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March 5, 2023 - Huckabee Today
49:54
TAKING ON THE CDC! | Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Dr. Bhattacharya & MORE | FULL EPISODE | Huckabee
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Tonight on Huckabee, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, health research expert Dr. Jay Manacharya, risen motherhood founder Laura Wiffler, traditional country duo the Malpass Brothers.
That's Trey Corley and the Music City Connection.
And I'm your announcer, Keith Bilbrey.
And now, here's Mike Huckabee!
Great audience here tonight and a fantastic show all lined up for you.
A little personal thing here tonight.
I started playing in rock bands as a very young teenager in the 60s.
Now we weren't very good, but here's what we learned.
If we played really loud, people didn't notice.
So we played loud, as loud as our amps would go.
Our parents yelled at us, turn it down!
They said, if you don't, you're going to go deaf.
So we did what every kid would do.
We turned it up even more, right?
I mean, after all, our parents were clearly wrong about the length of our hair, our bell-bottom jeans, tie-dyed shirts, and our love for the Beatles over Lawrence Welk.
So we figured they were wrong about the volume of our music as well.
Now, I've been around firearms most of my life, squirrel hunting mostly as a kid, but as an adult, shooting shotguns in Arkansas, duck blinds, and deer rifles from a deer stand.
And while hearing protection was encouraged, having little daubs of rubber stuffed in our ears really made it hard to hear the jokes being told in the duck blind between flocks of mallards coming in for a landing in the open water.
So we kept those little blobs of rubber in our pockets.
I'm not sure exactly what age I noticed, but it seemed that people started talking a lot more softly.
And I'd have to ask them to repeat what they said.
I eventually had a real hearing test.
Oh, not the kind we had in school that determined if we could hear a jet engine 30 feet away.
And I learned that I did have some hearing loss, mostly at the high frequency range.
You know, the range of a woman's voice?
Or a screaming eight-year-old?
That seemed as much a blessing as a curse, so I didn't worry much about it.
But it only got worse.
My wife complained that I wasn't listening.
That wasn't true.
I was listening.
I just wasn't hearing.
Big difference, by the way.
My now adult children constantly gave me the, Dad, seriously, you've got to do something routine, because I appeared to ignore their request for additional funding of clothes, cars, or college expenses.
I found that to be very helpful.
I realized I was becoming my own father whose own issues with loss of hearing had caused my sister and me and our spouses to insist that he get his hearing checked, more for our benefit than his.
He dutifully went to a hearing aid dealer and they tested his hearing and upon completion of the exam they said, Well, Mr. Huckabee, you definitely have significant hearing loss in both ears and you need hearing aids.
He asked, well, how much would that cost?
And when they told him the price, he abruptly said, I heard that.
And he got up and walked out and that was the last of that.
True story.
So...
Recently, I made my own appointment without telling anyone, and I went to the audiologist.
She told me what I already knew.
I couldn't hear a whole lot.
I got concerned.
Jesus might come back and I'd miss both the shout and the sound of the trumpet and I'd end up getting left behind with the likes of Trey and Keith.
Some of you are just now getting that, okay? - Okay.
So I got my hearing aids.
Yeah.
The truth sign of youthful stupidity and old man stubbornness.
And boy, do I hear stuff now.
But I got mixed feelings about it.
I mean, sure, I can actually hear what people are saying to me.
And I'm not just nodding my head and smiling while they're telling me that I'm standing on their foot.
I actually hear birds that I thought had gone extinct.
I hear the sound of my keyboard clicking and the dishwasher and ice maker.
I always thought they operated silently.
And I do hear and understand female voices again.
I'm not sure that's always a good thing.
Because I'm hearing stuff said behind my back that I probably shouldn't hear.
I also hear my dogs barking really loud.
And quite frankly, I heard them barking just fine before.
All in all, it's a good thing.
I don't really like wearing them, to be honest.
It's kind of a bother to keep up with them.
But I know it's for the best.
And it's my own fault for needing them.
I didn't pay attention to my parents back in my early rock and roll days.
But now, if you say something to me and I don't respond, it's no longer that I can't hear you.
I can.
I just don't want to.
And I'm old enough, I just don't care.
