This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

Score one more for the Trump Doctrine.  

Yesterday, President Trump declared a big “free and fair trade” win for his America First agenda at the expense of the European Union.  But this deal is actually a two-fer. 

After all, it stands also to set back Communist China’s efforts to supplant the United States as the Europeans’ most important trading partner.  Countering the Chinese has increasingly become the unifying theme of the President’s foreign policy.  The imperative behind this Trump Doctrine was underscored by witnesses who testified last week before the House Intelligence Committee concerning the extensive economic and national security damage done by the PRC’s decades-long “unrestricted warfare” against the United States.

If Donald Trump has just successfully played the “Europe card” against China, it may well prove devastating to the hostile, imperial ambitions of a nation that increasingly cannot afford them. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Rep. Keith Ellison is panicking.  The Minnesota Democrat evidently has gotten wind of a forthcoming book by Trevor Loudon documenting his extensive ties to radical anti-American, Marxist and Sharia-supremacist groups.

On July 17th, Rep. Ellison wrote Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding that his company censor books and other products by those deemed to be “hate groups” by the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center.  He wants such materials still in Amazon warehouses “destroyed” over the next three months and an end to the company’s publication of similar “physical and digital materials.” 

Every American will soon be able to read about Keith Ellison’s record of extremism.  But few examples are more blatant than his effort to establish the SPLC – which recently paid over $3 million dollars for falsely labeling someone an “anti-Muslim extremist” – the arbiter of what will be available from Amazon.

This is Frank Gaffney. 

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Donald Trump has a well-deserved reputation for pugnaciousness.  If he is attacked, he reflexively fights back.

That may explain his decision – in the face of intense criticism over his summit with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Finland last week – to schedule another one in Washington for some time this fall. 

Whatever the motivation for such a meeting, it affords an opportunity for a do-over by Mr. Trump.  That should include, among other things, resetting the agenda.  After all, the one Putin claimed the President had embraced is substantially at odds with Trump administration policies – and U.S. interests. 

For example, President Trump seeks to modernize our obsolescent nuclear deterrent, build effective, global missile defenses and deploy a space force. The Russians are determined to obstruct those much-needed initiatives. 

At Summit 2.0 and during its run-up, we must pursue the Trump agenda, not Putin’s. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Amidst the political jockeying in Washington to establish which party is more hostile to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, an even more ominous threat is getting scant attention.  Fortunately, the fact that Communist China has actually been waging “unrestricted warfare” against the United States for decades is the focus of an important congressional hearing today. 

For the second time in recent months, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes will conduct an unclassified review of China’s hostile actions.  Today’s topic is how the PRC has long been waging economic war against us and the damage it has done to our trade balance, industrial base, commercial and state secrets and national security.

The hearing is particularly timely in light of President Trump’s efforts to use tariffs, investment restrictions and other measures to fight back. It may be one of our last chances to do so.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Misdeeds by Peter Strzok and his confederates do not implicate thousands of other FBI and Justice Department employees, but they have damaged confidence in those agencies.  Former CIA Director John Brennan’s Tweet that comments by President Trump in Helsinki were “treasonous” is a timely reminder of justified concerns about Obama administration politicization of the wider intelligence community.

Mr. Brennan should be careful about casting the first stone. He voted for a Communist. As Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor, he institutionalized Muslim Brotherhood influence operations inside the U.S. government and endorsed its false claims that jihad is merely “holy struggle” and that Islam has “nothing to do” with terrorism.

John Brennan’s evident enmity towards Donald Trump today was  operating when he was in government.  It damaged the objectivity and reputation of the organizations he led – and discredits him as a critic of the President.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

If there is any good news for President Trump coming out of his summit meeting and press conference yesterday with Vladimir Putin, it may be that his widely condemned comments about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election have distracted attention from the rest of their agenda.

In his remarks to the press, the Russian dictator claimed bilateral agreement on a litany of initiatives ranging from past and future arms control measures, keeping weapons out of space, establishing a commission of academics, businessmen and others to advise on U.S.-Russian relations, “cooperation” on terrorism and cyber threats, saving the Iran deal, etc., etc. 

These are among the hardy perennials of Kremlin efforts to subvert U.S. security. President Trump needs now to clarify – and walk back – any mandates for institutionalizing Moscow’s agenda in ways that would make the appalling Obama-Clinton “reset” with Russia seem robust. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin today in Helsinki offers an insight into what might be called the Trump Doctrine. 

The common denominator for Mr. Trump’s foreign and trade policies seems to be a determination to isolate and counter Communist China.

Russia has become a close ally of China.  North Korea is Beijing’s puppet. Pakistan, Iran and Venezuela are its clients.  The European Union – unlike NATO and many of its members – is hostile to the U.S. and doing deals with the PRC. 

So, President Trump is working hard to drive wedges between China and the Russians and North Koreans, weakening its regional proxies, and challenging our allies for harming U.S. interests and rewarding them when they don’t.  And he’s taking on China directly with trade, investment and military measures.

Here’s hoping this is the Trump Doctrine – and that it works. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Donald Trump speaks truth to power, often with undiplomatic frankness.  But, by so doing, he exposes problems that are typically papered over or simply ignored, to the detriment of America’s interests and security.

Mr. Trump’s current travels in Europe have provided a number of cases in point. He told the NATO allies that their defense spending is wholly inadequate. He warned about Germany’s growing dependence for energy on Russia, the very country whose threat necessitates such increased expenditures. He pointed out that “All this immigration has changed the fabric of Europe.” And he criticized British Prime Minister Theresa May for “wrecking” negotiations over her nation’s exit from the European Union, pursuing arrangements that will preclude a new free trade deal with the United States. 

Such candid tough love is rarely welcomed, but a necessity for sound policy. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Congratulations to Rep. Ron DeSantis and others who took on the Muslim Brotherhood yesterday in a hearing on Capitol Hill.  They established that it’s a foreign terrorist organization and will be officially designated as such by the U.S. government.  The only question is how soon and how comprehensively. 

Muslim reformer Zuhdi Jasser testified that in 2011 then-FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that “elements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism.” Dr. Jasser added, “Nothing would be more pro-Muslim than the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood and its direct affiliates.”

That’s because the Brotherhood seeks to impose its seditious Sharia-supremacist doctrine on pro-American Muslims as it works – according to the group’s secret plan – to use stealthy “civilization jihad” to “destroy Western civilization from within.” 

They must be stopped.  Start by designating the entire Muslim Brotherhood now. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump has once again applied a dose of “tough love” to America’s allies.  They have, as usual, taken it badly.

Mr. Trump kicked off a NATO summit in Belgium today by upbraiding especially Germany – Europe’s largest economy – for failing to do its part to protect continental security.  He cited not only its woeful underfunding of defense.  The President also channeled Ronald Reagan in challenging Germany’s corrupt and strategically reckless decision to make itself reliant on energy supplies from Russia.

Mr. Trump could also have pointed to the immense damage done to European security by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s admission of millions of illegal aliens – many of them Sharia-supremacists. 

It’s essential to NATO’s future viability to acknowledge these unpleasant truths and take corrective actions.  President Trump deserves credit for addressing them, and must now lead the alliance in doing so, as well.

This is Frank Gaffney.