Secure Freedom Minute

This morning, our Victory Coalition opens a new front in the war to save our country. My colleague, John Guandolo, and I will brief Steve Bannon’s vast War Room audience concerning a mortal threat we face here, as well as elsewhere.

Since at least 9/11, we’ve been told America confronts “terrorists” who inexplicably use violence against us and others. Actually, they are overwhelmingly Muslims who adhere to the Islamic totalitarian doctrine of Sharia and follow its dictates to engage in jihad to terrify and conquer.

Fortunately, not all Muslims practice Sharia. Unfortunately, the authorities of the faith and millions of others do – including those at war with Israel. They seek to inflict the same on us to achieve global Islamic domination.

If we are to survive, let alone prevail, we must recognize and act on these hard realities. Follow us at VictoryCo.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Trump 2.0 presidency is scarcely a week old and an epic struggle is already underway to subvert it from within. The problem is not simply the expected one of a hostile Deep State bureaucracy.

Rather, it’s that a number of political appointees who do not share the President’s view of the threats we face and his determination to respond to them by practicing “peace through strength” are – despite Mr. Trump’s hard experience with uncooperative personnel in his first administration – getting key positions in the second one. Some are alumni of institutions funded by anti-Trump libertarian Charles Koch.

A sizable majority of the American people voted for a change in the nation’s foreign and defense policies, not a continuation of the failed ones of the Obama-Biden years. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth must not be represented and undermined by subordinates who disagree.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The U.S. Senate is expected to confirm Pete Hegseth today as our next Defense Secretary. His appointment – and the return to the White House of the man who made it – are the most exciting developments in the national security arena since my old boss, Ronald Reagan, secured and fulfilled his mandate to practice “peace through strength.”

What President Reagan had to do pales by comparison to the severe challenges to our security inherited by Messrs. Trump and Hegseth.

First and foremost, they must eliminate the cultural Marxist “Wokism” in the Pentagon, including the replacement of generals and admirals promoted by the Obama-Biden administrations to inflict it on the uniformed services.

Those steps will facilitate other vitally needed changes like restoring merit-based promotions and morale, reinvigorating recruiting, rebooting readiness, and rebuilding our sorely depleted defenses, industrial base, and power-projection capabilities.

Let’s roll!

This is Frank Gaffney.

Here’s a thought experiment: If the United States had a means of addictively informing, subversively manipulating and covertly collecting data on half the people of China – without the permission, let alone the control, of the ruling Chinese Communist Party – would the CCP allow us unilaterally to wield such a weapon against them?

As New Yorkers say, “fuggedaboutit.” The CCP would never permit us to do to their population what they are currently doing to 173 million Americans with their TikTok app.

It’s simply gobsmacking that we have allowed that to happen. So is the fact that President Donald Trump – who wanted to prevent it during his first term – has now intervened to postpone enforcement of a law requiring Chinese divestiture of TikTok, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and unanimously endorsed as constitutional by the Supreme Court.

Uphold the law, Mr. President!

This is Frank Gaffney.

A long time ago, I served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in Ronald Reagan’s Pentagon. In that role, I learned firsthand the truth of the President’s observation that “Personnel is policy.”

So, I have grave concerns about entrusting the Defense Department’s Mideast policymaking post to Michael DiMino, a man with deeply problematic prescriptions.

It would be one thing if his notions were being advanced when our most reliable Mideast ally, Israel, were secure and able to help fill the vacuum of power that DiMino’s isolationist approach would foster. But that’s not the case now, especially given a Gaza ceasefire Team Biden designed to assure Hamas’ survival.

Americans voted for Donald Trump, who supported Israel over her terrorist foes – and ours – during his first term. Personnel who fundamentally disagree will be a persistent problem for U.S. policy making consistent with that mandate.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Gerald Ford’s remark on the occasion of his inauguration that “Our long national nightmare is over” kept running through my head as I watched Donald Trump’s second one yesterday.

It’s a source of indescribable happiness that a presidency run by unknown, unaccountable, and radical leftists was finally done – and with it a wrecking operation that relentlessly assaulted our constitutional Republic and the national security.

The moment was made all the more delicious by President Trump directly repudiating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to their faces for what was done on their watch.

For example, he took them to task for: ravaging our economy; unleashing millions of illegal aliens across the country; and imposing cultural Marxism’s “Woke” divide-and-conquer strategy on our military and government more generally.

President Trump then immediately initiated corrective actions via over two hundred executive orders.

Praise the Lord.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The joyous return of three Israelis held hostage and abused by Hamas for fifteen months cannot obscure the reality of the deal that set them free: It’s not a ceasefire, it’s a hudna – a temporary pause jihadists use to emulate a diabolical strategy practiced by Islam’s prophet Mohammed.

When Muslims adherent to Sharia’s totalitarian doctrine are losing a conflict, they agree to suspend the fighting, then use the time to regroup, rearm and, when it suits them, renew the bloodletting to destroy the enemy.

The images of operatives and civilians in Gaza and jihadists elsewhere celebrating “victory” is all the evidence one needs that a true and enduring regional peace is not in prospect. Before Hamas gets the resources, time, and jihadist reinforcements Israel is obliged to supply pursuant to this hudna, the plug must be pulled on a predictable disaster.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Donald Trump has recently stupefied his supporters by embracing Joe Biden's policies towards Israel, antithetical to his own historic positions, to his campaign promises, and to our vital interests. Two new videos critically analyze the alarming Gaza ceasefire deal and how we got here.

The first is a new podcast by my friend and colleague, Caroline Glick. It dissects the insidious role played by Trump’s special Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, and what appear to be his handlers in Qatar, the principal global financier of toxic Sharia- supremacism and the jihad it commands.

The second is a PresentDangerChina.org webinar about the deal and who will benefit from it most, namely today’s axis of evil of Communist China, Russia, Iran and their proxies. It underscores powerfully the need for Donald Trump to disassociate himself from Witkoff and his handiwork. Now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The Gaza ceasefire Joe Biden announced yesterday is a formula not for peace, but for more war. It would prevent Israel from finishing off Hamas and return the Gaza Strip to its effective control.

When Hamas predictably resumes its attacks, Donald Trump will be President, not Biden. Thankfully, his incoming National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, declared yesterday, “Gaza has to be fully demilitarized, Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute….Hamas cannot have a role. ISIS doesn’t have a role. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have a role….These are hostage-taking, murderous rapists and torturers that never should…have any role in governing.”

For the moment, the ceasefire deal is on hold in Israel. Let’s pray that Israel, Trump and America are spared its dire repercussions and that the alternative vision laid out so clearly by Mike Waltz is realized, instead.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Can a man without an official portfolio inflict an enduring defeat on a President-elect not yet in power? That would be the case – unless Donald Trump promptly repudiates a disastrous deal engineered by a special Mideast envoy-designee that would effectively force Israel to lose its war with Hamas.

Follow me: A rich investor-turned-amateur diplomat named Steven Witkoff invoked the authority of the pro-Israel Trump to coerce Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with the terrorist group Hamas crafted by the virulently anti-Israel Biden administration.

Hamas is currently holding out for even more unacceptable concessions than the virtually complete capitulation Witkoff and Company dictated to Bibi.

It is in the vital interests of President Trump and his incipient presidency 2.0, America and Israel that this moment be seized for the latest, hapless “Apprentice” to be told, “You’re Fired!”

This is Frank Gaffney.