Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

As Chinese authorities in Hong Kong crack down on freedom-fighters there, former Vice President Joe Biden has evidently concluded that his recent cheerleading for Beijing is a liability. Yesterday, he started sounding instead like Donald Trump, warning that the PRC is a “serious challenge and in some areas a real threat.” He even said, “We need to get tough on China.”

Mr. Biden still doesn’t see the Communist Chinese as the kind of “existential threat” that he says President Trump poses.  But, now he wants us to forget that, just last month, he dismissively asserted that “they’re not competition for us” – an untenable and even delusional proposition.

The question occurs: Were he to gain the White House, which Biden would be our Commander-in-Chief – the one whose family took $1.5 billion from the PRC and parrots Beijing’s line or the putative China hawk?

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

This week a remarkable delegation is visiting official Washington in a last-ditch effort to avert an avoidable disaster in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Its members include prominent Nigerian religious leaders and victims of anti-Christian persecution at the hands of jihadists.

Among the latter is Rebecca Sharibu, whose daughter, the Leah is the only one of the 110 girls seized by Boko Haram in February 2018 still held by that terrorist group because she refuses to disavow her Christian faith and convert to Islam. As a result, she has been condemned by her captors to be a “slave for life.”

The destabilizing repercussions of Nigeria melting down in a bloodbath of Sharia-supremacist violence against the country’s Christians are unlikely to be confined to the African continent. The prospect of tens of millions of refugees will be felt in Europe and far beyond, possibly including here. The Nigerian crisis delegation can help President Trump and his national security team stave off that prospect if only they will listen.   

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In July 1997, I was in Hong Kong when the United Kingdom surrendered that colony to the Communist Chinese. The totalitarian PRC thereby achieved the bloodless conquest of millions who enjoyed great freedom and prosperity under British rule.

That moment was particularly demoralizing since – despite formal commitments by Beijing to respect the non-Communist political “system” in Hong Kong – clearly its people would inevitably be deprived of their liberties. Sadly, that has come to pass, most recently with the announcement that the Chinese will compel Hong Kong to extradite so-called “fugitives” without due process, sparking immense popular protests this weekend.

The United States has long allowed China to enjoy free trade access to this country’s markets via Hong Kong on the condition that the Communists respect the former colony’s autonomy. The PRC’s heavy-handed behavior precludes a continuation of this undeserved sweetheart deal.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In July 1997, I was in Hong Kong when the United Kingdom surrendered that colony to the Communist Chinese. The totalitarian PRC thereby achieved the bloodless conquest of millions who enjoyed great freedom and prosperity under British rule.

That moment was particularly demoralizing since – despite formal commitments by Beijing to respect the non-Communist political “system” in Hong Kong – clearly its people would inevitably be deprived of their liberties. Sadly, that has come to pass, most recently with the announcement that the Chinese will compel Hong Kong to extradite so-called “fugitives” without due process, sparking immense popular protests this weekend.

The United States has long allowed China to enjoy free trade access to this country’s markets via Hong Kong on the condition that the Communists respect the former colony’s autonomy. The PRC’s heavy-handed behavior precludes a continuation of this undeserved sweetheart deal.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump seems to have persuaded Mexican officials that there is, indeed, a crisis at the southern border – theirs with Guatemala, as well as ours with Mexico.

Suddenly, the government of Andres Lopez Obrador has apparently abandoned his previous stance that everyone in the world has a right to migrate to the United States and is welcome to come to Mexico for that purpose.

Press accounts say Mexico is stopping some Central American “caravans” and arresting several of those responsible for encouraging and facilitating them. 6,000 newly designated Mexican National Guard personnel are reportedly being assigned to help control their country’s southern frontier. We’re told further concessions are on offer, too.

If all this actually materializes and endures, it will be a powerful vindication of President Trump’s threats to impose sweeping tariffs on Mexican imports and a welcome repudiation of his critics.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In 1961, Ronald Reagan first declared that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction….It must be fought for, protected and handed on [to our children] to do the same.”

Today, we celebrate a day 75 years ago when the Greatest Generation courageously did just that in a daring amphibious assault on the beaches of Normandy.  We revere those who survived, especially the few still with us, and the many thousands who made the ultimate sacrifice there.

As President, Mr. Reagan brought a similar fortitude, tenacity and skill to defeating his time’s existential threat to liberty: the Soviet Union and its “Evil Empire.”

Now, our generation must do the same in the face of the combined forces of freedom’s enemies, notably, Communist China and its proxy, North Korea, and Iran and other Sharia-supremacists, both those here and those abroad.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

As the current leaders of the Allied Powers in World War II commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day’s launch today, the ceremonies will have a prominent subtext: For seventy years, a different alliance, NATO, has been instrumental to keeping the peace on the liberated European continent.

The dignitaries will surely note the transformation of former enemy Germany into a longtime contributor to NATO’s success. Probably unmentioned, however, will be the evolution in recent years of Turkey, a nation that sat out the Second World War, from important NATO pillar to an ally no more. 

Under the Sharia-supremacist regime of Recep Tayyep Erdogan, the Turks have been aligning with the alliance’s  enemies, notably, Russia, China and Iran. Islamist Turkey is also casting a pall on today’s festivities by ramping up the construction of mosques in Europe to recruit and radicalize Muslims there and subvert the West.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Thirty years ago today, China’s Communist Party violently crushed a peaceful demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. At a Committee on the Present Danger: China event in Washington yesterday, a heroic Chinese freedom-fighter, Chen Guangcheng, reported that more than 10,000 people were slaughtered there.

Horrific as it is, such killing pales beside the many millions murdered by Mao Tse-tung and his successors.  The reality is that the Communists in China, like those elsewhere – notably, in the Soviet Union and Cambodia – have perpetrated genocidal violence against their respective populations.

It is past time, three decades after Tiananmen, for us to stop enabling and actually underwriting the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression and other threats against its long-suffering citizenry – and this country’s. After all, any regime that treats its own people horrifically has worse in mind for ours.

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

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

For nearly three decades, the United States has relied on its strategic nuclear arsenal as the ultimate guarantor of our national security without conducting a single underground nuclear test to ensure that our weapons are safe, reliable and effective deterrents.

Absent such testing, it’s impossible to perform the sort of routine modernization needed to deter foreign adversaries. As a result, our arsenal today is filled with obsolescent nuclear arms – and some U.S. government scientists fear they might not work as intended. If our enemies reach the same conclusion, they may be emboldened to act aggressively against us, our allies and/or our interests.

What’s more, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency just confirmed that Russia has been using low-yield underground nuclear tests to completely modernize its nuclear forces.  China probably has, too.  It’s past time that we do the same.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Arguably, the best National Security Advisor in our nation’s history was Judge William Clark, whose boss, Ronald Reagan, fondly called him his “Tophand.” In a quiet, self-effacing yet instrumental way the Judge helped the Gipper reassert American power and defeat its mortal enemy, the Soviet Union.

Donald Trump is being similarly supported in restoring U.S. greatness on the world stage, rebuilding our military strength and countering our foreign adversaries, including today’s existential threat to freedom – Communist China, by another extraordinary National Security Advisor: John Bolton. The President’s foes, at home and abroad, hope to undermine his success by attacking Amb. Bolton and seeking John’s dismissal.

Fortunately, President Trump is shrewd enough to understand that, were he to yield to such pressure and let his Tophand go, those enemies would view it as a yuuuge victory for them – as would his strongest supporters.

This is Frank Gaffney.