With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the Republican presidential candidates were back in the state making their pitches to the voters.
 
Donald Trump held a town hall event with Fox News in Des Moines Wednesday night, just two miles from where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley were participating in a CNN debate.
 
Lots of issues were discussed during Trump’s town hall, but what really stood out to me was his response to a pro-life Iowa voter.
 
Trump has come under fire from some who are suggesting that he is abandoning the pro-life cause. I have met with him many times, and he is not abandoning this issue.
 
And it was striking Wednesday night that instead of running away from the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Trump strongly embraced it. He began by talking about a person who thanked him backstage before the town hall event started for being a solid pro-life president who saved so many innocent lives by overturning Roe v. Wade.
 
Even elected officials with long pro-life records try to avoid talking about the overturn of Roe. Unfortunately, that was not a politically popular decision. That’s a fact the pro-life movement has to contend with. But Trump did not run from it.
 
He also reminded the audience about the Democrats’ extremism on this issue. That was never effectively done by previous GOP candidates until Trump rhetorically hung Hillary Clinton’s pro-abortion extremism around her neck like an albatross. That exchange stunned her and, I believe, mightily contributed to his victory.
 
Trump said he supported the three main “exceptions” — life of the mother, rape and incest.  That was the same position that Ronald Reagan held, and Reagan was the most pro-life president we ever had until the election of Donald Trump.
 
But even Reagan blew it with his Supreme Court appointments of Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Trump had three Supreme Court appointments, and he got them all right on this issue.
 
Finally, Trump made it clear that if we impose a purity test that makes the perfect the enemy of the good, and which also allows the left to paint us as extremists, we’re not going to win, and we’re going to end up with abortion on demand back in the Constitution.
 
 
 
Biden’s Priority
 
Not only was Donald Trump’s response on the life issue noteworthy, but so too was a recent comment by Quentin Fulks, Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager.
 
Fulks appeared on “Meet The Press” this past Sunday and was asked what Joe Biden’s top priority would be for his second term. He replied, “First of all, Roe. The president has been adamant that we need to restore [Roe v. Wade].”
 
There you go. Abortion on demand is the top priority for Biden’s second term.
 
If we end up in another circular firing squad, we’re going to end up losing everything we gained in Trump’s four years and more.
 
 
 
Christie Out
 
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropped out of the race Wednesday, just days after saying it was “crazy” to suggest that he might drop out. And in his remarks, he demonstrated why people like him are hurting the Republican Party and the populist conservative cause.
 
Christie preened with the idea that the main reason he ran was because Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs, and he was the only guy willing to take him on.
 
Really? No one else is trying to stop Donald Trump?
 
The most powerful people in America are trying to stop him! The donor wing of the Republican Party is trying to stop him.
 
They are trying to bankrupt him. They are trying to put him in jail. They are trying to ruin him and his family. And Chris Christie thinks he was needed because no one else was trying to stop Trump?
 
Christie said that Trump is full of himself. Well, I think Christie is full of something, too.
 
Let’s just say that somehow Christie managed to stop the nomination of Donald Trump. I hope everyone realizes what that would mean: Joe Biden will be reelected for a second term.
 
While the pundits are talking about how the GOP needs to attract suburban women, no one talks about how the GOP must keep and expand the working-class, values voter base of the party.
 
It’s hard to imagine values voters supporting Biden. But the blue-collar, working-class voters who joined the GOP in recent years by the millions did so because of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump smashed the Democrats’ blue wall in 2016 by winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, doing what no other Republican since Ronald Reagan was able to do. He did it with blue-collar, working-class voters who will never vote for a Bush/Romney establishment candidate.
 
Chris Christie is the party’s past. His “moment” came and went when he took a pass on challenging Barack Obama in 2012. And I find it disturbing that a significant percentage of New Hampshire voters are still backing him 12 years later.
 
By the way, the latest Rasmussen poll finds Donald Trump beating Joe Biden 49% to 41%. Ron DeSantis essentially ties Biden 42% to 41%. But Nikki Haley loses to Biden 36% to 38%.
 
 
 
Confronting Anti-Semitism
 
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas continues to expose a growing danger here at home: rampant anti-Semitism.
 
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) just issued a deeply disturbing report finding that there were nearly 3,300 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States in the three months between October 7^th and January 7^th.
 
That’s more anti-Semitic incidents in just three months than in any entire year during the past decade, except for 2022, which set a record of nearly 3,700 incidents.
 
In response to these findings, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said:
 
“The American Jewish community is facing a threat level that’s now unprecedented in modern [American] history. It’s shocking that we’ve recorded more anti-Semitic acts in three months than we usually would in an entire year.”
 
Of course, anti-Semitism can take many forms and has many sources. But it is revealing that what triggered this latest explosion of anti-Semitism in America was the Hamas massacre of more than 1,000 innocent Israelis.
 
If so many haters are coming out of the woodwork to celebrate that savagery, then the source of this hate must be radical Islamic supremacy. (Please read this link to learn more.) And the left’s insane open borders / immigration policies bear much of the blame for this growing threat.
 
 
On Alert For Hezbollah
 
Speaking of growing threats, U.S. intelligence sources are warning that our homeland is at increasing risk from terrorist attacks carried out by Hezbollah agents.
 
While Hamas is getting all the headlines right now, Hezbollah is the Iranian regime’s main terrorist proxy, with a vast network of operatives around the world. Even in the aftermath of 9/11, U.S. officials described Hezbollah as the “A-Team of terrorists and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the ‘B’ team.”
 
Again, as I have often noted, border security is national security, and Biden’s open borders policies mean we have neither. Last year, the Border Patrol caught more than 170 illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list.
 
And in the days since October 7^th, there have been disturbing reports of Iranians (here and here) being detained at the border. The Department of Homeland Security stresses that such encounters are “very uncommon.”
 
But that’s little comfort knowing that Joe Biden has allowed nearly 10 million illegal aliens to cross the border, including almost 2 million “gotaways” of whom we know absolutely nothing.
 
 
 
Defending Faith, Family & Freedom
 
In this week’s “Defending Faith, Family and Freedom” podcast for the James Dobson Family Institute, I look back on the historic 1968 Apollo 8 mission — a tremendous American success story that occurred in a tremendously tumultuous year.
 
Yet in the midst of all of humanity’s historic “firsts” achieved during this trip to the moon, the Apollo 8 astronauts took the opportunity to remind us that God is still in control.