Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are expected to meet today with Turkish President Erdogan. Their mission is to secure an immediate cease-fire in his invasion of Syria and may prove to be an exercise in futility.

After all, under Erdogan’s Sharia-supremacist misrule, Turkey can no longer be considered a U.S. ally – despite its membership in NATO. For example, his regime has: flooded Europe with millions of unassimilable Muslim refugees; purchased Russian air defenses; enabled ISIS operations in Syria; surrounded and denied electrical power to the main U.S. base in Turkey; and, most recently, effectively forcibly displaced American troops in Syria. It is also supporting Muslim Brotherhood subversion in this country.

Messrs. Pence and Pompeo’s mission probably won’t be successful.  But it should clarify that Turkey is an ally no more – and must henceforth be treated as such.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Basketball superstar LeBron James has reportedly made $50 million per year in endorsements. But that was before he sided with Communist China against freedom-fighters in Hong Kong and American values.

How much was that endorsement worth? It may be no exaggeration to say: Priceless. 

LeBron evidently felt triggered by Daryl Morey’s now-famous Tweet, in which the Houston Rockets general manager urged: “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.”

James responded, “I believe [Morey] wasn’t educated on the situation at hand…and so many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically.”

 

It takes a special kind of uneducated not to know that Communist China is harming many people in Hong Kong right now. Worse yet, shameless appeasers like LeBron only further embolden Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who recently promised to have his opponents’ “bodies smashed and bones ground to powder.” 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Tonight, twelve Democratic candidates for President will hold what seems to be their umpteenth debate.  This one will be co-sponsored and aired by CNN.

If past practice is any guide, the participants will receive mostly gentle treatment at the hands of CNN’s questioners. It’s been obvious for years that the network leans to the Left.  But now, thanks to James O’Keefe’s intrepid Project Veritas and Cary Poarch, a gutsy CNN whistleblower, we know why.

Poarch secretly recorded CNN President Jeff Zucker’s coverage-setting “Daily Run-down” phone calls documenting his “personal vendetta” against Donald Trump. Poarch also taped an executive acknowledging CNN’s practice of treating Democrats to “softball interviews” compared to those with Republicans.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Americans had a wake-up call this week about the nature of Communist China and the existential threat it poses to freedom – not just in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the People’s Republic, but here.  The insight came from what might be called “basketball with Chinese characteristics.”

Those repressive characteristics were showcased when Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets’ general manager, tweeted “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” He was swiftly repudiated by his team and the National Basketball Association and obliged to apologize profusely.

The episode is just one example of how the Chinese Communist Party is now imposing its restrictions on free speech in this country and world-wide. It demonstrates powerfully the ambitions of totalitarians to crush liberty globally. 

We need not only to fight for freedom by standing with Hong Kong. We need to defend our own right here. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s army has just invaded Syria and begun killing Kurdish forces that fought bravely alongside ours in the recent, successful campaign to destroy the Islamic State caliphate. This incursion is just the latest proof that Turkey is a U.S. ally no more.

It follows the Turks’: purchase of Russian air defense missiles; increasing ties with Communist China; and flouting of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Then, there is the growing role of Turkey in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood – including that Sharia-supremacist group’s subversive operations and entities inside the United States. 

President Trump has threatened to respond harshly to a Turkish incursion in Syria, including by devastating that country’s economy. At the minimum, we must end the pretense that Turkey is a reliable partner and deserving of the preferred treatment accorded to the valued NATO ally it once was.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

News broke late yesterday that John Durham, the veteran U.S. Attorney based in Connecticut who has been assigned to investigate the perpetrators of the “Russian-collusion hoax,” is expanding his staff’s focus and numbers. 

It is absolutely predictable that this news will further panic already skittish congressional Democrats. Expect them to respond by ramping up their party’s well-honed ability – aided and abetted by the mainstream media – to deflect attention from Mr. Durham’s inquiry by intensifying their kangaroo-court-style Trump impeachment proceedings.  

Fortunately, the White House Counsel has just forcefully challenged the legitimacy of Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment gambit. Notably, she hasn’t sought – let alone secured – a vote by the full House of Representatives to begin a formal impeachment inquiry into the President. As a result, he and the chamber’s Republicans are seriously disadvantaged by an unfair and rigged process. 

This must not stand.    

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Roman general Sulla succinctly captured the formula for success in international affairs with the phrase, “No better friend, no worse enemy.”

Statesmen, however, are often tempted to take their allies for granted and lavish attention and favors on their adversaries. That’s a formula for having fewer reliable friends and more emboldened enemies.

Such calculations are being made around the world at the moment in the context of Syria.  Will America throw in with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ever-more-virulently hostile regime in Turkey – and abandon the Kurds who have done the brunt of the fighting there for our interests against assorted Sharia-supremacists, including the Islamic State and Iran?

The world will be a far more dangerous place if obvious adversaries – especially China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and Turkey – get preferential treatment and America’s proven friends conclude they’re on the wrong side. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Five influential veterans have joined forces to warn their comrades in arms – both retired and serving – and the rest of us. 

In a statement released today, the group, led by Lieutenant Generals “Jerry” Boykin and Thomas McInerney, decries the funding being provided by American institutional and other investors to Communist Chinese companies that enable the PRC’s increasing repression at home and aggression abroad.

A pending decision would add insult to injury. As the veterans note, “U.S. government employees – past and present, military and civilian – risk having their pension funds underwrite the Chinese Communist Party’s malevolent enterprises.  It is especially intolerable to those of us who have proudly served the Nation in uniform that our retirement investments will help its enemies threaten our comrades in arms and the country we love.”

That must not happen.

This is Frank Gaffney. Find out how you can help at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

One of the darkest blots on Nancy Pelosi’s record as Democratic leader in the House of Representatives has been her practice of politicizing a House Intelligence Committee that has historically been generally operated on a non-partisan basis. 

Instead of selecting panel members from her caucus for their strong backgrounds in national security and willingness to work across the aisle in overseeing the intelligence community, she has entrusted these sensitive positions to political hacks. Exhibit A is the panel’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff.

Yesterday, Congressman Schiff’s unchecked partisanship and his serial, seemingly congenital, lying were dramatically exposed.  He falsely denied having collaborated with the so-called “whistleblower” whose hearsay-based allegations have precipitated House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry aimed at driving President Trump from office. 

Adam Schiff is clearly unfit to preside over impeachment-related hearings – and the important work the House Intelligence Committee should be doing, instead.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Like an ever-smaller percentage of our population, I have dedicated my life to protecting our nation’s security. If the rest of us focus on that problem all at, we’re being encouraged to believe that the greatest threats we face are from global warming or what President Trump said to his Ukrainian counterpart in July.

This dumbing down of national security-mindedness is taking  place as real menaces to our country and people are proliferating.  Look no further than Communist China’s parade yesterday featuring an array of new missiles and other weapons designed to kill Americans and our allies.  Meanwhile, our defenses against such perils – and deterrents to their use – are grossly inadequate.

The truth is, we live in a dangerous world.  Those who degrade our situational awareness of present and coming threats are actually imperiling our national security, not safeguarding it. 

This is Frank Gaffney.