I CAN’T BELIEVE THESE ARE OVER… (COVID, Bud Light, Freedom, etc.) | FULL EPISODE | Huckabee
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Tonight on Huckabee, Florida Congressman Carlos Havanes, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, mystifying illusions from Joseph Reo, chair Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Carla Cook, that's Trey Corley and the Music City Connection, And I'm your announcer, Keith Bilbrey.
And now, here's Mike Hackeray!
Well, thank you very much. thank you very much.
We have a great studio audience here tonight.
They're excited and we're happy they're here.
But I got to tell you, we're going to begin tonight with some sad news.
It's the news of the passing of one of our audience experience team, Keith Kelly.
He died of a heart attack last week, just a day after working at the taping of our show.
Now, if you have been in our studio audience, you probably saw or met Keith.
We extend our condolences to his wife and family, and our heartfelt thanks to Keith Kelly for a life well lived.
What a blessing to have had him with us.
Well, we do have some good news tonight.
The COVID emergency is officially over.
Yes!
Yeah!
Oh, I know.
It's been over for a long time and most of us went back to living normally almost two years ago.
But this week, a bipartisan vote in Congress officially declared the national emergency to be over.
Now, President Biden actually had threatened to veto that bill because he really wants to keep telling us how to live.
But even a majority of Democrats in the Senate were COVID-fatigued enough to vote to end the eternal emergency that for a while made churches stop meeting, permanently closed many locally owned stores and restaurants, and destroyed the education of millions of students across America.
When it all started, remember, Dr. Fauci said that we needed to close everything for two weeks to flatten the curve.
What it really flattened was the American people and their families and businesses and their freedom.
And sadly, it flattened our faith in public health officials who repeatedly lied to us and stoked fear and division by forcing us to do meaningless things like wear a mask and take repeated shots, scrub our groceries and stand six feet apart.
Now granted, hey, some faces really do look better behind a mask, okay?
But the science that we were supposed to finally follow admitted that the masks were as worthless as a milk bucket under a bull.
Some of you non-country people are scratching your head.
You have no idea what that even means.
But so were a lot of other things that we were told by the so-called experts.
In other news this week, Budweiser fell into their own vat of suds this past week and they drowned a gruesome death when these guys thought it would be so very cool to feature a man named Dylan Mulvaney who pretends to be a young ditzy girl in their Bud Light ad campaign.
The self-professed transgender who is a biological male, but dresses talks and acts like a little girl, actually got invited to the White House.
I guess so Joe Biden could sniff his hair.
I don't know.
And then...
He got hired to be a spokesperson for Bud Light.
The ad campaign was so offensive that sales of the brand fell off the cliff and bar-owning country stars John Rich and Kid Rock quit serving it.
Good for them, right?
In bars that did sell it, sales of the brew plummeted by as much as 99%.
One meme, hilarious.
It said that Bud Light did more to stop people drinking in two days than AA did in 88 years.
Now, you're gonna find this really hard to believe.
I've never tasted beer.
I really haven't.
I honestly thought when I was a teenager, somebody handed me some, it smells so bad that I couldn't imagine swallowing it.
So it just hadn't affected me, this whole thing with Bud Light.
But I do pray that Louisiana Ice-T never hires the pretend girl to do an ad for them.
Because by golly, I go through about a gallon of that stuff a day, okay?
And also this week, right here in Nashville, a couple of Democrat legislators got expelled from the House after causing what Democrats call an insurrection if Republicans do it.
But it's a righteous protest when Democrats take over the proceedings of a legislative body, accuse the members of not enacting gun control legislation fast enough for them, and then shout down the speaker and disrupt the decorum so that the House had to adjourn while a mob tried to break through the doors and enter the chamber.
Now, the funniest description of the events from the lunatic left was calling the expulsion a threat to democracy.
Actually, I thought the threat to democracy was not allowing the duly elected representatives to carry out their business because you had these clowns disrupting it with bullhorns and shouting out slogans.
You know, what we would call an insurrection.
I wonder, will Liz Cheney fly into Tennessee to conduct hearings and demand long incarceration of people who led this insurrection?
Hey, she doesn't have to.
Vice President Kamala Harris slithered into Nashville so she could meet the disruptors and call them heroes.
By the way, she was so busy wet kissing their feet That she had no time to meet with the families of the three nine-year-olds or the three adults who were murdered in cold blood by a transgender activist, or even meet the heroic Nashville police officers who stopped the carnage of innocent kids by taking out the killer.
