Mike Huckabee

NOTE: The following commentary is not Russian disinformation, nor is it about a “debunked right-wing conspiracy theory,” as the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is currently characterized on Wikipedia.

Joe Biden denied the allegations during Thursday's debate, saying, “My son has NOT made money, in terms of this thing about...uh, what are you talking about?...China.” Interesting that he denied it before it was even quite formed in his mind what he was denying. He said “nobody else has made money from China” besides Donald Trump. Um, what?? Well, I guess that’s good enough for Wikipedia.

Unlike Wikipedia, I want hard evidence, and everything I’ve seen is on the side of this being true.

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson continues to face roadblocks in his attempts to call attention to this very real scandal, as he said on this week’s SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES with Maria Bartiromo. On October 21, Sen. Johnson sent a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz to tell him the pubic has a right to know why the FBI sat on the evidence from the laptop after receiving it last December during Trump’s impeachment. (It sure would've come in handy for Trump’s defense then, as it shows why the Bidens needed to be investigated in Ukraine.)

According to Sen. Johnson, Biden’s denial is a lie. He referred to page 78 of the Homeland Security Committee’s report, which shows that the conglomerate CEFC Chinese Energy transferred approximately $5 million to businesses controlled by Hunter Biden. And, of course, we know from the emails that Joe was lying when he said he never spoke to his son about his foreign business dealings. We also know that Joe and Hunter flew together on Air Force Two to China, where the elder Biden had a nice warm handshake with a Chinese executive who ended up being Hunter's business partner in the $1 billion investment fund Bohai Harvest RST. There is more, outlined during his segment on the show.

Sen. Johnson said that Joe Biden has been caught in repeated lies about “Biden, Inc,” POLITICO’s name for the Biden family businesses as early as August, 2019. So, why weren’t the media trying to cover for Joe Biden back then? One logical explanation is they were likely all in the tank for either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, not Biden. In fact, they might have actively disliked Biden’s gaffes and inappropriate hair-sniffing and actually wanted to expose this scandal. That is, until he became the nominee and they no longer wanted to. It’s hard to believe they ever reported this.

POLITICO isn't the only one that used to be interested in this. BUZZFEED, which probably also leaned Bernie’s way, sent an email to the Office of the Vice President after the announcement that Hunter had joined the Burisma board, saying in effect that this was very odd and represented “a glaring conflict of interest” and did the VP have any comment?

Where is that kind of interest now? More recent stories from BUZZFEED call the original reports “old allegations.” The big difference now: Biden is currently facing off not against Sanders or Warren, but against President Trump. So one good way to learn about this scandal –-- and the only way to discover anything about it from the mainstream media –- is to go back to the reporting from before Biden was the nominee.

Of course, now there's emerging evidence to report, if anyone will. “What we’re really finding out,” Sen. Johnson said, “is Hunter really ‘cracked the code,’ somewhere around 2013-2014, in terms of how to really vacuum up these dollars and how to attract money from people that wanted to have influence...and utilize the Biden name.”

Investigative reporter Peter Schweizer, the author of SECRET EMPIRES who has long been looking into the Biden family’s businesses, obtained 26,000 emails from former Hunter business partner Bevan Cooney, who now languishes in prison –- to be joined soon by Devon Archer but NOT Hunter Biden –- for an Indian bond fraud scheme that dates to the magic-money period of 2013-14, and some messages show that Chinese partners wanted CFIUS approval for acquisitions in the U.S. (This is reminiscent of the influence that might've been used to gain Hillary Clinton’s CFIUS approval of Russia’s Uranium One Deal.) As Schweizer explained, some of these deals involve “dual-use technologies,” meaning they have both civilian and military applications. Uh-oh. This is, Schweizer told Bartiromo, “about the Biden family participating in the transfer of U.S. technologies to China and getting paid for participating in that.”

We hope Bevan Cooney is in protective custody, and it seems he might be.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has released a comprehensive report by Kim Strassel, but when asked about it on the campaign trail, Biden reacted with anger, not anything of substance.

The NEW YORK POST ran Schweizer’s op-ed about the evidence supplied by Hunter’s emails, but don’t look for this on Twitter or Facebook!

Schweizer said the emails make very clear that Hunter brought absolutely nothing to the table but his connections to Joe Biden (“the big guy”) and, through him, the Obama administration. Hunter would be able to get them meetings to help with regulatory matters. They describe the Biden name as “a form of currency” –- the so-called “Biden Lift.” They describe this as “the direct avenue” to the Obama/Biden administration. It couldn’t be more clear.

Will we know more about this before the polls close? Will it matter? Can you imagine the outrage if anything like this were coming out about Eric, Don Jr. or Ivanka?

Sen. Johnson has sent two letters to Hunter’s attorney’s “inviting” Hunter to testify and has received what he characterized as “nasty” responses comparing him to Sen. Joe McCarthy and accusing him of participating in (yes) “Russian disinformation.”

Please, Sen. Johnson, as part of your oversight responsibility into conflicts of interest, subpoena Hunter Biden immediately. (This should’ve happened long ago, even back in 2019, before Biden was the nominee, raising the question, who has been protecting the Bidens?) If this really were just “Russian disinformation,” Hunter and his attorneys would be eager to set the record straight and exonerate ol’ dad.

The media must be held accountable for lying, “shaping” the narrative and censoring facts. Even some Republican campaign ads have been taken down. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are set to testify before Lindsay Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee in November, and topics are sure to include their censorship of the NEW YORK POST, but that’s not till AFTER the election. The House has introduced legislation overhauling Section 230 to create some liability and provide disincentives for the kind of censorship Big Tech is up to.

I hope these efforts don’t turn out to be too little, too late. JOE BIDEN ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT BECOME PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. If he does, the Biden scandal --- in combination with the 25th Amendment, if needed --- will be used to take him down and install Kamala Harris in the Oval Office. And you won't see that on Wikipedia.

Mike Huckabee

For 4 years you’ve heard the left and the very partisan press tell you how the Russians interfered in the 2016 elections. Recent documents released reveal the true meddling happened at the hands of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, aided and abetted by high level officials at the FBI, CIA, and yes, the White House under President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

But this year, a different attempt to rig the election by lies, disinformation, and censorship is happening under deceit from Big Tech social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Google and Instagram. In a move so brazen that it’s earned it’s founder Jack Dorsey an invitation to come testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Twitter locked out the Trump campaign twitter account and that of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for daring to mention a front page article in the NY Post, the 4th largest circulated newspaper in America, because it painted Joe Biden and his wayward son, Hunter, in a negative light. My own Twitter account was blocked from posting a link to the story. Twitter lied and said it refused to allow the story because not all of it was verified. The same Twitter censors who allows vicious and unverified comments not just about the President, but even about me and my family.

To assist a campaign with something of value is to be subject to the campaign finance laws and Twitter and Face Book’s actions are thinly-disguised campaign contributions to Joe Biden and the Democrat National Committee.

It’s past time for Congress to act and pursue anti-trust regulation against these companies who have long ceased to be market driven social media platforms and have become monopolistic utilities. The damage they are inflicting on free speech and a fair political debate are worse than anything the Russians have ever done. If you haven’t seen the documentary “The Social Dilemma” you should. I promise you will not be allowing your young teenager to be on social media without heavy restrictions if at all.

Silicon Valley billionaires now decide what you can and can’t see, and they have decided you can’t see negative information about how then Vice President Joe Biden used his position to obtain his son Hunter lucrative contracts with Ukraine, Russia, and Communist China. Not little contracts, but multi-million dollar deals that Hunter Biden wasn’t qualified to obtain other than the fact his father was the Vice-President. You know how much time the major networks gave to this story the day it broke? Not one second. Nothing. What would have been the coverage if the politician’s son had been named Eric Trump?

The election this year is a test of whether our elections can be stolen by Big Tech billionaires who only allow you to get information THEY want you to have.

If we allow this kind of heavy-handed influence peddling and the overt censorship of news unfavorable to the left and full-throttle fake news to destroy President Trump, VP Pence, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, or for that matter to YOU, we will end up with a government we won’t recognize. I have friends who will vote for Joe Biden because they don’t like Donald Trump’s personality. There are parts of it I can’t personally identify with, but I’m not voting for him to be room mother and bring cupcakes to school. I want someone who isn’t afraid to stand up to China rather than get his son a cushy cash deal with China; someone who will fight the DC Swamp rats rather than feed them cheese, and someone who won’t use the power of the federal fiefdom to fill his pockets and cover the tracks of corrupt creatures of the swamp.

Mike Huckabee

I'll say it again: Who needs Russia to interfere in our elections when we have our own media to do it?

Wednesday evening, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Chris Wray held a sudden press briefing about findings that Russia and Iran –- wait, not China? –- have been interfering on social media to influence American voters.

It seems Russia and Iran have been obtaining information about our voter rolls and sending fake emails pretending to be from groups such as the Proud Boys (which is NOT a white supremacist group), doing things that are nothing to be proud of such as threatening people to vote for Trump or else. They've determined that these were sent to damage Trump, and that makes sense, because why on earth would Iran be trying to help Trump when they hate him maybe even more than the American left does, if that's possible?

Ratcliffe and Wray were on and off the stage quickly without taking questions.

Yes, we need to get to the bottom of the foreign influence we find. But have our intelligence agencies considered the threats to the election right here at home? For example, have they looked into what our own media are doing to try to intimidate and suppress Trump voters?

On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson featured a story about Brandy Zadrozny, an NBC reporter who describes her job as seeking out “personal identifying information” about anonymous online Trump supporters and revealing their identities. She calls it “social media sleuthing...to learn about a subject’s real life –- their family, friends, jobs, personal politics and associations.” As Tucker reported, such information might include “phone records, property records, even their Amazon Wish Lists.” This apparently is her job description.

