MORNING EDITION

October 17, 2020

By Mike Huckabee

"HUCKABEE" PREVIEW

With the election coming into the home stretch, stretch out on the couch and join me tonight for a new episode of "Huckabee" on TBN! Former Acting Intelligence Director Ric Grennell will talk about his role in exposing the "Russia collusion" hoax. Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer will discuss the media's all-out war to defeat Trump. NFL legend Benjamin Watson will tell us about his new documentary on the divide over abortion. You'll meet a Huck's Hero who's changing the lives of foster children across America. Plus conversation and music from country superstar John Rich, and a very special surprise guest you won't believe.

It's all coming at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and Sunday at 9 EST/8 CST, on TBN. To find out where you can watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv and click on "Channel Finder" on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only "Digital Exclusives," including extended interviews, "In Case You Missed It" and "Facts of the Matter" segments, and extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests, all at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights, and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.

WISH WE HEARD THIS DURING THE DEBATE

This is an example of one of the things President Trump should've mentioned in the debate, if Savannah Guthrie had stopped interrupting him and demanding that he denounce white supremacy for the 100th time: The Administration has reached a deal with CVS and Walgreens to ensure that when a COVID-19 vaccine is ready, it will be provided to all residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities free of charge.

A GREAT WEEKEND STORY

Here's a great weekend story to take your mind off politics and remind you that there are other things in life that need tending to. Stacy Lois Oliver was a Chicago woman who died at 52 of the neurodegenerative disorder MSA. But before she did, she wrote her own obituary. It contains a lot of wise advice, so much that it went viral. Read it yourself, then go smell some roses. And say a prayer for her husband, Jeff, too.

AWARD SEASON

And The Award For Most Creative Excuse of 2020 Goes To… NPR, for accusing Republicans who question why a well-connected ne'er-do-well and known drug abuser like Hunter Biden makes millions from foreign deals of "stigmatizing" people suffering from the disease of addiction.

I care about and pray for anyone fighting the disease of addiction, but that doesn't mean when you see one of them with no qualifications being paid $50,000 a month for a do-nothing job, the logical response is, "Wow, that 12-step program must really be working!"

If you think that's too harsh, maybe it's because outlets like NPR have spent years stigmatizing Republicans as cold, mean, unfeeling monsters instead of just people who have the simple abilities to think logically and to smell a rat.

THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

Like a cheap piñata full of rotten candy, the Hunter Biden laptop story just keeps dropping more disgusting stuff on our heads every time we touch it. There are so many fast-changing details that it's hard to keep up. This is just a little of what's been going on in the past two days, none of which you would know if you relied on the mainstream news or social media to hear about it:

As of now, the laptop has been corroborated to be Hunter Biden's, and one of the people copied on one particularly damning email chain has verified the "big guy" message that appeared to give Joe Biden a 10 percent cut. The "big guy" definitely is Joe Biden according to this source. (I think this dollar-distribution was from when Biden was no longer VP, so I assume his attorneys and apologists will argue it's technically legal, no matter how bad it smells.)

Nineteen House Republicans led by Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs have written a letter to the FBI, asking why they would have held onto the laptop through Trump's impeachment, knowing it contained information about Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine that would've been key to the President's defense. Yeah, a lot of us are wondering about that.

So, what will remarkably incurious FBI Director Christopher Wray do now to protect the swamp rats? Trump himself needs to declassify whatever the FBI has on this and order them to comply immediately. If they were holding on to evidence that was exculpatory for Trump during his impeachment, that might be the worst thing yet!

Also, there's a big, related developing story about more emails being obtained, these from one of Biden's business partners showing that the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese investors were able to get a private, off-the-books meeting with Joe Biden. This is separate from what the New York Post reported. Peter Schweizer (who wrote "Secret Empires") is reporting this one; his source is Bevan Cooney (who used to be a business associate of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer and is now a jailbird.)

Schweizer reports that Cooney let him have his account name and Gmail password to allow direct access to all the messages. So Schweizer got a huge "window" into how business was conducted Biden-style as Hunter traded "established relationships" with the Chinese and got them access to the Obama-Biden White House. This business is referred to in the emails as "China, Inc." One email from Cooney said that "Archer got the Chinese guys all taken care of in DC."

This allegedly includes a high-level meeting with Joe Biden himself, though the official visitor logs make no mention of it. We know about it because of some obscure document by one of the "Chinese folks," Maggie Cheng, boasting that she had facilitated delegation meetings, including the one with VP Biden.

Laura Ingraham on Fox News had a good segment on this, showing how the media are trying to soft-pedal the story. George Stephanopoulos's failure to ask Biden a single question about any of this should now be seen for what it is. Likewise, David Ignatius, in WaPo's "The Truth Behind the Hunter Biden Non-Scandal," who said: "Hunter Biden made a mistake getting involved with a dubious company like Burisma. But the notion that the Burisma affair undermines Joe Biden's case to be President is, as he would say, malarkey."

If anyone has always been full of malarkey, it's David Ignatius.

When Biden is asked anything at all about it, he just gets testy, calls it "a smear campaign" and refuses to answer. Then it's dropped. But the dam is cracking, and not even all the media and social media giants can keep holding their fingers in it and smearing on spackle forever. I'll have more on Monday, since I assume even more will pour out by then.