Never even gave them the time of day or a wave.
And to quote former President Barack Obama, elections have consequences, and indeed they do.
And it is not too early to make sure these crazy people find out the consequences in the next election.
Congresswoman Carlos Ananas is the only Cuban-born member of the 118th Congress.
He's got first-hand experience with the dangers of communist regimes, and tonight he's here to discuss his work on the Select Committee on China and his efforts to protect American interests from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
Before going to Congress, he was the mayor of Miami-Dade County from 2011 to 2020.
Please welcome to the show for the very first time, Congressman Carlos Jimenez from the 28th District of Florida.
I have loved reading about your illustrious career, which started out 25 years as a fireman, then the fire chief, then managing the city of Miami before you became the mayor of Dade County in Miami.
Yes.
It's a pretty great thing.
My father was a career fireman.
So when I read that, I said, I like this guy.
But life didn't start out for you easily.
Born in Cuba.
Your family brought you here right after Castro took control.
What's the message that you wish younger Americans understood about what communism is really about?
It just brings about tyranny.
Every communist regime is tyrannical.
Every communist regime suppresses their people.
Every communist regime...
You don't have any freedom of the press or the religion.
The basic freedoms that we take for granted.
No elections.
And basically you're told what to do.
And by the way, you better...
Not say anything wrong, because if you do, you may find yourself imprisoned.
You may find your family is in prison.
And so, yeah, the lesson is that don't believe anything they say.
We live under the best system, which is democracy.
We're still perfecting it, but don't fall prey to their false promises.
Congressman, a lot of what you just said sounds like some of the things that we're beginning to see right here in this country.
People being told not to say what they want to say, telling churches what they can and can't say, actually arresting people because they're pro-life and having SWAT teams go out and get them.
Exactly.
How concerned are you that we are drifting toward a model that, as you so, I think, wisely said, has never, ever worked?
We've got to fight right now.
And we've got to push back on all of this.
And then get back to what America is about, which is freedom of speech, religion.
You can speak your mind.
You're not going to be canceled.
And freedom, our basic freedoms.
And so, yeah, that's the reason I ran for Congress, because I saw those things starting to happen here, which I never thought.
I never thought I would be saying this, you know, here.
Congressman, I've said this many times in places all over the country that I've never met a group of people who love this country more, who have a greater understanding of what freedom really means than the Cuban Americans of South Florida.
And I say that with all heart because people who have escaped the galloping terror of totalitarianism understand what they left.
Look, we were well off in Cuba, you know, but my father and mother came here with $10 and a watch, which I still have, by the way.
He gave it to me.
And then, you know, he started working as a bellhop in Miami Beach.
My mom, who spoke—she's half American, actually.
My grandmother is Irish-American.
So she spoke English, and so she got a job with Orkin as a secretary.
Mm-hmm.
And we started building up from there.
But my story is replicated in Miami by the Cuban-Americans hundreds of thousands of times.
My wife is the same.
She came a year later.
Her father was an attorney, a very, very reputable family.
Her name means a lot in Cuba.
And so they started again.
Her mother started driving a bus.
He became a teacher and later drove taxis and all that.
But that story, again, is replicated hundreds of thousands of times.
And we know what we left.
We know what we lost.
And we're very grateful to this country.
So you'll see that most Cuban Americans are going to tell you that they love this country.
I love this country.
I can see that.
I love my town.
And...
I will fight through this company.
Congressman, I think I've got the title for your book.
It's going to be called From Cuban Communism to Congress and How I Made the Journey.
We're going to talk with Congressman Jimenez Moore when we come back.
Stay with us.
We'll be right back.
And still to come, the amazing illusions of Joseph Braham.
And later, a musical nod to the legendary Sam Cooke by daughter Carla Cooke.
Go to MikeHuckabee.com and sign up for his free newsletter.
and follow @govbytuckabee on Twitter. - And welcome back everybody.
By the way, I think we got the best band in all of America, Trey Corley and the Music City Connection.
Give them a big hand.
We are back with Congressman Carlos Hernandez.
And Congressman, we were talking about Cuban communism, but there's another threat and a big one, China.
Yeah.
You have been one of the leading voices on speaking out against why we need to be concerned of China's activities, not the least of which was them sailing a balloon over America scot-free.
Well, it's just a weather balloon, right?
Right?
We may never know.
No, we know.
It wasn't a weather balloon.
Now, as a member of Congress, I sit on the select committee on the competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
They say it's competition, that they're competitors.
No, they're adversaries.