The must-read story comes from REVOLVER NEWS, which deserves special commendation for being on top of some important stories lately. Darren Beattie of REVOLVER said of Zadrozny, “She’s up to no good.” Here’s how he described her “job”: “...She uses state-of-the-art proprietary technical tools to dig up personal information about anonymous Trump supporters online...She’ll do anything she can to unearth anonymous Trump supporters, basically so she can ruin their lives.”

"It’s disgusting and disgraceful,” he said, “even by modern journalism standards.” (I didn’t know modern journalism had standards.) These people “are not even acting as meaningful journalists [but as] as commissars and neo-Stasi, effectively, in order to crush the rebellion of the American people [associated with the victory of Donald Trump] against their corrupt ruling class.”

Beattie said that Zadrozny uses the term “disinformation” as a pretext to target and shut down Trump supporters. As he explained it, the use of this term “invites the force of our own national security apparatus to silence Trump supporters domestically.”

Again, who needs Russia and Iran to “meddle”?

Beattie sees “broader swaths of our own national security apparatus being repurposed and redeployed domestically to silence, suppress and destroy the energies associated with Donald Trump’s victory in 2016.” That’s not surprising –- they're desperate to avoid a repeat of 2016!

This “journalist” was a major contributor to a doxxing manual for her media colleagues called the VERIFICATION HANDBOOK, telling them how to target Trump supporters and what to do to ruin them. Just one example: she calls the Amazon Wish List “a gold mine for learning about what a person reads, wants, buys.” She’s teaching agenda-driven “journalists” HOW TO SPY ON PEOPLE in ways Big Brother never dreamed. Here’s a telling quote:

"My favorite kind of stories are those that reveal the real people behind influential, anonymous social media accounts. These secret accounts are less reliant on the algorithm, and more carefully crafted to be an escape from public life. They allow someone to keep tabs on and communicate with family and friends apart from their public account, or to communicate the ideas and opinions that for personal or political reasons, they dare not say out loud.”

In other words, you can run, but you can't hide. If this isn't SPYING, I don’t know what is. This is dirty stuff, dangerous territory.

Good news for Zadrozny: there’s plenty of demand and job security for dedicated, highly motivated anti-Trump employees in the media. If she somehow loses this job, she might want to study artificial intelligence and go to work for Facebook in Hate Speech Engineering. They have the same goals.

And since we love research, look at the garbage we dug up that Zadrozny is into. Gosh, we’re hard-core Trump supporters and didn’t even know what “QAnon” is –-Trump didn’t, either –- but she apparently does and explained it in a podcast for (yes) Lawfare. Here it is on the website for the (yes) Brookings Institution. Zadrozny and fellow NBC reporter Ben Collins must have enjoyed going on this so-called “Arbiters of Truth” podcast series on (get ready) “disinformation” on August 6 of this year to talk about what crazy far-right conspiracy theorists we Trump supporters are and how the “disinformation” we post needs to be taken off social media. They say QAnon is becoming “increasingly mainstream” (!) and even that the Trump campaign has been “courting” its followers.

We got through about the first 10 minutes of this idiocy before having to turn it off. Thanks, NBC News, for being such dedicated arbiters of truth! What’s your next Trump-related expose –- the growing white supremacy movement? We don't imagine you work very hard to get social media to take down the REAL disinformation coming from the left, such as their insistence that the Hunter Biden laptop story is most likely a Russian plot, their claim that there's proof the Russians hacked the DNC, and well, just about everything they say about Rudy Giuliani.

Ironically, the REVOLVER site is probably one that agenda-driven NBC News would LOVE to get shut down, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were doing everything possible to limit its reach. They would, of course, label this reporting “disinformation.” But REVOLVER is doing a great job of revealing what in their words is “the true nature of the presidential election,” and I sure wouldn’t trust NBC News to tell me anything about that.

Mike Huckabee

Today’s Must-Read article is from the New Neo blog, where the anonymous female blogger (a former Democrat-turned-conservative surrounded by liberals in NYC) examines how liberals have become so blinded by groundless Trump hatred that they can no longer see dangerous realities, such as the rising anti-Semitism in their own party.

In particular, she cites a column in the Jewish magazine Tablet by Bari Weiss, whom you’d think might understand where the real danger is, since she was driven out of the New York Times for daring to express non-leftist groupthink-approved thoughts. She recognizes the dangers of the fascistic, anti-Semitic radical left, and that Biden will allow it to gain more power, but she can’t even bring herself to consider the possibility of doing the only thing to stop it: voting for Trump. She describes him in purple prose as an “obscenity” who has “normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society.” As the blogger notes, she offers no specifics as to how he’s allegedly done that.

She then quotes Weiss describing the attributes of the classic liberal that she fears are being lost in the Democratic Party: “…the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy…”

As the blogger points out, those things aren’t under assault in the Democratic Party; they’ve been dead there for years. What Weiss is describing is a conservative Trump voter, but her visceral hatred for “Orange Man Bad” has blinded her to seeing it.

It’s well worth reading and sharing the whole piece. But if your Trump-hating relatives refuse to read it, you can get the basic idea across by coming to dinner in one of those T-shirts that has Trump’s picture on it with the caption, “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

Mike Huckabee

In last week’s ABC Townhall, Joe Biden said, “The Boilermakers overwhelmingly endorse me, OK? So the Boilermakers Union has endorsed me because I sat down with them, went into great detail with leadership, exactly what I would do, number one.”

Ruling: Pants on fire, Pinocchio-nose FALSE!

The International Boilermakers Union has not endorsed any candidate in the 2020 race, although Local 154 in Pittsburgh has “overwhelmingly” endorsed President Trump. They called him a “true friend to the Boilermakers” and said it’s “imperative that we continue to battle over-regulations in the fossil fuel industries and fight for American energy production.”

The good news is that Joe finally came up with a creative new lie. I’m getting tired of hearing him repeat the same old discredited lies, like the “very fine people” garbage or the “coronavirus is a hoax” hoax. I was beginning to fear that advancing age had robbed him of his famous ability to spin out one outrageous whopper after another into entire paragraphs of jaw-dropping plagiarisms and falsehoods. For a moment there, it was almost like the young Joe Biden was back.

Don’t believe me? Here’s just one example from an article by Derek Hunter at Townhall.com that obliterates the argument that we need to elect Biden because he’s a nice, affable, regular guy who will restore honor, integrity, and honesty.

During Biden’s first Presidential run waaaay back in 1987, a voter asked about his academic record. Biden angrily snapped back, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect. I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship. In the first year in law school, I decided I didn’t want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds in my class. Then, I decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school, and, in fact, ended up in the top half of my class. I won the International Moot Court Competition. I was the ‘Outstanding Student’ in the Political Science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits, only needed 123 credits, and I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, if you’d like, frankly."

As Hunter notes, not one of those statements is true. His scholarship was based on need, not academics; he won no awards; he didn’t earn multiple degrees, and he graduated 76th out of 85 students.

Those looking for evidence of any mental decline on Joe’s part should stop analyzing his debate performances and consider instead the sad erosion of his ability to spin fresh, new lies with every breath he exhales.

Mike Huckabee

Just three days before the final Trump/Biden debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates changed the topics and rules, no doubt to repress questions about Biden’s involvement in lucrative family business ties with foreign adversaries. And these are BIG questions. It appears Biden sold his high office through a family intermediary for boatloads of money.

And no, CNN, there’s no evidence that this story is “Russian disinformation” or that Rudy Giuliani is a “Russian asset.”

No one denies the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails. Adam Schiff, you are lying AGAIN about "Russia." As Glenn Greenwald says, you lie “the way other people change underwear.”

Nobody invested in a Biden win wants to hear about any of this, and they don’t want anyone else to, either. This rules change was obviously done to shut down the conversation –- just as Twitter and Facebook shut down the NEW YORK POST.

This is important because the debate might be the only chance many will have to hear of these serious allegations against Biden. They sure won’t get it from mainstream news, or from Twitter or Facebook, or late night TV, or their college friends, or any other non-conservative source of news you can name. There's a “lockdown” in place on it, just as surely as if it were a virus, and the truth is feared as much as COVID-19, maybe more.

Even liberal commentators in Britain see this for what it is. Here’s Piers Morgan’s take:

"Just hours after the POST story appeared, Facebook announced it would be limiting its spread on the social media platform while it used independent fact-checkers to verify the paper’s allegations. By taking these unprecedented actions, the tech firms were effectively abandoning any pretense at protecting free speech or the First Amendment.”

"U.S. mainstream and social media companies have reacted to this story in an outrageously partisan and deeply sinister manner that is diametrically opposed to how they would have reacted if the name ‘Biden’ were swapped for ‘Trump,’” Morgan said. “Shame on all of them.” He told the American media to “start doing your job.” He’s right --- if this were Trump, his political career would be DOA.

Until the debate Thursday, Biden’s campaign has “called a lid” on his appearances, purportedly to give him time to prepare. But, as I’ve said, someone who’s spent as much time as Biden has in politics does not need four-plus days to prepare for a debate. He's just hiding so he doesn’t have to answer questions.

Not Trump, though --- ask him anything.

According to the Trump campaign, the so-called “non-partisan” commission had originally decided to make foreign policy the “central focus” of the debate. That would’ve given Trump plenty of opportunity to confront Biden on the seriously corrupt relationships being discovered between the Bidens and Communist China, the Bidens and Ukraine, and more. But the commission rescued Biden; foreign policy is no longer a focus. (Note: the economy isn’t either! Topics include covid, climate change and race. Ugh.)

A Trump spokesperson said, “The commission’s pro-Biden antics have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco, and it is little wonder why the public has lost its faith in objectivity.”

The moderator, of course, was never expected to ask Biden anything about the material on his son’s laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware computer store in 2019. The change of topics is just extra insurance to discourage it from coming up.