But at least when the Lord comes with a shout and the sound of the trumpet, I'll be able to say, I heard that.
Well, my first guest tonight was born on Friday the 13th.
But it turned out to be a pretty lucky day for her parents.
She wasn't easy to get booked on this show because she's been one busy young lady.
On January the 10th, she was sworn in as the 47th governor of her state.
Just a few weeks later, she was asked to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union Address And in the past week, she's introduced and will soon sign one of the most ambitious education reform plans in the country, which will take her state from some of the lowest starting teacher pay to maybe the highest in the nation.
But it will include accountability and empower parents to choose their children's school, whether in public, private, parochial, or even homeschool.
Despite how busy she is, I was able to pull maybe a few strings to get through to her, through her mother.
Now she was with us when she was press secretary to President Trump, but she's here tonight as the youngest governor currently in America and the first woman to be elected governor of Arkansas.
Please welcome back to the show, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Wow.
Whoa!
How about this?
You know, a lot of these people are from states all over America.
They didn't even get a chance to vote for you.
I think you need to get them to Arkansas so they can vote in the next election.
We'll take them.
Come on.
No, I think people appreciate what you have already launched in Arkansas.
I mean, it's pretty amazing.
And maybe some people don't fully understand how big the education bill is.
What are some of the things that are going to happen in Arkansas for parents Well, we think that we have the most bold, conservative, far-reaching piece of education legislation, not just in the history of Arkansas, but maybe anywhere in the country, certainly in modern history.
And our focus is really on empowering parents to make the best decision about where and how their child should be educated.
At the same time, we want to bolster our teachers.
We will go from being ranked at the very bottom, in the bottom five in the country in teacher pay, to number one by the fall of next year, which I think really puts us on the map and makes us competitive.
And we're putting power back into the hands of parents so that they get to decide how their kids are going to be educated.
I think a lot of parents across America, not just in Arkansas, They feel like that when they hear things like people heard in Virginia, where a governor candidate said, what goes on in the classroom is none of the parents' business.
I mean, that was bizarre.
So you've pushed back on that, and you've made it very clear that is not going to be what's happening for Arkansas parents.
Well, as a mom of three kids, I can assure you it is most certainly my business.
And frankly, it's my obligation to know what is happening in the classroom as a parent.
And now, as a governor, it's my obligation to make sure every kid in Arkansas has access to a quality education.
And our goal should never be to indoctrinate kids and not ever tell them what to think, but instead teach them how to think.
Now, there's certainly people in Arkansas who aren't all that happy about this plan.
Now, it's a pretty small but very vocal minority.
And here's what they say.
Well, you're going to destroy public education because when parents can take the money and it follows the student to a private school, home school, parochial school, then the public schools will collapse.
How do you answer parents when they say that?
It's very clear to me as a mom of three kids, my children are all very different.
None of them learn in the exact same way.
So a one-size-fits-all system is not going to work.
We have to make sure we give that local flexibility to the districts, to the schools, to make better decisions while also empowering parents that if a school is not meeting their child's needs, they need to have the option to take their child somewhere else.
I think the real question that those individuals should be asking, if they're worried about their schools, why are so many parents leaving?
What can we do different to make this the place that they want to stay?
And what about parents of children who maybe come from poor families, maybe they have children with disabilities, so there's real challenges.
And some have argued, oh, this will make it more difficult for them.
But during legislative testimony, parents of those kids were some of the biggest supporters of the plan.
Absolutely, because this allows them to find the place where their child can have their needs best met, whether that is a private school, a charter school, the public school, or whether it's at home.
And making sure that they have those options, I think, is so unbelievably important.
And the only way that we can provide, I think, true local control, because there's nothing more local than a parent making a decision about what's best for their kids.
Interestingly, the teachers union was the big point of opposition.
And they said, oh, we want the teacher pay.
Yeah, we want that big increase in paycheck, but we don't want to make it easy to fire bad teachers.
We want to be able to keep them.
And nobody is out making the argument that we need to clean house with our teachers.
We have some amazing, dedicated professionals that are doing a phenomenal job educating the students of our state.
However, we do have a few people that probably should choose a different profession, and we want to help them make that decision.
Well, I think you're probably going to do that.
Sarah, you're going to stick around with us.