They're adversaries.
I'm so glad somebody said that.
They're adversaries.
Thank you.
Thank you, Congressman, for recognizing that they are not our pals.
Look, I was a basketball player, and so when I competed in basketball, we had the same rules, right?
We had referees, and the referees would call the fouls both ways.
The Chinese company doesn't play that way.
They don't abide by the rules, and whenever they can, they're going to get an advantage.
And so we better wake up, and we are starting to wake up.
They're a competitor.
They want to be the greatest economic and military power by the year 2049. Why 2049?
That's their 100th anniversary of the revolution.
And you know what?
I don't want to live in a world, and I don't want my kids or grandchildren, again, to live in a world that's dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Good for you.
So we've got to stop them right now.
I know recently you had a meeting with the President of Taiwan.
I was just there three weeks ago.
I love Taiwan, the Republic of China, unlike the People's Republic of China, which is anything but that.
It's a wonderfully free country.
Entrepreneurial activity abounds everywhere.
It is truly capitalistic.
People vote.
Their voices are heard.
But a lot of Americans don't even understand this tension between mainland China and Taiwan.
What should Americans know?
And why do we need to know it?
Well, China considers Taiwan to be a province of China.
They consider Taiwan to be part of greater China.
And one of President Xi's biggest goals, actually his biggest goal, is the reunification of China.
And so 80% of the world's chips are created in Taiwan.
Everything that we run, our cars, our toasters, everything, our lawnmowers, everything has chips in them.
And so if we lose that to This is a serious deal.
Forget the partisan politics.
I admit I'm partisan.
I'm not pretending I'm not.
I am.
But for my country's sake, this is a pretty serious deal if a U.S. president has business ties to the Communist Chinese party, and if they have information about the depth of those ties, he's a compromised president.
Absolutely.
And so look, none of what he has done so far It makes any sense until you put it under that light, right?
Yeah.
And so, nothing.
Because the southern border is a disaster.
Any idiot knows could fix it.
I'm not saying an idiot could.
We can fix it, actually.
He didn't have to change anything that was going on because it wasn't a disaster, but he changed it.
Our energy policy.
Why does it make sense that we now have to be reliant on what China is dominant in, which is solar panels, wind turbines, and all that, right?
When, in fact, they don't use it.
They're burning coal for electricity, and they have a new coal-fired plant every single week.
We could be the dominant energy producer of the world.
We could use it to balance our imbalance in trade.
We can use it to help our ally.
Oh, and here's one great thing.
If you're worried about the environment, we produce it 20% cleaner than anybody else.
Yes.
And the world is going to need more of our fuel, of our energy in the next 50 to 70 years.
Why shouldn't it be American energy?
Why does it have to be Russian energy or Saudi energy or Iranian energy?
That only makes sense.
Only makes sense.
If you see it through the lens of, hey, what's really going on with this president?
Is he really, could he really be compromised?
It only makes sense when you look at it through that lens.
Congressman, it's great having you here.
I'm glad you're in Congress, and I hope your voice gets heard loud and clear in Washington.
Lord knows we're hearing it loud and clear here, and we need it.
If you want to follow Congressman Carlos Jimenez on social media, if you'll go to Huckabee.tv, we've got the links to the congressmen, and I hope you will follow them.
Right now, Keith Bilbrey is going to tell us what else we have coming up on the show.
Well, up next, magician Joseph Reum has some tricks up his sleeve.
And later, we pay tribute to the extraordinary Sam Cooke.
Carla Cook performs.
Go to Huckabee.tv and get your very own Made in the USA Huckabee mugs, t-shirts, and more.
Music by Ben Thede Our next guest is certainly no stranger to television.
He has appeared on Masters of Illusion, Penn& Teller, Fool Us, and America's Got Talent.
He's been named the APCA's Magician of the Year.
Would you please welcome Master Illusionist, Joseph Raon.
Joseph, welcome.
Thank you so much.
All right, you're going to show us some stuff.
Yeah.
You're not going to make me disappear.
Nope, not going to do that.
I know Trey wanted you to do, but you're not going to.
Okay.
So what I'm about to show you, I've actually been working on since I was five years old.
No kidding.
Yeah, this started out with a game we all know called Tic Tac Toe.
I know how to play that.
I do.
Yeah, now, Tic-Tac-Toe was my favorite game to play because it gave me an opportunity to see how people think, especially when under a little pressure.
Yeah.
And because I'm, I'd love to challenge you to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, and because I'm challenging you, I'll...
