by Doug Wead
“‘Can I do this right now?’
“He said, ‘Yes, go ahead.’
“So I went over to his chair and I knelt, and I put my hand on his shoulder. It is what many, many Christians do when they pray for someone, they will put their hand on you, just as a way of blessing. The truth is, we believe in impartation,” the pastor explained, referring to the giving and receiving of spiritual gifts. “And we are hoping that God will give a blessing through that.”
Was the prayer something he had coordinated with the White House ahead of time?
“No. When we were coming over on the plane, I’d asked Tony Perkins—he was on the flight with us—if he thought the president would mind if we prayed for him.” Perkins is an evangelical Christian leader.
“He said he thought President Trump would be open to that. And so, I had just jotted down three or four things I wanted to pray for him so that at the moment I would not forget them. So, I just prayed some of those things over him, and then Norine jumped in and prayed after I did.
“We didn’t realize it at the time, but what we’ve been told that it is unusual for someone to pray for the president. I know there are prayers said, for example, at inaugurations and when Congress convenes. But somehow, praying for him and having that broadcast out, all the words of the prayer, is more of an unusual thing, which we did not know at the time.”
Trump followed the prayer with a provocative query of his own. “Could I ask you one question? Who did you vote for?”37
There was laughter.
“You,” Norine Brunson said.
Pastor Brunson smiled. “I sent in an absentee ballot from prison.”
During the Oval Office visit, a reporter asked, “Mr. President, what do you do different than other administrations? You talked about the 19 people that you’ve seen—Americans held abroad that you’ve seen released. What did you do differently than previous administrations?”38
“They are tending not to take them out of our administration,” Trump responded. “And I think I could tell you why, but I won’t. But they tend not to take them out of our administration. And you know what? It’s going to stay that way.”39
NO RANSOM
In 1979, I had met with President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, the former California governor who would wrest the presidency from Carter in an election the following year. At the time, one of the biggest issues before the electorate was the Iran hostage crisis. Our embassy officials and other US citizens had been taken hostage by Iranian street mobs, encouraged by the Iranian government.
Once in the Oval Office, Reagan redefined American policy. “America will never make concessions to terrorists,” Reagan said. “To do so would only invite more terrorism. Nor will we ask nor pressure any other government to do so. Once we head down that path, there will be no end to it, no end to the suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized nations must pay.”
A Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) states, “The United States Government will work in a coordinated effort to leverage all instruments of national power to recover U.S. nationals held hostage abroad, unharmed. The United States will use every appropriate resource to gain the safe return of U.S. nationals who are held hostage. But the United States Government will make no concessions to individuals or groups holding U.S. nationals hostage. It is United States policy to deny hostage takers the benefits of ransom, prisoner releases, policy changes, or other acts of concession.”40
In my conversations with President Trump, I came away feeling that this policy had softened over the years and that the United States was, in fact, selectively violating its own stated dogma. “We do not pay a ransom in this country, at least any longer,” President Trump stated during his meeting with Brunson. “It started in a different administration, we took it over, we inherited it.”
When I asked about hostages, Trump was emphatic. “We don’t pay money to ransom innocent men and women to the countries. And terrorists that take our people. But believe me, they pay.”
And I believed him. The Turkish economy had been practically ruined over its government’s insistence on imprisoning an innocent man. Mostly to save face with pro-government media and government prosecutors, driven by religious and cultural bias.
Brunson told me he is convinced that Trump, personally, made the difference in his release. “So, this is what happened,” Brunson said. “I really believe, in my mind, God was the one that did this, but he used President Trump, and if he had not taken those steps, I don’t think that the Turkish president Erdoğan had any intentions of letting me go. It was really the unprecedented personal attention by President Trump, his leadership that led to my liberation.”
NOTES
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-gives-american-hostages-held-abroad-hope--and-also-takes-it-away/2018/12/23/965a5f28-046b-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html
2. https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-obama-hostage-ransom-20150624-story.html
3. https://abcnews.go.com/International/government-threatened-foley-family-ransom-payments-mother-slain/story?id=25453963
4. https://abcnews.go.com/International/government-threatened-foley-family-ransom-payments-mother-slain/story?id=25453963
5. https://abcnews.go.com/International/government-threatened-foley-family-ransom-payments-mother-slain/story?id=25453963
6. This according to a source close to the president.
7. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/freed-egyptian-american-prisoner-returns-home-following-trump-intervention/2017/04/20/d569fe1e-2608-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html
8. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-u-s-citizen-freed-venezuela/
9. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/asia/otto-warmbier-north-korea.html
10. https://dailycaller.com/2018/05/27/president-trump-freed-17-prisoners/
11. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/us/politics/trump-korea-detainees-pompeo.html
12. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/us/politics/trump-korea-detainees-pompeo.html
13. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/world/americas/american-citizen-held-in-venezuela-released-trump-announces.html
14. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-u-s-citizen-freed-venezuela/
15. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/trudeau-looks-to-trump-to-help-canadians-detained-in-china-1.4482222
16. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/world/middleeast/erdogan-turkey-trump.html
17. https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/16/politics/trump-erdogan-visit/index.html
18. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations in this chapter of Andrew Brunson come from the author’s personal interviews with the subject in 2019.