We're going to have more with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders in just a moment.
I know you're going to stay with us.
So we'll be right back.
Coming up, mind-blowing illusions of Anthony Salazar.
And later, brand new music from the Malpas Brothers on Huckabee.
Go to MikeHuckabee.com and sign up for his free newsletter.
And follow @govbyhuckabee on Twitter. - And welcome back, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
I think I know her a little bit.
I hope so.
Yeah, I hope so.
Because of her mother, I was able to get her booked as a guest on the show.
Speaking of booking, you did the response to the State of the Union, which is a big deal.
That is a big deal to be asked to do that.
So Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, they can pick anybody they want.
They ask you to do it.
Were you nervous and scared when they said that?
I was terrified.
Were you really?
Why?
Well, I've seen some people go and not go very well, and I didn't want that to be me.
And I also wanted to be able to rise to the moment and deliver a message that I felt like really spoke to the rest of America that Biden was going to ignore in his State of the Union.
And so, you know, the pressure was high, and I came out on the other side, I think there was a phrase in your remarks that really resonated with a whole lot of America.
When you said the issue is no longer Democrats versus Republicans, it's between normal and crazy.
So that spoke to people.
So what are some of the crazy kind of things that we are facing right now in the country?
I mean, some of the crazy things that we can't even define what a woman is now and that there is not two genders, but it's unlimited number and things like that.
I think people are starting to say, well, hold on a minute.
This is not, you know, the America that I grew up in.
This is not the America that I know where anything counts.
And so talking about and defining that I think is really important as we move forward, particularly for conservatives, not to back down, but to engage, frankly, at a bigger level and start to go on offense instead of just allowing the other side to constantly define us and tell us who we are and call us names.
We needed to do that on our own terms.
And so that was what I was hoping and trying to accomplish through my response in the State of the Union.
And I think you did.
I don't think there's any doubt about that.
I'm going to ask you a question that I've never asked you before.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
No, but it's not a difficult question.
This will be the end of my career, right?
No, it won't.
But, you know, I've never asked you, at what point did you start thinking that you might run for governor of Arkansas?
I mean, I remember when you came and said, Dad, I think I'm going to run.
But obviously you had been, like, cooking that up for a while.
When did that start ruminating?
Yes.
You know, the first time I actually really started to pay attention was right as I was leaving the White House.
I'd had a conversation with the president, and it was really important to me for the very first person I told in that building to be him, because he was the one that gave me that opportunity and that job.
And in that conversation, he said, so you're going to go home and run for governor?
And I was like, well, no, I don't know.
Yeah.
I said, I really want to take a break and spend some time with my family.
And he goes, you're going to run.
Your dad had nothing to do, he was the president who had all that.
Well, no, definitely our conversations when I moved home, that was a lot of, I mean, we spent a lot of time talking about it and you really talking about the pressures and the reality of the job.
And that was when I actually made the decision.
But I think some of those moments were the first time I really started to think about Actually doing that.
Before I worked in the White House and before that campaign, I'd always been more of a behind-the-scenes person.
I'd never been the forward-facing individual, and I kind of accidentally became press secretary, and then that moved in that direction.
But certainly, you had a lot to do with it.
I wouldn't be here without it.
But I wondered, even growing up in the governor's mansion, because, you know, a lot of your growing up was there.
Was there ever a moment you looked around and said, I'm going to come back here.
I'm going to come back here someday.
But I'm going to run this place.
You know, I think as a teenager, I certainly thought I was running the place a few times.
You kind of were, to be honest.
I learned the hard way.
I most certainly was not.
But, you know, I can't say it never crossed my mind, but I don't think I've set out for that to be my path and that to be the end goal.
But to say I never thought about it wouldn't be transparent.
And certainly it crossed my mind, but I don't think that was really my plan or the trajectory that I saw myself going until probably just a few years ago.
Tell us how you, as a mom and a wife, balance the family and all those challenges with the challenge of a job like Governor.
Well, I have really good free babysitting in my parents, which is very helpful.
And my in-laws also help out.
But in some days we don't balance it very well.
Some days, like every other working mom out there, there are challenges that come with trying to be a really good mom and also do a really good job.