The moderator for the proposed second debate –- which fizzled because the commission rejected Trump’s condition to do it live onstage –- was Democrat and former Biden intern (!) Steve Scully, who was just suspended from C-SPAN after lying about being “hacked” to cover for a tweet he sent about handling debate questions for Biden. We now know that the NBC news moderator for the upcoming debate, Kristen Welker, is partisan, too. On Monday, Sean Hannity showed a Christmas photo of Welker and her father posing with President Obama and the First Lady in 2012. According to the NEW YORK POST, her parents have “deep Democratic ties” and have donated tens of thousands of dollars to Democrat candidates, including Biden.

Welker deactivated her Twitter account earlier this month after Steve Scully’s unfortunate Twitter escapade.

Can the commission not find ANYBODY to moderate their “debates” who isn’t taking a side (always the Democrat side)? Even Chris Wallace, who moderated the first Trump/Biden debate, had previously demonstrated a marked tendency to interrupt the President constantly while interviewing him, and he did this during the debate as well. Still, he wasn’t nearly as bad as Savannah Guthrie, who set a new record for badness at Trump’s recent townhall.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said this about Big Tech on Monday’s INGRAHAM ANGLE: “Last week marked a major threshold --- it’s the first time they’ve directly stepped in and said to the media, ‘We are going to censor you, and if we don’t like what you’re saying, the American people don’t get to hear it, and you don’t get to say it.” And now, by limiting the topics for Thursday’s debate, the Debate Commission is doing the same thing.

Finally, I know I’ve been referencing George Orwell a lot lately, but that’s only because it seems that based on current events, a more prophetic title than “1984” might have been “2020.” (Orwell was so right, just off by a few decades.) Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted Saturday that a post-Trump commission, similar to South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” would “erase Trump lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

Is he serious? If anything should make your blood run cold, this idea of a“post-Trump” administration is it.

Author J. D. Vance told Tucker Carlson on Monday that this would be less about reconciliation than revenge. “This is torn from a page in a George Orwell novel, he said, “because who can protest ‘truth and reconciliation’?” It’s a “really dark threat” that you’ll be punished for trying to implement your ideals and principles.

Twitter, Facebook, Google, mainstream news and culture, the Debate Commission, and untold numbers of political hacks such as Robert Reich assume there’s only one permissible view. Watch the moderator try to mute Trump’s microphone during the debate if he tries to correct a lie or venture off-topic.

Candidate Ronald Reagan, in a 1980 primary debate he’d financed himself, famously said when his mic was cut off by the moderator, “I am PAYING for this microphone!” Though Trump didn’t literally pay for his mic, as in writing a check, I say he’s entitled to the same reaction if they try to cut him off. As the victim of numerous lies and “false narratives” during his presidency, Trump has paid and paid in ways large and small. He has this one chance to set the record straight and ask his opponent whatever he darn well pleases, and I hope he does.

Mike Huckabee

Sen. Ted Cruz has proposed a new Constitutional Amendment to prevent Democrats from trying to seize permanent power by packing the Supreme Court with additional liberal political appointees and turning it into a super-legislature. He calls it the “Keep Nine” Amendment. It simply reads: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine justices.”

Cruz said if Democrats win the election, they will kill the filibuster and expand and pack the SCOTUS with radical liberal activists to entrench their power for generations and destroy the foundations of our democratic system. Supporter Sen. Martha McSally agreed, calling their refusal to confirm or deny that they plan to pack the court “frightening.”

Unfortunately, the Amendment isn’t likely to go anywhere, since it would take a two-thirds majority vote of both the House and Senate and then have to be ratified by 38 of the 50 state legislatures. There are too many Democrats in power to allow that. But ironically, if the Amendment were put to a national vote, chances are it would win by a two-thirds majority. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that only 32% of Americans (just under one third) favor packing the Supreme Court.

But then, if Democrats believed in letting the people have control over their own government, they wouldn’t be so keen to have us ruled by unelected judges who write laws from the bench that they can’t get passed through legislatures.

Mike Huckabee

There are a lot of misleading ads running right now, but one in particular irks me for the artful way in which it misleads viewers into thinking Republicans want to take away their health care. It’s also a great example of a certain genre of reprehensible campaign ads that try to win votes by frightening the vulnerable through slandering the innocent. So I thought I’d examine it more closely to show you the techniques used so you’ll understand how you’re being played, not only by this ad but by the many, many others that are similarly sneaky.

This TV spot is sponsored by a leftwing PAC called Future Forward USA. To play on the viewers’ emotions, it pairs dramatic music with images of worried-looking Americans of various backgrounds. It starts with a narrator telling us that 133 million Americans have pre-existing medical conditions. That’s likely true, but it doesn’t mention that the vast majority do have coverage for them, such as employer-provided policies, Medicare and Medicaid.

The narrator then says, “This Administration and Senate Republicans want to overturn laws requiring insurance companies to cover people with preexisting conditions.” That’s only technically true. They want to overturn one specific bad law (the ACA, or “Obamacare”) that increased consumer costs while providing inferior coverage due to its one-size-fits-all government-mandated nature. It’s mostly gone now, but we need to remove the remaining shards so it can be replaced with something better that helps those who really can’t take care of themselves while using market forces to improve quality and lower prices for everyone else.

I’ve been in Republican politics for decades and can honestly say I’ve never met a single fellow Republican who dreams of taking away health care from people with preexisting conditions. We used to say that the parties mostly agreed on what needed to be done, we just differed on how to accomplish it. Now, if you disagree with the liberal approach (a giant government takeover), it means you want people to get sick and die. No.

Incidentally, I also know zero Republicans who want to take away your grandparents’ Medicare or slash their Social Security and make them eat cat food. I’ve been seeing campaign ads that make those claims since I was a small child. I’m now old enough for Medicare myself, yet after all that time, Medicare is still here and Social Security payments have only increased.

Next, the narrator says, “They’re rushing a lifetime appointment through the Supreme Court to change the law through the courts.” Conservatives don’t believe in “changing laws through the courts.” But they do believe it’s the duty of courts to strike down laws that are unconstitutional. Even so, Judge Amy Coney Barrett and President Trump both insist that they have not discussed how she would rule on any future case, including Obamacare. And her appointment is not being “rushed.” The timeline is entirely in keeping with historical precedent.

Next, the narrator tells us, “70% of Americans want to keep protections for pre-existing conditions in place.” I’m surprised it’s not 100%. Again, I know of no one who wants to take health care away from sick people or seize Tiny Tim’s crutch and sell it on eBay. The argument is over how to do it effectively, cost-efficiently and constitutionally, in a way that helps those in need without destroying the system for everyone else.

It ends with an entreaty to call the White House and Senate and tell them to “stop playing games with our health care.” Nobody thinks it’s a game (see above.) It’s a serious issue that is being taken seriously by Republicans. Far more seriously, I might add, than Obamacare was when it was rammed through in the middle of the night and Nancy Pelosi told us they had to pass it first to find out what was in it.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the PAC that created this ad is supported by deep-pockets leftwing donors, including about $3 million from the leftist dark money group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and a million dollars from super-rich former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

This ad particularly incensed me because of its subject matter and misleading nature, but it’s hardly unique. Sadly, it’s one of far too many political ads that are based on the old cynic’s definition of advertising: it’s the art of disconnecting people’s brains long enough to sell them something. Or in this case, of poisoning people’s brains long enough to get them to vote a certain way.

Mike Huckabee

This weekend, in an appearance on JUSTICE WITH JUDGE JEANINE, I made it clear that there are people right here in America deliberately trying to manipulate the 2020 election. This was in the context of Big Tech’s effort to shut down free speech and censor the very real story of Joe Biden and his son, and I said I’m much more worried about Silicon Valley than I am the Russians. Silicon Valley has done much more than Russia have. I said the Russians might’ve put their thumb on the scale in the elections, but Silicon Valley takes the fat woman and sits her right in the middle of the scale and tells her not to get up.

That’s not intended as a jab to any woman --- or man, Lord help me --- who’d like to lose some pounds. It’s just to make the point of what the anti-Trump forces are doing. I also said that if it weren’t for former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell and current DNI John Ratcliffe, we wouldn’t be finding out much about it.

Thanks largely to them, we’re learning that it’s not just Big Tech trying to silence the Hunter Biden story. It’s actually people within our own government, particularly the FBI, who were putting all their weight on the scale to protect the Bidens and damage Trump. Much of this has to do with the laptop of Hunter Biden’s that curiously ended up being hoarded by the FBI in late 2019 (impeachment time!) and for months afterwards.

As usual, it’s left to the Senate and Republicans in the House to take this information and find out what they can. Sen. Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, sent a letter this weekend to Pete Kadrik of Blue Star Strategies –- a Democrat-led firm that lobbied for corrupt energy company Burisma –- saying that the company hadn’t been completely responsive to a subpoena issued last May for all records relating to their work for Burisma Holdings since January of 2013. (As you know, Burisma paid the inexperienced Hunter Biden big bucks to be on their board of directors.) Sen. Johnson told Mr. Kadrik that one document in particular had been withheld, one that they became aware of on October 15.

This missing document is an email providing an account of a December 2, 2015, conference call that was hosted by the White House to discuss Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to Ukraine. As Sen. Johnson told Maria Bartiromo on FOX NEWS SUNDAY, that was the trip during which they believe Biden must’ve given the Ukrainian president and prime minister the ultimatum he later bragged about: Fire head prosecutor Viktor Shokin (who was looking into Burisma) or lose $1 billion of aid. Johnson’s committee never got this document, and they want to know why.

The reason they became aware of the conference call is that there’s a reference to it and to a memo about it from the Blue Star Strategies team on the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and they want to be able to verify this.

The email on the hard drive says, “This morning the White House hosted a conference call regarding the Vice President’s upcoming trip to Ukraine. Attached is a memo from the Blue Star Strategies team with the minutes of that call, which outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”

Of course, Maria brought up what we’ve all been wondering ever since the NEW YORK POST broke their the laptop story: Why, if the FBI had this laptop in December of 2019, during the impeachment of President Trump, did they sit on it, when it contained evidence that showed Trump was justified in asking President Zelensky to investigate?

