On Wednesday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily, Center for Security President Frank Gaffney said President Trump’s salute to Gold Star wife Carryn Owens was “clearly the high point of the speech.”
Gaffney said of Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night:
I think we need to be recognizing that part if it was, at the very least, it was a way of personalizing a commitment to the people who protect this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic – whether they’re in the uniform of the special operators doing derring-do in the beaches of Yemen, or whether it’s people who are protecting our borders, or people who are rolling up illegals in this country, or the military more generally.
This is something that is clearly at the core of this presidency, and it does I think help explain the money he is seeking to provide them, to do their job better, improve their readiness. I trust it will also translate into a renewed commitment to giving them the modernized equipment they need to defend us.
“In all of these respects, I am so grateful to the role that Breitbart has played in helping make it possible for this man to come to office, and to hold him accountable,” he said. “It has to be both. But we’re seeing a fresh start on protecting this nation and its people from all enemies foreign and domestic.”
SiriusXM host Alex Marlow played a clip of President Trump promising to “demolish and destroy ISIS,” describing it as both a difficult challenge and potentially a crowning achievement if Trump can do it. Gaffney remarked:
He has to understand, and I believe he does, and we all need to understand, that the Islamic State or ISIS is simply the brand du jour for a part of a global jihad movement that is very much on the march. I’m all in on taking these guys down, but it must be part of – and I think he envisions it as part of, that’s why he keeps coming back to this idea of ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ – and frankly terrorism that envisions both the violent piece of it, and the pre-violent piece, that network, that ‘beachhead’ stuff. He’s going after, I think, the leading edge of it. He will crush them, I’m quite certain. But he has to deal with this more broadly.
If I could just say, the plan that I’ve been hearing about, which is a little bit worrying, is one that remands the ideological or counter-ideological dimensions of this, crucial to go at and take apart, this whole idea of sharia supremacism – is being, as I understand it, entrusted to two entities. One at the Department of State, the Global Engagement Center, and the other the Countering Violent Extremism bureau over at the Department of Homeland Security – both of whom have been, I think, deeply associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, certainly under the previous administration, and have been part of the problem in not being clear about the nature of the enemy and not taking it down effectively.
“That would be a terrible mistake,” Gaffney warned. “It will undo the good vision and necessary steps he’s got in mind. So this is a work in progress, Alex. The president is getting it right. He needs to be supported by those underneath him who have the responsibility to carry out his directions.”
The final clip Marlow played for Gaffney to review was President Trump’s promise to collect more financial support from America’s allies, such as NATO, and his declaration that money is already “pouring in.”
“It got even the Democrats on their feet, because they sort of thought it was a climbdown from him being hard on NATO,” Gaffney chuckled. “I thought it was absolutely pitch perfect. He expressed a commitment to an alliance that is important, and he said we need them to do the burden-sharing bit.”
Gaffney continued:
In practice, a very important thing happened overnight. The Trump administration apparently intervened to prevent a travesty on the part of two of our NATO allies: the punishment of one of our covert operatives, Sabrina De Sousa, who was going to be removed from Portugal, extradited from Portugal to Italy to serve four years of sentence for engaging in part of the rendition program, at the direct orders I believe of President George W. Bush.
“Apparently that has been staved off,” he reported. “She’s, I’m told, gotten a partial pardon, a reduction in sentence, and the extradition to Italy has been pulled. I think it remains to be confirmed, but if so, it’s a huge – talk about feathers in the cap of the Trump administration, and a very important message to NATO, and to our covert operatives around the world, and our enemies as well. Godspeed.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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