Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Donald Trump has once again been sabotaged by leaks from inside his administration. This time, someone with access to materials prepared for the recent presidential phone call with Vladimir Putin gave them to the _Washington Post_, highlighting the staff’s admonition not to congratulate the Russian dictator on his recent “reelection,” and the fact that Mr. Trump did it anyway.

The intended target of this disclosure presumably was President Trump. But American statecraft is a casualty, too.

Fortunately, the close-hold handling of such information means that very few officials would have had access to the briefing cards and the actual content of the two presidents’ conversation. Prime suspects are National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Obama hold-overs employed in his personal office.

McMaster should have been fired long ago for bad personnel decisions, among other misconduct. Mr. President, seize the day.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Have you heard the political left’s gnashing of teeth about a company called Cambridge Analytica and its unauthorized exploitation of Facebook users’ personal information for commercial purposes? My immediate reaction was: Wait, isn’t that what IT monopolies like Facebook and Google do every day?

Fortunately, Michael Brendan Dougherty just explained at _National Review_ the double standard being applied here. Cambridge Analytica’s sin evidently was not so much what it did as who it was helping – namely Republican candidates and, in particular, Donald Trump.

As Dougherty observes, Silicon Valley has no problem with its products being exploited – as long as it’s by Democrats like Barack Obama, whose abuse of Facebook-derived data made Cambridge’s pale by comparison. But the IT giants are now working to ensure conservatives can’t do what Obama did.

Time to break them up like Ma Bell, before they abuse again.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

As Chinese president Xi Jinping completes his consolidation of power domestically and pursues with increasing brazenness the domination of half the world – on a scale that makes Imperial Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” pale by comparison, there’s an urgent need for clarity about the threat posed to freedom by Communist China.

The retired Catholic Cardinal of Hong Kong Joseph Zen has just helpfully provided a reality check in the form of an assessment of the truth about the proverbial “canaries in the coal mine” – China’s ever-more-repressed Christians.

Cardinal Zen warned “The truth doesn’t enjoy good health or high esteem nowadays in China. Everything is fake, from food to medicine. You are not expected to tell the truth, just say what the boss wants to hear.”

Here’s the truth: Communist China is persecuting its own people and is at war with ours.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

I had a chance to speak to a group in Queens, New York last night about Abraham Lincoln. It prompted me to reflect on civil war – in his time, and ours.

Of course, Lincoln’s presidency was defined by the cataclysmic struggle between the Union and the southern states that wanted to secede from it. A similar – albeit, undeclared and mostly non-violent – conflict seems to be underway today.

In my remarks, I cited an analysis of what might be called “Civil War II” written by David Vincent Gilbert. I don’t know the man, but found compelling his observation that: “…The basic issue here [is] who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other, but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.”

This is Frank Gaffney. Check out the rest of my speech at SecureFreedom.org.