I
want to discuss the national security threats facing our country.
A
recent poll showed that 45 percent of Americans acknowledge that China is the
greatest threat to the United States.
A
year ago, only half that number thought so.
Frankly,
this year, no other nation came particularly close: Russia, North Korea, Iran,
were all far behind.
Half
of Americans believe China is the world’s leading economic power, a record 63
percent say the economic power of China is a critical threat to the US.
The
American people are smart.
They
are perceiving exactly what is happening.
China
wants to supplant the United States as the greatest nation and the greatest
economy in the world.
And
China will do it, if we are blind to the danger.
Everywhere
I see the threat of China’s rise minimized.
Just
yesterday, I saw a very curious thing in a Declassified Intelligence Community
Assessment on Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections.
The
Intelligence Community determined that China did not engage in pervasive
election meddling, but noted that it was in part because of risks associated
with doing so.
The
IC determined that China would not be excited if former President Trump had won
the 2020 election because he would, and I quote, “challenge China’s rise.”
The
National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues, in particular, found that the
government of China wanted former President Trump to be defeated in the general
election, preferring, and I quote, “the election of a more predictable member
of the establishment instead” and “China took at least some steps to undermine
former President Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and
official public statements and media.”
Yet
some in the news media read this same report I read and declared triumphantly,
and falsely, that there was nothing to fear from China in terms of influencing
our elections.
It’s
pretty clear why China would not want a president unafraid to assert American
national interests.
That
means demanding reciprocal trade, secure borders and a defense policy focused
on American national security.
China
has been playing us for suckers.
China
continues to try to expand its influence globally, including in international
bodies like the World Bank and the World Health Organization, for
example.
It
doesn’t seek to play by the rules, but to exploit its influence for its own
advantage at the expense of the United States and other free countries.
In
this same assessment, I saw that Iran, another enemy, also wanted to defeat a
strong American president, and sow division.
Many
others: Lebanese Hizballah, the government of Cuba and the Maduro government of
Venezuela – they all had the same idea.
They
all wanted to defeat President Trump.
Only
Russia seems to have preferred him according to this assessment.
Although,
I remember reading a year ago, during the primaries, that Senator Bernie
Sanders was also a favorite of Russia.
He
had to have a defensive briefing, because Russia wanted to help his
campaign.
Also,
remember it was then Vice President Biden who first announced the naive and
disastrous Obama “reset” appeasement policy toward Russia.
This
coming in the wake of Russia’s invasion of our ally, Georgia, arguably gave
Putin the idea he could get away with invading Ukraine.
Let’s
also take this moment to recall that when the Obama Justice Department and FBI
saw threats from Russia during the 2016 election, they didn’t defensively brief
Trump and his team.
Instead,
they opened Crossfire Hurricane, and outrageously used briefings to Trump and
his associates as intelligence gathering operations and ultimately wasted years
of taxpayer money and time.
Abraham
Lincoln once said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we
lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”
In
fact, the goal of what the KGB calls “active measures” like disinformation
since Soviet times has been to pit Americans against each other to cause us to
destroy ourselves.
Which
brings me to another related point.
As I
see this seat of democracy fortified with walls and barbed wire, while the people
– the citizen, the taxpayer – are kept out, I can’t help but think about where
we go from here.
Yet,
the Democrats can only speak of destroying the filibuster during these
difficult times.
When
I hear talk of destroying the filibuster, the very tool that forces
bipartisanship and ensures that those representing all Americans are heard, and
that Americans act as one, being abolished forever, I am worried.
If
the slimmest of majorities is about to impose its will on the other half of the
country from inside an armed bunker, the Russians will have achieved their
ultimate goal.
We
are not our own enemies, to be silenced and fenced out.
We
are one nation.
And
we must pull together and acknowledge what it means when countries like China
and Iran – our enemies and adversaries – don’t want us to put our own country’s
interests first.
