This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

History is replete with what-if’s – what might have happened if different decisions were taken at critical junctures.  For example, what if U.S. forces were precipitously removed from Germany, Japan or South Korea after they helped end hostilities in each country?

We know what happened when President Obama removed them from Iraq in 2011. Candidate Donald Trump rightly castigated him for creating conditions that contributed to the rise of ISIS, its predations and territorial conquests in that country and neighboring Syria.

As President, Mr. Trump was tempted to do the same thing after ISIS’ so-called caliphate was destroyed. He ultimately and wisely decided to keep a small American military presence in Syria. Thankfully, as a result, we can indulge in speculation about what would have happened if he hadn’t done so, rather than deal with the likely, terrible consequences if he had.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan has concluded something that neither Attorney General William Barr nor even Special Counsel Robert Mueller did.  He believes there is sufficient evidence that Donald Trump engaged in obstruction of justice to impeach him.

Congressman Amash is entitled to his opinion and to vote as he wishes. While his judgment certainly can be questioned – and found wanting, there’s not much point to speculating about his motives.   

That said, one can’t help but remark on the sudden celebrity – not to say adulation – that this Republican legislator has achieved for being the first in the GOP to side with partisan Democrats determined to remove President Trump from office.

Mr. Amash may now be the darling of Nancy Pelosi, MSNBC and the New York Times. It remains to be seen whether primary voters in Grand Rapids will feel the same.

This is Frank Gaffney.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI, Editor in Chief of the Washington Free Beacon, Contributing Editor to the Weekly Standard, Author of “The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine” (2006), Author of “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star” (2009):

Is war with Iran imminent as mainstream media proposes?

Dissecting Ben Rhode’s ‘echo chamber’

The battle within the Trump administration over Iran policy

(PART TWO):

Implications of relentless attacks against John Bolton

Barr’s new investigation into the origins of Russia probe

Are the individuals in the Russia probe turning on each other?

MARK LANGFAN, Creator of a topographic raised-relief map system of Israel, Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI):

The threat Iran poses to the U.S. and Israel

The effort by Iran and its enablers to push Bolton out

(PART TWO):

How topography is key to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Why Jared Kushner’s ‘Middle East Peace Plan’ would be ineffective

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Other governments routinely interfere in our internal affairs. For example, Russia tries to manipulate our elections and China operates Confucius Institutes to influence this country’s academia.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti has just exposed today’s most aggressive foreign influence campaign. Iran’s regime is desperate to undermine the increasingly impactful “maximum pressure” Trump strategy designed to end the nuclear, missile and terrorist threats it poses to the rest of the world.

The mullahs’ subversive information operation is aimed at persuading the President to fire his putatively war-mongering National Security Advisor, John Bolton. And, predictably, the fellow travelers who populated the Obama administration and brought us its nuclear deal with Iran are ramping up their notorious “echo chamber” in support.

Fortunately, such “Never Trumpers” and their media allies have no influence with the one man who matters: President Trump.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Few marketers have been more successful in indelible branding than Donald Trump. Look no further than the myriad buildings, planes, wines, etc. that bear his name. Then, there are his foes who will always be known by the colorful nicknames he has given them.

Mr. Trump just gave Communist China a new designation. After decades in which the PRC was portrayed as a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union, then as a business partner, and most recently, as a “peer competitor,” the President gave it a far more accurate brand yesterday: “foreign adversary.”

In a new executive order clearly aimed at the Chinese Communist Party’s conglomerates Huawei and ZTE, Mr. Trump barred our telecommunications networks from using such adversaries’ equipment. Those overseas who want access to our intelligence and security assistance had better follow his lead.

This is Frank Gaffney. Learn more at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Attorney General William Barr has recruited U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the cabal of FBI leadership figures, Justice Department officials and senior CIA and other intelligence personnel who apparently manufactured for partisan purposes a counter-intelligence probe of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. If they haven’t already done so, these folks better lawyer-up.

That’s because Gen. Barr’s choice is an experienced prosecutor with a record of bringing to justice crooked cops and other corrupt officials. If anybody can get to the bottom of what seems to be rampant malfeasance at the highest levels of the Obama administration, it should be John Durham.

Diana West’s splendid new book, The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, provides a roadmap for his damage assessment and efforts to bring wrongdoers to justice.

This is Frank Gaffney. Read The Red Thread for free at SecureFreedom.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

We are told a “trade war” has started with China and investors are panicking. They point to President Trump’s latest tariff hikes and China’s retaliatory ones to justify  massive sell-offs on Wall Street and Chinese markets yesterday.

In fact, the PRC has been at war with the United States for decades. Unfortunately, that war is not restricted to China’s aggressively predatory trade practices, including the destruction of America’s manufacturing base and the annual theft of $500 billion worth of our intellectual property.

Rather, as the new Committee on the Present Danger: China has been documenting, Beijing has long pursued “unrestricted warfare” against our country involving economic and financial techniques, influence operations, the space and cyber domains and a massive military build-up. The Trump presidency may be our last chance to recognize these threats – and defeat them.

This is Frank Gaffney. Learn more at Present DangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Pacific Gas and Electric has acknowledged that its wind-whipped power lines last year caused the Camp Fire, the deadliest in California’s history. Taken together with other recent wildfires, the utility has incurred some $30 billion in claims, prompting it to declare bankruptcy.

In the hope of avoiding further losses this summer, the company has just announced that – if similar conditions arise – it will turn off the power, rather than risk sparking another disastrous conflagration.

The trouble is that the ensuing, possibly protracted blackout would likely put at risk millions of Americans, many of them perhaps mortally so due to a lack of water, food, medication, transportation and communications for days, if not weeks, on end.

President Trump has called for the nation’s electric grid to be protected against these and other dangers. There can be no higher priority. 

This is Frank Gaffney. Learn more at SecuretheGrid.com.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Yesterday’s session of the U.S. House of Representatives was opened with a prayer by an imam with a history of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiments. The question occurs:  Was he honored with this extraordinary public platform out of ignorance of his record, or because of it?

To be sure, the prayer offered by Imam Omar Suleiman did not speak of his hatred for Jews and Israel. Still, a search of his social media posts would have revealed such statements as “The Zionists are the enemies of God, His Messengers, sincere followers of all religions, and humanity as a whole.”

Who decided to honor a man with documented sympathies for the terrorist organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Jew-hating agenda?  And, if Speaker Nancy Pelosi – who presided as Imam Suleiman prayed – doesn’t share them, she needs to make that clear at once. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Chinese Communist Party’s track record compels low expectations about the bilateral trade negotiations that may reach a make-or-break point today. After all, it has serially, and notoriously, failed to live up to its previous international commitments.

It’s a particularly bad sign, though, when the Chinese abandon their promises even before an agreement is finalized. President Trump has responded to Beijing’s backtracking on provisions that have been painstakingly hammered out to date by announcing he’ll impose massive new tariffs on its imports at midnight tonight.

It remains to be seen if, in the face of such a threat, Communist China’s delegation will revert to form – agreeing to terms they have no intention of honoring. What is clear though is that even a perfect trade deal will not end the PRC’s other forms of unrestricted warfare against us.

This is Frank Gaffney.  Learn more at PresentDangerChina.org.