by Sean Hannity
Mark Moyar, author of Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism Have Imperiled America, argues that President Obama’s goal from the start was to shrink the military.87 Republicans recaptured the House in 2010 promising fiscal conservativism. With free-spending Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, an impasse was inevitable. To entice Congress to raise the debt limit, Democrats agreed to Republican demands for spending cuts, which led to the Budget Control Act of 2011. This imposed compulsory spending caps—called sequestration—to be triggered if the parties couldn’t reach an agreement on a spending plan to reduce the deficit. Somehow President Obama managed to secure a deal that allocated half the sequestration cuts to defense when defense constituted only 20 percent of spending.88
National-security-oriented Republicans like John McCain naively believed Democrats would agree to a compromise, forestalling major defense cuts.89 That didn’t happen due to Obama’s insistence on huge tax hikes, so sequestration kicked in and military spending was slashed. “Though President Obama denounced sequestration, his actions suggest that at the very least he was comfortable with its gutting of the defense budget,” writes Moyar. “During the 2011 negotiations the White House had already begun to work on a new national-security strategy to accommodate drastic defense cuts.”90
The Republicans’ weakness and defeat in this battle is the type of thing that led to conservative grassroots discontent, and ultimately their embracing Donald Trump. Thankfully, President Trump is far more supportive of the military than Obama was. Within about a year of taking office, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress increased defense spending projections by more than $200 billion for fiscal years 2017 through 2019.91 In 2018, the Trump administration signed a $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act, the largest defense bill in our history, which added 20,000 more troops and included a 2.4 percent pay raise for the military, the biggest increase since 2010. “History teaches us that when you weaken your defenses, you invite aggression,” said Trump on signing the bill. “The best way to prevent conflict of any kind is to be prepared. Only when the good are strong will peace prevail.”92
Under President Trump, this upward trend in defense spending continued—by design. His National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 included a record-high $738 billion for defense spending, a 3.1 percent pay increase for our troops, and the first-ever paid family leave allowance.93 During his 2020 State of the Union address Trump proudly reported on his military buildup. “To safeguard American liberty, we have invested a record-breaking $2.2 trillion in the United States military,” said Trump. “We have purchased the finest planes, missiles, rockets, ships, and every other form of military equipment—all made in the United States of America.”94
President Trump is committed to modernizing our military. He has made the U.S. Cyber Command a wartime concern to advance our efforts in cyberspace.95 He also announced the creation of the United States Space Command in late August 2019. As the eleventh U.S. combatant command and drawing forces from existing military branches, the command defends our nation’s interests in space, which Trump calls “the next warfighting domain.” “Those who wish to harm the United States, to seek to challenge us, in the ultimate high ground of space, it is going to be a whole different ballgame,” he said. “Our freedom to operate in space is also essential to detecting… any missile launches against the United States. Ultimately, we have no choice if we are to remain the world’s greatest superpower.”96 Trump eventually overcame congressional resistance to establish the U.S. Space Force as America’s sixth military service, beginning with 16,000 active-duty military personnel and civilian staffers, with more people to be added over time.97
Trump has been concerned for years about inadequate health care for U.S. military veterans. On June 6, 2018, he signed the VA Mission Act, which significantly improved veterans’ access to VA health care, including allowing veterans to receive urgent care in their own cities and improving their overall quality of care.98 The administration has also improved veterans’ access to telehealth services, including serving patients at home, outside a hospital or clinic, whereas before, these services mostly involved connecting clinicians and patients from different medicine facilities.99 The administration passed the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 “to improve VA’s ability to hold employees accountable and enhance protections for whistleblowers.”100 Also in 2017, the president signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act to streamline the appeals process for veterans.101 Trump created a White House veterans hotline, which opened in June 2017 and within two years had fielded more than 250,000 calls.102 In June 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs and White House launched a veteran suicide prevention task force.103 In August 2019, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum to ensure that veterans receive expedited access to student loans and educational benefits available to them.104
Finally, due to the Trump boom, the jobless rate for all veterans dipped to an eighteen-year low of 3.5 percent in 2018.105
FOREIGN POLICY
President Trump has reversed Obama’s lead-from-behind foreign policies that benefited our adversaries and punished our allies. He has shifted our policy from an America-last to an America-first emphasis. Trump succeeded in securing an agreement from NATO members to increase their defense spending by $130 billion.106 He has directed millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Christians and other minorities persecuted by Islamic terrorists. With input from Vice President Pence, Trump redirected U.S. funds originally planned for more general distribution by the United Nations toward Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities targeted by ISIS.107 Trump has supported democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere, imposing severe sanctions on repressive regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
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.”108
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.109
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;110 refused to give North Korea sanctions relief without a full denuclearization first;111 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 grea
test ally, the United States of America, today the United States embassy opened here. What a difference.”112 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.113
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.”114 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 1950.115
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.116 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.117
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;118 and Danny Burch, an American oil worker held in Yemen.119
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.120 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.121 “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.”122
JUDGES
The president has treated the appointment of originalist judges as a top priority.123 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.124
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.”125 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.126
PROTECTING LIFE
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,127 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.”128
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.129 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.130
In April 2017, the State Department announced it was ending funding for the United Nations Population Fun
d because it “supports, or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”131 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.132 He also cut funding for international groups that provide abortions.133
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.134 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.135
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.136
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.137