I'm up to it.
Okay, good.
And I'll tell you what, I'll go ahead and I'll start.
Okay.
And that leaves you a free choice to put your first X anywhere you'd like to go.
Where'd you like to put it?
I'll place it.
Let's put it right there.
Bottom right corner right there.
Okay.
Perfect.
I'll put the next one.
How about right here?
Okay.
Where would you like to put your next X? Right there.
Okay, I see what you did there.
Yeah.
Alright.
Then I'll put my next one.
How about right here?
I figured you would.
You've got a...
Where would you like to put your next one?
Let's go right there.
Right here.
Oh no, let's put it right there.
Thank you, audience.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
It's been a while.
You only get that once.
Now, here we go.
Put mine, how about right?
Kidding.
That goes there.
You've got one more.
Where would you like to put it?
Well, it would seem it needs to go there.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then let's do one more right here.
This is the last one I could do.
Yeah.
And this is a cat's game, a scratch game.
Nobody wins.
Yeah.
But I said I played this a lot.
Yeah.
I played this so much that I could predict every move my opponent would make.
And this actually is the exact game I was hoping you and I would play.
Really?
Yes.
Another thing I loved to do when I was a little boy is I loved...
To draw.
I would draw on everything.
And when I ran out of paper, I would draw on the table, the walls, the windows.
But instead of getting in trouble, my father was the artist type and he gave me a gift.
Give me a sketch pad.
He said, Joseph, you put your drawings in here and they'll last forever.
Draw on the table, the walls, and the windows again.
You will not.
And you won't last forever either if you do that.
And you know, parents can say that in the 80s.
My favorite thing to draw?
Superheroes.
Ah, cool.
I drew that.
It's the first one I drew.
Thank you.
Very good.
Yeah.
Governor, notice I have a page number one.
Yeah.
Well, I wanted to make my first comic book, so I drew 15 of my favorite comic book characters.
Okay.
Now, we already know page number one is Superman, so please, I'd love you to choose any page between 2 and 15. Where are we going?
Let's do 13. 13. You got it.
So I'll flip through them.
I'll show you what you could have.
Do you want to change your mind before I go through these?
No, 13. Cool.
You're going to keep the mind.
You're like, okay, good.
Yeah.
We've got two would have been Wolverine.
Three would have been Joker.
Four, if you would have picked that, would have been Wonder Woman.
I might have picked four.
If you would have picked five, that would have been Iron Man.
You missed some good ones in there.
Six, Captain America.
If you would have been seven, a lot of people picked seven, but that would have been Storm.
Eight is Thor.
If you would have done number 9, number 9 was Aquaman, remember him.
Number 10, ooh, Spider-Man.
Which one you said?
You said 13. 13. We've got number 12 is The Flash, and you said 13. Yes.
Page number 13, The Incredible Hulk.
Of course it is.
He's a good character.
I love The Incredible Hulk.
But here's what's crazy about what just happened.
Yeah.
There are 288,165 combinations of play tic-tac-toe.
We played that game.
If you would have made one real wrong move, what I'm about to show you would never work.
You could have chose any of my comic book characters.
You saw a lot in there, but you chose Incredible Hulk and you did not want to change your mind.
Right.
Do you guys remember I said earlier, I used to draw on everything.
Yeah.
- That is crazy.
That is crazy.
Unreal.
Oh, boy.
Wow.
Isn't that fun?
And if the audience hadn't saved me, we would not have had this work out like that.
No, that would have been a real problem.
That's pretty amazing.
Thank you so much.
Oh, we have food.
Yeah, I brought snacks.
Okay.
So this next thing I want to show you...
Here, we'll scoot down a little bit.
Okay.
So the next thing I want to show you is going to look like a card trick, but it's not a card trick.
Okay.
Now, it's going to look like it at first, and I am using a deck of cards.
Now, it's very important, like a card trick, it's very important that you know that all of the cards are different, not a whole bunch of aces.
Yeah.
They're all different, yeah.
And do they look fairly mixed?
They do.
Cool.
All I need you to do is put your finger on any card.
Do you want to change your mind?
Nope.
Right there.
Make sure I don't do anything sneaky with it.
Oh, okay.
No, no.
I want you to take it.
All right.
Now, usually, in a card trick, the spectator picks a card.
They put it in the deck.
The magician does all these fancy shuffles and cuts.
And then I'm supposed to find the card in a mysterious, magical way.
I'm going to try to save you guys a lot of time.
Okay.
Do I look at that yet?
