Live Free Or Die: America (and the World) on the Brink (32 page)

In a November 2017 trip to Asia, President Trump visited five nations—Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines—and attended the APEC CEO Summit in Da Nang and the U.S.-ASEAN Summit. His remarks on his trip capture his no-nonsense, patriotic approach to foreign policy and stand in sharp contrast to Obama's disgraceful apology tour. “When we are confident in ourselves, our strength, our flag, our history, our values—other nations are confident in us,” said Trump. “And when we treat our citizens with the respect they deserve, other countries treat America with the respect that our country so richly deserves. During our travels, this is exactly what the world saw: a strong, proud, and confident America.”
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During the trip, American representatives agreed to provide advanced military equipment to South Korea and Japan, and those countries agreed to more closely collaborate with the United States on defense. Trump also promoted stronger cooperation with India and Australia, and expressed America's commitment to promote security and prosperity in Asia, especially by developing financial institutions.
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Trump also attended two historic summits in North Korea and
became the first U.S. president to cross the DMZ into North Korea. Though criticized for negotiating with Kim Jong-un, Trump has kept the pressure on the North Korean dictator. He has imposed sanctions on people and companies that helped North Korea evade sanctions;
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refused to give North Korea sanctions relief without a full denuclearization first;
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and has led both the Treasury Department and the United Nations Security Council to implement and maintain sanctions on North Korea.

One of President Trump's most significant reversals of Obama foreign policy involves America's relationship with Israel. Unlike other presidents who glibly promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, President Trump fulfilled his promise and moved the U.S. embassy there, opening it on May 14, 2018. “For many years, we have failed to acknowledge the obvious, plain reality that the [Israeli] capital is Jerusalem,” said Trump. A grateful Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “President Trump, by recognizing history, you have made history…. Today the embassy of the most powerful nation on earth, our greatest ally, the United States of America, today the United States embassy opened here. What a difference.”
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Trump also withdrew America from UNESCO, the UN's cultural arm, citing its pervasive anti-Israel bias. “It sends a strong message that we need to see fundamental reform in the organization, and it raises everyone's awareness about continued anti-Israel bias,” said a State Department official.
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On March 25, 2019, Trump formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. “Israel has never had a better friend than you,” Netanyahu told Trump, citing America's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, his reimposition of sanctions on Iran, and his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital along with moving our embassy there. “This is truly an historic day,” said Netanyahu, noting that it had taken half a century “to translate our military victory into a diplomatic victory. Your recognition is a two-fold act of historic justice. Israel won the Golan Heights in a just war of self-defense, and the Jewish people's roots in the Golan go back thousands of years.”
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The administration
also declared that Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate international law.

Also in furtherance of our national security, the Trump administration issued an executive order to strengthen America's industrial base through the first whole-of-government assessment of America's manufacturing and defense supply chains since 1950.
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Trump has taken the offensive against terrorists around the world, destroying ISIS's caliphate and recapturing all territory subsumed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In the process, ISIS founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, one of the most murderous terrorists in the world, killed himself during a raid by U.S. commandos in northwestern Syria.

Trump has also taken strong action against Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. In addition to killing Iran's terror mastermind Qasem Soleimani, he pulled out of the disastrous nuclear deal and replaced it with a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions on more than one thousand Iranian individuals, companies, and organizations. These were later enhanced with additional sanctions targeting Iran's oil, banking, and shipping sectors. “We are striking at the heart of the regime's inner security apparatus,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
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The administration has also pursued military action against Iran's ally, the Assad regime in Syria, in retaliation for using chemical weapons against its own people, and Trump authorized sanctions against nations affiliated with Syria's chemical weapons program.
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President Trump has employed a new approach in Afghanistan to prevent terrorists from reestablishing a terrorist base there and to finally enable the United States to bring our troops home. He is increasing pressure on the Taliban to enter into a peace settlement with the Afghan government and is pressuring neighboring Pakistan to stop harboring militants and terrorists.

Trump has taken a personal interest in securing the release of Americans unjustly imprisoned in foreign countries. He has forced the release of Ziyue Wang, an American doctoral student imprisoned in Iran; Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American imprisoned in Egypt; four
prisoners held by North Korea—although one of them, Otto Warmbier, had slipped into a coma under suspicious circumstances and died shortly after being returned home;
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and Danny Burch, an American oil worker held in Yemen.
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Finally, President Trump has lived up to his “America First” pledge by rejecting self-defeating international treaties and defending American sovereignty. He announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, a product of environmental zealotry whose draconian provisions would kill American jobs and destroy U.S. competitiveness without appreciably reducing global temperatures.
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He also declared that the United States would never ratify the United Nations 2014 Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed by Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry and sent to the Senate on December 9, 2016. The treaty provides an end run around the Second Amendment by imposing regulations and conditions on the transfer and possibly the possession of any weapon.
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“This treaty threatened your… rights…. Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone,” Trump told the National Rifle Association. “We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your Second Amendment freedom.”
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The president has treated the appointment of originalist judges as a top priority.
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As of early March 2020, Trump had appointed 193 federal judges, including two Supreme Court justices (Neil Gorsuch replacing Antonin Scalia and Brett Kavanaugh replacing Anthony Kennedy), fifty-one judges for the United States Court of Appeals, 138 United States District Court judges, and two judges for the United States Court of International Trade. This was more than any other president in modern history at this point in their presidency.
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Most notably, Trump showed steadfast support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during the despicable smear campaign run
by the left and the Democrats, which included an escalating series of false allegations of sexual assault. Some of the most outlandish accusations were made by disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti, with whom CNN's Brian “Humpty Dumpty” Stelter showed a strange infatuation back then.