And some days you don't feel like you're giving either one 100% of what they need.
And so trying to find that balance can be very tricky.
I found that focusing more on quality time instead of quantity of time with my kids is really important.
Even if it's You know, 10 or 15 minutes at bedtime, making sure I get that time at the end of the day, or at the beginning, making breakfast and spending that time getting backpacks ready, taking time to put my phone down, block out all of the demands of work and really focus on what's important to them.
And prioritizing those things in their life, whether it's their basketball games, which my son Huck is a very dedicated basketball player, and George, who you all got to meet a few minutes ago, making sure I show up for the moments that are really important to them and trying to make those things a priority and letting them know is incredibly important to finding that kind of balance.
Well, from my very objective point of view, I think you do it as masterfully as anyone ever could.
I'm so proud of you.
First, as my daughter, I'm proud of you as my governor.
And I'm very happy that you came to be with us tonight.
Thank you.
What an honor.
Thank you.
Well, we have links to the governor's education plan, and you'll be able to read the entire thing, something some of the legislators who were against it never did.
So I hope you'll check that out.
You can also find her Twitter account, Instagram page, how to do that.
If you go to Huckabee.tv, we have a link to all of those things that we can get you straight to what Governor Sanders is up to.
Right now, Keith Bilbrey is standing by.
He's going to tell our audience what we have coming up next.
Well, up next, prepare to be amazed when illusionist Anthony Salazar magically appears on Huckabee.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Welcome back.
Anthony Salazar was born in the Philippines.
He moved to America at age 10, and he discovered a passion for magic.
He amazes audiences today on cruise ships all over the world, but tonight he's here to amaze us.
Would you please welcome illusionist extraordinaire, Anthony Salazar.
applause & cheers.
music plays
music plays music
plays music plays Alright, I'm going to give you guys a closer look.
Check it out.
No camera tricks, no magnets.
Let's show it to the band.
He's really in there dancing around.
Oh, he's trying to escape.
Close it up.
Governor, let's give you a closer look.
Stay right there.
Hold on to this.
Just like that.
Two hands.
Perfect.
You're doing a great job.
I'll be right back.
Okay.
Alright, I'm kidding.
Stay right there.
Hold on.
Just like that.
You're doing good.
Here we go.
Watch it.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you very much!
Now as a magician, I think by law, we are required to do a card trick.
So Governor, would you mind joining us here at this table?
We're going to do a card trick for you here.
Let's set that right here.
Okay.
If you can stand right over here.
I will do it.
We have a couple glasses, your wine glasses.
All right.
No drinking this time, but we do have a deck of cards.
And this deck of cards is set up in new deck order.
Okay.
Which means it's got the jokers.
All right.
And everything's in order.
The ace through king of spades, ace through king of hearts, and it goes in reverse.
Okay.
The king through ace of diamonds, king through ace of clubs.
We're going to use the first ten cards.
Okay.
The ace through ten of spades.
We're going to keep that in order.
I'm going to put this in this glass so I can't touch it.
We're going to use the ten hearts right here.
I'll give that to you.
We're not going to keep this in order.
I'm going to have you shuffle that.
Shuffle these up.
Just any which way.
Mix, mix, mix.
A shuffled pack of ten cards creates 3,628,800 different possibilities.
I'll take your word for that.
Every time you move a card, it's another one of those possibilities.
Okay.
Let me know if you can satisfy this completely shuffle.
Totally happy with that.
We'll see.
Okay.
That's pretty mixed up.
It's pretty random.
Yeah.
Agree?
Yeah.
This sequence right here is just one of those 3.6 million possibilities.
Okay.
We're going to make it harder.
Tenfold.
I'm going to go later.
Governor, would you just say stop?
Stop.
Somewhere in the middle would be nice.
I'll do it again.
Okay.
Say stop.
Stop.
Perfect.
Let's go down here.
You chose the four hearts.
Okay.
We're going to flip that, reverse it.
We're going to put it back where it was.
Okay.
So now we have a packet of ten shuffled cards, one card reversed.
Okay.
The ace through ten of spades and order.
Okay.
So we have order and chaos.
This is where it gets interesting.
It does.
Governor.
Yes.
Would you tell me, what is the first card on the red pack?
First card on the red pack?
