Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

President Trump has a potentially fraught meeting today with his new South Korean counterpart, Lee Jae Myung. While the focus will be on trade relations, there will be an ominous elephant in the room: Lee is deeply hostile to the United States and dangerously aligned with our enemies, Communist China and North Korea.

As my colleague, retired Marine Colonel Grant Newsham, observed recently in Asia Times, Lee has “referred to American troops in South Korea as ‘occupiers’ and said China should do what it wants to Taiwan.” It is hard to overstate the strategic peril associated with the “fundamental transformation” of a key American ally now in prospect. 

The question is: Will Mr. Trump come to grips with Lee’s longstanding hostility or try to paper it over in the interest of making “progress” on trade? Much will be riding on the answer.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

In America, there’s a growing awareness of and concern about Islam’s totalitarian code known as Sharia. Its practitioners are increasingly on the march around the world and in this country. 

For example, in Britain, Sharia-condoned gangs of immigrants are estimated to have raped a million native girls. In Nigeria, Syria, and elsewhere, Christians are being attacked, murdered and driven out by Sharia-supremacists. And a court in Austria just condoned the use of Sharia to settle commercial disputes. 

Here in Texas, jihadism-aligned Muslims are establishing incipient Sharia-adherent communities. Un-permitted Islamic praying increasingly takes over public spaces. And in New York and elsewhere, Sharia’s followers are joining forces with the radical left to gain elective office.  

Sharia is not a constitutionally protected religion, but an instrument of political warfare and control aimed at overthrowing governments and societies like ours. It must be opposed, not accommodated.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The untimely death of the governor of America’s westernmost territory has called attention to inroads being made there by our mortal enemy, the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s visa-free access to the islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, its gambling operations there awash with billions of dollars and its nationals’ illegal access to nearby Guam are among the reasons the late Gov. Arnold Palacios pleaded for investigations, audits and other help from a largely indifferent Washington, thousands of miles away.

Unfortunately, as the Daily Signal recently reported, a man who facilitated such ominous Chinese activities in CNMI is now the top official in DC responsible for the territory and federal funds flowing there.

Interior Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Angel Demapan should be under investigation, not in a position to help the CCP further penetrate – and endanger – our Western frontier.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

Jimmy Lai is one of the most heroic men in the world today. As a penniless youth in 1961, he fled Communist China to the British colony of Hong Kong, where he became a wildly successful entrepreneur and billionaire. 

Jimmy courageously used his media empire and personal resources to support opposition to China’s Communist Party and persisted in doing so even after Great Britain surrendered the city and the CCP inexorably crushed freedom there. 

Today, after five years in prison, most of it spent in solitary confinement, Jimmy Lai is standing trial for alleged national security crimes. His conviction is inevitable. 

There must be real costs to Communist China for its mistreatment of this extraordinary hero – and all those in Hong Kong and the mainland for whose freedom he has fought for so long and at such immense personal expense. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

President Trump is manfully working to put out the fire that has engulfed Ukraine ever since Russian dictator Vladimir Putin invaded it in February 2022. He is trying to negotiate not simply to contain the still-raging flames, but to prevent permanently a wider conflagration.

But seemingly entirely absent from the discussions is: What about the arsonist?

The man who probably instigated, clearly greenlighted and certainly is enabling the war in Ukraine is China’s tyrant, Xi Jinping. His strategic arson – first there and subsequently in the Middle East – has principally benefited the Chinese Communist Party with cheap oil, arms sales and chaos that has distracted and depleted the chief firefighter, the United States.

Currently, the CCP’s in the process of sparking a new conflict with the Philippines. If we fail to stop the arsonists, we’ll likely be engulfed by World War Xi.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

Everyone knows someone was missing at President Trump’s meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin last week. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky will get his chance this afternoon to address with Mr. Trump the fate of his country, accompanied by a posse of influential European allies. 

There was, however, another man absent from the Anchorage summit: China’s Communist emperor, Xi Jinping. He apparently greenlit Russia’s invasion and certainly has enabled its ongoing destruction of much of Ukraine. 

China expert Gordon Chang believes that President Trump is refraining from holding Xi accountable for his various hostile actions lest it destabilize his regime and imperil Chinese Communist Party rule. 

That is a formula for allowing the CCP to get away with still more murder – literally. The truth is that there will be no peace in Ukraine, let alone the Pacific, as long as it’s the case. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Nine years ago today, Donald Trump gave one of his most important speeches ever. In Youngstown, the then-Republican nominee for president powerfully repudiated the appeasement of jihadists long pursued by his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

Mr. Trump put forth, instead, a comprehensive and realistic of set of policy initiatives rooted in a central proposition: We are confronting not an assortment of “terrorists” irrationally, if not inexplicably, seeking kill us. 

Rather, America especially is being targeted by adherents to an ideology at the core of “radical Islam.” Its proper name is Sharia. And Candidate Trump promised to keep more of them from coming here and, most importantly, to “stripping out and removing one by one [their] support networks…in this county.”

That must be done now, starting with the designation of such networks’ mothership, the Muslim Brotherhood, as a terrorist organization. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Fox News star Maria Bartiromo rolled out yesterday another pathbreaking special on the Chinese Communist Party’s unrestricted warfare against America. 

This one features the Commander of U.S. Space Force, a developer of cutting-edge military technology and other experts assessing the PRC’s ominous determination to beat us to the moon – and to use a base there to control access to it and the “cis-lunar” space in between and project power even here on earth. 

A key contributor to the show is our colleague, Roger Robinson, who described in a powerful interview with Maria yesterday that – as with myriad other Chinese military programs – the CCP’s weaponization of space is being enabled, in part, by unwitting U.S. investors. Mr. Robinson will be unveiling today a report detailing the extent, and dire implications, of this aspect of our insane underwriting of the enemy. 

That must stop.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked yesterday by talk radio host Sid Rosenberg, “Why wouldn’t you guys designate the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR?” He responded, 

“All of that is in the works. Obviously, there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them.”

Those who have enabled that Sharia-supremacist – and therefore terrorism-tied – group and its fronts like the Council on American-Islamic Relations to metastasize in this country will surely mobilize to prevent their designations as such. Qatar, Turkey and jihadist organizations they support will use their considerable influence and operatives to protect the Brothers. 

Still, nine years ago this week, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged that “the support networks for Radical Islam in this country will be stripped out and removed one by one.” That’s a promise made that must be kept now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Concerns are growing that the galloping advance of artificial intelligence will imperil our jobs, freedoms and country. I call the phenomenon “FrankenAI,” and even some in the industry worry it’s becoming a man-made monster.

We’re told the unregulated pursuit of AI is required to compete with Communist China or we’ll be permanently dominated – militarily and economically. 

Some experts are warning, however, that by allowing China to buy AI-useful Nvidia H20 chips – and then profit from the sales, the Trump administration will help it beat us. 

While others contend those chips are widely available, and we’ll stay ahead by selling them, we seem to be facing a lose-lose proposition: Facilitating Chinese AI dominance – even as we pursue technologies that may make us more like Communist China – appears to be a formula for FrankenAI, at their hands or ours. 

This is Frank Gaffney.