Okay.
It's a ten of clubs.
Oh, okay.
But don't worry, it's not a regular card trick.
This is an illusion.
Have you ever seen an illusion where a magician takes a card, tears it in half, then slowly tears it again in other pieces, having four corners, then takes that card and melts it right back together.
I don't know how to do that one, so I'm not going to.
Hold on to that.
The other three pieces will go right here.
We'll get to those in a minute.
Now, when I was a young teen, I used to compete against other magicians, and it was terrifying because my audience, instead of being what we call laymen or muggles, we had magicians.
It was nerve-wracking.
So I found that the best magic for me is simple magic.
When I say simple, I don't mean technically, because what I'm about to show you Might be the most difficult thing I've ever created.
But it's done with something as simple as a grapefruit, a lemon, an egg.
We won't throw that.
And your torn up ten of clubs.
Yes.
We'll start with the card.
The card goes right here.
Then the egg.
The egg goes there.
Watch the egg and watch the card pieces.
Whoa!
Didn't feel like that a while ago.
Yeah, thank you.
I didn't want anybody thinking I palmed the egg out.
So I had to change it up.
I had to do something a little more difficult and up my game a little bit.
So that's where I came up with something with a lemon because the lemon is very bright.
It's easy to see.
It's also a lot bigger than an egg, so it's really easy to palm, not palm, like the egg might be easy to palm.
I want you to do me a favor, Governor.
Feel the top of the lemon right there.
Just feel that.
You feel that?
Yeah.
Watch the lemon.
It's not there.
It was there.
It was there.
I didn't want anybody thinking it went on my sleeves.
I wore sleeves practically painted on.
I didn't want people thinking it went on my jacket.
So I make sure I can show my jacket freely.
But I didn't want people thinking they knew how it was done.
So I came up with something absolutely impossible.
And that's where the grapefruit comes into play because it's way too big to palm.
It won't fit up my sleeves.
I'll cover it.
Check this out.
You can still see the grapefruit.
Do me a favor.
Whip the cloth away.
You know, my father, I talked about him earlier.
He taught me a lot of important lessons.
When he said that professionals and amateurs, they all make the exact same mistakes, but a professional knows how to cover up his mistakes.
It gets real quiet when I bring one of these out.
Yes, it does.
It's a balisong knife, a.k.a.
the butterfly knife.
And I travel a lot.
Last year alone, I was on 103 flights, 22 countries.
And sometimes I forget to put this in my checked luggage.
I go up to TSA and I'm like, hey guys, hello.
Butterfly knife.
They're like, sir, we're not concerned about that.
We're looking for water and big toothpaste.
Move along.
I'm just going to show you this really quick.
Inside the grapefruit...
Is a lemon.
Please make sure there is nothing falling behind my hand.
And there's no scar tissue on the lemon.
But inside the lemon.
Get out of here.
Get out.
It's an egg.
Whoa.
That's important.
You know I am not palming anything.
It is just the egg.
Come a little bit closer.
You're going to see this before they do.
Let me move this over here.
Yeah, right here.
Watch the egg.
Make sure I've got nothing else in my hand.
Just the egg.
It's a real egg.
And inside, do you see that?
I see that, but what I'm seeing is no way.
The egg is a torn-up card.
Now, have you ever seen the illusion where a magician takes a torn-up card and slowly melts it right back together?
But Governor, I am missing one corner.
That corner you've been holding the entire time is a perfect map.
That is absolutely amazing.
This is an incredible magician.
And if you want to see more of the amazing magic from Joseph Rayom, or if you want to follow him on social media, I got a better idea.
Book him for your next event.
He will amaze you.
Here's what you do.
Visit Huckabee.tv and we will connect you to Joseph.
Right now, speaking of magic, I think Keith Bilbrey has something up his sleeve.
Maybe a surprise.
Keith?
Well, coming up next, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Taking Our Country Back.
Then later, Chelsea Sobolik with Lifeline Children's Services joins Mike at the desk.
Stick around.
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Well, prominent Republicans and donors from all over the country are gathering right here in Nashville this week for a major fundraising event ahead of the 2024 election.
The event, organized by the Republican National Committee, is aimed at rallying support and resources for the party's candidates in the upcoming election cycle.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has been leading the party's efforts to take back the White House.
We're happy to welcome Ronna McDaniel.
Ronna, good to have you with me.
I'm so happy to be here.
This is the most amazing studio.
Thank you.
Everything's the best.
You've got a live band.
You've got an audience.