The computer store owner said he tried to give the laptop to the FBI but they initially didn’tt seem interested. (According to Devin Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, this man wanted to give it to them SPECIFICALLY because it was relevant to the impeachment of Trump.) But in December, he was served by FBI agent Joshua Wilson (who, perhaps tellingly, has specialized for five years in child pornography cases) with a grand jury subpoena to turn it over, which he did. The store owner, as you know, had the presence of mind to copy the hard drive first and, after hearing nothing back from the FBI, took a copy to the Senate. Sen. Johnson’s committee contacted the FBI to ask if they could verify anything about the laptop and its contents. After hearing nothing back in a couple of days, Sen. Johnson wrote to the FBI.

"The FBI has a duty,” he told Maria, “to inform us if they believe this is, maybe, Russian disinformation. They should give us a defensive briefing. They should tell us about that.” And if the store owner is trying to pass off something that isn’t real –- which is a crime –- the FBI should tell them that as well.

But here’s the key: No one, even Biden’s campaign, has said these emails are fake. If they were, you know they’d proclaim that. Considering, then, that these are genuine and that they would've been extremely relevant to the impeachment case against Trump, why did the FBI sit on them? Were they covering up to protect the Biden family, or were they withholding exculpatory evidence against the President during his sham impeachment?

Given the way the FBI has been operating for at least the past several years, my guess is that it’s both. It’s like that old commercial, “Certs is a candy mint, AND a breath mint!”

Sen. Johnson also brought up the totally separate email evidence uncovered by investigative reporter Peter Schweizer that we reported on last week. “This requires serious investigation,” he said, “and the fact that the mainstream media is suppressing this information from the American public is a scandal in and of itself.”

Agreed. So what’s it gonna take to get all that weight off the scales of justice? President Trump must put all the power he has into play. He can start inside the government, at the very top, with FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel, who both should be sent packing.

Much more will come out over the next couple of weeks. (This is why early voting is such a bad idea.) There are reportedly three laptops in the FBI’s possession: Hunter Biden’s, another from his business partner Devon Archer, and the third from...Hunter’s psychiatrist. Does the FBI really have THAT? It’s not likely they would unless they’re looking at charges for child pornography/sexual abuse.

Steve Bannon has apparently been in charge of the “roll-out plan” for the evidence, so he must already know what's coming and when. Here’s what he says we can expect.

And here’s Rudy Giuliani’s preview of coming attractions.

Mike Huckabee

"Joe Biden still has not been forced to explain why he fired Ukraine’s top prosecutor at precisely the moment his son was being paid to get him to fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor.”

That was Tucker Carlson on his Thursday show, which aired live before Biden’s televised town hall was over. Sure enough, that observation was still true afterward, because Biden wasn’t asked ONE QUESTION about this. And no wonder; anyone invested in a Biden win 2-1/2 weeks from now must know how damaging the story would be if it got the attention it deserves.

Biden also has never said whether or not he personally benefited from son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. He still insists he’s never talked with his son about them, not once. But according to one of the more telling emails on what is almost certainly Hunter’s discarded laptop, “Pop” benefited quite a lot. “I love you all,” it reads. “But I don’t receive any respect and thats fine I guess – works for you apparently. I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

What? Joe Biden was pocketing half of what Hunter made?

No doubt Hunter wouldn’t have made the big bucks without his father’s last name, and he has acknowledged as much. So in a way, it might seem fitting that his father would take a generous cut. That is, if his father weren’t VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Rudy Giuliani describes this as “a racketeering case.”

Tucker went on to talk about Thursday's update in the NEW YORK POST (don’t look for it on Twitter, as they’ve deemed the whole story “unsafe”), which explores Hunter’s dealings in China. Here, we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions and more. Another email on the laptop reads, “At the moment, there’s a provisional agreement the equity will be distributed as follows: Ten held by Hunter for the big guy...” The “big guy” surely was Joe Biden. So, can this money destined for him be traced back to the CCP?

According to Miranda Devine, a columnist for the NY POST, one deal with a Chinese energy company netted Hunter Biden $10 million a year for “introductions alone.”

He was also on a $1 million retainer from another company for “legal services.” Devine poses the question that, since the gravy train continued when Biden was no longer Vice President, what exactly were the Chinese paying for? I assume she’s wondering what we all are: were they anticipating the day when Biden would be running for President and likely becoming Commander-in-Chief in, say, January of 2021? They clearly want him to win.

This brings to mind the Clinton Global Foundation, whose billions in donations dried up soon after Hillary lost in 2016.

Ironically, by blocking a story that involves the the CCP, Twitter and Facebook are acting JUST LIKE the CCP. (Really, who needs Russia to “meddle” in our elections when we have Twitter and FB to do it?) And now Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are using Big Tech’s rejection of the Biden story as evidence that it’s not true. They’re saying it’s “debunked” when it’s not at all.

As Tucker pointed out, Twitter and FB aren’t claiming it's a hoax but are simply cutting off communication about it. I hope it’s not getting tiresome for me to bring up George Orwell, but these people really are acting like the Ministry Of Truth. They want censorship if it works in their favor. And they don’t mean just to shut down some obscure blog, though that would be wrong as well, but even to censor major publications to silence a story they don't want. Likewise, they’ll pass along an easily-debunked lie if the lie is what they DO want. They’ve crossed a big red line.

This should scare the pants off you.

According to Ms. Devine, the Biden campaign is backing off its original response, which was that his official calendar had no record of his meeting with the Burisma official who’d emailed Hunter a thank-you for their meeting. Now they’re saying they “would not rule out the possibility” of a meeting, but it would’ve just been “informal” and “cursory.” Okay, but the official had referred to “spending some time” with the Vice President. How much time?

She concluded by saying, “Maybe he will answer it tonight when he does a town hall. I doubt whether he’ll be asked any really tough questions, though.” (Wow, she must be psychic!)

Fortunately, outside the mainstream, there’s still some real journalism going on, such as this update from THE EPOCH TIMES.

Yesterday, I expressed curiosity about the “backstory” of the abandoned MacBook Pro, notably how it came to be subpoenaed by the FBI –- where it seems to have been deep-sixed around the time of the Trump impeachment (hmm). Seems I was not alone.

Giuliani says he received a copy of the hard drive three weeks ago from his attorney, Robert Costello, who got it from John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. (Isaac had had the laptop for 90 days and was unable to contact the owner.) Steve Bannon negotiated a deal and passed it to the NY POST, which also did its own authentication. This deal allowed Giuliani to later disclose the material to other media as he is now doing. (This begs the question: Can Twitter shut them ALL down?)

What I’m most curious about is the FBI subpoena --- what was that about? Mac Isaac gave Costello a copy of what he said was the subpoena, dated Dec. 9, 2019, used to seize the laptop. (Fortunately, he copied the hard drive before he turned it over.) Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that he wants the FBI to "come clean." What were they doing with this? Why did they sit on it?

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware declined to confirm the authenticity of the subpoena. As in the old song, “They didn’t say yes, they didn’t say no.”

There are some inconsistencies with Mac Isaacs as a witness; the EPOCH TIMES piece mentions these. Still, they have little to do with whether or not this laptop is the real deal or a hoax. These emails are either real or they’re not, regardless of Mac Isaac’s motivations or the fact that Giuliani is Trump’s attorney. It’s understandable that Giuliani and other Trump advocates are working overtime to get the truth out, because “journalists” have utterly failed to do their job and don’t even care if Biden and his family are corrupt.

Mike Huckabee

THE HUNTER BIDEN EMAIL

The New York Post obtained a 2015 email reportedly recovered from a computer Hunter Biden left for repairs and never picked up. It’s from Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the infamous Ukrainian energy company Burisma that paid Hunter $50,000 a month for his invaluable contributions as a board member. The email reads, ‘Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving me an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.” In another email from May, 2014, Pozharskyi asks Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on Burisma's behalf.

This was less than eight months before Joe Biden threatened to withhold foreign aid money to Ukraine if they didn’t fire a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma. It’s a big deal – or should be – because Biden has angrily denied having any ulterior motives or ever speaking to his son about his foreign business deals.

If you don’t hear about this, it could be because other outlets, from Facebook to the Washington Post, are doing everything possible not to report it and to keep others from sharing it. Not because they're biased and are treating any stories about Hunter as gingerly as radioactive waste. Perish the thought.

No, it's just that media outlets that have run countless anti-Trump fake news articles based on anonymous sources and “leaked” documents have suddenly become extremely concerned about repeating a story based on leaked documents. Facebook is limiting sharing of the story until its fact-checkers have time to verify it as genuine (I’m guessing that job will take until, oh…November 4th.) No bias, just standard operating procedure, you understand.

THE NY POST STORY EVERYONE IS SHARING (EXCEPT ON SOCIAL MEDIA)

For your convenience. If this is a hoax, someone went to a lot of effort to make it a good one, even creating a deep fake Hunter Biden sex tape, complete with crack smoking for added authenticity.

NAILED IT

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana nails it again, this time on the Joe/Hunter Biden story and, in particular, the social media reaction:

"These accusations are as serious as four heart attacks and a stroke."

He went to praise the NEW YORK POST as a responsible, reputable news organization, subject to libel and defamation laws. Social media are trying to pick winners and losers, and that is wrong.

He said this story about then-VP Biden and his son suggests to the world that "the foreign policy of the United States can be bought and sold like a sack of potatoes." Because of its importance, every news organization around the world needs to be investigating the veracity of this story. We need to get this right, "and that's why we have the First Amendment, and why we have a free and fair --- supposedly fair --- media."

Emphasis on the word "supposedly."

Mike Huckabee

“How Dare You Question Your Queen, Peasant?!” Wolf Blitzer of CNN committed the ultimate media sin by actually asking a top Democrat a tough question. He learned one reason why reporters never do that (you know the other reason.) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went into full-on huff mode when Wolf dared to ask her why she refuses to negotiate with Republicans to pass a coronavirus relief bill and keeps holding out for her far larger version, even as businesses are going bankrupt and Americans are losing their jobs and standing in food lines.

