Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Tonight, President Trump will report on the state of our Union. Much of the rhetoric will be familiar – a list of accomplishments, descriptions of challenges facing the Republic, calls for unity, etc. 

The imagery is often as important as the content of the message, however. Political rivals come together to honor the presidency, despite sharp disagreements with its incumbent – creating a welcome impression of a robust Union.

Last year, though, when Rep. Nancy Pelosi was the House Minority Leader, she led her Democratic caucus in repeated, symbolic repudiations of the President’s remarks as cameras captured their angry looks and refusals to applaud.

Tonight, House Speaker Pelosi will be on camera throughout, seated on the dais behind President Trump next to Vice President Mike Pence. How she conducts herself will do much to shape public perceptions of the State of the Union.   

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The U.S. Senate can’t muster the sixty votes required to build the barrier we need to make an appreciable difference in the national security and humanitarian crisis along our border with Mexico. So, the partial government shut-down continues, while the dangers associated with a porous frontier intensify.

Notably, it is predictable that the numbers of aliens coming here illegally will swell if another political stalemate results in a renewed and violent government crackdown on the desperate, starving masses in Venezuela. Hidden amidst such refugee flows will doubtless be Cubans, Iranians and other jihadists to whom the odious Maduro regime has given Venezuelan passports.

In short, we need “the wall” and we need it now. The Commander-in-Chief must employ the U.S. military to extend and strengthen fences where required so as to permit the border to be closed and the government reopened.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Finally, something is being done about the nightmare that has befallen Venezuela, thanks to years of socialist misrule there that has turned one of the world’s richest nations into an economic basket case, a humanitarian disaster and a geopolitical time-bomb.

Yesterday, Juan Guaido, the leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly, took the extraordinary step of swearing himself in as the Interim President of Venezuela. This desperate – but constitutional – move is aimed at ending the bankrupting chaos that is the legacy of long-time communist dictator, Hugo Chavez, and his corrupt and incompetent hand-picked successor, Nicholas Maduro.

President Trump promptly joined other regional and world leaders in recognizing Mr. Guaido as his country’s legitimate president.  This is a necessary but insufficient step.  They must now take measures to help protect him and the chance to save Venezuela that his courage is making possible.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

What’s up with Mitch McConnell? For weeks, he has supported President Trump in his effort to secure the southern border.  At least, that’s been the practical effect of his refusal to bring up legislation that would have ended the partial government shut-down unless Mr. Trump was prepared to sign it.

Then, on Saturday, the President announced what he would sign: a compromise that would provide $5.9 billion for steel bollard barriers in key unfenced areas in exchange for an amnesty for certain illegal aliens currently here.

But the bill that Sen. McConnell has just introduced explicitly prohibits the modified “wall” Mr. Trump now seeks. If adopted by both houses of Congress, the President would be handed a disastrous political defeat and, more importantly, the border would be left substantially unsecured. 

Repeat after me – and Vice President Pence: “No wall, no deal.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Senate Democrats are expected today to block President Trump’s proposed compromise designed to open the government and secure our southern border. Their mantra is “walls don’t work.”

The absurdity of this contention is evident in a new report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel. It found that 80 percent of those killed in the course of weekly Palestinian attacks aimed at tearing down the Jewish State’s fence with Gaza are terrorists who seek to capture or murder Israeli civilians. 

While Democratic legislators in this country are increasingly hostile to Israel, it still seems inconceivable they would demand that she remove this security barrier on the grounds that it would be more “moral” to allow Palestinian jihadists free access to her citizens.  So, why are they okay with giving dangerous aliens a free shot at ours?

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On Saturday, President Trump unveiled a proposal to open the government on the basis of a compromise with Democrats opposed to his plan for securing our southern border.

In exchange for the $5.9 billion in funding that he correctly insists is needed to close key, unfenced stretches of our frontier with Mexico, he’s effectively offering amnesty for large numbers of illegal aliens already here.

Top Democrats have dismissed the President’s proposal out of hand.  They insist on keeping the government closed in order to keep the border open.  As usual, they have it exactly backwards.

Unfortunately, some congressional Republicans seem prepared to open the government, grant some sort of amnesty and keep the border open. That would be a magnet for still more illegal aliens to come here – and an intensified crisis for public health and safety and the national security.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

“Our goal is simple: To be sure we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anywhere, any time, and any place.”

With those words, Donald Trump yesterday established a goal as ambitious, transformative and strategically important as any presidential declaration since John Kennedy sent men to the moon.

The imperative behind Mr. Trump’s initiative is compelling. Today, Russia and China are putting in place hypersonic, maneuvering and cruise missile threats against which we currently have no effective defense. Inevitably, in due course, other enemies will as well.

In recent years, bipartisan majorities in Congress have recognized the need to deploy the sorts of advanced and space-based anti-missile systems required to counter such threats. We all must pray that the new Democratic House majority will agree to continue in such ways to provide for the common defense.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Amidst all the talk about “Russian collusion,” one of the most egregious – and consequential – examples has received negligible attention.  During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton engineered the transfer of lots of high technology – including militarily relevant ones – to Russia’s Silicon Valley, in the vain hope of “resetting” relations with Vladimir Putin.

At the time, the Pentagon warned that this arrangement amounted to an “overt technology theft operation” that gave the Kremlin, among other things, strategically sensitive hypersonic missile know-how and gear.  It also massively profited Clinton Foundation donors.

Today, President Trump unveils a missile defense plan made necessary by such treachery.  His long-awaited Missile Defense Review proposes a comprehensive program of space-based and other means of protecting the American people against the hypersonic missiles Russia and China are now deploying.  Unfortunately, we need such defenses yesterday.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously in the wake of published remarks by Rep. Steve King to condemn “white nationalism and white supremacy.” Mr. King voted for the resolution, underscoring his animosity towards such practices, and his devotion to Western civilization.

One of the hallmarks of our civilization is a commitment to individual liberty.  The highest expression of that commitment is to be found in the U.S. Constitution with its guarantees of unalienable, God-given rights.  The most foundational of these is freedom of speech. 

Every legislator who voted Tuesday has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution as the “supreme law of the land.” Yet, singling out certain forms of supremacism for criticism is a formula for restricting some speech as “hateful” – and, thereby, eroding one of our most important, and needed, bulwarks against supremacism of all kinds. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

In a Tweet on Sunday, President Trump threatened Islamist Turkey, promising devastating economic sanctions if it attacked Kurds inside Syria. It would appear he has correctly concluded that the Turks are allies no more – and will be pursuing policies reflecting that reality.

It’s high time.  After all, under the Sharia-supremacist Erdogan regime, Turkey has repeatedly demonstrated that it is playing for the other team – buying advanced weapons from Russia and China, violating sanctions to trade with Iran, pushing migrants into Europe, threatening Israel and enabling ISIS.

A principal concern about Mr. Trump’s decision quickly to withdraw the small contingent of U.S. special forces on the ground in Syria was the prospect that the Turks would see it as a greenlight to crush our Kurdish allies there.  Here’s hoping that the threat of devastating U.S. economic sanctions will prevent that from happening.

This is Frank Gaffney.