It's the five of hearts.
Five of hearts.
Yeah.
Watch.
There's your five.
Five of spades.
This is very interesting.
One of the five of spades before.
Behind your five, you shuffle to an eight.
Yes.
Behind my five.
It's an eight.
Behind your eight, you shuffle to an ace.
Ace, yes.
Behind my eight is an ace.
An ace.
After the aces are the tens.
After the tens are the nines.
After the nines, we have the threes.
And after the threes, you could have turned over one card.
You turned over the four of hearts.
Yes.
Here's a four.
Yes.
But he wasn't turned over.
We have the twos, and after the twos, we have...
The sevens.
The sevens.
That's it!
That's awesome.
Thank you very much.
Wow.
Pretty incredible.
Now, if you want to see more of The Magic of Anthony Salazar and to book some tour dates into your community, our organization, visit Huckabee.tv.
We will connect you to Anthony, which I think you're going to want to do, and let's see if he can do it for you.
Keith, Have you got any tricks up your sleeve?
And if you do, pull them out and tell us what's coming up for the rest of the show.
Let me see.
Let me see here.
Oh, yeah.
Mike talks about health and the COVID response with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Still ahead on Huckabee.
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Thanks and God bless you for your help.
Well, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University.
He has boldly said that the COVID pandemic has been one of the most politically and culturally divisive events in American history.
He's probably right about that.
He was shadow banned on social media because of his views of opposing lockdowns, opposing long school closures, and other measures that he says did nothing but harm Americans, and that we should all be outraged.
Well, I think we are.
He was one of the originators of the Great Barrington Declaration, which brought real science to the COVID issue early on, from some of the world's leading doctors and scientists.
Please welcome to the show, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Thank you.
I heard you early in the pandemic when all these people were saying they were scientists.
And you made a statement that I said, that's the most sensible thing I've heard.
And here it was.
You said it was the first time in history that we isolated the healthy people instead of just isolating the people who are sick.
That didn't seem that it should be controversial to make that statement.
Really shouldn't have been.
For a century, the way we managed respiratory virus pandemics was we found out who's vulnerable, cared for them, tried to protect them as best we could.
And didn't disrupt the lives of everybody else, because we knew that harming those, disrupting the lives of kids, disrupting the lives of the poor, disrupting the lives of the working class, what it would do, it would harm those folks with absolutely no benefit for the people who are most vulnerable.
And we could have done that during this pandemic, Governor.
Well, I mean, you've been proven to be right, you and some of the others in the Great Barrington Declaration.
And it's been now evident that we were being lied to by federal officials, Dr. Collins, Tony Fauci.
They were all over the board.
But ultimately, they said things that weren't true, that masks, first they said they wouldn't work, then they said we had to have them, we would die without them, that we had to have the vaccine.
But if we had the vaccine, we couldn't give it to anyone and we couldn't get it.
All of that was a lie.
Yeah, and they said that if you got COVID and recovered, it didn't count for anything, even though it's actually pretty good protection.
And there were a lot of people that lost their jobs over this exact issue.
A lot of kids, a year and a half of school...
My kids didn't see it inside a classroom for a year and a half.
I mean, you know, it was one of these things where...
In order to create this crazy policy, they had to make this idea that they had the consensus behind them.
Yeah.
That's why they called me fringe.
That's why they had to dismiss and shadow ban and do all these tactics that don't belong anywhere near science.
Because if there's no consensus, you can't do those things that harm so many people.
Recently, when the Twitter files got uncovered, You were able to see firsthand that there were people inside of Twitter that specifically targeted you to shut you down.
I think it's even worse than that.
So I actually got to meet Elon.
He invited me to go up to Twitter headquarters I saw.
I was put on a blacklist.
So...
It's the craziest thing.
So what that meant is that I could write a message.
I didn't even know I was on the blacklist.
So I would write the message, my followers would see it, but it never went to anybody else.
But what can we do to make sure this never happens to us again?
I think you write your representatives and tell them the American people deserve an honest bipartisan commission.
To assess what happened during the pandemic.
After the Challenger disaster in 1986, space shuttle blew up.
We had a scientifically minded commission.
You remember Richard Feynman, this Nobel Prize winning physicist, he took the O-ring, dipped it in the water.