At the link, you can read quotes or watch on video as Pelosi haughtily lectures Blitzer that he’s wrong and should “respect the committees” and that the paltry $1.8 trillion offered by the Republicans is not even close to good. As for the people standing on corners begging for change, she claimed that “we see them,” although it might be hard through the smoked glass windows of her limo. Maybe $1.8 trillion just doesn’t seem like that much when you have $120 million and eat artisan ice cream out of two high-end freezers in your mansion.

Pelosi became so outraged at the effrontery of one of her house lackeys daring to question her that at one point, she said, "I don’t know why you’re always an apologist and many of your colleagues are apologists for the Republican position." Yes, she’s actually so far left that she thinks CNN anchors are spokespeople for the GOP!

This article also lists some of the vitally important demands that she’s holding up the virus relief bill over. They include $1 trillion for (blue) cities and states with no restrictions on how they use it, other than it can’t be spent on policing (as if it would be!); lots of climate change pork; revoking voter ID laws and legalizing ballot harvesting; funding pot shops and public broadcasting; racial quota enforcement on corporate boards; and taxpayer-funded free healthcare for illegal immigrants.

All obviously necessary actions to fight the virus and help Americans survive the endless lockdowns that Democrat politicians are enforcing, even though the WHO has now said they’re doing more harm than good and shouldn’t be the primary way of fighting the coronavirus. Ladies and gentlemen, the Party of “SCIENCE!” I assume that means “the science of picking the taxpayers’ pockets to increase your own power.”

If you think about it, when you hear Democrats complain about all the horrible things wrong with America, how many of those problems are largely caused by the same people complaining about them? We had a booming economy that was knocked for a loop by a virus from China (for whom they are boosters and apologists) and that continues to suffer due to lockdowns they enforced and refuse to lift. Racial divisiveness that was on the decline before they did everything possible to promote more of it. We have riots, crime and street violence in cities they run. They claim the riots are sparked by racist brutality by police forces they’ve controlled for, in some cases, up to 70 years. And after years of endless wars and growing terrorism, peace is breaking out all over the Middle East and they seem downright upset by it because Trump arranged it.

That’s why, when Chuck Schumer threatened for all the Senate Democrats to refuse to come to work, my first thought was, “Can you get the House Democrats to do that, too?” Imagine how many problems could be fixed in a week if they weren’t there to “help!”

Mike Huckabee

All I can say that's good about Day Two of the Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett is that it allowed Americans to learn even more about why Barrett is such an incredibly gifted and qualified nominee. The Kodak Moment came when she was asked what she had in front of her, and she held up a blank notepad. All the Senators required copious notes to grill her, but she was calmly and expertly answering their questions, quoting cases and deflecting attacks, all without even looking at notes.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats, realizing they had no substantive, or even fictitious, charges to level at her, chose simply to waste everyone’s time. Instead of asking Judge Barrett questions, which was the alleged reason for the hearings, Democrats like Kamala Harris droned on and on, making partisan campaign speeches and accusing Republicans of wanting to take health care away from families or make their payments skyrocket by getting rid of Obamacare (which actually made health care more expensive for most people.) If this is what her campaign speeches are like, I can see why nobody is showing up.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar was among several Senate Democrats who pulled the neat trick of wasting precious time by bemoaning that the hearings were wasting precious time that should be used to pass a coronavirus relief bill. Except that Republicans tried to pass such a bill three weeks ago and she and her fellow Democrats blocked it from even being debated. I did love when Judge Barrett told Klobuchar, “I don’t attack people, just ideas.” In that case, Sen. Klobuchar is safe on both counts.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse went off on a “dark money” conspiracy rant that looked like something out of “A Brilliant Mind,” minus the brilliance (note: Democrats are being greatly advantaged by dark money from a variety of sources, from Soros to Silicon Valley.)

But you can always count on Sen. Mazie Hirono to lower the bar of discourse to subterranean levels, which she did by asking Barrett (in front of her children), "Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?" To keep you off the edge of your seat, the answer was “no.” There was also a suggestion that she’s a racist, when her two adopted black children were sitting in the gallery behind her. Her only "score" was browbeating Barrett for causing pain and suffering to the LGBTQ community by using the "offensive" phrase "sexual preference" instead of "sexual orientation," for which Barrett apologized.

Judge Barrett was forced to explain over and over that she could not speculate how she would rule on future cases because she didn’t know the facts of the particular case and it would prejudice her ruling. Democrats assailed this as shifty and evasive, even though it’s exactly the philosophy Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed during her hearing. It’s even called “the Ginsburg Rule.”

Luckily, as the mother of seven kids, she’s used to having to patiently answer the same obvious questions repeatedly for a series of different children.

Overall, I’d say that day two convinced me even more that Judge Barrett is incredibly qualified for the Supreme Court, but there are a lot of Senators who aren’t qualified to be dog catcher.

Mike Huckabee

DIDN'T THINK THIS ONE THROUGH

A Democratic PAC wanted to promote the idea that voting by mail is trustworthy. So they hired “Seinfeld” star Wayne Knight to revive his role as the villainous, lazy, incompetent, scheming, dishonest postal worker “Newman” to deliver that message while eating cookies out of a package he opens illegally. “NEWMAN!!”

BIG CROWDS

On the first day of early voting, Georgia saw such big crowds that there were technical problems and waits in line of up to six hours.

This story mentions that there were big crowds in an area that supports Trump heavily, but most of these long lines it covers were in heavily Democratic DeKalb County. Unless those are Democratic Trump voters (a possibility), that tells us two things: (1) Democrats can’t run anything efficiently, and (2) there is a heavy anti-Trump vote (I’m not going to call it a pro-Biden vote because…well, you know.)

So to everyone who wants to see Trump reelected, take this as a warning that you need to vote and take every like-minded person to the polls with you. Bring along a book, an iPad and a beach chair if you have to, but get in line and vote!

PERFECT METAPHOR FOR LIBERAL GOVERNMENT

Philadelphia politicians voted to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus because he’s too politically incorrect to deserve to be honored. But when Columbus Day rolled around, they all took a paid day off work.

Mike Huckabee

If you’re looking for a new reason to hate Nike, try this: the ultra-woke sporting apparel giant just severed relations with Frank’s Sports Shop, which has been in The Bronx since the big star of the Yankees was Babe Ruth. After five decades, Nike sent a terse email saying the venerable family-owned store “no longer aligns with our distribution policy…This notice reflects a definitive final decision by the company.”

Moe Stein, the 92-year-old owner of Frank’s, said, “This is plain chutzpah. Let me tell you about Nike. We knew them when they had nothing. How do you like that? They’re putting down the Bronx. The Bronx! It’s not an elite place to them.”

Well, certainly not as elite as Beijing, which seems to be the place Nike is most concerned with these days. But it’s pretty obvious that neither Nike nor the sports leagues they’re in partnership with care much about Americans and their opinions these days, and the feeling is increasingly mutual. Sunday, the Lakers won the Finals over the Miami Heat, and a record low 5.6 million people tuned in. Last year’s game six, between the Warriors and the Raptors, drew 18.34 million viewers.

Liberal outlets like Yahoo Sports are trying to blame many other factors besides all the racial and political messages for the ratings collapse, like the coronavirus forcing multiple sports into competition. For instance, Sunday’s NBA game was opposite an NFL game that drew over 11 million viewers. But by comparison, in 1998, 36.9 million Americans watched the Bulls-Jazz game six alone.

Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban also tried to deflect the claim that sports fans are sick of in-your-face racial grievance politics, disrespect to America and kowtowing to BLM and China. His view on China: they’re “a customer” and they’re “not the only country with human rights violations.” To his credit, I haven’t seen anyone in basketball spin anything that fast since the Harlem Globetrotters’ Curly Neal spun a basketball on his index finger.

Mike Huckabee

Just a few weeks before the election, transparency should be the most important consideration of all. I’ve said numerous times that voters should, if they can, wait till Election Day to vote (in person) so they have as much information as possible. But this time, it seems that even those who wait till the last day to vote will lack information they should have. Why would anyone want to vote for a candidate who deliberately keeps them in the dark?

One thing Trump supporters love about him is that he respects them enough to tell them honestly what he wants to do, and then he actually does it. But in Washington, among all the politicians and bureaucrats, it seems he is just about alone in that. I’m talking about the bureaucracy and both political parties, which reflexively play everything close to the vest.

The Democrats have always run to the right of who they really are, but this time, they’re counting on voters hating Trump so much that they won’t care even if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t bother to answer questions about what they plan to do. Their evasion is downright cringe-inducing and, in effect, gives us our answer.

When asked directly by a reporter if voters didn’t deserve to know if he wanted to pack the Supreme Court, Biden actually said flat-out, “NO, THEY DON’T.” I’m sure many Democrats don’t even know what “packing the Court” is, and his media buddies will give him a pass, so he thinks he can get away with treating voters this way. How little regard his campaign has for the voters.

See, Democrats DO believe in walls, the kind that protect them from scrutiny. They’re still very much the party of the smoke-filled room --- or at least the modern smoke-free equivalent of that room --- with its secret deals and power brokers. Exhibit A: the placement of Kamala Harris on the ticket, which had nothing to do with the wishes of most Democrats, who had understandably rejected her early on. Reportedly, Bernie Sanders is calling the shots behind the scenes, as Hillary used to.

But Biden and the Democrats aren’t the only ones lacking in transparency. Some Republicans, even those who yammer incessantly about transparency, have been taking for freaking ever to reveal evidence about the intel community’s “meddling” in the 2016 election that President Trump has now FULLY DECLASSIFIED WITHOUT REDACTIONS. Some still tease us on FOX News with that cat-that-ate-the-canary grin and a cryptic, “Stay tuned.” Well, we can’t stay tuned much longer, as the election (the voting part, anyway) will be over in just a few weeks, and voters, especially those in the middle who might not have paid attention as diligently as we have, deserve to know what Biden and other Democrats did or did not do –- BEFORE casting their ballots.

