Secure Freedom Minute

Yesterday, President Trump spoke at a defense and innovation summit in Pennsylvania about the need for both, and his commitment to reshoring and rebuilding the nation’s industrial base. 

Unfortunately, events half-a-world-away are underscoring the necessity, as one summit participant put it, “to supercharge the supply chains” so as to accelerate the translation of defense innovation into production into deployed weapon systems.

Not only are we rapidly exhausting our dwindling supply of advanced weapons in Iran. It’s no coincidence, comrade, that Communist China is simultaneously flooding the Western Pacific with warships, coast guard vessels, maritime militia and armed fishing boats as it asserts ownership of international waters and puts in place the makings of a blockade or quarantine of Taiwan.

To paraphrase the money quote from Jaws: We’re going to need a bigger boat – and lots of them – and right quick.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Morse Tan is a freedom-fighter who served as ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice during the first Trump administration. Today, he is effectively a political prisoner in South Korea. 

Amb. Tan has long spoken truth to power. In particular, he has warned about the lengths to which the Republic of Korea’s radical leftists have subverted freedom and elections. He’s even courageously done so in South Korea. 

Now that the hard Left is fully in power in Seoul under a Communist named Lee Jae-myung, the Ambassador has been prevented from leaving South Korea for over five weeks. That is outrageous.

When Lee visited Washington last year, President Trump declined to criticize him over myriad, serious concerns about his guest’s decades of anti-American activism. It’s high time Mr. Trump let Lee know his present mistreatment of Amb. Tan is utterly unacceptable.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. 

Unbeknownst to too many Americans, there are three totalitarian forces seeking to take down the United States so as to install globally some new ruling regime. 

To his credit, President Trump has lately been lighting up the Communists in our midst. 

The Congressional Sharia-Free America Caucus is among those warning about the jihadists aggressively operating in this country. 

And now Secretary of State Marco Rubio has robustly taken on the globalist elites using transnational organizations like the International Criminal Court to create a world government at the expense of U.S. sovereignty. 

These three forces have different end-states in mind and will, inevitably, fight each other over who will ultimately prevail. But, for the moment, they are collaborating to take down the only real impediment to their collective ambitions: the USA.

We must recognize, vigorously oppose and defeat this Totalitarian Trifecta. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

The sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham tectonically shifts our national security firmament. Whether one agreed with his priorities or not, he indisputably filled a unique position in the Senate and the country for which there is no obvious replacement.

Notably, he was a tireless champion of Ukraine, Israel and liberating Iran. 

Sen. Graham died right after his tenth trip to Kyiv, living to see  the Ukrainians winning the war there – unless Putin goes nuclear.

At a time of rampant hostility towards Israel, Lindsey correctly recognized her as a key ally fighting our enemies and warranting our support – especially with respect to “finishing the job” by helping accomplish real regime change in Tehran.

Sen. Graham will be most missed, though, in his role as “Trump whisperer,” a trusted confident of the President surrounded by others with sharply differing views. 

R.I.P. Lindsey Graham. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

President Trump appropriately responded militarily this week to attacks by the Iranian regime on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The episode underscores, however, what is certain to be repeated by our enemies in Tehran if they remain in power.

The reason is only partly because Iran’s jihadists view a “humiliation ritual” as their strongest weapon for winning by defeating President Trump politically in the looming November midterms.

Another impetus is Iran’s Chinese puppet-master, Xi Jinping, wants the Mideast war to continue as it distracts America from his incremental, but intensifying, efforts to take Taiwan. The latest step tees up a quarantine or blockade as PRC Coast Guard vessels have begun conducting “law enforcement operations” in so-called “Chinese coastal waters” east of the island.

We must finish the job in Iran now, and prepare urgently for the next one in the Pacific.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Yesterday, President Trump repeatedly declared that

“There is something wrong” with the leaders of Iran. He’s absolutely right, fundamentally, because the current crop – like all their predecessors – are sharia-supremacists. 

As such, they will do everything possible to destroy unbelievers, including fellow Muslims they consider to be apostates and certainly us. To that end, they’ll employ every instrument from deception to political subversion to violent jihad.

The same is true of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the erstwhile al Qaeda commander who is now, with the backing of the sharia-supremacist regimes in Turkey and Qatar, the president of Syria. 

Tragically, Mr. Trump is being blindsided by such false friends and even some of his own subordinates to construe Sharaa-tied jihadist attacks on Christians, Druze and other minorities as laudable “stabilization” of that long-suffering country.

Mr. President, there’s something very wrong as well with the Syrian leadership.   

This is Frank Gaffney.

Today, Donald Trump declared that, as far as he is concerned, the so-called “ceasefire” with Iran is “over.” What is really noteworthy is that the President’s explanation for why negotiations are now “a waste of time” effectively precludes pursuing them further.

Having previously applauded Iran’s current leaders, Mr. Trump just excoriated them as “liars,” “scum,” “cuckoo” and “vicious” “violent” and “sick” people. It would seem to be an irreversible breaking point that he has concluded, “There is something wrong with them.” 

There is, indeed. But, while all of his disparaging characterizations are valid, what is, at its core, unalterably “wrong” with the Iranian government is that it remains sharia-supremacist and intent on destroying our country in the pursuit of a global Islamic caliphate. 

Mr. President, It’s past time to spare us all further threats from such dangerous enemies. Finish the job.  

This is Frank Gaffney.

Today, a country that shouldn’t actually be in NATO will be hosting its summit. After all, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has been a leading force on behalf of the “Red-Green axis” – the alliance between Communists and sharia-supremacists whose object is destroying Western civilization. 

That goal has been enormously advanced by Erdogan’s relentless efforts to insert ever-larger numbers of unassimilable Turkish and other Muslim immigrants in Europe. He has established Turkey as China’s beachhead in the Middle East and Europe’s soft southern underbelly. And Erdogan aspires to recreate the Ottoman Empire with him as its ruling caliph.

The magnitude of Erdogan’s unreliability as an ally was evident in President Trump’s comment last week that Turkey was a “prime candidate to go into the war with Iran – maybe on the Iran side.”

With “friends” like Erdogan…. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

Millions of Iranians have taken to the streets of Tehran for the funeral of the country’s longtime dictator, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their aspiration is revenge, expressed by mass chants of “Death to America. Death to Israel.”

Unfortunately, despite abundant evidence that the mullahs are not trustworthy parties to ongoing negotiations, let alone willing to conclude a genuine and enduring peace, the U.S. government is continuing to talk and, worse yet, make concessions.

The inevitable result of such accommodations is to buy time for our enemies in Iran to rearm, regroup and resume hostilities at a time of their choosing. 

Worse yet, jihadists worldwide and their friends are emboldened by the extent to which the government in Tehran has not only survived, but is getting away with treating America and Israel with contempt. 

We allow that perception to persist at our peril.

This is Frank Gaffney.

The celebration is underway of America’s Revolution – which, with God’s grace brought the world the most free, the most powerful and the most economically successful nation ever.

Unfortunately, the prospects for the next 250 years are being marred by an anti-American counter-revolution increasingly in evidence across the country. 

Communists, doing business as “Democratic Socialists,” and sharia-supremacists are seeking to use elections to supplant the Constitution and destroy our Republic founded upon it.

For the moment, such counter-revolutionaries are cloaking their true agendas as “progressive” and “diverse.” That’s because the vast majority of Americans want to continue to enjoy liberty,  not be enslaved by communism or sharia. 

But make no mistake: If the Democratic Party embraces such forces and the rest of us don’t overwhelmingly reject them, they just may make this momentous celebration of freedom one of our last. 

God forbid.

This is Frank Gaffney.