19. https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2017/november/still-waiting-for-my-dad-to-walk-me-down-the-aisle-a-daughters-plea-for-imprisoned-father-to-be-freed-from-turkish-prison
20. https://www.dw.com/en/trump-demands-turkey-release-us-christian-pastor-andrew-brunson-or-face-sanctions/a-44842486
21. https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/trump-urges-erdogan-to-free-us-pastor-held-in-turkey/article24457853.ece
22. https://www.wktv.com/content/national/489452121.html
23. https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-highlights/highlights-key-quotes-from-reuters-interview-with-trump-idUSL2N1VB111
24. https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-trump-highlights/highlights-key-quotes-from-reuters-interview-with-trump-idUSL2N1VB111
25. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Andrew Brunson in this chapter are taken from an interview in March 2019.
26. https://www.dw.com/en/trump-demands-turkey-release-us-christian-pastor-andrew-brunson-or-face-sanctions/a-44842486
27. https://eclj.org/religious-freedom/pace/open-letter-to-turkey
28. https://www.chattanoogan.com/2018/7/19/373144/Senators-Introduce-Bill-Demanding-That.aspx
29. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-poli
tics-erdogan/erdogan-says-u-s-turned-its-back-on-turkey-upsetting-ankara-idUSKBN1KW0B3
30. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/us/politics/trump-turkey-tariffs-currency.html
31. https://www.france24.com/en/20180810-turkey-curency-lira-plunge-erdogan-trump-twitter-tariffs
32. https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/trump-hits-turkey-with-doubled-tariffs-as-lira-tumbles-1.758702
33. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/10/erdogan-tells-turkish-people-trust-god-lira-tumbles-us-row/
34. https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2018/07/hopes-dashed-for-release-of-pastor-andrew-brunson-as-trial-to-continue-into-october/
35. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/10/12/freed-pastor-andrew-brunson-this-is-the-day-our-family-has-been-praying-for/
36. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-meet-evangelical-pastor-brunson-after-he-was-freed-from-turkish-jail/2018/10/13/352faf66-cef9-11e8-920f-dd52e1ae4570_story.html
37. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-pastor-andrew-brunson/
38. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-pastor-andrew-brunson/
39. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-pastor-andrew-brunson/
40. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/24/presidential-policy-directive-hostage-recovery-activities
16
THE FOREIGN POLICY PRESIDENT
“I don’t know, but they’re telling me that I might be more of a foreign policy president. What do you think?”
—DONALD TRUMP, IN AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
As a candidate, Trump’s frequent refrain was “America First.” We should take care of our own problems, he said, before meddling in the business of other nations. But the words “America First” were also a reminder that other countries were competing for our attention and our resources. One reason Trump had entered politics was his long-felt frustration over the nation’s trade deficits and defense arrangements, which he believed had led to the economic bloodletting of the American middle class. Were Americans being taxed to take care of the rest of the world? Trump had also complained that massive regulations, especially onerous to homegrown American businesses, had chased companies and jobs out of the country.
The challenge for Trump was determining how to take this on. Those jobs were going somewhere. Those trade deficits were benefiting someone. Our massive military expenditures were protecting other nations, freeing them to spend their money on other things.
The tax dollars that had fled America under Bush and Obama, on a massive scale, were now funding other nations’ government programs. They were building highways and airports in the capitals of other nations. An American president who had promised to make his country great again would have to pry loose those American dollars from the clutches of nations that had become addicted to them and that would not give them up willingly. America was not alone in the world. If Donald Trump was really going to put America first, the rest of the world was going to howl.
And it was even more complicated than that. The world of commerce had grown so international and interconnected that most big American banks and companies had also found a way to benefit from the money flowing to other countries. “America First” would be resisted not only by a long list of nations that were sucking from the teat of the American middle class, but also by many of America’s corporate giants, many of which were major advertisers and owners of the American media.
Trump was in for the fight of his life.
Our biggest trade deficits were often with countries that manipulated their currencies and stole American intellectual property, including top-secret military technology. Much of this, especially the key relationships of major American corporations with China, was driven by insider deals and a vast maze of “legalized” corruption. Many of those companies also sponsored the US news organizations whose stories promoted those same policies to the American people.