For example, guess who is reportedly on Biden’s “shortlist” for attorney general if he is President? SALLY YATES. It sure would be nice to know what involvement both Biden and Yates had in the Russia hoax –- including the Michael Flynn case –- before Election Day.

I'm aware that the Senate Intel and Judiciary Committees are not involved in criminal prosecution, but for crying out loud, some of them have the security clearance to have seen every last classified document --- at least the ones the FBI and CIA have turned over so far; I’ll get to that in a minute --- and they should now be able to speak freely and openly about all of it. Just spill it. Don’t drag it out another week or even another day.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had set up a hearing for former FBI official Andrew McCabe, but McCabe dropped out; we’ve discussed his flimsy excuses. Sen. Graham said on SUNDAY MORNING FUTURES that he’s still “trying to get him to come in voluntarily.” Why didn’t he just subpoena the guy? Now the committee will be tied up with the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings and McCabe gets to skate for who knows how long?

Who cares about “voluntarily” at this point? This has gone on too long. Senators, for crying out loud, get tough.

Sen. Graham disappointed on Sunday when he said this of Obama’s condoning of Hillary’s plot to smear Trump: “Now, is that a crime? I doubt it. Is it a crime to try to smear your opponent? Probably not. But what Obama did is one the saddest chapters in the history of the presidency. He knew that his party’s nominee was out to try to link President Trump to Russia unfairly, and without evidence, and he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

Wow, that mealymouthed criticism is just not strong enough, Sen. Graham. What Obama and his team did was far worse than that. With no evidence at all, President Obama --- and apparently Biden as well --- were at the very least complicit in the misuse of the FBI and a special counsel, using the full force of the American government to target the President-elect of the United States. That is much more serious than simply “smearing your opponent.” It is criminal. Americans need to see that it is criminal.

At least Graham outlined some possible crimes, noting that’s where U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation comes in. All right, but at this point, we've got to see the wheels turning at the Department of Justice, and so far there is nothing to see. Voters deserve transparency here, too. It’s Lady Justice who’s supposed to be wearing a blindfold, not the voters!

Devin Nunes appeared with Bartiromo on October 4 to talk about “smoking guns” and “information [that] needs to be made available to the American public.” Indeed. “And from what I understand,” he said, “there’s even more underlying evidence that backs up what Director Ratcliffe put out.” He noted that it’s been difficult to get to the bottom of this because of “corrupt officials.”

But now, another week has passed. CIA Director Gina Haspel is reportedly still holding on with her fingernails to documents unflattering to the CIA. AG Barr has said not to look for Durham’s report before the election. (Two words, Mr. Barr: INTERIM REPORT.) Ric Grenell, former acting Director of National Intelligence, was interviewed by Maria this Sunday, saying, “Somebody needs to go to jail, and be prosecuted first, obviously, and this is a slam-dunk...This can never happen again. We cannot allow our government to weaponize information, to hold it back.”

Recall that, ironically, Grenell was shut down by Twitter last Thursday for his tweet with pictures showing ballot fraud. Twitter is getting more adept all the time at withholding information.

This is what I mean about the importance of transparency, of ripping off the blindfold. Holding information back, in the context of an election, is just as bad as weaponizing it.

Mike Huckabee

This will come as a shock these days, but a group of academics, historians and college professors has released a statement demanding that American history be taught accurately.

The statement calls on the Pulitzer Prize Board to rescind the 2020 Prize for Commentary awarded to New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones for her lead essay in ‘The 1619 Project” that claims that America’s founding ideals were false and the American Revolution was really fought to preserve slavery. They say there is zero evidence of that, the Revolution was fought for freedom and to defeat tyranny, and the Times knew it when they published that garbage, which is now being taught in many schools to make kids hate their own nation. One historian who actually worked on fact-checking the original piece pointed out the flaws but the Times editors ignored the suggested corrections.

The statement says that “given the glaring historical fallacy at the heart of its account, and the subsequent breaches of core journalistic ethics by both Hannah-Jones and the Times," they do not deserve the Pulitzer Prize. They write:

“The duplicity of attempting to alter the historical record in a manner intended to deceive the public is as serious an infraction against professional ethics as a journalist can commit. A ‘sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay,’ as the Pulitzer Prize Board called it, does not have the license to sweep its own errors into obscurity or the remit to publish ‘deeply reported’ falsehoods.”

Honestly, that sounds like any issue of the New York Times, but we don’t need to give them prizes for it.

Mike Huckabee

One of the weaknesses of the bullying tactics of the left is that they believed that if they seized control of pop culture, sports, entertainment and the news media, they could tell all Americans what to do, say and think, and we would have no choice but to go along with it. They forgot that all those industries are, at bottom, capitalistic, and in such systems, the customers are always right, even if we’re not left. They depend on us to support their lavish lifestyles. When we get sick of being told what racists we are or listening to people insult America, our religious and political beliefs, and our intelligence, we can simply stop patronizing them and find something else to do with our time. As millions of us have.

That message might finally be starting to sink in. With movie revenues tanking and TV ratings plummeting for “woke” shows, pro sports and liberal cable news channels, some of these arrogant leftist celebrities might be starting to imagine themselves preaching their politics from a cardboard box in an alley instead of a mansion in Beverly Hills.

I mention this as a prelude to telling you that viewership for Game Three of the NBA finals took a plunge to 4.08 million from the record-low 4.5 million who watched Game Two, which itself shattered the record low of 7.41 million who watched Game One. At this rate, if there’s a Game Seven, it will be beaten in the ratings by reruns of “Green Acres” on ME-TV.

And just like magic, suddenly the bosses of the NBA seem to have decided that they made their point, the BLM moment in time was this past summer (emphasis on "past") and while America is, of course, still a horrible racist country, maybe next season there should be more basketball and fewer political messages all over the courts and on the players’ jerseys and in the fans' faces.

That would be a very smart business move. Although they might want to do it now while they can still afford new jerseys. And before all their former fans discover that “Green Acres” was a really funny show, and Arnold the pig never called his fans racists.

Mike Huckabee

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually plans to have a press conference today to talk about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office for mental/physical infirmity. The excuse is that he had the coronavirus (which he appears to already be over) and may be mentally impaired by getting a steroid shot last weekend (I don’t think she knows how medicine works.)

This lunacy has actually been tried before. In fact, she’s resurrecting a bill first introduced by one of her nutcase caucuses just 90 days after Trump was inaugurated. It was so laughable that it went nowhere then, but having impeached him over a phone call, they’ve got nothing left and are so desperate, they’ll now try to declare him mentally incompetent for having a steroid shot.

Considering we’re less than a month away from the election (which their pet media’s polls claim Biden will win in a Hillary-sized landslide), why would Pelosi be floating something so insanely desperate? Off-hand, I can think of four possible reasons:

1. She’s trying to sling some red meat to fire up a Dem base that has as much enthusiasm for the Harris/Biden ticket as I do for kale salad.

2. She doesn’t believe the polls and is terrified Trump will be around for another four years.

3. This really isn’t about Trump but just laying the groundwork for removing Biden to let Harris take over before Valentine's Day.

4. Someone gave her a steroid shot and she’s gone stark raving coo-coo herself.

Mike Huckabee

We asked for reader comments on the Pence-Harris debate and were deluged. Most of them contrasted Pence’s honest, classy, gentlemanly manner with Harris’s dishonesty, evasiveness, condescension and immaturity. Many also agreed that the moderator was biased in her choice and wording of questions and overly strict handling of Pence’s time. (As we've noted, Kamala’s total speaking time was actually a little longer than Pence’s.)

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD TAKE NOTE: most of the letters focus sharply on DEMEANOR. This tells me something very important: that the President really should not reject an opportunity to debate again, as his contentious approach during the first debate --- understandable to us--- inadvertently played right into the wrong impression of him so many people have. This was not the Donald Trump we know. Actually, the first Trump-Biden debate was a worthless mess; neither man came off well at all.

The President says he's feeling really great now. The debate commission has picked a biased moderator, for sure --- a Democrat who interned with Joe Biden! --- but Trump has the skills to work around that. On Thursday night's HANNITY show, Trump called the commission "a disgrace" and even challenged Biden on the air to just have a debate on their own, in person, without the commission setting the rules. (Watch Biden hide behind the commission, which has rejected a second in-person debate.)

Anyway, letters are still coming in on Pence-Harris, but here are a few highlights. Notice how many of them concentrate on attitude and demeanor...

From Dee:

Last night we saw two people who very likely could be the leader of the free world USA. VP Pence showed he is knowledgable, articulate, intelligent, and able to stay calm in uncomfortable situations. K Harris showed us she knows how to make faces, deliver preplanned one-liners, and lie...not very well. Biden is not well and she is unequipped to handle the job. I will say I would be happy if President Trump stayed calm in his next encounter and just be prepared with the facts.

From Sue:

Pence killed it. He made great points and great rebuttals. He corrected her when needed and let her speak her nonsense enough to hang herself. Super job. So honored to have such a great VP. Pence 2024

From Karen:

How can I get on the debate committee? My dead cat could pick better debate moderators then the Republicans on the committee.

From Kay:

Fly picked the winner.

Tried to pack too much in too little time. Needed more time to answer questions.

From Gene:

Senator Harris bragged on her record as a D.A. When Pence questioned that record, she responded with "I won't be lectured..." What she's really saying is that she won't allow anyone to hold her accountable. That's not the look of transparency or the attitude of a public servant.

From Helen (excerpt):

Kamala started off with putting down the President. After the first 40 minutes, I had to turn it off. I would rather watch reruns of paint drying on a DIY show than listen to her blatant lies. I live in CA, I know all about her career...