Yeah.
We need something like that.
A couple of particularly troubling things.
One, Even government agencies are now saying this came as a leak from the Wuhan lab.
This was not bat soup from somewhere in the jungle.
Is anybody going to be held accountable for the lies that they told?
And did they know they were lying to us when they told us?
The best form of accountability is reform.
Unfortunately, the American government, in cooperation with the Chinese, Undertook very dangerous experiments.
And I think that's likely what led to this deadly pandemic.
We need reform so this kind of thing never happens again.
We hear, listen to the scientists, listen to the science.
We've got to follow the science.
But that's not what we did in this.
And the CDC has destroyed their credibility.
And that's not something we want to have happen.
Public health is very, very important.
I've worked for decades in public health.
I've seen firsthand the good it can do.
But the confidence in public health is just in the toilet right now because of those failures.
And the CDC, probably the very worst thing that it did was that it didn't push hard enough to open schools.
Sweden opened schools.
They had better results in the pandemic than we did.
We knew very early on it was deadly for closing schools, and it wasn't actually helping as far as stopping COVID spread.
And the CDC did not push hard enough to do that.
Did they do that because they were getting pressured from Washington and from government officials who wanted there to be a lockdown?
You know, Governor, in 2021, the teachers' unions basically told the CDC what to do.
And they did it.
And they did it.
Which is disturbing on its face.
Another thing was this gain-of-function research.
Was there something going on that we as American citizens helped fund in Wuhan, because we couldn't have done it in the US, it would have been illegal.
Is that one of the reasons that some of the government people here were trying to, say, look elsewhere?
Because they didn't want us to know that we had helped pay for the very thing that caused this.
I mean, yes.
We funded that laboratory in Wuhan.
It's exactly the epicenter where the virus first spread out.
And we probably...
I don't think it was nefarious.
And the idea was that we could predict what viruses were going to make a pandemic.
It just was an accident, is my guess.
It leaked out, and somebody was playing with some test tubes.
They got sick.
They went outside.
This thing spreads very, very easily.
I mean, I've had it twice myself.
It's not surprising to think that it would infect a lab worker.
I mean, it was a dangerous experiment and we shouldn't have been doing it.
But I think that at the core of it is what happened.
It's the reason why so many people have suffered.
Well, I can only say this.
If we ever have another one, God forbid, I hope we don't.
But if we do, I hope somebody in Washington is smart enough to put you in charge of how we deal with it rather than the folks who were doing it the last time.
I truly do.
Thank you for your courage in standing up for all of us.
Now, for our audience, you can follow Dr. Bhattacharya, Silence No More, on social media.
You can actually find out what he's talking about, and it's worth following.
Head to Huckabee.tv.
We'll provide the links for you, and I have a feeling you're going to be quite amazed at what we were told and what we should have been told.
By the way, Keith Bilbrey has never been silenced, and he is silenced no more.
So, Keith, go ahead and tell our audience what we have to look forward to in the rest of the show.
Well, up next, author Laura Wiffler on faith-based parenting.
Later, the Malpuss brothers perform their classic country on Huckabee.
Thank you.
Say Huckabee mugs, t-shirts, and more.
Thank you.
Do you like that band Trey Corley and the Music City Connection or what?
Wow!
I think if I keep working with them, I'll have those guys playing real instruments real soon.
I really do.
Absolutely amazing music.
Some of the best that ever has happened in this country.
Speaking of some of the best stuff, Laura Wiffler is the co-founder of a wonderful organization called Risen Motherhood.
It's a ministry, website, and podcast, and it helps moms with faith, family, and church.
But she's an award-winning author whose latest book calls on her own experience as the mom of a special needs child.
And it's called Like Me, a story about disability and discovering God's image in every person.
Please welcome Laura Wiffler.
Laura, great to having you here.
Thank you for having me.
It's a joy.
I read this book to my grandson this afternoon.
He loved it and I loved it because it's a very simple story, helping children to understand that there are lots of different kinds of children.
Some of them have disabilities and they may be a little different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That's really the heart of the book is just to help show families what it might be like to have a child with disability and a family and to help give them a visual of what adaptive equipment looks like or what going to therapy looks like and just to expose people to a different type of lifestyle but also see that it's a really beautiful and it's a lovely life.
