Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Heartbreaking video from inside Uvalde elementary school documenting the protracted failure of police to stop the slaughter underway there is prompting afresh disbelief and fury at the officers involved. What on earth were they thinking?

After weeks of conflicting official descriptions of what went down, this video further undermines public confidence in law enforcement. And those most critical of its conduct, especially towards minorities, are emboldened to renew and generalize their condemnations and efforts to demean and, if possible, defund the police.

Given all that, it seems likely what the Uvalde cops were thinking was: If they took unauthorized initiative to stop the shooter, their risk-averse chain of command would throw them to the wolves.

It’s not an excuse, just a possible explanation. And one that surely is operating elsewhere at a time when we need robust policing more than ever.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Last night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered a searing indictment of Joe Biden and his presidency. He makes a compelling case that our Commander-in-Chief is deeply and perilously compromised by the Chinese Communist Party.

That’s translated into Biden’s material help to our mortal enemy in achieving its strategic objective of destroying the United States and ruling the world. For example: the President has stopped counter-intelligence operations against China’s espionage; ended tariffs on its imports; arrested two Americans the CCP has sanctioned by name – Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon; and wrecked our energy sector.

In fact, Tucker argued, as we have, that “Whatever helps the Chinese government, Biden has dutifully done.” Ditto whatever hurts America.

We’ll explore all this and more at 1 p.m. ET today in the first of  a new webinar series entitled “USA Betrayed.” Join us at PresentDangerChina.org.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Joe Biden takes his wrecking operation to the Mideast this week. Wonder what harm he can do? Think Afghanistan on steroids.

My colleague, David Wurmser, has just published a brilliant analysis of the dangers arising from Biden’s diminishing of Arab perceptions of the United States as the “strong horse.”

Dr. Wurmser correctly argues that the Israelis must do whatever they can to fill the vacuum thus created.

Instead, they are submitting to Biden, even giving him their country’s highest award. Not since Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has a distinction been less deserved.

No good can come from Biden’s three priorities: protecting Iran from Israeli preemption; resuscitating Palestinian ambitions; and  encouraging Saudi oil production, not ours.

Peace through strength – Israeli, if not American – is the only hope of preventing such truly reckless policies from resulting in the next horrific regional war.

This is Frank Gaffney

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Joe Biden’s policies at home and abroad have two things in common: They are bad for America and serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party. It now appears that’s not just two sides of the same coin, but of twenty pieces of silver.

For example, we have recently learned that President Biden has not only sold Communist China a million barrels of precious oil from reserves meant to protect our national security. The purchasing conglomerate, Sinopec, is one in which the President’s notorious son, Hunter, has had a financial interest – from which Joe himself may have benefited, as well.

Joe Biden is not simply grifting, something he appears to have engaged in throughout his time in government. He is doing so to the benefit of our mortal enemy and the grave detriment of our nation and its honor. He must go.

This is Frank Gaffney

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Barack Obama once outrageously diminished his office and our nation by bowing when he greeted the Saudi king. Joe Biden is widely expected shortly to repeat such submissiveness –  figuratively, if not literally – when he pleads with the Kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for help in lowering oil prices.

Such appalling conduct would be relatively robust, however, compared with the flat-out prostration the U.S. administration is currently doing before the Chinese Communists. Call it “the Biden kow-tow.”

Amidst escalating threats of war emanating from Beijing, Team Biden has been weakening our military, relaxing tariffs on PRC imports and insisting that the Chinese Communist Party is a “competitor,” not an enemy. It has even sold the CCP oil from our hedge against national security-imperiling disruptions in energy supplies: America’s strategic petroleum reserve.

Such appeasement invites not only contempt, but conflict.

This is Frank Gaffney

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

For years, we have been warning about the inevitable consequences of presidents of both parties since Ronald Reagan neglecting Latin America. Mostly, it was benign neglect. But sometimes it was actually malign.

Either way, it was predictable – and predicted – that the vacuum of power thus created would be filled by those hostile to our country and interests. In the past year alone, Peru, Chile and Colombia have voted in Communist regimes, joining those that have already devastated places like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Brazil may be next.

The principal beneficiaries of these tectonic shifts are our enemies: China, Russia and Iran. They are, among other ominous things, now preparing to participate next month in military exercises in Venezuela and pre-positioning weapons, some of which will almost certainly prove threatening to us.

We can no longer ignore the gathering storm in our hemisphere.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

There’s a Chinese Communist product that is as addictive as its fentanyl, and potentially far more deadly. The CCP’s TikTok app has deeply penetrated the youth culture here. And, according to, among others, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, it’s a threat to the national security.

The idea that a platform for sharing silly dance videos could be so dangerous is unimaginable to most of the kids hooked on it. Yet, the Chinese Communists’ ability to exploit immense amounts of personal data about its users puts them at risk of manipulation, compromise or worse.

Incredibly, the U.S. military has decided to use the TikTok app to help address its serious recruiting shortfalls. What could possibly go wrong?

The Chinese Communists would never allow us to operate a comparable app in their country. And we shouldn’t let them do it here.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Twenty-five years ago today, I was in Hong Kong to witness the surrender of that outpost of the Free World to the Chinese Communist Party. Official festivities couldn’t conceal the palpable sense of abandonment, and foreboding.

Hong Kongers intuitively knew the Chinese Communists would crush the freedoms they had enjoyed as a British territory. They were promised that wouldn’t happen for fifty years, which would be bad enough. Far worse is what occurred.

The CCP used its coronavirus and oppressive legislation to end the huge demonstrations by which the people of Hong Kong resisted China’s tyranny. Their leaders are in prison; free media is dead; and all vestiges of a supposedly liberty-tolerant “second system” have been forcibly eliminated.

Hong Kong is no more, reduced to an ominous foretaste of what the Chinese Communist Party wants to do to the rest of us.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

When you get a problematic diagnosis of a problem – particularly, one with potential life-and-death repercussions, it’s a good idea to get a second opinion. Rarely has that been more true than with respect to the Chinese Communist Party’s unrestricted warfare against America.

Fortunately, a team of distinguished national security professionals sponsored by our Center for Security Policy is today disputing the U.S. government’s party-line on the virus that triggered the COVID-19 pandemic.

This “Team B III” found that this coronavirus likely came from a Chinese biological weapons laboratory and the CCP’s deliberate efforts to spread it outside China mean the pandemic was a biological attack. As such, it fits the PRC’s longstanding doctrine, plans and growing capabilities for such asymmetric, and unrestricted, warfare against us.

Catch the Team’s important webinar at 1:00 p.m. ET today by registering at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Sweden and Finland have just been admitted to NATO, bringing fresh forces and capabilities to bear at a critical moment. And Tom Cruise is uplifting millions of patriotic Americans and others still rooting for our country with his Top Gun sequel, “Maverick.”

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the U.S. military that is the backbone of the NATO alliance and that is currently being portrayed so evocatively by Hollywood is in serious trouble.

Leading indicators are the dramatic shortfalls in recruitment being experienced at the moment by most of the armed services. Factors like Biden’s Afghan debacle, inflation, personal pronouns, the priority given to Critical Race indoctrination and ideological purges and forcing out healthy warriors unwilling to take COVID vaccines are destroying readiness, confidence in the uniformed leadership and eligible candidates’ willingness to serve.

Such unforced errors imperil America.

This is Frank Gaffney.