From Claudia:

Watching her debate gave me PTSD. She is a very practiced liar. Thinking that she could possibly be President is the scariest thing I could ever imagine.

From LaDina:

I'm very nervous. Harris is nasty and I want Trump to be presidential at his next debate. Not to get mad or interrupt, and to look at us, not Biden. Pence was very good, but he missed some good openings to make good points.

From Bette:

If Trump can debate like Pence did, then the next debate could be of great value, but if it’s a repeat of the first one, then it shouldn’t go forward. Undecided voters are looking at the trustworthiness of the candidate as individuals, and all the hysteria and frustration get in the way. Please, Mr. President, show us your compassion and your love for Americans and our country in the next debate. People need to learn who you are as a person. We’re praying for our President and our Country’s future!

From Raelene:

Kamala’s laughter and smirking have us a great insight on how she really feels about our most serious issues as a country. I’m proud of how Pence stayed so respectful to everyone and didn’t find the serious matters funny as if they were a joke.

From Gina (excerpt):

The last question tells you all you need to know. A young girl asks about the fighting and Partisanship. Pence gives a story about Ginsberg and Scalia and there friendship. Harris tells the Charlottesville lie and bashes the President...

From Kathy:

I watched it till I couldn’t stand Kamala any more...She gives me that slimy feeling that politicians give off. They don’t really care about you and try to tell you everything you want to hear only to do nothing they said over the next 47 years they are in office.

From Patrice:

Mr. Pence. He can play poker.

From Gregory (excerpt):

He ate her lunch, dinner and tomorrow's breakfast, very gracefully and spectacularly...PENCE 2024.

From TD:

I don’t think it changed any minds. If you want higher taxes, murdered babies, infringements on the Constitution, then by all means vote Biden/Harris. If you want the government out of your business, vote Trump/Pence ticket. Federal government was not created to run your life but for your safety and security.

From Alissa:

Kamala is absolutely terrifying. Period.

From Mary (excerpt):

I am so thankful that Vice President Pence loves Jesus and is bold about it...He presented the facts clear and precise. Did not put up with any lying from Harris. I was greatly encouraged. God bless America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

From Kimberly:

VP Pence rocked it! Though I Iove my President, I hope he took notes. Please tell him to keep quiet and let Biden talk.. He [Biden] will hang himself.

From Chris:

OMGosh, my wife told me it really does no good to yell at the TV. She's right, of course.

And finally, Rhonda makes my point:

Trump needs to do the second debate no matter what (virtual or in person). He needs to tell the American people what his plans are for the next 4 years. Tell us –- we want to hear it with compassion & love for our country!!! He WILL win hands down if he goes that route!!!

Mike Huckabee

Joe Biden is running on a platform that boils down mostly to “Just like Trump, only without Trump!” He’s going to bring back manufacturing jobs, put America first, and all the other things he never did in 47 years in Washington that Trump got elected by promising to do (and doing, to great success.) Joe calls this plagiarized platform “Build Back Better.”

So would you be really shocked to learn that even the phrase “Build Back Better” was apparently plagiarized from another conservative political leader who, like Trump, got elected by promising to do the exact opposite of what his processor did?

There has never in history been a better A-B comparison of Democrat to Republican ideas than the back-to-back records of Obama/Biden and Trump/Pence. We went from the weakest recovery since the Depression to the best economy and lowest unemployment in history…from ISIS growing across the Middle East, bringing murder, slavery and turmoil in its wake, to ISIS crushed and a string of peace deals between Israel and Arab States…from targeting the domestic fuel industry for extinction to America becoming an exporter of energy, undermining the power of Russia and OPEC…from suing impoverished nuns to force them to pay for contraceptives to defending religious freedom rights…and on and on.

A similar comparison can be drawn between blue states that people are fleeing from and the red states they’re fleeing to. In California, the “Golden State” that used to represent the American dream, the more power the leftwing Democrats get, the further back in time it regresses. San Francisco already regressed to the Middle Ages, with wealthy lords living in walled castles while the peasants huddle in whatever shelter they can find, surrounded by filth. Now, much of the state is back to caveman days, huddling in the dark, afraid to leave their dens for fear of dangerous marauders, disease and FIRE!! Fire bad!!

And they not only keep voting for more of this, they think the entire nation needs to be run like California. Are they clinically insane?

Trump could easily make the case that if you want America to be strong, free and prosperous, it's easy: just look at what Obama/Biden did and do the exact opposite.

Mike Huckabee

A grand jury in St. Louis has handed down felony charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who brandished weapons to make protesters move on who were trespassing on their property and threatening their home, their lives and their dog.

They’re charged with unlawful use of a weapon (even though they were obviously acting in self-defense, Missouri has a Castle Doctrine law that protects that right, and the firearms were apparently unloaded and one wasn’t functional) and tampering with evidence (even though it was apparently the DA’s office that tampered with the evidence.) The protesters who threatened them were not charged with anything.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt already filed a motion to intervene in the case and block the prosecution, and Gov. Mike Parson said that if they’re convicted of a crime, he’ll pardon them. But both Schmitt and Parson are up for reelection. If they’re replaced by Democrats like those in the St. Louis D.A.’s office who think that Constitutional rights apply only to protesters, rioters and trespassers, the McCloskey’s could be looking at serious legal liability for nothing but exercising their Second Amendment right to self-defense.

Mark this down as just the latest of the many, many, many reasons why I say the 2020 election could determine not only the future of America, but whether you still retain your Constitutional rights at all.

Mike Huckabee

Word went out while President Trump was in the hospital that he’d had enough of the Intelligence Community’s hiding of “Russia” documents and that he'd be using his time there to work on declassifying it all. Not surprisingly, he was true to his word.

He has DONE IT.

As he tweeted on Tuesday, “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”

Hallelujah.

Though we’ve heard from reputable sources that CIA Director Gina Haspel was holding on with her teeth to all remaining materials that might embarrass the Agency, rest assured that it's all coming out. Failure to produce these documents --- well, Director Haspel, I think that’s called “obstruction of justice.” Hand everything over now. Anyone who tries to slow the process can clean out his or her desk immediately and be escorted out, and they’d better hire themselves a good lawyer. As Devin Nunes said on Sunday, “THIS IS OVER.”

Last week, documents were declassified showing that then-CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed President Obama and other national security officials about information that Russian intel had learned Hillary Clinton was going after Trump with a made-up Russia scandal, tying Trump with Putin and the so-called hacking of DNC emails to detract from her own (real) email scandal. When former FBI Director James Comey was asked last Wednesday under oath about the investigatory lead the FBI got after this briefing, he laughably said “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.”

But now, in the first of what is sure to be a cascade of many document releases, we have Brennan’s own handwritten notes made after the briefing that Comey can’t seem to remember. They were first released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe with heavy redactions on Tuesday; one may assume from Trump’s tweet that the un-redacted versions will be available right away pursuant to his order.

Investigative reporter Sara Carter has a good analysis of what was going on with Brennan and why he might have supplied those notes. Remember, a smart intel guy is going to think in terms of “CYA.”

Most of the Brennan notes as seen here are still almost totally redacted. This is obviously the way Haspel intends members of Congress (and us) to see them. Trump is saying that will change.

Brooke Singman at FOX News also reported this on Tuesday.

Brennan’s notes reinforce what Ratcliffe included in his letter last week to Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ratcliffe also declassified a CIA memo showing that officials referred the matter to James Comey and Peter Strzok at the FBI for potential investigation. This really should "ring a bell" with Comey.

Right now, we’re still having to deal with redactions, as in Brennan’s largely blacked-out note that says, “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED], CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Won’t it be nice to know who [REDACTED] is?

One other part of Brennan’s notes that isn’t redacted consists of cryptic notes in the margins: “JC,” “Denis” and “Susan.” Easy guesses are that he was talking about James Comey, Denis McDonough (Obama’s chief of staff) and Susan Rice.

Importantly, since one way Brennan can "C" his "A" is to say that the "dossier" was Russian disinformation, numerous sources have characterized Hillary’s plot as NOT being Russian disinformation. One observation that makes particularly good sense: “This is not Russian disinformation. Even Brennan knew, or he wouldn’t be briefing the President of the United States on it.” Another source said, “...this information has been sought by hundreds of congressional requests for legitimate oversight purposes and was withheld for political spite --- and the belief that they’d never get caught.”

Ratcliffe himself said in a statement to FOX News, “To be clear, this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the Intelligence Community. I’ll be briefing Congress on the sensitive sources and methods by which it was obtained in the coming days.”

As reported at NOQ (“News. Opinion. Quotes”) Report, “The President has promised to [eliminate the redactions] and offer complete transparency just in time for the November elections.” Mr. President, please make this happen IMMEDIATELY, as millions of people have already voted early. As I’ve long said, early voting is a bad idea, because voters need and deserve all the information they can get before casting their ballots. Holding information until after an election is in itself a political decision with potentially huge political consequences. We have only 27 days before voting (at least non-fraudulent voting) ends.

Paul Sperry, a longtime source of ours, tweeted, “When all the documents are finally declassified, and all the redactions removed from reports, the nation will see that the FBI and CIA not only knew that the Russia “collusion” allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.”

Finally, Sean Hannity, on his TV show Tuesday night, did a segment on this breaking news featuring Gregg Jarrett, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, who was Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager.

Of course, Jarrett has reported at length about Hillary and the Russia hoax, not to mention Obama’s cover-up. “He [Obama] sat there silently,” Jarrett said Tuesday night, “as our government was thrown into turmoil for the last four years over what he knew, based on the intelligence presented to him by John Brennan, which was phony information conjured up by Hillary Clinton...”

Lewandowski was more focused on the two-tier justice system and who is going to pay for this CRIME, the greatest hoax in political history. He said Trump told him in 2018 (!) that, yes, Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper and Comey DID KNOW it was all a hoax. They attempted to depose a duly-elected President, yet “not one person has been put in jail for this yet.”