I've never seen anything like it.
Well, we're kind of proud of it, and it's a fun show to do, and we're thrilled to have you here.
Let's trade jobs.
How about you take over the RNC? No, no, no.
Too many people get mad at you.
You know, one of the things I like about this show, I tell people the great thing about TV, it sure beats working.
Yeah.
So, speaking of work and you're having to work really hard, it's a tough environment out there.
Things are not the same in terms of the way the Democrats are treated by the press and the way Republicans are treated by the press, or for that matter, the Justice Department.
How do we fix that?
Not only just the press, but also the big tech industry, right?
That's suppressing our voices, that's creating algorithms to push liberal and progressive ideas.
I use this phrase right now, which is the scared silent majority.
People are afraid to speak out because they're afraid of being canceled by all these entities owned by the liberals in New York and California.
But you know what?
We're stronger than them.
And so we've got to give them a voice and take back that silence by talking about things like common sense politics.
We know we need to be energy independent.
We know we need to close our border.
We know we need to stop crime in our streets.
We know we need school choice, things that your amazing daughter is pushing in Arkansas.
And when we talk to voters about that, we win.
It's also very evident, if you look at poll numbers, even Democrats don't agree with some of the radical ideas.
They believe that we ought to have voter ID, for example.
Overwhelmingly, they believe that.
But their party leaders are saying, oh no, that's racist.
What you said a moment ago, people don't want to be canceled.
Neither do they want to be called a racist or some type of transphobe or homophobe or whatever the latest phobe is.
So they just stay quiet.
Wouldn't it make a difference if people just, Not angrily, but just stood up and said, no, that's not right.
You have to.
We're not going to change this.
And I think of Sarah's State of the Union rebuttal where she said it's common sense versus crazy or normal versus crazy.
And I think about that all the time.
Many days I run into people and say, what's happening in our country?
What's happening?
And people are silent because they're afraid.
They're afraid of being canceled or losing their job or being called out.
But we can't be silent anymore.
Our country's at stake.
And so you've got to get involved.
Go volunteer.
Be part of a campaign.
The one thing I will say, Governor, I'm going to call you Governor because that's how I think of you.
You can call me.
The Democrats work all year, every day, around the clock.
They never take a break after an election.
They're always focused on the process.
How do we change election laws?
How do we ballot harvest?
How do we get early votes?
And they're funded all year.
And Republicans take a break.
They go, I'm tired.
This election didn't go the way I wanted.
Well, get over it, guys.
They also have jobs, too.
We've got jobs, but we have to move right now.
We have to start focusing on the things the Democrats are focusing on, because they're spending money every day, and we can't take a break as we're heading into a cycle where we have a better Senate map.
We can win the White House.
And keeping the House is going to be harder, because we've got to hold these key seats in New York and California.
We don't have a big majority in the house, but simply having a majority makes a big difference.
And I don't know if some people fully comprehend that just having Kevin McCarthy in the speaker's seat and a Republican majority has changed Washington a lot.
A lot.
And look at Jim Jordan, the head of judiciary.
These are the things we fought for.
Nancy Pelosi lost the House, but we won the House.
And we did it in two tranches.
Remember, we picked up 15 seats in 2020 when we didn't win the White House against all expectations.
And then we won the House in 2022. But we have to keep it.
So it is exhausting, but it is year-round, every day.
And that's why I'm here in Nashville raising money, because we have to go into all these states.
The RNC is in 57 lawsuits right now.
Democrats are trying to pass laws to make it so non-citizens can vote.
That's the— That's what they're trying to do.
We have to fight them at every single level.
We're also continuing to build our army of poll watchers and poll workers.
If you want to be one, go to 80810, text to them.
That's how we'll get you engaged.
But we need to be engaging year round all the time.
That's such a great point because I think when people whine, oh, the elections, you know, there's all kinds of interference with them.
Well, then be a poll watcher.
You can help be part of the Army.
Or an Election Day worker.
Absolutely.
In Wisconsin, we elected 5,000 Election Day workers.
It's on the ballot.
Wow.
So in 2021, we actually recruited and put 5,000 Election Day workers into the county locations in Wisconsin.
465 of them were just in Milwaukee County.
That's a big difference when you have a Ron Johnson running and we keep that Senate seat.
So these are the types of the things the RNC does, the infrastructure, the process.
It's not the TV ads, it's not the exciting stuff, but it's the infrastructure we need for our candidates to be successful.
Ronnie, we only have about 30 seconds.
So let's talk about the presidential election.
