russian reliance on massed troops and massed firepower to compel the enemy’s total compliance or complete obliteration. He will not be stopped by the mindless half-measures or the bloodless counter-moves now passing for “deterrence.”
During a three-decade career, Colonel Allard advanced from draftee to the West Point faculty and Dean of the National War College. The author of four books, he was also an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News.
America The Beautiful
God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Grand Canyon National Park, visit its website here.
Signs even San Francisco can get their head out of the clouds
There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. With virtually everyone in San Francisco now having become a crime victim thanks to “progressive” district attorney Chesa Boudin’s policy of ignoring crime and releasing criminals back into the streets, is it possible that even San Francisco liberals are capable of having some sense literally knocked into their heads?
A new poll by EMC Research found that 68% of likely primary voters plan to vote to throw Boudin out of office. That includes 64% of registered Democrats. Nearly three-quarters of respondents have an unfavorable opinion of Boudin, and 61% believe he’s responsible for the rising crime rate. Really? What was their first clue?
Between this and the recent surprise ousting of three ultra-left school board members, there are hopeful signs that even in San Francisco, the “woke” can wake up when things get bad enough. It remains to be seen, however, whether they will replace these blights on the public good with anyone better, or, as New Yorkers have done, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
This is, after all, the city so tolerant and devoted to diversity that its elected officials now refuse to do business or travel to more than half of America. A recent memo from the City Administrator pointed out that due to their disapproval of other places’ insufficiently woke policies on such leftist shibboleths as abortion, LGBTQ+++ issues and election integrity laws (i.e., “voter suppression”), San Francisco is now boycotting 28 of the 50 states.
This is making it difficult and expensive for the city to conduct basic public business, since they have to source every necessity from building contractors to bus parts from the dwindling handful of options that are still pure enough in their wokeness. And I’d be willing to bet there aren’t too many good contractors or bus part factories still in those places, since they’ve probably already moved to red states.
You’d think that when a city is overrun with crime, homelessness, drug needles and human feces, the people would be so furious that they’d throw out every last public official who thinks none of that is as important as virtue signaling about other places not showing enough deference to trans people. But in San Francisco, the jury is still out. I’m hopeful for the next elections, but I’ll believe they’re recovered their sanity when I see it.
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