The time has come. As David Bossie said Tuesday night, “You don’t have to be Columbo to figure this one out.”

Mike Huckabee

LEAVE ME A COMMENT BELOW. I READ THEM!

Mike Huckabee

The Labor Department reports that 661,000 new jobs were created in September. That’s lower than the 800,000 expected, but it was good enough to drop the unemployment rate from 8.4% to 7.9%. Black unemployment dropped from 13 to 12.1%, and Asian-American unemployment fell from 10.7 to 8.9%. The biggest drag on Americans getting back to work was the government, thanks to schools remaining closed. Also, of course, thanks to some state governments that are keeping businesses closed indefinitely (remember the good ol’ days of “Two weeks to flatten the curve?” How did that turn into “Hide in your basement from here to eternity”?)

Those draconian policies are what’s responsible for the increase of 345,000 in permanent job losses, due to employers being forced to give up and go into bankruptcy because of the endless shutdowns.

But as Rick Moran notes at the link, overall, it’s a positive jobs report, and it’s the last one that will be released before the election. He also notes that Joe Biden has stopped promoting his “Build Back Better” slogan, likely because it’s becoming obvious that we don’t need massive government intervention to rebuild the entire economy. We just need to get Democrats out of the way so people can get back to work. Say, that would be a great slogan, but probably not one that Joe would want to use.

Mike Huckabee

A trans-woman Trump supporter went undercover and joined Antifa in Portland, and in a fascinating piece for Reuters, she exposes what she learned about their intentions, their tactics and their organizational methods. The mole describes Antifa as a very efficient, “open-source networked insurgency.” Their attacks are organized in much the same way as the intifada terrorist attacks against Israel.

This link is to a piece that summarizes the story with key quotes, and it includes a link to the full original story. This is a must-read for all police and security professionals, and for anyone who wants to know what we’re really dealing with. It should shake the blinders off of anyone who still believes that Anitfa is just “an idea” and not a terrorist organization, if you can imagine someone that self-delusional.

Mike Huckabee

The Justice Department has sided with Capitol Hill Baptist Church in its lawsuit against the DC government and Mayor Muriel Bowser. The church argues that DC’s ban on outdoor church services is a clear violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

The church’s attorneys from First Liberty Institute say the government is under a high burden of proof that any intrusion on First Amendment rights must be to advance a compelling government interest, such as public safety. But by banning outdoor church services while allowing, and even endorsing and participating in, much larger protest gatherings, the Mayor and DC officials are clearly discriminating against people of faith while allowing exceptions for those they agree with. That’s not how the First Amendment works, and the DOJ agrees.

In announcing the DOJ’s stance on the case, the head of the Civil Rights Division said this:

“The right to free exercise of religion and the right to protest are both enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. We are a nation dedicated to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. The District of Columbia has, unfortunately, neglected these rights. The Justice Department is committed to defending both of these fundamental freedoms and in supporting all Americans’ rights to worship as they choose.”

There are more good quotes at the link, so read the whole thing. This is such an open-and-shut case of unconstitutional and illegal targeting by government officials, with even the Justice Department siding with the target, that I assume the only hope of DC prevailing in court would be if it lands in front of Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Mike Huckabee

“They Don’t Hear Very Well, Do They?” The media continue to press President Trump to denounce white supremacist groups and claim he refuses to do it. I recently shared a video showing him doing that exact thing on seven different occasions. Now, someone has compiled a longer video showing him doing it on 17 different occasions. You can watch it at this link, along with some more examples the video left out, which brings the total number of public condemnations of white supremacists to over 20.

All of this is a straw man. There is no giant surge in the number of white supremacist hate groups, or the SPLC wouldn't have to keep slandering benign Christian conservative groups as "hate groups" to gin up donations. We also know that the ludicrous claim that the rioters destroying blue cities are rightwing extremists in disguise is a lie because if they really were rightwingers, instead of being immediately released to do it again, they'd actually be arrested, jailed and have the book thrown at them, like anyone in those cities who uses his Second Amendment rights to defend his life, property or family.

The idea that Trump's supporters are all racists and white supremacists is a feeble excuse the Democrats cooked up to explain why he beat them in 2016. It saved them having to do any serious self-reflection about why they were really rejected, like the fact that eight years of Obama had proven that their policies are a disaster, and that they had nominated the most arrogant, entitled, dishonest and unlikable candidate in history.

Incidentally, the one candidate in the 2020 Presidential race who actually has been endorsed by a genuine, prominent white supremacist (Richard Spencer) is Joe Biden.

His campaign denounced the endorsement, but Biden himself never has personally. So how come the media aren’t demanding that he denounce Spencer’s endorsement? Oh, right: they don’t really believe this is an issue. It’s just a way to smear Trump with the same false accusation. Over and over and over. I think Candace Owens described the diminishing effects of this tactic perfectly in one word: “Boring.”

Say, here’s a way to put a fresh spin on it and make it more interesting: how about if the media start demanding that the Democrats apologize for their long, long history of supporting white supremacists?

Mike Huckabee

Because of Tuesday’s presidential debate, the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday didn’t get the attention it deserved at the time. But now, after a few days to unwind from that excruciating night, let’s take a look at what happened during the Comey hearing.

Comey was there at the prodding of Sen. Lindsay Graham, chairman of the committee, which is looking into Crossfire Hurricane and FBI corruption related to that case. If there was ever any doubt that James Comey is the slipperiest, slimiest snake in the swamp, he certainly put it to rest on Wednesday. Comey showed a selective lack of “recall” that was even more pronounced than Hillary Clinton’s, if that is possible. He just couldn’t remember with specificity much of anything he did that had to do with the “dossier” or FISA.

Any more mental lapses and he would’ve been qualified to run for President as a Democrat. Except in Comey’s case, it was an act.

Someone as smooth as Comey has to be pinned down quite forcefully to show how much he has to hide and how hard he’s trying to hide it. On Wednesday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley did exactly that. He skillfully filleted Comey like a fish. Hawley must be pleased to know that Megan Fox at PJ Media described his style as that of “a young Perry Mason with better hair.”

I\If Sen. Hawley was having a good hair day, he was also having a good questioning day. Comey could only go into his “Duh, I dunno” routine and at one point, after being hopelessly caught in an inconsistency, smirk and shrug idiotically. But Comey is not an idiot; his line of defense at the hearing was obviously to protect himself legally by “knowing” or “remembering” as little as possible, present himself as ethically pure, and give the impression that, hey, the FBI is ALWAYS this incompetent.

Comey tried to distance himself from the grossly misleading and error-ridden FISA application and weasel out of his own responsibility, even as Hawley pressed him on the fact that he had personally signed off on it. (Examples of Comey’s distancing: He said “what the FBI Director does in connection to a FISA is actually very narrow.” He said he doesn’t regret his “role” in this matter; he regrets that “it happened.”) If Comey’s not responsible for the verified accuracy and truthfulness of the content, then what does his signature to that effect even mean?

Comey claimed he didn’t have “personal knowledge that would have led me to understand that we weren’t supplying complete information.” But Hawley challenged him on the true extent of his personal knowledge, asking him if at the time he certified the first FISA application against Carter Page, he knew that Christopher Steele was working for the DNC.

"I don’t know if I knew [it was] the Democratic Party,” Comey prevaricated. “I knew that he was working for political opponents of President Trump.” (We know now that by the time of the FISA application, Comey and all those top-tier people knew Steele was working for Hillary.)

Hawley zeroed in: “Now surely you recognized at the time that relying so heavily on a biased source would undermine public confidence in the FBI’s activities, didn’t you?”

"No, I did not,” Comey answered tersely. NO, HE DID NOT??

Hawley went on, using Comey’s self-serving comments from other testimony against him. (Example: “You...said, ‘A reasonable appearance of bias can corrupt the American people’s faith in your work as much as actual bias can.’ Do you stand by those remarks?”) It was masterful.

He brought up Stuart Evans, a lawyer in the national security division of the DOJ under Obama, “reminding” Comey that before the first FISA, Evans raised “serious concerns about the ostensibly partisan nature of the information provided by Mr. Steele, did he not?”

Comey, again very tersely: “I don’t know.”

Hawley then cited Evans’ concerns as they appear in the IG report. This was a total take-down of Comey, who went on to claim not to have known who Steele’s sub-source was or anything about him. (Of course, we now know that the FBI had previously investigated this person over several years on suspicion that he was a Russian agent.) Hawley again read from the IG report: “‘Comey told us that the application seemed factually and legally sufficient when he read it. He had no questions or concerns before he signed it.’”

Comey stared into the camera like a diminished human being.

The former FBI Director actually said that the referral from the IC (intelligence community) to the FBI of Hillary’s plan to smear Trump with a story about “collusion” with Russia (the one referred to by DNI John Ratcliffe in a letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham) “doesn’t ring any bells with me.” If that is true, Joe Biden’s not the only one who could benefit from memory-enhancing drugs.

More details at the link, including the spectacular must-watch video of Sen. Hawley expertly nailing Comey to the wall.

It should now be obvious to all that James Comey and Hillary Clinton were cut from the same cloth. And the cloth is that slippery kind that slides around and won’t stay put.

Keep in mind, Comey was FBI Director, supposedly at the helm of an enormously significant and politically-charged case. Imagine: investigating a major-party presidential candidate for possibly being an agent of Russia and colluding with Vladimir Putin to win the election! That would be treason. Comey would have demanded to know every detail –- just as Obama and Brennan would have.

And yet, today, Comey is vague on the details. How was he able to write a book?

Reaching the end of his time to question Comey, Hawley asked the former FBI director, “How are the American people supposed to trust the FBI following abuses like this?” Comey responded just the way you’d expect: he focused on his own integrity.

Comey will go down in history all right, not for his integrity but for his stupendous lack of it. Thanks to Sen. Hawley for giving the world a clearer look at the FBI, from the top down, in 2016.