That's what I think I took away from the book.
That this is not something to say, oh, this poor family, they have a special needs child.
Let's feel sorry for them.
It's okay, they have a special needs child.
In a lot of ways, every child has some special needs, but some are challenging.
And it doesn't mean that they're not as valuable to God as any other child.
Yeah, you know, all people made in God's image, that means they have inherent dignity.
And I really tried to portray that in the book and just show children that to know another person is an enormous privilege.
It's just an incredible thing to know another human being.
We all carry the stamp of God on us.
And that was something that I really wanted to show in the book.
Because I see with kiddos, sometimes when someone moves or acts differently, they can feel a little bit uncertain.
And they can feel a little bit...
Just they have curiosity.
You know, it's innocent.
They have questions.
But sometimes they just need a little bit of help from an adult or someone that's older and wiser to be able to say, hey, this person, they think a little bit differently than you, but they still want to be included.
They still want to have fun.
They want to be friends.
And this is a very personal thing for you, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
My daughter is five years old.
Her name is Eden.
And when she was two months old, she was diagnosed with what's called rare chromosome disorder.
And rare chromo is this blanket term for people who have really unique diagnoses.
So she's actually the only one in the world with what she has that doctors know of.
So that meant that we were on a pretty unknown path and that they kind of said...
Hey, she may never walk.
She may never talk.
We're really not sure what the future holds.
We're looking at other similar cases, and more than likely, you know, that's not going to be her story.
But over the years, we have just been on a journey of discovering her, and she's unfolded, and we've seen her abilities, and she can walk, which is just an incredible miracle.
God has been so kind.
She can—yeah, go!
Seriously, it's such a gift.
And she is just learning to talk too.
And so she's getting some words.
She's in kindergarten and it's such a joy.
But this book was really born out of that experience and just watching her make friends and kids kind of learn how to include her and engage with her.
Laura, there's probably a lot of parents and maybe all their children are just fine.
They don't have a special need or a learning disability.
But if they see a child, a child who has muscular dystrophy or Down syndrome or some other issue that makes them look different or act different or talk different, as a mom, as a dad, what can those parents do to help their children to understand these can just be your friends and there's nothing that you should be afraid of.
You just ought to love them and God loves them very much.
Yes.
Oh, it's such a good question.
You know, I remember before I had a child with disabilities, I felt a little uncertain.
You know, how do I engage?
And I don't want to say the wrong thing.
And I want to be kind and compassionate.
And you know, what I would encourage parents to do is, first of all, you model right behavior.
So a warm smile, you know, just walking up to that child saying, how are you?
Hi, hello, any of those things.
And you might feel a little funny.
That child, you know, if you interact with my daughter, she may run and give you a hug or she may run the other direction with a scream.
You know, it's just 50-50.
You're not sure.
But, you know, there's an element of, as Christians, we know that life isn't about us and all of our comforts.
And there's a really beautiful thing when we can kind of say, hey, I'm going to go towards you and I'm going to lay down my life and my comforts because I want to make you feel welcome and known and loved.
And so that's one great thing, parents.
Modeling behavior.
Another thing is training beforehand.
You know, I think a lot of us, we don't know how to have this conversation because, again, we want to use the right words.
We want to say all the right things.
But there's a lot of foundational work we can do as parents to really say, hey, all people have inherent dignity.
No matter what they can do, no matter their resume, no matter their skills, their talents, the way they move, they are valuable and have dignity.
And we can explain, you know, just all of the hope that the gospel has for our children.
And I think by doing that, those things don't just help in the disability conversation.
It helps in all conversations as we talk about treating others with kindness.
That is a beautiful, beautiful piece of advice for every family.
To get your copy of Laura Wickler's great new book, Like Me, and to follow the Risen Motherhood website and podcast, if you visit Huckabee.tv, we will get you the links.
Keith Bilbrey is standing by.
We're going to ask him to rise to the occasion and tell us what's still coming on the show.
Well, it's a blast from the past as the Malphys brothers bring traditional country to the Huckabee stage.
coming up next!
Hey guys!
I have got a problem.
Smoke keeps coming out from under the hood.