It's obviously big.
Republicans are going to have a pretty big field when it's all said and done.
We are.
And you know this well.
Yes, I do.
And we've taken so much of your input and advice, so thank you on everything.
But we have a great field, right?
So we've got to be fair.
We've got to be transparent.
But at the end, we have to come together.
Yeah.
Because remember, we need to beat Biden.
And so my advice to everybody right now is, you can be on different spectrums of the Republican Party.
I'm Mitt Romney's niece, and I was brought to the RNC by Donald Trump.
I have the whole Republican Party in my body.
But we need to make sure we come together to beat Joe Biden, because what's happening to our country is fundamentally destructing America.
And that is not what our founders want.
It's not good for our future, and it certainly is stealing the American dream from our kids.
And we can't beat the Democrats if we're fractured.
So put our swords down after the primary, come together, let's hug it out, and then let's beat Biden.
I agree 100%.
Absolutely spot on.
To keep up with Ronna McDaniel on social media, if you go to Huckabee.tv, we have links right there.
So it's real simple.
Just follow the link right to her.
In the meantime, Keith Bilbrey is going to let our audience know what we have coming up next on the show.
With a heart and mission to save women and children around the world, Chelsea Sobolik is with us next.
Then singer-songwriter Carla Cook performs.
All ahead on Huckabee!
And welcome back.
Our next guest was adopted out of Romania and she adopted a child from India.
So she's got some very personal reasons for working to save girls all over the world who are victims of trafficking, abandonment, gender selective abortion, and even murder.
Would you please welcome the Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy for Lifeline Children's Services, Chelsea Sobolik.
Chelsea, great having you here.
Thank you for having me.
I'm intrigued because you're living in many ways your own story, rescued out of Romania, and how much do you know about your early life, your birth, and how you ended up here?
So I was adopted, like you said, from Romania.
I was less than a month old when I was adopted.
If you remember any of that, I'm gonna really- I don't.
I don't.
But what's really unique, my parents adopted six children from Eastern Europe, myself included.
So I grew up with siblings where it was our normal for adoption to be part of our stories and part of our ethos as a family, which was so very special.
A lot of people want to adopt children.
It's a tough process to adopt children.
Should it be easier?
And if so, how would we make it better and easier?
That's a great question.
So when we talk about adoption, there's kind of three main ways that people adopt.
There's international adoption, and so international adoption is governed by two countries' laws, the U.S. and then the country you're adopting from.
Domestic private adoption, and then adoption from foster care.
So those are the three main ways that people adopt.
And I think one thing, I do this all the time, we talk about adoption and foster care in the very same sentence, in the very same breath, and they're actually very different.
When a birth mother is making an adoption plan for her child, she has options, she has choices, she gets to pick the birth family, she gets to decide the level of openness in a domestic private infant adoption.
And adopting from foster care, parental rights have already been relinquished.
So to your question, adoption is actually not largely governed at a federal level, it's governed at a state level.
So there are some things that we can do, you know, make sure the adoption tax credit is permanent, states can pass state level But with that, you're holding intention, wanting to ensure that children are protected, well protected, that families go through a proper home study, and that birth mothers' rights are honored and protected.
And so, as we're in this post-Roe, post-Dobbs world, one of the things that Lifeline is doing so beautifully, and I love our heart, is we're walking with women, and we're really empowering her to make The best decision for her and her child,
so whether that's parenting and wrapping around her or whether that's making an adoption plan, we walk with her through every step of that journey and we offer post-adoptive support so that if she's having a hard day or a hard season, we're there post-adoption with her.
Lifeline is in all 50 states and, what, 20-something foreign countries?
Yes, yes.
So we serve women in every state in the country and then we do international adoption and global orphan care as well around the world.
I mean, there's a lot of different ways that women are being exploited today.
And it sounds like Lifeline is literally just that, a lifeline to women to give them something more positive than having them out on the streets or being trafficked as sex objects.
Lifeline Children's Services was started over 40 years ago actually to meet the needs of women and from that has grown all the work that we do.
But our mission and our heartbeat as an organization is to equip the body of Christ to manifest the gospel to vulnerable children and women.
And we do that by certainly policy and advocacy, and that's my job, and I think I have the best job in the world.
But we do that by also equipping local bodies of believers, whether it's in Arkansas, whether it's across the globe, to care for people in their communities.
Because again, I have worked in government in some capacity my whole career, The church can be where government can't and shouldn't be, which is everywhere.
We hear these numbers, 140 million orphans globally, 400,000 children in foster care.