While people focus mostly on Supreme Court appointments, lower federal court appointments are extremely important, especially considering the small percentage of cases that actually make it to the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court decides fewer than eighty cases per year, while the thirteen Circuit Courts decide tens of thousands.) Since judges have lifetime tenure, Trump has intentionally appointed younger judges, once boasting that “the average age of my newly appointed circuit court judges is less than 50.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been instrumental in shepherding the confirmation of these judges, also intends for these appointments to have a lasting, beneficial impact on the judiciary and the nation. “My goal is to do everything we can for as long as we can to transform the federal judiciary, because everything else we do is transitory,” said McConnell. “The closest thing we will ever have an opportunity to do to have the longest impact on the country is confirming these great men and women and transforming the judiciary for as long into the future as we can.”
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In some cases—such as the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, and Eleventh Circuits—Trump's appointments have flipped key courts to a majority of Republican-appointed judges.
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President Trump has compiled an astonishing record in defending life. Those who scoffed at his campaign commitment to these causes have egg on their faces. True to his campaign promise to appoint pro-life judges,
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within days of taking office Trump issued an executive order
reinstating and expanding the “Mexico City Policy,” which he renamed the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy, to ban federal funding of abortion-providing groups abroad. “President Trump is continuing Ronald Reagan's legacy by taking immediate action on day one to stop the promotion of abortion through our tax dollars overseas,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life group. “President Trump's immediate action to promote respect for all human life, including vulnerable unborn children abroad, as well as conscience rights, sends a strong signal about his administration's pro-life priorities.”
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As I've shown, however, there is no denying the pro-abortion extremism of the Democratic Party. In January 2019, while most were focusing on the border wall debate, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the Democrat-controlled House a measure repealing the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy so that funding could be resumed for abortionists like International Planned Parenthood Federation, which performs abortions in foreign countries.
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The bill did not pass the Senate, but Democrats continue to press to repeal the policy while Republicans seek to close a loophole in the law that allows nongovernmental organizations incorporated in the United States that perform or support abortion to receive federal funds.
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In April 2017, the State Department announced it was ending funding for the United Nations Population Fund because it “supports, or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
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That same month, the administration cut all funding for the UN's Family Planning Agency, which the administration believes has supported China's oppressive population control activities, such as coercive abortions and involuntary sterilizations.
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He also cut funding for international groups that provide abortions.
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Also in April 2017, President Trump overturned an Obama administration rule and allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood of family planning funds under Title X, which serves low-income
Americans.
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In February 2019 the administration finalized its Protect Life Rule, which substantially cuts Title X funds being distributed to abortion providers, including an estimated $50 million–$60 million cut per year for Planned Parenthood. In January 2018 the Trump administration rescinded Obama's 2016 policy that prevented states from defunding Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds. “President Trump and his administration have taken… an important step toward getting American taxpayers out of funding the abortion industry, especially Planned Parenthood,” said Dannenfelser.
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On March 4, 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule change to lift the Clinton-era provision of the Title X family planning program that requires organizations receiving Title X funding to counsel women about abortion and give them referrals for abortion services. Under the amended rule, providers would not be required to talk about abortion, though they would not be forbidden to, according to the administration.
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In June 2019 the Trump administration announced the government will no longer conduct research using fetal tissue obtained through elective abortions. The Trump administration has “once again done the right thing in restoring a culture of life to our government,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students of Life for America.
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In January 2020, HHS reversed another Obama administration policy and granted the state of Texas a Medicaid waiver to fund the Healthy Texas Women program, which excludes abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood. Also that month, the HHS declared it would take action against California for violating the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits discrimination against groups that don't provide abortion coverage in their health-care plans.
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On January 24, 2020, President Trump became the first sitting president to address the annual March for Life rally in person in Washington, D.C. “Every child is a precious and sacred gift from God,” said Trump. “Together, we must protect, cherish, and defend the dignity and sanctity of every human life…. Unborn children have never had
a stronger defender in the White House. And, as the Bible tells us, each person is ‘wonderfully made.' ”
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During his State of the Union address on February 4, President Trump urged Congress to ban late-term abortions.
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