One of the most impressive men in the Trump administration is Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger. A former journalist in Beijing and combat Marine, he is today one of the President’s most knowledgeable and robust China experts.

Mr. Pottinger’s skills were on display in a speech delivered in fluent Mandarin on Monday to a University of Virginia audience. But it was clearly intended for the people of China, too. He subtly appealed for them to draw on “traditional Chinese ideals about virtuous leadership” in repudiating the CCP’s totalitarian repression.

The Pottinger address will surely infuriate the thugs of the Communist Party. Like all bullies, they are good at dishing out incitement, but are hypersensitive about taking it. Here’s hoping President Trump will pile on with a Reaganesque “Evil Empire” speech of his own, perhaps like Matt Pottinger’s, with “Chinese characteristics.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

“Made in China” is clearly a damaged brand in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party pandemic that is perhaps its most notorious example.

Americans have awakened to the horrifying reality that their lives are now profoundly impacted by what comes from China. And much of what China provides can be – and in some cases is being – weaponized, by withholding it, by adulterating it or by utilizing it for the CCP’s own purposes.

For instance, thanks to decades of predatory trade practices, the Chinese produce our medicines, hygienic masks, gloves and gowns, clothes and shoes, gear for the electric grid, hardware, drones, phones, silicon chips and other electronic equipment and the rare earth minerals from which they are manufactured.

The made-in-China virus is our opportunity to begin ending an unsustainable practice of relying on other things produced there. Boycott China.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Donald Trump will always be remembered as the president who led the country through the “wartime” period precipitated when the Chinese Communist Party unleashed the “invisible enemy” – the CCP virus – and resulting pandemic upon us and the rest of the world.

The single most important accomplishment of the Trump presidency, however, may be his efforts to prevent an even worse catastrophe than what we’re currently experiencing. In an Executive Order issued in March 2019 and another one unveiled last week, Mr. Trump has explicitly recognized that the vulnerability of our electric grid to attack or natural disruptions constitutes a national emergency. Without electricity, there’s no America.

For the potential importance of this legacy to be achieved, however, the President will have to ensure that the Deep State-riddled bureaucracy and hostile special interests, notably among the utility sector, do as directed. Starting NOW.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Donald Trump has reportedly decided US military and civilian federal government employees must not be compelled to invest their retirement funds in Chinese Communist Party companies. Sinclair Broadcasting’s James Rosen reports the President has said, “We can’t allow this to move forward. This needs to stop.”

That should be a no-brainer. For one thing, doing otherwise risks Thrift Savings Plan beneficiaries’ savings in non-transparent, unaccountable CCP corporations with undisclosed material risk. Some help the Communist regime oppress its own people, others help it threaten ours. And the TSP investing $50 billion in China now would reward the pandemic’s perpetrators.

Mr. Trump will doubtless come under excruciating pressure to reverse course – from Beijing, naturally, but also from the powerful China Lobby on Wall Street. The President needs to know we have his back. Please sign a petition telling him so at PresentDangerChina.org.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Ronald Reagan wanted to bankrupt a Communist enemy seeking our destruction. He told our allies they could help the Soviet Union build a Siberian gas pipeline or they could do business with us. U.S. government lawyers said he couldn’t use the International Economic Emergency Powers Act – known as IEPPA – “extraterritorially.” He ignored them. The rest is history: the USSR is no more.

Now, government lawyers are telling Donald Trump he can’t use IEEPA to prevent federal retirement funds from enabling the Chinese Communists’ ambitions to destroy us. Yesterday, Mr. Trump acknowledged they’re also trying to terminate his presidency.

Trump China advisor Michael Pillsbury says the Chinese are “laughing at us,” contemptuous that we’re so corrupt, we’ll actually reward them for their pandemic. If President heeds the lawyers, the Communists will, indeed, laugh – all the way to the bank named BlackRock or Goldman Sachs.

This is Frank Gaffney.

Senator Tom Cotton believes the Chinese Communist Party deliberately sent overseas hundreds of thousands of people from Wuhan and elsewhere in China to ensure its virus – and the accompanying devastation – would be spread worldwide.

Even before that revelation, many Americans thought the CCP should be punished for its misconduct that made this pandemic so costly. Especially if Sen. Cotton is right, they would be furious at the prospect that our military and civilian federal employees would be forced to reward the perpetrators.

Yet, unless they act quickly, many federal officials and lawmakers – whose own retirement funds are managed by the Thrift Savings Plan – will have to invest them in Chinese Communist companies. An open letter sent to President Trump recently points out that among those companies are ones that threaten us.

Go to PresentDangerChina.org to tell our leaders that must not happen.

This is Frank Gaffney.

When this traumatic period’s history is written, one public figure will stand out as having presciently and courageously warned of the threats we are facing from the Chinese Communist Party. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton often is assailed for making observations that flout the prevailing conventional wisdom, only to be proven right.

That’s likely true of his latest accusation that the CCP “deliberately and consciously” allowed vast numbers of Chinese to travel abroad after it determined how dangerous the Wuhan virus was, but before the rest of us had a clue. The CCP did it malevolently, Sen. Cotton contends, to infect and damage the rest of the world, rather than contain the suffering and cost within its own borders.

If Sen. Cotton’s right about this charge, too, it would constitute an epic crime against humanity and the CCP perpetrators must be punished.

This is Frank Gaffney.

When the Iranian regime last year threatened to kill Americans in Iraq, President Trump issued a stern warning. And when its surrogates in Iraq did just that, he retaliated by taking out the mullahs’ top general, Qasem Soleimani.

Lately, Iranian gunboats have been menacing US warships in the Persian Gulf. President Trump has issued another warning: Vessels engaging in such threatening behavior will be sunk. My guess is that other senior figures will pay a price, too.

Faced with crushing US sanctions, a severe drought, a Biblical-scale plague of locusts and the devastation wrought by the Chinese Communist Party virus, the ayatollahs may think it’s time to precipitate apocalyptic attacks against this country and Israel.

All the more reason to make the express object of American policy not just punishing the regime in Tehran, but helping the Iranian people bring it down.

This is Frank Gaffney.

John Solomon is one of America’s best investigative reporters, having broken stories for years that have rocked the political establishment and shaped our history. His latest revelation may be one of his most important ever.

On April 22^nd, Solomon reported at Just the News about a natural treatment that the U.S. Army’s highly regarded biodefense research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland has demonstrated is effective in “slowing and halting” even worse diseases than the Chinese Communist Party virus, having been successfully tested by it against Ebola and Marburg.

If tests now underway at Ft. Detrick on this extract of the oleander plant prove it works against another “enveloped virus,” officially known as COVID-19, we just may have what it takes to begin reopening America quickly and safely – namely, the confidence we all can go back to work, school and normal life. Stay tuned.

This is Frank Gaffney.

In this pandemic crisis, President Trump is wrestling with unenviable choices including immigration, reopening the country, maintaining the Navy’s readiness and the investment of federal retirement funds in malevolent Communist Chinese companies.

Mr. Trump has to balance competing interests, often involving public health considerations versus the need to resuscitate the economy and/or protect the national security. If there is any rule of thumb as to how to resolve such dilemmas, it probably should be “America First.”

In practice, that would mean we should do the following: Put all foreign immigration on hold for sixty days. Implement the phased reopening plan Mr. Trump announced last week, supported by aggressive use of promising therapies to reduce the risks, especially for the Navy and other military services to maintain readiness. And don’t underwrite our enemies by investing public pension funds in problematic Communist Chinese businesses.

This is Frank Gaffney.