Secure Freedom Minute

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.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Asia Bibi is free!

Like many of her fellow Pakistani Christians, Asia has been brutally persecuted for her faith. That was especially the case after she was falsely accused of having violated Islam’s Sharia “blasphemy” restrictions.

Asia was actually convicted of speech that offended Muslims and spent eight years on death row in a horrible Pakistani prison because, under Sharia, blasphemy is a capital offense.

Fortunately, under pressure from the Trump administration and others, the Pakistani Supreme Court finally, courageously acquitted Asia last year. Until today, though, she couldn’t leave the country and was kept in isolation to prevent Sharia-supremacists from murdering her.

Thank God, Asia is finally free. Now, we must work to end the persecution of others whose speech, religious liberty and lives are threatened by the brutally oppressive code known as Sharia.

This is Frank Gaffney.  Learn more at Savethe PersecutedChristians.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

An American carrier battle group is headed toward the Persian Gulf in response to as-yet-undisclosed “indications and warnings” of threatening Iranian behavior. Presumably, the targets are U.S. personnel or allies in the region, or the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

A similar, but even more urgent response is needed to protect another, far more vulnerable target, namely our nation’s electric grid.

In an executive order signed in March, President Trump recognized the acute vulnerability of this most critical of our critical infrastructures – especially to a phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulse. Like all of this country’s other enemies, the Iranians understand that they could use EMP, sabotage or cyber attacks to destroy the United States.

We must act with at least as much urgency to address this peril as the one perceived to be emerging in the Persian Gulf.

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

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The Chinese Communist Party evidently thinks President Trump is bluffing in declaring he’ll ramp up tariffs on its imports this Friday. The real question is not so much whether that threat will prompt its negotiators to promise significant and structural concessions in this week’s trade talks, or even whether they will actually be fulfilled.

Rather, the issue is whether a trade deal will end Communist China’s “unrestricted warfare” against the United States – or simply buy Beijing time to continue and intensify it. Given the dramatic expansion of the PRC’s military capabilities, its economic power plays and the imperial infrastructure it is building world-wide, the answer seems obvious.

President Trump is right to turn up the pressure on the PRC. It must not be eased, however, as long as Communist China remains a present – and growing – danger.

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

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The 1980 presidential election offered the American people a choice between Ronald Reagan’s clear-eyed and robust opposition to a dangerous Soviet Union or its appeasement and emboldening under Jimmy Carter’s policy of detente. Mr. Reagan drew heavily on the case for taking on the USSR – and for taking it down – made by the Committee on the Present Danger.

Yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden signaled he intends to ignore the immense and growing threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Worse yet, he would have us continue to enable it.

A meeting of the new Committee on the Present Danger: China yesterday offered the latest evidence of why President Trump has been right to recognize that threat –and to reject business-as-usual with Beijing, from which Mr. Biden’s family has profited handsomely.

Let the debate begin on China.

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