It can feel overwhelming to hear those numbers and think, what can I do?
But the reality is each one of us have a part to play.
Scripture calls us to care for the fatherless and the orphan, and each one of us have a part to play in that.
Come check out our website and see how you and your church fit into that.
I love that.
And I hope people will connect.
And if you want to learn more about Chelsea Sobolik, get her book.
It's called Longing for Motherhood.
As well as if you'd like to connect with Lifeline Children's Services, if you'll go to Huckabee.tv, we have the links to everything we've been talking about regarding Lifeline.
And surely there's several of you, God's touched you, and maybe this is the right organization for you to connect to.
Speaking of connecting, Keith Bilbrey is going to connect us to the rest of the show tonight.
So Keith, it's all yours.
Well, Grammy-nominated jazz singer Carla Cook is here with an amazing performance after the break.
Don't go away.
Join us next week on Huckabee with New York representative Claudia Tenney and the sweet country sound of Tony Jackson.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Carla Cooke was with us before and she just wowed every one of us.
We love her here.
Vocal talent, well, it's kind of in her DNA. She happens to be the youngest daughter of one of the greatest singers ever, the legendary Sam Cooke.
Carla's own album is called, yeah, go ahead and give her a big hand.
I wasn't kidding.
She's got a brand new album out.
It's called A Time to Remember, and she's touring in a fantastic tribute to her dad called the Sam Cooke Experience.
It is an honor to welcome back Carla Cooke.
Carla, glad to have you.
You just wowed us when you were here before.
I mean, I heard you and I said, God has given you a set of pipes, girl.
He really has.
Your dad is strong in you, I'll tell you that for sure.
Yes, he is.
Did you grow up singing all the time?
I did.
As a little girl, I would always sing and sing and sing.
As a matter of fact, we had a hallway that had a great acoustic sound.
I would get up every morning singing and my mother's neighbors would say, this girl, all she does, we hear her singing all day.
And she said, well, at least she isn't crying.
She's singing.
I hope those neighbors are going to buy this new album.
Hey, they better.
They better buy it, right?
I mean, they heard it when it was just being groomed as a child in you.
When you go out, I know the comparisons are there.
People, of course, if they're my age and Keith's age, certainly remember the amazing music of your father.
That wasn't a punchline, by the way.
I don't know why they're laughing at that.
But I know the comparisons.
Do you ever get tired of that?
Does that bother you?
Oh, no.
I enjoy it.
I'm just amazed that after 59 years, people still around the world love my father and love his music.
I mean, he was voted number three as the greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stones magazine.
Number three in the whole world.
That's pretty big.
Yes.
Your voice has such a warmth to it.
I think it's your personality.
And I'm not just trying to flatter you, but one of the things that I love when I hear you sing is that I feel like not only are you hitting the notes, but you're communicating.
There's a warmth.
And it's just a joy to behold.
I can't wait for you to sing for us tonight.
And one of the songs that you're going to do is, When I Fall in Love.
It was a song that your dad had a big hit with.
Got to be a little emotional, doesn't it?
To stand on the stage and do something that he did?
It does.
I mean, it feels that way with my whole entire show, the Sam Cooke experience.
I can feel his presence when I'm on stage.
And since I didn't have that time with him as a young girl, it's very special.
You know, one of the things that it's hard for me to believe, and I think our audience will be stunned, You're actually a grandmother.
I am.
You don't look old enough to have children, much less grandchildren.
And I want you to know, whatever it is you're doing, Keith and I would like to get in on it, okay?
We really would.
Well, we brought you here because we want to hear you sing.
And that's exactly what we're going to do.
So while Carla gets ready to perform, Keith Bilbrey is going to tell us how you can hear more of her music, see her in concert, and especially get this new album.
I am convinced you're going to want to.
Well, just go to Huckabee.tv and you'll find links to Carla Cooke's website, her great album, A Time to Remember, and tour dates for the Sam Cooke Experience.
Now, singing the Sam Cooke classic, When I Fall in Love with Trey Corley and the Music City Connection and Mike on Bass, here's Carla Cooke.
Maybe I'm old fashioned, feeling as I do.
Maybe I'm living in the past, but when I meet the
right one I know that I'll be true My first love will be It
will be forever For I'll never fall in love In a restless world like this is Love has ended before it's begun And
too many moonlight kisses seem to cool in the warmth of the sun.
When I give my heart, it will be completely Or I'll never, never ever give my heart And the moment I can feel You