All of those companies gave massive donations to the Democratic and Republican parties and to key legislators. They financed many well-intentioned special-interest groups that promoted regulations that caused economic hardship for small businesses, conveniently resulting in monopolies for themselves. They financed think tanks that commissioned scholars to write papers and conduct studies to justify the status quo.
America’s universities, addicted to foreign students who were paying full tuition, openly advocated globalism and funded supporters such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who was reportedly paid $350,000 by Harvard University to teach a single class.1 This is the same woman who conveniently promoted the idea of government-paid, free college education. It was hard for some to see Harvard University, which had a $37.6 billion endowment, in need of further government subsidy.2
In a conversation with the president, I brought up these issues. “When you were first elected and took office, you obviously began to learn details that the rest of us don’t know,” I said. “You had all of these ideas for years, decades really, ideas about the world and about trade and corruption. You’ve given speeches about it. How did all of that change when you became president? Was it as bad as you thought?”
“It is even worse,” the president said. “It is far worse than I thought.
“The good news,” he added, “is that we have great potential. We are turning it all around. And that’s one of the reasons this country is rebounding.
“I can give you twelve countries right now. You would be shocked! How about Germany? How about Saudi Arabia? These are great countries. These are rich countries. Some of the richest countries in the world.
“So, we defend Saudi Arabia and they don’t pay us, okay?”
The president shifts in his chair, preparing me for his impersonation of an actual conversation. You’ve got to love this; remember, Trump is an entertainer.
“So, I told the king, ‘You’ve got to pay. Okay, king? You’ve got to pay.’”
The president then pursed his lips to mimic the dignity of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia. “And the king says, ‘Yes, and how much would you like?’
“Imagine? Imagine?” Trump said. “The Saudis have been doing this for years, but nobody ever asked them to help pay for it. Saudi Arabia wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for American support. It is the most incredible thing I have ever seen. Our roads are falling apart, our bridges are in danger, our airports look like they are in developing countries, and you have years and years of us protecting the world while they all grow rich. Doug, I hope you can see right now how crazy this is.”
He impersonated King Salman once again, pursing his lips. “‘Yes, and how much would you like?’
“I say, ‘Hasn’t anybody ever asked you before?’
“He says, ‘Well, no. Nobody ever asked us.’
“This is how America was run. For years. For years. And there is so much I could tell you. It’s worse than I thought.”
DONALD TRUMP’S WINNING FOREIGN POLICY
In November 2016, just before the Clinton-Trump election, fifty leading Republican foreign policy experts signed a letter warning of the dangers of electing Trump as president. “Donald Trump is not qualified to be president and commander-in-chief,” they wrote. “Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous president and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”3
Two years later, according to Investors Business Daily, “even former Obama administration officials were admitting that, while Trump’s methods were certainly unorthodox, he was getting results that those … experts could only dream about.”4
Politico, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, was asking aloud, “Doesn’t Trump deserve some credit?”5 Ivo Daalder, ambassador to NATO under Obama, described Trump as a “disrupter” who “is leading to some very healthy debate about what are our goals.”6
When Trump demanded th
at NATO nations pay their delinquent dues, token amounts of money that they had agreed to pay to provide for their own defense, the American national media erupted. He was trying to weaken NATO, they claimed. He was a Russian spy. The media insisted this with a straight face.
Trump did not back down. “This has been going on for decades, by the way. Under many presidents,” he said. “But no other president has brought it up like I have.”7
He was right.
In fact, within two years, the NATO secretary general insisted that Trump’s confrontational approach to member nations had made the organization stronger than it had ever been. The call for increased participation from allied nations was “having a real impact.”8 It was long overdue.
“Here is the ultimate example of American stupidity,” Trump told me. “We buy billions and billions of dollars’ worth of missiles. Then we give them away to our allies, our rich allies.
“So I challenge that. I say to the general, ‘Why are we doing that?’”
At this point in the conversation, Trump once again adopted the persona of a character in his story. He straightened up like a soldier and declared solemnly, speaking in the monotone, emotionless, staccato voice of his general, “Sir! They are our ally. They are our friends. Sir!”
Then Trump’s demeanor relaxed. “I say, ‘They are not our friends. They are ripping us off.’”
The president straightened up again, becoming the general. “‘Sir, they are our ally. Sir!’
“The worst part of this is the realization that the people who treat us worst are our allies. And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?”
The president was referring to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which became operational in South Korea in May, 2017. It is designed to intercept any incoming North Korean missiles.
“We give so much,” Trump said. “We give so much. We get nothing. Many times, we can’t even get votes in the United Nations.”