Could you take a look at it?
Okay, we'll get you fixed up.
Oh man, thanks so much.
I find your problem.
Oh good.
Your percolator's bad.
What?
So that's where that is!
Percolators have been bad for years.
Terrible real.
Join Huckabee next week for America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, on uncovering the truth and the legendary rock band The Zombies Perform.
And welcome back.
I have really been looking forward to having the Malpas Brothers back because they play my kind of country music.
They're so authentic.
They opened for Merle Haggard for seven years.
They've got a brand new album called Lonely Street.
It's coming in May.
But the first single, Sleep and the Party's Over, debuted this weekend.
I'm incredibly happy to welcome back the Malpas Brothers.
Guys, thanks for coming.
When you walked out, I suddenly realized I'm so underdressed for a country music performance, I think, right?
I wasn't going to say anything.
But you were going to say something, weren't you?
Yeah, I was going to tell you that there was really no need to introduce me.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, there wasn't?
Everybody already.
Don't.
Don't.
Don't come here and start lying and telling that everybody knows.
He knows.
My birthday has become a national deal now.
China flew a balloon over the other day for my birthday.
Did you see that?
I did see that.
So it was you that was the source of having that Chinese balloon fly over here.
Your birthday.
My birthday, yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Do you have to deal with this all the time, Chris?
I do have to deal with this.
He tells people that stuff all the time.
It's just, it's ridiculous.
You guys are truly brothers.
We are.
Just like brothers.
I originally came to see if you would start traveling with me and I could get rid of him.
About three days with me on the road, and you'd say, where's my brother?
Oh, no.
You know, one of the things I'm excited about, you guys are gonna do some of the music from this new album, and it's gonna be, for the first time, right here on this show, because when you were here before, I said, you guys are gonna work on a new project.
Would you come and do it here?
And you did it.
You kept your promise.
Yes, sir.
Well, we couldn't be asked for a better place to be than here tonight.
I mean that you've got the greatest show, and it is just top notch.
I appreciate that very much.
We kind of like it.
You're going to do a tour, 120 shows over 20 states.
I mean, that's a pretty rugged schedule.
Yes, sir.
Well, we're very devoted to keeping this music alive.
And I think the world needs good, honest music and good, honest people.
And so we're working hard, but we're happy to do it.
We don't really consider them fans.
We consider them family.
So we love all our friends and family we see.
One of the things that I admire so much about you guys is that you don't try to be somebody else.
You don't try to say, we do the music of fill in the blank.
You are who you are, comfortable in your own skin, but you give us a taste of authenticity of what I would call classic traditional country music that a lot of us really You know, if we're going to talk about country music, we want it to be authentic.
And you are keeping that alive.
And I think there are a whole lot of fans of the Malpas Brothers because they love and appreciate that about you.
Well, thank you, sir.
Yeah, people ask us, you know, y'all could change and do something that would be, you know, but we love what we do and we stick to it and we feel like if you do that, the fans will find you.
And we, I mean, we wouldn't make up this accent.
People say, if you really talk about that, we wouldn't make this up.
Love it.
So we'd just be ourselves, you know?
That's why we love you and hope you keep coming back.
Keith Bilbrey is going to tell our viewers how they can hear more of the classic country music of the Malpas Brothers, and we're going to hear some of their music in just a moment.
Well, for tour information, recordings, and more, visit Huckabee.tv.
You'll also find an exclusive performance of their brand new single, Sleep When the Party's Over, from the upcoming album, Lonely Street.
Now, performing Road of Memories with Trey Corley in the Music City Connection and Mike on Bass, here are the Malfus Brothers!
applause Down the road of memories
Yesterday comes back to me Mom and Dad were so much younger and I was filled with teenage dreams My grandpa he said
was my hero He taught me how to pick and sing I first heard the songs of Haggard coming from his guitar strange down the road Oh,
memory Of the day They took my uncle And put a rifle in his hand Shipped him off In
Vietnam He stood proud The day he left us But he lay still When they brought him back home We still ride His beat-up Chevy Cause there are days Down
the road of memory As long as there are pictures and frames Though they're gone,
they'll always remain Empty herein' And empty spaces were ones I loved and used to be.
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